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How Can I Make More Of My Cubicle?
hv writes "I reside in a 10' x 10' space better than 12 hours a day... as do a lot of you. How do you make the most of the space? I'm looking for creative ways to add storage and unclutter the stacks of lab notebooks, USB peripherals and the O'Reilly Zoo that also inhabits my space."
You are not your Swedish furniture!
-Tyler
Nope, you're right. It was Rita Hayworth.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Thats Nothing!
Where I was working, they told me to move back, 'cause they had to put more boxes in my cubicle. ...somebody stole my stapler.
Then they made me move into the basement and told me to get some spray for the roach problem.
Then. Then, somebody stole my stapler. We had been using the Swingline stapler, and they wanted to switch, but I didn't want to switch. And they, they...
I'll burn down the building...
think Office Space
Wow, a window seat...
:(
I haven't had one of those since I worked at the University. Course back then I had my own office, and such.
Now I have the 7x7 cubicle.
ThinkGeek
Reality has a liberal bias
Where did you expect her legs to go?
One thing I've found really helps it look neat is that I mounted power strips to the underside of my desk instead of them sitting on the floor. I also cable-tied all my cables up underneat there as well leaving it so you can't really see any cables. Makes it look a whole lot tidier.
FWIW
-- Cameron
[ long pause] Riiiiiiight.
At my first job, we worked four to a desk - two sitting on the floor and two sharing the chair. They didn't have money for computers, so they gave each of us two paper clips and an electrical outlet, and we had to modulate our data into the building power by running the electricity through our bodies and flexing various muscles in phase with the 60Hz AC pulse. If we made any mistakes our manager would punish us by connecting us to the 240V, 30A laundry room circuit.
Ah, you tell the kids today that, and they won't believe you.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I came up with that after about my third cube move to a new building, when they moved us from 10'x10' to 10'x8' cubes (back in the pre-A.C. days.)
But these new cubes are ridiculous. Over the course of years, I tend to accumulate more stuff, not less. I just have to pack it tighter and stack it higher now. 'Course, if I had any brains at all, I'd get a KVM switch instead of having six monitors staring at me all day.
Hey, anybody wanna trade me a 21" flat screen monitor for one 10" flat screen, one 15" and four 17" monitors? It's a heckuva deal, 93" of monitors in exchange for a lousy 21"... that's a 4X return on investment! How can you refuse?
John
John
I shedule frequent "meetings" with the cute intern down the hall.
This notice is being sent to inform you that your "geek" status has been revoked.
You have been found in violation of article 12, paragraph 7 of the Geek Code by noticing a member of the opposite sex. Furthermore, this offence has been aggravated by noting that member of the opposite sex as "cute", violating paragraphs 9 and 12 of article 17.
Please remove all O'Reily books from your shelf, disassemble two of your computers and return the parts to the original manufacturers, and disconnect all active internet connections at your home.
Failure to comply with the above request will result in severe penalties up to and including the installation of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups on all active computers in your home and Rosie O'Donnel pouring cold grits down your socks!
Been done before...
jwz's tent-of-doom
- passion
OK. That's interesting. First I've heard of it. I've been loudly requesting the MS method - give every coder an office. Being able to close the door would increase my productivity. I don't know how many times I'm interrupted on any given day. When you're in the middle of a tough programming problem, you don't want to lose your train of thought.
I wear headphones a lot. It helps, but it would be nice to have a door to close in addition. I think it will be interesting. I'm all for making things more 'equal'. I've been here about 8 months, and you can get used to the noise, but I still think it's detrimental to productivity. Perhaps you gain it back in people not being able to surf the web for hours at a time, since anyone can walk by and see your monitor.
Giving credit where credit is due
Changing a few words doesn't make it original.
Ice Cream has no bones.
Work at home, dude!
No cubicle is as nice as home: No driving. Everything you need is always there. Possible afternoon delight with your honey.
Bush's education improvements were
-sk
Camouflage.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Fridge.
Get promoted and move your arse to a wall office with a nice view and a hot secretary :)
Music and good headphones.
Forget the headphones! Bring in a big shelf stereo. Let everyone know ahead of time and explain that if they don't like what you're playing, they can ask you to play whatever they want...
