[tlhIn`toq]

This one will make you cringe and I can't break my step-son's habit of this one. (He's 20 now, what can ya do?)

6'2 guy
Laptop on a low desk
Chair raise to its highest
He arches down to be at eye level with the screen. Looks like a ? or a hunchback.

That may not bother him now at 20, but in 10 years it will take its toll. Now that he's living on his own I can't hound him about it. I just hate thinking what it's doing to his spine.

[baavgai]

Yep, you get to develop all the bad habits over the course of a lifetime that you'll get to pay for later. Damn, I feel old.

Martial arts probably saved my life... Not that I ever got into a fight with anyone; at 6'4" and 400+ lbs you don't tend to get into a lot of fights. However, you do tend to have knees that blow out in your thirties. I've dropped 100 lbs since those days, but the habit of always bending knees and being aware of points of balance have left me in much better shape.

Standing like a tree ( Zhan Zhuang ). Sounds silly. Looks easy. Is neither and really gets the knots out.

[DarenR]

At home I have a cushioned high back chair which does wonders for my back. At work I have to use a broken back normal office chair. I wish I had a better chair at work but they keep saying they are getting new ones etc.. been almost a year and no new chair.

[rgfirefly24]

DarenR I would say that if your chairs are really bad you could always put a complaint in to OSHA. OSHA has a set of guidelines that they set for the types of chairs that should be used in an office setting. Cite

[Skydiver]

baavgai, on 02 July 2012 - 04:53 AM, said:

Yep, you get to develop all the bad habits over the course of a lifetime that you'll get to pay for later. Damn, I feel old.

Martial arts probably saved my life... Not that I ever got into a fight with anyone; at 6'4" and 400+ lbs you don't tend to get into a lot of fights. However, you do tend to have knees that blow out in your thirties. I've dropped 100 lbs since those days, but the habit of always bending knees and being aware of points of balance have left me in much better shape.

Standing like a tree ( Zhan Zhuang ). Sounds silly. Looks easy. Is neither and really gets the knots out.

If you are not into martial arts, another thing that helps is ballroom dance. Three of my friends who had previously always complained about backpain took up dance because they had tried everything else. It did wonders for their posture (as well as overall health). None of them complain about their backs anymore. I think it also helped them find more dates as well. :-)

[fromTheSprawl]

Thanks for reminding guys. By the way, are reclining chairs better? My chair isn't one but due to a broken something(I don't know why) it reclines now so I can shift my body posture. My workmates don't though, and I'm looking at them now and they are either hunched or slumped.

tlhIn`toq They make monitors like that? Wow.

[tlhIn`toq]

Those are just standard Dell 24" LCD's. I have a FirePro 4 monitor display card. Its the only way to have your development real estate!

[fromTheSprawl]

Upon zooming in, yeah, they are just standing sideways. Awesome! Will try working with that.

[Skydiver]

fromTheSprawl, on 02 July 2012 - 06:45 PM, said:

Upon zooming in, yeah, they are just standing sideways. Awesome! Will try working with that.

You may have to shop around for monitors. Some monitors have great left-right viewing angles when in landscape mode, but more limited up-down angles. So when you turn the monitors on their side, you get a more restricted viewing angle.

The Dell Pro series tend to have nice wide view angles. If you plan on going multimon, buy them in sets. I went cheap thinking to buy one monitor, and buy another 6 months later. Same model, but different batches so the screen colors didn't match up even with a lot of calibration. I ended up going back to single monitor because I couldn't take the color difference.

[tlhIn`toq]

Good advice. I bought two of the Dells at the same time, direct from Dell on-line using their in-house financing. The third later.

This is actually the scaled down version of how I used to run my system. Before I went full-time on-the-road, I had 5 monitors. Now that was luxury.

[DarenR]

I used to buy Dell all the time until the last 3 monitors sucked and all died right at the 1 year mark. I now buy either AOC or ViewSonic.

[Jstall]

Just on the topic of posture in general. A little over a year ago, when I was 31 my back started hurting and sending a shooting pain down my left leg. Over a weeks time it got worse and worse then it kept hurting for another 6 months or so. It was a crappy experience. I couldn't sleep longer than 2 hours at a time before having to get up and walk around. I was sleep deprived, in pretty much constant pain.

Turned out to be a herniated disk. My physiotherapist identified the likely cause as my poor posture. I always sat slouched over forward peering at my monitor and it screwed my back up. I feel like an old person saying this for some reason but it's true, having a good chair and proper posture is very important! Not having these things can lead to significant prolonged discomfort!

[GWatt]

Something like that. There are decently cheap ones on the Target website.

[Skydiver]

GWatt, on 03 July 2012 - 01:25 PM, said:

Something like that. There are decently cheap ones on the Target website.

These chairs, other than helping with posture, also have a great secondary use. If a manager keeps hovering over your shoulder wanting "just one more change", a slight rock back is great for crushing toes.

[Utael]

GWatt, on 03 July 2012 - 03:25 PM, said:

Something like that. There are decently cheap ones on the Target website.

How do you sit in that?