I've had to confront a couple of truths about the new office space we're building.

The first and most awkward truth is that the office is not as big as we had imagined. This is just plain old wishful thinking at work - the office is currently in the smallest of the bedrooms, and we had imagined acres of space in the new office where we could languorously stretch our creative muscles, filling the abundant wall space with desks and shelves and wall units and generally taking up as much room as we felt we needed for the various writerly and business projects which we want to undertake.

This is not the case.

The new office is bigger than the existing space, but it is only a foot and a half bigger along one axis. This is better of course, but not by as much as we had naïvely assumed. The new space is better configured, though - all of the walls are free to have furniture applied to them. whereas in the current office space we have to leave access open to the walk-in cupboard and reserve some space for the door to swing.

This correction of misperception has a particularly brutal impact on my choosing a new desk. The discarded office desk that I am using now is from my early Oracle days, and while the desk surfaces are solid enough the fixtures are worn out (so that the desk is only being held together now by some extra bolts I added) and there are some inappropriate features (like UK sockets inset into the desk top). I need something with drawers, and something which doesn't constantly need extra hardware adding in order to stay in one piece would be good too.

Unfortunately, my initial thought of buying a U-shaped desk with a stragically placed hutch is not happening simply because there isn't space for it. Where there might be floor space, there is a window which I obviously do not want to obscure. So, the desk plans are having to be scaled back a bit.

The second truth is that it's much more complicated than I'd expected to sort out the networking gear.

We want to put in an abundance of network sockets in the office, and to install further sockets in some of the other living areas. All of these sockets will terminate at a patch panel, where the sockets can be connected to appropriate networking gear. We are supplying the sockets and the patch panel to the installers.

It's pretty complicated, though - there are many, many choices of patch panels, socket categories, mounting styles, and so on. I didn't know any of this existed until Saturday afternoon, and again I think I am a victim of my naïveté in thinking this would be a simple decision. My only comfort is that it's actually coming in about where I expected on cost, although that could undoubtedly spiral out of control again at any moment.

There's also the slightly awkward question of where to put the patch panel - I had the strange idea of putting it under the stairs, but this is so plainly silly that I shall not trouble my readers with it further. No, it's going to take a further chunk out of the office... it'll be wall-mounted, at least, but there needs to be a spot set aside for it before the cable guy starts laying wires, since all the wires need to go to this one spot.

Choices, choices.

Posted by Dunx at May 3, 2004 03:13 PM