Saturday, May 31, 2008

Green Energy, or *partly green* energy?

I switched energy providers from BGE to Pepco Energy Services, under the impression I'd be cutting back on CO2 emissions from the energy generation. On closer inspection, I should have gone with the even-higher-priced wind-only source. Why? Because over 97% of the energy source Pepco is brokering comes from combustion sources.

It's my own fault, of course, for not reading the fine print (if it was there), and not clearly understanding the advertising style of listing biomass near the end, when it's most likely the majority, the way that foods are supposed to list ingredients so we can see how much sugar or other junk is there.

The fine print in the information package I received after I signed up shows these energy sources (as supplied between January and June 2007):

  • 72.59% Captured Methane Gas
  • 02.50% Solid Waste
  • 24.91% Wood or other Biomass

All the other sources show 0%, including geothermal, hydroelectric, solar and wind. The Pepco Energy site says:

Green Electricity is generated from renewable resources, which includes hydroelectric plants, solar panels, wind farms and biomass fuels. The generation of Green Electricity produces almost none of the pollutants commonly referred to as "greenhouse gases". These pollutants (such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide) contribute to global warming, smog and acid rain, and can result in damage to the environment.

Source: http://pepcoenergy.com/ProductsAndServices/productCategory.aspx?Market=Residential&MarketCode=Residential&MarketId=1&CategoryId=2

The fine print online:
http://pepcoenergy.com/ProductsAndServices/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductId=43&UtilityId=3&StateId=21

We should have gone with:

Pepco Energy Services is proud to offer NewWind™ Energy – electricity that is produced right here in the Mid-Atlantic region by wind farms contracted to Pepco Energy Services. NewWind Energy is pollution free, burns no fossil fuels and creates none of the emissions that are released by the generation of standard electricity.

Source:
http://pepcoenergy.com/ProductsAndServices/productCategory.aspx?Market=Residential&MarketCode=Residential&MarketId=1&CategoryId=1

Because of my mistake, and until I can correct this, our "Green Energy" will be releasing over 767 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour.

It looks like I'll be sending an email to info@pepcoenergy.com to make a more significant change in our energy consumption impact.

References:

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Launch party for "Freshly Squeezed"

The Creative Alliance started out in a dingy ex-store front, and is now a shiny jewel in an ex-vaudeville era movie house.

Several folks read last night, with Kathy kicking off the Freshly Squeezed collection release party with the short story "The Box".

Mare Cromwell picked a few poems, some in the anthology *"Toy Soldier", and some not.

Tamara Keurejian's autobiographical story "Goodbye, Francis" brought a lot of emotions to the surface.

Barbara Friedland spoke, but I don't think her pick was in the book, certainly not the Bush editorial comments. Afterwards, we spoke to her about teaching, learning, and attending Towson University, where Kathy graduated, and Julian is going into Sophomore year. Her class on Marketing seems a good choice for media careerists.

I hope Fernando Quijano finishes his novel "Forever Lilith" one day; he shared a few pages and skipped to parts that seemed as true and real as anything in the newspaper.

Rick Connors read parts of "A Gentleman's Garden" which reminded me of my days on Collington Avenue in Baltimore City.

Eugenie Nable ended the sessions with "Single-Mom Buzzard." We were glad we had eaten.

Apprentice House
published the book, and claims to be the country's only campus-based, student-staffed publishing firm. Thanks to all the editors and teachers at the Creative Alliance!


Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Shel asked 8 other questions; I answer most of them.

I met Shel Israel (or as he prefers, shel israel) earlier this month in Orlando, although we've followed each other on Twitter for, oh maybe twice that amount of time? He's a great guy, and has a great business card that says so. I read one of his books ("Naked Conversations") and started digging back into his earlier writings.

