I saw a link to a sofa made out of mouse-pads on Boing-Boing and said to myself "Eh, neat, but I've seen one of those before." The picture looked vaguely familiar, but once you've seen one piece of furniture made out of mousepads, well, the uniqueness goes out of it.

When the story got picked up by Lockergnome Bytes I looked closer at it - and I figured out where i had seen it before.

Resnet. I believe the project was started either a few months before I finished my coursework, or a few months afterwards. I got a link to the pictures, and I think I sat on it during one of my trips up there.

The last few years I worked there, every so often we would get boxes of mousepads from ITS (ITS is both the academic computer administration people, and technically the boss of Resnet - or at least I remember it this way).

Now, we couldn't give these mousepads away - I think in the few years we had them, I saw one person take one. I guess you either saw the need and brought one from home, or you didn't. So it got to be a joke around the office, both 'what do we do with all these mousepads?', and that our raises would be in mousepads and not dollars, next time around. I thought we did something else with the mousepads, but I forget what it was now (there may have been a reference to going scuba diving or something too, I forget).

So, a mild bit of geeky fame for the guys at the office - and now you know The Rest Of The Story.