unproductive but geekishly fulfilling things to do at work part 2 (a.k.a. how to almost break a chair)

my new job doesn't involve products with code names, and telnetting into external websites doesn't work anymore (and there is only so much satisfaction you can get out of pretending to be a browser, given that most webmasters are incompetent, lazy or both ;)), so i've been forced by boredom and pure geekish innovation into new avenues of discovery.

my subject: my trusty chair.

my chair at work has been promoted from a piece of furniture to a complex system of all kinds of complex machinery, and i've realised (in sparsely distributed moments of wisdom) that there's much more to it than meets the eye.

initial exploration of my chair was limited to getting it to a point where i could sit comfortably in it. now that that objective has been fulfilled, the next thrust of exploration was to get it to a point where i could comfortably sleep in it (sleeping being a close second to sitting when it comes to things that i usually do in my chair, and definitely the most enjoyable...so far :P)

as an aside, just like maslow's hierarchy of needs, i have my homegrown hierarchy of knowledge (kristopher's hierarchy of knowledge, if you like)

a thorough discussion of the hierarchy will have to be postponed to another day (and another rambling, almost-pointless blog post). for now, it will suffice to say that i just attained its highest level w.r.t. the chair :D

so yeah...the highest level: discovering things about the chair that do not affect my comfort (either sitting or sleeping) in any way. this involves finding out what mysterious and highly inaccessible knobs and levers do, since they obviously do something, but were meant to be used by a chair administrator rather than a general user.

for example: there's a knob right below the seat in the centre that adjusts how responsive the backrest is when tilting back/forward. not terribly useful, unless you're particularly malnourished or are too light to muster the force to tilt the chair when you lean (believe it or not, there actually are a few such people in my class...i intend selling this vital piece of information to them for a price :P)

ps: there was supposed to be a punchline here, but i forgot it as this post has been saved in my drafts for over a week. what an anticlimax! i should do this more often :D