Like this one:

http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/02/the-revised-sap.html


1. Describe the culture of your business or where you live. What role does social media play in it?

*) American style

I work for a big/global American-based company that makes consumer and professional products. Growing up, this was a big employer in my home town; the son of one of the founders went to my high school and to my college, so I felt deep local roots when I started work. With a majority of top positions in the U.S. and a large portion of manufacturing jobs outside the U.S., the cultural feeling is different than when I started. Reading Thomas Friedman's book The World Is Flat helped me better understand what corporations will look like in the future, and what my role might be. As for social media, I'll describe impacts on my outward-facing role as a community facilitator for the Americas SAP User Group (ASUG). When I started, contacts were via email, phone calls and at face-to-face meetings. Picking up business cards was the primary method of documenting the established network. I really didn't concentrate on any social networking except trying to get the spreadsheets of the attendees at the smaller Fall events ASUG hosted. Lists of company names, email and phone numbers was a gold-mine for connecting to peers facing challenges we faced with deploying and managing enterprise software. Probably a nexus for me was sitting in a meeting with my boss, doing a conference call with colleagues in the UK, as he showed slides on a webcast, and then updated the slides in real time for them (and for me). This global multimedia meeting showed me the power of tools that I had not connected together before.

Subsequently, when trying to leverage our common challenges of converting our SAP systems to Unicode, I tried to get webcasts organized through ASUG official channels, but found budget, logistic and resource constraints hampering quick meeting organizing, so I used the resources I had to set up meetings for under 25 people cross the web. I built up an email list of like-minded ASUG contacts, SAP experts and others, scheduling sessions using ASUG's web site discussion forums for follow up. These informal meetings evolved to formally scheduled ones when SAP agreed to host webcasts on their systems. We found that exchanging ideas on the "back-channel" of webcast chat messaging has become the elevator or hallway conversations of the 21st century, where people who may never have met in person can connect in virtual space.

*) Engineering

As I work for a manufacturer, the engineering teams are the primary conduit from idea to reality. I've been in training courses with some, support others in my daily job, and chat with many in the course of the day. Since I have an engineering degree, I can relate in a professional way to the jobs they do, and could see myself in a role there one day. Without going into any detail, we use software for product lifecycle management, meaning tracking the evolution of something we want to sell from idea to being built. Teams of engineers and product design specialists around the globe share these details electronically. In this case, we are not using SAP software, so there are challenges connecting data from inside SAP to outside. I would imagine these challenges aren't much different than we'd face if we were using SAP across the board, as there are always customizations and different ways of doing business, depending on where you start, what your specialty is, and what influences drive you.

Social media between teams are webcasts, document management systems and lots (LOTS!) of email. With travel budgets impacted by rising fuel costs, I would imagine that video conferencing will grow, filling current network pipes. I've got open "to do" lists containing knowledge management opportunities and challenges.

*) New products

Google "new products" "power tools" and we're #1, and 4 out of the top 5 hits. Not bad. Urban legend is we're in the top 10 recognized brands. Could be, but whenever I say where I work the typical reaction is "Oh" as in "nice." I see quite a juxtaposition from the products consumer manufacturers create ("hardware" if you will) to the products that software entrepreneurs build. In both cases, end users ultimately determine your fate, but building and shipping software seems to have a high "turn ratio" which can sometimes be detrimental to corporate stability. I'm not talking security intrusions here, I'm talking churn like the boiler room penny stock pushers of yore, and the bubble-licious flavor of the month like so many new Holland tulips.

2. How has social media changed your business or your life (pick one or both)?

"Life? Don't talk to me about life." - Marvin the Paranoid Android, via DNA

I think webcast when I think of social media, not so much facebook or myspace. I started with a personal computer in the late 1970s and by 1983 or so had a CompuServe account. They had "CB radio" which was primitive 2 way talk to strangers, and there were numerous permutations of bulletin boards, which were store and forward messaging systems. It was connectivity to people with mutual interests all over the world, just like ham radio operators were in the middle of the 20th century. I didn't get into instant messaging then, or on IRC later when the internet grew up, but I see twitter and texting services as very similar to those earlier incarnations.