This is actually a true story from a dorm. A guy moved in to the "quiet floor" of U. Hall at Depaul University a few years ago with a rack system and about 1400 watts of amplified speakers. He made the above offer at the first mandatory residents' meeting and never had a problem... even when he made full use of all that wattage.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
You can knock out the walls off the empty cubicles next to you, even install your own bowling lane.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
Think vertical. I have cabinets, shelves and racks almost to the ceiling. Just make sure you keep the extra monitors on the bottom, not the top :P Also, bookshelves over your monitor, (not too close though) and on the sides are nice for getting to your reference quickly. I have about every piece of office equipment from steelcase and love them.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
Most people keep more crap in their cube than they actually need. You can open up a lot of space if you trash or take home the stuff you haven't touched in six months.
Transformers are my current action figure of choice, but YMMV.
You've got a cubical? I dream of working in a cubical. Here, there's 150 of us working in a shoebox in the middle of the road.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
One of the nastiest things about working in a cube farm is the direct overhead fluorescent lights. They get installed in offices without even so much as as second thought. But they're awful. They turn everything into a weird unreal hue and they blink and flitter and they just generally suck.
I was fortunate enough to work for a company (for 8 years) that had indirect lighting that was mounted at the intersection of four cubes, shining upward against the white ceiling tiles. So much nicer. That combined with a small incandescent desk lamp (I had a green banker's lamp) and you're all set. Of course, there's no substitute for ample amounts of natural light coming from windows.
But then I eventually ended up with fluorescent overhead lights for a while. Covering the top of the cube occured to me! But they wouldn't have let me get away with it. Now I work at home. Complete control! At the moment I have no lights on. Just the window!
"...and also giving people reasons to stop by and linger"
I'm guessing that you aren't a Network Administrator, are you?
I could see a 'Hang in there' poster with a noose. It might cause problems with the management, but everything interesting does that.
Reboot macht Frei.
Mass-produced posters ("Hang in there!"), to me, are tacky. If you're living in a place eight to twelve hours a day, get something better, and more personal.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
Camoflage netting anchored to a single point in the ceiling and draped over the walls of your cubicle will make it unique and more private. Then you can look at pr0n and draw up your plans of burning the place down without much fear of anyone catching you.
Drop a mini fridge under your desk for keeping snacky foods, pop, beer, etc. And maybe a $50 mini microwave for reheating dilberitos (or something better with real meat in them).
You could also build your cube into a replica of the Unabomber's shack. It would keep pesky users from bothering you with technical questions, and may get you promoted into an area which is less hands on tech, and more management(which means less work for you, as we've all seen how much work managers actually do).
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
dude, your url is a little off (it needs to be radiofreenation.com/store.html instead of radionfreenation/store.html. Even that's a redirect, but you get the idea.
I totally know what you mean- I have numerous servers and PCs under and around my desk, running and/or in various states of disrepair. some of them are running semi-important tasks (at least to me) so everyone knows NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING. this works out really well, as things like my mp3 server and the UT server don't get touched either :)
:)
and the piles of cards- that works out awesome. make sure you get neurotic with people about ESD problems and the dangers of it, and then pile tons of expensive looking cards around. this works out really well if you have lots of old EISA cards or things that you KNOW will never be used again (this can backfire if you've got other technically competent people who realize that EISA is dead.)
another really good thing to try is to leave stacks of unlabeled burnt CD-Rs around. it's a good way to keep people from digging through your software collection(s) if you say there are IMPORTANT files in there that can't be put out of order... you get the picture.
it's not really much of a BOFH thing as much as it is a keeping your space kind of thing. nobody likes it when the desktop guys decide they need to browse through your stuff, and relieve you of that triple channel ultra-3 raid controller (even though they don't even know what it is.)
so cheers to you, my fellow comrade in messiness
EOM
Just don't let any cats in your cube.
--Blair
It'll end up looking something like Japanese "Coffin Hotels" where everyone gets a little space that's 7'x4'x4', stacked 3 high. Oh well, the advantage of that arrangement is that it's easier to justify mounting doors on the coffins for privacy.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Not for the claustrophobic, that's for sure - just another trend in the industry I suppose - save on real estate costs - at the last place I was at, the new plans call for everyone to be in 60 sq. ft including managers ...
