Green Reprinters

Product Development Idea of the Week: Green is all the rage. Hurrah for us for saving the planet.

One overlooked green initiative is recycling paper. Yes I know that paper is routinely recycled in mass everywhere. I'm suggesting directly recycling paper, specifically used paper from the office. Memos, draft documents, spreadsheets--all could be used again without the unnecessary steps of reducing the paper to pulp then back to paper. That just seems like a waste in itself. Paper -> paper is used -> collect big piles of used paper -> move big piles someplace where they make that pile into something that is not paper, but still a big pile -> make the pile back into paper -> move paper back to the place where it will soon become used paper again. For visual leaning people I have created the process graph shown below.


My model is much simpler and will create demand for jobs and new technology. You might recall that some typewriters had erasing ribbons as well as ink ribbons. I remember my sister had a Correcting Selectric II with integrated erasing ribbon. Now as I recall it didn't actually erase the ink as apply a thin coating of a paper-white material that would cover the ink.

Typewriters are long gone from most offices. But paper documents that have served their useful life are still with us. Why not recycle them directing in the office without the wasteful paper->not paper->paper process?

This is how I propose it be done. Computer printers put ink onto paper. For inkjet styles they actually us a tiny jets of ink. Many tiny jets of ink. Yes, really, that's how it is done. Why not make white ink? You could then send those documents back through the printer and cover up the original ink with white ink. Like magic you have a white piece of paper. How simple would that be. Paper purchased would be virtually non-existent. As a new employee, along with your badge and benefits documents you could be issued ten sheets of paper. These sheets would stay with you throughout your career, recycled with white ink and used over and over again.

A pool of people might be needed to do all the actual unprinting activity thereby creating jobs. This pool of people might by called the unprinting pool.

Printer manufacturing companies could even make dedicated unprinters as well as the white inkjet cartridges.

Wow, with one simple idea I might have solved two important issues society is facing--excessive waste material management and unemployment.

Note: No paper, typewriters, ink, print cartridges or inkjet printers were harmed in the creation of the blog article. All ideas are the intellectual property of Garrison Douglas. If you would like to use this idea for use in your office, please contact for Mr. Douglas directly for licensing instructions and limitations.

For a serious take on the impact of printed media read a blog post titled 'Too much emphasis on ERP, not enough on BRP barely repeatable processes) by Joe McKendrick.

Traveling Fool

You know it’ll be a good travel day when the mistakes come early. When I travel something inevitably goes wrong. Nothing of a cataclysmic nature occurs—they’re minor, annoyances really. But something will always go wrong.

I like to start with problems early and get them out of the way. It’s less stressful that way. This trip to Portland began with a minor problem—at which terminal will I start the air portion of my travel? It was a Delta ticket but operated by Horizon Airlines. Delta = terminal A; Horizon = terminal B—I see no possible problems of clarity for a novice traveler like myself. I take three or four trips per year requiring such conveyances, so let us agree to call me an infrequent traveler. Delta? Horizon? Delta? ‘Eff’ it, I’ll start at the Delta gate and see what happens. Terminal A, here I come. As an infrequent air traveler, one that is never described as normal by any metric, I guessed wrong.

The line was short. The Delta counter agents were mixing it up with the traveling hoard, directing them to the open self-help kiosk terminals. “Step right up. This one is open.” How many times must these pedestrian traffic directors repeat these phrases in any given day?

Just as I began to input my travel information on the kiosk screen, the system decides to cycle through a reboot. Five attempts later I give up and catch the eye of one of the blue-vested customer herders. She directed me to the line that was quickly forming as travelers realized the only way to get a boarding pass was at the actual counter. I got in line only to hear the announcement that the kiosk was now rebooted and ready to serve customers again. I returned to the fickle robotic agent and entered the nine digits of my ticket number and pressed ‘Next’. Nothing, then the screen flickered in a menacing manner. “You must enter a 14-16 digit ticket number to proceed.” What about my nine digit ticket number? I was confusion, wondering if I had been given a bogus ticket.

I waved for assistance. The agent, this one of flesh and blood, shook her head at this pathetic traveler, and with a weary voice, directed me to walk the seven minutes to Terminal B and check-in at the Horizon Air counter.

With the assistance of the helpful Horizon counter agent I was soon on my way up the stairs to gate 24.

Now, shaken by my trivial travel woes, I wondered if this is not all part of some sinister traveler IQ test. If you fail, you don’t get to travel. Pass the test and away you go. Are they secretly assigning status categories to travelers? Not the openly discussed silver-gold-admiral-million- mile-type categories that are universally used to segregate travelers and that simplify the travel discrimination process. I’m referring to the categories that are never discussed in public. These are the traveler intelligence categories and have no relationship to personal IQ. I hypothesize these categories are ranked in order of travel competence: idiot, fool, normal, smart, genius.

