Friday Donuts

Dear members and constituents, Last Friday afternoon I received an inquiry from this week's donut girl, Christie Rygiewicz, inquiring as to whether three dozen donuts would be appropriate on a Friday before Memorial weekend. "Will my little round bundles of gold go to waste due to many constituents having the day off?" she asked. Now, as you can imagine, this put me in a real dilemma. The instinctive answer of "bring three dozen anyway" would likely mean a lot of wasted donuts, but it could also mean more donuts for me. On the other hand, if I said two dozen donuts was the right number and, for some reason, the lessons history has taught me about donut days and holidays about a seasonal lowering of demand did not materialize this time we might have a run on the donuts. In the end I did the right thing and told Christie two dozen would be appropriate. It appears, however, that Christie decided not to heed my advice and has gone with three dozen (you go girl!). Th

Dear members and constituents, I've come to the conclusion that the proliferation of acronyms in the telecom industry, while amusing can also be confusing. In-fact, I think the only industry (if it can be called that) which uses acronyms more gratuitously is the military. Yes, the proud creators of SNAFU, FUBAR and ABC (which has 8 different meanings in the military alone, depending on context). In telecom, we like acronyms so much that we even have acronyms to describe acronyms: TLA (Three Letter Acronym) or extended TLA (any acronym with more than three letters). Heck, I've even been guilty of coining an extended TLA myself, you may have heard of it, ADoPT. But there is an acronym I want to talk about today which is not part of telecom or military jargon. You might call it a TLA if you substitute the word two for the word three. It's CF and it stands for Cystic Fibrosis. Aimee Lee has been baking pastries of the non-donut variety all week long and putting them towards the

Dear members and constituents, What a day for a Jimmy Buffet song. I think pleasant weather is the key. Somehow sitting on my porch swing and strumming my six string sounds a lot better when it's 82 degrees, sunny and the humidity is low. Granted, cheeseburgers are just as appealing in any weather… however, were it blistering hot or freezing, you would not call it "paradise". Another food item which is good no matter the season, but seems that much better when the weather is beautiful, are donuts. That may be why the Friday Donut Club has been so successful for two years and eleven months to the date. That's a little over 4,000 donuts by my count! As we look for things to do to celebrate the third anniversary of the Friday Donut Club, I think we should institute next Friday as Hawaiian Shirt Friday. I will wear mine and hope to see lots of color around campus from similarly flamboyant shirts. Obviously, the whole point of this e-mail is to let you know donuts have arr

Dear members and constituents. Yesterday I received two e-mails in short proximity of each other suggesting ideas for my "donut letter". These two e-mails had very little else in common, other than the fact that they both had fascinating facts. This seemed a rather odd coincidence. I don't usually get e-mails suggesting topics for the donut announcement, let alone two in a ten minute span. I therefore have interpreted this as a sign that I should communicate this information to the larger group (in conjunction with letting you know that donuts have arrived). Fun Fact #1: (Courtesy of Carolyn Reuss) This Sunday in the wee hours of the morning (for countries that present their dates in date/month/year order), time and date will be nice and neatly lined up. So, what’s special about early Sunday morning? Well, at 2:03 AM, and a few seconds in the morning (ugh, hopefully none of us will be up to see that), the time will be 02:03.04 05/06/07. Fun Fact #2: (Courtesy of Jay Les