AZspot
Stop bathing. Learn a new love for limburger cheese, raw garlic and onions. Keep a bowl of durians nearby as a snack.
When everyone moves out, take over their cubicles.
geez, you employees that think you can just create tunnels outside of the secure zone! how can you guarantee security that all people that come in through your tunnel are passing through the proper checkpoints on the other side?!
i hope you at least bothered to encrypt the traffic over this tunnel, or have you been leaving copies of the company's sensitive objects all over Spacetime, where any competent spatial engineer or timelord can just grab them?
For more information on building a cubicle roof, see also this Ask Slashdot thread on building cubicle roofs.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Simple. Stay out of it. What the hell are you doing spending 12 hours a day in your cube?
Unless you are part owner (and I don't mean like, you have some options or a bit of stock.. I mean like a HUGE interest in the business), there is no reason for you to be spending 12 hours a day at work. Get a life (I mean that seriously.. you will regret the wasted youth later in life.)
As for 'sprucing up' your cube... why do you need suggestions? Just do what you want, within what your office will allow.
As my guru once said, you aren't doing your job properly if you can't do it between 9 and 5.
Try raising a Bonsai Kitten You'll get attention from every animal lover in the office!
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
Actually happened to a friend of mine. She's very neurotic about decorating, so when she looked up one day and her perfectly-centered poster was no longer centered, she knew something was wrong. She looked at the carpet in her neighbor's cubicle and found fresh dimples from where their shared partition wall used to rest.
The best part was when she confronted the neighbor, asking "Did you move the wall this weekend?" and his response was, "Um, I don't remember."
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Try http://www.zdnet.com/computerstew/html/0364.html, looks like a parody of "This Old House".
Dude, get a life!
Or, get promotoed and move your arse to an area with a nice view OF a hot secretary!
Fridge.
Of course! That's a given. But with a twist.
Okay. Here's a list.
Every now and then, dumping a little bit of compost heap activator (available at any gardening store) will help the disposal process.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I use the "sky is the limit" analogy in my room, that which can be stacked, well, gets stacked, so basically if you have a 12'+ roof you can save a lot of space by going vertical for storing.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I cleared everything off the desk, lay this piece of plastic down, used a tad of scotch tape on the corners to hold it in place, and slipped some papers under it. Pages I need to refer to frequently that used to be stacked on the desk now sit under the plastic where I can see them, but don't have to sacrifice space for them.
The most useful thing, however, has been sliding a piece of blank copier paper under the plastic. Now I can use dry-erase markers to make lists, diagrams, any temporary lists or notes (or doodles) I want right on the plastic with the white paper background. A napkin wipes it clean and it's always in easy view.
At home my wife got these little mini self-standing shelves at Home Depot which she put in some of our cabinets. Makes a lot more efficient use of empty space when you have a lot of small objects.
My $.02. Keep the change.
Coach
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
1. Make sure your ventilation ducts are too small to crawl through.
/do/ have an energy weapon, right?) useless -- you will not be overrun by a handful of savages^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmarketing consultants armed with spears and rocks.
2. Don't interrogate your co-workers in your cube. Use a small conference room outside your department.
3. Keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train yourself in their use. That way -- even if management manags to neutralize your power generator and/or render your energy weapon (you
4. Keep your pet monster in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which you could not accidentally stumble.
5. Dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw your manager into confusion.
6. Shave off your goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.
7. Make sure your main computers have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.
8. Hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine your cubicle and inform you of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that you might not know about.
9. Don't install a sentient computer smarter than you are.
10. No matter how many shorts you have in the system, treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.
11. If all your co-workers are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt you, pull out a conventional weapon instead of using your unstoppable superweapon on them.
12. Do not shoot at any of your co-workers if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.
13. Make sure that your doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
14. Cover your vats of hazardous materials when not in use. Also, do not construct walkways over them.
15. Do not design your Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.
16. If you ever talk to HR on the phone, do not taunt them. Instead say that their dogged perseverance has given you new insight on the futility of your evil ways and that if they leave you alone for a few months of quiet contemplation you will likely return to the path of righteousness. (HR is incredibly gullible in this regard.)
17. Design your door mechanisms so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.
18. Pad any data file of crucial importance to 1.45MB.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Ikea baby, Ikea.
