The "other" corner office

After several days of rearranging furniture and trying several configurations of video cables, I've got a setup that supports some serious "work at home" capabilities.  The future is here now!

The 40 hour work week is, if not dead, in need of some serious life support.  My company provides financial services worldwide, and problems involving the European or Far Eastern markets just don't happen between 9 to 5 Eastern Standard Time.  So my online work life will contain two distinct phases:

1. I'm monitoring for incoming issues, responding to work emails and work IMs, and... doing some seriously intense coding, scripting, documenting, or root cause analysis.
2. I'm monitoring for incoming issues, responding to work emails and work IMs, and... doing some seriously intense goofing off.

When I'm working, I like to use a lot of tiled windows, and cut and paste between them, or have multiple mail and browser windows open -- which requires a large monitor.  And gaming is always better on a humongous screen.    Likewise, it's nice to have a second monitor when I'm working with mail and IM open, so when something arrives I can glance over and see if it's something I need to deal with.  And when I'm gaming, I like a second monitor to do research, or read blogs during slow times.  Two monitors for each computer, right?  Um... not without running out of desk space.

Another requirement is that I strictly partition my work computer and my personal computer.  You can only login to the corporate VPN network with the corporate laptop.  And once on the corporate network, you can't use gmail or an AOL IM program.  And you're not supposed to put unapproved software on the company laptop; it annoys the Security Droids. So I can't just load games on the laptop and run everything from there.

So, how did I avoid needing four monitors?  It turns out that the large Dell monitor has not one but *two* digital video ports.  So it has a cable from the company laptop,  and a second cable from my gaming PC.
In both configurations, the leftmost monitor is connected to my laptop.  I login via VPN and fire up Outlook and the company IM program.  The rightmost monitor is always connected to my personal PC. Viola!  With a switch of a button, I can switch from gaming to working!

In configuration #1, the middle monitor extends my laptop's display, and I use it to RDC into my computer at work.  The desktop is large enough to tile 15 xterm windows, or two browser windows and an editor,or a 25x50 cell spreadsheet...

In configuration #2,  I'm still monitoring things at work, but now have the awesome firepower of a fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL battle station, I mean 1920x1200 display, powered by an air-cooled GTX 470.  I cranked up the video settings in World of Warcraft to "ultra-epeen", and gave myself vertigo flying around

There are still some refinements to make.  I currently have two keyboards, and am not sure whether I want to put them on a kvm switch.  I really like the flexibility of my new wireless solar-powered Logitech keyboard and mouse, but I'm not sure about using them for gaming. My PC is hooked up to the old-style Sherwood stereo receiver in the background, but the laptop is only using it's internal speaker.  And my wife wants me to rearrange the power cabling so I can flip a switch at night and power down everything instead of having them use electricity on standby.

Other gadgets in the picture?

• iPad2 running Sonos app to control all the music in the house
• corporate Blackberry, with photon torpedo and light saber sounds for incoming email and IMs