Top signs you’ve picked the right place to buy a new pair of run­ning shoes:

1. The sales­man is the same guy from whom you bought your last pair.
2. The sales­man exam­ines your feet and instantly nar­rows the selec­tion down to two or three models.
3. Four-time Boston Marathon win­ner Bill Rodgers shows up at the store.
4. A doc­u­men­tary film crew arrives to inter­view Bill Rodgers for a pro­gram about Fred Lebow.

Back at work, we have increased pro­duc­tion for my most recent prod­uct to 400,000 per year. For some com­po­nents we are now secur­ing pric­ing at unbe­liev­able vol­umes of more than 1,000,000 per year. That’s a far cry from the 100 mil­lion iPod play­ers that Apple has built, but the num­bers are at once excit­ing and scary. (What if my cir­cuit proves unreliable?)

Another thing that amuses me is how, at these quan­ti­ties, a 30-second cycle time for a part in a plas­tic mold­ing machine can cause a ven­dor to say, “we can’t make these things fast enough!”

I’ve fallen behind with get­ting pho­tos up on the Web, and prints out to peo­ple who are owed them. I’m sorry.

I ordered a tent this week. Until now I’ve always had to bor­row one. With that obsta­cle removed, the only thing that keeps me from camp­ing is the need to bor­row a car. (True, I could just bike, or per­haps sail.)

Speak­ing of cars and boats, what should I do about the car­boat this year?

This week­end I am going to visit the Corn­ing Museum of Glass.