Talking Time's Top 50 Office Supplies

[Daikaiju]

This all reminds me of how Daisy revolutionized putting sour cream on your taco.

Tillamook is better quality, but Daisy is still very good and it's hard to deny how much this changes the game.

Oh agreed, plus it keeps air out thereby prolonging shelf life

 

[Daikaiju]

These are what I was talking about Kirin. If you need the squeeze kind, you can tear off the top up there. These new dunkers completely replace the packets. They're superior in literally every way, but people are scared of change or something.

Even the ketchup itself is improved in them because they reformulated it so that the ketchup-water never separates and you don't have to do that annoying thing with ketchup bottles/packets where you have to re-mix the separated bits back into each other. It was truly a marvel of modern technology. I miss them dearly.

https://www.amazon.com/Heinz-Ketchup-Dip-N-Squeeze-Pack-500/dp/B00SW257AG

 

[Violentvixen]

I didn't consider food at all. I guess I would have had coffee and protein bars on my list if I did. Yogurt, apples and cheese are a work food staple for me too, but not sure they would have made it.

 

[Mogri]

#44 (tie)
Pencil sharpener

Score: 50 - Votes: 2 - Highest vote: 7th (Johnny Unusual)​

Sharpening is relaxing. Or intensely frustrating when the lead keeps breaking.

Do you prefer the speed of an electric sharpener or the satisfying action of a manual sharpener?

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I transitioned to mechanical pencils long ago, but pencil sharpeners are a way of life for educators. And I just want to say that X-Acto brand sharpeners are some of the cheapest, shittiest, rip-off, hog-wash, donkey-dookie, turd, pieces of garbage you could ever purchase. They are flimsy useless paperweights that break incredibly fast and will destroy any pencils you put in them. You are actually better off sharpening pencils with your own teeth, because you stand a better chance of getting a useful pencil at the end of the day going that route. Either electric or mechanical, I've never met an X-Acto brand sharpener that stayed functional and useful for longer than a few months of regular classroom use. If you want to piss off an educator, buy them one of these.

 

[Daikaiju]

My family has a manual sharpener. Works like a charm.

 

[Torzelbaum]

Do you prefer the speed of an electric sharpener or the satisfying action of a manual sharpener?

By manual do you mean the cranked ones or the little ones you can hold between two fingers?

 

[Mogri]

By manual do you mean the cranked ones or the little ones you can hold between two fingers?

Either/both, although I'd be surprised if anyone prefers the little ones over the crank.

 

[RT-55J]

The tiny pencil sharpeners are always nice when you're at school or work or whatever and don't want to get up to go to the real pencil sharpener.

 

[Kirin]

I didn't have it on my list, but now that I look I'm realizing I actually do have a hand pencil sharpener right here on my desk - attached to a figure of Lynn Minmay from Macross that I got out of a gacha somewhere.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Tiny ones are better for art imo

 

[Dracula]

In childhood I had my own electric pencil sharpener. I was in love with it. So much better than the hand-crank ones the schools had in those days, and I distinctly remember how some of those manual sharpeners had been used so much that they were falling apart, and you had to press together all the parts just so for it even to get a half-decent point out of your pencil lead.

I also really enjoyed pulling out the little plastic drawer on my electric model, full of wood and graphite shavings, and dumping it in the trash. Even the smell of it was enjoyable to me.

Nowadays I use mechanical pencils for writing, but I draw with wooden pencils. For that purpose I have a neat little German sharpener with two blades, one that trims the wood and one that trims the graphic. You do them consecutively so you end up with the maximum amount of sharp lead. It doesn't always work well, but most of that comes down to human error. When you shave the wood away from the lead, it gets fragile, so sometimes I accidentally break it during the second phase. Still a good device, though.

In art classes, they always advised us to sharpen our pencils by hand, using a hobby knife to whittle away the wood and expose as much of the lead as possible. I was usually not patient enough to do this.

 

[Torzelbaum]

Tiny ones are better for art imo

They are also the only ones that can create a long, thin strip of wood from a pencil.

 

[Violentvixen]

I'd never thought about it until now but I don't know if there is a single pencil in either of my work buildings.

 

[Ixo]

 

[Kirin]

Oh man, the Shufflepuck Cafe cameo sent me.
(Also the kitty is v cute)

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

In art classes, they always advised us to sharpen our pencils by hand, using a hobby knife to whittle away the wood and expose as much of the lead as possible. I was usually not patient enough to do this.

lol same. Especially when you lose patience and you just slice the lead clean off instead of continuing to expose it.

