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Re: FW: At an impasse with ergonomics folks.

This is nothing to do with <deleted> or any particular company -- bureaucracy exists everywhere, so no one should feel they are vilifying a particular company in writing this.  In other words, I'll bet they're all the same.

Since this looks like it happened in the US, let me narrate my (much more pleasant) experience, while working at a small firm called Unidata in Denver.

A co-worker saw me flexing my wrist in weird ways.  He asked me why and I said it feels good to do this, because there is some small stiffness or ache.

That's it.  After that I was not in control...!

He called HR and reported the matter.  The HR head (it was a small company, about 400 people in 4 floors of one building) came scurrying to my desk, had me sit down, asked me a bunch of questions, and called OSHA.

[This is OSHA, not OSHO, in case you were wondering, although the OSHA girl who came by the next morning to take measurements of my body in the typing posture was certainly the stuff of dreams.  I am now much, much older, and am considered to be in a position of responsibility, so I will refrain from describing this young lady in any detail.  It should suffice to say that most of my male colleagues were contemplating how to inflict similar wrist injuries on themselves and my female colleagues were nowhere to be seen for all the time this girl was at my desk ;-)]

OSHA fixed me up with a physio-therapist in a nearby health center, and I was asked to go there the next morning, and once a week for the next 3-4 weeks.  At the end of that I was given a huge check list and asked to report IMMEDIATELY should ANY of those symptoms make an appearance.

My desk was also fitted out -- yes sir!! -- with an articulated keyboard and various other paraphernalia that they deemed necessary for me to do my work without being in a situation where I could later sue my employer for work related injuries.

That's the power of OSHA.  I suggest your friend invoke this power and get himself an articulated keyboard.

Me, I would prefer an articulate keyboard over an articulated keyboard any day.  I come in pretty early in the morning and it would be nice to have someone to chat with while doing the morning chores like email etc :-)

Sita

PS: feel free to forward this to the same bunch of people you sent the original email to -- I haven't said anything here that may bite me later :-)

on 07/12/2007 08:06 PM <deleted> (<deleted>) wrote:

I dunno whether I should forward this or not… but it’s worth a read coz it’s a funny situation if you aren’t the one facing it… and it’s an email sent to a distribution list that I’m part of.

 

Please do NOT forward it to others*!

 

Regards,

 

<deleted>

 

*(If you *do* feel like forwarding it, please remove my name and alias from the email body content… I don’t want to be kicked out of <deleted>! {Not yet, that is :P})

---

From: <>
Sent: <>
To: <>
Subject: At an impasse with ergonomics folks.

 

Folks, this is probably going to sound a little bit absurd, but I think what better way to let out a little steam than gather a little sympathy J

 

I have been working at <deleted> for about a year now and was a college hire. I am quite used to having an articulating keyboard tray which I found immensely useful. So, when I did not find it here and found working with the regular height table a bit cumbersome, I asked around how I could get an articulating keyboard tray. It was suggested that I talk to the ergo/HR folks and so I did. This is how the conversation went:

 

Ergo Lady> Did you read the ergonomics guideline on the website?

Me> Yes

Ergo Lady> Do you have an injury, pain, ache etc anywhere?

Me> No

Ergo Lady> So, how may I help  you?

Me> Well, I want an articulating keyboard tray for my desktop so I can work better.

Ergo Lady> If you follow the ergo guidelines on the website, you would not need one.

Me> Huh?

Ergo Lady> What do you need the keyboard tray for?

Me> Well, to put the keyboard at a height that is suitable for my arms

Ergo Lady> Since 1998, we have been getting the  height adjustable tables. You can obtain a key to adjust the height of the table. I can order a key for you if you want.

Me> No,  no, you see, I want to add a negative tilt to my keyboard as well

Ergo Lady> Well, we can give you a wrist pad…

Me> No, no, you see, then the monitors will be too low, I want them at my eye level.

Ergo Lady> Well, we can give you monitor height adjustment stools…

Me> No, no, you see, I also want to keep rest of my stuff such as books, hardware etc at my eye level…

Ergo Lady> Well, you see, we can order a bookshelf for you to keep the stuff there.

Me (by now exasperated)> Well, how can I get a keyboard tray, it is just something that I find very useful, convenient and I am just so very used to it. It will make me happier when I come to work because I will find my workstation exactly the way I way I want to work on it.

