Friday Donuts

Friends, Do you wear headphones when you exercise? I used to. Looking back, I think I saw running as an unpleasant healthy activity. I wanted the results. The process, I could do without. A ‘must-do’, not a ‘wanna-do’. If my mind could be somewhere else whilst my body was being tortured, all the better. Then something happened. A design flaw in my ears caused the earbuds to continuously slip-out. It was so annoying I finally decided to try to go without the music. Jogging without putting my mind in neutral to the tune of a familiar song took a little getting used to. Still, it wasn’t long before I noticed I was more present during my runs. There were the sounds. Birds chirping and squeaking. The tires of passing cars fading in and out like waves in the ocean. The gravel rhythmically crunching beneath my feet. Crunch, crunch, crunch –with the occasional thud, thud, thud of a wooden bridge or thump, thump, thump of concrete sidewalks. I must admit gravel is my favorite and not bec

Friends, As a non-native English speaker, I find some of the idiomatic expressions we use, well, befuddling. When someone arrives in the nick of time , do you ever wonder who Nick was and why he so often borders on impunctuality? The Internet puts many answers at our fingertips, which can be fascinating. Too often, I find the explanations the pundits provide dissatisfying –either because the origin of an expression is too mundane, or because they are merely speculating on how it came about. I sometimes prefer my own backstory. Earlier this week, Missy Glauch, Kelly Crosby and I got to speculating about some of these expressions: Neck of the woods . Since when do woods have necks and how in tarnation did that come to mean neighborhood? For a while I thought it might be Nick (perhaps the same chronically semi-punctual gentleman we discussed earlier). Apparently, Al Roker’s folksy expression dates back to colonial days when many villages were near a narrowing (a neck) of the wooded

Friends, Folks tend to complain about the negativity in the news. Some people think that all the stories about lying, stealing, cheating and killing are a sign of the poor health of our society. A perverse urge that draws us to the events in the tabloids and tells of the decline and inevitable doom of civilization. I disagree. Of course, I would prefer that the evil things that are reported hadn’t happened, however, the news is all about the unexpected. In order to be newsworthy, something must be out of the ordinary. Our baseline expectation is for things to be good. There is no novelty when people tell the truth, respect other people’s property, behave honorably and let other people go-on with their lives. Goodness is the norm, and so, we take the good stuff that happens in the world for granted. Evil acts, on the other hand, scare, surprise and scandalize us. And that’s a good thing. Granted, some extraordinary act of kindness will make the news from time-to-time, and I’m glad to

Friends, How will our lives be different in ten years? We’ll be older, sure, but what technological breakthroughs will drastically change the way we do things? It seems to me that we are reasonably good at predicting incremental change. When I tell folks bandwidth demands will increase, security needs will be more complex and reliability will be more important, I’m simply projecting longstanding trends. Electronics get smaller, pixel density gets larger and processors get faster. Change is gradual… until it’s not. Although I’m afraid I may not be visionary enough, here are some thoughts of what may be coming. Windowless cars. As our vehicles start to drive themselves and talk to other vehicles, traffic will speed-up and the need to stop (or even slow down) at intersections diminishes. In general, watching this as a hapless passenger is going to be scary, so why not replace the windshield with a screen so we don’t have to watch. These windowless cars would rely on artificial inte

Friends, I’m surprised that none of those trolling POTUS over the Covfefe tweet have suggested an acronym-related explanation. After all, he is the commander in chief, and much like telecom, the military is replete with acronyms and abbreviations. Here are some plausible explanations. ·          A new top secret chemical weapon, inadvertently referenced due to an innate desire to Brag –it would explain the ensuing “oops” silence. Referenced by its chemical elements: Cobalt Vanadium di-Iron (CoVFeFe or CoVFe 2 ). ·          He may have been talking about the border wall: Concrete Obstacle Visioned to Forcefully Exclude Foreign Entry ·          It could be that he was contemplating a new shorthand that packs a high concentration of superlatives. Charming Outrageously Very Fabulous Extremely Fantastic Eyepopping (which could be followed by any noun) ·          It’s possible he was explaining the rationale for leaving the Paris accord: Climate Optimistic Views Fiercely Avoiding