Bye bye Treadmill Desk

I am not using a treadmill desk anymore...The Big Head decided that this was not acceptable and ordered the desk moved out of my office. I had asked him previously whether it was okay for me to change my office and my desk and do something new and he had said "fine fine, do whatever you need" but I guess he changed his mind. I have really missed the treadmill desk. Hopefully, I'll be a graduate student in a couple of years, spending my time in research and not working for fickle bosses and trying to keep officers from multinational corporations like 'Environmental Menace' happy. I just realized that I didn't even get a picture of the treadmill desk before they dismantled it. Oh, well. *sigh*

Checking In: 2nd Week of Treadmill Working

My treadmill squeaks! It's really annoying and I'm hoping to have a tech guy here sometime soon to figure out what's up with that. Maybe it just needs oil or something. I noticed my parents' treadmill (same Nordictrack brand) does the same thing and I just never noticed before. And I wish it were easier to turn the thing on and off...but otherwise, it's awesome as ever. I haven't been eating very well recently so I'm not expecting any weight loss right away but I can feel that I've been working out my leg muscles and such. Certainly all my students dropping by my office have found it interesting. And all the ladies in the main office were jabbering on about needing a fitness room (and a bathroom since the nearest one is across the building) in the office.

On a sad note, someone stole my bicycle a week and a half ago. I've had that bicycle for at least seven years now and my stainless steel water bottle was in the holder and the bike had all my cool bumper stickers on it (including Obama '08 and Globalize Human Rights and Are You Good for the Environment) and now I can't get to my class from work without sneaking out early and hightailing it back afterwards. I felt really crummy about going to campus for a while afterward. Like someone had walked by and spit on me...Why would they steal my bike anyway? I don't think it's worth anything.

The Time is Here, to the Treadmill We Cheer!

So, I'm doing it. I'm writing this post at my very awesome treadmill desk, at work. I'm using a Nordictrack C2155 and the desk is a very sturdy and heavy wooden desktop (that was in storage/trash at my workplace) placed over two file cabinets (about 52" high) on either side of the treadmill. The thick wooden board/desktop was exactly a foot longer than I needed it to be and the awesome facilities guys took it down to their shop and cut it to size for me (note that it doesn't rest on the treadmill at all, it's independent of the treadmill though it does block the console and I have to reach underneath to turn the thing on). I then borrowed a screwdriver and drill and installed (and then uninstalled and reinstalled, repeat once) the keyboard tray I had the office manager order for me last week. So the keyboard and mouse are at the perfect ergonomic height for me and I have even more desktop space than I had before. My office is now in total disarray because I had to move so much to get everything set up but otherwise I am good to go. I spoke on the phone with the 'Environmental Menace' executive yesterday while on the treadmill and he was none the wiser. One thing I don't like about my current set-up is that the printer is up on a shelf of my bookshelf and the printer is not one of these small home doodads...it's big, freaking huge. It shouldn't be on the shelf and certainly not where it can fall and damage the treadmill, but I need to be able to access it easily while at my desk and the last thing I want to do is put it up on the desk where it would take up a lot of room and block my view of the wall where I've posted flowcharts and such. So that's one problem I haven't quite solved yet. Oh, and the other problem is I can no longer listen to NPR when I come in in the morning because the treadmill messes up radio signals from here to New Hampshire. Seriously, I tried moving my radio to the lounge down the hallway and it played nothing but treadmill static even that far away! I'm not too too devastated about this though. I assumed that this would be the case and fortunately I know that I can listen to online radio too, even if they don't have the channel I'm used to.

Noise: The treadmill is very quiet, much quieter than my air conditioner in the window. It just makes this swishing sound similar to what it sounds like when you go through a car wash and locked in the car you can hear the swish of the water and brushes...I think that's a good analogy anyway. I've never been in a car wash that sounded noisy from inside the car. :-)

So, of course, I need to take some photos now. As soon as I can figure out what pile my camera is buried under...

Robot Thought's Office Treadmill Desk

Thanks, Catfiend for these additional links...

Building a treadmill desk

Walk and work

Slow... Deep... Breaths...

FOX16 blogs

Losing weight on a Walkstation

The Veal Farm

Building a treadmill desk

Walking while you work

Walking and working

and here is Brad Rhoads blog where the wheel is already rolling (the one I am reinventing, silly me).

Wikipedia's Treadmill Desk entry

Treadmill Desk: Lose 57 lbs in one year...really

This is a great place to start as it's a real compendium of information with links to audio, video, and the posts themselves are a goldmine.