Get rid of those #@#$% Todd McFarlane models.
Careers should combine three things: what you can do, what you want to do, and what you can get paid for.
I find that about a quart of gasoline and a box of saftey matches clean out cluttered cubicles better than anything else.
:)
Have fun
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
Beer.
Milk crates are cheap storage that stacks nicely.
And for a subtle effect, get plants. Like cactus (hard to kill).
Check out Althea for a stable IMAP email client for X. Now with SSL!
I've found that paper shredders make excellent storage bins. Just one holds reams and reams of memos!
Take a look at how Jamie Zawinski did it.
You're stuck. Can't fit much in a 10x10 2 dimensional space. Now if there were some height then you could: 1) Build a loft. A cube with a attic... 2) My cube space often has "dead" space at the very back underneath the desk. Assuming the space is not already occupied with system parts you could place selves there. 3) If multiple systems and monitors, get a Multi-PC contoller that switches the monitor/keyboard/mouse to your different systems. 4) Throw out the manuals you have looked at in five years. Particularly if there is an online version available. Serious do you really still use RUNOFF? 5) Sell trade those peices parts. That RP05 for the PDP11 looks great, but it take up a lot of space. 6) Replace hard copy manuals with online version if you use them less than once per week. How often do you really code your Postscript documents by hand? 7) All those little teepee keypad guides you look at once a year? Scan them, store the image in a well named place and pitch the hardcopy. 8) Do you really need 5 4 ft. stacks of 3.5" diskettes in salvaged from old software? Not to mention 5.25", 7", 9", etc. etc. etc. 9) Iris makes great filing drawers that roll under most desk tops. They come in different drawer configurations. 10) "Borrow" the extra shelf from the un occupied cube down the aisle. 11) While you're at it, those selves often fit on the wall on the outside of the cube. 4-7 of them can hold a lot of notebooks. ;)
12) Convince your building coordinator that your team needs an MT cube for storage then forget to tell the rest of your team about it.
13) Convince your neighbor that that dusty dot matrix printer you're storing would be great attached to HIS/HER PC and served to the network.
14) Request to work from home. This works particularly well if the eigtheen-year-old with a 12x16 bedroom has just gone to college. Remember though, most work-from-home plans don't include adding extra electrical circuits for the four systems or more you take home with you.
about a gallon of gas and a match...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Thanks for reminding me of them. Wanted one for years, just ordered one. My cube desparately needs life...
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Just be happy they haven't started stacking workers vertically, with ladders to get up to their cubes.
More Caffeine. NOW
Here are a few things that have worked well for me. YMMV, of course :)
Get the power strips off of the floor. Currently I have mine attached to the cubicle desk supports with cable ties. Bolting them to the underside of the desk works well too. The same (naturally) applies to your personal network [hub|switch].
Cable ties are your friends. It's amazing how much better things look when the rats nest is sorted out and tied up nicely out of the way. Velcro strips or wire twist ties (the kind that come with plastic garbage bags) work well too, when you need something less permanent.
See if you can't get a nice KVM switch. Getting rid of the extra two or three monitors, keyboards and mice makes a huge difference :)
My current switchbox only does KV, so I still have three mice on my desktop, but still...
Bookshelves are a nice addition to any cubicle. The little 3- or 4-foot ones from Shopko (or WalMart or Target, if you prefer) work well and don't cost much. Milk crates or file crates can be helpful, too, if you use them right.
A couple of hooks on the wall for headphones and such like things do wonders, too.
YMMV, but I find it useful (and better for my poor aching back) to set part of my work surface about 4 feet high, and stand up while I work. With the typical three-section L-shaped cubicle desk, I generally put the corner and one long section up high, and leave the other one at the usual height with all of the drawers underneath it. This has the side effect of giving me lots of space under the desk for my extra computers, etc., and could theoretically do away with my chair altogether. (In practice I keep the chair, but most of the time it's under the desk in the corner of the cube, where it's out of the way.)
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Try flat panel monitors. For my primary Mac workstation I have three monitors connected to it. Replacing them with flat panels clears up an amazing amount of desktop space. They are expensive, but they don't have all of the problems that CRTs have like the high frequency scream that CRTs occaisonally emit, the screen flicker etc etc etc....
