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)

Getting Old and Realising that Some Projects *Do* Fall into the "Too Hard" Basket...

Every time I see the mass of multicolored cable bundles behind the dashboards of cars and planes, and also the trouble that folks go to to not only access those areas to begin with (i.e. pretzel sausage origami, plus effectively dismantling the whole interior - stripping away panels / etc.), but to then make tweaks +  fixes (i.e. tracing what each cable does and where it goes, etc.), I'm glad I decided to stay away from DIY-ing any stuff like that OR working in fields that do it.

 

The SWE part of me wonders why they don't just like simplify everything to like aggregate all the cables into bigger feeder boxes for each subsystem that then only export a single cable that goes to a central thing that delegates throughout the rest of the systems... then you'd maybe only have ~5 (?) fat cables to deal with?

Then again, if they did that, that removes a lot of the redundancy and systems isolation (i.e. single direct circuits!) we kindof expect safety critical systems to have 😬

 

On Outsourcing, Delegation, Code Review + Mentoring of Juniors, and Alternative Paths Not Taken

This started as a series of response to a thread discussing Boeing's disasterous decision to outsource the coding of their firmware "to the lowest bidder", with the thread starter originally claiming that "you still have to spec and test" the outputs of those outsourced workers. In general I agree that, the senior folk who were responsible for writing the specs that the code followed (AND most likely should also be responsible for testing/verifying that the obtained results were fit for integration into the codebase)  *SHOULD* bear some responsibility for ensuring that the work done is up to required standards. However, I'd also like to point out that in many ways, this way of working is in many ways much harder for everyone involved, so the blame-torch shouldn't be aimed at these folks dropping the ball (save for complete systemic dereliction of duty). My own mini-thread of response follow (inlined together + tweaked to follow read a bit better).

2024 Recap

Happy New Year!  Time for a brief recap of 2024 I guess.

Main Highlights

* Trips to Mt Cook, Sydney, and Wellington

* First full year at work supporting the important operational system we're responsible for (and getting it stable / fixing all the major-ish quirks that popped up after it launched in late October 2023)

* Taking the plunge and getting a new camera setup (Canon R5 - Mirrorless) after years of using my trusty Canon 7D

* Capturing multiple Auroras, after years of trying unsuccessfully

* Starting a mini collection of my favourite aircraft as detailed diecast models at 1:200 scale (i.e. Emirates A380 + Cathay Pacific 747 in old "green-white-stripe" livery)

* Finally getting a heatpump for my main home-office  (hot room days be gone!)

* Hosting visitors a few days ago + reconnecting with a bunch of old friends

* Returning to actively posting longer-form posts on here (after a few years away mostly posting on Twitter) 

   * I'm still trying to figure out some plans for migrating off this platform onto a more stable / sustainable solution under my own control...

 

Firsts

* Spending time actually exploring the Mt Cook national park  

* First overseas trip post-COVID 

   * And, actually, having this happen after actually contracting COVID for the first time - probably at a local healthcare facility

* Flying in Premium Economy - especially on an A380 flying out of my home airport - that I paid for myself.

* Visiting the Blue Mountains + various other Sydney locations

* Seeing + Photographing an Aurora for myself... and from my back yard at that!  Then getting to do so again multiple times again during the year!

* Capturing a kookaburra + pelicans + "garbage bird" in Sydney