Dear Friends,

We have had some sunny warm days and cold nights, and while it may seem a bit early, the sap in the maple trees is running and maple sugaring operations are starting up here in the nation’s largest (and by far the best) maple sugaring state. I used to sugar the old fashioned way by drilling holes for taps with a hand drill, hanging buckets on the tap and waiting for nature’s sunshine and the awakening maple trees to fill the buckets. We would then tromp from tree to tree, sometimes in the waist-deep snow, and gather the buckets to pour into the big tank on the sled that my workhorse would pull over to the sugar house. There we would boil the sap until way into the night, feeding the wood fired sugaring arch to make one gallon of sweetness from forty gallons of sap. Nowadays there are pipeline systems for most sugaring operations, but you can still see buckets on trees in some parts of the state.

Long-time Small Dogger Mark Englehardt will be leaving the company next week after over fifteen years of being a consultant and employee. He is going to pursue some other interests, and we all wish him the best of luck with his new ventures. He’ll be around and helping us out from time to time but will also be missed. Fortunately, Rebecca Kraemer has stepped up and will now be our Director of IT and Consulting. I am so pleased that Rebecca has agreed to take on this new responsibility and am very confident that she is going to do a fabulous job. Rebecca is a frequent contributor to Tech Tails and other newsletters. Ben and I will twist her arm to get her to write some for Kibbles, too!

While the new Apple App Store for the Mac means that Small Dog Electronics will be selling less software, I am finding it to be a very useful resource. Just the other day we needed a piece of software to generate some barcodes for packaging, and it was easy to find, download and use from the App Store. Apple tends to change the prevailing paradigm with many of their products and innovations. They have done this so many times—with music, with the Mac, with the iPad—that it is the real key to their success. When Steve Jobs introduced the Mac as the computer “for the rest of us,” it was the launch of a string of innovations and visionary use of technology.

I had the pleasure of outfitting David Sellers, my dear friend and mentor, with technology for his upcoming trip to China. Dave was my professor at Goddard College and my business partner in my first business, North Wind Power Company. Dave is a noted architect and inventor but still uses yellow drafting paper and a pencil to make his drawings and sketches, so when he called to tell me he wanted an iPhone and iPad, I was thrilled to help him out. He is going to China to work on an architectural project and then stopping on the way back to check out the 1918 Stanley Steamer that he purchased with the notion of driving it back to Vermont from California. I’ve told Dave that I will join him for at least part of that journey, which should be a blast!