That $8 dimmer detail is what gets me. I bought a $30 "smart" lamp two years ago and it has exactly three brightness levels, all of them wrong. Fifteen percent on a strip behind the screen sounds about right, my eyes bug out too when something is blasting at full power in a dark room at 11pm. The kid wanting the box is how half my tech ends up in the house, no shame there. Under the desk, I would skip it unless you point it at the wall, otherwise it lights up your shins and every dust bunny down there like a crime scene. One soft glow behind the monitor is the sweet spot, two and you are running a nightclub.

It stings when you realize you shorted someone who went out of their way for you. Airport pickups are rough on drivers with all that waiting time and gas burned just sitting there. Distance and time make way more sense than just looking at the fare.

Birds hit windows all the time. Happens to everyone. That finch flew off after two minutes, so it was fine. Probably just stunned, not dead. All this careful measuring and gap testing sounds like a lot of work for something that might not even be a real problem. Cats are a bigger danger to birds than windows anyway. You put decals up, that's more than most people do. Good enough.