Episode: 3593
Title: HPR3593: Home office setup mouse shoulder and Auto Hot Key Scripts
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3593/hpr3593.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 01:53:58

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3593 for Wednesday the 11th of May 2022.
Today's show is entitled Home Office Set Up Mouse Shoulder and Auto Hotkey Script.
It is hosted by Operator and is about 23 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is I talk about my issues and solutions for desk ergonomics.
Hello, I'm one look at the episode of Hacker Public Radio with your host operator.
Let's see the next one on this here is Home Office Set Up Mouse Shoulder.
If you're working on an office environment, you're probably not practicing proper posture.
There are tons of videos and stuff out there for proper posture or whatever.
Ideally, the simple way to say it is that closer you want to keep your elbows closer to your core,
towards the inside, your core is your stomach.
Just like when you lift your legs, not with your back, keep that core close to your body.
If you find yourself, which ruined my back, if you find your stack of shoulders,
if you find yourself extending your arms out, that weight just holds your arms out for more than a minute,
and you'll start feeling that weight pull on your shoulder muscles.
You do not want that, you want your shoulders to be relaxed.
Keeping my back straight and having my shoulders relaxed is very hard for me.
My shoulders will usually tense up or I will need to hunch over,
and you can record yourself a timelapse, which is one way to do it,
and just watch your posture kind of degrade, honestly, over time,
as you get comfortable, horrible things like sitting on your legs,
that if you Google mouse shoulder exercises, there's only like four videos on it. Those are pretty good.
I have a little rubber band here, TRK, brand rubber band.
I had cheap, you know, cheap Amazon, cheap whatever rubber bands,
and they were just the exercise bands that are real thin.
One of those, this is a legit straight up, you know, a quarter inch thick rubber band,
and I have it wrapped around the two wooden dowels that,
because when you're holding, obviously when you're holding a rubber band that's thick,
it's going to kind of rip on your skin.
But I got these two rubber dowels, made a lasso, tied to not in the middle,
to give it a little bit more strength.
And if I'm waiting for something to finish, waiting for something to download,
and recording a podcast, I can exercise these muscles.
And it's the, I don't know what the exercise is,
but you take it, put it out in front, put those arms out in front,
hold onto it, and then you stretch it, and keep stretching it.
And I count to 10, and I do 10 more.
And if I can get to the next 10, then I'll do 10 more.
And I keep adding 10 more onto it, until my arms, you know, I can't do it anymore.
I try to, at least.
So that helps just kind of idling, obviously getting upstanding.
I have a standing desk.
I have a 340, 340, something for it.
I just look at somebody trying to sell one.
This is a dual.
So what you want to get is a dual motor.
Obviously, I would think, because if you have two motors,
they're better than one, right?
If you have two motors, it's lifting it evenly, more evenly,
and it's getting support on both sides.
The desk is heavy.
You don't, you're not kind of forced to put the motor on the side of the desk.
It's heavy.
My workstation here is on the left.
It's not heavy, by any means.
But my laptop is over there, and also I have a speaker, and I have a monitor.
It's also done.
It's actually a lot of weight.
But this standing desk has, you know, three standing basic stuff.
What I'll say is, the hard part is the cable management.
And making sure that the desk can go up and down without catching on stuff.
You want to be aware of that.
The desk, the rolling chair thing I have is a fabricated piece of plastic,
which you're not going to get.
But they sell a lot more no crack lifetime warranty desk rolling things.
Now, back in the day, they were all made out of crap plastic,
and they would dry right now.
They would last a while.
The difference between the ones then and now is that the ones now
won't crack, but they will divot.
And they will weaken.
And you'll end up rolling.
You'll have these divots where your wheels are supposed to be, or not supposed to be.
And you'll fall into those divots.
With this piece, you know, this is like a $200 piece of plastic I got from my dad,
who does plastic custom plastic tape.
But with this giant plastic piece, it's got nicks and scratches in it,
but it's never going to have any divots.
It's not going to rot.
It'll be here when this house burns down.
Like, it's going to be the only thing left.
I love this thing.
It's awesome.
I wish everyone could have one.
I love it, and I've used it forever.
Now, my wheels.
I wouldn't suggest these skate wheels.
It's cool, and it looks cool.
They are rollerblade wheels for your desk chair.
They're cool, and they're slick.
Now, if you run a shop, an IT shop, or a tech shop, and you're constantly like sliding over here to pick up something,
and sliding over there to pick up something, and you're leaning,
and you're doing a lot of back and forth, then you might want these high speed.
