My Office

My office is E2-476 EITC, and I can typically be found there or in our laboratory (the Autonomous Agents Lab) in E2-504. Each term I post my office hours on my door, as well as in my teaching section. I am normally available outside of those hours as well, but will occasionally have to chase people off if it's a very busy day. Drop-ins are generally fine though, and give me a break from whatever else I'm doing.

If you want a virtual tour, here it is. We moved here in mid-September (hugely bad timing) of 2005, so at the time of this writing it's basically been enough time to get unpacked yet not enough to become hugely messy. My old office was 532 Machray hall, from 1999-2005, and I was in windowless 554 Machray hall before that. The new office is just starting to look lived-in (read: messy). In addition to the pictures below, I grabbed a quick video pan of the place, basically because I had just gotten the last of everything unpacked.

The view is really super (note the desk does not face the view in order to increase productivity). It's nice to be able to see people shuffling between classes and the greenspace of the quad, as opposed to the asphalt roof we got to see in the old building (or the many of us that had no windows to view from). If I currently have it turned on, you can see the current office view from the webcam I have set up.

The new offices are hugely conducive to work compared to the old ones, in that the walls are a lot more soundproofed and the environment is pretty pleasant. There's room for some plants and a lot higher ceilings as well. The shelves are reconfigurable and while they aren't actually any bigger, the useability of the space has increased immensely.

I was concerned about the size of the new furniture but it works well. I also recently invested in a better monitor that also increases my desk space.

In case it is not obvious from the images themselves (give it time, I've only been here awhile), I am a firm believer that a perfectly organized workplace is the sign of someone without enough to do (or, I suppose, someone with somebody to clean and organize it all for them :)). I like to work in a visually interesting workplace and the clutter does tend to fluctuate. It certainly has more than most given the length of time we've been here.

There's also more than enough room on the top of the bookshelves for all the interesting computer-related stuff I've accumulated over the years

Some of the more less-expected contents in my office at the time this was written:

A 1911 class 3 Burroughs adding machine (among various other pieces of far-from-state-of-the-art computing paraphernalia)
Fossils, just to make the above seem new
A glass block from the old "Bison Building" (torn down to make way for the Helen Glass Centre for Nursing), where I and many others spent so many hours as graduate students helping Computer Usage students.
A small cardboard cutout of Albert Einstein
A useless collection of museum receipts
A mexican dias des los muertos tableau
A reproduction Anasazi pot
Many, many succulents. I used to have more cacti but it was too warm to overwinter them properly.
Two [yes, two :( ] car airbag covers, souvenirs to keep me in mind of my own mortality. These come with good stories, of course.
Colville's Horse and Train, Munch's The Scream (no, not the original, but thank you for asking), Hopper's Nighthawks, and images of the Grand Canyon and Saguaro National Parks.
Some of my own artwork, that I have the good sense not to compare to the above.

I've been promising forever that I'd be putting together a page detailing the move from the old office and lab to the new one, along with the construction of the current building we're in, but these promises have been going on since 2006. At this point, it'll be interesting history by the time that gets together. But stay tuned.

(xmas 2005!)