My home office 10 yrs ago in late 2001. I had two G3 Macs under the table, one connected to the two monitors on the left, and a 15" Apple grayscale portrait on another desk for writing documents. The PowerMac 6100 on the desk was my version control repository running VOODOO and ran headless; I was using VNC on the Sun monitor (which you can see here) to access the 6100. There was also a 14" CRT for a Linux console. The Sun machine was used as an X11 front-end for Linux work because XF86 was so unstable for me. A few months after this, a buddy gave me another 21" Trinitron CRT because it was "too big". Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of those set-ups.

Planning the 2011 Update

About six or seven months prior to the 2011 updates, I did some planning to see what the new furniture would look like. It was partially a practice run to get better at using SketchUp so I can work out some other remodeling projects I'm doing. Flickr page.

General

What do you use all of those computers for out of curiosity?

Most recently I was CTO and co-founder of a software company that was building software for enterprise VMware environments. We sold the company to a large storage company and now I am doing software work there. My time is split between coding, simulation, working with customers, and PowerPoint. It's a fun blend of different skills and keeps my brain healthy.

I work at home in Boston when I am not on the road--I travel a lot--230,000 miles in the last 24 months, according to TripIt. I used to live in Silicon Valley full time, but got tired of it after 5 years. Going back and forth is energizing and has been effective for me for the last 4 years. Virgin America, GoGo Inflight, and figuring out how to play the travel points and perks games combine to make it a tolerable lifestyle. With the change in my job function and organization, I am traveling a bit less and spending more time enjoying this space, which has been a great change.

Please do not send me your résumé. I appreciate the thought but my current job has no hiring responsibilities.

This office is over the top.

It is. But it's fun and probably qualifies as a hobby at this point. I've tried to create a space that is pleasant in which to work. I'm in here 60-80 hours a week during crunch time. It's way less depressing than long hours at an uncomfortable desk and phone books to boost the monitor height.

After many years of working at tables that were the wrong height, looking at small monitors, listening to loud computers, typing on cramped keyboards that hurt my shoulders, sitting in falling-apart chairs, I decided enough was enough.

Some people have over-the-top cars, I have an over-the-top office.

How big is the office?

Overall, it's about 26 x 14 ft. The vaulted ceiling is about 10 ft high. The closet is 7 x 9 ft.

What chair is that?

I recently upgraded from a Herman Miller Aeron chair to the Herman Miller Embody chair. The Embody was an excellent upgrade at first blush, but after using it some more I am less certain.

The other chairs in the room are also from Herman Miller; there are two Eames DCM chairs and an Eames Lounge Chair.

What desk system is that?

The big desk is from the Bush Furniture Series C collection. From the set, the office contains the 72" bow desk, a 72" credenza, a 36" return, the 72" right-corner module, a 3 drawer free-standing pedestal, a 2 drawer attached pedestal, two 30" storage cabinets, a 36" lateral file cabinet, and a pencil drawer. Update: The right-corner module and pencil drawer were replaced with the below table:

The front desk is the Design Within Reach Dordoni Worktable. It's 72" x 36" and features essentially two surfaces--an upper working surface and a lower surface that can be used for storage, either with or without drawers. The lower surface is the same area as the work surface, essentially doubling the amount of space. This is way more useful than a simple pencil drawer. The drawers have sliding aluminum inserts as well.

The Dodorni desk is expensive (overpriced), but small quantities likely require the high price. However, I really haven't found anything else on the market like it that is so large--and I looked hard (I believe Ikea and Crate&Barrel have had some similar but smaller desks in their catalogs before). I wanted as big of a surface that the room would fit (if there was a 80" x 36" version, I would have bought it.)

Overall, the entire desk footprint is 11 ft x 8 ft.

What keyboard tray is that?

It's a self-built table--it's actually completely separate from the desk. The surface is a 1x18 piece of pine, reinforced with a 1x3 under the front and a 2x3 under the rear. On the sides are a pair of 2x4s that attach to a pair of Ikea T-legs. The Ikea T-legs are height-adjustable, so I can tweak the height from time to time. I can move the table around if I want and it gives me plenty of space for the keyboard and mice.

You built a cubicle in a huge room! / What is the workflow? / Do you really need so many desks?

