I’ve run many offices out of
cramped quarters. They were near-clones of each other. Common features? A chair
at a desk or table. The computer, the screen, the keyboard, the mouse, and the
printer…all present and mostly correct.
To this day, the office remains papery. I
reduce the use of dead trees and almost
go paperless, until I am overwhelmed by a sudden surge in rectangular sheets
that takes me back to the old ways.
Well.
Damn.
I’ve
gone about as hi-tech as I can run – the printer is wireless and sits in a different
room, with actual room for it there. But I never quite manage to be 100%
paperless. There is a printer in this room – I only use the scanner part of
that machine. Yes, there’s always a need for paper. I scan stuff into the
digital world, in imitation of the movie TRON.
No, I don’t have a big eff-off laser or a
massive vault door. One day, sigh.
We’ll always need paper. Even if it’s just
toilet paper. I have a roll of that handy, to mop up spillages that threaten to
turn my chair into an electrical one if the rising tide consumes the cables. As
more time passes, the cables grow longer and snakier and cablier…not less-so.
If I went completely wireless, I’d be my own radio station.
The computer sits to the left in one office.
Now it’s on the right in the revamped writing lair of another set-up. Here, in
an earlier incarnation, it’s still under the desk in the flashback I’m having.
There, it’s on a chest of drawers next to the table and I’m being inventive
with the cabling. The cable creature is the hydra-headed monster that grows two
new cables for each old cable I ditch.
As I type, I moved the new computer from
under the desk to the right of the desk for around five minutes and…now, for however
long NOW is, I’ve settled on a
platform to the left of the desk. Low, the machine perches on a TV stand chosen
for its ability to fit in the lack of space not available.
I’m in the process of clearing the
bookshelves of non-book things. Living clean, now. No gadgets amidst the stacks,
away with clutter, why would I perch spare shoelaces there
anyway…and so on. The TV and desk both block very easy access to the lower
shelves, but those hidden planks are taken up by the cabling. Of course.
Still with me, long into the digital age, is
my reference shelf. Twenty books. There were nineteen tomes when the reference
section sat, loosely, atop a small bookcase. The rule of the bookcase is
simple.
That
topmost area of the wooden frame is also for books. The low bookcase just squeezed
in, and made for a great stage on which my reference works strolled and acted.
Storm after storm shook the office. And with
each organisational tornado, shelves rose and whirled and flew and settled. I
kept the doorstopper books on the ends, without support, to hold everything
else in place.
Now and again another bookcase acted as a default
bookend of sorts, buttressing the reference works. Storms came and storms went.
The reference section remained intact. Fossilised, as it turned out. I left the
reference relic to sparkle, in amber, as the easy lure of the internet made it
more convenient to cross-reference items.
Today, the reference shelf is a little
longer, and higher up, on an entirely different bookcase within easy sight and
reach. Living on a wider bookcase, nineteen books accepted a twentieth into the
ranks when I picked up a new reference work.
A papery
refugee, struggling to find a home.
They stand, tight-packed, in there. Those
books. No matter how the office is arranged, the reference shelf survives. As
technology advances, the reference shelf endures. Just this minute, I’ve added
eight tiny dictionaries to the reference shelf.
Those micro-books are held in place by a
large dictionary in what is now the back row. No, I don’t know how many
dictionaries I own. I’m sure there are others, somewhere else. Yes, I was once
trapped behind a bookcase. But I survived to have another coffee.
Moving books from shelf to shelf is a tricky
prospect. Many books loom over my workspace. I sleep on the other side of this
great divide. One day, I’ll be found dead under the collected works of Dorothy
L. Sayers.
A
clear slipcase of murder.
Moving books around shelves is a tricky
prospect for reasons of memory. I’m engaged in wordy toil over movies at the
minute, and I was reading up on The
Matrix when a name jumped off the page at me.
That name collided with the bookcase to my
immediate left. Over the past month, I’ve been accused, by three separate
sources, of being surrounded by bookcases as I sit in a high-backed chair next
to a roaring fire…
Smoking-jacket, optional. Tobacco-products,
not in evidence. I’m suspected of swilling brandy, most likely just for the atmospheric
effect. A Mary Shelley Level of Rain™
rattles off the windows, and another lump of coal cracks and splits dramatically…
The truth is, it’s been a good while since I
sat in a high-backed chair next to a roaring fire with a shelf of books to
hand…but, yes, there’s a grain of reality on that fictional beach. No
smoking-jacket. The room contained an empty brandy glass. Rain rattled off the
windows.
But the real truth is…as I type, I am
hemmed-in by the too-tall bookshelves that will one day deliver a succession of
fatal blows from the typewriter of Dorothy L. Well, if you have to go…go
dramatically, with a hint of murder and mystery.
In other words, I’ll have vanished, on the
run, after killing them all.
My reference shelf grew based on what would
fit in. A biographical dictionary sits next to an Atlas. Then there’s a
dictionary on artists. Wikipedia and Google Maps are closer to hand. I’ve
entered, or exited, The Matrix too
many times to know what’s real.
Another author tells me that there is still
room in life for picking up a book and checking a reference. And I agree…if
only to assist in keeping the fruits of my research sound exactly like everyone
else’s browsing of Wikipedia.
Top tip. On Wikipedia, I read the Talk pages as well. Mostly for the
humour.
*
The last time a maintenance
man was in here, he declared that someone
likes to read, and left it at that. The library changes in the sense that
the library grows. Bless your heart if you thought I cleared the stacks at
intervals. Away with your heresy.
That business of change is an easy business.
Far trickier is the puzzle over ensuring things stand still. When the old
computer dies, electronic koff, digital splutter, you move to a new computer.
