This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,762 for Tuesday the 3rd of January 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Existencies Pain.
It is hosted by Operator and is about 22 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is,
our S.I. Carpool Tunnel Syndrome and ergonomics.
Hello everyone and welcome to episode I.C. Public Radio with your host Operator.
Don't have a ton of time here, this is going to be pretty quick.
Episode 78 of Urandom,
Boston Bronx was talking about, you know, repetitive stress injury and issues he's had and foresight.
Yeah, with first start out by saying, you know, if you got kids or if you know people in the industry that are in IT,
on keyboards all day, you need to tell them to invest in proper equipment and spend money in a nice chair and things like that.
So, I want to go through as quickly as I can because I have a fair amount of stuff.
First start it out with sitting in properly leaning back on the chair, probably 20 years ago now.
I did 12 hours shifts leaning back in a chair and I had what I call, I think is forward neck syndrome or mouth shoulder.
And you can look for exercises on that.
But mouth shoulder is essentially not getting support from your body for your arm.
So, your arm is not resting somewhere, you're not getting support.
So, all that weight from your entire arm is pulling on your back and all the muscles in your back.
And you start to feel pain in your shoulders and your shoulders, you know, you get up and stretch your shoulders back.
There's tons of exercises for mouth shoulder.
Specifically, we try to do yoga every day that will help.
Your basic stretch is fine, which stretches work for you and just do those whenever you're waiting for something or sitting in line or whatever.
Yeah, you look awkward, but, you know, working old.
So, that kind of started, you know, not probably 20, 15 years ago.
And I think I was kind of okay, started with just having shoulder issues and shoulder muscle tension all the time.
My wife actually gives me adjustments, probably every three days and just cracks the top of my back, which gives me a fair amount of relief.
Here in the past, this probably a year, two years, I started noticing my appendages getting cold, my feet and hand.
So, I'm on 42 now.
So, my feet and hands were really cold.
I've managed to get my feet from being frozen all the time.
And that's helped a little bit by just wearing really good slippers.
There's some north-face indoor, north-face split pairs that are like shoes on the bottom.
And I used them for slippers because they're half-slipper, half-shoot.
They have actual souls, not like you're crappy slippers.
So, invest in some good slippers, like some good shoes, slash slippers that you can wear around the house.
Did you only wear around the house and not outside to fetch dog poop?
So, that helps with the feet.
I started getting pain in my left hand.
And I started getting numbness in my left hand and coldness.
So, if you start feeling fatigue from anything, then it's a sign of you need to stop doing whatever that is.
You're not supposed to sit for a long period of time.
You're not supposed to stay in for a long period of time.
You're not supposed to do anything for a long period of time. You're supposed to be hunting, gathering, right?
So, that whole dynamic is all broken.
No matter what you do, you're not supposed to be doing it for a long period of time.
So, having a standing desk, I chose a dual motor desk with no table,
so that I could just drop ship the desk and then I can get a go-to-lose.
Home Depot had them cut to you a MBF board is what I like.
It snows for a while, but MBF board is good.
When I use that for a standing desk, I'll stand sometimes.
I'll sit sometimes, just depending on how I feel.
If I start out sitting, I try to get up.
Set timers to a walk. I take a walk, try to everyday in a 12.
Try to take a walk.
Get some energy going.
If your impenetous are cold, do jumping jacks.
That's stupid as that sound.
Jumping jacks help out a lot.
My left hand is the one that really got screwed up.
I started to notice fatigued in the right hand, which is my mouse hand.
I'm actually left handed, but I'm right handed mouse, of course.
I started noticing fatigued in my right hand.
So, I switched to an ergonomic left handed mouse.
Now, we talked on, you know, Lawson Box talked about those left handed mice.
I wouldn't go hard on a left handed mice.
I would actually feel like the diagonal mice are better.
Because the left hand amounts, you're completely working against gravity,
and you're using muscles that you wouldn't normally use.
And there's not a lot of good, extra ergonomic left handed mice
that I can see out there.
Maybe right handed, I don't know.
But there's a big up stink about, you know, non-left handed peripherals,
especially for gamers and things like that.
So anyways, I would recommend something that's big.