Also Anthrocart http://www.anthro.com/ makes some very cool computer workstation furniture and accessories that can clear up some desktop space. I have been very happy with their products. (No association with the company other than being a happy customer).
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I also recall reading somewhere that the people who organized their desk (cleaned it up) on a weekly or even daily basis before going home, were more productive workers. I can attest to the fact that it's much more satisfying to sit at a desk that is free of a million pages of tech specs and memos than it is to sit down and have to *see* all the work waiting for me.
I had a little bonsai tree once, but it died from too much 'Coke dumping' before I would leave for the day. I'm thinking I should get some greenery back into my cube, and soon.
ask the warden for a tin mug. Then clang it against the bars anytime you need some audio stimulation - it can get pretty bleak in there.
:0
Bryguy
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
At our company, we talked about attempting to acquire a Tardis.. Not only would it help solve production deadlines (just hop inside and bo back in time), but as a bonus it would also solve that pesky space problem!!!
My cubicle was so small, when I sat around the cubicle, I really sat around the cubicle.
> http://store.yahoo.com/modernhumoriststore/compan
I like the ones at http://www.despair.com. Beats the fsck out of those damn "Successories".
Representative sample: Mediocrity
I've been looking for one for my lab space for a while. Where can I find one ? I've got an argon lasar all ready to dazzle the developers.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Scrounge up as many old laptops as you can, and make a tiled LCD display wall! Use it to check your email, watch CNN, etc, or just display your vis output from winamp... put them in rows on your file drawers, or wallpaper with them!
(Note: may require some assembly)
(PS: sorry for the lack of links, but I tried and tried and couldn't find anything worth showing.)
We came across this old dartboard that had to date from the vietnam war. It had a picure of the old president Lyndon Baines Johnson on it. You could hardly recognise him for all of the holes in the newspaper on that board from all those darts thrown over the years.
I wish I had kept it. It would be a genuine collectable.
you could have matching Gates and Ballmer Dart Boards, or whatever.
They could even be sold on Think Geek, depending on the taste.
- - -
Do you have your White House Selected Vegetables Coffee Mug?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You guys get full cubicles?? I only get a half of one. Two walls with a set of hanging shelves on one, so my back is open to the aisle. Its good for conversation, but not so good for getting work done, or for privacy. Worse yet, I work in a glass building. From any direction you can see all the way through the building. I know it could be worse. I'm glad I'm not a manager. Managers get stuck in glass cubicles we call "fishbowls". Even worse, at my last job the desks were set up classroom style (no walls at all) -shudder- with the manager sitting behind us all -double shudder-. At least I get a desk.
Zeus_tfc
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley
No shit man. 10x10 is the size of some bedrooms dude...
SIG: HUP
- Plants, plants, plants! (But only in an otherwise unclutered cube) If your company allows it, these really make it feel better. However, in a cluttered cube, they just make it seem more closed in. Oh, and don't forget - just because you can live on Jolt doesn't mean your green friends can.
- Small bookshelf. A small bookshelf (1.5' wide, 3' high) can be aquired cheaply, and gives you more top surface - as well as removing the stacks of binders you have. It really is amazing where those will fit, so don't just give up on it!
- Pen jar - a mug or jar for your pens can really make a big difference if you are like I was. I had pens, pencils, slide rule, etc spread all over my desktop. Now, one coffee mug makes my desk ever so much neater.
- Cord keepers. Little bits of velcro strips make more of a difference than you think.
- Get rid of the 50 post-its on your monitor - it'll make your space seem bigger immediately
- organize and clean up the crap you have stuck on your walls.
Hope these help - they helped me!Get yourself a poster of Doris Day or Racquel Welch so that the warden doesn't see the hole that you are digging.
When I worked in a cube (now I work from home--and that's NOT a euphemism for "I got fired") I used to periodically clean house: any ununsed computer equipment gets dumped in the hardware person's cube and any unused books/supplies get dumped in the "admin" (read: "secretary") person's cube. Hardware that I AM using, but I don't need to sit in front of/next to I put on the rack. Docs that I need but not right now go on the (communal) shelf.
There's really very little that I need to be able to reach out and grab without moving my chair. Everything else (work-related) can take up employer space, not MY space.
