I've suffered from varous RSI related injuries, including bad wrists (initially from too much hard-core mountainbiking, then from too much right-hand mouse usage), bad shoulders (again, sports related injury first, then agravated by too much leaning over the keyboard for my studies) and lower back pain (all computer related - bad posture and no screen breaks).
My solutions:
1. Wrist pain - use the mouse in the other hand! It takes a while to learn to use the mouse in the left hand, but now I can use either for work (but only the right for HalfLife) and I get very few problems. I also do arm stretches from my Physio to stretch the arm's nerves.
2. Shoulder pain - lots of physio to fix it, then discussion with physio about how to maintain it - mainly stretches again, with some (light) weight lifting. That's pretty much fixed now.
3. Back pain - talking with doctors/physios and reading books on back pain, so I learned the problems (which muscles are being put out and over worked) and the cures (correctly setup chair, monitor at head height rather than lower down on the desk, regular screen breaks).
I also tried Feldenkrais and Pilates which worked quite well. These exercises are slow and easy on the body, and they tone and stretch the affected muscles making them better able to support your body's weight.
Bottom line - your body isn't designed to sit statically for 8 hours a day with your head leaning down (your head is heavy!) and your right hand hover over the mouse. It is designed to run about and hunt things! So, you've got to find a compromise between sitting and moving about.
I work for a French research company, at our England office, and my French sucks. I've spent some time in the French office, and found that most of the other coders spoke some level of English (especially the research guys with Phds), so communication wasn't really a problem. Communicating in restaurants wasn't so easy though...
Most books on software engineering are written in English, so our coding norms (and probably others') are in American English, as well as most of the coder's websites. *BUT* you don't code well in isolation, so you'll need to pick up some French slang pretty damn quick:-)
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I've suffered from varous RSI related injuries, including bad wrists (initially from too much hard-core mountainbiking, then from too much right-hand mouse usage), bad shoulders (again, sports related injury first, then agravated by too much leaning over the keyboard for my studies) and lower back pain (all computer related - bad posture and no screen breaks).
My solutions:
1. Wrist pain - use the mouse in the other hand! It takes a while to learn to use the mouse in the left hand, but now I can use either for work (but only the right for HalfLife) and I get very few problems. I also do arm stretches from my Physio to stretch the arm's nerves.
2. Shoulder pain - lots of physio to fix it, then discussion with physio about how to maintain it - mainly stretches again, with some (light) weight lifting. That's pretty much fixed now.
3. Back pain - talking with doctors/physios and reading books on back pain, so I learned the problems (which muscles are being put out and over worked) and the cures (correctly setup chair, monitor at head height rather than lower down on the desk, regular screen breaks).
I also tried Feldenkrais and Pilates which worked quite well. These exercises are slow and easy on the body, and they tone and stretch the affected muscles making them better able to support your body's weight.
Bottom line - your body isn't designed to sit statically for 8 hours a day with your head leaning down (your head is heavy!) and your right hand hover over the mouse. It is designed to run about and hunt things! So, you've got to find a compromise between sitting and moving about.
I work for a French research company, at our England office, and my French sucks. I've spent some time in the French office, and found that most of the other coders spoke some level of English (especially the research guys with Phds), so communication wasn't really a problem. Communicating in restaurants wasn't so easy though... Most books on software engineering are written in English, so our coding norms (and probably others') are in American English, as well as most of the coder's websites. *BUT* you don't code well in isolation, so you'll need to pick up some French slang pretty damn quick :-)