Hal Stern's thoughts on the economy, software, services, technology, and snowmen. Hal Stern: The Morning Snowman

I'm watching the state of New York area sports with a mix of incredulity, passion, illness, bewilderment and bemusement. Around Mother's Day, Mets fans all over the tri-state area were beaming, shining a light on their much-detested Yankees loving friends and just gloating. Why not? The Yankees were so far behind the Red Sox that Boston looked like another country, and the Mets were sitting on top of a healthy lead that they maintained into the last week of the season. Emphasis on last week.

For those of you like my boss that believe baseball is the thing taking space from the cricket scores, let's recap briefly:

The Mets have lost 11 out of 15 games and no longer control their own destiny. Being able to say "Win it and we're in it" is nice with reference to sports playoffs or even big sales deals, but the Mets need help now. Help from the Phillies, who are so hot right now that South Jersey is considering asking Pennsylvania to annex it (with all of the shopping mall land rights contained). Along they way, they blew 5-run leads more times than a Little League team that has run out of eligible pitchers and lets "the snowsuit kid" take the mound.

The Yankees did not win the AL East for the first time since the dot-com boom. I see this as a trend reversal; the Yankees return to Earth and win the Wild Card. Not bad; a Wild Card team has won the World Series the past few seasons. At least there will be playoff baseball in the Bronx. And they play Cleveland in the first round, which means I can shout "Hello, Cleveland" at the TV, combining references to Spinal Tap with baseball cliches.

The Cubs won the NL Central. But a goat is going to fall out of the sky in the bottom of the 9th inning of the 5th game, turning a sure game-winning home run into a ground-rule double, and all will be for naught. You read it here first.

The football Giants and Jets each won last week, but don't get used to it. I've learned that football is played with a round ball, 90 minute running time halves that count up, not down, and without the use of the hands. I think the Giants and Jets are mixing their sports rules metaphors here. Or else they're both miserable. Or all of the above.

After much careful consideration, weighing of the evidence and consumption of post-game data on mlb.com, all became clear during a morning coffee run. Dunkin' Donuts, the staple of my morning routine, has introduced the "Official Donuts" of the Yankees, Mets, Giants and Jets. "Official" means that Dunkies has the coffee concession at those stadiums. The official donut is a vanilla frosted or Boston Kreme (how ironic) donut covered in the appropriate team color sprinkles: Green and white for the Jets, blue/red for the Giants, white and blue for the Yankees and blue/orange for the Mets (even though the Mets colors are now black, blue and orange). I don't think they're selling well. Who wants to eat the official donut of a team that couldn't beat your local high school on a good day? On top of that, Dunkies is using sprinkles to represent teams without any reasonable Jimmies.

If we're going to field junk food and junk on the field, we might as well provide explanations (sprinkled with obscure references) of what happens when consuming Official Donuts Of Your Mathematically Eliminated Home Town Teams:

Giants: First half tastes great. Unfortunately, the second half of the donut tastes like the three-week old grease in the deep fryer, and you run screaming for the nearest bathroom before the donut is over.

Jets: Lots of potential. They look so tasty that you buy two, one for you and one for the guy you've been tailgating with at Giants Stadium (don't ask) for the last 11 years. On the way into the parking lot, you each grab your "late breakfast", take one bite, and all of the sprinkles fall into your lap. In the rush to wipe them off, you spill Dunkin' Donuts coffee onto the mess, permanently staining your Zubaz pants.

Yankees: Hard to love. Maybe it's the thought that random coatings of sprinkles don't really do justice to Yankee pinstripes. Maybe it's the suggestion that the winningest sports team of the entire known universe could be represented by a donut. Or maybe it's the fact that even though you really want a Yankees donut, you can't get one in every outlet, particularly if the "other" cable system is on in the store. Since they cost five times more than other donuts, you arrange a seemingly clever trade of six promising, less decorated donuts for one Yankees item. Sadly, you knock your half-eaten confection onto the floor, and while reaching to save it from certain contamination you pull your shoulder, break a finger and develop tenderness in your striding hip. And the donuts that you traded away lead in every breakfast statistical category for their new owners.

