Picking up Shelley’s office meme, here are some pics and narrative on my office space. These were taken without the slightest attempt to straighten or dust.

First, the “where I sit” view:

The left-most monitor is connected to a Dell server running Windows Server 2003 underneath the custom desk (hiding behind a ton of junk — and I wonder why the case fans keep going out). Beside the monitor sits an HP 7310 All-in-One, networked.

The second monitor is connected to an old AMD K6 underneath running Debian Linux.

The black monitor is connected to a Dell P4 underneath running Windows XP SP2. That’s where I do most of my work and all of my blogging (for now). I usually sit in the chair on the right.

Signature green sweatshirt thrown carelessly on spare office chair. Too hot in here today.

Panning right:

The window looks out over a stone wall to the cedars and hemlocks that curtain our property from all neighbors and provide a home for woodland creatures. Beneath the window and behind the pile of paper junk sits an old mantel clock that was awarded to my grandmother on her retirement from teaching high school English, “For Unselfish Devotion to Education”.

The right-most monitor is connected to another Dell P4 underneath that belongs to a customer of mine. Also running XP SP2.

Linksys WRT54GX wireless router at the end of the desk covers the entire house in 802.11g at 108 Mpbs without a glitch.

On around to the right, another window looks over the deck and spa towards the sauna. Beneath it sits a filing cabinet with obligatory microwave and box of green tea.

Dark grey cabinet filled with disks, books, boxes of cables and spare hardware. I’d show you how neatly that’s all organized, but it isn’t.

Lighting on this pic sucks, but moving again to the right we have the sliding door onto the deck facing the main house — and an old mirror, in which is reflected part of our second pic above and two IonicBreezes.

Why the mirror? This is the only wall in the entire house where it would fit and be out of harm’s way. Here’s a better picture of it:

This mirror has a story. My wife’s father picked up the frame at a sale somewhere in New Jersey, maybe 50-odd years ago. He got a glass made for it, and then he wanted to cover the frame in gold leaf. He found an expert in gold leaf and asked him what he would charge to do the job.

The man replied, “I am an old man. I have no remaining family to carry on my life or my work. When I’m gone that’s all the world will know of me. I’ll gold-leaf this beautiful mirror for you at no charge. All I ask is that whenever someone remarks on the mirror, you tell them that I did this for you as a labor of love, and mention my name.”

So here in the age of the Internet I can now tell his story to the entire world.

Only one problem: my father-in-law can’t remember the man’s name.

What does your office look like?

Two forms of pleasure : Baskin Robbins is famous for its 31 flavors of ice cream, and in Turkey the word for 31 (“otuzbir“) is slang for masturbation.

Poor Santa (some segue, eh?). He’s become a victim of science (thanks, Doug)

… and studios (thanks, Jim).

But Google and Norad still believe! (thanks, TDavid)

Are you a geek, a nerd, or a dork? (thanks, Valleywag) I think I’m a combination of all three, which makes me a gerk.

Lajykxl, bxt stupyd (or yz yt “styupyd”?) (thanks, Armchair Anarchist). Every alphabetic system of writing started out with phonetics in mind, but pronunciation changes across space-time and you end up with Celtic or French.

Also via AA: lest thou shouldst consider the British Monarchy a meaningless relic of history, check thee out Her Royal Highness’ forthcoming podcast.

Matt wants to know why blog comments bring out the worst in people.

It’s true that you can’t see non-verbal signals, but I believe the bigger reason is anonymity. The more of a composite identity that you represent (so readers “know” you), the better you’ll behave. Even if that identity departs somewhat from your meatspace persona, you have an investment in its social survival. How often have you seen the most caustic comments from someone who uses an obvious alias and leaves no URL?

You see this in online games as well. When completely anonymous, players can throw comment fits and even just walk away from the game, forcing the other player to have to resign instead just to end it. When players have an identity, even if it’s just a semi-permanent screen name that they’ll be known by in the future, they think twice.