The bigger the better, I'll have it big hand.
I'm six something.
But I have a fairly long lengthy hands, and these tiny little mice don't do it for me.
So, yeah, get a big mouse, maybe a track ball, you can try that.
Actually try different things.
So, maybe you use a track ball, and it's annoying.
And training your whole body to use the left handed mouse is actually pretty bad.
It took me close to two weeks, and I would say maybe a month of solid left handed mice.
And switching to the vertical.
The problem with that is you're using muscles you've never used before.
So you're going from never using your left index finger to click to using your left index finger to click all day.
And you're working against gravity.
So I think that's some of the problems with the completely vertical mice,
is that you're sort of working against gravity and you're kind of straining to click that button
whereas if it's down, you're just working with gravity to push that button down.
That's the feedback that I've gotten, and I feel like the same way.
So I went extreme, left handed, extreme vertical.
So I had issues with my hands, and I was doing something in that day.
I was like, oh, this isn't good.
And into the next day or the day after that, I played a switch game,
which you had to hold one of the triggers on the top of the controller,
and use the joy pad, or the joystick, whatever.
What happened when I did that is I played for about 20 minutes,
and I had just that pain, like a pretty bad pain in my left hand.
And that was pretty much it.
I've been suffering from that pain.
Basically any time I get on the keyboard and use my left hand to type,
I will have pain within 30 minutes an hour.
If that within 30 minutes 15 minutes, I will have pain if I start.
So I've been trying to use just by right hand to do keyboard,
keyboard mouse.
It's again, it's a result of not listening to your body and doing the right things,
and having the right posture and things like that.
What I will say is take breaks, set a timer, to do walks, to yoga,
every night if you can, every morning, whatever.
And take breaks, do stretches.
If you can, whatever you can, idling, the, as far as the,
the carpool goes is, I don't know if I'm going to be able to prepare this without having surgery,
but I use a, if you, F-T-U, F-T-U, you are O, 3M by 3M,
they make a little wrist strap thing.
I'm trying to see if I can track everything that I've purchased for this ergonomic stuff.
I bought a future O night wrist port, and that's both hand left hand right hand.
It's a, what do you call it, amodextrous thing.
So F-U-T-R, sorry, F-U-T-U-R-O night wrist support.
That's, they say that's the best thing you can do.
If you wear it, wear it every night, don't wear it too tight.
It kind of keeps you unconsciously aware that it's there,
and it keeps you from like sleeping on your wrist and causing more damage.
I can't seem to get anything, I don't know if I'm getting better.
It's been a month now, but I'm going to try to take care of it,
and you know, people can say, you know, up to, up to a year, six months to get,
kind of summary leaf from doing that.
But I know I'm pretty much screwed at this point.
So the nighttime wristband, I bought another thing that's a,
a future energizing wrist support.
So if you, if you, future, energizing wrist support left,
so they have, and I got the extra large, and it doesn't even feel extra large.
It comes with a metal plate, and that metal plate was excruciating.
So I had to take the metal plate out.
Another thing purchased is Dr. Frederick's original arthritis clubs for women in men.
They start out tight, but eventually they will loosen up.
I got the large ones.
And again, I have a pretty decent size hand.
I don't have big hands, big sausage fingers.
I have lanky fingers.
So you'll probably want to get like an extra large,
if you're a sausage hand or do read the comments.
I also got a Linux, L-U-N-I-X, L-X-3,
cordless electronic hand visager with compression six levels, probably.
That one, I don't think it's actually helped me.
It, it just ends up hurting more.
I think it's supposed to do like arthritis,
pain of these carpal tunnel.
I guess if you've had a really bad day,
and you've ignored your symptoms or whatever, you use this stuff.
I don't, I don't, I guess it's fairly expensive for what it is.
And I don't think I've reaped the benefit from it, or are using it right.
I mean, it does feel good to have that, that hand massage,
but it, it is definitely, I think, doing more harm than it's good.
I don't know.
Kind of physical therapy, look online.
There are stretches you can do, put your hand up against the wall,
and then you turn your neck, the opposite direction,
and that'll stretch that carpal tunnel out.
There are tons of stretches you can do for carpal tunnel
specific stuff for your wrist.
