Office1000 Blog February Archive

Let's Go Solar with Calculators

By Blog Stories at 02/23/2009 23:53

And since I have already gone on with talking about my scientific calculator, why don't I proceed with the next best thing in the land (I said that I will leave accountants' calculators in peace), the ordinary arithmetic calculator.

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The Engineer's Best Friend

Ask an engineer or an engineering student what his/her bestfriend is and the most likely answer will be the calculator. No, it is not the mathematician's bestfriend, for they hardly deal with exact figures and computations.

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Butterflies in the Stomach

Last Friday, I had to prove some scientific laws in front of around two dozen people using differential calculus. I've long been known by my peers to be downright nervous in such situations. Fortunately, I am able to divert my nervous energies into something useful. For one, my loud voice during such presentations is enough to silence my audience.

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Better Without Brushes

For the older people or the more artistically inclined, using a paintbrush, a pen, or someother tool to put colors and shades is nothing new. It has been like that for many, many years--centuries, in fact.

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More Reasons to Recycle

When I was a kid, I wasn't taught much about recycling the trash that I produce. My family rather had an industrial train of thought, thinking that the world's resources are at our disposal.

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Cleaning Sensitive Electronics

One thing that I hate when it comes to electronic equipments is their sensitivity to external polluting particles such as dust. Removing dust from media storers and electronics has never been easy. These expensive gadgets are prone to malfuncitioning when not handled carefully. The same is true for media storage devices such as CDs--a little scratch can go a long way.

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By the Photocopier

The photocopier machine is arguably one of the most important machines inside the office, largely due to the fact that we sometimes print documents not for ourselves only, but also for the entire office population. The cheapness of ink (or powder) for photopiers relative to those of computer printers is also one reason why people would, as much as possible, still prefer the photocopier.

Funny as it sounds, the photocopying station has also affected office culture in a lot of ways. Depending on the kind of flavour inside an office, a photocopier machine can be a source of different experiences and emotions.

For some people that I know, finding the lost stapler usually located beside the photocopier has always been a source of amusement for their entire department. The stapler, along with the staple remover, just keep on losing itself that they sometimes wonder if the stapler has legs and a mind of its own.

For some other offices, the photocopying section is that single place in the office where co-workers can catch up with each other's lives. Printing the photocopied materials take some time, which is already enough for a person to ask how a co-worker is doing in life, probably with a cup of coffee in hand to boot.

However the photocopier machine affects an office's culture, the office will not be what it is today without that single machine that has seen worker to worker pass by and use it.

Papers in A Filer

Since I'm already up early in the morning and go home late in the evening, I hardly have enought time to check the stuff inside my backpack and separate the garbage from the non-garbage. This results to the accumulation of unnecessary stuff overtime, which is not exactly what anybody would like to have.

I'll just wake up one day, finding the urge to open my bag, and see it filled with dozens upon dozens of paper--pampleths, flyers, bond papers, yellow pads, and scratch papers. All these are combined in one bag. Imagine how chaotic it will be. So what I do, to speed up things, is to throw away as much paper as possible. However, this also has its consequences: I might throw an important document by accident, which has certainly happened over the past few years.

Now, if I only had an expandable filer for all of my papers, things would have probably been a lot easier. With a filer, I could easily sort out my papers from the very beginning. I wouldn't have to deal with the mess I accumulated if they were seperated into different containers beforehand. My backpack wouldn't be that heavy as well, since the load of papers will be stored in the handcarried filer.

Ah well, but point is I don't have a filer, so I end up stuck with tons of garbage inside the bag. I guess I'll just have to sort them out once again one of these days.

Trash the Tape!

Every year, an office probably uses thousands of meters of adhesive tape, which are used to stick together notes, presentations on paper, documents, and whatever else your office might think of sticking.

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Company Frugality Measures

To say that your company is 100% immune from the credit crunch, especially if you are based in the United States, is downright impossible. Everybody is still affected, albeit the degree of effects may vary from region to region.

Companies, no doubt, are trying to mititage the effects by introducing measures that will save money, assuming that they are still standing. In this case, lavish corporate spending is eliminated (forget the thought of repainting the office furniture; you are going to make them brand new by putting in a lot of furniture cleaner) while hiring is frozen. Passing the costs to consumers will not work, since the problem was consumer-driven in the first place.

If things become worse than expected, lay-offs are just around the corner. No boss would ultimately want to fire his/her employees if they are from a hardworking bunch, but some things just have to happen. Lay-offs can be inevitable for a hard-hit corporation. So you'll have to double your efforts to show your bosses that firing you will be their boss. You'll have to show them that you are an asset and not a liability.

So, what measures does your office implement in order to save money and prolong your company's business?