The basic layout of the desk is a single rectangular desk up against a 'U'. The front desk is for task processing and brainstorming: Dealing with incoming requests, filing, and organizing happens at this desk. For filing, there are two lateral file drawers (personal and brainstorming) and a two pedestal file drawers (corporate records) within "swivel distance."

The 'U' desk is where work happens. The front desk is more administrative: Paying bills, stacks of paper to deal with, or the infrequent meeting in the office.

Physical separation helps me stay focused. The physical separation also puts my mind into a state of knowing anything piled up on the front desk needs to be dealt with and so aggressive use of the trash can and filing cabinets prevents accumulation of huge stacks of clutter that never get moved.

I am using David Allen's Getting Things Done model for processing tasks; I rely on the Mac/iPhone combo Things and two letter trays on my desk for "in" and "next" processing stacks. David Allen says to buy the cheapest label printer that plugs into the wall, but I splurged and spent $100 to get one that doesn't waste so much tape. I use the label printer pretty heavily on labeling files, and make it a point to keep about 500 new manilla folders ready for filing. I have also found that keeping an industrial shredder--not a cheap $20 one--helps me reduce clutter by letting me quickly destroy confidential documents. With a cheap shredder I would inevitably pile up documents to shred but never actually do the shredding.

Too much light / too loud / too hot.

Lights: The lighting is all balanced against the monitors--the monitor and ambient light are roughly equivalent. The lights are controlled via X10 and I can quickly change the lights in the room from any web browser or a physical remote control. Eye strain is very minimal.

Noise: In the office, there are only two computers--the laptop and the Mac Pro. These machines are extremely quiet. There is another computer in the closet, a beefy 1 GHz Athlon with 1 GB of RAM. In the basement are 3 other computers. The Mac Pro in the office itself is on the other side of the desk from where I sit.

Heat: The temperature in the winter is about 65-75 F--by far the warmest room in the house; during the winter, window fans on timers pump cold air in from outside. In the summer, there are 2 tons of A/C to keep the office cool. The closet and the office are separate thermal zones; the closet stays at around 68-72 F and the office 72-78 F. It's very comfortable.

LED light bulbs?

At one point in the past, I was running all CFL bulbs. However, I really dislike the color of CFLs, and some of my light fixtures caused CFLs to buzz. I really enjoy GE Reveal incandescent bulbs, so I switched back.

Recently, I took the plunge to switch to LED bulbs. I'm using Philips AmbientLED bulbs that have a color temperature very close to incandescent bulbs but use about 20% of the electricty. The higher end bulbs are dimmable and make no buzzing sound in any of my lamps.

I went from 520 watts to 90 watts for lighting the office by switching. Unfortunately, the bulbs are not cheap, but I should break even in about 10 months.

What about windows?

There are two pretty large windows at each end of the room and a small window in the closet. I did consider putting in skylights, but the roof outside is in very good shape and I didn't want to mess with it. I also had a very small "window" of time allocated for remodeling; only about 4 weeks to do the whole house.

There are always compromises, and it's very hard to find a house in this area of Boston with a large enough space for an office like this. Often times when I've had windows in my office, whether at home or in a corporate building, I've ended up covering them to cut down on glare. The 10 lamps + 6 can lights in the ceiling definitely provide plenty of light, even if it's artificial light.

It doesn't look like there's much shelf space.

There are 37 linear feet of bookshelves in the office, and 16 linear feet of storage shelving in the closet. There are also two storage cabinets in the office with about 10 feet of shelving that is 2 feet deep.

My next planned update for the office is to replace the regular bookcases and the cabinets under the stereo with glass-door bookcases/cabinets.

Have you read all those books?

No, absolutely not. I would guess the breakdown is 30% read cover-to-cover, 30% used as reference materials, and 40% on the to do list. The books are a dynamic collection, I am continuously weeding and backfilling empty space as my needs change. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.

I see a lot of phones.

There are 6 cordless Panasonic phones (2 pair with cell phones, 4 are just tied to one Comcast VoIP "landline"), 2 Polycom speaker phones, 2 cell phones. I was using a Polycom 450 VoIP phone + Plantronics headset which are now no longer in use. I really like that cordless headset except that it can't control the phone, so I didn't keep the VoIP service after my last company was bought. I'm back to using wired headsets with the cordless handsets for walking around the house.

I spend a lot of time on the phone.

Monitors

Why not go with virtual desktops instead of physical screens?

