Skip to content
Home » My home office setup

My home office setup

  • by
Snow on a bare tree in winter

That aging hippie (he likes Apple products and has a goatee) known as Brent Ozar wrote a post recently about his home office studio setup, with a big focus on bragging about his admittedly really nice Mac Pro online training.

I don’t do online training, but for some reason there’s a lot of interest in the SQL Server community about how I spend my time. Kenneth Fisher (blog | Twitter) is literally keeping a list of the things I’ve done in my life. So I figured I’d do my own light-hearted take on this type of post.

Four years ago, I missed a meeting with a potential client. It was an online meeting and I still was able to connect with them and do the work at a later date, but I felt terrible about it. So terrible in fact that I wrote a post on professionalism from the perspective of someone who works from home.

There’s a serious follow-up to that post which I can probably write, but this ain’t it. The wonderful person who edits my blog posts for me suggested I write about “effective tools for a remote office and how to quickly ramp yourself up as a remote worker/business owner / consultant / gig worker / creative. Software, hardware, daily routines, things to avoid, things to encourage.” Instead, I decided to make fun of Brent Ozar’s beard and show you photos from 2010.

On the day between the Ides of March and Saint Patrick’s Day in the year 2010, my husband and I moved to Canada. Technically I was semi-retired. The company I was working for said “remote is Pretoria, not Canada,” so I was funemployed. Over the next few months I became good at building IKEA furniture and buying six-inch subs from Tim Horton’s. I kept up with Twitter and Facebook using an old Asus laptop.

This was my home office on 10 June 2010.

Asus on the right, freshly imported from South Africa

Not even a day later, I became the proud owner of the best computer in the world, an Apple iMac. Shut up. Yes it is. No, you smell funny.

In which Randolph gets an iMac

We eventually moved to Calgary in 2012, and the IKEA desk was sold, but we were still situated in a basement.

Two laptops, an iMac, and a fourth screen

Although we moved again, this was the same configuration until we moved into a condo, after which I didn’t have an office anymore. I now sit wherever I can. Usually on this couch with a MacBook Pro.

There’s a Randolph-shaped hole in this now.

I’m not kidding, This is my view right now as I type this. As many of my friends know, I don’t sleep regular hours. It’s almost 10pm which means I’m going to be doing about three hours of work before I go to bed.

View from the Randolph-shaped hole

I do actually have a small desk. It can be closed up and takes up very little space in the bedroom, but I usually sit there in the summer when it’s warm, then I can open the deck door and get the best of the outdoors without burning in the sun.

Share your home office thoughts in the comments below.

Featured image by Randolph West.