Work From Home, Save the Planet
Most of you know that I’m an avid fan of tele-commuting. As fuel costs continue to rise, it just makes the whole work from home argument that much stronger. Recently I stumbled across a great post on the Rebel Dad (yeah, it’s a great blog name) blog that summarizes a recent study by Sun Microsytems, which essentially says that working from home, in addition to being great for employee moral, is also a very green way to work. Here’s the summary from the Rebel Dad himself. To read the entire article click here.
- Employees saved more than $1,700 per year in gasoline and wear and tear on their vehicles by working at home an average of 2.5 days a week.
- Office equipment energy consumption rate at a Sun office was two times that of home office equipment energy consumption, from approximately 64 watts per hour at home to 130 watts per hour at a Sun office.
- Commuting was more than 98 percent of each employee’s carbon footprint for work, compared to less than 1.7 percent of total carbon emissions to power office equipment.
- By eliminating commuting just 2.5 days per week, an employee reduces energy used for work by the equivalent of 5,400 Kilowatt hours/year.
- Working from home 2.5 days per week saved the employees in the study an average of 2.5 weeks of commute time (8 hours/day, 5 days/week).
I rest my case.
Until next time…
George Carlin Passes Away at 71
Sad news this morning as word comes that we lost one the comic greats this weekend. George Carlin has passed away at 71 from a long battle with heart disease. Carlin’s career spanned over 5 decades and the comic re-invented himself again and again. I first heard Carlin via his famous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” and always appreciated is clever irreverent style. Over the years Carlin’s routines became the stuff of comic legend.
A mainstay on the Tonight Show, Carlin was also the host of the very first “Saturday Night Live” telecast in 1975. During the course of his career he produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, several TV shows and appeared in numerous movies.
He won four Grammy Awards, each for best spoken comedy album, and was nominated for five Emmy awards. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.
Love him or hate him, his comic genius is undeniable. Rest in peace George, we will miss you!
Until next time…
The Future of Firefox is here, Merry Christmas!
For those of us that use Firefox, news of an new version of their browser is a lot like Christmas. Well guess what, Christmas is a little early this year kiddies. Firefox has just today released version 3.0 of their popular web browser. Early word is nothing but positive feedback, with some saying that it is again the world’s best browser. Its speed and features handily beat those offered by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari. I just downloaded and installed a copy. As usual the install was quick and easy and so far it is noticeably faster than the previous version. All of my tabs and bookmarks moved over without any effort. If you’re using an old version or, perish the thought, aren’t using Firefox yet, well then you’re probably still rubbing sticks together to make magic fire, and watching standard definition TV. When you’re ready to come out of the stoneage, download and try it out. You’ll be glad you did caveman.
Until next time…
