Journal

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Sunday, January 16, 2005
Free office swag

On Jan. 5, I started my first full-time job as an associate producer (technically a reporter) at Court TV. I'll explain what I actually do another time, but first, look at all the free office swag I got!

When I interned at Court TV online last year, I had an ancient computer and a sorry-looking monitor. I was working under daily (sometimes hourly) deadlines, but this poor machine couldn't handle more than a few tasks at once.

It significantly lowered my productivity. On top of that, I had a 15" CRT monitor.

It wasn't even a flat screen, so the text got distorted, and the resolution was only 800x600 pixels. If I opened more than five windows at once (which happened frequently, since I chatted with all my co-workers and viewed multiple web pages at the same time), the task bar became cluttered.

As you can see, having three characters in the window descriptions isn't really helpful.

So when I entered my new cubicle on Jan.5, I was excited by this new computer!

Plus, my 17" flat panel (comparable to a 19" CRT) had a 1280x1024 resolution!

Now I can actually see what I have in the taskbar!

After basking in my new digs, I met with an office manager and got the standard supply of pens, pencils and notepads. Actually, even that was a treat. Court TV online was short on supplies, so I interned for six months without much needed erasers, scissors, staple removers (I had to scavenge my own stapler!), and push pins. Now I have boxes and boxes of supplies. While I was at it, I asked if I could have a calendar (to keep track of court dates, of course). I tried to save a few bucks last September by buying a mini calendar. It just wasn't cutting it, as you can see.

Sometimes I had to write down appointments in the incorrect date because I ran out of room. Thankfully, Court TV gave me a new calendar, which had twice as much writing space.

Since I'm just starting out, there's not much in my schedule, except macaroon orders for my mini-bakery, Su Good Sweets.

I asked for some other things, like an under-the-desk keyboard slider and a headset. It sounds like I had diva-like demands, but I just have to say two things in my defense:

It's all about ergonomics.
The Bible says, "Ask and you shall receive." (I probably took that out of context.) So yeah, I got this new headset that was still in the box!

Even people who were more senior than me had no idea Court TV gave out headsets. It just goes to show: it never hurts to ask!

In all seriousness though, I really did need this stuff (I wasn't trying to be obnoxious). More on that later.

posted by Jessica at 11:43 PM | 1 comments

1 Comments:

hey jessica, did you get my e-mail about my friend at the nytimes? i couldn't find your latest e-mail address, so i clicked the link off of xanga. don't know if you got it or not. -- jimmy

By Anonymous, at 6:18 PM