Enshittification Rant - On the inanity of "modern data-driven" hiring processes...

Was reading this morning about yet another story of someone doing the job hunting dance, and getting some kind of role-unrelated "statistics test" thing...  (Thankfully this sort of thing didn't apply the last time I had to go through a recruitment process a few years ago... and with luck, won't have to again - or at least not for many many years to come, fingers crossed!)

 

More likely than not, the following happened:
* Previous long time HR person retired (there's a big wave of this happening everywhere). 

* They replace them with one or two younger job hopping ones. The ones that stay like 1-6 years at any place, and then chase a promotion elsewhere

* These roving marauder folk pitch to their manager that they will help "modernise" their hiring practices, with "data driven insights" and so forth to ensure they can "better select the right fit" or some synonyms for all of the above, generated by LLM of the week

* Of course, this will sound awesome to the higher ups. All those buzzphrases always do, as they imply "progress" and "improvement", and most importantly, provide a bunch of juicy trackable metrics that seem less arbitrary

* They implement such hiring process changes, and then likely get handsomely awarded in the company employee awards the next year  (which naturally helps them in their next leap)

* In the meantime, the hiring process has now gained:
  * An AI based resume scanner  
  * 2x phone screens with the recruiter team (or their AI surrogates)
  * 3x online quiz tests (e.g. personality, behavioural, and some kind of "basic competence" test)
  * Possibly a recommended "take home" test or similar + (increasingly prescriptive) guidance to interview panels on questions to ask

Granted, you now have a lot more folk using LLM's to generate their CV's and spam them everywhere, even jobs they are totally not suited to, in the hope that something sticks... but still!

Yay (NOT!) for everyone apeing what they heard from MBA school + trickle-down rumor blogs/podcasts about what hip innovative things the BigTech titans had been doing... 🙄

Linux Rant / Wishlist - The Ongoing Quest for Achieving My Dream Desktop Setup

Yet again, I was recently reminded about how *ALL* current desktop environments suck rather badly when it comes to doing "session management" in the way that I want.

 

In short, my bottom line is:

Every time I wake up my computer to get some work done, I want it to effectively be in the exact same state as I left it (at least from "My POV").  This matters as I typically have several different projects on the go at a time, and want things in a particular state, ordered + grouped in a particular way.

 

What Currently Happens:

* Every time a system / browser / etc. update happens, a non-trivial chunk of my setup gets blasted away

* When it comes back, most if not all that state is now in a scrambled state that needs me to waste 10-15 minutes restoring it back to the way I want it, e.g

   * On Home Windows Boxes (after a forced update), 

        * I only get back my Firefox windows on the right workspaces, and "maybe" if I'm lucky, all the folder windows I had open. 

        * Everything else (terminals, text editors, git clients, temporary reference image windows, etc.)... ALL GONE!

       * Worse still, when I restore my Sublime Text windows, they all open again on the first Virtual Desktop, so now I have to spend time clunkily dragging them back to the ones I want them on! 

       * The only saving grace:  My VMWare virtual machines all just get suspended, and then when I reanimate / restore them, they are exactly as I left them, each with their own window grouping state (like with the VNC sessions at work, but local)!  Hmm... now there's an idea! 

   * On Work Windows Boxes (after a forced update - which happens once a month)

        * Email usually comes back by itself... Usually... unless it is somehow time delayed, and now I get 2 from trying to open one myself 

        * I have to 2FA log back into 3-5 different SSH tunnels, so that I can then revive the corresponding VNC sessions. But, I need to space each 2FA login apart by 1 minute per attempt (assuming I don't typo the password, and need to try again a minute later again)

        * I then need to restore my browser windows:

           * Chrome for our internal tooling nearly always loses its open tabs (due to an IT policy), and so I have to spam the Ctrl-Shift-T key to bring them all back. With luck, I haven't also been kicked out of the tool, and need to re-sign in on the first such tab (or else all of them end up in "log in again" mode that doesn't take nicely to double-submits)

           * Firefox for external "out in the wild" browsing 

       * Oh, and Teams... yeah, that thing never comes back after an update, and you have to search for it in the laggy Windows start/search thing, as pinning it doesn't work either (as the reinstalls always invalidate the old shortcuts!)

