Tomato, Tomato

You call it “Surplus PC Collection,” I call it “New Monitor Shopping”

See if you can score me a new printer while you're over there.  Mine's empty, and I can't buy new ink cartridges for it anymore.  

Strange as it may seem, my job involves using computers.  I know...shocking.  It's true, though.  I basically look at a computer screen or two for roughly my entire working day.  When I'm not looking at a computer screen, I'm usually looking at a projector screen showing a display of somebody else's computer screen.  It's just how things go.  

It is not at all uncommon for me to be using two computer screens at the same time.  One will have some data open, and the other will consist of a presentation I'm putting together where I'm putting in all of the data I just collected.  Sure, I could sit there and flip back and forth between the two programs on a single screen, but it's so much more convenient to have both open, look back and forth, cut and paste quickly and easily, and be done with it.  For that purpose, I have my regular laptop screen and an external monitor that I liberated from a recycling bin some time ago.  

My extermal monitor sucks.  

You know how pretty much everybody has flat-screen LCD or LED or Plasma monitors these days?  Not this guy.  No, sir.  A clunky old 19-inch CRT for Jeremy.  It takes up the lion's share of the available real-estate on my desk, weighs in at approximately 83 pounds, is a standard 4:3 ratio, which doesn't match my 16:9 main screen, and it heats my office up to a cozy 77 degrees if I leave the door closed.  I'm not even joking about that...I have a little thermometer.  

Why don't I have a better one, you ask?  Because we're not allowed to buy stuff that costs money.  So, clunky old 19 inch CRT it is.  

But wait!  Soon, we're going to be having an IT Consolidation called "Surplus PC Collection" where people bring all of their extra computers that they were supposed to turn in ages ago to the shipping dock with no questions asked.  They're also collecting peripherals, so the inkjet printer I liberated a few years back is finally getting scrapped, the LCD monitor that was in my office when I moved in that may never have worked is going away, and that dead laptop battery that I replaced two offices ago is finished.  

Also, maybe there will be a decent monitor which can be liberated, and I can replace this piece of junk sitting all over my desk.  Shopping!