They're essentially high speed wheel, the very frictionless wheel.
Now, think about frictionless chair.
Now, if you're sitting in a chair, you're naturally going, your legs are naturally going to want to be tensioned or flat.
They're supposed to be flat, and your legs are supposed to be at a 90 degree angle.
The problem with doing this is that when you rest your arms where they're supposed to go,
you'll start to float away from just by the nature of how your muscles work.
When I scoot up to the desk, my body floats away, I don't know, two inches.
So you have to scoot up farther than you think.
You'd scoot up, and then you'll float away to the desired position.
And then you continue to just kind of keep floating backwards,
because it's so frictionless, you're like trying to use a keyboard and mouse on a boat,
and naturally you're going to flop around.
So the wheel's frictionless wheels sound like a good idea,
but I think the actual plastic wheels that come with this chair were probably better,
because they stay put.
You want to stay put when you're rolling around sliding over the freaking place when you're trying to do something.
The other advantage there is that if you do like to move around, you can,
but that's what the standing desk is for.
You don't want to sit a long time, you don't want to stand a long time.
You just don't want to do anything for a long time.
So, you know, try to start outstanding.
If your feet start to get fatigued, then you sit down,
and then hopefully by the end of the day, you haven't been sitting down for four hours straight.
Try to make yourself set a daily alarm to go walk.
Do your stretches, do the armbain here.
Your legs to 90 degree angle, not hunched over, back straight.
You want your back straight, but you want back support too.
And then I'm struggling with this workstation up here in my office.
Home office, I can sit on the computer all day, and my hands are frozen,
but that's a different topic altogether.
But I can sit on the computer at the office all day and be perfectly fine.
This desk for whatever reason, I'm not able to find that sweet spot
that doesn't destroy my back and shoulders.
Not lower back, it's that forward neck syndrome, mouth shoulder syndrome.
And what I found out here is that the desk is slightly higher than my elbows.
And it works to support my shoulders and back,
and takes that strain off my back, and I can keep my back straight.
But I'm still, you know, I'm still worried about, obviously,
if I'm, if my wrist are higher, or if the table is higher,
it's cutting off the blood circulation on my hands and wrist.
But I'm moving my hands enough to where they're getting whatever.
I have a left-handed mouse, which is Jesus.
There aren't really any good left-handed mice.
It's also an ergonomic left-handed mouse.
So there are some mice that you can, that are interchangeable.
This is Aceto A-D-E-S-S-O, brand mouse, model E9.
I mouse, model E9.
It's a left-handed ergonomical mouse.
The problem with it is it is all sticky.
And I had to put some gaffers, some nice cloth gaffers tape on it
to make the thumb position not be just greasy,
because hands are oily and gross and disgusting.
So I found when my thumb was getting in the side of the left-handed ergonomic mouse,
it just felt greasy all the time.
So I put a little piece of tape there.
The other, as someone else mentioned, that when you're using an ergonomic left-handed mouse,
or an ergonomic mouse, a general that's up and down,
it kind of fits in your palm and feels, it feels right.
It feels more ergonomic.
But when you click, try to think of going against gravity to click.
It takes, it's very subtle and it hasn't bothered me.
But someone did mention that instead of having that downward motion to click,
you're with an ergonomic mouse that's at least not a track ball.
It's up and down the vertical mouse.
You have to use that extra energy to click.
And accuracy is kind of weird, at least with this one,
because I'm clicking with the tip of my finger almost instead of the ball.
I guess I can, no, I can't even click with the middle of my finger or whatever.
I had to kind of click with the tip of my finger.
Anyways, that's left-handed mouse.
Not fun.
I have some auto-hacky scripts.
I'm like, get hub.
If you want, it's under or scripts auto-hacky.
I'm not going to put it in the show notes because I'll never remember.
It's an auto-hacky, auto-hacky installer that will do all kinds of stuff.
It will anti-idol.
It will turn on, have hotkeys for...
I black and white or vision impaired or high contrast.
I'm going to add a lot of contrast mode switching through all Def1 and Def11,
as profile-based.
Depending on your IP address, it will load a specific profile.
So my gaming machine, I start it, boom.
It loads all of my stuff that I want to do for my gaming.
This left-handed mouse is actually left right,
so you're not supposed to switch the buttons, like you would traditionally switch the buttons on a left right.
So, if I go here and I work on the office, then I switch to the right mouse left trigger
in the AutoHotkey switch, but then I go home, and that same laptop is now backwards on
my left-handed mouse because it is logically right, right swapped on the left-handed mouse
to make, you know, the right-click, the left-click, and the left-click, the right-click, so you
don't have to swap it.
