Badtux the Snarky Penguin

In a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin.

Religious fundamentalists are motivated by the sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, is having fun -- and that this must be stopped.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Agh my aching eyes!

Well, it finally happened. This aging penguin's eyes got to the point where they couldn't focus on stuff near to the face, like books and newspapers.

The answer: Bifocals. Sort of. Oh my poor aching neck! Either I have to look up to see the entire computer screen through the bifocal part (and have to move the screen closer to me too), or I have to look down to see the entire screen through the top part of the bifocals (and move the screen further from me). I was better off with plain glass lenses for everything but reading... agh!

I guess it's time to look into that laser eye stuff... at least if that works, I'll just need reading glasses.

Sigh, getting old sucks. The alternative, of course, sucks worse, but...

-- Badtux the Middle-aged Penguin

Posted by: BadTux / 1/25/2006 08:24:00 PM

Comments:

As you say, the alternative is worse. Laser is a temporary fix. If you can hold on for a year or two, they should be perfecting the surgery for farsighted people which should help to eliminate the issue of reading glasses.

I've been waiting since I was 4, it won't kill you but if you are a hasty penguin you might not be eligible for the more effective surger Soon we will all have 20/20 eyes or extremely large fonts.
# posted by Debra : 25/1/06 11:15 PM

surgery, I was typing without looking. sorry.
# posted by Debra : 25/1/06 11:16 PM

Actually, I'm near-sighted, about in the middle of the range where current laser surgery technology works really well. I don't even have any astigmatisms or anything, which means that the new "wavefront" technology, while impressive in its ability to map the cornea, probably isn't necessary in order to reshape my cornea. Laser surgery for nearsighted people in my range of nearsightedness is now a mature technology, though there are still some improvements to be made.

The problem is that when I wear my old pair of glasses, I can see things far away but not up close, making it sorta hard to read. Without my glasses I have to hold a book, like, 2 inches away from my face. The solution was created by our old pal Ben Franklin: Bifocals. The top part of my prescription is my normal 20/20 vision one, the bottom part is 1 diopter weaker (or something like that) so that things at reading distance look fine. I look out the bottom part to see things up close, and the top part to see things at a distance. Works fine if I'm, say, driving my car, where flicking my eyes down to see the speedometer uses the bottom part of the glasses, flicking them up to see the road uses the top part of the glasses. I imagine it worked the same when old Ben was riding a horse too. Thing is, Ben didn't use a computer, which is neither up nor down. Either I tilt my head back to see the whole screen up close, or tilt my head forward to see the whole screen at a distance, either way it's a pain in the neck (literally!).

So right now I'm moving my screen up, down, back, forward trying to find a place where it doesn't make my neck hurt. I suspect that Real Soon Now I'm just going to say "f*** it" and get a pair of computer glasses and haul two pairs of glasses around (one for normal stuff, one for working on the computer). Oh well, at least I have that choice...

Oh, the other recommendation of the eyeglass folks is the new "progressive" bifocals. But those are an even bigger pain in the neck. Sigh. I wish I had 20-year-old eyes again...

-- Badtux the Myopic Penguin
# posted by BadTux : 26/1/06 12:17 AM

I've finally gotten used to my progressive lenses. It took about 3 weeks. Driving was interesting at first.
# posted by Fixer : 26/1/06 11:58 AM

Yeah, I still haven't ridden my motorcycle while wearing the new bifocals... I'm waiting until I'm used to them first. Motorcycles are dangerous enough even when you *can* see!

The thing about the progressives is that I read by looking at the whole page ("speed reading"), not word-by-word. So progressives simply won't work for me for reading.

- Badtux the Middle-aged Penguin
# posted by BadTux : 26/1/06 12:47 PM

The other thing you can do is to hold CTRL and press the + key. Do that until the letters are big enough to see well. Once or twice is enough for me.
# posted by SB Gypsy : 26/1/06 1:26 PM

I think there are things called computer glasses... don't know much about them...
# posted by Anonymous : 29/1/06 8:14 AM

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