speccy four-eyes
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanHi de hi campers.
Late in to work this morning through a complex combination of sloth, bad decision-making and the sheer bloody mindedness of a public transit system that chops and changes destinations on the indicator board and fails to match them with the front of the train. I have lived in Whetstone for a little over three-and-a-half years or so now and I really ought to know better, but old habits and hopes die hard. I still hope for the best that it rarely delivers.
How do people cope with glasses? I have had glasses for a couple of years now, largely for use with the computer and I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the inconveniences outweigh the benefits. Firstly, there is the question of having had eye tests at two different places and coming away with two different prescriptions and secondly there is the entire problem of basic spectacle maintenance.
My first eye test since 1999 was at Specsavers in January 2006. They told me that I was marginally long sighted and wheeled me unceremoniously into the sales room where I was sold two pairs of glasses (though you only pay for a single pair, of course). I rarely wore either pair because when I had them on I could no longer see anything further away than a yard and provided my eyes weren’t too tired I could see close up anyway, thanks very much.
Earlier this year – or was it late last? My memory really is appalling – I went to Dollond and Aitcheson because frankly I wasn’t happy with Specsavers. The upshot is that they gave me an entirely different prescription because I am not long sighted, I have a slight astigmatism, which tires my eyes out if I focus on a computer screen for too long, and when my eyes are tired I can’t focus properly on anything much closer than a foot away; certainly nothing fiddly. So I wear these new specs quite a lot at work and occasionally at home though they are a very weak prescription. They do help, but Christ on a bike, the amount of polishing they need is driving me mad. Where doe the bloody grease come from? I don’t touch the lenses if I can help it and yet I pick the brutes up and they need polishing. It’s almost as if there’s something smeary suspended in the air, which settles on the bloody things and nowhere else. Sometimes polishing them just moves the smears around into new and exiting patterns.
I am beginning to dislike the damned things. I can see perfectly well without them and I’m beginning to think that I’d be better served buying eye drops to cope with the tiredness my eyes feel when I don’t use the glasses rather than stop them getting tired in the first place.
The trouble is, I think, that I have been able to see very well all my life, so I am sensitive to anything that impairs my vision even slightly and at the moment it seems to be perma-smear glasses.
Grumble.
Late in to work this morning through a complex combination of sloth, bad decision-making and the sheer bloody mindedness of a public transit system that chops and changes destinations on the indicator board and fails to match them with the front of the train. I have lived in Whetstone for a little over three-and-a-half years or so now and I really ought to know better, but old habits and hopes die hard. I still hope for the best that it rarely delivers.
How do people cope with glasses? I have had glasses for a couple of years now, largely for use with the computer and I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the inconveniences outweigh the benefits. Firstly, there is the question of having had eye tests at two different places and coming away with two different prescriptions and secondly there is the entire problem of basic spectacle maintenance.
My first eye test since 1999 was at Specsavers in January 2006. They told me that I was marginally long sighted and wheeled me unceremoniously into the sales room where I was sold two pairs of glasses (though you only pay for a single pair, of course). I rarely wore either pair because when I had them on I could no longer see anything further away than a yard and provided my eyes weren’t too tired I could see close up anyway, thanks very much.
Earlier this year – or was it late last? My memory really is appalling – I went to Dollond and Aitcheson because frankly I wasn’t happy with Specsavers. The upshot is that they gave me an entirely different prescription because I am not long sighted, I have a slight astigmatism, which tires my eyes out if I focus on a computer screen for too long, and when my eyes are tired I can’t focus properly on anything much closer than a foot away; certainly nothing fiddly. So I wear these new specs quite a lot at work and occasionally at home though they are a very weak prescription. They do help, but Christ on a bike, the amount of polishing they need is driving me mad. Where doe the bloody grease come from? I don’t touch the lenses if I can help it and yet I pick the brutes up and they need polishing. It’s almost as if there’s something smeary suspended in the air, which settles on the bloody things and nowhere else. Sometimes polishing them just moves the smears around into new and exiting patterns.
I am beginning to dislike the damned things. I can see perfectly well without them and I’m beginning to think that I’d be better served buying eye drops to cope with the tiredness my eyes feel when I don’t use the glasses rather than stop them getting tired in the first place.
The trouble is, I think, that I have been able to see very well all my life, so I am sensitive to anything that impairs my vision even slightly and at the moment it seems to be perma-smear glasses.
Grumble.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-03 10:38 am (UTC)Smears that someone else can see - BAD. It's rather gross to see fingerprints on someone's glasses!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-03 11:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-03 11:28 am (UTC)How gross is that?!
Anyway, as Pete says below, it's only an option if you need constant sight correction, which - happily/luckily - I don't!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-03 12:09 pm (UTC)I only need them for driving and seem to cope with them no matter what the smear/grime level. I probably should go for another test but I'm worried they'd make me buy new glasses and I really like the ones I've got (even if they are slowly falling to pieces) I do occasionally go in to a cleaning fit of trying to get the black gunky stuff out of all the cracks and crevices in them though...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-03 02:53 pm (UTC)Abso-steamin-lutely. As I love to read and write, my glasses are a Godsend.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-03 12:13 pm (UTC)The last pair the other glasses wearer in the house bought, when she put them on they gave her a headache really quickly and she was very grumpy about them. Eventually she took them back and after sending them to the lab they found out that they had been ground to the right prescription but the focus point wasn't the same on both lenses so they were trying to force her eyes to focus in two different places, hence the headache. It took them two more attempts to get them right as the next pair that got sent back the optician in the shop checked out and sent back as they still weren't right. That was D&A too, by the way.
I think if they don't make your sight exactly how you'd expect it to be if you didn't need glasses at all, then take them back and complain that they aren't working right. Sounds like with the first set, if you'd put them on you couldn't have read the eye test board with them.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-03 11:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-03 12:47 pm (UTC)It is a false economy to try cleaning with a huff of breath. I always use the cleaning stuff they sell in Boots. Mine has lasted for ages - over a year - and remember to wash the cleaning cloth regularly or you are simply putting back the grease you took off last time.
When you have only one good eye and one that can see but won't you tend to make sure the good one does not get tired or stressed.