Color and a Computer.
After waiting the requisite week for the plaster to completely dry, it was time to paint. Of course, painting poses (more than) a few problems for me. First, we have to pick a color. I agonize over this to the point of paralysis. How the hell can I tell if a color will look good by holding up a 2x2 inch swatch to a giant expanse of primed wall? Not only that, but I have twelve hundred and thirty-two different swatches to decide between, each a slight variation on the one which preceded it. It could take months to decide, and usually does.
When I finally make up my mind, I have to buy the paint, which is easy enough, as there’s a paint store just down the street. But, for some reason, I always end up painting on Sundays. I sleep in, then procrastinate doing something stupid, before finally getting my ass off the couch to buy the supplies I should have bought during the week when I drove by the paint store everyday going to and from work. I get to the paint store at 3:05PM, when they close at 3:00PM. And another day goes by without color.
Somehow I finally get everything I need, and this is the color we came up with:
Sunday, June 25, 2006
It’s a cool, darkish blue. I wanted a cool color, as I have so many windows, and it is so bright in this room, that a warm color would be overwhelming. It is also a good contrast to the green in the kitchen.
I also needed to add trim along the floors and around the windows to make the room look finished. I decided on painted trim, so I could save some cash and buy cheap primed pine boards and just paint them white rather than staining a natural wood. This also makes my job easier as I could make due with sloppier cuts - caulk and paint mask all mistakes. Because the walls were so uneven, I needed to caulk every edge of trim. I used nineteen tubes of caulk. When I added up the total distance of trim in the room, I came up with something like 17.45 miles. I never was good at math though, so my basic addition might be off.
The next step was finding a place for a computer. Before this, I was a die hard WIndows user, if only because every single one of my friends used a Mac. I didn’t switch just to piss them off. There, I said it. I’m a dick. But just before I bought my 454 square feet of squalor love palace condo, Apple came out with the G5 iMac. It was exactly what I wanted - it fit my master plan.
First, I needed to find a VESA mount which could hold 26 pounds of computer. VESA is a mounting standard for computer monitors and flat screen TV’s. VESA mounts are generally designed to hold LCD computer monitors, most of which weigh less than 15 pounds. I finally found a mount stout enough for the iMac, and they really squeezed my balls in a vice on the price.
Apple doesn’t make the iMac VESA compliant straight out of the box. No, you have to buy an attachment first. To install said attachment, you must remove the “L” shaped stand that originally holds the computer up.
You like that leopard print, don’t you. This is the computer, with all the dongles, ready to be attached to the wall. Then I realized that I couldn’t just have the computer hanging in space. I needed a table under it to place the keyboard and mouse. One trip to Ikea, and I had the perfect table, which only cost me $25.
The table folds flat against the wall. The metal thing at the front edge of the table is the piece which attaches the computer to the wall. Ta-Da! Lots of computer in a little space.
