As far as health benefits I've experience, it's about the same as last week, seem to have a bit more energy at work, and faster recovery time after a heavy lunch. I have no reported weight loss at this time, but even if I burned an extra 100 calories a day by standing, it would still take more than 10 business days to lose even 1 pound, this is something that's more of a health benefit over time rather than a quick loss scheme.

Still no issues to report, no injuries have occured, no athlete's foot or sore joints, all's well with the standing desk, I do encourage the use for anyone interested.

We're brought up to think of November 11th as a day to remember the sacrifices our brave men and women have made to preserve our freedoms, and we thank them for that.

What we're not brought up to do is think about everyone else affected by war other than ourselves, our version of the heroes, afterall it's always an Us vs Them war we're fighting. We're not brought up to think of the enemy, or the enemy's family and children. When we say a prayer for the fallen, the fallen enemy is not usually included.

So I simply ask that this year, and perhaps even next year, and the year after that, we can remember that war not only affects us, but it affects everyone equally, and if we can come up with solutions in the future to avoid bloodshed, then we should follow through with those solutions.

On remembrance day, and veterans day, we're not only remembering and honouring veterans, we're remembering and honouring all victims of war, whatever race, country or creed.

Overall it's gone very well. Energy levels overall have improved at work and after work. I think my energy level may have improved overall even before work, but then again I may simply be waking up more refreshed because of the Daylight Savings Time switch this week, so I'm not counting that.

My legs are doing fine, my arms feel good, as less time sitting in a chair has meant less time for my elbows to sit on the arm rests of my chair, so I think it's actually helping my arms as before I had some pain down the ulnar nerves and carpel issues.

While standing at my desk, I've been more free to move around and exercise a little(Keep the abs tight, stand straight, squats, etc), it's so easy when you're already standing and have a clear area.

The feet aren't hurting too badly yet, my back is fine and my legs aren't hurting as much as they were the first few days.

I do take my lunches sitting down, and I keep a chair in my cube if I feel like a sitting break. Overall it's looking like there are going to be no issues the second week, after which my desk will be transformed from temporary to permanently standup.

I've set up my desk temporarily to accomodate the standing:

My current temporary standup desk

I'm currently using empty paper boxes to prop up two laptop docking stations, which allows me to have the solid surface I need to properly use a keyboard and mouse(Again the point isn't to injure myself with a difficult to use set up). I removed the monitor from its base and was able to squeeze it into the overhead compartment above my desk which also fits my laptop for dual screen use. Over the next few days I'll be finding a better solution for my phone, but otherwise I feel it's a pretty sturdy temporary setup.

My goal: To trial this desk style for 2 weeks and see how I feel over the course of the trial run and how I'm feeling at the end.

I'm currently on Day 3, I'm not going to put an entry in for every day as that can get tired quickly so I'll recap week 1 and then recap week 2, as well as recapping days 1-3 in this entry.

I started on Thursday, it was a bit of a challenge but the initial fun of trying something new was making it easier to stay on my feet. It took some getting used to, at first I didn't use the docking stations and only the boxes. This made it more difficult and by the end of the day my wrist hurt a bit from mouse use.

The docking stations went up on Friday and have made things much easier. Standing the second day was beginning to hurt and make it more difficult to stay focused some times, but at other times it helped. It seems to be a matter of getting used to it, mostly the bottoms of my feet hurt.

The weekend gave me some time to recover a bit in time for Monday, which is today. It's been much easier going, I've found myself taking fewer sitting breaks, and my feet and legs don't hurt as much. Generally it's been a good experience so far as I really enjoy the freedom of walking around my cube, or outside of my cube, it's amazing how easy it is to just do a quick pace around while waiting for a slow program to load, or save. When in a chair you can't really do anything, maybe spin or just tap and wait, but when standing, even 5 seconds is enough to just get a quick stretch in.

Overall I'm feeling confident about the switch. How I'm feeling Thursday night after 7 days may be something else.

