The Ten Cent
SassenRanch Office Tour


The "office" started out originally as a pump shed and was the first structure built at SassenRanch, predating the house by at least a year. For about four years, it served its purpose... for pumps, tools, and storage. Of course, its primary objective was to establish a hookup point for PG&E -- giving us a source of power for the main house project which was yet to come.

Sometime in 1993 I decided that I needed a workspace at home. While visiting a soundstage I realized that it had exactly the "feel" that I wanted for my space: cool, still, and totally quiet.

So, I quickly set off to sound insulate a corner of my basement for my own "soundstage" workspace. Unfortunately, even through 10 inches of spun fiberglass, I could still hear all the children's troubles. There was also the disadvantage that the basement was too "convenient" -- meaning that I would end up mixing my home life with my business life. With work so close, there is always that temptation. The other way as well.


Photo of the Shed

"The Shed"
Landscaping started this summer...
And hope to do final roof in 97.


Giving up on the basement for quiet space, I decided that the shed would make a better workspace, and being 200 feet from the house would solve all of the basement problems. I lowered the ceiling, added a wall (to isolate the pumps), along with a window, phone lines, conduits, insulation, etc. Finally, the interior was finished out with cherry cabinets. The icing was to run the ethernet back to the servers in the basement. (Now my wife, Cindy, can send me email when dinner is ready... yeah right!)


Desk Top

"Surround-Desk"
Left to Right: Dual screen Mac, PC
spaced-out on Win 95, and a
smartly calculating Amiga A3000.
And, no, that isn't the source to Java
on the right. Something much better.


The desktops are all three feet deep, so can hold large monitors without a problem. I thought a lot about rounding the inside corners of the U shape, but decided that it probably would make little difference for the added effort. Running under the desk along the back wall is a three inch by one foot chase for cabling, and there are 11 "ports" through which wires can pass from the top. The walls are covered with bookshelves both below and above the desk space. I've thought about putting up a cork board on the west wall, but those things usually just fill with junk...

Oh, and please excuse the photos... I just now snapped them using a simple Kodak "Brownie" digital camera. It has a fixed lens, so it was tough to capture the entire look of things. To over-compensate, I took a few other photos, listed below:

And, of course, there are some nice views from this location:


Northern View

"View to the North"
But no wolf dog in sight. Too bad.


Other views from the "shed":

So that just about covers it. The only shortcoming: space. With only 170 sq feet, I am quickly buried... but, it helps keep me (forces me to be) organized. I think it is sort of like that old memory saying: "A program always expands to fill all available memory." Or, inversely, keeping the memory small keeps the program cleaner.


29-Aug-96 www.sassenrath.com (c) Sassenrath 1996