It's a little confusing, I wish they would just stick with one of the other so that I could
always just keep it on left, or always keep it on right, but I guess the idea is that
I can plug in this left-handed mouse, and I don't have to do anything, it just works, logically
like you would think it would.
What else have I not talked about?
I said, the standing desk has two motors, I pay $3.24 or $2.44 or something, I bought
my own piece of wood, it's an MDF, don't get a wet wood, nice particle board stuff.
Don't let it get wet for too long, and you're fine, I've, the one I had previous was also
a particle board, but this one's now attached to a standing desk deal, I don't need to save
this actual position because it's helping.
And you don't want arcs or back too much, you want to kind of have your back straight,
but not arched backwards, because that's going to make things worse.
So if you find yourself hunching over and you arch your back backwards, that's going
to make it even worse, because your back is going to, your shoulders and back are going
to tire out much faster than if you were at kind of the neutral position, and the neutral
position for all of us is hunched over the keyboard, but if you're up and down and you're
not putting too much back arch on your shoulders and back, then you won't lose that, get that
back fatigue, if you have the support and the lumbar, which I didn't have, more so kind
of, I'm more, instead of legs being flat, I'm almost leaning forward a little bit.
So you know, you think of the guy, the typical IT guy way back in the chair with it refined
as far as it can go, and of course the seat part, you know, is that a 15 degree angle
suit shooting up in the air, that is the exact opposite of what you want.
You want it, you want to be heavy feet flat, you want your eyes parallel with the top
of the monitor.
I mine's lower, actually as low as it will go right now, because my desk is a little bit
higher to give me that support that I need for my shoulders back.
So mine should actually be a little bit lower, but I can't get it any lower right now.
But you want kind of, for me, since my screen is maybe a little bigger, I don't know why,
but it's very subtle, but if you notice that your neck is getting fatigued, and you can
pinch the back of your neck, and it's strained from basically holding your neck back, you
need to lower your monitor, and maybe it starts out that way.
I had mine slammed all the way to the ground, and I had the monitor all the way down.
So I was almost like, I felt like I was almost looking down at some point.
But now I think I've kind of got it in a butter zone, where it's slightly, ever so,
maybe three inches lower than I level, actually it's right at, I level right now.
But before I had it higher, and I was looking up, anybody that's put their TV over the
fireplace, you'll recognize this, because the second you sit down, you're like, in the
front row of the movie theater, and your neck is jacked up, and you're wondering, you
know, why you can't, you know, you want to hurt yourself.
Same kind of thing.
You don't want to be looking, have your neck back arched when you're trying to look at
the monitor, but you do want that high level, top of the screen, high level, what else can
I say?
You know, these little gel pads for the keyboard, gel pads for the mouse.
Neither one of them are good.
I don't think you want to be typing for a long period of time with one of these.
You want that wrist support, but you also don't want to be typing as much as you need.
You shouldn't have to need this.
You shouldn't have to need to, you know, to have a foam thing for your keyboard, or a
little foam silicone pad for your mouse, silicone pad for you.
You shouldn't actually need them.
The idea is that you should move around dynamically enough to where you don't.
I actually envisioned a keyboard that rested at my core and kind of hung around my neck
like one of those guitar pianos, and I could use that, like a, like a regular ergonomic
keyboard where the keyboard is split, mount, a light, super light weight, a framing system
for it, and where it around my neck, like a rope, and if I was doing a lot of typing,
I could essentially stand up, not have my hands, you know, wherever I could have my hands
down, and just kind of type at my core, and then move the mouse, you know, had the mouse
relatively close to my hand to my waist, and I could move the mouse there, but that would
involve moving the monitor and having all kinds of crazy stuff set up.
But ideally, you want, you know, everything to kind of be at your stomach core, I feel
like, you know, it might be completely off.
Look at that idea, of course, bombed.
So I have a right-handed mouse for the gaming, because you're not going to be able to go
full left-hand.
On the desktop, I'm pretty much full left-hand.
It took, I would say, a month of straining.
I still don't have that accuracy with the left-hand.
It's going to take another year to have that accuracy with the left-hand that I do with
the right-handed mouse, but you can't play games with the left-handed mouse.
It's just, the keyboard is not made for left-handed people.
All your hockey's, everything is out of the right, I'm wrong place, your old tab is
on the wrong place.
So I have, in my auto-hockey script, I have number pad bound to functions you would use
with your keyboard, your right-hand.
