Office1000 Blog June Archive

Push pins can be a fun way to decorate a child's room

By Lizzie Botticelli at 06/26/2007 10:06

Kids love to stick things on their walls. Even though we hate to fill in all the little holes, it gives them so much pleasure why not give them some designer push pins to tack up their posters and what not.

Even better, buy them or make them their own place to keep mementos and pictures by using cork squares. You can double them together to make it thinker, cover it with a pretty piece of fabric and glue it on the backside. You can use a couple of strips of ribbon going over the fabric to give them another way of holding pictures there. They just slip them under the ribbon.

You can put a wood frame around the cork tiles if you wish since it will be easier to hang on the wall. Then buy them some kewl push pins to stick things on their new display.

Use colorful 3 ring binders to clean up your office

If your desk is like mine, you have many different types of stacks of paper lying everywhere. Things can be separated and filed into 1/2" three ring binders so you have easy access to the paperwork.

They come in fashion colors and will liven up your desk. You can always use bigger binders for bigger stacks. Poly binders don't take up much room and wipe clean when you spill your coffee on them because your desk is so messy you dump it over trying to find things.

Getting ready for the big show? Better get your groomer ready!

If you are getting a horse ready for a rodeo, or a dog for a dog show, or even an animal ready for the 4-H fair, you can use a large animal groomer. I use mine to prepare my horse for his events.

The vacuum brushes make it really easy to suck the old dirt and hair up out of their coats and leave them shiny and clean. The vacuums have different grooming tools that attach to the ends, curry, brush, etc. They make all the difference in the world for earning that blue ribbon in the ring!

Want just the right photo album? Make your own!

You can spend a whole bunch of money on a photo album or you can make your own with a three-ring binder and some sheet protectors or photo holders.

Start with a colorful three ring binder in maybe a 2-inch width. A two inch ring binder will make a nice album since it won't be so big that the pages get stuck under the ring making it hard to turn the pages. They come in so many colors now, just about anything you can think of.

Next, you will need some sheet protectors. C-Line makes special ones that are designed just for pictures of different sizes called photo holders. You can add a couple of pages in there that look like scrapbook pages as well just by using a plain sheet protector without the photo pockets every now and then.

Making your own photo albums is fun and easy, and it doesn't have to be expensive either if you make your own!

What is the difference between push pins and map tacks?

Are you wondering what the difference is between map tacks and push pins? Well, after doing some research on just that subject I found that they both have many uses and in some cases can be used interchangeably.

Push pins are great for tacking stuff to cork boards like pictures and other crafty things. Kids use them a lot in their rooms to mount posters to walls and stick their photos on their spaces they have created for such things. I have found some very kewl push pins in lots of shapes and pretty colors. I found pewter push pins that are really neat for speial uses. They can be plain boring colors or neon brite colors. There are also push pins with round flat heads you can write on.

Map tacks, or map flags, or sometimes even map pins... are very diversified and can be used for bunches of things. Art galleries buy the numbered pins to identify artists work. Planners use map pins on schematics to identify key tasks in a project. I was looking at some different map tacks and it seems there is one for everything you can think of and more on a map. You use different colors and shapes to denote different features.

Some type of map tacks are:

• Erasable map pins
• Small map pins
• Medium Map pins
• Large map pins
• Medium pins with dots, stripes or crosses on the pin head
• Flag and pennant map pins
• Large colored push pins
• Numbered map pins

Of course you can also think of other uses for map tacks and push pins, like putting them on the teacher's chair (common in my day and age at school), using them for land mines in areas you don't want intruders sneaking in and many more.

How to Get a Bigger Cubicle without Getting a Job Promotion

I know, I know, you really want a promotion. We all do, but according to the recent annual review (yours and mine alike) we're just not the right material to move up to management, no matter how warm we've kept our desks during the intervening years. That's okay, though, even though it isn't. You can kid yourself all you like, but at the end of the day, the day still ends, and you can't do anything about it.

You're a good, smart, indispensable and loyal employee, and you know it, so be bitter all you like (I recommend a just-short-of-postal degree of bitterness,) but you can't do anything about it, so take what you can, how you can, and let's make this business work already.

Let's say you've got a cubicle, which is statistically just about certain. The first time I had a cube I had replaced two guys that made more than me (each), and a cube smaller than either of them. That was a miserable deal, but what killed me was that there were five of us in the room, and the two guys who got the window were "outside" sales guys. They were almost never in the office, but were the only ones within 12-feet of the outside world. We didn't have a view of anything, but come on, can't I look outside whilst perpetually on hold too?

Answer is decidedly "no", but isn't there something I can do about it?