I've used facebook as a means of keeping in touch with my son at college, although he's only a mile away from where I work. Some ideas and concepts are shared easier in this media, for some reason, that aren't as easily shared in person, on the phone, or via email.

Writing blogs on SAP SDN BPX SCN has been life-enabling in a lot of ways. I have developed a number of different voices or characters, and sets of followers in each of them, from a core technical expert, to a social organizer, to an environmental voice, to being a recognizable personality (an SAP mentor) in a tremendously large crowd of people.

3. How has social media impacted your views of businesses, government, politics or education (pick one or more)?

Er, my views of each of these is pretty much the same as it has been since I was young. I probably changed or evolved my views on education the most when I was a middle school Parent/Teacher Association president, with insights into the ways that adults try to influence children, but I already had a lot of vicarious experience into education listening to my father's stories of the teachers, parents, guardians and students in the schools where he taught and administered.

4. Has social media impacted what you do in your spare time? How about other family members?

Well, I'm blogging more, spending a lot of time writing and a lot of time thinking about writing, and probably also sharing more photographs, audio and video recordings than I ever did or thought I would.

My wife has transitioned from writing poetry and short stories on the typewriter, to doing more work online, sharing content within a group ("Write Here, Write Now") that is partly on Yahoo, and partly email chains. I've spent time being tech support, including on one ambitious story where each writer was supposed to contribute with different color fonts. Try that with 8 different email clients! So, we are both online collaborators in a sense.

[
Weird, I just googled the book she contributed to and found the release party is tomorrow. Think I need to post this blog NOW!
Freshly-Squeezed
ISBN: 1934074322
ISBN-13: 9781934074329
]

5. If you have children, or are close to young people, how does social media impact their time or opinions?

*) 1 son, in college, who bugs me regularly for texting service for his phone.
*) Scout leader role in local troop and lodge, where youth have all the answers, plenty of time, yet can't spell worth a darn.

I've noticed that youth often have a huge and growing network of friend links. I have maybe 50 on Facebook, 250 on LinkedIn, but teenagers have hundreds of friends. If these are true friends, this social base will help them later in life to be able to draw on resources as people move around. On the flip side, there is the potential for some of these tools to be turned against us, being damaged by malicious users, or becoming time drains rather than a help.

When I friended (which in the old days was probably called "befriended" but I digress) one of my son's friends, it felt a little like I was prying, but then I thought, no, I'd start conversations with these people if they were in my house or I was in their house, so starting a network connection is socially acceptable. When I've contacted a few people who were interns at my work, they have been appreciative of my reaching out. In most cases, I've tried to leave endorsements, so that others who may hire or consult them can leverage the time they spent with us as college students. I might also need for them to hire me for something someday!

6. Is there a discussion of social media where you work? If so, what are the sharpest arguments?

Business impact, return on investment. Always with the knowledge management and retrofitting/adaption/adoption planning.

I've discussed my research, which has included experimentation, and reading a couple books, like the Corporate Blogging Book, and Naked Conversations. Just like having a good story or joke you want to tell at a party, there isn't always an opportune moment or an appreciative audience to share insights with. Often, people have either made their minds up based on personal experience (or what someone else told them), or they are following a different development path. Recently, I've seen growth in professional contact management services like LinkedIn. I expect there won't be a "killer app" that persuades people, like Lotus did, or like Netscape did, but there will be a "killer meme" that just encapsulates the power of media tools more than anything else could. I don't think it will be "8 things I wouldn't tell my shrink."

7. Can you tell my studio audience an interesting story about how social media impacted business or culture.

Maybe, but it's going to cost you.

8. Additional comments

One of the hardest challenges I'm faced with is evangelizing for Wikis. It seems like the facebook/myspace and even blogs are at least known quantities, but do-it-yourself authoritative collaborative group-think websites are a different story. Dennis Howlett suggested wetpaint.com, so I've set up a private wiki space for an SAP users group team to draft material before sharing it with the world. The Stewart Mader book wikipatterns and the associated web site have been like Zen writings, simple but tough guidelines.

Keep reading, keep writing, keep editing!

