It’s still in the “soft launch” stage as the IT people fine tune the software, but I couldn’t wait. I don’t care about software (ignorance is indeed bliss). I wanted to find out what the packaging was like! So I ordered up a bunch of stuff. And unpacked it.

Dan is used to finding inedible stuff on our dining room table. This lot beats all.

I wanted to see whether a) the sheet glass would arrive intact, b) it would arrive in a timely manner, and c)  I could find something WRONG with it.

OK, all arrived without a single crack, chip or dent, beautifully packed and fast.

But I thought some stuff was overpacked. So I’m going to take it back and complain, oops, “offer constructive criticism”.

Seriously, the line between well- and over-packed is certainly a fuzzy one. And I’m an Olympic-caliber nit-picker. I hope I don’t demoralize anyone in shipping. Honest, it WAS terrific, just a few wraps too many.

How about anyone else? I’d love to hear from anyone who’s actually bought anything from the site. Any feedback – good or bad – will be hugely appreciated. OK, how about rewarded?

FIRST PRIZE: for the most helpful feedback from an online buyer (at BE…Circuit City doesn’t count): a Bullseye T-shirt (your choice style & size)

SECOND PRIZE: Two Bullseye T-shirts (your choice style & size)

All entries must arrive as COMMENTS to this blog….before noon Dec 5, 2008.

Jurying (by moi) with awards announced by Dec 6.

He’s never had a problem with anything I’ve blogged about here. But I suspect that – given a choice – he’d keep politics out of the workplace. BUT, inspired by Ed’s comment yesterday (“My football, my rules”), I’m going to quit biting my tongue on this one.

I’m voting for Michelle’s husband.

Obama got my ear many, many months ago when he talked about discussions he’d had with a wife I knew nothing about.  They were talking about his running for the presidency.

He said that she’d said something like “If you’re going to do it, you have to do it now.  In a few years you won’t remember what’s it’s like to have been poor, to have had student loans to repay, to have struggled to pay bills. If you’re going to run, it needs to be now while you still remember.”

OK, I’m sure I took a lot of liberties with that “quote” since I can’t now find it anywhere online. But the substance hit me. And stayed with me. I fell in love with that woman. And her history. And the advice she gave her husband.

So I wasn’t surprised to still be captivated by her when she – and her awesome J. Crew threads(!) -  showed up on the Tonight Show a few days ago.

Thanks for posting the Michelle on Leno clip online, Gary!

And thanks, Ed, for giving me the quote I needed. This morning over oatmeal when Dan says “I’m voting for him too, but that’s a personal – not a business decision”, I’m just going to say “My football.”

Oddly though, my BESTS were a little too much like my WORSTS. Stuff like:

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED GLASS FANATICS…

…craning for a view (the bleached head in the upper right-hand corner of the frame is me), I can’t deny the rock-concert allure of mobs watching really good blowers (and Paul Cunningham doing a Moje roll-up fills that bill brilliantly).

But somehow, conversing through a bullhorn lacks a certain intimacy.

…even if Dan seemed to enjoy the hell out of herding hundreds of compliant souls around the factory.

I appreciate the organizational steroids it takes to manage a project of this size, but I came away from  GAS  with a heightened appreciation for conferences on the scale of Ausglass‘ or North Lands’, where human contact doesn’t mean having your hand ground into the steel bleachers by some kid’s Doc Martens as he scrambles for a seat.

OK. Clearly I’m still in GAS rehab. I WILL try to find some less curmudgeonly BESTS in a day or two.

For now, I’m off to confer with the most appealing crowd in THIS neighborhood.

Then imagine that the cost of that gas has increased by 50% in the last year.

If concern for the environment isn’t reason enough, maybe red ink will get you thinking about ways to cut back.

One 12,000 gallon cryogenic tank + two vaporizers = 50% reduction in natural gas usage per furnace.

At Bullseye we’ve wrestled with energy costs from Day One. Fuel makes up about 20% of our glassmaking expense (labor is the only larger category). From the time that Dan, Boyce and Ray first started re-melting mayo jars in the 1970s, controlling fuel use has been a top priority. Dan once even tried turning old tires into gas (long story, another post, maybe). A few years ago we made the decision to install a liquid oxygen system at the factory.

In short, the system allows us to replace air with pure oxygen in burning the gas that fires our furnaces. This does two pretty neat things:

1. it cuts our natural gas usage in half.

2. it reduces nitrogen emissions to nearly zero.

Vaporizing gas is a cooling process. The equipment gets pretty frosty. Think almost 300°F below zero. Sometimes it even “snows” in the parking lot next to the vaporizers. I think that’s pretty damned cool

Huh? OK, here’s a little Glass Melting for Dummies (that’s me):

You need oxygen to burn gas. Air is about 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen. By taking the nitrogen out of the process, you eliminate the energy used to heat it and cut in half the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions created in the process.

CO2 is the stuff that under its trendy stage name “Carbon Footprint” is currently getting more press than Paris. There. I just added to the press.

]]> http://www.bullseyeglass.com/weblog/2008/04/20/speaking-of-savings/feed/ 2 http://www.bullseyeglass.com/weblog/2008/03/07/the-end-the-beginning-of-memory-lane-thinking-small/ http://www.bullseyeglass.com/weblog/2008/03/07/the-end-the-beginning-of-memory-lane-thinking-small/#comments Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:59:50 +0000 Lani http://www.bullseyeglass.com/weblog/2008/03/07/the-end-the-beginning-of-memory-lane-thinking-small/ As heady as it is to think that we could conserve 6 million gallons of water a year with Daren’s recycling system, Bullseye is still a factory that is defined more by daily individual effort than by the periodic super-projects.

The humble factory drinking fountain. One little revolutionary idea.

Which is how the filtered water fountains happened.

For years we’d had filtered water trucked in to the factory in 5-gallon polycarbonate bottles so that there’d be fresh clean water throughout the factory and offices. But every day Dan – whose grumbling over energy wasted by lights left on and furnace dampers not properly adjusted is legendary – bristled at the sight of the hundreds of discarded paper cups and the huge diesel truck pulling up 2-3 times a week after its 10-mile drive in from Clackamas to deliver the hundreds of water containers.

OK, so it wasn’t rocket science. But simply installing seven filtered drinking water stations around the factory, warehouse and offices is keeping thousands of paper cups out of the waste stream and two or three big diesel trucks off our block every week.

We’re not going to get another BEST award for our drinking fountains, but Bullseye is still, after 30 years, about a way of thinking as well as a way of making. Its success is about what Woody Allen calls “just showing up”. And trying to do the right thing.

And I’ve failed miserably at that – I mean, at writing this blog regularly. So, at the end of Memory Lane, I’m inviting some Guest Editors onto my little soapbox.

In the coming weeks I’m twisting arms from around the factory, resource center and gallery to post their own reports about what it’s like BEing at BE.

A bevy of BEs. Just something to round off the grungy drinking fountain. Bullseye’s Brilliant Babes at BECon. Now let’s see if they (& others) can BLOG! Susan, show us your hummingbird babies!