Good News!

Great news—we've reached Goal #3 in the Print Sale / capital campaign!! I'm very excited about this and have already started shopping for flat files and sketching ideas for new cabinets and a table.

Also in the good news column, the sacrificial Miata was sold for the good of the cause on Thursday—to a TOP reader from New Hampshire named Larry G. He's sending a car transport firm to pick it up. I can honestly say I enjoyed every minute I owned that car—it was great fun and I'm very glad I got to experience it for three years. I loved the thing. I think Larry will be happy if he enjoys it half as much. (I'm not sure yet just how much I'm going to miss it yet. I hope not too much.) Next on the block—the D800 and 58mm ƒ/1.4 lens. Those will go on Ebay. Sandy R. is interested in the whole plate camera again, too. We go through this every so often. Maybe he likes to think about it more than he actually wants to buy it, and if so, I totally get that.

My friend Art Elkon, office manager for Culver Brands, passed along a tip about a good place to buy good ergonomic office chairs for less. Thanks Art.

Ctein wouldn't let me whine about this before, which was no doubt good advice, but I wanted to tell you about the desk I've been using for years. (Reason: it amuses me.) I almost take a sort of pride in how awful it is. Well, maybe "pride" isn't the right word. It's a hulking goverment surplus desk from at least the 1950s—more likely the '40s. I bought it from a junk dealer in Woodstock, Illinois, who had refinished half of it...and therefore offered it to me for half price! Which makes me laugh right there. Would you buy a meal in a restaurant that was half cooked if you could get it for half price? Such a deal. I guess I could have refinished the rest of it myself. Theoretically.

On one side you open the cabinet and behind it is a sturdy tray on a mechanism of articulated metal arms and heavy springs. Tug on the handle, and the tray pops out and up with surprising speed and force—it's a typewriter caddy, and it was meant to have a typewriter on it acting as a counterweight. A big, heavy typewriter. The stylish 1940s secretary could type when she needed to and then put the typewriter neatly away. Of course, now, the Rube Goldberg typewriter caddy makes half the desk more or less useless, because there's absolutely nothing to use the pop-out typewriter tray for. Except, possibly, launching small children a few feet into the air (those springs are strong). It's been a while since I needed a typewriter.

On the other side there's a slide-out writing surface with a tattered 1961 calendar stuck on it.

The typewriter that went with this desk probably looked something like this:

Those suckers were built to last till about...now. Like the desk.

I've modified it further—it has a power strip screwed to the back of the desktop, and I've nailed a board to the right hand side as a place to put my preamp, from which I control my computer sound, including music. (Listening to music as loud as you want to is one of the primary advantages of working at home.)

I will say one thing for this gross old desk—it is built like the proverbial brick outhouse. I'm going to need a lot of help to get it out to the curb for pickup. I'll take a picture of it by the curb so that those of you who contributed to this project can see the extent of the improvement you're enabling.  :-)  I am greatly looking forward to replacing the Hulk.

As happy as I am at the thought of being able to remodel, it would be better still if I just had a little more room. More space would just make things easier and much more effective.

On to Goal #4! Anybody need a D800?

I'll write about the pictures in the sale today or tomorrow. Lots of stuff going on today...which I will get to in a moment.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

toto: "Another option would be to save the money and pool it with money from subsequent fundraisers in order to buy the house across the street."

Mike replies: A good idea. After we started this sale we heard from a reader who is a professional fundraiser working at a high level. He did say that most fundraisers are not one-shot but multi-part, and that there's nothing wrong with having several facets to it. Gonna put my thinking cap on about that.

Jim Witkowski: "Had I known the type of desk you were using earlier, I would have recommended one of these."

Mike replies: That's hilarious. I especially like their tagline, "A groundbreaking advancement in the field of obsolescence!" Maybe they're the ones who should make the digital conversions for old mechanical cameras that the Internet has been begging for for the last 20 years. (<—Note: a group that doesn't include me).

Comments

[Michael Matthews]

Please, share the chair tip. My back is killing me, but so is my budget.

["Office Furniture Resources on Brown Deer Road at 87th Street [in Milwaukee] sells reconditioned Herman Miller, Steelcase and Knoll office chairs." That's from Art. --Mike]

[Stephen Gilbert]

You need one of those thermometer graphics!

[John]

eBay will suck up your money with fees. FredMiranda is a better place to sell a D800 and serious glass. Good luck.

