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

Five thoroughly marginal tips for flying cross-country on a regular basis:

1. Pack an extra t-shirt in your carry-on. Several times, I've been thankful that I had a clean, dry shirt to swap out for one that was covered in coffee, soda, or something worse (only once, but it was really vile). If you don't wear it, you can roll it up and use it as a neck pillow. Current t-shirt of choice for redeyes: Underarmour relaxed fit short sleeve: soft and warm.

2. Instant oatmeal packs and a spoon > "Something in a wrap". Sometimes you don't quite know what the meal is, and other times you can decipher the wrapper that's been heat-welded to its contents and decide you'd rather pass. A few packets of instant oatmeal and a spoon are a wonderful alternative. Have the galley attendant pour 1/2 a cup of hot water into an insulated cup, you are Sir Mix-A-Lot of Row 12.

3. Sit on the aisle opposite your handed-ness. Lefties like me do better in the D-E-F right-hand side of the plane, particularly on the aisle. If you're trying to work on the brain annhilator strength puzzle, your writing arm and elbow can drift (somewhat safely) into the aisle rather than the midsection of the person next to you. A window seat yields the same benefit if the middle seat is empty, versus banging your elbow on the side of the plane as you frantically scribble notes for the talk you're due to give upon arrival.

4. Check your seat for power and width. The newer Continental 737-800 equipment has in-seat power, but only about halfway back. Many of the seemingly extra legroom bulkhead row seats are actually less comfortable than those in regular rows since they have the tray tables set between seats, reducing their effective width a few inches. For those of us in the shape more commonly called "round", cross-row seat spacing matters as much as seat pitch. I'm a big fan of SeatGuru to get a projection of my bin-packing problem.

5. Dunkin Donuts is portable. I bring the small individual serving sized vacuum packs of ground coffee and my own filters; any hotel with a coffee maker turns into a mobile Dunkies outpost. Since I'm an iced coffee fiend, I'll make a pot the night before, let it cool in the in-room fridge, and then add ice to my DD-logo cup for a bit of the home coffee field advantage on the road.

It was one of those weekends when I did many things, but didn't see a common theme emerge until I spent Sunday afternoon with my hands submerged in a failed attempt to blend art and plumbing and realized I'd had a trio of plumbing references as the meta data for my weekend. But I'm cutting to the chase....

Friday night: One of my all-time favorite summer activities is to announce Williamsport Little League Tournament games at the NJ District level, mixing up my own brand of John Sterling with equal parts radio DJ and CB radio operator. Given travel schedules and the fact that I'm no longer on the local Little League board, I get a chance to do about one game a summer. This past Friday night, I got to the ball field to find out that one of the teams had withdrawn from the tournament, their short post season flushed before it had begun.

Saturday night: Rush at the PNC Bank Arts Center. After having seen Rush in Philadelphia a month ago, I was expecting a repeat of the same amazing show. But having read Peart's Roadshow I should have known of the variation in venues, and how the musicians themselves often feel a show is only "adequate" or "competent", not the exhilarating experience those of us who paid $100 a ticket thought we were enjoying. Saturday's Rush show suffered from significant reductions in the lighting rigging, such that the "spaceship" type lights that normally ascend and descend toward the stage were fixed along the stage's ceiling. Much worse, the sound quality was "Delaware River mud" at best, with bass suffering from echoes and very tinny vocals (I know, I know, Geddy Lee sounds tinny in Carnegie Hall). I forgot how much the acoustics in the PNC Bank Arts Center resemble that of a concrete arena bathroom, and I can also see why Peart refuses to use corporate sponsor names when recalling stops in the roadshow.

Sunday night: I decide, after a fun-filled trip to Home Depot, to attack the two Kohler Rialto toilets in our house that are testing my patience. Toilet plumbing isn't really all that complicated, but when a former software engineer is facing a very low profile, very small tank plumbing fixture armed with a toolbelt and extension cord, only bad things can happen. In the words of Al Bundy, nobody appreciates a toilet for the work of technology that it is, and that's probably because in some designer's efforts to hide its function, it's function got too complicated. Charles Mingus used to say (with reference to jazz music) that anyone could take something simple and make it complicated; only genius could take the complicated and make it simple. This bit of plumbing was the work of the anti-genius; however; two hours, one session with the drill press, four different screwdrivers, a home-made shim, and one custom-cut fitting down the drain (literally) later, I think both toilets are functional.

If I get home to find they're not, I'm unbolting both plumbing fixtures and using them as lawn seats at the PNC Bank Arts Center. Art imitates art.

