5 down, 5 to go...

Getting stuck in a pokey little office when you're used to the luxury of a studio is... a bit depressing to say the least.

It last happened back in January when I spent a day in a different box...

And nothing much has changed apart from it being a little hotter...

1. Small, lonely, pokey little office. No pot plants or nothing.
   
2. It's dark too - can't work without horrible artificial lights on
3. The view is rubbish - well actually the council tip *is* just up the road, but the view is just plain boring
4. It's too far to walk to the front door to get my ass outside, though it will be done to escape at some stage...
5. The only pen is a leaky biro that got all over my hands
6. For an office that consumes more paper than Sweden has trees, there's a distinct lack of stationery... pens & the like, apart from the leaky one of course... I was doing some expense accounts the other day and couldn't find a flipping red pen...!!! Grrr
   
7. The laser printer has seen more miles than Forrest Gump's trainers - it needs a service and it squeaks - annoyingly.
   
8. When flatfoot, from the unit next door, clumps his way past the office door, my monitor wobbles. It's like the time when I lived in an 18th century cottage next to a busy main road and freight trucks thundered past at 4 in the morning...
9. Non-ergonomic keyboard, non-wireless mouse, Win NT therefore no USB ports, 733 pentiums with 128mb ram (about 5 years old - can't handle multi-tasking i.e. dreamweaver & fireworks plus some MS office apps at the same time - slows and hangs-up quite regular too) and a server that's so loud you have to raise your voice to talk over it's drone and it kicks out more heat than Dante's Inferno...
   
10. Enforced musical deprivation - When a music CD is loaded into *any* one of these clunky old coal-fired PCs they crash and show the Blue Screen Of Death... and they only got 1 pissy little speaker... I can fart louder!
    
11. Office chair with no arms, doesn't recline and isn't made of leather ;)
12. No Tea... Can you believe it? No frigging tea! And there's a really crap kettle that randomly switches itself on once in a while and has dubious looking electrical meltdown marks on it...

Normally you have to balance out something this dreary with something good... but I couldn't find anything of note... and then the sandwich van turned up :) OK, the serving wench was nowhere near as nice as my girl, but I did get a bacon sani and a choc chip cookie...