Some people swear by this,
tart, cherry tart, dynamic health brand, cherry tart.
I tried it for two bottles worth,
and I don't think it did anything.
They also have like glucose means,
and you're all your arthritis type of stuff,
doesn't seem to make any difference at all.
Really the best you can do is the yoga,
the stretches, trying not to piss off whatever it is,
and maintain good posture.
That's all I'll say about the carpal stuff.
So far as general posture,
your eyes want to be kind of right at the top of the screen.
I'm actually more comfortable with it,
towards like the top third of the screen,
not the very tip top.
Excuse me.
So for some people like the very top,
and they have to kind of look down.
I like it, I think, the top one third.
So it's really just depends on how you sit in your posture.
I got a nice Harman Miller arrow chair used.
They can sort of kind of buy them used.
If you have a furniture shop or a office supply place,
you can call them up and see if they have a bone yard,
and they might be able to help you out
and get you like a bone yard chair for relatively cheap.
If you do experience that that shoulder pain,
there's two things you can try.
You can try raising your side part,
the elbow support.
There are tons of tutorials out there,
but really your feet need to be flat.
Your hands need to be kind of like at a 90 degree,
and your elbows, your elbows need to be supported.
Now, I think some of that has consequences.
So I kind of switch back and forth.
My work desk has support now,
or a little bit of support for my shoulders,
and my home desk has no support for my shoulders.
Because I found that if I get the support for my shoulders,
it starts to, if I rest my elbows on the arm,
I have shoulder issues for whatever reason.
I don't know if it's a response of just tensing up those shoulder muscles,
or just something else is going on,
but I found that when I dropped the arms,
I will have some of that shoulder pain to go away.
But really it's about being dynamic,
finding what doesn't work,
staying away from that,
and then everything else being dynamic.
So if you find that your chair at the office sits really low,
then maybe put the chair at your house a little bit higher,
or something like that.
You don't want to get stuck in a static position
for a long time.
So I have a standing,
I have two kind of cubes,
one's a standing desk that I stole,
and another one is a standard cube.
So I'll transition in between there.
If I sparse to steal like today,
my shoulders are tin stop, I haven't done any exercise in three weeks,
because it's been wet here in Atlanta.
I get out on the bike, that helps loosen everything up.
It's a great way to loosen stuff up,
because you're unintentionally using muscles you don't use.
You are jailing up and down on the trail,
and all of your stuff is forced to just relax,
and get ironed out.
Honestly, high baths actually work,
soaking those muscles.
If you have a chronic pain,
you want to use like a heat.
If it's an inflammation pain,
you want to take some Advil.
Any Advil from your time alone,
it's going to be for fame.
Advil's going to be for that inflammation reducer.
So if you have pain that's not chronic pain
from like joints or whatever,
bad back or something,
then you always want to do cold,
and you always want to do that.
That I'd be perfect.
The inflammation thing.
So with that said,
that will help with some of any of that posture stuff.
I will say that I got a fancy keyboard.
It's like a connexis,
connexis,
I don't even know if I can find it.
Let me see.
It's a connexis keyboard.
It's a two split two keyboard,
ergonomic,
that has,
you can buy an additional little attachment
that elevates it.
So it was stupid expensive.
It is a very sturdy keyboard.
I have two gaming keyboards that are a cookie keys.
This one is a very softer touch obviously.
It's a split keyboard set up,
so you can adjust however you want to adjust it.
So it's depending on where your shoulders are
and where your shoulders are apart.
I don't even use it the way I'm supposed to use it
because I can't even use my left hand right now.
Well, I do not want to use my left hand.
I just want to do my physical therapy
and try and get this healed up
before I switch to the connexis keyboard.
It's a weird keyboard.
It doesn't have a number pad on the right side,
but it does have like the page up page down
stuff on the left hand side.
I've also have on my GitHub
just to get hub, free load 101,
FRE, LOAD101.
You can find under the scripts folder.
I'm an out of hotkey script that I'm working with
that changes hotkeys around basically.
Changes functions around.
So instead of the problem with a lot of the keyboard
it's set up is control V.
If you can imagine stretching your fingers
all the way across control V and control C,
those are very long distances.
