Thursday, May 21, 2020

Home Office

Spring of 2020 was defined by the COVID-19 pandemic. My job, like many others, switched to have everyone work from home for several months. I feel very fortunate to have a nice dedicated home office to work from.

Coincidentally, I began upgrading my office in December 2019 by ordering a new desk and some other items. As a result, by the time we started working from home in March the office was in good shape.

The office is a 10x11 foot space with two desks.

My desk is the Uplift 60" with curved bamboo top. It is quite stable and I find the beveled curve to be very comfortable.

The monitor is the Dell U2720Q. If Apple ever ships a 5K display I will probably get it. Until then I'll probably live with 4K. The display is really good and I like that it has a foot that is smaller than most displays. This allows me to push my keyboard farther forward and also means the display itself is a more comfortable distance. The display delivers 90W of power over USB-C, but I don't use the power delivery because the display is plugged into a dock.

The dock is the 15-port CalDigit TS3 Plus. It works really well and has the unique advantage of a vertical orientation. That means it takes up very little desk space. As you can see, it currently resides on the monitor's foot. The dock allows me to connect to my gigabit fiber internet connection via ethernet instead of WiFi.

My chair is a HON 7808 "High Back High Performance Executive Chair" that I picked up at an office surplus sale for $20. I've tried many chairs by Herman Miller and others while at various jobs, but none of them are as comfortable as my old chair. John Siracusa would be pleased to know that I removed the arms several years ago. Office chairs are better without arms.

The windows to the front and left of the desk bring in light so that I don't look like I'm in the witness protection program while in Zoom meetings. The window to the left faces north and I enjoy the view of Mount Timpanogos. Here are some photos taken from that window with an iPhone.


I also have a treadmill desk that I built a few years ago. I find that I can operate the computer well while walking at 2mph. Some days I walk 4 miles while working.

When I'm ready for a break I swim laps in the pool.