terrible environment killing terrible person

[deird_lj]

Yes, I left my work computer on all night. I am terrible and energy wasting, and must be shunned.

(Although I did, in fact, turn my screen off, so I'm not all bad.)


Apparently work has decided that the best strategy for turning us into Happy Little Energy Savers is to shame/bribe us into it. By giving people who turn off their computers chocolate, and taping Big Black Balloons Of Nasty Blackness to the computers that were still on.

(One might wonder if, in fact, the energy wasted by manufacturing hundreds of black balloons is going to balance out the energy saved by turning the computers off... if one were cynical and heartless and uncaring.)


And yes, I got a black balloon. Oh the shame.

The thing is, the work computers are ancient. And turning them on takes about five or six minutes. During which you can't wander off and do something else, because every minutes or so you have to press a button so that they keep turning on.
I am not willing to waste that much time every morning.

Also, our work email system completely closes all emails every time it's turned off, so you can't go back to something you were working on earlier - you have to start all over again.
I am not willing to track down all the emails I was dealing with AGAIN every single morning.


*will continue to waste energy until work upgrades their computer system, you morons*

Comments

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Start tossing the black balloons around with your fellow environmental bandits. Have fun. Pretty soon everyone will want a black balloon. In fact, tell your online friends about it and they will all suggest the same schemes at work. The whole world will be one giant feast of black-ballooning. And when all our companies go out of business because everyone spends all day playing with balloons while the computers hum along merrily all through the night, eventually the entire economy will shut down and we'll go back to living off berries and roots, restoring the ecological balance.

[deird1]

I like the way you think...

[cereta.livejournal.com]

But black balloons are awesome!

[deird1]

Absolutely!

[taiba.livejournal.com]

1. Save your emails as a word document, then copy and paste.

2. Write a protest letter explaining why turning computers off is a problem. Have everyone sign it.

3. I like beer_good_foamy's idea :-)

[deird1]

1) Err, no.

2) Not going to happen...

3) Me too. :)

[lavastar.livejournal.com]

Hahha, black balloons of shame are the worst punishment ever. Well, as in, they fail as a punishment, not as in they're a really scathing punishment.

Also, if the balloons are helium, that's super terrible, because apparently hospitals use helium for stuff.

[deird1]

They really are stupid. Exactly how they're meant to make us enthusiastic about energy saving, I'm not sure...

[the-starshadow.livejournal.com]

Ok, lemme do a back of the envelope environmental assessment. In my head. Somehow.
So, making a black balloon requires X amount of plastic, which is ultimately based on oil, unless it's recycled, but we'll assume it wasn't coz that'd make it more ironic.
Then there's the energy required to make said balloon, which requires, probably, X amounts of coal.
Then there's the petrol burned by the truck to take the balloon from the factory to the store to your office etc etc. (Not to mention the fuel to transport the petrol.) Technically you could look at making the truck itself, but unless its only job is to transport black balloons around, it's probably not relevant.
Then, there's the helium that goes in the balloons, if there's helium. Ignoring the fact that the world's supply of helium is becoming depleted, helium is extracted from fractional distillation of natural gas. But that'd probably happen anyway in the refining process, so it's probably not important.

So... does making a black balloon and taping it to your computer create more greenhouse gas than the computer did? Possibly. It'd be passable if they used the same balloon over and over again, but apparently they're not. So what they've inadvertently done is challenge you to a pollution contest, by matching your CO2 emitting computer with their CO2 emitting balloons. It's like they're saying "We're going to shame you into turning your computer off by generating even more pollution on your behalf." Which is an actually kinda cool way of doing it, when you think about it.

[deird1]

Right. I'm going to win the pollution contest.

*determinedly starts turning on electrical stuff*

[next_to_normal]

I am completely befuddled about whether I should turn my computer off at night or not. The last job I had was all energy conscious and absolutely You Must Turn It Off Every Night (And We Will Know If You Don't). But the job before that, they were like, "OMG don't turn your computer off at night because that's when we do our server upgrades and if your computer is off, it'll crash the whole system." Or something. Geek speak, I don't speak it.

Now I'm in an office where our IT guy is hundreds of miles away and won't know what I do, and my boss never turns his computer off (mostly because he's technologically challenged and probably wouldn't know how to turn it on again), but maybe he should, because I end up having to restart it for him at least once a week because it freezes all the time.

I don't think we have a server that requires nightly upgrades, so I suppose I should err on the side of being environmentally friendly. But then again, on the occasions when my boss needs to use my computer and I'm not there (I'm the only one who can print - long story, don't ask), it helps if it's already on for him to use, so I worry about shutting it down in the event that I take a sick day. Though I rarely do that. But I just did, three times in the last month.

*flails*

[deird1]

Ack! Confusingness!

[next_to_normal]

As bizarre as the chocolate/black balloon system is, at least I'd know where we stand on the environment.

[feralxheart.livejournal.com]

Huh. I wonder what they'd do if you took your balloon, and popped it.

-pats sweetly-

[deird1]

*tries to find something sharp*

[padawanspider.livejournal.com]

hey, big black balloons don't make you fat.

now who is being rewarded?

[deird1]

:D

Good point!

[spiralleds.livejournal.com]

Yes, shaming. A fabulous tool for successful behavior changes. :: rolls eyes::

[deird1]

Oh, absolutely. I know I will never waste electricity again...

Shared headdesk?

[brutti-ma-buoni.livejournal.com]

My work has recently removed all bins from desks (I remember you know this new torture well). But at the same time they've given us little cardboard pseudo-bins called TreeHuggers which is on the desk top - and if you fill the bin 30 times and recycle it, you've saved a tree.

...

Except...
1) You may have filled it with unnecessary printouts, so let's face it, not 100% guaranteed tree-friendly.
2) The bins themselves are only 80% recycled, so by my reckoning every 5th one has itself helped to kill a tree.
3) WE HAZ NO BINS, so everyone is using their TreeHuggers as bins, and they are full of apple cores, coke cans and other non-paper waste which is NOT BEING RECYCLED because they gave us bin-substitutes.

*weeps*

[deird1]

Oh dear. *facepalm*

The logic behind this sort of stuff escapes me, it really does.

[klme.livejournal.com]

I love this idea! Your workplace sounds so fun!

[roccondilrinon.livejournal.com]

until work upgrades their computer system

Not going to happen. Government or private enterprise, they will put it off until the last possible moment. The reason Windows Vista hasn't taken off in the enterprise isn't that it's a piece of crap, it's the sheer inertia of IT departments (coupled with a dose of Vegemite effect). For this reason, Windows 7 will not be the big seller Microsoft's hoping for, no matter how great it is.

Ahem. I appear to have tangentified.

Could be worse. The computers at my work are ELEVEN YEARS OLDER THAN ME!