When I came up for my review, I didn't even get a raise enough to catch me up to either of the two people whose jobs I'd taken over, but worse, I still didn't get the darn window, which is double-sad at least. Not content to take "no" for an answer, I took my own advantage instead… I made my cubicle bigger.

I looked at the wall configuration, and seeing that nobody but me was ever there early, late or over lunch breaks, I figured it was my duty to adjust those silly cube walls as needed to make the best use of the space available.

I took long walls and changed them out with short walls. I took short walls and replaced them with half walls. I also took bare walls and replaced them with promotional posters, as if to make the space seem so conspicuously ugly that my coworkers couldn't even notice that they're cubes had magically diminished.

I increased my cubicle from 80-square-feet to 108-square-feet, and none of my obviously absent, adjacent cube-mates even noticed it had happened.

If you can't get the raise or respect you deserve, you should at least consider making yours a cubicle worthy of praise, if not at least office-wide curiosity and suspicion. I did it, and though I quickly left after I was rejected yet again for a raise, I felt really, really good about it.

On an unsurprising side-note, the company went through three-rounds of buyout, down-sizing and bankruptcy over fewer than four years. Maybe consider that, if your cubicle is thusly, artificially confined, your company might likewise be gone before you know it.

Metal nibs and the history of fountain pens

A fountain pen contains a reservoir of water based liquid ink. The ink is provided to the nib through a feed via a combination of gravity and capillary action. Older fountain pens had an internal rubber sac that was squeezed and released to create the suction needed. The more modern fountain pens can utilize a convertor, or screw or piston mechanism, or a disposable ink cartridge.

The earliest historical record of a reservoir pen goes back to the 10th century. In 953, the caliph of Egypt demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes, and was provided with a pen which held ink in a reservoir. It is probable, however, that attempts at a fountain pen go back way further.

In 1636, German inventor Daniel Schwenter described a pen made from two quills. This pen had one quill that served as a reservoir for ink inside the other quill. The ink was sealed inside the quill with cork. Ink was pushed through a small hole to the writing point.

The oldest surviving reservoir pens date to the 1st century. It was only after three key inventions were in place that the fountain pen became a widely popular writing instrument. Those inventions were:

• The iridium tipped gold nib
• Hard rubber and
• Free flowing ink

Here are some other key facts about the progress of metal nib pens:

• The first fountain pens making use of all these key ingredients appeared in the 1850s when a student in Paris, Romanian Petrache Poenaru, invented the fountain pen
• In the 1870s, Duncan MacKinnon and Alonzo T. Cross created stylographic pens with a hollow, tubular nib and a wire acting as a valve. These stylographic pens are now used mostly for drafting and technical drawing
• William B. Purvis from America is credited with inventing the ink feeding tube and patented it on January 7, 1890
• In the 1880s the era of the mass produced fountain pen finally began
• During the 1940s and 1950s, fountain pens retained their dominance. Early ballpoint pens were expensive, prone to leaks and had irregular inkflow, while the fountain pen continued to benefit from the combination of mass production and craftsmanship
• Although fountain pens are still in common use, a few modern manufacturers (especially Montblanc) depict the fountain pen as a collectible item or a status symbol, rather than an everyday writing tool. In spite of this, a majority of modern fountain pen users use fountain pens as their primary writing instruments over ballpoint and rollerball pens for reasons related to writing comfort, expressive penmanship, aesthetics, history and heritage

NIBS:
The nib is usually made of stainless steel or gold, with the most popular gold content being 14 karat and 18 karat. Gold nibs are tipped with a hard, wear-resistant alloy that typically uses metals from the platinum group. The tipping material is often called "iridium", but there are only a few penmakers that still use this metal in their nibs. Gold is considered the optimum metal for its flexibility and its resistance to corrosion, since fountain pen inks tend to be somewhat acidic or alkaline.Steel nibs may also have harder tips; those with un-tipped steel points will wear more rapidly due to abrasion by the paper. The nib will adjust itself more readily to the user's style as it wears down. Although the most common nibs end in a round point of various sizes (fine, medium, broad), various other nib shapes are available. Examples of this are oblique, reverse oblique, stub, italic and 360 degree nibs. Broad calligraphy pens may have several slits in the nib to increase ink flow and help distribute it evenly across the broad point. Nibs divided into three 'tines' are commonly known as 'music' nibs, as their broad line is suited for writing musical scores. An apparent common denominator of good quality nibs, that have been used appropriately, is that they are long lasting - often lasting longer than the lifetime of the original owner. Many vintage pens with nibs that are several decades old can still be used today.