Monday, May 26, 2008

weasels ripped my photostream

I've been uploading photos to panoramio and then to google earth for a few months, and gotten a couple useful comments, as well as pointing out mis-labeled locations. Yesterday I got what I would consider a comment worth reporting to the authorities, and since then I've gotten a half dozen. If I have so many in a short time, I wouldn't be surprised if this useful service is being ripped to shreds by malevolent ghost users.

Here's the message body:

"Thanks for publishing this great photo you qualified for a SPECIAL gift. CLICK HERE to claim your gift."

Of course, the tip-off was they selected mundane photos I've uploaded for geo-tracking purposes, none of the more photogenic subjects, not to mention "SPECIAL gift" just has to be a trap. I wasted no time in reporting this abuse to the admins, but it's Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. and possibly response time will be above average.

The first trash arrived at 4:34 PM local time, and the latest within the hour.

Using the Lynx text browser on NetBSD, I gingerly looked beneath the scab in this comment. Panoramio lets one embed links in comments, so this is ripe for people who should be beaten with sticks. The links all go through the exact same "snipurl" and expand to these domains:

clickbooth dot com
monetizeit dot net
and end up at:
bahamiancruises dot net

Wow, what a prize, junk mail telling me I've won a cruise; just send money for the postage to deliver the tickets, or a time share, or whatever.

The user ids so far are:

1786106
1791939
1793020
1793996
1797718
1797788

As Bugs would say, what kind of maroons are they, anyway?

I've gone ahead and deleted these from my streams, and will be on the look out for more over the next few days.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Over 4 hours hiking, only found 1 battery

4 hours of walking, found 1 battery nearly at the end, hidden in the gutter at an intersection between Carroll Island Road and the nearby shopping center.

Details:
http://www.editgrid.com/user/jspath55/HIKE-2008-05-24

Photo map (only the ones southwest of Eastern Ave). Drill down for more shots - I took nearly 150 and uploaded and geotagged over 50 of them today.

There's a path from Tidewood Rd. to Schmidt Rd, and I have a few photos I need to crop before putting them online.



The battery carcass:





















p.s. The Baltimore Sun has a story that Miami Beach opened up on May 26th, after being closed for 7 years. Funny: I was there on the 24th.



http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_county/bal-md.swim27may27,0,1457112.story

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Indy Tweets and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Went to see the new Indiana Jones movie at the Bengies Drive-In Thursday night, and sent out a few twitter messages while there. Phone battery was almost out, so I was fairly terse. TinyTwitter behaved adequately though it has suffered lately through the twiccups.

In most to least recent order:

http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/818250036
http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/818220199
http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/818184435
http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/817894908
http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/817891181
http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/817833010
http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/817559580

http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/816504964
http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/816487399
http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/814591308
http://twitter.com/jspath55/statuses/814481381


It doesn't seem like all of these made it to hashtags for some reason.
See http://hashtags.org/tag/bengies/ for more details.

Oh, and thanks, Abesh, for the virtual Indy hat:
http://www.facebook.com/gifts/gift.php?id=28699178720
(Somehow, he knew I like hats)



p.s. Saturday night I dreamed of a really big scorpion. Wonder why?

9 batteries in 25 minutes - a new personal record

I went for a walk at lunch Friday, over to Towson and Hudson Trails shopping for eating utensils (found a foon for $2, not a spork, not a spoonfork, not a forkspoon, a foon).

On the way back to the office I decided to vary the straight-ish line I took to get there, and look for dead batteries in parking lots around Towson.

In an April blog, I had noticed how much battery hunting was like fossil hunting, or archeology ("first 3 were several feet apart, at the downhill side of the Middlesex shopping center parking lot, like dinosaur fossils collected at a flooded stream site") and this expedition was very similar. Here's the photo file log, showing the shots that I took, and excluding dupes:

385112 May 23 12:14 0523081214.jpg
425286 May 23 12:15 0523081215.jpg
470554 May 23 12:17 0523081217a.jpg
272830 May 23 12:18 0523081218.jpg
409044 May 23 12:19 0523081219a.jpg
348803 May 23 12:20 0523081219b.jpg
512043 May 23 12:25 0523081225.jpg
587916 May 23 12:35 0523081235.jpg
646898 May 23 12:37 0523081237.jpg

I used NetPBM tools to mosaic these into a 20K JPEG file.
