324006
Get an LCD Display, if you haven't got one already. Saves a ton of room. Better yet, get one mounted on a hinged suspension arm. Another idea: Arrange to telecommute once or twice a week.
That's no cubicle. That's a friggin mansion.
Our VP's are in 10x10. Mine's more like 7x9.
Don't gripe to us because you're in the lap of luxury and can't figure out how to use it.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Don't laugh. The popular design company, Ideo, does just that in one of their offices. In fact, if you pick up the book about Ideo's innovative practices, The Art of Innovation, you'll read pulleys described as a technique for increasing office space and creating office decor. A photo of this technique exists here - second row, middle selection in the gallery.
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
it varies. sometimes you don't really have a choice (I mean, of course you HAVE a choice, but losing your job isn't always the choice you want to make.)
with the economy going the way it is, and especially (at least for me) working for a stock brokerage, there's a certain amount of fear involved on my part to demand to work only 8 hrs a day. If I was to just leave at 5 pm (like some of my european friends do) and leave things undone until the next day, there would be some serious hell to pay.
although I don't make those kinds of demands of the guys who work for me... I try to get them to work only 8 a day, and leave early if there's nothing really pressing that requires them to be there. I don't mind picking up some slack so the guys with families can spend more time with them, since our management is totally dicking them in the pay dept. (no wage increases, no bonuses, hiring freeze, layoffs... etc.)
There's kind a grinding capitalistic thing going on here too, at least in my industry. you get ahead by busting your butt, and that's the perception that many of the higher up sorts (IT and otherwise) have. I've personally made the decision to work hard while I'm still young so I get to a more comfortable place by the time I'm thirty. If that means I have to put in some 12 hr days to singlehandedly pull off huge projects, so be it. my resume was pretty good before the last 2 years but now it's like a book, and at least for me it's been worth it...
YMMV I suppose.
EOM
Well, let's see. As soon as someone hands me some dead trees, I proceed to immediately put them in a large pile in the corner of my desk. When this pile reaches 6-7 inches high (about every two months), it gets filed away in the bin under my desk with the old diet-coke bottles. Next day, voila, the bin is magically emptied; clean as a whistle. :-P
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Whuhu. These cant be killed by any normal human.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
The boys over at bacon have some of the most incredible cube pics Ive ever seen
For instance, The cube comode
or the nativity cubicle
They also got some classic packing peanut cube pics, but 've all seen those before.
Live plants will do amazing things for your cube. Not only do they bring a little of the 'great outdoors' (that everyone is trying so badly to get to) in to your space, they can actually improve the air quality.
If you go to a Nursery they may have specific indoor plants, or look for 'shade' plants. Spider plants are reliable and tough. Aloe is a good one too, and you can cut off a sprig and squeeze the sap on cuts and burns. If you need a plant with personality to keep you company, try raising a Bonsai Tree.
Start Running Better Polls
Dude, clearly you're an inmate.
This
Chances are good your cubicle wall supports lockable cabinets, and no doubt you've filled them. Add cabinets above them if you're able to. Adds tons of storage space. Or if that's a problem, add flipper cabinets under your desk in an non-obstructive spot.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Pulleys! Huhahah!! Attach pulleys to the ceiling, tie ropes to your shelves, run them through the pulleys, and put a big cleat on your desk. You pull the rope, and the shelf full of O'Reilly books goes up, up, and away! Make sure you attach the pulley to part of the ceiling that can hold weight, and don't try that with USB periphs while they're still connected. If the ceiling is really high, use helium balloons. Lots of helium balloons.
I'm moving into an 18x10 room for three people in two days, so merely having to persist in a 10x10 space for 8 hours a day doesn't seem so bad. I will say that working in any sort of cubicle has to be the most depressing thing I can think of. I interned at a large company a couple summers ago and vowed never to return to a cubicle again. Unless, that is, I find a company that lets me paint the cube, tear out the flourescent lights, and install a soundproof door and roof. Those are my demands - you hear! Really it was more of an atmospheric problem with the whole confinement concept than a space issue though. My cube was probably more like 7x5 and I had plenty of room for papers, computers (laptop, docking station, monitorx2, test platform tower pc), bags, whatever. I even had an empty CDR box lying around, a box for photoshop, a box for dreamweaver, who knows what else. No space problem what-so-ever.
