A serious multi-screen setup

As a professional day trader or internet poker player, your entire business depends on the computer.  You need a blazing fast connection, good hardware and most importantly a spectacular monitor.  Your pc monitor acts as the eyes of your computer, allowing you as a human to see all of the information it would typically display in code and numbers.  That’s not so helpful to us, so thankfully pc monitor companies have taken it upon themselves to develop these wonderful interfaces for us to connect with.

 

In the high-speed professions that I mentioned above a large and powerful monitor is the best choice.  Often times it’s not about the actual size of the screen in inches, but the resolution of a monitor.  You can have a 17 inch monitor that displays more information than a 30 inch monitor as long as it can support a higher resolution.  Of course, it’s going to be the best play to get a monitor that is both large in inches and in resolution if you have a highly visual computer job, or simply need a lot of information on your screen at once.

The productivity loss of switching, minimizing and maximizing different windows all of the time has been reported to eclipse 25% – a staggering amount of work that could be done.  Imagine if you were 25% more productive right now – you would literally be getting one extra thing done for every four that you completed.  Expanded over the course of a month or year, you’re looking at a lot of extra work.
This is the argument that I like to give to people who say that big, high resolution monitors are simply too expensive for them to buy.  If they can get a lot more work done and make more money as a result, the monitor will pay itself off in no time at all – sometimes as short as a week!  I know a professional poker player who was able to play four more tables at once when he switched from a 20 inch to a 30 inch monitor.  At his hourly rate of $20 per table, he was making 80 extra dollars an hour.  It only took him a couple days of playing to pay off his new purchase.

While not every case is this extreme, there is no doubt that pc monitors are a necessary consideration if you have any type of job that has you spending even a quarter of your working time on a computer.  The difference in productivity and overall enjoyment in the workplace is too astounding to ignore.  If you haven’t already, take a look at the market for pc monitors lately and make a decision on whether upgrading is a good choice for you.  If you have to, ask (or beg) your boss to make the switch for you – use the productivity argument – it works like a charm!  I personally know a couple people who have used that argument and then followed through with real results, and their boss went from micromanaging them to becoming their best friend.  I’m not saying it was all due to the monitor, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

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For those out there who think they are doing the environment a favour by hand-washing their dishes rather than using the dish washer… I’m sorry to say it, but you’re doing the opposite. According to the Home Depot’s Fall magazine entitled “Eco options,” “today’s dishwashers trump hand-washing every time. The provide a consistently hygienic wash and use about 37% less water.” Even better, “Energy Star-certified washers are at least 41% more energy efficient than the minimum government requirement and use less than half the energy of a 10-year-old model and one-third less water.”

How does yours rate?

The magazine offers other helpful tips such as running the dishwasher only when it is full, turning off the machine’s drying cycle and air-drying the dishes, not pre-rinsing by hand (simply scraping food off is enough), run the washer on its shortest cycle (this is usually sufficient), running the washer during non-peak energy times (late evening or before 7a.m.–we usually do it before bed), and use natural detergents such as Seventh Generation’s Free & Clear Automatic Dishwasher Detergent or liquid.

Are there still some naysayers out there? I bet there are. What about the material and energy needed to manufacture and run the dishwasher, doesn’t that use a lot of resources? Washing dishes by hand only requires some water, soap, a cloth, and human energy–that sounds much better for the environment. At first it does, and I thought about this. However, I then thought about the 37% less water usage. If you think about adding this 37% up every time you do the dishes for the lifetime of your washer, that is a significant amount of water. The chemicals needed to purify the water for household use and the fossil fuels needed to heat that water would probably quickly exceed the energy/raw material use of the dishwasher itself. According to a University of Bonn (Germany) study, dishwasher use only half the energy and one-sixth of the water used by hand-washers. Even the most frugal hand-washer cannot compete with dishwashers–sorry. Then if you use something like solar power to power that dish washer you are miles ahead! Learn how to make solar panels if you are on a budget or handy with tools.

I’m fairly convinced with the evidence I’ve collected while reading about this topic, but what if you don’t have a dishwasher nor the money to buy one? Well, the most efficient way to hand-wash your dishes is with a double-sink. Half-fill one sink with soapy water and the other sink with hot, clear water (use a dish pan if you don’t have a double-sink). Soak and scrub the dirty dishes in the soapy water, rinse them in the clean water, and then set them out to dry. Letting your dishes air-dry is actually more hygienic than using a towel and reduces laundry. It is also wise to use non-toxic dish soaps that don’t add harsh chemicals to the water system. Seventh Generation offers great soaps of this kind and can be found at many household retailers.

So, if you’ve been using your dishwasher to store your plastic bags or Tupperware containers, clean it out and put it to good use–you’ll be doing the environment a favour. Have a great, green weekend!

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