I do use virtual desktops. :-)

I keep 2 Spaces going when two very different activities are going on. Sadly, Spaces is pretty bad when you want the same application with different windows/documents in different spaces.

I've used virtual desktops heavily in the past even on my primary coding machine. Mostly I need concurrency in what I am seeing. Watching cascading crashing, seeing a few gdb sessions + code, etc. Virtual desktops don't solve the concurrent viewing. When I don't need concurrent viewing, I use tabbed terminals quite a bit.

Of course, if I couldn't afford a lot of monitors, I can work on a single 17" monitor with 8 or so virtual desktops (and have done so)--but it really sucks. This lets me get through tasks a lot faster with less pain. Debugging is painful enough as it is--there's no reason not to add as much hardware to ease the pain where possible.

Did you have to do any software tweaks [for the portrait mode displays]?

Modern Mac hardware/software supports rotation with no additional tweaks. Look in the Displays System Preferences; you can pick an orientation for a monitor (90, 180, 270 degrees).

How much do the monitor stands cost? Where did you buy them?

On the desk, I have a Ergotron LX arm. (I used to have a pair of Ergotron DS 100 stands as well.) The LX arms are very sturdy but a little expensive. If you get really bad sticker shock, imagine that the year is 2005 and they cost 2-3x as much as they do now. Try Amazon, NewEgg, etc. I do not recommend the Ergotron Neo-Flex line. Spend a little more and get a vastly better product.

In the closet, the monitors are mounted to the wall with $10 mounts from Monoprice. They are very sturdy, but not very flexible. I wouldn't buy the cheap ones for anything I had to use more than an hour or two a year.

So how are the monitors driven?

The main displays are connected to the Mac Pro, which has multiple video cards. Currently it has two ATI 5770 cards. In previous versions of this office, I was running 3x2600 cards. I also ran a 4870 + 2600 for a while. The two 5770s seem to use less electricity than the 4870 + 2600.

How many monitors total?

1 x 20" + 4 x 30" (11440 x 1600 on the Mac Pro)
1 laptop screen.
1 in the closet. (And about 6 others not used right now... When I bought my first 30", I was running 4x20" and I still have the other three in the closet.)
1 in the basement with some loud rack-mount disks.

What's with the projector?

I stole borrowed the projector idea from this guy. I do a lot of presentations and thought the projector would be handy--it's very portable, light, and uses an LED bulb (so no expensive $300 surprises). It was the above link that made me think it would be handy for more than just color checking of slides and rehearsing talks.

Sadly, even a cheap projector costs a lot. I couldn't justify a used one because there's so few (zero?) used LED units on Craigslist, and a used one + replacement bulb was more than a new LED unit. However, the projector screen was silly cheap--$77 at Amazon for an 80" 4:3 screen. 16:9 would be more trendy, but less screen real estate, given the ceiling constraints I have.

I would probably do a lot more with the projector if I had a different physical room configuration (you know, a room with walls...).

Don't you lose track of the cursor?

On the Mac, I turn on the big cursor (System Prefs > Universal Access > Mouse, then use the Cursor Size slider).

It's ugly, but my arm gets less tired--when the cursor was the old 16x16 size, I would shake my arm hard looking for it. Now at around 96 x 96, it's a heck of a lot better. There's a freeware Mac tool called "Screen Crosshairs" that I tried for a while, but it's ironically(?) broken on multiple monitors.

You should use [the software called] synergy!

I have in the past, but it doesn't make much sense for my current situation.

OK, it looks cool, but I bet you won't like it once you use it. / Too much neck/wrist pain.

I've been using variations of this set-up for over 3 years now, and I've running monitors spanning 6+ ft for about 8 years. No neck pain, no wrist pain these days, especially with the Kinesis keyboards. Check my Flickr pictures for pictures of old offices set-ups and experiments.

To avoid neck pain, I turn the chair slightly in addition to my neck. It's also not like driving a car, where you need to be scanning the entire visual area constantly. :-)

For wrist pain, my keyboard is tilted to try to keep a more natural posture for the palms (versus a flat keyboard). The large space between the keyboard lets me avoiding turning my shoulder inwards and has greatly improved my shoulder and back posture. I also use a variety of mice throughout the day. My non-medical belief is that the R in RSI is the important piece--the repitition of the same motions. Using a thumb trackball, vertical mice, a trackpad, and a regular mouse throughout the day changes the motions that I do. This along with having the proper height of the keyboard tray has reduced my wrist/arm pain from mousing to nothing at all.

