Apparently over the years I’ve gotten into heavily customizing my workstation, and it pretty much dominates all the photos I’ve taken over the past decade or so. Since apparently I love my computers so much, I thought I’d dedicate a page to them.

2014⌗

September - The University of Tulsa - Tulsa, OK⌗

I’m pretty sure I was taking a picture of the Peanuts photo above my desk. But you can at least still see my workstation setup: two monitors, a bad keyboard, a mess on the desk (which is apparently the only thing I keep consistent between photos) and Windows.

I was using Linux regularly at this time, but swapped to Windows for gaming.

2015⌗

June - The University of Tulsa - Tulsa, OK⌗

While living in Tulsa, Oklahoma at the University of Tulsa. The machine on the right was a desktop that I had been using for years at that point (I believe built in 2012) with specs I definitely don’t have any longer.

The desk came from the Container Store. My dad got it at a discount since he worked for them in the web services department. Ended up serving me for over 5 years.

At the time I was running on Xubuntu with Xmonad as my Window Manager and only about a year later did I finally start recording my system config in some dotfiles.

2018⌗

March - PhD studies - Tulsa, OK⌗

Moved into my friend’s house. It’s the same machine but for some stupid reason I replaced all of the fans with cheaper stuff that had annoying lights. Added a new monitor, 144hx and 1440p.

By 2018 I was running on Arch Linux and using i3 as my WM.

November - Still a postgrad - Tulsa, OK⌗

Upgraded the speakers to bookshelf speakers, and since they didn’t fit on my tiny desk I had to raise them with some books. I moved out of this place around February 2019.

2019⌗

April - Working at Exxon - The Woodlands, TX⌗

A few months after I started work at Exxon. I got a nice L-shaped standing desk, and it ended up being free as it came scratched Wayfair didn’t want to pay the return costs I guess. You can barely tell here but this is three monitors.

July - Working at Exxon - The Woodlands, TX⌗

A few months later, I added a rug. Looks quite a bit nicer I think. Eventually I got a NAS (pictured bedlow) which eventually turned into a whole setup.

November - The mess grows… - The Woodlands, TX⌗

Got yet another desktop for some stuff to run continuously, sitting on top of my NAS. It was at this point that I realized I probably should just buy a rack to store everything on top of.

2020⌗

January - The server rack - The Woodlands, TX⌗

Put a server rack in my closet with an insanely loud switch that I still use to this day. I got something ridiculous like 30U because I was planning to add more to this stuff over time. Also added some HPE nodes because I wanted something dedicated to run my virtual machines that wasn’t also a NAS.

March - Cross country move! - Mercer Island, WA⌗

In March, I moved from Houston to the Seattle area in Washington to work for Amazon. Funny enough, the week I started was also the week everything shut down due to COVID. I never actually went in physically to work for a year, although I think the move was still worth it. The house was located on the border of Mercer Island, with a magnificent view of Lake Washington and a close view of downtown. Perfect place to work when I’m stuck at home all day. Although it took over a month to unpack all of those boxes…

March - The desk is set up! - Mercer Island, WA⌗

This was trimmed down to something more acceptable. Wire management still needed some work, but fortunately...
...the server rack behind it was a convenient place to hide those wires. Effective wire hiding not pictured here.

Nevertheless, there was something missing…

At this point I think I had gone off the deep end. Couldn’t even sleep because the switch fans were so loud. Was a nice source of heat, though. Too bad it was summer.

July - A return to some sanity - Mercer Island, WA⌗

After a while I decided to move my server into a closet and swap my desk so that I was facing some windows instead. That ended up looking a lot better. I also added a record player to the whole situation, which is admittedly a bit more useful to have nearby during work compared to the server.

August - Herman Miller addition - Mercer Island, WA⌗

I found a very nice leather executive chair from a used seller in New York. It makes a pretty nice addition to the whole desk setup, and was fairly comfortable too. That old chair served me well, for something like 8 years. It now sits in a basement for when I’m doing work down there.

2021⌗

January - Moving out again - Mercer Island, WA⌗

As soon as I had gotten comfortable in Mercer Island, I ended up moving again. I wanted to purchase a house at this point, and got lucky and closed on a deal that got me a place in West Seattle. So, ended up packing this poor desk yet again. This time it was fortunately quite a bit easier.

February - The best server home - West Seattle, WA⌗

One of the advantages of moving was that I now had a basement to store the server in. No more crowded closets or trying to figure out networking in a place where I can’t drill holes!

June - A better audio setup - West Seattle, WA⌗

I also finally committed to building a proper setup for managing my audio. The major issue I had before was that I couldn’t really use my computer audio and listen to my turntable through my headphones at the same time. So I bought a mixer, added a DAC for my computer audio, and got a better set of headphones too. That ended up solving most of my problems.

For those interested, here’s what I bought:

August - The ultimate setup - West Seattle, WA⌗

Apparently I finally took the time to take a picture of the whole thing. I also added an extra monitor in the meantime, because that was definitely the biggest limiter to my workflow before.

For those considering a fourth monitor: I HEAVILY recommend stacking them rather than just having them sit horizontally like this. Using all of the monitors at once was a neck killer.

September - A new keyboard - West Seattle, WA⌗

On that note, I actually did go ahead and stack my monitors. That really saved my neck, although I will admit I don’t use the top monitor as often anymore.

Biggest change in my life was getting the Kinesis Advantage2 keyboard. I had noticed that after intense coding sessions with Emacs, my hands would hurt terribly. For the sake of avoiding carpal tunnel, I went ahead and changed keyboard to something that would make it a bit easier to use modifier keys.

I decided on the Advantage2 as, while it was an awkward configuration, it inluded more buttons in the thumb position which I knew would help solve my biggest problem.

When I started on the keyboard, I was so turned around that I could barely type 30 words per minute. It took about 2 months to relearn how to type altogether, which included many sessions of practicing on typeracer.com and keybr. Fortunately I’ve mostly recovered at this point to about 80-90 WPM.

2022⌗

April - Moving yet again! - Fort Lauderdale, FL⌗

And of course, the moment I settled in West Seattle, I decided to make yet another move. It wasn’t due to disliking Seattle but I saw that the window for purchasing in South Florida was shrinking so I decided to jump on the opportunity when the numbers worked out. Of course, I had another cross-country move and another few weeks working in much more barebones conditions. This picture was taken the day I got to stop working on the kitchen cabinet.

I got a new standing desk, mainly because I was tired of moving the big desk from one place to another. This one actually ended up being really cheap to DIY.

2023⌗

January - A clean setup - Fort Lauderdale, FL⌗

I finally decided to do some proper wire management below my desk so I could use the standing desk feature. I brought in yet another server rack for my wire management, but this time no annoying fans. I also upgraded the turntable with a Pioneer DJ PLX-500 Direct Drive Turntable. It’s definitely a nice upgrade, although I need a better preamp.

That’s it so far. I don’t know what else I’ll do to transform my setup, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something clever over the next few years.