Now that I’m back behind my desk regularly, the setup I have for my desk, mouse, chair, and keyboard is starting to be problematic. I rather like how it’s arranged – I have a nice monitor and natch keyboard (I can’t type on flat keyboards anymore. Ow ow ow), but my chair is really becoming a problem. My older leather standard joe office chair finally fell apart, and I’m using a similar shaped one now, but it’s causing all sorts of aches and pains.
I don’t trust ‘ergonomic’ chairs in general, since it’s just a buzzword nowadays. The concept is totally valid, but you can’t ‘shop’ for an ‘ergonmic chair’ – you have to go sit in a lot of chairs until one clicks in. I was under the impression that most chairs are basically the same, and there are minor improvements left and right, but really, being 6’6″ means I’ll never be totally comfortable.
Oh, woe, was I wrong. I found a chair and a situation that is incredibly comfortable and perfect and great. But there’s a catch.
Next to my current favorite lunchtime spot there’s a Relax the Back store. I’d seen these around, but never actually stopped in. I figured, in my search for a good chair, lets start with a specialist.
Had a great chat with the owner – the store was large, had some normal-looking office chairs – they don’t look particularly edgy or special, just regular high-back chairs.
I sat down in one, and started fiddling. And then fiddled more. And the manager fiddled some more, and… eventually… it just clicked in. The position was right, the support was right, the armrests were right… it.. was just right. I’d never been that comfortable in an office chair before. We added wrist rests (sort of palm-sized cups for the hands), and a foot rest (normally I don’t do foot rests, and actually started to tell him that, but then he adjusted it right, and… voila! It worked!) and I felt I could work there all day without a single twinge. Delightful!
So, after 15 minutes of this, realizing I was running a little late for lunch, I finally asked the fellow how much the chair was, with the accoutrements I was using (wrist rests and headrest). “Oh, that chair is… lessee… 1495.”
1495. One thousand, four hundred, and ninety five dollars. For a chair. Granted, an amazingly cool comfortable wonderful chair. But YIKES!
Ah well, guess I’ll keep shopping. At least I have a baseline to compare it to now.
<small voice> yeah, but, it was a really nice chair. </>
Oh this is not good. Apple has announced 
Enter 
One of the fun bits about having kids when you’re a geek is you can justify going back and playing with cool kids toys all over again. When I was a kid, (boy isn’t THAT a lead in), we didn’t have 
