Is there an upgraders anonymous?
So let’s just jump straight into it. I think, I might have a problem. I’m a gadget freak, I get the latest gadgets all the time (when I can afford it), and I’ve even dabbled in writing reviews for gadgets to justify my acquisition of new gadgets. I sell old gadgets to fund the acquisition of new ones. If I were into cars, I’d probably be that guy who takes a $27k Honda Civic and dump $40k of upgrades into it.
To many of you that might not be a surprise, you’ve seen me upgrade lots of things over the years, from laptops, desktops, meals (high five for the McRib with hashbrown sandwich), flights; you name it, if I could upgrade it I probably did. This year alone, I acquired a Dell desktop computer (not known for being upgradeable) and I replaced the stock heatsink, with a noctua tower cooler, replaced all the original case fans with Noctua fans all so I could get an approximate 5 degree lower air temp when I look at a program that tells me how hot my computer is running. I even replaced the crappy dell power supply with an EVGA 600W one because POWER! In less than a year, I upgraded my video card from an AMD 7750, to a Nvidia 960 and finally a Nvidia 1060. Upgrading, it’s a thing I do. I’ve always done it.
Getting back on topic, how did I reach this realisation that I might have a problem? Well this weekend, I upgraded my desk chair.
I don’t mean that I bought a new desk chair, no, that would actually make sense. What I did instead was replaced the crappy casters all desk chairs come with to roller blade wheel style casters, each capable of supporting 650lbs each or so the box claims. In addition, because my desk chair kept sinking (hey I’m a big guy, what can I say?) throughout the day, I upgraded the gas cylinder/lifer of my chair, from the one it came with that has a max of 250lbs load to one that according to the amazon page, says supports up to 1000lbs (I hope I never get to test that maximum limit).
All in all I spent an additional $60 on top of the original cost of this $90 chair, it’s comfortable, keeps its desired height, and roll-able; I’m quite happy with these upgrades, for now. I would like to see if I could retrofit a raspberry PI into this thing to dynamically adjust height, back angle and lean as needed (or maybe not, I’m also extremely lazy). But I still think I have a problem, I mean, how many people do you know went so far as to “upgrade” their desk chair? Not too many I bet.
Also in other weekend news, I upgraded my desktop computer from a SATA based SSD to a NVME based SSD. It’s at least 3x faster than my previous setup but that’s another story. Links below to the wheels & gas cylinder, also to the desk chair I upgraded.