[Jim Freeman]

Mike,

Why not use fredmiranda.com buy/sell forum for camera and lens sales? Very low annual dues and no seller or buyer transaction fees, and you would be dealing with a very good and knowledgable crowd.

Best regards,

Jim

[Roger Bradbury]

It sounds like that desk would make a fine enlarger support, especially if you are making huge prints.

However, when it's out by the kerb put a sign on it, 'For sale, $30' and it will be stolen by dawn the next day. : ]

[Mendocino Steve]

Mike:

RE: The desk. I had an enlarger table of similar style and vintage - war surplus. Somebody had stripped off the old top and I replaced it with masonite. Thing was HEAVY. Did not vibrate, period. I could play music as loud as I could and dance around during a long exposure, and no hint of it in the final print.

RE: Miata. Congratulations! I predict that you'll be trolling for a used Scion/Subaru rear drive coupe soon, if you haven't started already...

[Marilyn Nance]

My folks had a desk with a typewriter thingy like yours and a typewriter that sure looked like that (the 1950s).

[BigHank53]

Borrow a Sawzall and the desk can make the trip to the curb in pieces. I had to disassemble my father's surplus desk-with-typewriter-compartment when clearing out his house.

[Bill Tyler]

Congratulations on hitting Level 3! For what it's worth, I support the idea of multiple fund-raisers, because I'd really like to see you get the larger house.

[Dop]

I learnt to type on a typewriter similar to that one, except this was my mum's old "Imperial Model 55", a huge monster covered in crackle paint. This is why I've disturbed my colleagues when i had an old IBM Model M keyboard which made a lot of noise as I bashed away on it, and why I really really HATE modern Mac keyboards which have no heft to them...

[Tom Swoboda]

I had a desk exactly like that. I threw it out about 15 years ago, with a lot of help to move it out to the dumpster.

A little over ten years ago I was suffering from cervical stenosis and typing at the computer keyboard on a desk at work was excruciatingly painful. A client of mine said her husband had the same problem and he purchased a Bodybilt brand ergonomic office chair and it eliminated his pain when typing. My employer wasn't about to pay $850 for an office chair for me so I shopped around and found a used one for $125 at an office furniture store and paid for it myself. It was a life saver for me. I'm retired now and have it at home but it's breaking down. Need to look for another used one.

[Bil Mitchell]

Boy, am I relieved that the Miata is gone.

[Carsten Bockermann]

I wasn't aware you had the 58/1.4 Nikkor and I'm curious about your opinion concerning that lens. Did you post your impressions?

[As with a lot of equipment these days I just don't have enough time to get to know it well enough to write meaningfully about it. As you know it takes time and work to arrive at a point where you have any real insight. "I have it and I've used it" is about all I can say so far. Sorry! --Mike]

[Larry Gebhardt]

I think multiple fundraisers is the right approach. Save the money and get what you really need. That may not be the full new house, but expanding the office to 250sf would be a huge improvement.

As far as office chairs go, I finally broke down (almost literally as my back was in severe pain) and bought an Aeron chair. Best $800 I've spent in a while. Now sitting doesn't cause pain, and in fact I find that if my low back hurts, sitting in the chair actually helps. The only downside is I find it harder to remember to get up to stretch and move, which is very important.

[Tom Hassler]

Re: the old desk, "humblepride?"

[Trecento]

Mike,
I'm glad you are getting the chair! Fantastic!
I've suffered from lower back pain in the form of back spasms for some time, and I finally learned that it was aggravated by weak supporting muscles in one direction, and strong ones in the other. The solution is to do reverse situps, basically. Lie on your belly, and use your back muscles to lift your shoulders off the ground. It feels weird, but seems to help, since it is the exact opposite of the flex you do when you sit in a chair.

[Ben]

Fundraiser #2 suggestion: A book of TOP's greatest hits... maybe 20 or so of your best/favorite columns. It would be relatively easy to do on one of the publishing on demand sites, no investment required. You could even include relevant pictures that are your own or which you could easily secure the rights to use.

[Maggie Osterberg]

My congrats to Larry G., who has broken my heart by buying my dream Miata before I could assemble the scratch to do it.

::sigh::

[MartinB]

That typewriter tray would have been just the place to put your UPS (you do have an uninterruptible power supply, don't you ;)
Those lead acid batteries in the UPS should be about the right counterweight!