I am sorry this article is late.
I am now the proud owner of an assembled Uplift V2 standing desk. The reason this article is late is that prior to yesterday I was the proud owner of an unassembled Uplift V2 standing desk. You might sense the fragrance of a fine California whine here, and you would not be terribly wrong.
The Uplift V2 standing desk is hundreds of dollars of product that promotes workplace comfort and healthiness. One would think that they would take the “C-Frame and T-Frame Models” combined instruction booklet and better annotate the instructions that only apply to one of these models, so the person assembling the other one does not get freaked out and lost trying to find and assemble parts that do not exist. Or better yet, for as many hundreds of dollars just put one of two completely separate books into the product. I would not expect to find a “Pickup Truck and Sports Coupe” owners manual in a vehicle purchased from the Ford Motor Company. And yet, these products are scarcely an order of magnitude apart in price.
Setting aside my mental disassembling over assembling this desk, it is a great product so far. Five stars. Better than Cats™. Would purchase again but hopefully do not have to.
Since I was somewhat preoccupied with getting this desk assembled I thought I would take a moment and ramble about work idiosyncrasies. I have recently come into possession of a full-sized room inside my house as my oldest son has moved out to pursue college education. I have transported all of my various computers, work surfaces, and electronicals into this room and made it my own.
I have three different stations set up in this room, each with their own purpose. I have a primary workstation, a hobby-project work station, and “snobby pc gamer” setup. If you do some kind of hobbyist development, I have found that having a separate physical space has helped me focus on the successful outcomes of those projects. I heartily recommend it to anyone who is trying to do some extracurricular projects. I also have tried to persuade my remote-learning children to adopt the same habit.
Earlier in my career I used to commute every second week between northern and southern California. I was also raiding in an MMO quite profusely at this time. I started ordering keyboards and mice of the same kind by the threes and fives—having identical computer peripherals in multiple locations helped me stay consistent in my pursuit of raid-boss enmurderment. To this day I still attempt to keep the same peripherals for all of my devices. I cannot say enough how great it is to use computing machinery with a consistent man-machine interface.
Since I was preoccupied with building my desk this week during my regularly scheduled writing time, I thought I would take a moment to share some of the peripherals I used consistently—they have evolved modestly over the years. Yes, I have extra sets of all of these if I ever wind up in a situation where I would need to return full time to an office.
Ancient Dell Keyboards. I know many people are hot and bothered by clicky mechanical keyboards. I really got used to the phat spacebar on these bad boys. I do buy these in groups of ten and I am down to my last few spaces over the course of a decade.
Razer Deathadder Mouse. I grew up on a steady diet of Microsoft Mouses. Mice? I don’t know. When the last of them started to fade, and the replacement OEMed Microsoft Mouses started to break more frequently, I decided it was time to upgrade. Fortunately the Deathadder is reasonably close to the form factor I know and love.
IMAK Ergo… uh… thingy. I keep these under my wrists because: Old Person. I also pick them up and toss them around like a bean bag in meetings. I don’t care if people hate it—they probably read comic books and listen to rock-and-roll, so we have plenty to argue about.
Steelseries mouse mat. This is a big mouse mat that covers a lot of my desk. Whether I am stretching bigly browser windows or trying to move my mouse frantically in an attempt to keep a raid alive as a healer, these are my favorite mouse mats.
Belkin gel wrist rest. The final piece of my consistent assemblage of peripherals and ergonomics is this goofy squooshy bar of gel. They make them, someone has to buy them.
I could go on about ASUS WQHD monitors here but I will not. I am likely to start phasing these out in Operation Experiment With Curved Monitors coming soon™. Similarly, I have a few nice Sennheiser headsets that are just really nice headsets minus a gamer mic.
I could also go on about Secret Lab chairs. I am on my second Secret Lab chair. The first one is presently a family heirloom passed down through at least one generation of lineage from father to son.
Okay. There you have it. I have given you digital words this week.
If you are doing multiple things with computers, I find it helps to have some separation of space between them. I also find that it is good to have decent ergonomic support items, and a consistent interface for all of your computers. It has been a decade since I have found myself using a different brand of keyboard or mouse between home and work and making these things consistent has brought me some measure of value, even if it is just perceived value.
Looking forward to writing to you again next week, probably on an actually interesting topic.
Author’s note: Blah blah blah Transparency. Something something Authenticity. There are referral codes in the links above. If you are offended that I would like see if I can earn some beer and pizza money off of your staring and clicking I apologize. I am not trying to get-rich-quick. I am experimenting with it for my own education and amusement and will share anything I learn.