Just finished Neal Peart's Ghost Rider, the story of his "healing road" of motorcycle travels after the tragic deaths of his daughter and wife within 10 months of each other. Normally I find travel literature really boring; I'd rather go and explore and get a sense of places first-hand than have context prescribed for me. But Peart uses the travelogue to establish the context for his moods, his thoughts, and in the second half of the book, a series of letters to his friend Brutus (who co-stars in Roadshow: Landscape with Drums, the successor story to Ghost Rider).

Snippets of Rush lyrics (written by Peart) appear at the opening and close of various chapters, and as adjuncts Peart provides along the way. It's eerie to see how some of his attitudes and thinking pre-tragedy shaped his recovery after those events; it's even eerier the Rush CD Roll the Bones deals with death and matters of circumstance, written long before Peart experienced those first-hand. At the close of the book, he describes the process by which he began to pen lyrics again, for the Rush CD Vapor Trails (and it's easy to pick up on the themes that later braced that CD, starting with small personal victories).

I turned the last page of the book last night, and was left with two striking thoughts that paired with a difficult day of work:

1. Tormented by time and space where he was, Peart rode his motorcyle. Fast. Speed and distance (changes in space over time) counted for more than direction. Forward progress.

2. He rediscovered hope by building on the things that gave him joy: first his motorcycle, then nature, then caring about the environment, and eventually meeting his second wife.

I put on Rush's Snakes & Arrows, a CD about hope and faith, in some ways the third part of the Peart mental travelogue, on the way home. It's audio Anne Lamott.

I get (at times) grief for investing as much time as I do on Facebook, from creating groups to seeking out friends to thinking about how to build small, vibrant communities. One of my friends claims it's my competitive nature that makes me a "friend hound;" my kids insist I do this mostly to embarrass them (as if other embarrassment vectors weren't sufficient).

As I was reviewing the "Missing Manual" (O'Reilly/Pogue Press) for Facebook, I scribbled notes about business uses for the social networking site, from promoting themes and memes to building a readership to locating new channels for ideas. One of those channels hit me head-on a few weeks ago -- an old friend found me on Facebook, read some of my Sun blog entries that get imported as notes, and decided I might make an interesting interview for the Innovations Exchange for which she consults.

Today that Facebook "friending" turned into about 45 minutes of interview (which I'll recap another evening) and hopefully will show up on their site as a thought piece on where technology can disrupt the healthcare provider market.

Spent a vacation weekend in Montreal (and honestly, truly did no any work for four days, including blogging, reading email, or even texting friends from work). A work de-emphasis didn't stop me from thinking about architecture and sustainability, however, and those thoughts were front and center as I toured the Basilica de Notre Dame and the Olympic Stadium.

Flying into Montreal, it's easy to pick out the 1976 Olympic venue: at 175 meters, the inclined tower is the tallest of its kind. Along with the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas, it's one of the few buildings you ascend via an "inclinator" rather than a purely vertical elevator. The stadium sports a permanent cover, making it look something like a piece of Tupperware encasing something that has run afoul of your refrigerator. Original architectural plans for the Olympic venue included a retractable roof, pulled up like a magician snatching a tablecloth from under a full place setting. However, the roof wasn't finished in time for the 1976 Olympics and after several design failures that resulted in ripped, torn, and unusable stadium covers, the current lid was put in place with a vengeance. In only thirty years, the Olympic stadium suffered structural failures, lost its primary tenant (the Montreal Expos) and now sits as a stark (and tall) reminder of bad long-term design. Quebec residents still feel "sustainability" of a different sort, as tobacco taxes fund the remaining financial burden of the stadium. Conversely, the spectacular Basilica of Notre Dame is now nearly 200 years old, has survived a fire and several reconstructions, and operates as a tourist and religious center on a daily basis. Partly, I believe the difference in long-term perspectives is due to the differences in the communities responsible for the buildings. The Basilica dates back to the founding of Montreal in the 1640s, and has had a strong community interested in its upkeep, structural integrity and long-term existence. Looking up at the ornate ceiling, completely supported by the exterior walls, I was reminded of Danny Hillis' discussion of the very long-term planning for the 14th-century era College Hall at New College at Oxford. Having a community commitment to anything, whether a building or a wiki, greatly improves the odds that thing survives in functioning form for more than a (technical) generation.

On our walk between the hotel and biergarten for dinner last night, a few of us stopped into a local music store on the Ku'dam in Berlin. This is one of my favorite ways to get a sense of local culture: stop into a local retail store. This music shop was 80% equivalent to what you'd find at a good used-CD store in the states but the classification system for the CD trays made up the other 20% that was unique.