= = =
$ jpegtopnm ${shot}.[Jj][Pp][Gg] | pnmscale -xysize 150 200 | ppmtojpeg > ${shot}-150x200.jpg
$ jpegtopnm ${shot}.[Jj][Pp][Gg] | pnmscale -xysize 150 200 > ${shot}-150x200.pnm
$ pnmindex -across=3 0523*200.pnm >batteries-20080523.pnm
$ pnmtojpeg batteries-20080523.pnm >batteries-20080523.jpg

And then Xpaint to show a closeup of one of the nearly buried specimens.

$ xli 0523081235-crop3.jpg
0523081235-crop3.jpg is a 541x378 JPEG image, color space YCbCr, 3 comps., Huffman coding
Building XImage...done

The ones wedged under the concrete parking barriers were the trickiest to find, and the shots are not so great since they were usually in shadow. I think the camera phone behaved adequately, though, despite my inability to see the screen in the bright sunlight.

$ strings graphics/0523081235.jpg | head -4
Exif
SAMSUNG Electronics
Anycall SCH-i760
2008:05:23 16:35:53

= = =

Thursday, May 22, 2008

well, at least we're communicating

Well, I asked for a shopping list from the returned prodigal college student so this is progress of sorts. Quite the balanced diet of easy fixin's. However, it's legible, not all junk food, gracious, and was neatly placed on the kitchen counter rather than hidden away somewhere, so I'm declaring victory.

To the store!

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

reindex of 8 things

I indexed the "8 things" meme back in January and February.
In the meantime, I have met a couple people who were further back in this chain of events.

Looking at this from oldest post to newest:

Luis Suarez 19-Dec-2007
http://www.elsua.net/2007/12/19/eight-things-you-didnt-know-about-me/

Susan Skrupski (at ASUG08, didn't meet her) 31-Dec-2007:

http://susanitsa.wordpress.com/
http://01ebeb1.netsolhost.com/scrupskiblog/
http://susanscrupski.com/scrupskiblog/2007/12/31/crazy-eights-im-it/

Maggie Fox (met at ASUG08/Sapphire) 01-Jan-2008:
http://socialmediagroup.ca/2008/01/01/eight-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-me/

"But, enough about me. I’m tagging Collin Douma, Laura Fitton, Shel Israel, Craig Cmehil, Thomas Otter, Kate Trgovac, Leila Boujnane, Jeremiah Owyang and Phil Gomes (yes, yes, I know that’s nine!) to tell us eight things we didn’t know about them."

Shel Israel (met at ASUG08/Sapphire) 01-Jan-2008:
http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/01/maggie-tags-me.html

"Thus I now tag Pat Phelan, Loic Le Meur, KD Paine, Chris Heuer, Robert Scoble, Toby Bloomberg, and Liz Strauss. May each of you have fun with this. More important, please do not forget to link to me."

Craig Cmehil (met him at SAP TechEd in 2007) 01-Jan-2008:
http://craig.cmehil.com/2008/01/eight-things-you-probably-didnt-know.html
"To keep with the spirit I tag Alvaro Tejada, Michael Coté, Nigel James, Eddie Herrmann, Dan McWeeney, Matthias Zeller, Frank Köhntopp, Dennis Howlett and Rich Heilman."

Thomas Otter 04-Jan-2008:
"Hmm. I’ve been tagged. By Maggie and Susan. Their wish is my command. They are not to be trifled with, those two."
http://theotherthomasotter.wordpress.com/2008/01/04/8-things-you-probably-dont-know-about-me/
In the tradition of these meme things, one should pass it on, so I’ll tag James Farrar, Steve Mann, Mike Prosceno [met him at ASUG08/Sapphire] , and Nigel James.

