Julie Barrett is a freelance writer and photographer based in Plano, TX.

The State of the Desk

Fresh when it gets here from Julie Barrett
Tuesday, May 12, 2009


Well. I've made some serious progress, and may be ready for a picture by Thursday.

This is one of those "one thing leads to another" sort of projects. Since the desk looked so clean, I decided to tackle the shelves. And I was seriously sidetracked with sound card issues. You may well ask what that has to do with a clean desk. And I may well answer! One of my ongoing projects is to get set up to do videoconferencing. Yeah, I should have been on this baby years ago. I was, in fact, but between various upgrades stuff stopped working. I decided it was time to get that technical act together.

Of course, I can't just be happy with a twenty buck microphone - not with my audio background. So I plugged in a (very) low-end pro mike that we had sitting spare. Naturally, I couldn't get any decent sound. After much wailing, gnashing of teeth, Googling, installing of various drivers and renting of garments, I finally discovered that most professional microphones put out a lower level signal than the sound card is expecting. Funny, that was my first thought, but it sounded a bit odd, so I didn't pursue it. Guess I should have. I dug around in the axillary black hole garage and found an ancient bit of gear designed for microphone reverb. I don't need that, but it has an amplifier built in. All I had to do was dig around ro the proper cables...

Well, you know how THAT goes.

Long story short, I now have a working microhpone, though I may replace it with something a bit better. I also have a working webcam, and that's another tale.

Anyway, I needed a clean spot on the desk for the microphone stand, and that was the proverbial final straw that led to the cleaning frenzy.

I know the desk won't stay clean, but there's a masochistic streak in me that just won't give up. So here I am.

Besides, it's an opportunity to procrastinate on a looming deadline.

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