Late tonight I reconfigured my desk setup for the umpteenth time. The main reason is that my last setup revision, which moved my monitor forward and my keyboard and mouse to a pull-out drawer under the desk, left my headphone and stereo amps in a no-mans-land behind my monitor, completely out of reach.

My desk is strange, and I wish I had one or two normal, five-foot-wide rectangular desks in its place. I have a corner desk that is not nearly as wide as I would like, though it does connect to desktop areas of varying utility along each side. (Imagine a V-shaped desk, where the main seating area is at the apex of the V, with a secondary desk area on the left, and a cabinet on the right, all connected together.)

I am planning to add a second monitor to the main area that I use for work. Unfortunately, it is unclear how exactly it would fit comfortably there, but I went ahead and ordered a new monitor anyway. (Both monitors are/will be 4K 27-inch displays.) My plan is to orient it vertically (with a downward tilt so I can read it) to the right of my current monitor. It may look a little weird, and be less useful for me to use on that side, but I don’t have anywhere else to put it.

Oddly, for this setup I moved my work laptop onto the floor. It’s actually on a little five-inch-high shelf I made right that sits on on the floor under my desk, far enough from my chair that I cannot kick it. Fortunately, you can’t see it or the multitude of wires connecting to every side of it, unless you crawl under the desk. I’m sure I will have to do that occasionally to reboot the laptop, but that won’t be too often, and has always been a pain for me to do anyway.

I moved my headphone dac/amp stack right next to my Mac mini, which has its own setup to the left of my work computer’s monitor-and-keyboard setup. Because the path for headphone cords no longer crosses over my keyboard or mouse at either computer, I will be able use it again. (I haven’t been able to use it since the last revision to my desk setup.) I really look forward to that.

My two laptops (one a very old MacBook Pro, the other a relatively new Dell running Windows 11) are now in a drawer. I removed their chargers from their power strip, and they now reside neatly in labeled bags next to the laptops. I just don’t use them that much since I got my Mac mini, and I never plug them into a monitor. It just makes sense for me now to consider them as portable, and to pull them out when I need them and hide them the rest of the time.

Also as part of this revision, I put my high-speed Epson scanner away in a cabinet because I never use it. It’s s shame, because it is very fast. Unfortunately, it isn’t that useful for my scanning needs because I don’t have stacks of letter-size papers to scan. Instead, I usually have a bunch of irregularly sized papers that require a flatbed banner (which I have as part of my multifunction printer).

Now that I am done, I am happy again with it. Everything looks tidy and functional. Adding the second monitor to the work setup will be a challenge for another night.