New Desk; Old Puzzle

I got a new desk for Christmas. It replaces the old one I built about five years ago. Other than being too small, there was nothing wrong with the other one and I didn't want to donate it just yet so it got moved to the Island of Misfit Toys (attic).

I love the new desk. In addition to the increased real estate it is a lot more cozy to sit at than the other one - you are less "at" the desk as so much as you are "in" it. It goes with the darker furniture in the room, it has lots of cubbies that hold cool looking/inspiring stuff (ammonite fossil, Robot Chicken robot, wooden El Cid (I guess) statue I picked up in Spain) and was pretty inexpensive since it was the floor model and the manufacturer had gone out of business. 

The down side to doing woodworking as a hobby it that no matter how well built some store-bought item like this is any sort of flaws in the manufacturing process sometimes really stand out. Outrageous markups also stand out, but not this time.

I had to bolster the mounts that held the top part of the desk to the bottom part because, one day, it will need to be moved to get to some cables or the cat will attempt a daring bookcase-to-desktop leap and the whole shebang would have slid out of place or have come crashing down altogether.    Also, there are no holes that allow for the use of power cords or data cables so I needed to make that modification as well, and is part of the reason my printer in on the floor to the right of the unit. This really annoys my wife so I will be building a matching printer stand in the near future. I will probably mount the stand to the desk to further stabilize everything. 

But, hey it's easy to nitpick and say "I could build something better than this". While that is certainly true in this case and I enjoy building stuff 1) I didn't need to spend actual time building it and 2) unlike the manufacturer, I could take my sweet time customizing one and not worry about needing to rip out, like, 200 of these a month to make payroll.  It's not really a fair comparison.  

I will miss the old desk a bit, but I can already tell this place is going to work out great. Speaking of the old one, it's probably a good idea to put this out there again: 

What is this?  Well, when I build stuff, I like to incorporate some sort of puzzle into whatever it is. Many times the puzzles go unsolved, unnoticed, or both.  That's cool.   The ones that are discovered, though, I put on my Secret Puzzle Page (link in sidebar - top of page on certain mobile devices) and I sometimes put out hints (I haven't done so in a very long time but they are in the same place).   This is the wooden plaque I mounted to the bottom of the old desk. Since the old desk is probably going to spend many years in the attic I thought I'd post this here as well. 

Good luck!