Monster Monitor

I recently kind of tricked my boss into buying me an enormous computer monitor.

Last week, he bought himself a gigantic and very overpriced monitor and called me into his office to help him set it up. He is probably the last person in the office (or the state) who needs an enormous monitor, since his desk is set up in such a way that his face to monitor gap is only a few centimetres - but i guess he wanted an Imax-style computer experience. After setting it up for him, I suggested that he should move it back a little so as not to go completely blind and/or cross eyed, and after a few half-arsed attempts at pushing the monitor back a little, he ended up with it in the exact same position.
'I'd love to have a monitor like this,' I told him 'It would really help with the graphic design aspect of my work'
'Yeah, it's great' he enthused while bobbing his head from side to side like a confused turkey as he tried to take in the
entire picture on the screen.

I just shook my head and added the monitor to the list of pointless things that my boss thinks are cool to own, and went back to my desk. 5 minutes later, my phone rang - The boss.
'Hello?'
'You can have it.'
'Excuse me?'
'You can have it, it's too big. I'm going to buy a smaller one, and you can have this one'.
'Wow, gee thanks' I said, as I weighed up whether or not to point out that he could probably return the freakishly large monitor and exchange it for the smaller one instead of having to spend another small fortune on a useless toy. I decided it was worth letting it go for a while, and hoping that no one else would point out the very obvious (and much cheaper) option. After all, no one wants to be the one to point out to the boss that he's not that smart.

And that is how i came to own a monitor that is so big that i had to remove half of the items on my desk to accommodate it.

There is, however, a downfall to owning such a large monitor that i hadn't thought of before i hooked it up. I sit with my back to the rest of the office, and there are two desks behind me. There is also a walkthrough next to my desk, and with such an enormous screen, my ability to successfully bludge without detection has been severely compromised. Everything on the screen appears so large when maximised that it can be seen clearly from the other side of the office.

My work around so far has been to minimise whatever i am doing to the smallest window possible and place it directly in line with my body so that the people behind me can only see the maximised work and not that i am actually browsing the web for music or chatting on MSN. I haven't yet managed to work out what to do about the people who are walking past my desk, but I'm thinking it might involve disguising my web browser as some kind of playground-related work program. I'll have to come up with something, because I have just typed this in a window that is so small I can only see one word at a time, and even that is so big that I feel like everyone in the building can see every last word.