I want to write about the effects of standing. If sitting is so bad, then standing must be good. This isn't 100% accurate, as with sitting too long, standing too long also has some bad health effects. So if you're like me, and think having a standing desk will be a good idea to try out, make sure to take some time and find out the health effects and how to go about using a standing desk to maximize your health, rather than simply trade in your higher risk for DVT for a higher risk of Vericose veins.

When I was researching the health benefits, I found a lot of articles, such as this one over at Harvard Business Review about the benefits of standing, or this one over at TreeHugger.com, and of course there's also articles to be found over at eHow about the benefits of a standing desk. Either my reading comprehension is low or none of them talk about standing for too long or incorrectly.

For your reference, here's some basic information from the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety about standing at work:

1. Basic information on standing
2. Foot comfort and Safety at work

If you don't want to read up on all of that but still want to go gung-ho on standing desks, here are just a few things to keep in mind that I picked up on in my reading:

• Move around! In all of the articles I've read about standing for too long, the #1 cause of issues is not moving enough. Standing straight all day causes your muscles to tense up, not getting the oxygen they require, poor circulation, and locking joints. Simply moving from one foot to the other counts, but you should also walk around your cube, go socialize, etc.
• Wear comfortable shoes that have arch support. You're now making the decision to stand almost 8 hours or more a day compared to when you were sitting. Your old shoes won't cut it, unless of course your old shoes were the right shoes for the task that is. Without proper shoes, you can cause fallen arches(flat feet, as a result of misaligned bones), blisters, corns, rheumatism, bunions or sprains. Not to mention if your shoes don't breathe, standing on your feet that much longer in a day will cause them to sweat, which can cause athlete's foot.
• And lastly, when you sit all day it's recommended to take frequent breaks to stand and stretch. Now that you're doing the opposite, it's a good idea to take sitting breaks, it gives your legs a chance to relax a little and get some circulation going.

Stand up desks are much healthier when used correctly, and I hope more people will start using them in the future, but I don't like how nobody talks about safety when making the transition, so I'm hoping this may have helped at least one person out there.

I will be conducting my own experiment as I make the transition to a standup desk, look for that in the coming days.

Sporting a 6.2 inch 16:9 display on the controller, and having the ability to play some games without a TV is appealing to me if I want to share the large TV screen while I play on the controller, but this only works with games that don't use both the TV and the controller, of which I'm sure there will be few, since from the gate most publishers will probably want to use the TV+Controller combo as some feature. The controller can't be used as a portable gaming system, which probably disappointed a few people, but it does make sense that just after releasing the Nintendo 3DS, they wouldn't have released a console that would directly compete with such a big part of its business, but I do see some WiiWare(WiiUWare?) games coming out in the future that mainly use the controller screen for such a purpose, especially considering it has the touchscreen + stylus.

I've also seen some of the Super Mario Bros. Mii, which lets players use their Mii characters as players, it looks good, hopefully it's a good sequel to New Super Mario Bros. Wii, it looks like a lot of the same, which is good since I liked the last one. What does annoy me a bit is looking at the screenshots(Below) I always see Mario, it makes me think it will be the same as New Super Mario Bros. Wii where the first player must always be Mario. This is annoying to me, sometimes I want to play as someone else, like the underdog Luigi, or in the case of SMB Mii, I'd like to use my Mii, but if I'm playing alone and I have to use Mario instead, this would be annoying, and I truly hope it's not going to be an issue, but I feel it will be(From a branding standpoint, they probably need Mario to be in every shot.)

I'm also waiting to find out more information about what it can do as a system, and also what price point they're expecting. Does it play movies and/or music? Can it stream from my computer? Will it cost a crapload, or just the modest amount we've come to expect from a Nintendo product?
Edit 06-16-2011: I've just learned that there will be no DVD/Blu-Ray playback capabilities on the Wii-U. The official word is that most people will have a device that plays movies by that point, and so to save costs of hardware and patent licensing, they're simply cut that option. If it helps keep the price down, I'm for it, I don't need another movie device that badly

Here are the only answers I've got, this is directly from Nintendo:

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Here are some press images from Nintendo:

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Hopefully someone finds this useful, though there are probably a million of these already online.