Flashes of Panic

Time was, I had the nicest monitor in the office. You’d think that would come naturally, my being the IT department and all, but in actual fact I often have the leftovers; I spend enough time buying everyone else’s machines that my own stuff doesn’t get replaced unless there’s smoke rising from it.

I managed the nicest monitor—a 19” ViewSonic LCD which pivots to be either portrait or landscape, a real asset in a publishing company—by not ordering it for me. It’s the show monitor. When we go to a significant meeting, like this week’s Society for Neuroscience meeting, my monitor gets shipped out and plugged in to a laptop in our booth to show off our software titles. And believe me, everything looks good on a 19” LCD.

Meetings happen twice a year, tops, though. The rest of the year, it accumulates sticky notes on my desk, which is better than sitting in the basement by a long reach.

But, like my department head, my monitor is currently in San Diego. And I’m still here, looking at a 17” CRT with the accompanying flicker. The thing that really gets me, though, isn’t the flicker: it’s the glare. Sunlight on a notebook on my desk reflects in the monitor. Sunlight from a neighboring office on the wall of the hallway reflects in the monitor. It’s not enough for me to long for a return to my cubicle days, but still, I’ll be happy when “my” nice, big monitor is back.

Now Playing: Mercy Of The Fallen from The Beauty Of The Rain by Dar Williams