Mets: Choking hazard. The first one is great, the combination of artificial flavors and colors delighting your coffee-sensitized palate. The second, third and tenth ones are just as good, as you are fearful of breaking your donut streak. And then you wake up and realize that while you were hysterical the Phillies had lost 10,000 games, they passed you in the standings. And you choke on your 18th donut, sickened that nothing fits your newly enhanced waistline, and almost relieved that there's no reason to go outside anyway until April.

As for me, I'm enjoying the last of a Benchwarmer Porter, and cheering for the Padres. If the Friars win the World Series, not only will Southern California have the Stanley Cup and the Commissioners Trophy, but there will be two champion Tigers (George Parros, Ducks; Chris Young, Padres) in the same season. And I can ask Dunkies to do a black and orange themed crueller for the occasion.

I'm the kind of person for whom upselling was invented. While trolling iTunes for some John Wetton-led U.K., I was tempted to look at The Syn. Being a Yes omnivore from my teenage days, I knew that bassist Chris Squire was a member of a group called "The Syn" in his pre-Yes days (being in sales, we have a lot of pre-yes days). Original keyboardist Peter Banks is gone, leaving only Squire and singer Steve Nardelli. But the result isn't bad. It's not quite the long, "audio painting" style of classic Yes, nor is it the pop meanderings of Asia or late lifecycle Yes. It's also lot more accessible than "Flag", the Squire-Bill Bruford collaboration. A good return on $10, commission of a nice Syn to my iTunes library and iPod.

Here's the recording industry's Syn of omission: I probably wouldn't have spent $18 on this CD. I certainly wouldn't have found it filed under "S" for "The Syn", or perhaps "Squire," avoiding Billy Squire without severe 80s withdrawal symptoms. But the suggestion offered by a perfect long tail of music -- iTunes driving demand from one small distribution curve (of British progressive rock fans) to an even smaller one (those who knew Chris Squire when...) -- incented me to spend money unintentionally.

On Tuesday I attended the roundtables and discussions surrounding the Department of Energy's MOU to join the Green Grid. It's great to see a government agency with a department of efficiency, and even more important is that having the DOE on stage drags eco-computing front and center as a national policy issue as well.

Among the dominant themes was that of high voltage power distribution, comparing high voltage AC and DC and the potential energy savings of each. There's a study that Sun and Lawrence Berkeley Labs conducted to examine DC power distribution in the data center, and the first order estimates are that it could save 5-7% over AC. That seems significant, until you put together a pareto of other energy savings ideas. What's lost is lost -- whether it's in the conversion of AC to DC or in spinning disks to manage data that could be migrated to tape or running inefficient code.

The last point is one that was touched by both DOE Assistant Secretary for Efficiency Alexadner Karsner and the New York Stock Exchange's CTO, Steve Rubinow. Rubinow commented that we've come to take "cheap processors and memory" as an excuse to get messier with code, and as a result, we have inefficient applications consuming power on gross scales. Karsner was more direct: "The most available, cheap source of energy is that which we waste".

As we've seen with other environmental and ecological initiatives, real savings come from both reduction in demand as well as efficiencies gained in production and distribution. Managing demand is independent of supply voltages, and can be kicked-off with software tools like the Sun Studio Performance Analyzer as well as systemic inspection offered through Dtrace. Back in the 70s, Tower of Power preached that "There's Only So Much Oil in the Ground." While we've improved discovery, production and distribution of fossil fuels, it's been conservation efforts and efficiencies that extended the lifespan of dead dinosaurs.

In his book 700 Sundays, Billy Crystal remarks that he finally felt like an adult the day that his boyhood hero Micky Mantle died. Six years ago, I had a similar experience: as the Pittsburgh Pirates prepared to open the new PNC Park for their home opener, Hall of Famer and personal boyhood hero Willie Stargell died, far too young and far too full of potential for good. The event prompted me to go for a physical, and I found that I was inhabiting a body that checked out ten years older than I was. It was the event that spurred me to take the hockey gear out of the basement, throw away the stuff that was too small, moldy, or fabricated from hazardous materials, and lace up to play ice hockey again. It re-ignited my love affair with the number 8, Willie Stargell's number, the twin circles that made snowmen on the back of every jersey for which I had been able to pick the number.

Five months later, my 9-11 birthday went from a date I shared with Julius Caesar to one I shared in observance with most of America.

