Voice of the DBA

Tag: work

The Standing Desk – Week 1
I finally got my standing desk working last weekend and started on Tuesday (after Memorial Day) working at it on a regular basis.

This was the initial setup

I used a box of books, with 4 more under the keyboard and another box for the mouse. I had two monitors working due to a lack of cables, but this would allow me to essentially duplicate what I had upstairs. I added a short barstool (round, no back) and I was ready to go.

I wrote a bit about this the other day, but this is a more detailed post after almost one work week (3+ days) of working.

Tuesday when I came downstairs, I was tired, and it was chilly, and I didn’t really want to go in the basement. I spent an hour with my laptop at my regular desk before deciding to go stand downstairs. It wasn’t bad, but I realized quickly that the keyboard and mouse were too low. The ergonomic position is slightly above the elbow, so I added another box, more books and raised things up. Books make a great experimental platform for raising lowering to different heights to see what works.

I also realized that I needed to get all four monitors going and see if I liked that. So I ordered two new cables, and kept working. I stood for 5-6 hours on Tuesday, taking a few breaks to go upstairs, run, and handle other non-desk tasks.

Wednesday I felt better and I sat at my desk for an hour for our weekly department conference call. I don’t have a webcam on the desktop and with the books, no desk to set the laptop on. However afterwards I went downstairs and worked. My round bar stool was too short, but I did find an older, tall barstool to use. The height is just high enough that I have to raise up an inch or so to sit down. Or sit up.

I didn’t love sitting down, but taking 10-15 minutes on the stool was nice.

Thursday my cables came, and I hooked everything up. I got all four monitors situated in the right position in Windows 7, though I am tempted to raise my bigger monitors up to the top and put the smaller ones below. Right now I feel like I’m looking down when I’m working. It’s not too bad, and it’s similar to how you might work with paper on a desk.

My legs feel a bit more tired, but not much. I notice it most when I’m running. It’s that they’re slightly more tired than normal. I suspect that I’m adapting better than most since I run every day (1370 days and counting), so I’m used to some amount of work from my legs every day.

I do find that I take more breaks now. I can’t sit with an empty coffee cup and get lost in work for 90 minutes. Every hour or so I get up and move upstairs. It’s also changing my eating slightly. I’m eating smaller meals, and planning on going upstairs every hour for a small snack or piece of fruit. I’m not sure of the long term health effects, but I can’t think of a reason why this would be bad.

On the extra plus side, my regular desk is fairly clean now

So far I like the experiment, and I do feel like I’m burning more calories overall. I’ll give it a couple more week and then set about re-evaluating my move back upstairs.

A few things I need to consider fixing
- flooring – Buck talked about padding and I think I need something. I have carpet, but otherwise this is cement and I know that will take a toll. Upstairs I have wood, but probably need more padding.
- Monitors – The smaller two of my monitors are older and dimmer. I don’t use them as much, but I don’t love looking down so much at the newer ones. I need to reverse the positions.
- Desk space – I’m used to having space for a bottle of water and a coffee cup, plus my phone, a plate if I eat, etc. I need to consider that as I move to a more permanent setting.
- Monitor mounts – My desk doesn’t have a lip to clamp on. Do I cut a hole in it or move this one upstairs? Decisions, decisions, and permission from my wife.
This is cross posted to both my personal blog and the Voice of the DBA.
June 1, 2012
The Standing Desk Experiment

I’ve had a few friends using standing desks for sometime. I first heard about Greg Gonzalez (sqlSentry | Blog | @SQLSensei), fellow runner and one of the smartest SQL people using a treadmill desk. I saw it in his office at SQLSentry a few years ago, and was intrigued, but I never tried anything. Then I saw Buck Woody (Blog | @buckwoody) build a standing desk at home, and still didn’t do anything. However a few weeks ago I ran into Buck in San Diego and we talked about it.

And I decided to start.

I bought a 4 monitor stand that clamps to a desk. I have been working with 2 monitors, but I had 3 set up for awhile and when I moved my desk I didn’t hook the third one back up. I’m actually tempted to add the 4th, so this was a good purchase.

However I didn’t look at my desk. It has no rear lip. I tried clamping it to my wife’s desk, which backs up to mine, but it didn’t work well. The weight and torque were a little much. I was slightly stymied, but then decided that I could experiment with my desk in the basement. I use that one for podcasts, and it has a lip. So I started moving things downstairs. I started with my spare monitors.

