new glasses
Jan. 12th, 2007 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioGrumble. This should not be this difficult!
Yesterday I picked up a new pair of glasses. There were obvious problems with bifocal placement, so I returned today to see what could be done. (The bifocal for my dominant eye was not centered left-right in my field of vision, among things.) They made some adjustments to the frames (so maybe my glasses are a little off-center now? can't tell).
That gave me enough to reveal the second-order problem: the bifocals are fuzzy at the old focal distance, and the new focal distance is too short. It was already short; reducing it from about 9" to 6" is Not Acceptable. This is most noticable with a computer monitor, but it applies to print too.
The ophthamologist (/optician) was there today (that's why they said I had to return today to deal with it), and he said the price of good distance vision is poorer close vision, or something like that, and really, I need to get a special pair of computer glasses. He started by saying that using a bifocal to read a computer screen is bad ergonomics anyway; I said I've been doing it for close to 30 years. He countered with "your eyes have changed in 30 years", and I responded that they haven't changed appreciably since yesterday, when this worked fine with my old glasses. He suggested that there's an adjustment period, which I was willing to grant, so I took the new glasses away again.
I don't think adjustment periods can fix focal distance, though. That is a problem. I think he's right that the distance vision on the new glasses is a little better than on the old ones, but he didn't warn me that the new prescription would impede the bifocal so. If that's a trade-off, it needs to be a customer-specified trade-off.
Why can't I have both? The bifocal is just a magnification layer on top of the base (distance) lens, but why can't we precisely control that layer? And if layering can't yield the results, is there any technological reason one can't make an actual compound lens, with part of the base lens sliced out and replaced?
I'll try the new glasses a while longer (I won't be using the computer on Shabbat, after all). Maybe I'll get lucky. But I suspect I'm going to be back in the optician's office on Monday.
Without blinking I would pay a four-digit number of dollars for user-adjustable glasses, even if I had to look like Geordie LaForge (though I'd rather not). That would give me both context-switching and adjustment over time. Depending on the specifications, I'd pay a lot more. Being able to see as well as possible is important. Is there anyone in this space of optics work who can deal with an end user (with an end-user's budget)?
Going back to the optician's "you're not young any more" comment, I asked why my coworkers my age and older don't all have two pairs of glasses, and he said my eyes are Hard in ways theirs probably aren't. (He also accused them of abusing their eyes.) His answer for me is separate pairs of glasses, but management there is an invasive hassle. I did have a pair of computer glasses once (when my employer was willing to pay for them); changing glasses every time I got up or sat down, and sometimes just while in my office but switching to speaking with a visitor or using the whiteboard, was a real hassle. And that was without the problem of carrying them around. (I didn't carry them between work and home.)
Yesterday I picked up a new pair of glasses. There were obvious problems with bifocal placement, so I returned today to see what could be done. (The bifocal for my dominant eye was not centered left-right in my field of vision, among things.) They made some adjustments to the frames (so maybe my glasses are a little off-center now? can't tell).
That gave me enough to reveal the second-order problem: the bifocals are fuzzy at the old focal distance, and the new focal distance is too short. It was already short; reducing it from about 9" to 6" is Not Acceptable. This is most noticable with a computer monitor, but it applies to print too.
The ophthamologist (/optician) was there today (that's why they said I had to return today to deal with it), and he said the price of good distance vision is poorer close vision, or something like that, and really, I need to get a special pair of computer glasses. He started by saying that using a bifocal to read a computer screen is bad ergonomics anyway; I said I've been doing it for close to 30 years. He countered with "your eyes have changed in 30 years", and I responded that they haven't changed appreciably since yesterday, when this worked fine with my old glasses. He suggested that there's an adjustment period, which I was willing to grant, so I took the new glasses away again.
I don't think adjustment periods can fix focal distance, though. That is a problem. I think he's right that the distance vision on the new glasses is a little better than on the old ones, but he didn't warn me that the new prescription would impede the bifocal so. If that's a trade-off, it needs to be a customer-specified trade-off.
Why can't I have both? The bifocal is just a magnification layer on top of the base (distance) lens, but why can't we precisely control that layer? And if layering can't yield the results, is there any technological reason one can't make an actual compound lens, with part of the base lens sliced out and replaced?
I'll try the new glasses a while longer (I won't be using the computer on Shabbat, after all). Maybe I'll get lucky. But I suspect I'm going to be back in the optician's office on Monday.
Without blinking I would pay a four-digit number of dollars for user-adjustable glasses, even if I had to look like Geordie LaForge (though I'd rather not). That would give me both context-switching and adjustment over time. Depending on the specifications, I'd pay a lot more. Being able to see as well as possible is important. Is there anyone in this space of optics work who can deal with an end user (with an end-user's budget)?
Going back to the optician's "you're not young any more" comment, I asked why my coworkers my age and older don't all have two pairs of glasses, and he said my eyes are Hard in ways theirs probably aren't. (He also accused them of abusing their eyes.) His answer for me is separate pairs of glasses, but management there is an invasive hassle. I did have a pair of computer glasses once (when my employer was willing to pay for them); changing glasses every time I got up or sat down, and sometimes just while in my office but switching to speaking with a visitor or using the whiteboard, was a real hassle. And that was without the problem of carrying them around. (I didn't carry them between work and home.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-14 03:20 am (UTC)