I've always worried what the long-term consequences of staring into a terminal for more than an hour or two at a time. Surely, staring at approximately the same focal distance without much blinking is going to cause some sort of damage if it happens for years on end.
And to be honest, I've been doing exactly that for at least the last eight years. I don't get the impression that my vision has degraded significantly in that time, but I certainly wouldn't preclude it happening in the next eight years.
So now that I've got awesome medical insurance, I went to a local optometrist and had an eye exam and a chat about staring at these computer screens so long each day.
Medical optical examination technology lies somewhere between the goofy 1950s-style mask-looking lens rigs and wavefront sensing equipment developed sometime in the early 1990s. Of particular fun was the machine that shot puffs of air into my eyes to measure the amount of tension in them. Wow.
The exam reinforced essentially what I already knew: my vision is really damned good—better than 20/10, which is around the maximum limit for human vision. The doc also informed me that when my eyes will go bad, they'll tend toward being near-sighted...which sortof sucks.
Most importantly, I was able to get a prescription to reduce eyestrain at mid-range focus (right around the 44" between my head and my monitors at my workstation) and cut down on any extra UV and glare. Bonus.
And plus, the frames are rockin'. Maybe I'll post pictures when I get them, in 5–7 business days.
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