Ergo Lady> Well, we cannot order a keyboard tray for you. A keyboard tray costs about $300. All that stuff (monitor adjustment stools, wrist pads) costs us a few bucks. If, however, your health care provider prescribes a keyboard tray for you, we can do it.

Me>Ummm…. You have been very helpful, thanks for your time….

 

I understand her reasoning,  I understand also how I can adjust my desk, add a wrist pad (which I hate) and get a shelf (which will take up a good amount of space in my doubled up office) but for the life of me, I cannot understand why spending $300 (retail) on something that will make me a happier, more productive developer is not worth <deleted>’s while. I am sure if I spend 5 minutes a day fretting about it and I am in general not as content with my workplace as I could be, it would more than make up for the $300 that they might have to spend one time on me. *Sigh* there are bad days and then there are days when you feel like you just are hitting  your head against a wall…

 

Thanks,

<> 

 

Quantum Cryptography

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18838/

quote:

To create the key, the team first had to create pairs of entangled photons. Entanglement, which Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," means that the fate of one photon is tied up with the fate of the other. Measuring any quantum mechanical property of one photon automatically changes that same property in its entangled partner, no matter the distance between them.

What Einstein neglected to mention, possibly out of fear, was that at first the photons thus created think this is love.  Then they get married, and then they realize the meaning of the word "entanglement"!

I'm just disappointed that it seems to happen at such a low level also.  God must be a sadist :-(

(geek) ever wondered...

...what life would be like without regular expressions?

http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/Just_in_Case.aspx

Linux: immune to large doses of whackiness from the US Congress :-)

As some people know, the US Congress mandated new rules for DST (Daylight Savings Time), such that instead of DST starting on the first Sunday in April, it starts on the second Sunday of March.  In the fall (or autumn), DST will now end on the first Sunday in November rather than the last Sunday of October.

This has predictably caused a lot of operating systems to update various bits of software to accommodate this change.

On Linux, you just need to upgrade one package (usually called the "timezone" package) and that's it.  The rest of the system, and all applications simply use the new information.

Apparently things are not so simple in the so-called "user-friendly" operating system :-)

[ stuff below was extracted from comments in http://lwn.net/Articles/224794/ ]

One comment said:

One thing that surprises me is that, for Microsoft Windows, you don't just need an update patch for the OS, you need patches for applications like Outlook as well. In *nix/Linux systems as far as I'm aware, all the apps just use the common zoneinfo data, so you only need one update for that to fix all your apps. Why doesn't Windows do the same?

And here's the explanation from another comment, of which I have extracted the best parts:

Microsoft products tend to do their internal calculations and storage formats in local time. This simplifies display, as there isn't any knowledge of time zone required. That was fine when DOS asked you the current time and date every time you booted, and was *somewhat* liveable after the advent of CMOS clocks. The OS just needed to know what DST algorithm to apply. [...] [But it] also gets weird when you have users from multiple time zones on the same machine.

UNIX and its derivatives tend to do those same things in GMT. This eliminates much of the clock twiddling mess and so on. Also, file date stamps are never ambiguous. What changes is time display. That needs a notion of the current time zone. The plus side is that you can have two dozen users logged in, each in different time zones, and each can see their own local time, just by setting TZ.

So if you don't patch Windows, it'll *use* the wrong time. If you don't patch UNIX, it'll just *display* the wrong time.

Yet another reason to love Linux -- immune to large doses of whackiness from the US Congress :-)

(funny,quote) on XML

XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.

(USA,funny,quote) love this one...

There's free as in speech, free as in beer, and free as in range. Americans are free in the latter sense.

...found it somewhere on slashdot, of course!

(malware) Microsoft apologises for serving malware | APC Magazine

http://apcmag.com/5382/microsoft_apologises_for_serving_malware_to_customers

"We have learned that Microsoft was notified of malware that was being served through ads placed in Windows Live Messenger banners."

Don't they make enough money already? Why do they need to ''serve ads'' for God's sake...?

(geek) The Command line marries the GUI?

http://www.zicorp.com/QixFunctions.htm

Take a look at the illustration at the top, and the simple description below.

Ignore the fact that this website is about mobile phones. The fact is, any interface that has grown too complex and unwieldy needs something like this, period. This is the only way to keep frequent users happy (which means productive) while simultaneously keeping it "friendly" for new users...

...and the faster we all realise it the happier mankind will be :-)

religion is so important for some people...

http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/88q3/323.14.html