Oh no! We've been hexed!

In early October 2004, RAND's new building was finally complete and had been blessed by the People's Republic City of Santa Monica. As a member of the Information Services and Technology dept., I've been working on the Operations Center portion of the move for months and have been in and out of the new building sporadically since August. So I've gotten to watch the construction of our workstations progress, and to stand in my hex and think about how it needed to be arranged well before IST moved on the weekend of 1-3 Oct.

Herman Miller's Resolve System is truly lovely industrial design. A workstation that's been properly arranged for its occupant is everything their advertising copy claims it to be. It's amazing just how much stuff you can cram into one of those hexicles and still feel like you've got plenty of room to spread out in— I've still got lots of room in mine.

It didn't start out that way, of course. While we were able to specify what we wanted in terms of shelving, filing cabinets, etc., we weren't able to specify where in the hex we wanted them placed. Also, while we were able to specify where we wanted our computers and telephones placed, the movers weren't about to do any rearranging of small bits, like shelving. There would be work crews coming around to do whatever rearranging was necessary after our stuff was moved.

"Hexicle" is a neologism invented by yours truly- the office layout is a honeycomb, and it makes no sense to me to call a six-sided space a cubicle. There isn't a 90 degree angle to be seen (especially not through the lens of the camera on my cellphone, which is what I used to take these snapshots).

The official "before" photos. It's small. It's awkwardly arranged...	The specialist IT movers fscked up recabling my Unix systems. Etc.	I knew I should've put large "Do not reassemble this system!" signs on each of them and marked the cable placement myself.
This space intentionally left blank		This space intentionally left blank
	This was so precious it deserved a row all to itself. I can almost hear the moving company rep, "We're computer movers, not furniture adjusters!"
Life got much better after the furniture adjusters rearranged most of the Known Universe and I was able to unpack.
		It all fits, and nearly all of it is in arm's reach.

Some shots of the honeycomb, taken while standing on my desk.

29 December 2004. Since October, the ergonomicist has been by, I received the binder shelves that hang from that ladder-like thing, and I discovered that the phone tray works better in its original spot. There was also the chaos of moving all of the client systems and the half of the servers that hadn't already been moved. And people think moving to a new house or apartment is bad...

Last modified by Lee Ann Goldstein on 20