Semi recently, we bought a desk – this desk to be exact. It was a desk I had been looking at while living in Milwaukee which Wal-mart carried. Unfortunately, the version they carried had been upgraded so by the time i was able to buy it, it was unavailable and I had to start my search all over again.
As a stroke of luck, they had it at the furniture store on base and I suggested we buy it. Rian wanted to wait and we forgot about it until a couple weeks ago when we purchased it. However, acquiring this desk and being able to use it was a little trying.
First, we measured the box and his car and decided it would fit, only to find that it didn’t fit. After trying to make it fit every which-way, we decided to take it out of the box. As he was doing this, Rian decided to just take out the longest piece which fit in the backseat and smush the end of the box into the car which worked but we both had to have our seats up and not locked into place on the drive home.
We got home but headed out to look for a desk/office type chair only to no avail. They didn’t seem to have any on base and off base we only found Japanese style chairs which were all of 6 inches high but – no need to worry – we were rewarded with a flat tire on the way to the mall which cut our trip short. Rian was admirable as a driver in such conditions and luckily, on the way back to base there was a full service gas station so the blown tire and the other front tire which was damaged from driving on it, could be fixed.
Eventually we returned home and went to work only to find that this was extremely difficult to put together. The screws and holes were picky in the way that you had to get it just right in order for the screws to actually go in and that was difficult because the damned holes were so close to other pieces that there was no room for the screwdriver.
Eventually we had a generally desk-shaped object which needed to be in a different position in order to move on to the next step and upon lifting it up, the screw popped/broke out of the wood. Of course, I didn’t expect the wood to be fabulous but that’s always frustrating.
Add to the list of difficulties that some screws had to be put in upside down which is not as easy as it sounds. Additionally, some couldn’t be put in at all because the holes were off slightly which worried me. I was opting for quitting until we could get a drill because I didn’t want my computer on a faulty desk only to come crashing down and breaking into a million itty bitty pieces.
One angry Rian, one tired Cole, several sores hands and one usably decent desk later, we were finished. Needless to say, we skipped the bookcase.
Anyway, point is that I have a new desk and – if you look at the picture – you can see the highest shelf which is where my monitor now is. Before, it was about eye height which worked well but now that it’s higher, the colour and contrast seems off quite a bit, probably because it’s LCD. Unfortunately, the range of positions into which I can put my monitor is limited and adjusting contrast doesn’t help so I guess I’m stuck.
This is extremely noticeable on my website where I use shades of the same colour of similar colours for certain things (links/navigation, quotes, image displays et cetera) and I cannot tell the colours apart. What used to look really sleek, is now useless to my eyes and it makes me sad. )=