   * On KDE Boxes

       * Only the windows in the first workspace get restored

       * Terminals and Dolphin windows all get closed, leaving only a single instance of each, stuck in your home folder (i.e. useless)

           NOTE: Initially I was quite excited to see that both of these included a "Restore Session" option, thinking that this would be great for this very case.  Unfortunately, that implementation is so braindead borked, that I have to leave it off!  I mean, the problem is that it doesn't just do that on Machine / KDE Session restart! It does it every time you go to the taskbar launcher and try to fire up an extra window/instance! So, all of a sudden, you have double the number of terminals/folders open, all showing all the tabs you've already got open... UGH!  That is so utterly stupid!

Windows Rant - The tyrrany of Windows Updates

Since I've mostly been ranting about Linux configuration / migration type things here in recent months, you may be forgiven for thinking that I dislike Linux, and would love folks to be using Windows instead!

Alas, that couldn't be further from the truth! I just couldn't be bothered inflicting a medium-long form rant about the tyrannical regime of forced Windows Updates!  (Those who follow me on Mastodon will however know that I do rant about this much more frequently:  About once a month currently, as that's the frequency of the forced Windows 11 machine reboots from IT at work, while my personal machines are no longer subject to any of that anymore thankfully!).

Since I'm writing this today / now,  you're correct if you guessed that I'm ranting about it right now, as my office computer went offline about 2.5 hours ago for one such forced update, and hasn't come back online again yet!  (With luck, it hasn't bricked itself via Bitlocker, requiring the stupid recovery key to be entered on the physical machine to unlock it... hopefully I don't end up finding out tomorrow morning that that is what has transpired this time again!  While I've had a relatively good run in recent months, my colleague and I have both previously had strings of these BIOS-bricking problems before...),   

Anyway, given that such updates on our work machines typically takes them out of action for anywhere from 1 hour, up to in some cases 3-4  (while the Windows UI always cheerfully predicts "4-5 minutes" (i.e. this time was quite a bit beefier, at 8 minutes instead), I can only wonder how much "lost productivity" there has been *globally* from all these effing automatic Windows updates (as well as the impact of all that global electricity and bandwidth usage shuffling all those update patches around)?!  🙄

So yeah... to say I'm not a fan of this frequent-update-treadmill is an understatement!

 

Rant - Food Labelling / "Imported Ingredients" / Country of Origin

Have you taken a good look at the country of origin of stuff you're regularly buying?

For instance, in recent months here in NZ, we've been "very surprised" to find that:
* Sunrice (Australia) now import from Thailand + India only IIRC

* Practically all cooking oil now comes from Malaysia... But god knows if some of that actually secretly comes from China now! (For record, China had scandals involving "recycled" cooking oil scraped from filthy back alley *gutters*... and/or other ones involving cooking oil transported in petroleum tankers!!!)

* Equally disturbing is how we're increasingly having no local garlic across increasingly many months (I.e. used to be only summer, but now winter too), with only the Chinese produced ones (looking way too artifically uniform)/beyond stocked!

* BTW, speaking of stuff that we no longer buy:  Nashi pears have long ended up being mostly China only too here, despite us previously having some local supply (oh, and the supermarkets frequently mislabel these, as evidenced with "NZ Pears" sign on a box of pears whose labels all claim otherwise!)

 

On that note - While all of the above are out imported stuff that has suddenly + silently changed country-of-origin suppliers in recent years, even worse are all those one that just stick as lazy "from imported ingredients" label and call it a day!

As soon as that "packaged here, but of imported ingredients" gets slapped on, they literally give themselves the license to import random crap from anywhere - AND they would still be justified in saying that the label was technically still correct in what nonsense it was spewing.

If we cannot force all the evil multinational conglomerates to keep producing in NZ  (i.e. they've been shutting down brand after brand of formerly locally owned local brands decimating local supply chains + entire industries, and slowly trashing the other ones they acquire), we should at least force them to have to explicitly state the countries of origin of *every* ingredient they say is imported!  