I've found doing as few as 10 push-ups every day also alleviates some of the tightness and fatigue in the wrists and forearms (as well as having other good side effects). This is an unscientific observation and is not medical advice. But it helps me, so I have a yoga mat at one end of the room for when I don't make it out to the gym.

Some folks have mentioned it looks like a 'just-completed' project because it's so clean/de-cluttered. I de-clutter the office once a week. Otherwise I go nuts.

Computers

What are the specs of the Mac Pro?

8 x 2.8 GHz cores, 32 GB of RAM, two ATI video cards (two 5770 with 1 GB of RAM each), 1 x 20" + 4 x 30" monitors, 38 TB of storage, and a external Blu-Ray burner.

There is an 8 TB primary storage array that is a SAS-attached enclosure (the black box next to the Mac Pro). This array is a RAID-6 volume with 5 TB of logical space (1 disk is a spare). The performance of the primary storage is very good. There are no internal drives in the Mac Pro. I'm using an Areca 1680x SAS controller--it is fast and EFI-bootable in the Mac Pro. (For those looking for this card, it has been replaced with a 1880x model that looks to be equivalent.) The external chassis is from PC-Pitstop in Missouri.

The Mac Pro has a DroboPro connected over iSCSI with 18 TB of disks in it and a bootable SAS->SATA RAID with 8 TB of disks in it. The DroboPro is used for scratch space and Time Machine backups. Thre is also an external 12 TB Mercury Pro quad disk enclosure on the desk from Other World Computing.

I can't believe you use Macs. Macs suck. You are teh loser.

I've seen this comment a few times, which is a little weird--I have dozens of Windows VMs for testing. I probably have more Windows installed here than most people hating on the Mac.

I mostly am using a Mac Pro for the main desktop because (1) a key piece of my development environment only runs on Windows and Mac right now (2) I hate Windows (3) X.org's RandR support is missing hwaccel on a lot of video cards. :-(. If I could cross-grade some of the key software with minimal charge (re-buying it doesn't make much sense to me), and RandR was better, I'd switch to a Linux desktop in a second. Ubuntu 64-bit desktop does in fact boot on the Mac Pro out of the box and it's pretty nice, but without hwaccel RandR, portrait displays don't make much sense on Linux. Fonts under Linux still suck, too, though the situation has improved some. For better or worse, I spend most of the day looking at Courier, anyway.

Even if the programming desktop were a Linux hosted OS, I'd still have a Mac or two on the side for Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Pages, and OmniGraffle--the last two are pretty kickass applications. They obviously are limited for sharing source files, but if sharing annotated PDFs is good enough these apps are fantastic.

I would suggest not buying into the computer religion too seriously. These are just tools. I've tried dozens of them. I use what I use for pretty specific reasons--and it's always a compromise.

How many computers total?

There's really just a few these days--my MacBook Air 11", MacBook Pro 15", and my Mac Pro are the main machines. I used to have a lot of PCs in the closet; those have since been moved to California. I still have 1 PC in the closet and a few in the basement. There used to be 12 computers altogether, but it's down to 6 now.

What are the specs of [other systems]?

I still have two 2.66 GHz Xeon systems in the basement with 8 GB of RAM for testing software, and I also have a Core i7 with 9 GB of RAM in the basement as well. In the closet there is a 1 GHz Athlon shuttle for dnsmasq, some home-grown network monitor / management tools, and MRTG that monitors the managed switches, etc. I have written some nice tools that plug-in to dnsmasq; I hope to release them "someday.").

The MacBook Air is a 11" 1.6 GHz with 128 GB SSD and 4 GB of RAM. I previously owned a 2/128 SSD MacBook Air 13" (2008) and the 2010 MacBook Air 13" 4/256. I am on the road a lot, so the MacBook Airis the way to go. If you are considering the Air for travel and find yourself in US domestic coach seats a lot, you probably want the 11". As small as the 13" is, it's too tight in a regular coach seat.

I also recently bought a MacBook Pro 15" (2011, 2.5 ghz i7, 16 gb of RAM). It's an awesome machine and easy to upgrade.

In my living room, I have a 2011 Mac Mini plugged into a TV. The 2011 Mac Mini is the middle model with the Radeon video card and a 750 GB disk.

