I have never been one to adorn my office with trinkets from home. I walk past cubes cluttered with pictures of vacations, smiling children, pseudo funny cut out sayings of other people’s humor and various personal knick knacks. That stuff is not for me and I think it stems from all the time I spent as a consultant. My consultant days were spent in sweltering north Texas where IT people live an underground mole-like existence during the summer months. Dress codes are seldom relaxed so that means underground parking and staying in for lunch unless you want to feel like Alex Rebar in the Incredible Melting Man. The desktop air conditioner ought to be as common as laptops among consultants.

When you hop from job to job you tend to travel light. Another vestige of my years spent consulting is I am not terribly particular about my office accommodations. Upon arriving at one contract I was told that my office was right down the hall.

“Cool,” thought I, “a real office – that makes a nice change from a cube.”

I was escorted to a very narrow, windowless room where three other guys were already crammed together. I noticed brackets on the walls where it looked as though shelves had once hung.

“Hey wait… This is a closet!”

And yes, it was a closet transformed into an “office” for consultants. With the four of us in there I really could have used the desktop air conditioner.

The desktop air conditioner sports an adjustable car-like vent, uses a small bottle of ice for cooling and is battery powered. Battery powered? I would like to know who dropped the ball here; everyone knows that to be super cool these days you have to make your gadget USB – maybe they will come out with an adapter.

Found via Think Geek.