Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012 — Been digging around in the shack tonight … the word “excavating” is more appropriate. Unlike the picture-perfect shacks some guys have, mine is … well, not-so picture perfect. In fact, I would need to spend a few hours cleaning to allow a shot of my operating position, much less a complete visual tour of the shack.
My wife treats my shack like its the TB ward at the hospital … she won’t come through the door without suiting up. Some guys have a “man cave,” I have a “ham cave.” Same thing, including the beer. Very similar activity, too — rather than drink beer and bitch about stuff with your buds, you drink beer and bitch about stuff with your friends … and use RF to do it! Much better!!
My wife points out that other than myself, the people who walk in the shack and are excited to be here are usually under the age of 14. Some years ago, one of my son’s friends described my shack as a “way cooler version of Frankenstein’s laboratory.”
My shack stretches across three tables; the center table is a corner table that’s basically 3 feet square, and designed to mate with matching tables (or other accessories) on each end. It’s one of those build-your-own workstation things. Anyway, I have a four-foot table on each side of the corner desk; each of the side desks has three shelves. I had to build custom shelving to match for the corner desk. All together, there are three shelves of equipment that fill the entire mess.
If I had it straightened up, it would probably look impressive; right now, umm … not-so impressive (unless you’re an 11-year-old boy (or sub-AARP qualifying ham) who thinks that stuff is “cool.”
The beauty — and curse — of a messy shack is when you begin a project in the shack to do something simple — like route some computer cables properly to run them behind the desk and shelves. Simple — until you start the job. It’s “KY4Z’s Addendum to Murphy’s Law” that states, “The simpler the task the greater the distractions one will uncover while doing it.”
Take my computer cable project (please!) … I don’t like cables creating a rats nest in front of the operating position (in the back of the desks, is ok, of course!), so I was going to move them around.
In the process of “cleaning up” for this simple project, I kept uncovering things I had mislaid, or needed to be properly filed for future reference. For example, the original instructions for one of the nearly-new Vibroplex keys I bought last year; they need to be stored, not tucked under stuff on the desk. Oh, and what about these nicads under the shelf? Are they still good? Let’s find the charger and see if they’ll hold a charge. Where’s the charger? It’s here somewhere … oh wait … hey, a USB charger for my Bluetooth headset! Let me put that with the headset … but where DID I put that headset? I set it aside until I could find the damn charger!
There’s the bluetooth, and there’s that 1/4 to 3.5 mm stereo adapter I need. I need to put that with the headphones I need it for … what the heck was I trying to do at the beginning??
As you might guess, I didn’t finish the cable project; turns out I’m going to need a longer cable, which I’ll fabricate or buy sometime later. In the meantime, I have a stack of stuff to get reacquainted with. Heck, this could be a movie … “Indiana Jones and the Rediscovered Ham Stuff.”
-30-