I woke up this morning to a surprise: my colleague Riley MacLeod, having seen my excited social media posts yesterday (I got a new PC!), had written a whole blog post about how I keep my PC on the floor.
new pc! and it matches the desk lol
— Luke Plunkett (@lukeplunkett.com) 2025-08-07T01:49:19.488Z
In a 600-word piece that is more an indictment on New York City than a commentary on my PC or its placement, Riley worries about two main factors potentially affecting my new purchase: cockroaches and dust, citing a 2018 Kotaku blog about roaches getting inside a PlayStation 4.
I don't know how to tell you this Riley, aside from pointing at this company's needlessly complicated ownership and taxation situation thanks to its international composition, but I don't live in New York City, and this is not a PlayStation 4. I live in a cold, dry, Australian city that doesn't have a cockroach problem, and I live in a house where I vacuum the floor and keep a clean office. My last PC, which was kept in the exact same spot, only had to be properly dusted out once in its five-year lifespan. And it also had a glass side panel, meaning I could be kept very much up-to-speed on its dust situation!
Besides, leaving all that peripheral stuff aside...how the fuck am I supposed to keep this thing on my desk? It's huge, and would take up like 1/3 of my desk's usable free space, space I need for actual desk items like microphones, speakers, headphones, a mouse pad and my keyboard. It's also heavy, and even with its fancy case and modern fans, surprisingly noisy once you get really close to it. Which I would be if I sat it on my desk, right next to my head.
Riley ended his blog charitably, in a 'just asking questions' kinda way, asking people for their opinions on the matter. As someone for whom this wasn't even a question, not even the remotest possibility, something that never even once entered into my head when plugging it in, I'll do no such thing; if you keep your PC on your desk the only question I'll ask is is everything OK?
