YOU GUYS. 50 people follow my blog! My mind is blown. A hearty thank you to everyone who clicked the “Follow” button on this little site; dumb milestones like that make me feel good, even though I’m pretty sure less than half of that number actually read the content I write. BUT! For the non-zero number of you that do read the content, I love ya. Thanks, sincerely.
On that note, if you don’t look at your WordPress feed too often and want to keep up with my posts, you can like my Facebook page, Little Sister Gaming.
On to more important matters! Remember when I said gaming is not a chore? I still believe that, but I also think blogging shouldn’t be a chore. And even though I’m going strong on my daily-except-for-vacation blog posts, I’m still not exhausted by it. But with the vacationing, the moving, the unpacking, the all-the-other-things, I haven’t gamed in FOREVER. I finally got to game with my brother last night and we restarted the Halo 4 campaign on the Legendary difficulty setting. Damn, it is difficult. Mainly because I am not a valuable contribution to our duo, ha.
Anyway, my point is this blog is not a chore to me, I love it, I’m more motivated than ever now that we’re a thriving community, but I am scraping the bottom of an empty, dry, splintering barrel for content (e.g. yesterday’s repost of an article without even any critical thought from me – I AM SORRY, GENUINELY). This is all a lead up to an actual, legitimate question I thought of asking you all today:
What’s your gaming furniture/hardware setup?
I moved, and I had to buy a desk because I have a gaming desktop and awesome, massive monitors, and I kept getting perturbed by desks that required me to either put the desktop on the ground or in a tight, non-breathable cabinet. I also had to buy a TV stand that would hold my Xbox and my Wii and my games and controllers and other peripherals and movies and cables and headset. Booooo space. So I bought my second favorite desk choice (opting for speed of delivery over what I exactly I wanted) and I bought the cheapest, open TV stand (but didn’t think about cable management at the time, facepalm).
The cables behind the TV look pretty horrendous, but all of the stuff I’ve crammed into the shelf hides it fairly well. I had to STUFF that stuff into the shelf so it would all fit however. And I’m realizing the desk doesn’t have enough drawers/cabinet space, and the desktop has to sit on the floor (at least it’s a hardwood floor) and I’m just a little bummed out.
Do I just have to spend a ton of money the next time around? Do I just have to build my own furniture like a boss (even though I have no knowledge or means to do so)? Am I just anal retentive (yes)? Do you guys worry about cable management, or have you ever had to homebrew the perfect solution for your gaming set up? I’m also in the conundrum of finding a great gaming chair, since the couch in the living room is on the wall opposite the TV, and too far away to game properly. Any suggestions on that front?
Share your woes, celebrate your triumphs, give me some obvious advice that I need to hear from a stranger to know that none of this actually matters.
Ashton
I’ve never really mastered the art of cable management though I try to keep cord visibility as minimal as possible (with varying degrees of success). In our living room, we have a couple of IKEA’s Besta units (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S99891441/) fitted up top with glass doors–perfect for displaying my 360 and PS3–and a few drawers below which contain our DVDs . I cut a hole behind each gaming console and ran the cables through there and fit a power strip behind a potted plant so that it doesn’t cause too much of an eyesore. Unfortunately, the HDMI cables running to our mounted TV are still plain as day.
My PC area is considerably messier. I have a corner desk that I picked up from Wallmart and while it fits nicely into the space I have available, the divers cables running from my printer, monitor, speakers, etc. pretty much just hang out in the open. I did my best to strap them behind one of the desk’s legs, but that only made a marginal improvement.
Once I have the space, I’d really like to build a standing desk like the one Kotaku described here: http://kotaku.com/how-to-build-a-healthier-pc-gaming-table-for-under-200-510211038 Anyone have any experience with those?
Laurie
Ooooh, that Kotaku standing desk looks rad. I’ve never had a standing desk; some people moved their desks to standing desks at work and it seems to be going well for them. I’m hesitant to do that just because I really enjoy sitting, ha. If I weren’t such a cheap rat fink, I would’ve gotten those Besta units, heh. Well at least I can commiserate with you about our ugly PC cable setup!
thedanner
LAURIE – you totally contribute to our Halo 4 gaming sessions. Sometimes I go beast mode on a level, but lots of times you do as well. Honestly I don’t even think about it – I’m just glad we’re both roughly the same level so one person isn’t embarrassing themselves.
As far as gaming furniture – BestBuy.com actually has a great selection of TV stands. After going to a bunch of other places and not wanting to spend too much coin on it, I was really impressed with their website. I have a center speaker that is comically large, a 60 inch TV screen that I didn’t want to mount (renting, sigh), and an average-sized AV receiver (read: absurdly large), so I had to go with a ridiculously long TV stand. It says it can hold 100 pounds but the particle board it is made of is slightly bending in the middle. Kelsi wanted one that had glass doors to our AV equipment so babies wouldn’t screw it up. Here’s the link (but mine is black):
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/TV+Stand/4202137.p?id=1218463162069&skuId=4202137&st=sonax&cp=1&lp=2#tab=overview
We don’t have a desktop, but this is the desk we have, from Ikea:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00214157/#/00214157
It is huge. Sadly, a tower PC would probably go on the ground or even on the top of the desk. If I put it on the ground I would probably make a little platform for it so it didn’t sit on the carpet.
For a desk chair, I bought the cheapest one I could find, which ended up being at Office Depot for $60.
As far as cable management goes, I have tried my damnedest to fix it to no avail. I use rubberbands (because you can work with them and reuse them rather than zip ties, which I think is the preferred method), and I have them enter and exit the “same side” of the rubberband, so if I need more length I can just pull the cord out. It sounds great in theory, but it doesn’t look great. If your TV stand doesn’t have any backing to the cabinet bays, you should look into getting some, so you can at least “hide” the cords.
Furniture can be expensive. Don’t pay a lot unless you absolutely love it.