While keping it real, Mike makes mention of a website I hadn't heard of called TerraPass. Basically, they help you fund green research to counterbalance the damage you're doing to the planet with your car. Pollution credits for the masses.

This is completely fucked up. First, it rests on the fallacy that a dollar value can be assigned to everything. What is the price of clean air? How much research do you have to fund to clean up 10,000 lbs of carbon? Apparently, the total comes to something like $50/year.

How do they come up with that figure? No details are given. There is only a passing, vague reference to 'market mechanisms'. Well, here's one clue into their pricing structure: TerraPass isn't even a non-profit! WTF?

Even if you do buy into the universality of markets, you'd be way better off investing in green mutual funds. At least then you have some idea of where your money is going and who is skimming how much off the top.

But if the worst effect of TerraPass were to deprive a few naive hippies of a few dollars, I wouldn't have wasted so many keystrokes on it. No, what really has my bee in a bonnet here is that this kind of thing is likely to do far more harm than good.

Taken at face value, TerraPass promotes the belief that a bunch of guys in white labcoats somewhere are going to fix all of our problems with energy and pollution. It says "the problem is just technology, and we're good at technology. Don't worry about it, just go about your business." In fact, the best thing consumers can do is to go on consuming, in this case by buying a brand-new product from TerraPass.

Meanwhile, they can get back in the SUV and forget about it until next year.

I've been doing some belated spring cleaning and have unearthed some baubles that can be yours for a pittance or a kind word.

Last week, my tenure at BEA Systems came to a close. I started at WebLogic in 1997, which was later acquired by BEA in 1998. That's a long time to be anywhere in the tech industry; the time had come to move on.

There are a lot of great people at BEA and I've made many lasting friendships in my time there. I was certainly sad to go, but I know I'll continue to see a lot of those folks, so it's not so bad.

I'm starting a new job next week as product manager for Terracotta. I'm psyched - TC is a mid-size startup with cool technology and good people, plus I get a new role for me to move into.

Until then, I have a week of wedding planning, painting the house, and hosting some visiting relatives and friends.

The webservices folks give me a goodbye lunch. Greeks departing the land of the living crossed the river Styx; Geeks departing the land of BEA eat dim sum at CityView.

Some old friends of mine from Portland have a great new band called Ape Shape. They just came through town on a west coast tour opening for Built to Spill, playing three sold-out shows at Slim's.

I put some of them up and was able to spend some time hanging out with everyone. We went to the shows and played some basketball up in Corona Heights park. Overall, just fun.

Life on rock tour has a very different cadence from my life now. I sometimes miss it; it was nice to experience a little bit of it vicariously.

Here are some pictures.

Sometimes friends or new acquaintances don't understand why I choose not to eat meat, especially given that I started eating seafood a few years ago. I know it seems weird. It is arbitrary. I don't even think that eating animals is inherently wrong.

Refraining from doing so is simply the only rational response I can come up with to the way animals are processed for consumption in the industrialized world. I made that decision shortly after reading The Jungle in high school, but this video pretty much sums up the same point.

I've remained a little skeptical of this whole flickr thing, but Bob just sent me a link that may change my mind - a beautiful page of classic handheld electronic games. I'm starting to see the potential for using shared photos to jumpstart online communities. I guess I'm just kinda slow.