Bonum Certa Men Certa

My New Desk Arrangement (and More Breaks From the Keyboard)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 22, 2025

Green Beer And Pretzels

Related: Social Control Media as a Rapid Race to the Bottom - Part IV - Physical Health, Mental Health, and Debilitating Anxiety | Many Geeks' Achilles Heel: They Don't Take Computer Breaks

Two summers ago I had 10 screens on my desk and 6 computers. I've since then trimmed that down to 4 laptops and 7 displays. That's mostly fine and more than sufficient now that I need not monitor the sites for DDoS attacks 24/7 (sans sleep time). It also decreases power consumption and noise levels (quiet hum of laptop fans).

Yesterday I spent 3 hours reducing from 8 displays to 7 because one of the displays, which was made 15 years ago, had shown backlight issues since ~3 months ago. Then it just gave up completely and repair would cost too much to be worth it (more so given the age of the low-grade appliance). By 11PM I already spent some more time on the ergonomic chair, seeing that 3 important screws were loosened after 5+ years of nonstop use. We humans have two of most organs, but not the back (spine), so posture is very important yet tends to be underrated.

So all in all yesterday I devoted 4-5 hours to redoing and shuffling stuff, more so in the hardware sense, software tweaks were made to Barrier as the orientations/layouts changed. Now it looks more tidy than before (two vertical tiers, not three like before).

2025

This is the most minimalist my desk has been since before COVID-19 lock-downs.

There's always company on the left hand side. The "pets": (we feed about 50 each day from 4:40am until 9pm; they're 'free range' but love to hang around, taking baths and eating a lot of seeds)

Schestowitz

Some like to "bottle-feed": (usually the ones that we gave names to)

2025

They help a lot with "desk breaks" (which means health); most days I'd have to get up about 50 times just to feed them, not to grab something from the kitchen.

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