Energy Saving Computers

Recently our two year old computer started to make a buzzing noise...the fan in the graphics card was going out.  As time progressed, we would have occassional computer crashes and this past week we realized we needed a completley new one.  The thought occurred to me to look into ways to make it more energy efficient.  I was surprised to find out that your graphics card actually consumes as much energy to run as almost all the other components in you computer combined!  So, making sure you have one that is not a power hog is very important.  I found out that GeForce cards should be completely avoided because in almost all comparisons, they are almost double the power consumption of a Radeon card.  A handy tool that I found is: http://www.hwcompare.com - you can plug in two cards to see not only power consumption, but other specs such as price, memory, and performance.  We ended up settling on a card that was powerful enough for our needs (my husband has a side job using HD video so it needed to be somewhat powerful), but wasn't demanding too much.  It is interesting that once you get in the mind frame of conservation, all sorts of doors open for you to change your habits as well as putting your purchasing power to good use.

Responsible Parenting, Part 1

"Train a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not turn away from it."  Proverbs 22:6

I have been thinking a lot today about what it means to be a responsible parent.  Training our children to be responsible adults that love God is probably the greatest responsibility most people will ever have.  I have two small children and I can definitely see how they are like sponges and imitate even the smallest habits.  I was washing my face when I noticed my son reaching out to the faucet to turn on the water.  I said "no touch!" as I did not want him to waste water, and he proceeded to dip his little hand in the "discard" water and then patted his face.  What I had initially perceived as the desire to waste water just because he wanted to play, was actually his attempts to imitate me.  Every day I can see that he is trying to figure out the world - the difference of right from wrong, how things work, what pleases or annoys people, and he surprises me daily!  One thing I have been challenged on in the past month or so is my son's fascination with light - turning light switches on and off continuously.  I told him (as I always do) that it wastes energy and that in broad daylight we shouldn't need to turn on any lights.  This morning he had his Twilight Turtle (a battery operated turtle that shines stars on the ceiling) that he was playing with, experimenting with the light.  I decided to just observe his play, and was fascinated by how he went about experimenting.  First, he brought it into the bathroom and turned on the light and then he noticed that he couldn't see the light in a fully lit room.  He then tried to figure out a way to see the stars in the room, and discovered that if he pulled out a drawer and tucked it inside, he could see the light from the darkness of the drawer.  After a few minutes I walked over and told him to shut it off and gave him some crayons to play with.  Later in the evening that same day, my son noticed that the hall light had been left on and he shut it off saying "turn light off."  My point for mentioning this is that sometimes we get overzealous in our efforts to conserve energy and we inhibit growth and learning in our children.  It is okay to allow them to experiment and explore, as long as they are ultimately learning that it's important to try and conserve our resources.