Office upgrades

My wife always struggles to know what to get me for my birthday. Well this year she finally figured it out: let me buy office upgrades! A new desk, monitor, graphics card, headphones, and wifi adapter.

Old desk:

New desk:

My parents bought me my old desk for my birthday 13 years ago. It has served me well, but was getting a bit cramped. My new desk is an UPLIFT Plus standing desk. Each leg has a motor that makes it easy to go from a sitting desk to a standing desk and back again. I’m hoping to improve my posture by spending more time standing rather than sitting. The desk is huge: 80” x 30”. I’ve been using it for a few days and love it.

My monitors are a little newer than my old desk (only 4.5 years old) and still look fine, but I’m not going to complain about a new 27” IPS monitor with QHD resolution. I decided to keep both of my old monitors, so now I have a 27” IPS flanked by 22” LEDs. I’ve always wanted a tri-monitor setup!

I’ve been using onboard video for a few years. It has been fine for my needs but was limited to 2 monitors. This means… new graphics card! YAY! I went with the Gigabyte GTX 750 Ti. It is nice and quiet, supports up to 4 monitors, and performs infinitely better than my onboard video. I’m not a gamer so this card should be more than adequate for my needs.

As a bonus, I got a set of Sennheiser RS 170 wireless headphones a few weeks ago. When the kids start getting too noisy while I’m working (or I’m getting too noisy while they are trying to sleep) then I slap on my headphones and everyone is happy. I opted for wireless so I can easily move around without yanking out a wire. They are a bit heavier than I’d like, but comfortable enough for a few hours of listening at a time.

The one downside to the wireless headphones is that they interfered with my 2.4 GHz wifi adapter. To fix this, I was going to run network cable. Unfortunately, our walls have firebreaks and I’m not prepared to go through them (either by putting extra holes in the wall which would be difficult to patch thanks to our textured walls, or by getting a fish bit which can be a bit difficult to use) so I just got a new dual band wifi adapter. It works great.

I’ve got a big blank wall that I’m planning on putting a whiteboard on. I’m going to try following the Google Ventures design sprint methodology, but not sure how well it will work with just me and my wife. Worth a try anyways.