So whatever key combination you would hit with your left-hand and or right-hand, I have
now bound to key like copy paste, switching windows, switching tabs, closing tabs, closing
windows, and I try to use those, but I find myself using all tab a lot when I should be
using the one in the zero key.
So with that, there's still some mental mapping machine, or a mental memory, muscle memory
that has to go into tab management, but once I get past the tab management, I think I'm
going to be able to go full left and not have to touch that keyboard.
The idea is that if I find myself, you know, taking my hand off the mouse, that should
be a macro, right?
If I take my hand off the mouse, that should be a macro.
I shouldn't have to like washy washy my hands across, if I'm typing words, then my
hand should be on the keyboard, otherwise my hand should not be on the keyboard.
They should be on the number pad and the mouse and have that distance between, and I'm
not straining to try to like, wafidoo my hand in the middle of the keys, and then my
mouse is over here.
So it's kind of the theory is to keep everything at its core, and you know, comfortably in a
comfortable place, and not have the, you know, wishy wash, to move the keyboard around
or whatever.
Let's see, I think that's it.
The mouseholder exercises yoga at night.
There's a postuse, I'm just supposed to do it in the morning, but we do it in the morning.
At night, we make each other do it.
It's nice if you have a partner to help you, push you through, keep you doing it.
But I do a lot of exercises, these little baby cobras help, they'll make my shoulders pop
like crazy.
I have them like rotator cuff issues, because I fall on bikes, has to do with some of it,
but just standing up, stretching, doing, you know, stretches, and yoga at 15 minutes, and
you'll find out your trouble spots.
For me, I've got like issues with my, you know, hips and piriformis, that's just from
sitting on my legs, or just sitting in the chair and properly for 20 years.
And as I get older, that's why I switched to a left handed mouse, because I'm left handed
one, and two, I already have, you know, essentially, carpal from playing video games for two years
straight.
So, instead of, I don't know, I guess I'm going to ruin both of my hands, but instead of
having, you know, a really bad right hand, I'm going to try to give some of that right hand
relief from the mouse clicking, and hopefully my wrist won't be completely destroyed by
the time I get older, so, um, that, I think, is pretty much it.
One other quick point is, I don't know if I did, I didn't do an episode on this, maybe
I did.
It's a Murphy workbench.
I got two fancy three one foot arms, three foot arms, two foot arms, a metal foot arms
for, uh, the wall, and they're a little retracting foot feet, so it's retracting table that goes
on the side of wall.
It's a Murphy table, but it's, I don't know, four feet up, my wife says it comes up to
her eyeballs, so if she were to trip and fall, it would like, you know, poker and eye,
I have rounded off the edges, because if I get up in a fast hurry, the way I have it
designed in the office here is that I get up real fast.
If I'm not paying attention, I will run into the corner of the desk, but other than that
it's great.
It's great for, um, doing electronics and stuff like that, because every single workstation
I've ever worked on, I find myself hunched over and trying to, like, look at something
with my geek goggles on, um, little magnifying, you know, magnifying headsets, band things,
um, those are great, but I kept finding myself a, not having my own space, it wouldn't
be destroyed by my child, and be having to be hunched over everything, like even on
the bars at the, in the kitchen, that's not tall enough for me.
It needs to be like, at my almost that shoulder level, basically too high, um, but I love this
thing.
It's great.
I can fold it out, do my work, clean up most of the mess, fold it down, wipe it off,
and then vacuum, um, up all the dirt and stuff, so I don't have to do anything as far
as clean up.
I just fold it down, all the dirt falls off, and I vacuum up the dirt, and I'm good to
go.
Um, as far as ergonomics go, that helps, you know, if I found myself working on electronics
and being hunched over, you know, the dining room table, and then by the time I'm done,
I want to, I want to die, because my back and shoulders are so jacked up.
Anyways, if anybody has any hints, tricks for mouse shoulder or upper body pain, um,
let me know.
Um, just stay active, stay moving, take walks for lunch, figure in the meeting, go take
a walk, um, if you, if you can't do exercise weekly, you know, cardio weekly, at least,
you know, do a bike trail, or I used to do airsoft, I'm going to have to switch to bike
trails again.
Um, do like yoga, if you can, if I don't do it for a day, I notice, because everything
goes pop, and everything will, will feel a lot more, um, crunchy, essentially, when
I don't do yoga for like a day, I'll, I'll notice.
Anyways, um, hope that helps somebody out, you know, stay moving, stay positive, and
uh, go from there.
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