That’s why, for my own integrity, I always post and comment using my real name. It forces me to be more real, because Google is watching us.

The fact that removing the “web as parent” causes us to degenerate into Lord of the Flies does not speak well for human nature.

Calling Corinth: 30 is the country calling code for Greece.

Happy Do-ngZhì, Yalda, Yule, Géol, Jól, Jul, Julfest, Mitwinternacht, Alban Arthan, Soyal, Saturnalia, Karachun, and Winter Solstice!

Joshua Allen reports on conditions on the east side after the storm. Sounds like they got even worse than we did. Puget Sound Energy expects to have all of Bainbridge Island back on by the end of today, according to an email update I received from the Bainbridge Chamber.

OMG (he he), Jesus has a MySpace profile (thanks, Randy). Just goes to show how little you can trust the myths … of MySpace.

Speaking of mythology, did you know that Dave Winer had nothing to do with RSS? Next they’ll be trying to tell us that Santa Claus didn’t create Christmas, fercrise sake.

And while we’re at it, how about a real virgin birth? Armchair Anarchist: “Insert your own ‘Jesus Lizard’ joke here.”

Siemens spurts an emission of 107 gigabits per second over an optical fiber. Could be seminal to the development of a faster Internet.

Why waste time commenting your code, when the Commentator can do it for you? (thanks, Assaf). I want it. Where’s the download? Self-importance to the Wall!

In response to apotheon, I created three functions for generating Fibonacci numbers in Synergy/DE. They even have comments. Don’t know why I never needed these sooner.

Shelley gives us the mother of all widgets. I’m still waiting, Shelley. Related discussion here.

Penny for your thoughts: 29 is the atomic number of copper, although in the U.S. a penny is only 2.4% copper-plated. The Canadians lay on 4.5%, making the metal in each of their pennies worth more than two of the US variety. Not sure how much copper goes into the plating on a British penny.

Shelley wants to make 2007 the year of the accessible web. I confess that about the only time I think about accessibility is when a user raises the issue, and usually they’re just concerned with achieving a minimum level of compliance. If we’re going to solve this problem satisfactorily, we need to build the right approach into our basic methods and tools instead of dealing with it as an afterthought.

OMG, I have not laughed this hard for a long time, and I badly needed it. Any relative of an autistic child will be singing along with these Christmas Carol parodies, followed by several sets of signs that you might be about to have a bad IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting: “10. The IEP invitation lists drive-thru hours.”

Wow, “autism” was number 8 in Google’s top 10 news searches for 2006. Lots of people dealing with this problem. One in every 166 children.

Jamie writes a Dear PHP letter (thanks, Doug).

Scott Adams’ donut theory of the universe. My favorite part is in the intro:

Personally, I’m totally comfortable with a state of eternal confusion. It’s practically a lifestyle.

Here’s to uncertainty — most questions don’t want a premature answer.

TechCrush implodes.

Think I’ll have a glass of red wine instead (thanks, Armchair Anarchist).

Without wisdom: adult humans normally have 28 teeth, not counting the third molars (wisdom teeth).

Glad to see that Chris and Ponzi got power back last night. Still a lot of folks here in the Northwest without. It’s really tough for people who rely on power to run a well pump in order to have running water. Some homes also use a grinder pump for sewage, so they can’t even flush without electricity. It’s amazing how dependent we’ve become in only about a century.

Speaking of the double-edged sword of technology, here’s why you should – or shouldn’t – get a flu shot. (via Schafer)

But on the other hand, if various longevity treatments are developed in time, I could live to 175. Without them, I’m still projected to make it to 102. That scares the hell out of my wife. How about you? Might be just a tad optimistic, d’ya think? (via Mercola)

Randy declares his independence from the workplace to focus full-time on blogging and personal projects. Congrats on flying solo, Randy!