I’ll be proudly displaying my self-assigned ‘fool traveler’ credentials. Wow, it feels good to be upgraded from ‘idiot’.

Next time I travel to Hawaii I’d like to avoid all the air travel stress. I’ll just take the train instead.

Rack Mount PC

Ah the allusive 19" rack mount personal computer. I want one. There is not logical reasoning behind this other than I want one. Full height or half-rack is the first question that needs to be addressed. I'm leaning toward the full rack. Blank spaces can be covered with panels until the need to populate the rack with necessary and critical equipment arises.

Possible components of this rack would include not only the PC, but other utilitarian items. The list of such devices will be shown immediately below:

UPS: as an uninterruptible power supply, which oddly enough is use when the utility supplied power is interrupted. It will need to be mounted near the bottom of the rack to keep the center of gravity low. Cornering capability is highly underrated by most rack mount experts. It's a significantly more important than straight line speed.

NTP: network time protocol devices are used to provide accurate time to a network. I need this so I can track exactly when I update my Facebook status. "I'm now taking a shower. Well not exactly, but I am naked, typing over my rack-mounted PC on Facebook, but I intend to get in the shower soon. I thought you should know." Yes, that sort of FB update. The critical kind that needs, verily I say unto thee, demands an accurate time stamp. The world might end if it didn't.

A digital temperature display for the internal rack temperature. It's like the low oil pressure light on your 1987 Buick. It must absolutely work so that you know when you need to pull over to the side of the road or save the latest great novel in MS Word mid sentence.

A touch panel, rack mount monitor will be required. As will a 1RU rack mount keyboard with touch pad. That should complete the whole input/output requirements. Do they make a rack mount printer? Research is needed on the subject.

Since the rack with contain a keyboard, a video monitor and a mouse-like input device, then a KVM switch is mandatory also.

All this hardware needs to be supported by adequate and secure data storage. You can see where this is going now can't you? As you already guessed, it must be secured in a RAID array. According to Wikipedia a raid array is, "an acronym for redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks." But who can trust an open encyclopedia. Someone might have made all this 'RAID' stuff up as an elaborate way for the IT department to get pizza and beer money.

"Hey, let's tell the CEO we need to update from RAID 1 to RAID 5 to protect the company from data loss."

"Cool. We were getting low on PBR in the server room."

I don't know what kind of beer the guys and gals of IT prefer. The whole PBR comment was conjecture. For all I know they might be Coors folks. I've never been invited to their server room beer blasts. I suspect they occur; I just don't have any proof.

The rack needs to be secured against the wall so that in the event we have one of those ground wiggling things happens, I think they're called ground quaking events, the rack will not fall over and crush me or a guest. (No, I've never had any guests, but it theoretically could happen.) A wireless connection between the KVM and the desktop keyboard, monitor and mouse will be needed. Come on now, who would think it practical or ergonomically efficient to sit next to a six foot tall rack, working off some clunky pullout keyboard viewing a 9" monitor that is mounted too high. That's just silly.

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Or, I could just buy a new laptop.

Typos and Clunky Grammar -- Why I Write In Spite of Them

I write, sometimes well and sometimes with errors. This does not prevent me from writing you see as I am a writer. What I need to work on is editing. But editing is so much work and I'm limited in my capability to see my own errors. I don't claim to have the skills to be an editor, so I write.

At the risk of creating competition, I encourage you to write as well. "But I'll make mistakes and misspellings and break the grammar rules", you say. I'll forgive you.

Write. Write well if you can. Write better than you did last week or last year. I'd like to see what you come up with. Send me link or post a comment here on this blog.

Do runners stop running if they can't complete a marathon in less than four hours? I choose to put my effort not towards running, but writing, so I write. And sometimes I begin sentences with the word 'and'.

I'll get the occasional note from someone pointing out my there/their/they're, affect/effect or its/it's/its' error. I politely apologize for the error and move on. I'll then go write something, sometimes well and sometimes with errors.

Beer Friday

...end of post.

Out.

Day of Silence

Tomorrow is the 15th annual Day of Silence. Sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, it began in 1996 by one University of Virginia student and has grown to a national event since.

"Gay Day of Silence a Waste of Tax Dollars, Critics Say"

You can read the article at the link above, or I'll summarize my take on the situation below.

