Posts from — April 2008

If you have been trying to think of ways to boost your image at work, then look no further. You can finally ditch the polkadot tie youve been wearing for the last two years, and replace it with the Guitar Hero Key Neck Tie, which aside from showing everyone at the office that you have a sense of humor, will also signal your guitar shredding prowess to fellow employees, and perhaps initiate a challenge or two.

If you are looking to refurbish the cheap vintage office chair your stingy employer provided you with, meet the Chair Chair Pad

I enjoyed a good laugh this morning at the expense of a co-workers’ stupidity. Upon arriving to work (late) he discovered that his computer would not turn on. After attempting to solve the issue by pounding on the keyboard and blurting out the usual bag of insults, he angrily picked up the phone and demanded immediate assistance from our company tech support. The tech guy arrived promptly, and after a just a few moments of contemplation, he bent down and gave the power cable a small nudge into the socket. Apparently it had not been pushed in all the way. Unable to withstand the laughter that inevitable emerged from the surrounding cubicles, my co-worker apologized to the tech guy, and disappeared to the kitchen.

The incident reminded me of a great article I read recently that offered some tips on how to get the most out of tech support. Most people will agree that there are few activities more grueling than spending an hour on the phone following directions from a person that’s probably stationed somewhere in India. So save yourself the potential humiliation and check out the article titled 11 Tips for Better Tech Support.

Despite being a bit sick of all the wonderfully abstract designs for USB drives these days, I couldn’t help but feel the urge to share this particular model with you, being as how it is Earth Day and all.  Made by OOOMS, a Dutch design studio, they were created from wood “manually selected on [its] natural beauty”.  However, with a $110 price tag for a 2GB I think I’ll hold on to my plastic one.

Source 

It should come as no surprise to my readers that Ergonomics is a topic of great interest to me being as how this blog is about ways to improve your work happiness and productivity. Here is a brief definition I grabbed from Wikipedia:

Ergonomics (or human factors) is the application of scientific information concerning objects, systems and
environment for human use (definition adopted by the International Ergonomics Association in 2007).

The goal of ergonomics and human factors is to make the interaction of humans with machines as smooth as possible,
enhancing performance, reducing error, and increasing user satisfaction through comfort and aesthetics.

While most of the gadgets I post about are simply pre-existing products with a unique design twist, or added features, very few of them offer any significant benefit to the user through daily use. Thus, I decided it was time to reverse that trend and to start giving you guys something you can actually put in a request for at your job through the HR department (seriously!)

To start it off, here is a product a work associate recommended to me after I had complained about some pain in my right forearm after a long day of tedious mouse clicking. The Evoluent Vertical Mouse is designed for comfort and the promotion of neutral wrist and forearm posture, thereby eliminating the risk of pain conjured by resting your arm awkwardly on your desk while you click away your day. Although it certainly took me a while to get used to the different layout of the buttons, and the somewhat extreme sensitivity of the mouse, I definitely noticed less stiffness in my arm at the end of the day.  Although I was somewhat baffled at first over why there were 5 buttons, as opposed to the 3 I’m used to on a normal computer mouse, I eventually discovered that you can actually program them for different functions within various applications.

Office master recommended!