33 years ago, my parents took me to the other ballpark in Pennsylvania (Veterans Stadium) to watch the Pirates play, so that I could get a glimpse of Willie Stargell. The Pirates were in between World Series runs, and while we had a great time, it wasn't until I was in my senior year of high school that I saw the healing power of sports. Willie Stargell led his racially and emotionally diverse Pittsburgh Pirates to the World Series title in 1979, with the old Three Rivers Stadium bouncing to Sister Sledge's "We Are Family," a song that came to represent the team unity that started with captain Stargell.

This year, I got to celebrate my birthday with some of Sun's global government and education systems engineers as well as a few customers at the new PNC Park. We walked in by the statue of Willie Stargell, as large as he must have seemed in real life, and then found our seats just past the food court that features "Chicken on the Hill" (a reference to the restuarant Stargell ran in the off-season) and "Fam-i-lee BBQ", a less oblique nod to the 1979 World Champions. My dinner won't help this year's annual physical report, but I savored, literally, every moment to celebrate in the shadow of a hero.

With my birthday nestled on the calendar between the unofficial end of the Jersey summer on Labor Day, and the official start of spiritual accounting marked by the Jewish New Year, I prefer to see 9-11 as a day on which to take stock of opportunity. What can I do more of, do better, or do differently? What's the scope of "We are Family" in 2007?

Something to think about delayed for four hours in the Pittsburgh airport.

I lived with a Dead Head for a year, and lived in his musical light cone for another year, so it's hard to say when exactly I first heard "Dark Star," one of the Dead's platforms for improvisation and fun (if you want a thorough treatment of the philosophical, metaphysical and less musical underpinnings of Dark Star, check out Steven Skaggs' essay on those very things).

Improvisation in code or in music needs a framework to carry it. It has to be accessible; it has to be easy to digest (at least for those not familiar with the rest of the author's work); and done well it both builds on the ideas of others and contributes new phraseology back. That's the end of the literal comparison between the Sun Labs gaming platform and its namesake Dead exploration.

In our latest Innovating@Sun podcast, I traded fours with Jim Waldo on how Darkstar hides some of the real-time and occasionally messy elements of building a game, how we can make it grow to "interesting" economies of scale, and why Java is well-suited for the highly charged (no pun intended) world of real-time development. Jim even runs with my obscure Grateful Dead references, which is fortunate since I was one step away from invoking the confluence of technology and John Perry Barlow by referring to Jim as the estimated prophet of Java.

Officially I'm back from Israel, and behind about a half dozen blog entries that are in various half-composed states on devices ranging from my laptop to the nightstand notepad from a hotel in Tiberias. So much to write about, but one incident early on in our trip sticks out because it was a potential high and low point.

We had taken a jeep ride along the Burma Road, an unpaved, unfinished but well-marked trail that runs from about 10 kilometers outside of Jersusalem into the city. During the 1948 War for Independence, the Burma road was built as an alternative to the main road which had been heavily fortified. It's quite a ride, particularly in a vehicle with random suspension. At our first stop, I hopped out of the back, not checking that my camera bag was properly zipped, and proceeded to watch my Canon Digital SLR camera do the Rebel yell about 5 feet onto a flat rock where we'd parked. It landed smack on the cap of the short zoom lens.

I've been waiting 22 years to prove the advice of the man who sold me my first SLR camera (also a Canon): "Always put a cheap UV filter in front of every lens. When, not if, but when you drop the camera, you'll only break the filter". He was right. The lens cap managed to crack the filter, but the glass didn't scratch the surface of the much more expensive (and vital) lens underneath. I struggled with using a longer telephoto lens for part of the day, and then invested in a few tools to fish the broken glass out of the filter, returning my favorite lens to service. The filter ring was hopelessly jammed into the lens, but at least I had functional camera equipment for the next two weeks.

Our local camera store had to use a filter wrench (looks like an oil filter wrench) to extract the old UV filter from the lens, and I'm sure they're saving the old filter ring to retell the story. Simon Phipps likes to say that we pay for things at the point of utility, when we find we need them in whatever productive aspect they were acquired. I'll add my own corrollary: We pay for risk management, whether it's service plans, insurance, or redundant parts, where the cost and time elements of a failure far outweight the costs of protecting against that failure. In short: always buy the UV filter.

Now if only I can figure out why my Digital Rebel insists on over-exposing pictures taken in desert conditions, I'll be happy. Might need another filter....