(e.g. A particularly evil variant I've seen is: "Made in NZ from local and imported ingredients" - WTF?!   Are the *key ingredients* still NZ produce, or have they just gone "imported produce + NZ water to top it off"? 😡) 

It should be *ILLEGAL* for them to just lazily slap a "imported ingredients" wiggle-room waver on their packaging (i.e. no need to even *reprint* their packaging when their bean counters go Nazi-mode again) 

Firefox Tweaking Tips - Easier Access to "Page Info / Media"

I recently learned that there are two ways to make it easier to access the "Page Info" window in Firefox:

In short:

1) The "Ctrl-i" shortcut opens it directly

 

2)  Enable the following option:  "browser.menu.showViewImageInfo".   Then, right-clicking on any images will now include a menu entry to directly jump to the "Page Info window's "Media" tab", with the relevant image selected

Apparently the following Bugzilla issue was tracked this through to completion (whereas the linked issue to put back easier access to this in a few extra places is still a pending todo even today, YEARS after the easy access functionality was removed!)

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1692553

Linux Rant - Session Restore Not Working

It seems my ongoing quest to set my machines up to seamlessly maintain state through the inevitable forced updates that still need to happen will likely need to me step in and hack up my own solution!

Right now I need to solve this problem across 2-3 platforms TBH:

1) Gnome - For my work machines, where I've got a specific "6 + 4" window setup I want to have restored each time my VNC session restarts for whatever reason.  i.e. With that, I want a whole bunch of terminal + folder windows opened at specific sizes + positions, each one hosting a mix of some 3-4 different tabs set to specific folders, with specific commands pre-typed into each shell ready to be deployed with a single enter-key press, and/or each maintaining its own command history log.

2) KDE - This is the setup I'm trying to move to for all my personal machines. Currently just on my laptop and a bunch of VM's on my primary workstation. Annoyingly, it looks annoyingly close to doing what I want - but only on a surface glance!

3) Windows -  While in the future this will hopefully no longer be a concern, until then, I still am running Windows as my primary at home, at also have to go via that at work to get into my Linux VNC sessions at work. So, finding *any* way to streamline the process of automating a restore-setup-after-forced-restart is still very important to me...

PSA: You're doing wrong when your stuff-ups become a plot point

Jeez (Big)Tech industry! You're doing it very wrong when not only everyday folks are having to regularly warn each other about your antics, BUT you're also being used as a punching bag *PLOT POINT* in topical popular media, where they explicitly show your products as being in the wrong!

Yes, just the other night, I was watching a movie where a major plot point of the story is that an iOS update ended up inadvertently wiping out a whole bunch of precious and irreplaceable memories. And then just now, I'm greeted by a social media post where some everyday folk are warning that the newest iOS update may end up inadvertently deleting your "Shortcut Automations", as the "trigger mechanism has been rewritten to be part of each shortcut".  While I'm not an Apple user myself, this is still embarrassing to see!

Please do better!

🙄 

 

"AI Smells" in 2026 Software Engineering

Just like how there used to be "Code Smells", there are some remarkably obvious "AI Smells" on code and interactions that feel less than savoury...

* 1) Comment blocks in code that are way more verbose than even most non-lazy humans would produce.  There's nothing quite "wrong" with it - and indeed, in some ways, some of the things it does are quite helpful even for whoever next has to try to unpick how it works - but it also just doesn't feel right...

* 2) Obvious markers and tells - like em-dashes and unicode arrows... (yeah, humans don't do those as they all require looking up the symbols as they're not on most keyboard layouts!)

* 3) Screeds of accompanying  documentation, more verbose than even the most prolific documenters out there (aka *me*!!!) would bother to produce, which also have a nasty habit of burying the lede / not making the key points very obvious to pick out

* 4) Code review comment responses that make you wonder if you should just start being less civil + helpful in your comments, and just more blunt / symbolic (i.e. to "maximise efficiency for the machines"), since it doesn't seem like there's gonna be a human on the other end actually reading those anymore...  

