I Can Has Chair!

The VESA adaptor arrived. After a moment of panic from the box (“49-inch monitors have two different mounts; be sure you have ours”), it turned out fine.

The chair (it’s also the desk) is a little on the YUGE side for the room, but it does fit. I’m typing this in the reclined position, which is more than a bit strange, but it seems to work just fine. The trick is to have the neck pillow in the right place.

Installation tip: Attach the message (mah-saj should be spelled differently than mes-age) cables right after attaching the chair. I had to undo things because I couldn’t get them through the cable run with the chair bolted to the back.

This has exposed a Windows weakness: Each app can only have a single audio output. The message synchronizes with audio input, but if you switch the app’s output to the chair, you can’t hear the music; you just get your butt bounced in time with it.

The angled desk is going to take some getting used to. One cannot put anything on it or when one reclines, the thing falls onto the floor, which is mostly out-of-reach. Now I understand why it came with a phone holder.

I got a new keyboard at the same time, so there’s that, too. The old one (Corsair) started losing keycaps, then fracturing the things the keycaps attached to. Apparently, my angled striking of keys is not the proper technique. This one (Roccat) was on sale – and it’s also RGB – for a whopping $29. At that price, it’s hard to go wrong. We shall see.

For those of you not following the chair saga, it started about two years ago. After a hiatus, I was inspired. Then it arrived and I mostly put it together. Tomorrow will be its first working day! I shall be more upright. This is getting weird.

I haven’t attached the back plate that covers all the cabling. I have three mysterious not-computer power cords coming out of the UPSes (wedged in behind). I’m sure they’re for something. Starlink is up. Firewall is up (left upper monitor). Router is up. Automation is up (right upper monitor). Wireless headphones are charging. Oculus is sitting in a drawer, somewhere, but its cord is accounted for. No idea what they’re for. Even leaving that aside, something is undoubtably hooked up wrong.

Oh, speaking of which, if you had taken the bet about the upper monitors being in the wrong position, you would have won. I raised them two spots. That looks fine on the ground, but rotated up like this, another one or two spots up would be better. The angle change on the curved monitor covers up a non-trivial amount of corner on each.

I’m also not sure what to do about the monitors not being on a UPS. It doesn’t do much good to have time to shut the computers down if I cannot see to do so. The plug on the pre-run powerstrip is some non-US thing. It fits fine into their other powerstrip, but I can’t just slap an extension cord on it and plug it into the UPS. I don’t want the chair on the UPS because who knows what kind of spikes the reclining motors put out.