RSI at the Coc

Repetitive Strain Injuries, or RSI are a debilitating condition which can make life as a CS grad student extremely difficult (typing is a repetitive task). Its symptons include pains, tingling, numbness in hands, arms, shoulders, necks andother body parts. Although it's hard to point to a specific piece of equipment that will help alleviate or avoid RSI, it's very easy to identify habits that will hurt you.
Introduction to RSI
Resources at the College
People to Contact
Wei Han (weihan@cc.gatech.edu, (404) 894-8791), Alexander Stoytchev (saho@cc.gatech.edu, 404-894-6064) are the Graduate Student Committee RSI Representatives. They are the first person you should contact if you have any questions about RSI or are experiencing any sort of regular pain.
Mailing Lists
rsi@cc.gatech.edu
To Subscribe, send email to majordomo@cc.gatech.edu containing the subject "subscribe rsi"
Discussion Forum
This forum is to discuss rsi-related issues.
Equipment
The college has a lending library of equipment you can try out for a month at a time while trying to evaluate the best setup for yourself.
Other Resources

Introduction to RSI

Repetitive Strain Injuries, or RSI are a debilitating condition which can make life as a CS grad student extremely difficult (typing is a repetitive task). Its symptons include pains, tingling, numbness in hands, arms, shoulders, necks and other body parts. Although it's hard to point to a specific piece of equipment that will help alleviate or avoid RSI, it's very easy to identify habits that will hurt you. The typing injuries FAQ has a good description about how to avoid injury as do the other sites listed in our resources section.

Below is a short summary of some advice from those web pages which you can follow to try to reduce the risk of injury. HOWEVER this is not guarranteed to work, and if you are experiencing pain, it's very important that you see a doctor (most students have free access to doctors in the student health center).

Habits:
the most important habit you can develop is to take regular breaks. Every hour, you should take at least at 10 minute break from typing. Ideally, you should do some stretches, walk around, and RELAX during this time. Some people recommend taking a 3 second break every 3 minutes just to look across the room (exercise your eyes) and relax. There's a program installed in ~public/bin on the solaris machines called xwrits which can help to remind you to take breaks. There are many other programs available on the net.
Posture:
Basically, in order to avoid strain injuries, you should work in neutral posture. This means back straight, neck straight, wrists straight, and knees and elbows at 90 degrees. Your feet should be resting on something. (All of this can vary +- a few degrees according to what you find most comfortable.) If your environment prevents you from working in this position, something is wrong with it. You can often fix whatever's wrong by adjusting the height of your chair (piling 2 chairs on top of eachother if they're not adjustable) or sitting on phonebooks or putting phonebooks under your monitor (if it's too low). Ideally, your environments should support correct habits (eg a pillow at the level of the lumbar region of your back can help you to sit up straight.

Lending Library

We now have the beginnings of an rsi equipment lending library, which includes a kinesis keyboard, a floating arms keyboard, etc.
If you want to check one out, send me email and I'll arrange a time hand it off to you. The idea is to try different equipment for a month and then if one keyboard or mouse helps you, we will work with you and secure one for your work needs. A big thank you to the College of Computing for sponsoring this lending library!
weihan@cc.gatech.edu