For my next adventure, I’ll be taking the role of Senior Software Engineer, UI at Kace, and I couldn’t be more excited!  They’ve got a great set of products and some even better stuff in the pipeline.

Also, it was announced today that Dell has purchased Kace!  So, ACTUALLY, I’ll be taking a job at Dell, which is really cool as well!

sign up.. we’ll be in touch.

it’s been a while since I’d gotten to do any woodworking.. and who better to do it for than my favorite people in the world.

I’ve been watching the daily videos at TED, lately.. gather all sorts of bits of motivation, encouragement and wisdom from simply listening to people talk about the things they’re passionate about, and their methods for pursuing those passions.  I heard Parkinson’s first law in todays talk, and immediately realized that it sums up one of my biggest productivity blocks.  Now that I’m aware of it, I plan on removing that block

Hopefully it’ll help you too, and I suggest you watch some of the talks at TED, they’re motivating, and often pretty funny.

So now, we’ve got a guest bedroom with a good amount of space, so she asked me to build her a big workstation which would house all of her jewelry supplies and tools, along with her sewing machine and supplies (which includes a CRAZY amount of yarn) as well as books and a scrapbooking/letterwriting area.

The room has 2 walls covered with wallpaper (2 layers in fact) as well as a border all the way around the room.

For future reference, if you have to take down wallpaper, don’t bother with the chemicals…  just rent a steamer for $30 a day from your home improvement store and do it that way..  MUCH BETTER, TRUST ME.

So I spent 3 full days (seriously) taking down wallpaper, 2 more days patching, sanding and painting the walls and updating electrical outlets and switches.. but the room looks like inew construction, so it was worth it.

Luckily, we had a good size space to work with.

She and I differ on approaches to decorating/building things, but this one is FOR HER, so I’m just building what she wants and trying not to force my own ideas in so that the space is really HERS.

So anyway, I made the 139″ desk out of a sheet of MDF, stripped down to a 24″ panel, attached end to end. It’s setting on a 2×4 that is mounted across the wall and 2 sets of shelves that I also build from MDF.

I used MDF because she wanted the whole thing painted, so it’s a very cheap solution for that amount of wood.

So, he’s the desk part installed..

since the photo, it has been primed and we got a good deal on some simple laminated cabinets to hang above it.  There will be a 31″ space inbetween the cabinets, so I’ll build more MDF shelves to fill the gap.

We’re planning on putting up a combination of cork panels, and pegboard on the back wall between the desk and cabinets, as well as mounting a good deal of lighting to downlight the space.

More pics as I progress (which will hopefully be tomorrow)

It’s silly, but it was a good way to waste an evening..