Standing and working followup

So I posted last week about trying out standing and working here is the follow up post I promised. I should have posted this earlier but I have been crazy busy all week with a nasty nasty bug in GraphiteCharts for Silverlight that causes chart grids to vanish randomly. Startups man that shit will kill you. Anyway I digress. I don't have any money at the moment and am staying with my folks. When I set up the standing setup my father walked in and said you won't last an hour. He's a doctor, he also thinks I'm crazy for not getting a regular job and as he puts it wasting my life. Anyway. Next morning he walks in, I'm still standing there, yup still working. I half expected him to say something about me being crazy, but instead he puts on his serious doctor voice and says you'll get Varicose veins if you keep that up.

Umm what !

Yikes those things are ugly !

(I can't find a free domain picture so just use google or bing images).

So I google it some more, turns out this stuff is real and a lot of professions where people stand for long hours actively complain about this stuff, for eg. teachers. But initial googling has resulted in conflicting information where some articles say that standing and working triggers it others say it doesn't. I'm afraid I don't have time to read those articles in detail or read about this more. Here are a few

British medical journal says this is a real problem

Some random clinic says standing can accelerate it in people that have a certain valve defect

Another article discussing the hazards of standing and working

I see standing and working really picking up in computer science work, but I haven't found any articles discussing the potential problems of this. Man, so standing will give you ugly veins and sitting all day will kill your back. Another reason to hate computers.

Maybe I'll post this on HN someone out there ought to know whats happening. I went back to sitting a few minutes after I read those first articles.

Standing and working

I've been working seriously long hours trying to get GraphiteCharts up to scratch and its beginning to have an affect on my health. More specifically my back. So starting today I'm going to start working standing up. I got a new, smaller desk and have placed it over my existing desk. Seems to be working so far. But its just 2 hours in and too early to tell.

I had tried this earlier with stacks of CS books but the iMac isn't very stable on a stack of books. I've chanced upon a small desk and suddenly thought of giving this a new shot. Lets see how this goes hopefully it will work out and will also help me concentrate more rather than having to rest my back every so often (note to self: just lose weight you fat fool). I spend around 15 hrs a day in front of a computer of some sort (yeah I know, no life etc. etc.). This has been the case for a while now since the final years of my undergraduate degree through to my masters and now this charting library. I get cramps and pain in different parts of my back depending on different postures I try. So its not working out. Standing is worth a shot.

Obligatory picture below.

Will report back in a week or so about how its progressing.