FILLING MECHANISMS:
The filling mechanisms of the pens evolved over the years as more efficiet ways were introduced:

• Eyedropper-filling pens
• The crescent filling system
• A series of systems of increasing complexity, which were phased out in favour of convenience but reduced capacity
• Piston filler or a cartridge
• A converter, a device which has the same fitting as the pen's cartridge, but has a filling mechanism and a reservoir attached to it. This enables a pen to either fill from cartridges, or from a bottle of ink.

CARTRIDGES:
Most European fountain pen brands and some pen brands of other continents (for example Tombow) use so called international cartridges or standard cartridges in short or long sizes, or both. Many fountain pen manufacturers have at various times developed their own proprietary cartridges, for example Parker, Lamy, Sheaffer, Cross, and Namiki. Fountain pen cartridges are closed by a small ball of plastic, held inside the ink exit hole by glue or by a very thin layer of plastic. When the cartridge is forced inside the pen, a small pin pushes in the ball, which falls inside the cartridge. While cartridges are mess free and convenient to refill on the go than bottle filling, many users of fountain pens today appear to prefer filling from a bottle.

FOUNTAIN PENS TODAY:
Despite the perceived heightened prices in the modern niche, good quality steel and gold pens are available inexpensively today and there are even some disposable fountain pens available. The main reasons people seek fountain pens in recent times are for: ease of writing and comfort (some sufferers of arthritis are unable to use ballpoint pens, but can use fountain pens), expressive penmanship and calligraphy, longevity, professional art/design, wide range of ink colours available, recreational collecting, and academic benefits. Many users also mention that fountain pens retain a sense of timeless elegance, personalization and sentimentality that computers and ballpoint pens seem to lack. Fountain pens have also always been prized as works of art. Ornate pens are sometimes made of precious metals and jewels with cloisonné designs; others are inlaid with lacquer designs in a process known as maki-e (Maki-e is lacquering, a centuries-old technique in which multi-layered patterns are drawn on the barrel and cap with urushi - sap from Japanese lacquer trees). An avid community of pen enthusiasts collect and use antique and modern pens and also collect and exchange information about old and modern inks, ink bottles, and inkwells.

Fountain pens, whether used in offices as a disposable fountain pen or an executive's favorite, are timeless. Used for calligraphy or art style writing, they can make memories last forever.

How to Spite Your Intra-Office Nemesis (Part-1)

So there's that guy (or gal) in your office who totally drives you crazy. Maybe he or she kisses up to the boss in ways the rest of you can't stomach, or maybe it's that lazy jerk who gets all mad because you're kissing up. It doesn't matter to me, so either way, here are a handful of subtle methods you can use to spite your coworkers. This is kind of a long article, and I tried to keep it to a single piece, but once it broke the thousand-word mark, it necessarily was broken into two, but I assure you, revenge is a dish best served via a long, drawn out article explained in vivid detail.

I'll try to put these in order by least offensive to most, but in the end it's all a matter of taste.

Starting off easy, if you've got a co-worker you dislike, take his or her handset telephone cord, disconnect it and place it in the top drawer of the desk. No harm, no foul, but it will be fun when the phone rings, they try to answer it, and they're stuck with a disconnected handset upside the head with no ability to hear or be heard. Oh, it's just fun.

If your co-worker uses a 10-key to punch up numbers, take a fine-tip screw driver to disassemble and rebuild it. Take the traditional number placements of the calculator, and re-order them in keeping with a telephone, which is top-to-bottom, instead of bottom-to-top. Visually, it will still look fine, but all of the math that comes out of it will be crazy messed up. It isn't too bad of a prank, but don't worry, we're just getting warmed up.

If you've got a beef with the janitor, as I did when she hit on me, dressed up fancy, then turned me down once I succumbed to hitting on her, take the contents of your hole punch and place them strategically around the office. There's nothing harder to get out of the carpet than hole-punches, so lean towards your bosses door, since he or she will be the first to complain, and the most probably to fire that janitor.

Bring in a two-dollar vial of clear nail polish, and use it to varnish the pencil and other erasers. It's virtually invisible, but the damn things won't erase nothing for nothing once you've sealed them in polished lacquer.

If your office has air-fresheners, whether of the clip on, tape on, or spray variety, use them up entirely against your nemesis co-worker. If you have to buy it and bring it from home, go for it, it's still a cheap degree of vengeance. Easy is to fill the bottom of a garbage can, since it will reek for weeks, but go for cloth or hidden areas. Stick a paste-on sort to the bottom of a desk (wide open, of course), or dump a few ounces of patchouli oil in the swivel chair. The stench will quickly become unbearable, and there ain't much a darn thing that can be done about it.

Save up dead ink cartridges and put them in your coworker's desk. It's easy, you just take his or her good, new ones, and replace them with your own old, dead ones. It's the most minor distraction, but every bit helps when it comes to harassing your least favorite coworker.