In addition to the Rock A-Z dividers and a separate section for new releases, there was an almost equal-sized area for German artists, which was further broken down by genre. If I didn't have (literally) half of our European management team tapping its toes to a different (hungry) beat, I would have browsed the selection of German Hip-Hop. And I was thoroughly impressed by the dedicated and sizeable stack of Kraftwerk, although I was somewhat disappointed that Edgar Froese didn't have his own section (in all seriousness, I would have picked up a German pressing rather than download his material from iTunes just to see the liner notes).

Hanging out with Global Sales and Services Chief Geek Jim Baty has given me an appreciation for artists in general, and what Jim calls "the discomfort that comes with good art." Alas, the discomfort of long queues for weisswurst took precendence over further exploration of the deustche music scene, but not before I noticed that in the "world music" section, there was a divider labeled "Klezmer/Gypsy."

I'd never considered klezmer orchestras as a variation on gypsy music, or derived from Central European roots rather than the stuff of Hassidic tales of Tsarist Russia, but it stimulated an interesting conversation for the rest of our walk. Turns out that Inka, part of our GSE team in Prague refers to "gypsy music" as something that makes you feel energetic but you're not really sure you like it because it's crazy music. That's a more accurate description of klezmer than that of a friend who tabbed it "high speed oompah with jazz clarinet." Yes, the discomfort of good art. In the case of my affiliation with klezmer music, it started around 5th grade when I was suffering through clarinet lessons. Occasionally my father would dig up his old "Russian music fake books", primarily badly printed, hand-written transcriptions of klezmer songs that had survived on aural tradition for decades. We'd play a few songs together, a little clarinet duo having fun with the score to definitely capture "energy" and "crazy music" at the same time.

Bottom line: this is why meta data matters. Whatever the surface level taxonomy - CD shelves, file labels, bookstore directions to "file under programming languages" - it only represents one view of the actual bits or atoms. What we associate with the content in terms of related concepts, family memories, national references or other, alternate filing systems adds to the appeal and reach of the content. What's frightening is that I'm starting to think that klezmer isn't so much of an acquired taste as a genetic predisposition to take liberties with musical tradition: at least that's how I explained my son's arco rendition of the bass line to Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused" at the end of a school concert. Discomfort, good art, crazy music, but I'm not sure where you file it.

There's very little glamorous about business travel. Continental has managed to maintain a perfect batting average in the past three weeks: five out of five flights have been an hour or more late. I'm going to spend about 24 hours in Berlin, and while it's the second time I'm visiting the city on business, I've never seen the remnants of the Berlin wall, the Brandenberg gate, or bought a Steiff bear. Hoping to correct some of these cultural deficiencies on this trip, if there are a few spare hours between our last plenary and bulk food.

Music: "In the Cage", Genesis Live Over Europe; "Pass the Peas", Maceo Parker Roots & Grooves (the bass line and guitar solo in this version just kill); "Ozark", Pat Metheny Group As Falls Wichita; "Your Majesty Is Like A Creme Donut", Hatfield and the North, The Rotter's Club; "Lines on My Face", Peter Frampton, Frampton Comes Alive. There's probably some bizarre Cambridge (UK) connection between Genesis and Hatfield; I'm waiting for someone at our GSE meeting to fill me in (last year, someone handed me a sampler CD of Porcupine Tree and I was hooked).

Words: Finishing up Rush drummer Neal Peart's Ghost Rider, the travelogue of his 55,000 mile journey during which he attempted to re-assemble his life after the deaths of his wife and daughter. I read his Road Show: Landscape with Drums and adored the travel writing interspersed with behind the scenes concert vignettes so I went one level deeper into his work. Great backdrop for having seen Rush just a few weeks ago; the books provider greater appreciation of Peart's lyrics on the last two Rush releases.

Threads: I may be able to complete the hat trick of Diesel Sweeties venue-appropriate shirts: I'm currently sporting the metallic Clango shirt to arrive in Berlin, a tangential nod to Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk; on my way to Montreal on Friday I'll cross the border in my Canada 2.eh maple leaf shirt and then for California the week after, it's Electric Sheep and obscure Blade Runner references. The electric sheep shirt gets only slightly fewer stares than my xkcd sudo shirt, but that's part of un-glamour of business travel. I tend to travel comfortably unless I'm going directly from plane to meeting; if I have time to change I'm going to represent the Sun brand in my behavior (despite any number of delays, bad meals and weak coffee servings) but dress code reverts to my peculiar brand of culture.

