Getting Organized (aka Saving a Marriage)

I sat down today to do some more work with Part 4 of Exercise 11... the first photo here shows my little work area. It consist of 1/3 of my wife's beautiful dining room table (yes, it's hers - I just rent space). As you can see, it's getting a little crowded. Okay, messy. I've been putting it off and putting it off, but I had some free time at lunch so I got out a few plastic storage boxes I purchased ($4.00 for one large, $2.00 for three small) and got all my resistors, capacitors, and other components semi-sorted into various compartments. I even used a Sharpie to label each compartment - I was channeling a little Martha Stewart today.

I next moved everything to my office and cleaned off my second desk. Why two desks? One for writing - it's always fairly clean - and the other for stacking stuff and storage. Doesn't everyone have two desks in their office for this kind of thing?

But no more - after about half an hour of going through the junk on Desk 2, I got the surface area cleaned off (and found a book I've been looking for for months... who knew). Now I have a fairly organized workspace to keep plowing forward with the book. I need to go down to my basement workshop - not my garage - that's workshop #2. Doesn't everyone have two workshops these days? Somewhere down there are my soldering irons, helping hands, and a few other gizmos that Chapter 3 requires. I'll get those later.

So, as you can see, I'm all set for Chapter 3 and beyond. I've got a nice organized area to work in, my components and tools are tucked away in the toolbox and storage boxes, and my wife isn't filing divorce papers today. (A side benefit - I won't have to worry about my 3 year old boy getting near a hot soldering iron, either...)

Onward and upward...