What flavor of Linux?

When I run Linux on native hardware, I usually install Fedora or CentOS. VMs run a mix of Fedora, Ubuntu, and Windows. However, most of the PC hardware is running VMware ESX or VMware ESXi.

Can't you just run all of these machines as VMs?

I run a lot of test machines as VMs. I also run several ESX machines as VMs on the Mac Pro. There's also three PCs in the basement, two of which are ESX machines running more test VMs.

How much does your electric bill run you each month with all of the computer equipment?

It's not too bad. Moving the light bulbs to LED is saving me about $32/mo alone, not including AC savings in the summer for reduced cooling.

For those concerned my carbon footprint is very high, I do compensate a little with a Rinnai tankless water heater. Gas for the water heater is about $6/mo--significantly less gas is required for this than keeping 40 gallons of water hot 24x7. All of the lamps in the office use LED bulbs. Also, because I work at home (and live where there is a good subway system), I hardly ever drive my car. A tank of gasoline lasts me 6-10 weeks. I drive rental cars when I travel more than I drive my car at home.

Do you use Textmate?

I've tried it and love the flexibility of syntax coloring that it offers. However, I'm too entrenched in vim and BBedit to make the switch though. I don't use Emacs, sorry. :-)

What keyboard is that? How much do they cost?

I have two Kinesis Freestyle keyboards (Mac version) that Kinesis customized for me--they put in a 20" cable instead of the 8". I used to have a PC version with the 8" separator and it was too short. The 20" version costs a lot ($40 more), but it's worth it. (Where is the 2nd keyboard? It's in a cabinet. It was in my California office when I was on both coasts constantly.)

The key switches are decent and I find these keyboards extremely comfortable. They were around $180 each w/ shipping.

I bought them directly from Kinesis. I've never seen them in a retail store. Some specialty ergo shops sell them online, but I haven't bought from those stores.

What's in the rack?

In the office closet, there's a Linksys RV082 router, HP ProCurve 1800-24G GigE switch (it's web-managed w/ read-only SNMP, sadly no CLI or RS-232), and a patch panel.

In the basement, there's a 1u PDU, a unmanaged 16 port NetGear GigE, and an 8 port KVM.

I didn't see a [wireless access point].

There are 5; I have 2 AirPort Extremes and 3 AirPort Expresses throughout the house.

What's your favorite piece of hardware?

This is tough--I'd say it's tied between my Verizon MiFi and my MacBook Air. I cannot say enough good things about the Verizon MiFi. "Mitch, the wireless in the hotel / conference center / coffee shop sucks." "Really? I hadn't noticed." It has been a hugely useful tool.

What software applications do you use?

This changes so much that I've removed the list that was here as it is too tedious to keep it up to date.

What kind of Internet connection?

I have Comcast Business with some static IPs, 50 mbit down and 10 mbit up. I originally anticipated that I would have two ISPs, but I never got around to buying The Other Cable Company (the sales guys are aggressive jerks) or Verizon (they stopped rolling out FiOS and their DSL is silly expensive)... and as it turned out, Comcast Business has been rock solid and serious about their 4-hr SLA in event of problems. I think I've had about 30 minutes of total outage in 4 yrs. It's been great.

Since I travel a lot, I also have a Verizon MiFi. I recently upgraded to the 4G version. This has made life on the road so much easier.

Construction

Why straight drops instead of conduit?

Good question. Probably a combination of things: (1) I didn't have much time for the remodel, so planning was short--I didn't really think of conduit. (2) Keep costs down. Also, I suspect that in-wall conduit would have required thicker walls in some areas, and visible conduit is just ugly.

I don't view this as my ultimate office, just a pretty darn good office. Maybe next time around. :-)

How much did you spend on ripping out the attic? like with plastering and wiring and fans, etc.?

It was fairly cheap. I suspect that contractor rates vary quite a bit from area to area, and it's hard to say exactly what was spent on the office because I did the whole house. But the attic work included new walls, ceiling, insulation, vaulting the ceiling, new fans, new lights, all new wiring, the sub panel, Ethernet drops, put down a new floor in half of the room, sanding the floor, stain, poly, drywall, plaster, paint, trim, the doors. It sounds like a lot--and it was--but I think the contractors gave me pretty good pricing. 2008 was a pretty slow year for them (as of April).

