Moving Offices

Well, last week, we had yet another office move.

Office moves are sort-of a tradition at Microsoft, this one's something like my 20th.  Personally I think that management schedules them just to make sure we don't collect too much junk in our offices... 

For me, it doesn't help, I moved 14 boxes of stuff this time (and a boatload of legos that were stashed in my grandmanagers office).

As I said, moving's a regular occurrence - I'm in my 4th office in this building alone.  Fortunately, intra-building moves aren't NEARLY as painful as inter-building moves, but they're still a pain in the neck.

My longest time in an office was something like two years, my shortest was 2 weeks (they moved us out of building one into building four for two weeks while they moved another group out of building two, then moved us from building four back into building two).  I've had corner offices (twice, once in building two, another time in 25), I've had window offices and I've had interior offices.  I've got to say that I REALLY hate corner offices - my office has a whiteboard, a corkboard and two bookshelves, but in a corner office, you lose one of your walls, which means that you can only have two of the 4 items (we have modular shelving and corkboard units in our offices, in an interior office, you get two walls full of hanging shelving racks, in a corner office, you only get one, plus a partial one).  The great view doesn't even come close to making up for the loss of a bookshelf.  In my case, one of my bookshelves is filled with lego models, but who's counting :)

I can't wait to see the view from my new office though - it faces more-or-less northeast, which means that I get to see the Cascades.  I took the opportunity to reorient my office as well - traditionally, I have had my office laid out like this:

But I'm laying my new office out like this:

just to take advantage of the view (Ignore the units, they're Visio goop from when I made the drawing).  I like facing the door (so I can see who's coming), but I figured that the view would be worth the startle effect.  I suspect I'll end up getting a mirror to put into the window so I can see people at the door...  The cool thing about the new layout is that I'll be able to add a round table to the office, so I'll be able to get the manipulative puzzles off my main desk onto the round table.

Unfortunately, this morning, just before came into work to unpack, the fan motor on the AC blower feeding into my office gave up the ghost, filling the office (and the corridor) with REALLY noxious fumes, so I'm currently installed in an empty office near my office (I'd forgotten how heavy a 21 inch CRT monitor is).

Anyway, today's tech-light, hopefully I'll get bandwidth to do more tomorrow.

Edit: Clarified text around new office layout, it was awkwards.