When I was in college, I lived in a cooperative community of environmentally-minded students. We cooked our own food, cleaned for ourselves, and handled our own recycling. While, strictly speaking, this isn't a common mistake, there was an episode of recycling gone too far.
Frozen orange juice canisters are not generally considered recyclable. However, a member of our co-op discovered how to extract the recyclable portion from these goods, and decided to present to the other members, so that we could all follow this practice. Here goes.
1. Tear off the metallic-feeling plastic lids on either end of the can. These are trash.
2. Tear open the tube, yielding a sort of diamond-shaped piece of stuff.
3. Tear off the white waxed inside, which is trash
4. Tear off the shiny outside, also trash
5. You are left with a strip of cardboard. Recycle with pride!
Instead of precisely calculating how little value comes of this complex process, I'll end with a note. The co-op was a ten minute walk from campus. The student in question drove his SUV to class every day. I'm all for recycling and conservation, but this wasn't it.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Not upgrading computer RAM
Many non-technical people I know fail to understand that the single biggest reason why their two-to-four-year-old computers run very slowly is a paucity of system memory (RAM). With every upgrade, i.e. multiple times a year, browsers like Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer hog more and more RAM. RAM is cheap and easy to install, even for someone who's not used to opening up their computer.
My favorite web site for buying RAM is Crucial.com. It has a wizard that lets you select your computer manufacturer, then model, and shows you memory upgrades available for your system. For example, I just priced out 2GB of RAM for a MacBook at $34.
How much RAM should you get? The answer's simple. Since it's so cheap now, you should get as much as you can fit in your computer. The Crucial site will tell you how many slots you have, and what will fit in them. If you're running Windows XP, you should have at least 1GB; for MacOS, at least 1GB, and for Vista, 1.5GB.
How do you put RAM into your system? Power down your system first, of course. It's easiest for laptops. On the bottom of your laptop, there's a panel with two phillips-head screws. Open it up, and there are slots for memory. Make sure you seat the chips properly, close up the panel, and you're done. You don't have to do anything to tell the operating system to recognize the new memory, as it will figure it out automatically. See http://crucial.com/install/sodimm.aspx for more details.
For desktops, you'll need to open up your system case. See http://crucial.com/install/dimm.aspx for instructions.
Apologies for the single-mindedness of linking to Crucial all over the place. I have no economic relationship with them - I've used the site a bunch of times, and find it the least confusing and cheapest way to do this upgrade.
In summary, it's a no-brainer. If your system is slow, upgrade your memory! You'll save so much time it'll be worth it many times over.
My favorite web site for buying RAM is Crucial.com. It has a wizard that lets you select your computer manufacturer, then model, and shows you memory upgrades available for your system. For example, I just priced out 2GB of RAM for a MacBook at $34.
How much RAM should you get? The answer's simple. Since it's so cheap now, you should get as much as you can fit in your computer. The Crucial site will tell you how many slots you have, and what will fit in them. If you're running Windows XP, you should have at least 1GB; for MacOS, at least 1GB, and for Vista, 1.5GB.
How do you put RAM into your system? Power down your system first, of course. It's easiest for laptops. On the bottom of your laptop, there's a panel with two phillips-head screws. Open it up, and there are slots for memory. Make sure you seat the chips properly, close up the panel, and you're done. You don't have to do anything to tell the operating system to recognize the new memory, as it will figure it out automatically. See http://crucial.com/install/sodimm.aspx for more details.
For desktops, you'll need to open up your system case. See http://crucial.com/install/dimm.aspx for instructions.
Apologies for the single-mindedness of linking to Crucial all over the place. I have no economic relationship with them - I've used the site a bunch of times, and find it the least confusing and cheapest way to do this upgrade.
In summary, it's a no-brainer. If your system is slow, upgrade your memory! You'll save so much time it'll be worth it many times over.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Buy your home?
Conventional wisdom holds that buying a home is almost always better than renting, because renting is throwing money down the drain. I've heard that, if you're planning to be in the same place for at least three years, it's best to buy.
There are calculators to help put numbers with this:
NY Times
Ginnie Mae
Suze Orman discusses this in detail at http://biz.yahoo.com/pfg/e10buyrent/. She estimates that additional costs of home ownership add up to about 40-50% of the mortgage payment.
