What is it?
This is a monitor stand for my flat panel monitor at work. I work in cubeland, so I'm stuck with unadjustable tables and unadjustable chairs (there are adjustable chairs at work, but none of them give me the option of locking the mechanism so they won't recline. I hate reclining chairs when I'm trying to program, because I tend to slouch and the chair just collapses backwards on me. So I'm using a regular old 4-footed non-rolly metal chair instead), all of which are designed for programmers who are approximately 5'4" tall. And all of the standard adjustable things are designed for people who are smaller than that and need to have things made even shorter.
One of the first things I did when I got my job was to buy a second SGI 1600SW monitor, attach it to my workstation, and take the somewhat clunkier Acer FP855 display in to work to replace the horrid 17" CRT that they'd put on my desk. It was too short, so I've piled up piles of notebooks and boxes of printer paper to get the monitor up to a better height. This works okay, but it's kind of ugly; This weekend, I pulled some sticks of black walnut wood out of the scrapbox (The Joinery -- a local furniture shop -- sells boxes of scrap hardwood, and I picked up a box last year) and spent about 4 hours putting this little hardwood monitor stand together. It's not what you'd call professional by any meaningful definition of the word, but it's pretty when it's all sanded and oiled.
The slots in the side? I'm also building a little drawer to put into it, and that will get done sometime around the time I finish with the kitchen counter.