Obviously I am dodging the question, but I will say if you can afford a pretty high end system that you spend a lot of time working at, it's worth checking into the cost of remodeling the room you use it in, if the room is not a suitable environment as is. You might be surprised. After years of "making do" with terrible office situations, this has been a nice change.

There may be possible tax savings for remodeling a home office depending on your circumstances; talk to your accountant. [This is not tax advice.]

Where did you get those fans?

The fans are made by The Modern Fan Company; I bought them from form+function. They are awesome fans and I love the look.

Aren't you worried with that many PCs that eventually SOMETHING will burn up while you are away?

No. I assume that this question is really about electrical overload: There's a 60 amp subpanel in the office, and 6 circuits throughout the room. The electrical load is fairly well balanced. The biggest worry is pushing too many amps through an under-rated cord, and I deal with this by only using 15 amp cords. I've noticed some cords rated at 15 amps are quite warm with 8 amp loads, so I've replaced them with commercial-grade cords.

All that remodeling and you painted the walls white?

The walls are "silver plum"--a light gray. It doesn't photograph so well with my lack of photography skills. Why no accent walls? Well, I ended up putting up a lot of artwork instead. I was also worried that the drama of the room might be too much with colors added to it. So for now, off-white it is. The ceiling is just "ceiling white". If I was doing it again, I wouldn't use any drywall in the room--I'd go for an all-wood look. I had too many things on my mind during the remodel to get creative, unfortunately.

Do you wish you had done anything differently with the construction?

I had a compressed time window for construction and I had a budget I was trying to keep the remodel under. In hindsight, I should have been more relaxed about the budget and time window. For a bit more money, and probably 2 more months, I could have raised the roof on the non-stairs side of the house and built a proper dormer. That would have added 100 sq ft too the room. I also should have replaced the furnace with a direct-vent system so that I could remove the chimney.

Less dramatic things I should have looked at--I should have done quad 20 amp circuits instead of the weird 3-gang 3x15 amp circuit drops around the room. Some of the outlets are in weird positions. There's a wall (where the printer is) that I didn't put any Ethernet ports because I was trying not to go over 16 drops for the whole house (the thought of punching down both ends of 32 drops sounded too tedious, even for me). The pocket door design is cool but I should have taken a different approach. I should have gutted the entire closet as well, but I was running out of time. Also, I wish I had looked at putting in a wooden ceiling instead of drywall.

But overall, these are pretty minor "regrets". The room is an awesome space and no matter what you do, you'll think of more later. I did a lot right in the house remodel, especially given it was my first remodel and I was very distracted.

Misc

An office for one person? You're not sharing it with anyone?

My girlfriend has her own office elsewhere in the house. Her room is also a dedicated office with a door that closes, perhaps around 13 x 13 ft, wired for Ethernet, colors of her choosing, etc.

No, I will not post photos of her or her office. :-)

No fridge / wet bar / bathroom?

I thought about it, but as a friend of mine said during the remodel, "Don't build a house within a house." It's good to take a break and get out of the room for a few minutes. I have thought about it, though. :-)

Physical security?

There are a number of physical security measures that are implemented, but I'm not going to elaborate.

Do you like writing software? I'm kind of considering something computer-based when I go to college. but not really sure...

Yes, it's about all I've ever wanted to do. It's not for everyone though. A degree in computer science is (or used to be :-) ) a lot of work, especially in math. I struggle with certain aspects of math, but I managed to get through it and had a meaty chapter in my thesis about quaternions. In general I'd suggest double majoring if you can. I often wish I had double majored in CS and Latin.

The day to day aspects of writing software is very different from a CS degree. I enjoy both though. There's a lot more to CS than "computers"; CS isn't really about programming at all. But to be an excellent programmer, you'll need to understand the science of computing, somehow.

I'm trying to decide if I should go to college / start a company / switch jobs / other career advice

I'm flattered you want to ask me about this, but I suspect you'd do better to ask on a web site such as StackOverflow and/or people who know you well.

Also, one minor detail: "awesome office" doesn't necessarily imply "awesome person." It's possible I am clueless, but have a nice office.

I do have a bit of free advice about college though: Go to college! Understand that college is the one time you will be around a lot of single people. Once you're out of college, the number of available people to date goes down. Way down. There's no reason to get a big hurry to start working. Go to college. Chill out. Meet people. Even if you're already the world's greatest hacker who doesn't want to date or meet anyone, realize that college is 4 years you have to hack with almost no interruptions.