It's an anti-bully event with the purpose of raising awareness about the vicious verbal and physical attacks that many gay and lesbian students experience. Class time is excluded from the silent part of the 'Day of Silence', so no change would occur during instructional time.

Some conservative groups are encouraging parents to keep their children out of school that day as a counter-event.

So let me get this right, those parents that oppose an anti-bullying event in which participants don't speak are concerned? It's an odd response to a passive campaign that in no way changes what occurs inside the classroom. If they do remove their children from school for the day their child will miss out on a day of instruction and the schools will not get the funds provided to them based on the number of student days of attendance. Are they concerned that their child will be forced to not talk with someone who is also not talking?

Bobby said, "______________"

" _____________", responded Jane.

And the crickets chirped.

What am I missing in their logic?

Overheard this Week

Words fascinates me. I'm always listening to how people use speech in new, interesting, and often incorrect ways. When I catch myself making errors it's not as much fun. Just me being hypocritically honest.

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Repeat offenders get bumped to the front of the list. I've heard this one used on at least three separate occasions.

"I give good advices."

No it's not a typo.

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A young single friend was describing his latest girlfriend to me. Not that I was really interested. I was just being polite as I pretended to listen to him. It's the socially correct sort of thing to do when your not as excited about a subject as buddy, but you don't want to be a jerk and just tell them your don't really give a damn.

"She half German, half Italian and half Chinese!"

I slowly turned away from him snickering.

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I learned a new word listening to NPR this week. That happens a lot when I listen to NPR--learning a new word that is. 'Glocal' is created by combining global and local.

Learning this new word left me with a tingling feeling all over. It was a rather exciting moment. Then the light turned green and I pulled away from the stoplight. But a few miles down the road, as my mind was still trying to index and sort this new work I came to a conclusion. Global is all encompassing, while local is specific. So 'glocal' describes what exactly? I'm still not sure.

Is this how new words are created? Shesh, what a messy and random process.

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More clever stuff should have been entered here, but I lost interest in writing any more today.

iPad Pad

Did you get your iPad yet? No, I haven't made the splurge yet. That product gap between laptop and phone can remain unfulfilled in my life. I'd rather keep my cash in the bank earning interest--all twelve dollars and sixty-five cents worth.

I think Apple has once again done a great job of creating product buzz to the point of near hysteria. Go get 'em you early adopters. They have left room for a competing product that I will call an 'iPad Pad' for lack of a better name.

Imagine a device thinner and lighter than an iPad with similar capabilities but much less expensive. There has to be a market for such a thing. This iPad Pad would use a multi-layered flexible media onto which images, text and other forms of communication could be displayed. A liquid of contrasting color would be placed on the flexible media to display content. Various technology solutions to apply this secondary color/liquid to the base media have been developed.

Now all I need is a venture capitalist or angel investor to back my idea.

Associated Content

Never heard of Associated Content? Well pull up a chair. It's a site that allow authors to self-publish online content on virtually any subject. Do you want to write about your hub cab collection? Here is the venue.

I'm writing business related articles for the site. They're not as colorful as what you might see on this blog, but honestly now, how exciting can a discussion of economic order quantity be?

Associated Content articles written by Garrison Douglas:

Is Your Business Ready for Cycle Counting?

Here is what you need to get to the point where you can implement a successful program. Now if your not worried about success then just go ahead and start right now. Go. Really now. Go start counting. I dare you.

Create a Professional Certification Plan

The business world is tough right now. Get some letters to help separate you from the unemployed masses.

Rack Screws -- The Key to Cleanly Installed Equipment

Mounting 19" electronic rack equipment is just as exciting as you are imagining. Hardware, tools, security rack screws--I think it has the makings of a mini series.

5S Overview - Sort, Set in Order, Sweep, Standardize, Sustain

No, there were not enough articles and web pages on this subject, so I filled the gap.

This list will be periodically updated with newly published articles.

Yes, I know it's shameless self-promotion. Isn't that the point of a monetizing blog linked to a site like that? If you don't like that then head on down the cyber-road. Feel free to click on a link above as you exit...

Material Disclosure

In the beginning

In the beginning was the Blog, and the Blog was with Garrison, and the Blog was Garrison. Apologies to King James about the stupid play on words. It's one of the things that I'm about--stupid plays on words

Leave a comment, search the site, subscribe, click on a link or two and come back when you can. I'll post in a random pattern until I find a rhythm that works. If you like what you find here share it with a friend. If you don't like what you find here share it with a friend.

The blog backlog now sits at four incomplete posts with six more vague and incomplete ideas in queue right behind. If you have a subject that you think would be interesting, send me a message.

GD