(Hmm... this last part I gotta say does sometimes make you feel a bit empty inside. 

Also, there was a time when I did comment on open source project that seemed to be going on the right track in many ways but had some annoying bugs, only for it to then transpire a few days later that the author admitted the whole thing was "an experiment in getting AI to fully do all the work"... Yeah, I think I swiftly stopped caring about that one right then and there...)

Meh...  😥️

Linux Annoyances Rant - Solutions for Rough UX Sought

This post covers 3 main annoyances I'm currently working on solving across various Linux machines I have to use. I'm mainly only talking about the issues that I haven't got solved on other machines I used...

 

1) Taskbars - Fully un-grouped windows, absolutely not ordered or grouped by window, and able to be freely reordered.

NOTE: I have long had this problem solved on Windows (i.e. using 7+ Taskbar Tweaker), and also on KDE (yay!  Those guys rock!), but on the RH 9 type Gnome-based Linux we're in the process of migrating to?  That's the one I'm currently seeking solutions!  Of course though, all of these could've been solved if everyone didn't do the stupid thing that they learned from Windows 7, OR perhaps they learned that from Apple first?!  Whatever...

2) Gnome Button Ordering

3) Kubuntu (Auto) Update Checks on Resume from Sleep

  

Hard Earned Lessons When Doing Backups on Windows Using Robocopy

This afternoon, I tried updating the set of secondary backup drives I'd previously spent Easter weekend painstakingly (and very frustratingly) spent waiting several *DAYS* to complete...

At the time, I'd ended up doing a bunch of reading, about what may have been going wrong (especially as it seemed awfully slow + hard to predict what was going on / when the copy jobs "may" complete). Well, turns out I needed to call on those lessons today, confirming that that does seem to have been the culprit  (i.e. it had only made progress over like 2-3 folders for the past month's data, when usually each time I'd copied those using Windows Explorer onto another drive, the process was usually way quicker!)

In Short:

It seems that that combination of "robocopy /mt" and "exFAT" drives in particular is slower than a frozen snail!🤬

So yeah, don't do what I did over Easter Weekend  (contributing to over half of my tech pain that weekend):

* 1) Do NOT use "robocopy /mt" when copying to an external HDD - Apparently, the "/mt" arg only really makes sense if you're copying between local drives, and really, only when one of those is a SSD even. (If it's over USB, or to anything other than NTFS... yeah, don't bother!)

* 2) Especially do NOT use "robocopy /mt" when copying to an "exFAT" formatted external hard drive

* 3) Probably do NOT use Window's Explorer's "Format Drive" right click menu to do so either!  (With my other external exFAT HDD drive, I had to get it to do a "scan + fix errors" on it after I aborted the first round of copies!) 

* 4) Oh, and make sure you've got something like "wakepy" running when you start up your copy job, so that your machine doesn't end up going to sleep during the copy operation before it finishes (resulting in a job you thought you left unattended to run as-quick-as-possible overnight actually terminating about 2-4 hours after you left the room) - This last tip applies to both Windows AND Linux...  Both of these apparently ignore the fact that robocopy or rsync are busily chugging away:  Robocopy doesn't set the necessary flag that wakepy does, while rsync on Linux err... I can't remember the details now!   (e.g. See my "wakepy_keepalive.py" script in my "cmdutils" repo)

 

Outcome: 

I've now replaced corresponding flags for the other drive's backup script too, so hopefully that will  faster when I get there!  (There's still half a month's data to copy at time of writing this post)

 

NOTE: The problem isn't as pronounced when the drives were formatted as NTFS, hence I hadn't really bothered. But as exFAT... yeah... big mistake!  (It's too late to reformat those drives now and re-copy them from scratch again without having to waste another weekend. I'm better off making a third set of backups instead, to be able to have rotating backups instead!)

