Crass Materialism Week: Home Office Edition

It's Crass Materialism Week here in LittleRopeWorld, where I lust after things I want, celebrate those I've already splurged on, and tempt the weak-willed to follow me into retail gluttony.

Okay, this post is going to be all about computers and office things. Most people don't think that's very sexy, although I can think of a few (you know who you are). However, I submit that my home office can be a sexy subject, because most of my computer time is spent:

1) corresponding and networking with kinky friends
2) writing blog posts
3) viewing and storing porn (sometimes of myself)
4) doing paid work that supports all of the above habits

Therefore, my office technology is very important to me!

I finally bought a desk for my apartment a couple of weeks ago. I agonized over this purchase, because I wanted it to be a perfect desk (such a thing does not exist, any more than a perfect purse), and I didn't really want to spend the money. But the absence of it was a logjam in my unpacking process, and I was getting pretty tired of the living room looking like a storage unit. So I finally bit the bullet and chose one, fit it into my very compact space, and unpacked all the office supplies into their new home.

Little did I know this simple purchase would inspire a retail frenzy (or at least a potential frenzy).

My enormous CRT monitor takes up the whole depth and much of the width of the desk, it's incredibly awkward (and physiologically problematic) to use my laptop there without a port replicator or docking station, and my desktop CPU doesn't fit in the cabinet designed for it. So, the shopping list begins: flat-screen LCD monitor, docking station. This draws my attention to the fact that I really need a better backup solution, like an external hard drive. Add that to the list. Oh yeah, I should actually start paying for wireless instead of pirating it, because the desktop won't pick up that weak signal. And of course, now it's time to face the fact that I'm overdue for a computer upgrade, because neither of my machines has enough hard drive space for my needs, and one is decidedly cranky.

Both machines were gifts, and both were lifesavers when I received them. The gift of the desktop also included a bunch of hours of data recovery and transplanting my old drive into a new box. Technically the price of this was meant to be me dancing around wearing nothing but Cool Whip, but I never paid up, so let's call it free and incredibly generous. (Thanks, M!) It has done the job, but it has some chronic hardware issues and the noisiest fan on earth. The laptop arrived in my life just as the finicky desktop was starting to drive me completely nuts, and saved my bacon during my move. (Thanks, H!) I hadn't even started up the desktop since October.

After noodling around with a number of options, I think I'm resigned to shopping for a new laptop, and ditching the desktop entirely in favor of a semi-permanent docking setup for working at home. I love my Thinkpad, and I'm looking at getting another one, unless I find something I like better. They offer big hard drives as an add-on, big enough that I can have all my data in one place with room to grow. I'm still debating other features to figure out just how much machine I need.

So my relatively modest desk purchase suddenly spiraled into a pretty hefty shopping list. Each piece on its own isn't too bad, but the bottom line is a little daunting. Some of that can wait indefinitely (I can live with a big-ass monitor), but now that I have my eye on a new laptop I'm eager to squeeze it into my budget before something catastrophic makes it a necessity. Somehow this doesn't thrill me as much as shopping for naughty underwear.

Of course, in the process of all the web research, I started looking at the iPhone and the Android G2. A new phone is definitely at the bottom of the priority list, but still, it can't hurt to look...