sean's place

Clarification

Ok. So I read the last article about the chair. It sounded dumb. I then wrote an even dumber response. I’m not one to waste words, so it’s an extended entry.

If you have time to burn, go ahead and read it. You’re not missing much if you don’t, though.

I’ve discovered, in retrospect, that my last post about the very expensive chair has a few whiney overtones. I figure to further explain in this entry.

The chair I desire is a Herman Miller Aeron size C with tilt limiter, PostureFit, adjustable arms, and the works. This is a definite “luxury” task chair. I know, I know, luxury items are something that I buy frequently, but in this case, I hold back. It is well known that I spend a great deal of time in front of my desk, usually blathering into this infernal box. It stands to reason that I need a reasonably good chair to make my butt happy.

I currently sit in what Shane accurately calls an ottoman. It was a very nice chair, but I’ve since removed the arms and the back. I would have left the back on, but unfortunately, the back and butt were connected by a pair of very sturdy arm rests. After years of resting my elbows on arm rests, I’ve developed something of a sensitivity (pinched a nerve or something) to arm rests. Unfortunately, I mistook the pain’s cause as poorly padded armrests. I rather moronically then purchased a chair with high (but well-padded) arm rests, which helped but eventually exhibited the same problem.

Don’t get me wrong – arm rests can be very nice. Conference chairs need arm rests. Task chairs, at least for me, need the adjustable variety.

So I’ve justified the need for adjustable arm rests, but not the exorbitant cost of the Aeron. Well, here’s the thing, I sat in one for 6 months at the lab. I loved it. I even offered to buy it from them with no luck. This brings me to the conundrum – do I just go out and buy a stopgap chair? Should I just go all out and buy a new, fancy chair?

On a purely ergonomic note, there are a lot of other things I could do to better spend my cash. For example, my 19″ CRT flickers when attached to my Belkin KVM. It’s annoying and probably doing some sort of optic trickery on me. It only does it at high (1280×1024 and up) resolutions, which are a must for my work.

Anyway.