 

Audio Hardware Rant - HDMI Monitor Sound Playback (with no speakers to speak of) + Headphone Woes

 It's quickly turning into one of *those* nights I think:

* 1) Spent ages trying to debug why Firefox was not playing any audio (but MuseScore) was:  Turns out, the stupid HDMI switcher has again caused computer to forget that I've previously hell-banned audio from being sent to play on my monitor via HDMI, but it had suddenly decided again that that is the default location it should go!  

ARGH!

Does anyone sell HDMI cables where the audio pins are purposefully knocked out, and this fact is communicated to the PC at the other end, so it never pulls this trick again?!


* 2) It seems I also need to hurry up the search for 2 pairs of headphones:  My main pair (that I've brought over with me) have in recent weeks developed a very disturbing habit of suddenly and randomly / explosively *LEAPING* from my head and collapsing into a crumpled/folded bundle that lands with a loud thud either on my keyboard, on on the floor!


My main requirements for headphones are:
 a) Ear cups do NOT use PU leather, or equivalents that will flake in 6 months tops
 b) They are better than the crappy el-cheapo Panasonic ones I once got that leaked sound AND had to be turned up to 90% to hear anything
 c) No sound leakage
 d) They don't clamp hard with horrid nutcracker squeezing force (like all those I encountered as a kid)
 e) It has a cable, mounted on the right side only, which is ideally more than 2m long (and/or can be detached, to allow switching out if too short)
 f) Ideally has some degree of noise cancellation / muffling, to block out any annoying environmental noise that may be an issue

Rant About Interminable Roadworks Outside Our House

What follows is a summarised rant about the IMO totally unacceptable, and really poorly managed + executed + communicated roadworks outside our place, that have been going on for the past 3 months and counting now!  🤬

While I accept that roadworks sometimes have to take place, the manner in which this has whole process has taken place has been nothing short of appalling, and completely unacceptable IMO.  (It's all the more surprising, when the council had only just spent a bunch of money getting another bunch to resurface the whole road like 2 years earlier, to the point I thought that we wouldn't need any further works for another decade!)

It's also somewhat galling to finally find that the company ("Hunter Civil") who won that contract / tender, did so on a "Restricted Tender" project (i.e. the council, for all intents and purposes, could've effectively shoulder-tapped those bastards to offer them this "juicy nugget" project - covering a whole bunch of streets, over 6 months... to what extent that is / isn't true is not really something that can be easily found out just yet though - yeah, there's the LGOIA (Local Government Official Information Act) provisions for finding out such shit, but yeah... it turns out you have to pay them to hire / divert a staffer to gather that info for you... and then they charge *per page* copied in addition to their hourly rate around minimum wage-ish spent doing all that... 🙄)

 

Opinion / Rant - Christchurch Protest Zones Ban Denied

TBH, as crude as it sounds, I *DO* support the motion to place restrictions on groups of people protesting at the Bridge of Remembrance (and a few other sensitive spots like the official quake memorial), and think that it is a terrible shame that this proposal got voted down (by such a slim margin, and from the usual suspects too)

 

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/588649/controversial-proposal-to-ban-protests-in-parts-of-christchurch-fails-to-get-off-the-ground

 

Christchurch Wastewater Treatment Stench Rant (+ A Layman's Alternative Interim "Workaround" Scheme)

If you've been following the news from Christchurch in the past week (or my socials for that matter), you'd be aware that this week, we've been *plagued* by waves of a putrid poopy stench (that irritates the eyes and airways, and yes... aggravates asthma in folks like myself). The last time many of us were faced with this stench was for the first half of 2022, after the water treatment plant caught fire in late 2021!

That was 5 years ago now! Yet this, we suddenly have the same bloody problem again!

For additional context:  No we are *NOT* in the "Eastern Suburbs" near where this plant and all the open-air "oxidation ponds" that the poopy water is pumped into are located, next to the Estuary / Eastern coastline lining the Pacific Ocean. Anything past the centrally located "Hagley Park" really cannot be considered an "Eastern Suburb" here, with places like Wigram, Halswell, or out around Burnside/Harewood where the airport is located certainly falling *well outside* the range where you'd expect to smell stuff like this!

