NSFW Author

I woke up the next morning and looked at the new door.

It was clear the paint needed a second layer and it’s only when Jill asked me when I would do it that I remembered offering to do it myself.

Fortunately for me, Jill had painting experience, from a small job she took in college, and offered to do it: I had to find a new office space.

I would have preferred having Jill accompany me, but Suzy had a full day of consultation, there was the painting to do and the bathroom was too cramped to really be a 2 person job, even if we each did one side of the door.

We ate breakfast and I promptly called the landlord to set up an appointment. As it turned out, he was only available in the afternoon so all worked out!

As such, I bit the bullet and proposed to have Jill work on our latest contract while I painted the door. After a little insisting, she agreed and I was soon left alone in the house with both of my girlfriends at work, and my kids at school.

I enjoy painting, either walls or our prototypes. Applying paint is, for me, a soothing job where you slowly transform the look of something into either a work of art, or, in this case, hide fresh renovations.

Once I was done, I thought about peaking into Jill’s things to find either the movie script of our home made porn or other hidden things about her past, but I resisted. Trust is important in a relationship, especially when it’s a non common one…

After cleaning my paintbrushes, I left for the office to discover Jill in deep concentration over our newest project: a custom Raspberry Pi case for a client. I had no idea what a Raspberry Pi was, but after research I discovered it was a small Linux based micro-computer you could hook to a monitor or a television to serve as a media-center or any other purpose.

Most Raspberry Pi owners get a case because the micro-computer comes without one. The majority of the cases are rather small, being roughly the same size as the tiny computer.

This client instead wanted to have a big case, not as big as a normal computer, but big enough to support the weight of a television.

His idea was that inside the case, in addition to the Raspberry Pi itself, there was a USB hub, a dual USB to SATA controller and space for 2 hard disks to store media such as movies or music. He also had a few more gadgets in in to make it the ultimate media center such as 4 external USB ports, 2 SD-card readers and a IR port for universal remote controls.

Jill had done some research and his final cost was a little too high for similar products but he claimed that the openness of the Raspberry Pi and of his idea would make the difference. Plus, you could put any hard disk you wanted, not just external USB disks.

I had the great idea to ask for a prototype for “future quality control” but in practice, it would end up in our living room…

After she was done and our common review process completed, we realized we still had some free time in front of us and took the opportunity to review our inventory of furniture, this time taking measures.

We ate a delightful lunch and soon enough met with the landlord to see his smaller office available for a lease.

He had seven such offices, either currently vacant, with a tenant ready to leave or soon to be available.

Two were in the same building, which would have been very convenient, but one of them was clearly too small, and the other well, too bare: it was previously used as a loft and never fully prepared.

Even after the landlord offered 3 free months it was clear we’d pay too much for renovating it to suit our purposes.

Three were in a new unit he was building and would be available in 2 weeks. The main problem with this building was that it was an all glass one: from the street, you could see straight through the building (with the exception of the restrooms, of course…)

This was perfect for stores which wanted to show their inventory, but not for a design firm which wanted to hide their designs.

Fortunately, one of the 2 remaining units was slightly easier to reach from our house (not that it was closer, but it was closer to it’s nearest highway exit, meaning less red lights and stops on the way) and of a relatively nice size.

The current tenant was still occupying it but they were going bankrupt and were only using the office as a storage place while they were being liquidated. I couldn’t prevent myself from imagining that I almost went there not so long ago.

A few of their furniture was floor mounted meaning that it was hard to remove them without breaking them. In some cases, such as the welcome desk, it suited our needs perfectly and we managed to negotiate a very low price for leaving them behind.

Jill took a ton of pictures, we commented on where to place our existing furniture and quickly realized we even had two extra offices. Jill proposed to use one as a production room where we could place our plotter (a kind of large printer which draws instead of printing) and future tools like 3D printers.

I like the idea and joked that the other one could become our on the the job sex room. Jill didn’t take it at all as a joke and instead, became delighted at the idea… Oh boy…

After we manage to get both the 3 months penalty lifted from our previous office and 2 months of free rent in this one, we signed the lease, without bothering to take a look at the last office.

This one was perfect, and the little information we got on the final place didn’t inspire us (it was notably in a shady part of town).