Ever since we were born, we see a myriad of “broken” entities – broken things, broken emotions, broken promises, broken trust, broken relationships etc.  However, it doesn’t quite mean that broken entities can’t be fixed. One such incident that happened today makes me optimistic.

It so happened that I, along with my better half, went out to dine at an Italian restaurant. When we reached there, we were put in a waiting list with 45 minutes estimated wait time. So, we thought we would take a stroll in downtown menlo park. An Indian handicraft store soon caught our attention. We decided to check it out. Amazing artwork and immaculate craftsmanship on intricately carved marble stones left us wondering. A beautifully carved Taj Mahal made from white marble caught my attention. I was curious to know what it was priced for. After searching for it for a while, I decided to look beneath the art-piece.  So, I lifted it with my hands and inverted it but before I could be happy to find the price sticker and read the price of the item, there were quite a few things falling off and breaking from the taj mahal. The dome, the minarets, the roof – everything fell piece by piece and broke. And this was after my better half had warned me to carefully handle the items sighting a sticker on the display shelf that read like “its nice to look at, great to handle, but if it breaks, its considered sold”. Cutting long story short, I had to buy the Taj Mahal in its broken  form. And this is how it looked:

Before I used my shoe-goo to stick it altogether :

The moral of the story is :

“If something is broken, doesn’t mean it can’t always be fixed“

PS : An interesting observation is that I have been singing and playing the song “Free Falling”  (John Mayer’s version)  the whole day before something actually “fell off freely” at the end of the day. LOL

After a long gap, I decided to learn a new song on my guitar last friday night – Free Falling from John Mayer. Please press play to listen. You are welcome to leave comments.

I have always wanted to have an ergonomic set up at home for working long hours on my computer. After a thorough research I finally managed to find the right equipment to achieve  back-friendly ergonomics.  Here are my choices and reccomendations:

Desk

Any Solid Wood of standard height will do with at least an inch thick table top (to attach the keyboard tray) will do. Don’t buy “engineered” wood. Ikea, Kmart, Walmart are bad places to look for.  If you are on a budget like me, I suggest looking on craigslist (thats how I got mine). I bought a Solid Oak Desk through CL for $100 and spent another $40 for the U-Haul. $140 for a Solid Oak desk  is not bad. A new one will cost at least $300. Another  “must” is that the desk should NOT have drawers underneath it. Space underneath the desk top is best left empty to accommodate for your leg space. Here’s how mine looked like :

Keyboard Tray

I seriously recommend the Humanscale Keyboard Tray.  It costs a few hundred bucks but is worth the money spent. If you don’t care for used ones (like I don’t) then try craigslist. I got mine on CL for just $95.

It is very easy to install.  Since I got mine from CL, it was missing the screws to attach the base of the tray to the bottom of the desk top.  The right screw size is : #6  1/2″. I got a 98 cents pack from Home Depot that has 8-10 screws. Note, its important that your desk top depth is at least 0.8″ to accommodate for these screws.  Here’s how you go about installing the tray:

1. Screw the metal base underneath the desktop

2. Detach the Keyboard tray base and the arm so that you can slide the arm to the metal base you attached in step 1.

3. Slide the arm over the metal base

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4. Screw the keyboard tray base back to the arm.

External KeyBoard And Wireless Optical Mouse

I highly recommend purchasing an external keyboard and external mouse  if you are going to use a laptop.

Chair

Herman Miller Aeron may be the most popular ergonomic chair but once you try Herman Miller Embody, you will not like anything else. Its very expensive so you will have to view it as an investment.  I ordered mine for $1200 (with taxes) from a Herman Miller dealer. You can find the list of the dealers at hermanmiller.com. Note, you will get better price from a dealer than a retailer. But, you won’t be able to return the product or exchange it. The 12 year guarantee from manufacteurer (herman miller)  will be the same though. A retailer was selling the same chair for 200 above that cost. Another thing to consider while buying the embody chairs is the color. I chose a dark color as the lighter one gets faded and looks bad. It also shows dust and stains if any. These chairs come with standard carpet casters. Therefore, I advice getting a combination casters (both for hardwood floor and carpet) for an extra $25 (dealer’s quote, retailer’s is $40).