My Truck Desk

My Truck Desk

theparisreview.org440 pointsby zdw113 comments

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  • > I hadn’t interacted with any of the office staff, but they’d seen me.

    This story would have taken a very different turn if early on he had realized that befriending the office staff would have scored him a permanent place in one of those empty unused cubicles. No need to be best friends, but just being friendly and forthcoming now and then would have avoided their attitude of "who's that weirdo let's involve the site manager to get rid of him". It fits with his lonely wolf persona though which makes it easier for him to be a hero in his story and which he seems to cultivate in purpose.

  • I know a good few who live versions of this particular life, feral creatives living inside the guts of our industrial complexes, working high steel, marine,etc. The drive for this goes way back, all the way to human origins, perhaps further to progenetor species, something to do with describing our world and rearanging the bits and pieces into a pleasant form, even in the harshest environments, something right, placed, just so the other impulse to then smash everything and have palaces and vast halls on the ruins is less explicable, inspite of the huge efforts at rationalisation, but also self evident
  • Reminds me of the ad I saw for the Ford transit van - whose steering wheel can be converted into a 'desk'/laptop table:

    https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a45497067/ford-transit-ste...

  • Working on the road has become so prevalent for many field folks that Ford's F-150 has a "Center Console Work Surface" (at least as an option):

    * https://www.ford.ca/support/how-tos/more-vehicle-topics/f-se...

    * https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-the-for...

    * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GyZgeM7JM0

  • Lovely story. I work out of the back seat(s) (Crew Model) of my Ford Transit pretty regularly and can relate.

    I'm astonished at how productive I can be while waiting around outside a job site for late deliveries/people or even my kids music lessons for an hour or two, or when sometimes I can sit at my desk and get nothing done in the same time. Maybe it's the constraints of the time/space? I (only half) jokingly wonder if some times I'd be more productive sitting in the van in my own driveway rather than in my home office.

    My "truck desk" is the rear parcel shelf/cargo blind out of a Hyundai Accent and the moulded counters fit my laptop and mouse pad perfectly. It also tucks nicely into the void behind the back seats when not in use.

    I recently acquired a Vision Pro and am still coming to terms with how incredible it can be sitting in the back of my van parked literally anywhere in the country and having a full ultra-wide desktop experience that packs away into something the size of a lunchbox.

    This is the cyberpunk future I dreamed of as a kid.

    by dfex
  • I'm very impressed by (and jealous of) anyone who can context switch fast enough to make use of 10 or 15 minutes here and there to do a completely different task (and actually have it be coherent).

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