So if we can minimize that impact in that stretching,
which I think is all primarily what my issue is
is that stretching of the hand and the
parking of the hand and holding that hand up
will help.
So I've rebound keys like alt A is like,
you know, paste or control Z is paste,
what's in the clipboard and alt A is copy
and alt S is paste,
and I've used the function keys to do stuff.
So I can do a lot of things with either my right hand
or my left hand,
and I'm not having to do like control C.
I've tried various things like binding the number keys,
those don't work because when you're typing numbers,
it can mean because it's all jacked up.
So I've pretty much been limited to like using the alt key.
And sometimes just the alt key and a holding down that key
and gives me basically a range of keys that I can bind to.
So with alt left alt and right alt,
I can essentially rebind all of my hot keys
to be ergonomically feasible.
I think that's a lot of problem with why people have
carpools that they're stretching their fingers all over the place
to like do control B, control C,
and I do a lot of copying and a lot of pacing.
I do not do a lot of typing.
I do a lot of copying and pacing.
All right, we're already 17 minutes.
I'd like to think,
stony from the alt,
underground podcast.
If you haven't checked that out,
it's hilarious.
Old school stories about
ALL and just kids hacking on stuff
and pulling everything.
But he has had some issues to,
and he gave me a lot of these links and stuff to try.
I have talked to my doctor,
and he said that surgeries could be an option,
but I am extensively talked to him
and I haven't talked to a specialist or anything yet.
So that might be my next step
as long as I give myself like another 15 days,
another month,
and if I'm not getting any better,
I may be on the keyboard, but for five minutes,
without having pain,
I'm going to try to take that
step and see a professional
that can maybe do,
a direct physical therapy.
Things just as simple as holding a cup
can change the way that
your symptoms kind of flare up.
Anyways,
some other stuff I have,
again,
the staining desk is an option
that motorized staining desk.
I don't move the one at the house
to often.
If I am going to be working on something
I know is electronic in nature
or not sitting on the computer.
I'll actually pull the desk up
and if I'm doing it for research or on my workbench,
which is a, I call it a Murphy workbench.
You can buy a,
what I did is I just bought a sheet of MDF
and then I bought these two little,
they're say they're 500 pound,
but they're a little folding,
a little elbow brackets,
and that's to say they're not little
by any means,
but they're a little folding brackets
and very sturdy,
and I got two of them.
I put a piece of MDF on top of that
and then I put it at my almost
my shoulder level and I'm six feet tall.
So the problem with working on things,
soldering, electronics,
I had the old man goggles
that you put on for the light of LED attached to.
The problem with every single table is
the table I'm hearing here in the office is,
I don't know, I feel like two feet off the ground.
I can touch,
I can pull my leg up
with my foot and touch the top of the table.
It's way too low.
So all tables are too low for tall people.
All tables are too low to be working benches anyways.
So I took this idea
that I would have like everything almost at arm level
where my arms come out,
my shoulder level.
So I'm almost resting my elbow, my entire arm on the workbench
at the level that it's at.
So I can do soldering,
I can do whatever I can zoom in
and I don't have to worry about leaning over
and having that chronic pain around
leaning over the desk and working on something.
So that helps fair amount,
but the biggest thing is exercise,
do yoga stretches,
find some stretches that work for you
throughout the day,
take breaks.
If you have to set alarms
and then snooze them,
I snooze some my alarms
for up to an hour.
So like,
I've snoozed them like six times.
But having that,
say,
okay, I can't stop now,
I can't stop in 30 minutes,
but okay.
So in 45 minutes,
I can stop,
take a break.
The alarm keeps going off from me
to go do something besides work.
That can help with some kind of
timer that you can't,
you can't avoid.
But anyways,
my ramble on enough.
I hope this helps somebody.
It's not because nothing we can do
for our sold folks.
So what I would suggest is
if you see a coworker
who's a little younger
or maybe they're an intern,
you tell him,
hey, look man,
here's some links,
a proper posture,
start thinking about it now,
start thinking about repetitive stress,
and don't start thinking about
our carpaut tunnel
because you are going to get it
if this is your profession.
It's really a matter of time,
so it catches us all right.
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