God Bless the Grass (and Twitter)

I just received an insightful e-mail from a good friend, Alan Kucheck.  I first met Alan at Starbase, where he was VP of Engineering and subsequently became my boss after Starbase acquired Genitor.  From my very first pre-acquisition due diligence telephone call with Alan, I sensed that Alan was an outside the box thinker with a gift for seeing things the way they are and the way things ought to be.  This morning's e-mail, reproduced below with Alan's blessing, is just another example of that.

Twitter in the workplace...

Like browsers a [very] long time ago and Facebook more recently, Twitter in the workplace is often deemed unproductive activity and, therefore, frowned upon.

Since necessity is the mother of invention, enter Spreadtweet.

Attached is a screenshot from my Mac.  Written in Adobe Air, it looks just like Excel on the Mac [and native on Windows as well] except for that strange toolbar with the buttons like "Replies" and "Direct Messages" and serves as a camouflage for your unsanctioned activity in case the boss strolls by - Andy will find this particularly useful.

People will do what they need to do - swimming against the tide only ends up producing waste heat.  The context reminds me of the old Malvina Reynolds song, "God Bless the Grass" [Andy, Judy, and I are old enough to remember, but the rest of you were not yet in diapers]:

God bless the grass that grows through the crack.
They roll the concrete over it to try and keep it back.
The concrete gets tired of what it has to do,
It breaks and it buckles and the grass grows thru,
And God bless the grass.

God bless the truth that fights toward the sun,
They roll the lies over it and think that it is done
It moves through the ground and reaches for the air,
And after a while it is growing everywhere,
And God bless the grass.

God bless the grass that breaks through cement,
It's green and its tender and it's easily bent,
But after a while it lifts up its head,
For the grass is living and the stone is dead.
And God bless the grass.

God bless the grass that's gentle and low
Its roots they are deep and its will is to grow.
And God bless the truth, the friend of the poor,
And the wild grass growing at the poor man's door,
And God bless the grass.

And now, it seems, there could be a new verse.