MGM is trying to take the domain wargames.com away from Rogers Cadenhead, citing trademark infringement. Yeah, like they invented the term. Rogers is using the domain for an online store of — you guessed it — war games. As Randy says, spread the bad PR on MGM!

“A funny number”: “Weird Al” Yankovic: “Twenty-seven is a funny number” that makes many appearances in his life and his work.

Justin James’ career ascends into the businessanalystosphere. My advice: don’t do it, Justin! You can’t breathe up there.

xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Funny. Geeky. Subscribed.

Hourann Bosci mashed up xkcd’s Map of the Internet to create map-o-net. Map your IP (or any host) within the IPv4 structure (thanks, Armchair Anarchist).

And map-o-net points us to the Open Clip Art Library. Over 10,000 Public domain clips from over 600 artists.

Rails Rubyisms Advent from Err the Blog. 25, no 39 handy Rubyisms added by Rails.

Varometro – a Greek blog that uses my tag cloud widget. Thanks, Nikos!

One gains, one relinquishes authority; both portentous: in 26 AD Pontius Pilate was appointed prefect of Judaea, where he would make an enduring name for himself. The same year, Tiberius largely retired from being emperor to permanently vacation in Capri, letting the Roman empire continue to go to hell.

Across Puget Sound from where I sit, TDavid blogs his side of the storm. Looks like the east side was also without power since Thursday night, but it’s getting restored. Back at you, TD. Stay safe.

Tara Hunt: “Stats mean nothing if they don’t account for real people who are truly interested.” How many of those do you have? But even that number is irrelevant.

Chris Samuel liked my simple specification. Thanks for the link, Chris!

Shelley distinguishes syntax and semantics. The former is form, the latter is fecal fecundity.

Joel decides to supplement the discussion on simplicity with a “new” term: elegance. Hmm, seems like I’ve heard that one somewhere before, only it didn’t have much to do with avoiding “intrusion into the user’s actual DNA-replication goals”.

Maybe it’s wishful thinking, Doug. Pax vobiscum, baby!

Two by five at nine or two: The decimal number 25 can be formed using the digits “2″ and “5″ in two ways: relative to the “5″, the “2″ can be placed at nine o’clock (25) or at two o’clock (5²).

After the power outage, these aren’t as fresh as they were on Thursday. Hope you don’t mind a few leftovers:

Kiltak points us to this article on weighing the risks/benefits of online banking. But my favorite part was Kiltak’s comment:

Many security experts are ready to say, “So long and thanks for all the phish.”

I believe online banking is here to stay. But as with each past innovation (checks, ATMs, credit cards, etc.), the security exposures will have to be covered.

Speaking of Kiltak, [Geeks are Sexy] is running a Sexiest Geek of 2006 contest. And we all know who should win that one, don’t we? Hurry, get my your nomination in there now, you only have five two days!

Randy reviews ReviewMe, and gives it a tentative thumbs-down. But not exactly for the reasons discussed here. Randy’s Besting Adwords blog focuses on generating revenue from blogging, so his recommendation is based solely on that metric. Bottom line: ReviewMe doesn’t pay enough to offset the resulting loss of readership.

Hmm … how interesting.

We lost power on Thursday along with over a million other Northwest households. It finally came back up last night after 50 powerless hours. I wouldn’t want to be a Puget Sound Energy employee over the past few days, or the next few either. Hats off to them.

We don’t have a generator here, so we relied on flashlights, candles, and the fireplace for light and warmth. Temperatures inside fell to below 50F, but we layered on and managed to stay warm enough.

We plugged in the lights on the Christmas tree so that was the first thing we saw when the power came back on. We cheered, only to have it go down about five minutes later. But then after about a 45-minute wait, it came back on for good (we hope).

Our thoughts go out to the hundreds of thousands of people in the area who are still without power. Especially since it was cold enough outside to frost this morning.

It will take me some time to get everything sorted out and back in blogness. Stay tuned. How are other Northwest bloggers faring? I see that the bay area may also be threatened. Hold on tight, folks.