Now, let's assume that you've worked out the numbers, and that you can afford that home, and you know you will pay more on a monthly basis, but you believe that, between growth of principal and appreciation, you're better off. This is often true, housing bubbles aside. What about other negatives of home ownership?
Reduced flexibility in terms of moving. After all that time spent making a house a home, it's going to be much harder to pick up and move. But what if your neighbors are loud, or you have the opportunity of finding a better job in another city?
Being your own handyman. Lots of things need work in houses, from gutters to chimneys to lawn maintenance; while there are service providers to handle all of these needs, the cost of paying someone to handle all these tasks adds up quickly. And even if you're having someone else do it, you'll need to devote a lot of time to phone calls and waiting around for them to show up.
Longer commute? Many people end up buying in more peripheral neighborhoods, which adds time getting back and forth to work. That time might be pleasant, but often it entails sitting in traffic, with the attached expense and frustration, not to mention environmental impact. And, even if your house is close to your current workplace, if you switch jobs in the same city, you're likely to find yourself with a longer commute.
All in all, it's often best to buy, but the conventional wisdom overstates the importance of that choice.
There are calculators to help put numbers with this:
NY Times
Ginnie Mae
Suze Orman discusses this in detail at http://biz.yahoo.com/pfg/e10buyrent/. She estimates that additional costs of home ownership add up to about 40-50% of the mortgage payment.
Now, let's assume that you've worked out the numbers, and that you can afford that home, and you know you will pay more on a monthly basis, but you believe that, between growth of principal and appreciation, you're better off. This is often true, housing bubbles aside. What about other negatives of home ownership?
Reduced flexibility in terms of moving. After all that time spent making a house a home, it's going to be much harder to pick up and move. But what if your neighbors are loud, or you have the opportunity of finding a better job in another city?
Being your own handyman. Lots of things need work in houses, from gutters to chimneys to lawn maintenance; while there are service providers to handle all of these needs, the cost of paying someone to handle all these tasks adds up quickly. And even if you're having someone else do it, you'll need to devote a lot of time to phone calls and waiting around for them to show up.
Longer commute? Many people end up buying in more peripheral neighborhoods, which adds time getting back and forth to work. That time might be pleasant, but often it entails sitting in traffic, with the attached expense and frustration, not to mention environmental impact. And, even if your house is close to your current workplace, if you switch jobs in the same city, you're likely to find yourself with a longer commute.
All in all, it's often best to buy, but the conventional wisdom overstates the importance of that choice.
Driving crosstown to save a few cents on gas
How far out of the way should you drive to save at the pump? Sites like GasBuddy allow drivers to look up prices in their area, and detour to the cheapest source.
Let's say that a driver wants 15 gallons of gas. If the price difference between two stations is 30c per gallon, which is unusually high, this works out to $4.50. How far does it make sense to drive even for this high savings? If the driver averages about 10 miles an hour, with lights and traffic, then even two miles out of the way will take 24 minutes of driving time, and will consume, assuming 20 MPG, a fifth of a gallon of gas, or 60c at $3 gas. So, for a net savings of $3.90, our hypothetical driver has lost almost half an hour. And that's if the price differential is very high.
What about for a 5c/gallon difference? For a 15 gallon purchase, the savings is only 75c. If we assume that our driver's time is worth $10 an hour, this savings justifies a detour of no more than 4.5 minutes, total.
Let's say that a driver wants 15 gallons of gas. If the price difference between two stations is 30c per gallon, which is unusually high, this works out to $4.50. How far does it make sense to drive even for this high savings? If the driver averages about 10 miles an hour, with lights and traffic, then even two miles out of the way will take 24 minutes of driving time, and will consume, assuming 20 MPG, a fifth of a gallon of gas, or 60c at $3 gas. So, for a net savings of $3.90, our hypothetical driver has lost almost half an hour. And that's if the price differential is very high.
What about for a 5c/gallon difference? For a 15 gallon purchase, the savings is only 75c. If we assume that our driver's time is worth $10 an hour, this savings justifies a detour of no more than 4.5 minutes, total.
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