 

[Issun]

I don' t draw or do crosswords, so I haven't used a pencil in at least 15 years.

 

[Yimothy]

I was definitely thinking of the little tiny handheld ones when I made my list, because they’re the only ones I use currently. I get a lot of breakages, which I’d always assumed was from cheap pencils but could well be blunted sharpeners.

When I was a kid I remember at some point we figured out we could remove the screws holding the blade on little sharpeners and so get a little knife. My primary school was not impressed.

 

[Adrenaline]

Spoiler: Content warning: injury

When I was 5 or 6 I had a pencil with the eraser pulled out so that all was left was the metal that's supposed to hold it in place. One time I was sharpening it using a manual sharpener too slowly for the tallest girl in class, so she grabbed my hands to do it faster and the eraser end cut my palm open.

I prefer electric sharpeners.

 

[Mogri]

#44 (tie)
Second monitor

Score: 50 - Votes: 2 - Highest vote: 7th (JBear)​

The one part of the computer I will partition off as a separate supply because it's optional. My life got so much better when I started using two monitors. Particularly useful when you're reading info on one monitor and performing tasks with it on the second.

I don't know why I think this counts as an office supply while my PC doesn't, but here we are. Anyway, my work flow is dramatically improved by having a second monitor.

But did you know that you don't have to limit yourself to just two? I have four on my desk if you include the laptop, although one is hooked up to a PC I'm not currently using. Arguably I should, like, move it or something.

Show me your ridiculous monitor setups.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Show me your ridiculous monitor setups.

I use a 55", 4K TV as my monitor in my home office. It's basically like having four regular-sized monitors in a grid, but without any bezel getting in the way. And thanks to how Windows 10 works, it's really easy to just snap windows into each of the four quadrants. It's wonderful for productivity!

 

[Daikaiju]

Assuming I'm unable to keep teleworking: when I return, it'll be dual monitor setup.

 

[Kirin]

I didn't vote for monitors due to not considering basic computer parts, but the voters make a good point that *second* monitors are totally optional but valuable for an office.

I actually have four screens right here on my desk:
- ancient Dell 19" on an ancient Antec PC from my old job that's now used mostly for, uh, posting here
- 13" MacBook Pro monitor on a work laptop I use for travel and video conferencing
- another old 19" Dell on the desktop Mac Mini I use for current work, but it also has
- a nice 21.5" HP second monitor that work bought me to have something higher res for GUI development work

 

[Falselogic]

I'd go power hungry with more monitors. I have a very widescreen HD monitor and then my laptop.

 

[Yimothy]

There are only a couple of computers at my work with dual monitors, and they’re definitely the ones I use if I can. At home if I’m working with multiple windows I just have to put them side by side on the one screen, which is nowhere near as good.

 

[Ixo]

Show me your ridiculous monitor setups.

You asked for this.

 

[Violentvixen]

I have one vertical and one horizontal for my work setup, and ended up switching my home monitor to use as vertical while my laptop itself is the horizontal one.

I originally did it that way when I was doing algorithm design, as a few people in the comp sci group preferred it for writing code. I don't really write code much anymore, but It's so much better for reading notebook scans, reports, etc. Saves a little desk space too!

 

[Dracula]

At my office, I have two monitors and my lapotp sits closed in a dock next to them.

As soon as I started working from home last year, I went to Walmart and picked up a monitor (which I expensed to my company). It's absolutely untenable for me to do my job well with just one screen. But, wow, I did not realize how vastly the quality in flatscreen monitors can vary. The basic model I got from Walmart actually caused me eye strain after a few hours of work. Fortunately I was able to pester my IT department for one of the better monitors we use in the office, and I've still got that one at home.

(Yeah, I considered grabbing one of the monitors in my workspace, but they're both attached to a standing desk contraption and I didn't have the stands for them anymore...)

You asked for this.

Which of these is the most ridiculous / least practical? Which is your favorite? I don't know anything about any of them, except for what's obvious in the photo.

 

[JBear]

I didn't vote for monitors due to not considering basic computer parts, but the voters make a good point that *second* monitors are totally optional but valuable for an office.

FWIW, my vote was explicitly for "second monitor".