Dennis Howlett (met him at ASUG08/Sapphire) 11-Jan-2008:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=284
http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12688-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=43080&messageID=795894&start=0

[didn't take the baton, but interesting commentary on the pass around]

James Farrar (met at ASUG08/Sapphire) 07-Jan-2008:
"As if blogging is not exhibitionist enough I have been tagged by Thomas Otter for even more personal disclosure."
http://jamesfarrar.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/eight-things-you-probably-dont-know-about-me/
"Well there you go, enough privacy surrendered for one day. I now pass the baton to Dennis Howlett, Charlotte Otter, Marilyn Pratt and James Governor for same."

Marilyn Pratt (met in 2007) 24-Jan-2008:

http://grannimari.blogspot.com/2008/01/8-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about.html
"Now, grannimari is quietly and sedately working as an online community evangelist for the Business Process Expert Community. And looking to the community members who inspire and challenge her thinking. In that spirit of letting no good deed go unpunished, I’ll tag: Jim Spath , Eddy De Clercq , Jen Robinson, Thomas Ritter, Dick Hirsch and Ram Tiwari"

I wrote 8 separate blogs, but it took me nearly a month to finish them, as I went for depth rather than my typical short answer, starting on 25-Jan-2008 with:

http://jspath55.blogspot.com/2008/01/1-thing-you-dont-know-about-me.html

My summary was published as:

http://jspath55.blogspot.com/2008/02/index-to-8-things-you-probably-didnt.html


At this point (21-Feb-2008), I tagged 2 people:

1. Blag
2. Ignacio

I know they both responded, so as soon as I find those stories I will link them.

Other side links also welcome!

easy trip home

All those years of Boy Scout summer camp paid off nicely, as Julian came home with less stuff, it seems, than he went to school with. Everything in his dorm room fit into 2 foot lockers, a duffel bag, and a back pack that wasn't even crammed. The portable vacuum cleaner went with me for the trip and then right back home. All in all, an easy finish to the first year in college.

He's now thinking driver's education, job, car, etc., so now we can worry about an entirely different spectrum of challenges.

How long until the trip back in the other direction?

Sunday, May 18, 2008

2 batteries in 1 weekend

A rainy weekend at the Order of the Arrow Section NE-4C Conclave did not stop nearly 400 campers from participating in lodge events. My tasks included registration (printing badges for walk-in customers), emptying trash cans and sorting recyclables from trash. It took me a couple days, but I finally spotted my first discarded battery just before lunch on Saturday (I went to camp Thursday night). This D cell had been sitting on the mulch outside the dining hall for a long time based on its condition, and scores of people walked past it, including me, before I got this photo.













Sunday morning as I was helping clean up after breakfast I pulled a few recycle cans and bottles out of the trash stream I spotted a couple zip-lock plastic bags, in nearly new condition, so I grabbed them just in case. They were double bagged, with the inner bag containing another D cell battery, in much better condition than the first (notice the "expiration" date of 2013).












So, my haul on this hike, camping and event trip was 2 batteries and 4 large blue bags. Hopefully a side effect was a bit of education for young (and old) scouts and Scouters. Shaun Woolmer had given me a cool, custom, Leave No Trace patch, which should be visible, over my right pocket. The official patch is on my right sleeve.












I could see, just barely out the back window...













Tuesday, May 13, 2008

who is going to cut my grass when I run out of gas?

I tweeted:

going to try cutting the lawn with the push mower - the gas engine is in the hospital waiting room with a 3 week line ahead of it.

Then I quicktimed:




Now I'm replenishing lost fluids.

Monday, May 12, 2008

one small step, one small battery

Went shopping on the way home from work for paper towels (yes, they aren't very eco-friendly but we get the select-a-size so maybe kill fewer trees than we might) and spotted a wild battery. Sometimes it is the little victories over a vindicative world that help get you through the day.

This little kipper is now in the bag, waiting for a trip back to the material feed stream.

