When I launched the Task Manager, the cause of the problem became obvious. The CPU was under load: both cores were fully utilized by ORTHOS, a simple program used to stress-test CPUs and RAM. In fact, ORTHOS had been running for 58 hours. I had started it two days ago to heat up my room in the night, and forgotten to shut it down the next morning. (My Radeon HD4850 is a much better heater, but I wanted to effect a gentle increase in temperature, not turn my room into a sauna.)

Chew on this: Over the past two days, I had been using my machine almost continuously and hadn’t realized I had two computationally intensive processes sucking the life out of both CPU cores! (In the interest of full disclosure, there was a brief moment yesterday evening when I thought that skipping forward and backward in a HD video clip took a bit too long, but I put it down to normal differences between video formats.) If I hadn’t checked my CPU parameters this morning, which I did for a completely random reason, who knows how much longer it would have taken me to realize something was amiss.

Now, that wasn’t the first time that I’d had ORTHOS running in the background while using my computer. Those other times, it was a different experience altogether. Applications took a long time to launch, websites took much too long to load – the lack of responsiveness was simply unacceptable. I would have sworn to you that ORTHOS was crippling my PC.

Of course, the only difference between those other times and the last two days was in my head. Back then, I knew I had ORTHOS stressing my CPU, so I expected poor performance, which is why every single operation seemed slow to me. Without that knowledge and that expectation, my PC was, it seems, perfectly responsive.

Today’s experience will make me think long and hard before I decide to spend money on a new CPU. And every time I hear someone say how much snappier their new Intel i7 rig feels next to a Core 2, I will wonder: would they even notice if I secretly swapped out their i7 for their old Core 2?

Anyway, I started cleaning my glasses regularly. The problem was that I couldn’t figure out a good cleaning technique. First, I tried washing my glasses with running water and then drying them up with towels. That didn’t work so well for the grease and the towels (either cloth or paper) would leave tons of lint on my glasses. So I bought a professional microfiber cloth, the same kind that I use for cleaning photographic lenses, and some isopropyl alcohol (isopropanol), the stuff that they put in those overpriced “lens cleaning kits” you’ll find in the photography section of your electronics store. That was a lot better than my previous technique, but the alcohol would not clean off all the grease, which was impossible to remove completely with the cloth.

Well, I’ve finally figured it out. (Actually, I wish I had. I learned about this technique from my optician.) The answer is dishwashing liquid (AKA dish soap).

1. Rinse your glasses under running water.
2. Put a bit of dishwashing liquid on one of the lenses, then use your fingers to gently rub the liquid on both sides of both lenses.
3. Rinse glasses again to remove the dish soap. The glasses should now be 100% grease-free.
4. Use a microfiber cloth to clean off remaining water drops and other spots. (The microfiber cloth leaves no fluff, so your glasses should be perfectly clean.) Paper towels or tissues work well, too.

It’s really a perfect combination. The dish soap dissolves all the grease, so you don’t get any smudges when you use the microfiber cloth. The microfiber cloth removes the remaining water drops and (non-greasy) stains made by evaporating water, and leaves no lint. The result: pristine-looking glasses in one minute.

What’s more, this technique is fairly convenient to use. Many online how-tos recommend special eyeglass-cleaning sprays or vinegar, which may be expensive or unavailable. On the other hand, most people have dish soap in their kitchen, so the only special accessory you need is a microfiber cloth, which costs $7 (for a top-quality one) and can be re-used for years. And even that isn’t really necessary, as paper towels or tissues work almost as well.