I’ve been thinking recently about items you use a lot in life. For example, the internet thinks we sleep for 20+ years in our lifetimes[1][2]. As well, the internet suggest a person with a desk job will spend 80k hours sitting [3]. What does this mean? It means that you shouldn’t skimp on your mattress and your chair! In fact, you should buy the best mattress you can afford. Well…no, you should by the best mattress on which you sleep well and should try to not be price conscious. Same for your chair and your desk. So if you recall Ashley’s Law said:

If you don’t have it, you can’t use it.
– Ashley Jones, 2011

So the addendum would be:

If you’re going to use an item for more than a 1/4 of your life, it should be a quality item you didn’t skimp on.
– Ashley Jones, 2013

The list of applicable items should be quantifiable! Despite having recently purchased not one, but two cars, I would say for most folks they don’t spend 1/4 of their lives in their cars. So, unless you’re a trucker, my advise is to not spend a lot of money on your car.

Speaking of this new addendum, I wanted to set up my iMac to be mounted on an articulated arm on my desk so it could be be the perfect ergonomic height when I work on it for hours a day (8+). This would also giv my desk those really clean lines with the monitors floating over the surface. Here’s my advise to those who want to also endeavour to have this setup:

• The $115 Ergotron MX will indeed support a 2012 30lb, 27″ imac[4]
• Be sure to get the iMac VESA mount[5] and not the Cinema Display mount which is cheaper[6]
• Read the instructions for your iMac VESA mount carefully.
• Especially the warning after step 4:
• If you don’t follow this step and after you take off your iMac stand you see the VESA mount suck back into the dark depths of Mordor[7] otherwise known as the inside of your iMac, chill out. Go down stairs and grab a cold beer. Crack off that top, take a nice long sip.
• Back with your beer? Great. Skip the the top search result[7] which you find where they say you’ll have to disassemble your entire iMac and void your warranty to get your VESA mount back out:
  

  Hopefully you can fish the inner bracket back up and out the slot, because if not the iMac may have to be completely disassembled to recover it.

• Take another sip of beer.
• Check out the post waaaay down yonder in the search results. That’s right, the one with pipe cleaners[8]. See? You’ve got those supplies in your house to fetch that nasty guy back out. Here’s another variation that I came up with:

  Yes, that’s right, using some needle nose pliers, some picture hanging wire or what ever else you have around the house, you retrieve your precious and get back to setting up your desk.

After heeding my own addendum, following the wire cutter’s advice on standing desks[8] and recreating the “you can’t stump me, I’m the internet” solution to get my VESA mount back, I have a great desk set up that’s really quite nice. I highly recommend treating yourself right with the items you use the most: