Today I went to my new online room and started piecing things together. A lot of my gear has arrived, and now I’m just waiting on the major pieces of equipment from my reseller, and the desk. The desk will be the very last thing to arrive (end of January), so it’s going to look crappy for now while I use a temporary desk.
And here it is:
What a mess. Here you can see the small, temporary desk I’m using for now, and the two Samsung desktop monitors. I also need room for the grading monitor and scopes. You can also see the chair I got, which is a used Aeron I scored today. I’ve resisted Aerons for a long time because I felt they were the symbol of all that was wrong with the dot-com era. But that was the year 2000, and 8 years later everyone still recommends the Aeron so I broke down and finally gave in. What I really like is that it has a feature that lets you either lock the back upright or allow you to recline. While I’m working I can lock the chair, and when I view cuts I can recline. Ahhhh.
You can also see a stuffed penguin ((more on that in a later post)) and some other desk tchotchkes.
The RAID
This is my LifeZero RAID, echoblack variation. It consists of a ProAvio Editbox 8MS, 8 1TB drives, and a RocketRaid 3522 hardware RAID card ((I’ll post a more complete analysis of the RAID once I get the rest of the system)). The target price for a LifeZero RAID is 2K$, but I decided it was ok to go a little higher than that by getting better-quality drives. The drives I bought are 1TB Hitachi 7K1000’s, which has a reputation as being a benchmark high-performance drive even though it’s a couple years old.
I also bought one extra drive as a spare. If a drive dies in a few years, it’ll be next to impossible to find the same model of drive so I would probably have to get something “similar” and hope everything works out ok. Instead, by spending an extra 110$ on a drive now, I have a nice insurance policy that should help extend the life of the RAID.
I ripped open all the packages, screwed the drives onto their rails, and inserted them into the enclosure. Even though I don’t have a computer to connect it to, I powered it up just to see what would happen. It did not explode. All the lights lit up and it’s extremely quiet. This is going to be fun!
Other bits and pieces
Aside from the RAID, I also took care of some little issues. The free couch I got was looking a little dirty, so I ripped off the cushions so I can wash them. They’re in the drier now 🙂
There’s also a window near the ceiling letting in ugly fluorescent light from the rest of the office, so I blocked that with a hi-tech rectangle of cardboard. It’s not as hideous as it sounds:
The room is still a mess, but I can start to see the editing suite underneath it all. Within a week or two I should get all of my equipment delivered, and then I can really start to set things up.