The people who use our boards.

Who are you, and what do you do? What do you like to do outside of work?

I’m Joel Wilcox (pronouns: he/him; other identities: Autistic/ADHD). I’m nearly absent on social media, but operate under variants of the name Hirk Eukvic in the places where I’m present online. The screen name is my given name typed with my hands misplaced on the home row of a QWERTY keyboard; I’ve not discovered any other names that remain pronounceable using that cipher.

Although a former manager accurately described my career track as “bizarre,” I’ve finally settled in as a technical editor and UX specialist. I got here via a convoluted path: immunology research assistant, copywriter, fisheries observer, oil spill remediation, academic publishing editor, technical writer, then training and development QA, punctuated by three halves of a Master’s Degree in Technical Communication.

My day job duties now range from policy and procedure editing to user experience research on our internal systems. I hope to avoid another drastic career change. On the side, I volunteer as a community moderator for ND Connect and mentor other neurodiverse professionals. I have a similar volunteer role with my full-time employer, where I lead neurodiversity employee experience.

I currently live in California with my amazing partner and two cats who function as our “kids.” After work, if I haven’t had enough of writing, I hammer away at my novel. When I’m tired of writing, I build wood models from uGears, dabble in soldering projects, and read fewer books than I’d like to. I have a pass to the US National Parks and try to get outdoors when I’m able. And my life has a soundtrack, because I’m a major audiophile.

What hardware do you use?

Work occupies a lot of my life, but fortunately I still work from home and can customize most of my equipment. My desk is a generic powered sit/stand conversion. It usually stays standing so I can keep my WalkingPad under it. I’ve got a work-issued Dell widescreen monitor that’s VESA-mounted to the desk, and until recently I used a Logitech MX Ergo as my mouse. Then there’s my ZSA setup, which I’ll get to later. As you’ve probably figured, I’m deeply invested in my ergonomic workspace.

My personal laptop is a Framework Laptop 13 based on an AMD Ryzen 7640U mainboard. I like Framework because of the same philosophy that drove me to ZSA: future-proofing, and reducing e-waste. The laptop mostly exists for boring stuff like web browsing and budgeting, but it’s also good for novel-writing.

My audio gear is constantly in flux. In the winter, the core is a Bottlehead Mainline DIY headphone amp, which runs on two Sovtek 6C45Pi vacuum tubes and a single Northern Electric 12AU7. This beast strictly runs in the winter because vacuum tubes are hot, and they make my office uncomfortably warm in the summer. Behind it is an iFi NEO iDSD digital analog converter, at least until I sell it for something else. In the summer, the driving force swaps out to a stack from Schiit Audio (yes, their name is pronounced as you’d expect). The music comes from my Roon server on my overly complicated home network and mostly runs a pair of Meze 105 AER headphones.

I live out in the countryside, so my high-speed internet comes from space, courtesy of Starlink. I promptly bridged their modem-router to an ASUS ROG GT-AX11000 Pro router, which is meshed via Ethernet cable to a lesser ASUS router in the living room. The ROG serves, among other things, my work/personal computers, a Synology DS224+ NAS and a Roon ROCK server built on an Intel NUC. And that’s not to mention all the IoT devices.

And what software?

For work and home, I’m primarily ingrained in the Microsoft ecosystem. At work, this unfortunately involves lots of time fighting with SharePoint and other MS365 products. I still appreciate Microsoft tools like Planner for my time management, so I really hope they’ll make that available outside their enterprise plans. At home, I’m equally stuck with the usual Microsoft products, (Windows, Word, Excel, etc.). However, I’ve bounced between MacOS and Windows for most of my life. The first computer I used ran MacOS 7.0, and I’ve used Windows since the Win 98 days.

I also joke that I’m “bitextual” because I swap out Android and iOS devices regularly. My next exploration will likely be Ubuntu Linux, since my Framework laptop can run Linux natively as easily as Windows.

My novel, which I mentioned earlier, is a Scrivener project. The software has a steep learning curve, but it’s a lot easier to manage the many notes, backing materials, and document versions in Scrivener than in Microsoft Word. I discovered in my publishing days that Word’s change tracking is very unstable in large documents. I stream my music through Qobuz and integrate that with my local music collection via Roon. On occasion, I play retro games on my computer in ScummVM and, if I ever get around to it, will explore editing my back catalog of photos in ON1 Photo RAW.

Browser-wise, I’m a Firefox user in most cases. I use DuckDuckGo when I need a Chromium-based experience for certain websites that don’t tolerate Firefox. I use the Proton suite for my VPN and email, and 1Password to keep track of my logins.

What’s your keyboard setup like? Do you use a custom layout or custom keycaps?

I learned about ZSA from a web search for “best ergonomic mechanical keyboards.” In my 10+ year career in front of a computer, I’d recycled far too many keyboards that failed me on durability, comfort, or both. A year later, I’ve highly customized my Moonlander.

I added a ZSA Platform to my setup almost immediately to align my wrists better when I type. Usually they’re tilted between 30 and 40 degrees. The adjustment wrench lives on my desk so I can fidget with the angle from day to day.

Most days, I work with the Kailh Gold switches that ZSA installed. I like the typewriteresque clacky sound, and I’m heavy-handed enough to need high actuation pressure on my switches. When I’m not working from home (which is rare), I swap them out for Glorious Fox switches to avoid bothering co-workers.

To indulge the novelist in me who dreams of typewriters, I added Datamancer’s Elemental Alchemy keycaps. Their caps are meant for a standard ANSI/ISO layout, so I improvised with the arrangement of their larger caps for the Moonlander’s thumb wings.

I was thrilled to learn about the Navigator … until I found out it’s designed only for the Voyager. ZSA, being the fantastic folks they are, told me about their official 3D printable Moonlander shell. One custom print job later, I’ve finally got myself a left-handed trackball. The shell still works with the lift kit—it just takes a longer screw (about 10 mm) and 2-3 washers between the Platform and the shell to level out the mounting area.

Since I have a glass-topped desk and clammy hands, I also made a few more janky mods in the form of Velcro strips to lock the keyboard in place on the slick desktop, and felt strips on the palm rests that I replace on occasion. Nothing to see here, folks …

In terms of Oryx, my layout is pretty vanilla. The custom macros I use are primarily for triggering screen captures and toggling video/mic for Zoom and Teams. I use different RGB patterns to indicate the active layer and highlight my home keys. My Navigator layer uses per-key lighting to highlight mouse keys and mouse combos like Shift-Click or Ctrl-Click.

What would be your dream setup?

I’d dare say I already have it. Were I to dream bigger, I’d likely spring for a Framework Laptop 16 so I could add a discrete GPU and extra power. I might also invest in a Canon full-frame DSLR so I could explore photography with fewer hardware limitations, especially if I could link up with a telescope to do proper astrophotography.

The rest of my spending would likely be on my audiophile hobby. I’d love to buy all the music I stream in high-res FLAC files so that I’d no longer have to worry about albums randomly being pulled from services. I’ve always been curious about electrostatic headphones, maybe a pair of Dan Clark Audio Corinas (the prices on electrostats are eye-popping, but hey, I’m dreaming here!).

And while I’m dreaming, I’d like a custom-built home in the countryside. But I’ll settle for sunsets like this in the triplex unit I rent.