It's an AA battery; by coincidence I was looking for AAA rechargeables. Seems like the big box story may be cutting back on inventory of the NiMH models. Perhaps they sold out, but I think the red tag on the one I bought is a pointer to discontinuance.

plastic drinking water bottle disposal

Back in December 2007, I wrote a rambling blog about Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability (aka CSR) on the SAP SDN network site. In part, it was a reaction to a running dialog between Marilyn Pratt of SAP and me on the meaning and intent of social responsibility. Much of what I saw posted on the SAP web site seemed to be pitched to the executive level, almost at a command-and-control mentality of "your company should do such-and-such." My argument was that the vast majority of us have little direct influence on policies where we work. Very big indirect impact, but very little of what the SAP CSR wiki was saying. So I wanted to express where I was coming from.

I think I succeeded, given the feedback I got from SAP community members around the world, particularly with new friends in Europe, South America and Asia. Using the term "guru" resonated with people. So, what's the story with the water bottle disposal?

After posting the blog on SDN, I shared it with friends and relatives, including printing a copy for my mother to read. A small portion of the story dealt with my department purchasing and distributing bottled drinking water. I expressed my opinion that this practice was wasteful, and had a discussion with the IT vice-president, among others. Shortly thereafter, the department policy was changed, and people who wanted to drink bottled water could use the large refillable bottles delivered by those big trucks. No more small, disposable bottles for the IT department!

This isn't the huge company-wide cultural shift that may come one day, as bottled water is still available in vending machines and in the cafeteria. But the trash cans on our floor no longer overflow with empty plastic bottles.

Below is a shot of my "Leave No Trace" refillable water bottle at the Bloggers Corner of the ASUG 2008 / Sapphire conference. The aluminum cans in the background were not mine.


Saturday, May 10, 2008

ASUG 2008 conference recap

Here's the lazy way I did my trip report: URLs to my SAP SDN blogs on the Americas SAP Users Group Annual Conference and Vendor Fair, which some mistakenly kept calling Sapphire. I didn't go to any Sapphire events in Orlando, unless you include the Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability round table, or a jazz music party Monday night.


Bonus tracks:

Is your name "Spath"?

While I was at the movies last night, I put this on my twitter time line:

Man parked next to me @ #bengies saw my last name on car sticker-taught school where my dad was principal "nice man" 40 yrs ago-I'm so proud

I put as much as I could in the 140 character limit; here's more.

I went to a triple feature at the Bengies Drive-In Theatre, the last one left in Maryland, with the distinction of having the largest movie screen in operation in North America.

To get my favorite spot (row 5, left of aisle) I arrived early, and brought a book and an ipod to amuse myself. A man parked next to me after I had been there a few minutes, got out, walked around, and then came over to ask me if "my name was Spath" and did I have a "relative who was a school principal." Well, of course I did, my father taught school, and was a vice-principal and principal in Baltimore City (read: inner city) schools for 30 years.

He told me his name was Keith, and he had worked as a teacher for my father at an elementary school at Oliver and Eden Streets (which I later remembered is, or was, called Rutland Elementary School). He said how nice my father was; I told him my dad is no longer with us, but my mom is.

A few minutes later, he came back to say he had called a co-worker he was still in touch with to let her know he had seen me, and that she was happy to hear abut it. He told me (and I grabbed a piece of paper to write this down before I forgot) it "would take a lifetime to find anyone who didn't like my father, and I probably still wouldn't find one."

Wow.

Within a few minutes, my ipod shuffled to Leo Kottke's Jack Gets Up from My Father's Face.

Just a coincidence.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

A first for me - the first person someone followed on twitter

I've been added by over 100 Twitter users, and blocked a few who seem to think it's a contest to collect as many links as possible, instead of using this tool to expand your consciousness. Well, today as I was checking out a new follower I found they had just started on twitter, and I was their first. A different kind of feeling, maybe like being a godfather to someone.




Of course, I don't know who this is yet, but perhaps all will be revealed soon.