Once those were up, I shut down my desktop and dragged it downstairs, along with monitors and assorted cables. I hooked everything up and was ready to go when I remembered one thing. No Internet.

We don’t have cables run downstairs, and I didn’t have a spare wireless adapter. Or did I? I “borrowed” the one my son uses for the XBOX, forcing him to deal with the built in one in the slim, which lags at times. However priorities matter, and I told him it would be a week or two and then I’d move back upstairs.

No digital cables, or digital to analog adapters handy, so I’m with two monitors for now. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but I decided to just order a few DVI cables so I can actually test this well. I have 2 19” monitors on top and 2 23” ones on the bottom, but I may need to reverse things. I’ll experiment over the next week or so.

I did a little minor work, including a podcast edit on this setup over the weekend, but it was like 30 minutes at a time. Today I added another box of books so the keyboard is above my elbows about an inch or so. Books are nice height adjusters for the test, so I can experiment a bit. I also raised the mouse as well, so it’s level with the keyboard.

Today I’ve worked a few hours, and it’s definitely more work than sitting. I hesitated getting going this am, both because I’d be in the basement, and because I was tired, but once I got started, I actually liked it. Definitely tired, and I need to get some shoes for the afternoon to see how it works, but for now it’s a good setup.

I’ll post more and add a few more pictures. It’s definitely a little out of sorts for me as I don’t have everything from upstairs. No speakers (headphones), limited power outlets until I move my other power strip down, and no office companion

May 29, 2012
A traveling man
It’s been a long year for me. This year I’ve attended:
1. SQL Saturday #60 – Cleveland
2. SQL Saturday #66 – Colorado Springs
3. MVP Summit
4. Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta v3.0
5. SQL Saturday #63 – Dallas
6. SQL Saturday #77 – Pensacola
7. SQL in the City – London
8. SQL Saturday #64 – Baton Rouge
9. SQL Saturday #91 – Oklahoma City
10. SQLBits #9
11. PASS Summit
12. SQL in the City – LA
13. DevConnections Fall 2011
14. SQL Inspire NYC
That’s a lot of trips, and a lot of time away from home. It’s also possible I missed one or two in all the chaos of the year.

Next year will be much quieter for me. I’ve already avoided a few trips, telling some people that I would not be attending their events in an effort to slow down and not be so burned out with travel.

It’s been a good year, but a hard one and next year needs to be a little quieter for me.
December 5, 2011
No Overtime

Are you working too much?

It’s been a long time since I received overtime at any job. Most of my IT work has been with a salary, and the expectation that I would work as needed to accomplish my assignments. Early in my career I worked as a contract for an hourly rate, and while it didn’t necessarily lower the hours I worked, I did receive a little more pay on long weeks. From there I worked for a company that provided “comp time” when the hours exceeded 20 hours in a month. That seemed to help reduce hours more than anything.

There’s a bill that’s in the US Congress that adds some new job classifications to the exemptions for overtime pay. In addition to the system administrative jobs, it now includes database and network professionals. I’m not sure how many people this affects as the overtime requirements disappear once you make more than $27.63 an hour. That equates to about an annual salary of 57,491, without the benefits. If you make less than this, you should be getting overtime.

Does overtime pay matter to most IT workers? I don’t know. There are lots of workers who make more than US$60,000 a year, and are exempt, but I suspect there are many others who make less than this amount and work long hours without any extra compensation. This bill is aimed squarely at reducing pay for those people in the industry that make the least amount of money.

I struggle with whether the benefits and abuses of a salary. On one hand salaries provide a level of security to workers, along with a guarantee of payment for work that cannot easily be measured in terms of output per unit of time. On the other hand, employers sometimes see a salary as a way to push workers to their limits, burn them out, and impose strict requirements on the work needed for deadlines, themselves often arbitrary.

I like the idea of allowing businesses to pay salaries, and stabilize their cost structures, but I do think we ought to implement a few bumpers that prevent abuses. Limiting hours across a month or quarter and ensuring that employees can take their vacations would be limits that I’d like to see implemented. This bill doesn’t affect those and I’m not sure we’ll see any limits implemented, but I do think it’s up to each person to stand up to their employer and ensure they are not overworking themselves.

Steve Jones

December 3, 2011