Despite all this, and the problem first *really* rearing its ugly head city-wide (after having been a problem for months already in the areas surrounding the plant), the latest council update today says they are still "monitoring" the situation and hoping it miraculously improves - somehow... by itself... when hopefully some algae miraculously grows to fix it!  WTF?!!   🤬 

"Monitoring" (i.e. standing there with you hands to kept to yourself, scribbling away on a clipboard, while peering into the abyss / monitoring screens, staring at the charts) is about as much use as "thoughts and prayers" after yet another mass terrorist / gun violence incident... jeez 🙄

January 2026 - Position on AI

Given the fast moving nature of these things, and how heavily it's still being pushed by all the Big Tech interests, I guess it's time for another update on my current position on AI stuff

 

General Position

Get your stupid effing "Large Lying Model" / "Grand Theft Autocorrect" / "Pervasive Spying Narks" away from me!!!

For the record (even if it's useless actually saying this):  

In general, I DO NOT consent to any of "my data" or any of my work / creative outputs being used for AI training / processing, except for very specific case-by-case purposes.

While I'm asking nicely: Please cease and desist any operations where this may have happened, and delete all relevant records or thus-trained models  🙂 

 

For Coding / Software Development 

For work stuff, my current position on this stuff is:
* 1) If I'm stuck on trying to resolve a sticky "compiler says no" problem (BUT only after having given it a decent stab), then I will now consider getting AI to suggest a fix / solution, since it's there and may be able to help.

I will however scrutinise whether it passes the sniff test for bad code... (and have on a few occasions just thrown that approach out and changed tack, after seeing how bad it can get!)

* 2) For big tricky changesets, I will also ask it to do a pass over the code and check for any obvious issues (since we have found it can catch or at least flag a whole bunch of stuff that tired eyes might miss)

* 3) I've had mixed results getting it to do any bulk code generation (mainly unit tests), and TBH don't trust it to do actual feature implementation (which is usually the fun bit that us humans should get to do anyway!)... so: So far there's really not much need / use for it on that front from my end!

 

Oh... and this only applies to work problems, where work has said we should experiment with these tools + fenced off some "approved" tools that appear suitably tame.

 

(*) EDIT (22 Jan): 

I have also had some luck with getting it to generate a whole bunch of boilerplate for translating between one enum definition, and a protobuf protocol one (that I got it to generate from the first), and then writing all the conversion logic (that would've been tedious to do by hand). The best solution of course is to not need that boilerplate (i.e. the language / compiler should really be able to deduce it itself), but since our environment isn't set up for that sort of "experimental" stuff, having this tooling available when cases like this call for it is certainly nice...

 

For personal stuff:
Nah, I like the challenge / can deal with whatever it is over a longer timespan when I can be bothered...  😜

 

Exceptions (for personal stuff):

* Wrangling intractible CSS / Javascript problems - As those are nasty, and I suck at that

* Wrangling compile errors stemming from trying to build publicly available third-party OSS repos 

Linux Migration 2nd Attempt - Part 2

In this update:

The saga continues. Turns out the distro I initially tried is quite badly configured for what I want in general, but the other two I will subsequently trial will also have their own set of issues too! 

Status: Still trying to figure out a good base setup via a VM.  (Actual hardware support when I finally finish up enough ongoing projects to justify rebooting will be another matter later - and will likely require another round of figuring out if the problems are worth self-diagnosing vs just trying something else)

 

Update 2025/11/12:  I've managed to get the audio problem on my Manjaro VM sorted by running the instructions from https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/Troubleshooting#stuttering-audio-in-virtual-machine, though I did have to restart the VM (as the systemctl command kept complaining about not being able to access other users / etc.) 

Crusade Against Smoking

It should probably come as no surprise to most folk that I am avowedly and firmly in the camp that is against any of the following:

* Smoking

* Vaping

* Recreational Drug Use

 

And yes, in case you're wondering: 

* I class "cannabis use" under "Recreational Drug Use" 

* I can't stand the smell + taste of alcohol either 

 

Rant About Office Chair Sizing

Sigh... it's looking increasingly like I'm going to have to give up on this new office chair after all, after using it in anger for a few days with an adjustable desk that I can try to work around its height-limitations with.