Steal office supplies and put them in your office-mate's desk. Especially if it's something critical and important. If the tactic doesn't work, mention to the office busybody that you thought that person might have them. It will be a surprise to everybody, and you weren't part of it, but it's trouble when we're out of push-pins and one person has every single one of them buried in the desk.

Go in a tad early, and take the making of the morning coffee upon yourself. Do it, and do it with glee, but make the coffee ever and forever weaker. I had an ornery ass of a coworker who made four times what I did, and that jerk would drink a hundred half-cups of coffee per day. He wouldn't brew the stuff himself, but oh man, that Bill Watt would drink it like a madman. I took it upon myself to make the coffee weaker and weaker until he wouldn't drink it. He had to walk halfway across the complex to get coffee strong enough for his taste, and my single pot became enough for us, even though three-pots never was before.

If your hated coworker uses Equal, Sweet & Low or Splenda, it's easy to spite them. Just start slitting the packets and emptying them out. It doesn't work with sugar, but it does with these. If you also use an artificial sweetener, just keep a stash in your desk and you'll be fine, but they'll find none of what they want, and that small irritation will overwhelm them in a day.

If you don't drink coffee, go ahead and add pencil shavings, ash and spices to the coffee grounds. Even mixed up a tad, nobody will notice it, but even a dash of All-Spice will forever change the flavor of the coffee in ways they can't imagine. If you do drink coffee, and you still want this prank in your arsenal, keep taking cups of coffee yourself, pour them out in the bathroom by degrees, and insist you don't notice anything wrong with the taste of it.

What is resinite?

The desks made by Iceberg are noted as having Resinite construction. If you are wondering what this is all about, it is explained as follows:

The desks are manufactured using a plastic material called HDPE which is High Density Polyethylene and include reinforcement bars of steel. The bars are found underneath the panel or tabletop. The combination of the plastic and steel is what Iceberg calls Resinite. Resin is the raw material used in combination with pigments and other materials becomes HDPE. The desktops are filled with foam for additional strength.

This durable office furniture from Iceberg, with the exception of the Aspira Wood pieces, are excellent for "clean environments" like hospitals because they can be disinfected easily.

The Resinite furniture is durable because is resists dents, scratches, and chipping.

The desk inlays are made of polystrene, which is another form of plastic.

The Eight Best Uses for Three-Ring Binders

Two and four-ring binders are exceptionally uncommon, though I have seen a five-ring binder once, and that made no sense at all. I knew when I saw it that an engineer had grown a tad over-zealous, but it inspired me to nonsense, and I now feel all but compelled to share what equally nonsensical wisdom I've since discovered. Three-ring binders are helpful, clever and can make your work-a-day life more efficient, profitable and in rare cases, even somehow remotely bearable. Here are some of the many advantages of three ring binders.

• 1. Starting with the least crazy use, you can use them to print out all the most relevant things for your profession, and keeping them in tidy, organized, categorized ways, so you and the person who succeeds you in your unsuccessful profession know easily and precisely what to do.
• 2. From there you get a bit crazier. Start off by taking all your important work-related documents, and do not organize them alphabetically or chronologically, but by who filed them, who wrote them, or by length of title based on each letter having a numerical value, added up and made into a mathematical equation. It makes painfully little sense, but it can justify the heck out of your binder budget.
• 3. Since you may be working on your graphic novel, or let's be honest, your comic book, an open-ring binder is easily the best way to organize, edit and adjust your works in progress. Still, don't plan on it being a big success. Either way, this will make it that much easier to get it done in order.
• 4. While writing your manifesto out of order, you can use a three-ringer to bind your works in ways that allow you to edit and re-edit it day-by-day as needed, in accordance with prophecy.
• 5. If you're a runaway-rampant scrapbook-keeper like me, a clamp-in/clamp-out binder can be the best book to keep odd-sized and off-sized things like soiled garments, bar napkins and de-crumpled inter-office memos.
• 6. If you like pain and punishment, buy yourself some 3" binders. They don't work worth a darn, and they only bind pages while tearing the tabs and punched holes out. Not only are they big and mostly empty, they're unruly and horrifically abusive to the pages they contain. I recommend them highly.
• 7. Consider a few hundred half-inch binders, since they're adorable, though 80% of their bulk is consumed by the spine and covers. It's not that they aren't any good, it's just that they're only good for something very specific, and nobody I've ever met has any idea what that benefit may be.
• 8. If your employer doesn't provide a healthcare package that affords routine physicals, you can use the clamping action of the top ring of the binder to hammer down on your testicular region in probative ways that may not rule out cancer, but can surely rule out ball comfort.

Three-Ring binders area available in an assortment of sizes and colors, and can be shipped straight away