It
works fresh out of the box, but it’s not the same. That’s the bloody trouble. You
must house-train the young pup. Teach the new dog all the old tricks by
installing familiar software. Not to go all Yogi
Berra on you, but I think we’ve been here before.
I endured a month of computer disruption.
Two weeks crawled along as I used my old retired computer. At least this was
familiar. I’d ported the look, the layout, and the software from the retirement
home computer to the dust-free model all that time before, after all.
Familiar, but slow – like a much-favoured
brand of treacle. My computer died and I took a familiar-looking computer out
of retirement. Now it was time to pass the grandfather layout to the grandson.
But. That’s all digital. Making the new
computer set-up so familiar that it resembles the computer before and the computer
before that. Going back further, it was more like an offshoot of the family
with little resemblance.
This is where I came in…
I’ve run many
offices out of cramped quarters. They were near-clones of each other. Common
features? A chair at a desk or table. The computer, the screen, the keyboard,
the mouse, and the printer…all present and mostly correct.
Out of the box, the new computer was a
magnificent thing. As long as I had a monitor it recognised. That was sheer
luck, Jeeves. And gradually, week upon week, I transformed the faster machine
into a racehorse I recognised. The old racing colours flew again. That desktop
is the old desktop once more.
But.
The new machine was…bigger as well as
faster. Adding an extra reference book to my reference shelf was possible only
after the transfer of the entire collection from a small bookcase to a large
bookcase with longer shelves.
I had a case problem. The new computer case
was just a bit too big for the space available. Solution? Okay, I reached for a
hacksaw. So what? This is what you have to do when you really have to do stuff.
Briefly…(too late.) The old system was
sideways. You walked in, turned left, shut the door, and sat in the chair. My
computer sat on an old TV unit that barely fit into the alcove of bookshelves.
I am, sadly, still clearing up those shelves so there are only books and hardly
any clutter. Yes, I tidied. And yes, I’ve untidied the shelves all over again.
The old TV unit wasn’t tall enough. I needed
an overhang for the keyboard. In comes the upright desk thing. Whatever the
gadget is called. It lets you stand at a computer and type. Height is
adjustable. I had the wooden TV unit with the upright desk thing on top, and
the computer itself sat down inside the glass door of the TV unit.
Fine. It worked. Cables were all over the
place and then some. But it worked and I didn’t care how it worked. So much for
the Olden Times. It worked. Until the new computer arrived. And the new casing
for the PC was just a shade too large to put under the TV unit inside that
glass door. Not total glass. Wooden frame with a pane of glass in there.
Right. I’m stuck with a huge unit and a
too-huge computer. Is there a solution? Yes, if you chase after one. When you
shut the wooden frame of the door, it buts up against a crossbar. That support
is there to make the door fit snugly. It was loose. (I’ve put it back together
again, and it is still loose.)
I decided to pry this slat out. No bother.
The computer now had enough of a gap to fit in there. Terrific. Only
problem…the computer case was too fucking long. What to do? It is essential, if
you have a library stacked with dead trees, to possess some spare bookcase
shelves. Obviously, I have spares.
Short
and narrow, two of these spare planks would fit under the case and act as a
platform allowing the case’s annoying feet to rest evenly and safely…
Well, sign me up to that shit.
Problem I see in my near-future. The two
shelves together are narrow, and will slide around from right to left if I bump
into the whole arrangement. UNLESS I fill the gap down the side with two pieces
of wood cut just right. And I have a piece of wood left over from a chunk of packaging.
All I need is a hacksaw. I hack and I saw.
There is some measuring, of course. You can’t go around with a hacksaw,
willy-nilly. It’s just not done. When the dust settles, what do I have? There
are two planks of wood forming a makeshift platform, inside this cupboard area.
They are jammed in solid by the wooden bracing pieces I’ve cut up…
The computer slides in on this contraption
and all is fine. It’s terrific. EXCEPT…
Oh. For. The. Sake. Of. Fuck.
This machine has a glass panel at the front.
Which means all the USB ports are at the back, as expected. And all the front
USB ports are on top instead of the standard arrangement. I truly need the two
front ones for various gadgets.
BUT. The top of the computer case is a shade
TOO TALL. It nestles just barely under the extending desk arrangement that
holds the TV monitor. The only way to access the USB is by extending the
extending desk into the air and taking the TV up the way. Then there is room
for the USB. Okay. Thank fuck for the extending desk.
I stepped into difficult territory here. My
archive, from my dead computer, was in a live hard drive. That hard drive sat
in a cradle to make it easier to plug in with a USB for all that wonderful
access. The USB went in the top of the PC. I started copying the data over.
This took a few hours. As I came and went and
did other computery things, the extending desk shuddered and dropped a little. Shit, fuck, bugger. I couldn’t unplug
the USB during file transfer. So I had to sit there and catch the desk to stop
it crunching down on the USB head and ruining the gadget.
I resolved to save the day by using toilet
roll. The roll was hardly touched. I place it as a brace under the extending
desk. The desk later collapsed with twenty minutes of file transferring left.
It landed on the toilet roll, and the roll held. I banked on the cardboard core
being supported by the huge wad of paper. And I stayed with the machine for the
final transfer of files. As soon as that procedure was done and digitally
dusted, I switched the old archive off and took the USB the hell out of Dodge.
And then?
Either raise and brace the extending desk
platform or change the office once more. I had to rearrange so much fucking
furniture to make room for a new desk. The computer sits to the left of it on a
glass TV stand, and I now face the back of the room instead of the left-hand
wall. There’s less faffing about with the chair behind the door.
I am in the same place and a much better
place all at the same time. The TV is all cabled up and sits on the extending
desk unit atop the new desk. It’s been a long time since I rearranged an entire
office set-up to cater to a new machine.
Here’s hoping it’s going to be a long time
again before the next upheaval.
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