If I'm going to make a serious effort to improve my writing, and maintain something of a regular cadence, then I should attempt to blog every work day. I don't want to make yet another resolution on some calendar boundary condition that only returns "true" for a few days. I'm going to make a concerted effort to write with the clockwork regularity of gulping my daily Dunkin Donuts allowance: that means something every work day. One of the deciding factors is a need to be more transparent about what I'm trying to drive in Global Systems Engineering, and how that relates to our customers, our markets and the industries in which Sun has a presence. There's no better way to get that transparency than to essentially open up the daily diary.

Today's plan: I'm writing this 39,000 feet over France (listening to Genesis Live Over Europe, which just struck me as coincidental) on my way to Berlin to meet with the systems engineering management of our entire European region. We're about to get into the thick of kick-off season, where each country or group of countries hosts a meeting that's one part strategy setting and one part celebration. I try to convey my messages to as broad a cross-section of our management team as I can, allowing them to translate into local language, local emphasis and local culture. My themes this year: how we are going to grow into the space created by the "big trends" in computing infrastructure, how we are going to fuel that growth through cross-field organization teamwork, and how we equip those teams with stronger technical skills and communities in which to share, grow and highlight the applications of those skills. Customers, Competencies, Communities. That's FY09 in a GSE nutshell, to borrow a phrase from Tim O'Reilly.

Happy New Year to my fellow Sun employees. While most of the world aligns to the Gregorian calendar and maps major events into the January to December timeframe, Sun operates on a July 1 fiscal year, putting it in an equivalence class with two of my other favorite things: the NHL and Princeton University.

For all things financial -- sales attainment, spending, goal progress, or annual giving contributions -- those of us who roll on July 1 reset the counters to zero today. It's a bit auspicious, but it's also exciting because the new year also brings new strategies, new tactics, and new challenges. The NHL free agency season is always a time (for me) of thinking strategically: who do my beloved NJ Devils need, in what role? What missing ingredient will make them hungry, hard-hitting, and perhaps even more prolific goal scorers? It's a clean slate for general managers, coaches and marketing organizations. That sense of building a team and refocused energies on the next season's goals is precisely what permeates the next few weeks at Sun.

The Princeton University July 1 fiscal year never really mattered to me until this year: as of midnight last night, I'm a member of the 25th Reunion Class, the semi-official "parent class" of this year's annual giving campaign, punctuated with what is typically the largest post-graduation gathering of classmastes in June. It's another sign that I'm officially an adult, but it's also refreshing. I began thinking about a variety of 25th anniversaries: the first NJ Devils game that I attended was in 1983 (I sat with my cousins under the scoreboard and we heard the non-stop click-click of the relays turning the scoreboard bulbs on and off for three hours) and my son won his first NJ state ice hockey tournament medal on the 25th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice. Both involve hockey, but both also involve putting some element of perspective on events -- I now go to games with my son, and rather than cheering for Chico Resch in the Devils' net, we cheer for him in the Devils' broadcast booth to the left of our seats. And by seeing the parallels, we have another bit of history to share as another parent class another 25 years hence.

I'm looking forward to renewing old friendships, to meeting my classmates' kids, and to participating in my class' capital campaign. I'm not the guy who calls and asks for large sums of money (too close to the day job); I will be leading a "participation team" whose goal is to get classmates to give at any level, just to show support and connect back to the university. I explain my motivation for this work derviative by re-telling a story I've rarely dusted off. 27 years ago, while attempting to complete the freshman physical education requirement, I decided to sign up for "athletic conditioning" not realizing it was a euphemism for "spring football camp." The first eight weeks weren't too bad, but the first day of actual "conditioning" involved running, up-downs, more running, rolls, sprints, more running, more up-downs, and somewhere along the way I think my left lung decided to go on strike. There was no actual blocking involved, or my insides would have liquified. What I remember vividly was Billy M, a guy I vaguely knew from our dorm and a class, telling me "point your head up, breathe in hard through your nose, blow out through your mouth." I cannot vouch for the medical authority of this aerobic guidance, but it worked. I've used that breathing trick when I'm exercising (rare), stressed out (less rare) or need to focus (frequently). Each time I do, I think of Billy M putting an arm around me so that I wasn't trampled by 300 pound offensive tackles, and I'm thankful that even though I was never on his team, he considered me enough of a teammate in some context -- classmate, fellow wheezer, survivor of multiple papers on modern European authors -- to offer advice.

Good teams and good teammates can even overcome even the obstacles posed by an asthmatic nerd, without anybody getting hurt. Happy New Year, Billy M.