Sweet Sounds

I work in a cube farm.  I think this is one of the most annoying half-measures foisted upon us by our corporate overlords.  behold the sight that greets me when I stand up in my cube:

Now don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy having some personal space and some privacy, but in a cube farm you only get the illusion of space and privacy.  It reminds me of a description I once heard:

“Having the appearance of [personal space and privacy], but lacking the power thereof.”

That’s the problem.  I have somewhere to sit, somewhere to hang up pictures, somewhere to store all my junk, but no real privacy.  I have no door; people can walk in and bother me at will.  I have no (real) walls or ceiling; I hear everything that happens around me with astounding clarity. Even my boss doesn’t have an office, so when we need to have a “real conversation” we need to go find an empty conference room so we aren’t overheard.

Give me an office.  Or at least let me hope for one someday.  There are engineers/managers/directors here that are pretty senior that are still in cubicles.  Granted, they are big cubicles, but that doesn’t solve my problems.  I’d rather have a smaller office that I can close the door and shut out the outside world with all its distractions.  Somewhere that I can paint the walls and hang some real pictures.  Somewhere that I can play some music, albeit not very loudly.

So this brings me to my temporary imperfect solution: I use a white noise machine.

Okay, okay, technically it’s not white noise, per se.  It’s an environmental sound generator.  And it’s not a machine, it’s a computer program.  I like the sound of the ocean breeze along with some light surf.  Since using it, my cube has become a much more enjoyable place.  It feels like coming home (kind of).

Here’s the linkage, freeware, works with XP and Vista:

http://www.relaxingsoftware.com/atmdeluxehome.htm