Top Gunnar

I have always been intrigued that I have gone through my adult life with good vision.  The reason is both of my parents have poor vision and have worn glasses most of their lives.  My sister also has bad vision.  Somehow my brother Todd and I wound up with a decent set of eyes.

As I was in my late 30’s I started getting the predictions from those older than I am, “Just wait till you hit 40!  Your eyes will go to shit.”  Well 40 came and went without my noticing any significant change in my ability to see.  Somewhere around 2-3 years ago that started to change.

My job, which puts me in front of two computer screens for the better part of 40 hours a week, obviously requires non-stop focus on items that are relatively close to my face, roughly two feet with my desk layout.  My vision at my job has remained rock steady, I have no problems reading, close.

However what has started to happen is I struggle reading/focusing on things that are further away.  Reading small text on the bedroom tv that is 10-12 feet away is a challenge.  The most difficult thing for me to read are LED’s at a distance.  If I try to look at the clock on the microwave from more than short distance away it all fuzzes into a green blur.

I HATE to admit to any age related degradation taking hold of my body so I have just dealt with it.

Well yesterday I took a small step to hopefully address the issue, buying a pair of Gunnar glasses.  Many geeks have known about these glasses for awhile, I just heard about them a few days ago, despite being a pretty big geek myself. These are glasses that are designed for people that sit behind video screens for significant portions of a day.

The description for the glasses is full of neato buzz words like, “i-AMP lens technology”, which is designed to help prevent DEF (Digital Eye Fatigue) and CVS (Computer Vision Syndrome).  They also are tinted yellow which blocks “harmful blue light”.

Sure I love tech so tech computer glasses sound cool to me but the only reason to buy them is if they work.  As I looked through the large amounts of Amazon reviews on the glasses the overwhelming opinion on Gunnars is, they work.

I read many accounts of people suffering from tired eyes, eyestrain and headaches prior to getting their Gunnars.  The glasses in most cases significantly improved the problem.  The glasses focus the digital images and also offer slight magnification.

Well this is all well and good but I can still see my monitors just fine and I don’t have any noticeable issues with eyestrain.  However the reason I decided to try a set were a few reviews that talked of similar problems to mine where distance vision was suffering after looking at screens all day.  These people found Gunnars helped that condition as well.

I used my Amazon spiff points to pay for the majority of the cost of the glasses so I had little to lose by giving them a shot.  If they help me read the microwave better down the road, cool.  If they just ramp up my level of  geekiness that is fine as well.  Maybe they will make me at least look intelligent.

Somehow I have managed to find my way back to playing some WoW in recent weeks.  Not only am I playing, I am enjoying playing the game, an accomplishment for a nearly 10 year old game.