The problem is that it is ultimately way too low for me.

So, just as it was 3 months ago, I'm back to square one in my search for my next long-term office chair it seems.

 

Thoughts on Teaching Human-Computer Interaction University-Level Courses

Those who've followed me on various other platforms will probably have heard bits of this spiel before, maybe worded slightly differently in each instance, but ultimately discussing the same ideas / talking points. So I thought it'd be good to write up a canonical version once and for all - especially since it's unlikely that I'll end up doing this anytime soon anyway  (i.e. never say never, but at least for the foreseeable future in the next 3-5/10 years, I'm honestly not really that interested in a return to academia or teaching).

Key Points:

1) I've seen things. Perhaps a whole lot more than most people get the chance to see, and with a bunch of variables controlled for (or at least held somewhat constant).

2) From my observations, left to their own devices, the majority of students gravitate towards doing certain things that, left uncorrected / undiscovered (until too late usually) practically mean they probably don't learn half the lessons they probably really ought to  (i.e. From my perspective, they practically learned nothing (beyond maybe picking up some new trivia that'll be gone soon after the final exam) and just tried to get an easy pass on a course they may have thought was one of the "easier" ones they may be required to take).  At least IMO.

3) "UCAPT" - A useful mnemonic I developed during my time doing this, which I adopted for evaluating student's work (+ and also later in my own practice) to check if all the necessary things have been accounted for.

The Quest for a Replacement Office Chair - Part 1

For the nth time in as many years, I've recently been hunting for a new office chair for my home office setup.  Unfortunately, every time I go for another round, the options seem to have gotten way worse than the previous round!

To put everything in context, here is my list of (seemingly impossible to satisfy in the current market) requirements:

  a) I want something with an "executive chair" type high-back form factor with sufficient base + back padding 

     (i.e. It should be suitable for someone about 6 foot 1-2'' tall to comfortably sit/slump on it for hours (i.e. no sore back or butt, and head able to easily reach the headrest without having to lean/snap backwards to do so), and also allow me to easily + freely sleep / recline on it via the "butterfly tilt" mechanism - where the whole L-shaped seat tilts back instead of just the back)

  b) It should NOT be made out of fucking "PU Leather" (as I'd have the same problem again in 2-3 years, with yet more bulky trash to find a way to dispose of, along with having to deal with all the flaky mess in the meantime)

    TBH, I don't care now whether it's real leather or fabric. But this fake plasticy leather alternative is definitely out (and I strongly urge you to avoid these too for ANY products you may be considering getting)

  c) Needs to have a gas cylinder that would put the seat at at-least 50cm (and would have weight rating to sustain that, to not degrade over time). 

     It seems that pretty much all newer seats are NOT being made with suitable ones  (either they are too low - i.e. usual situation;  OR  they are don't have their weigh capacity I'd like to have a safety margin on it failing and repeatedly sinking below a usable height)

     Also, I'll get onto this later, but WHY is it that they don't make recliner chairs that sit MUCH higher off the ground?!   (It is a serious mystery why so much of the world is built + designed for mystical MIDGETS! Gah!)

  d) I want *long* padded armrests at decent/adjustable height + a headrest (suitably positioned high up and forward-facing) that I can easily reach it when leaning back for a nap

  e) Does not give me back pain after sitting on it - either just a < 5 minutes trial, or after sitting on it doing work for a ~10 minutes

  f)  It should be built to last (i.e. should be able to take daily punishment for >= 10 years) vs failing in 2 years

  g) For bonus points, it should come fully assembled (vs trying to mate bottom-back cushions and arm rests together... ugh! The last three I've build were physically-taxing *hell* on that front)

 

At least in my corner of the world, a chair matching ALL of these requirements does NOT exist on the market today. I know, as I've gone through the various shops trying all the ones they have on offer.  (There were a few others seemingly matching a good subset of these that I've been interested in trying, but no one *ever* seems to have them on display - in a few cases, they actually left the showrooms like the day before I got there)