My other college advice: Live on campus. Buy the meal plan. Yes, the dorms will probably suck.

You drink too much Coke Zero, which contains Aspartame, which causes cancer!

Yes, I drink too much Coke Zero. There has been controversy over Aspartame for some time. I try to drink a lot of seltzer and regular water, too.

I am a big fan of Diet Coke with Splenda, but I haven't been able to find it in stores for some time.

What lamps are those?

Most of the lamps in the office are made by Artemide. I am a huge fan of these lamps. I have two Tolomeo Classics over the 30" monitors, two Tolomeo Minis over the Dordoni desk, and a Tolomeo Mega at the end of the room. I also have two of the Artemide Open Table lamps, one in amber and one in indigo. The lamp behind the Eames lounge chair is a Toto Cube Table Lamp. My girlfriend tells me I have a lamp problem...

Where can I buy X10 gear? x10.com frightens me.

x10.com frightens me as well. I mostly buy from www.thehomeautomationstore.com. I've bought about 20 modules from them and they seem to be a good vendor, but I don't really know anything about them. There is also SmartHome (retail in Irvine, CA) and HomeTech (retail in Cupertino, CA). These two vendors are pricier.

If you want a "reliable" automation system you might consider Insteon over X10. (Update: I've seen a lot of compalints about Insteon hardware being short-lived, do some research before taking my word for it.) I'm cheap and went the X10 route though.

How do you control X10 from the computer?

I am using bottlerocket on Linux with some lame scripts + cron. The hardware bridge is the X10 firecracker module (RS-232-to-RF).

Why did you write a FAQ? Do you have too much free time?

This FAQ was inspired by Stefan Didak's Home Office FAQ. I never understood why he had a FAQ until I decided to share pictures of the office--suddenly, the questions above were coming in rapidly and frequently--and I understood the need to pull together the common questions.

Usually the FAQ is updated during bouts of insomnia.

Why share the office pictures if it takes up so much time?

Short answer: I have met some really cool people as a result of this office page. And not all of them have crazy offices (or if they do, they didn't mention it :-) ).

Long answer: Nothing exists in a vacuum. Back in 2007, blakespot posted this picture of his HP 20" + Apple 30". It was from that picture I got the idea to use 4 of the same HP monitors with an Apple 30". Stefan Didak's notes about his HP ProCurve Ethernet switch resulted in upgrading to the same switch he is using. I didn't know about Ergotron stands until I saw a picture of them in someone's set-up. I never would have thought to install in-wall speaker wiring and wall plates in the living room or the office without the folks posting pictures on avsforum.com. I learned of the Ikea Signum cable trays from this LifeHacker post; otherwise I would have spent 4x as much buying server room cable raceways.

It is my hope that many people will learn something from what I've done to improve their own situation. I'd love to see pictures / write-ups of how you have maximized your productivity / design / space / sanity in your space, whether you have 1 monitor or 30.

Other impressive offices?

• "indygreg"'s incredible office in Indiana. I think this is one of the best and least-known office pages on the web.
• Stefan Didak's office that inspired this web page.
• Fog Creek -- "But wait, this isn't a home office," you say. That's OK--the goal of this office is to make money, and I assume Joel feels the same way about his.
• Scott Hanselman's home office
• Brian Palmer's office -- I laughed.
• Brian DeHamer's amazing Shed Office in San Diego. In addition to the very cool shed, Brian has found a nice-looking set of office furniture that is very inexpensive.
• Dennis Klein has a nice write-up about his attic office.
• This guy is building a 60-monitor office for trading.
• I'm sure there are others; if you'd like to see your office link here, email me.

Will you design an office for me?

You'd probably do better to hire a professional; I'm just a guy with a few desks, a big room, and a lot of monitors. What works for me may not work for you. Feel free to use any of the ideas presented here.

I am starting a company, any advice?

Read my notes on starting a company.

Who you are?

My name is Mitch. You can follow me on Twitter.

I have a question that wasn't answered...

Feel free to post the question on Flickr or write to me at mitch.haile@gmail.com.

Please try to keep your mail succinct (unlike this page!). I'll try to humor you if you send me your life story, but I may not find your question buried in it. I do try to reply to all questions, up to about a limit of 3 questions / 1 email per person.