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Fierce David
This month I co-won the Fierce award, which is this helmet. It's pretty cool. The golden trowel was an award that got retired and now it's mine. I think I need a shield type award to complete this award triforce.
Ends to a Mean
I've been maintaining radio silence for a while so that I wouldn't jinx anything, but now I can finally tell you about the stuff going on in my life. I got a job in Washington, DC, and I got approved for an apartment.
Here I am after my first day of work. I'm a Web Developer at FierceMarkets. I started last Wednesday and it's going pretty well so far. I get to move in to my apartment around April 1st. So stuff is going great for me. How about you?
How to get a bigger monitor at work
Just tell your boss about this quote, and change the $50,000 to whatever you're making.
Big monitors are the easiest way to increase white-collar productivity, and anyone who makes at least $50,000 per year ought to have at least 1600x1200 screen resolution. A flat-panel display with this resolution currently costs less than $500. So, as long as the bigger display increases productivity by at least 0.5%, you'll recover the investment in less than a year. (The typical corporate overhead doubles the company's per-employee cost; always remember to use loaded cost, not take-home salary, in any productivity calculation.)
From Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, July 31, 2006: Screen Resolution and Page Layout
Your dull job is rotting your brain
It turns out that new research shows that dull environments slow down or stop brain growth. It used to be thought that the brain doesn't grow new neurons, and we just have the ones we're born with. But that was shown by studying monkeys in caged environments. Some new research involved studying monkeys in natural environments with lots of toys and other stimulating things, and they grew more neurons. So the conclusion is something about not only being able to grow new neurons, but also that boring environments prevent the physical brain growth from happening.
I found this information from this Creating Passionate Users post. It's a really good blog to read, although the posts are probably too long for people with short attention spans.