1) a second monitor (LCD is the way to go) so you can display documents on that monitor while doing other stuff on the other monitor,
2) a shredder, so you can shred all the documents you have on you desktop.
Now the actual configuration of your cubicule can probably handle the zoo.
All my coworkers are amazed when they find that I have nothing except empty cabinets and drawers in my cube. If they need more space, they come to me.
Why is this? Beyond my computer equipment, I keep no paper. If someone hands me a document, I copy the network location and throw the paper away. I do have some miscellany: silverware, a plate, some iced tea mix, tissues, and a nerf gun. That's all in one drawer. Essentially, space is infinite so long as I have a server and a hard drive.
Have you ever seen the movie Office Space? Got a cordless screwdriver?
Anyways, what I usually do is to clean my desk once a month. Anything I haven't touched in the last month I put in somebody elses inbox.
I had the same problem a while back, and then I realized that there were only two viable solutions: I could either get a better job or create an interdimensional gateway to a small pocket dimension for storage purposes. I created the gateway, but my company had an explicit "no portals to other dimensions" clause in my employment agreement, and I lost my job. Believe me, that was tough to explain away on my resume.
Got Rhinos?
Roof, door, frosted glass.
And take out the horizontal slab, to be replaced with a mahogany desk.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Try these Parody Posters. It is fun.
... "follow me" the wise man said, but he walked behind
Attrition.org has a pic of a bunch of enterprising individuals who taped off the entrance to a cubicle and filled it with foam peanuts Here's the pic
Where are we going, and why are we in this hand cart?
i was sick of the fluorescent lights which others in the room needed, so i built a roof for my cubicle:
:)
http://www.mskf.org/roof/ - directory of pictures
not for everyone, but it keeps me happy.
0x0D 0x0A
I also recall reading somewhere that the people who organized their desk (cleaned it up) on a weekly or even daily basis before going home, were more productive workers.
Really? I clean my desk every day before going home and I'm one of the least productive people in the office.
Works for me. I pile EVERYTHING on my desk. Know where in the pile the important stuff is. Don't tell anyone else how the pile is arranged. Nobody will touch your stuff for fear of having to clean it up when it falls.
Many people will bitch, but the trick is to know how the pile works. People will ask me for some 'important' piece of paper, assuming it will take an hour to find it. It doesn't. If they complain, the answer is "it only took me a second to get it, what's your problem".
Another good trick is to keep extra cards lying around (I have an abundance of ISA SCSI cards and NIC's. Almost useless, but most people are afraid to touch them. Ergo, my stuff isn't touched.)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
When i got todesign my cube at one jobn, I covered onen entire cubicle wall with hang-in shelves.
Was great.
For the love of God, all you poor cubicle workers should quit and work at a place with an atmosphere. A place where you can talk and interact with your co-workers. Go abroad.
Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
Geocrawler error message.
Never, EVER organize your cubicle. When I started my first sysadmin jobs, one of the older guys gave me the following advice:
Always have a messy cube. This will make people think that you are actually BUSY, and already have too much to do, and may get them to dump new work on someone else. This leaves you more time for things like experimental kernel compiles, mp3s, pr0n, and long lunches.
Ideas for a busy looking cube include:
- Techie books left open. It is best to do this with books you actually use, so that they get moved around. Good choices include Unix in a Nutshell, The UNIX System Administrator's Handbook, and anything related to PERL.
- Coffee mugs. Don't wash old ones, get more from vendors and pile them up.
- Manila Folders. Leave them open too, as if you are actually doing something with the information they contain.
Follow this path, and offload all of your work onto PERL scripts. You will soon be free, as in beer.
Oh the joy of cube toys.
Things like the hobberman ball, the bigger the better. Rubics cube, slinky and those neat little metallic balls that bounce against each other forever and a day. Anything and everything that will fit in your cube and make sure they have lavish colors.
These aren't for you, but those who would come to your cube to make some statement.
Instantly, upon witnessing the toys, they will be drawn to them and their little minds focused.
I can't tell you the number of times my supervisors forgot what they were going to say.
Trust me, it was never good news anyway.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra