Slashdot Mirror

OMG PONIES!!!

Ugh. Nasty as!

I have the soothing green light t-shirt.

I have a shirt with this on from a good few years back... Remember ThinkGeek?

Coolness? Superior UI? Apple? You've got to be kidding. Check it out: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/zune/ images/image022_low.jpg. You'll want to compare this, of course, to the latest and greatest iTunes storefront: http://dsandler.org/gruntle/itunes7/iTunes7Dissect ed.jpg Then there's the customizable zune ui: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/zune/ images/image004_low.jpg. Of course, you might prefer the iPod version- I know Creative did, earlier this summer, to the tune of a million bucks. Innovative. You betcha.

This [link to reciprocating saw] can fix anything.

Unfortunately, it can't fix the damage you did to your office equipment (from the perspective of your employer). Companies are often irrationally resistant to non-destructive, 100% reversible alterations to office equipment, but they are 100% rationally resistant to destructive, irreversible alterations to office equipment.

The trick is to work within the system you're given, adding things you can remove, and removing things you can put back later. Other commenters have suggested basic upgrades along these lines, like keyboard trays, shelving, etc., and these are great ideas. A few more simple thoughts from my personal experience:

1. Ergonomic keyboard. Cheaper than an ergonomic chair, but almost as useful. Forcing your hands into a more reasonable position for typing marathons can have (positive) ripple effects throughout your posture and musculature. Some swear by the Kinesis keyboards (my advisor has the "keys-in-a-bowl" version), but these will set you back almost as much as a chair, so I settle for the venerable MS Natural Keyboard (mine is an OEM version of the Pro, resold at Fry's for about $15).
2. Move your desk. If you can't change anything else about your desk, hopefully you can position it so that it's not backed up to a wall. This gives your eyes a different distance at which to focus when you glance away from your monitor (assuming your boss allows you to do this).
3. Hack your furniture. Not applicable if you really just have a big lab-bench-style desk, but for those who are living in Hermann Miller Hell® (a.k.a. a cubicle farm), there are lots of ways you can reconfigure your space, given the right hex driver. Half-walls, shelving, whiteboards--there are cube modules for all of these. Even if your employer didn't spring for all these fancy parts (the office furniture equivalent of purchasing exclusively the "boring" LEGO sets containing only 2x4 bricks (tall)), there are still hacks to be had. At a previous job we connected desks to wall sections out-of-phase, so we could have half-width wall sections cut open between cubicles (for a little bit of collaboration without reverting to an open bullpen layout, or to suspend other improvised half-height divider panels).
4. Use spare moving boxes to create dynamic and interesting office furnishings. OK, this one's a joke (mostly).

I don't doubt that happened, nevertheless there is no LEGAL reason preventing you using trademarked goods in a movie or drama. It's just a policy promoted by over-cautious legal departments covering their asses. Consider a few examples: on TV, The Sopranos often uses trademarked goods in ways that the manufacturers wish they wouldn't -- for instance in this episode, Tony sprays Raid in a guy's face to blind him before strangling him. In movies: the whole Supersize Me. It strikes me that the small risk of dealing with a suit that would inevitably be dismissed was much less than $50,000.

Palm Plog, pLog

Dan Sandler has kindly made his design available in vector format here... and it should scale nicely to any size you like!

.:diatonic:.