Friday Donuts

Friends, It’s that time of year again. Chocolate bunnies are at the peak of egg laying season and children of all ages are dusting-off their baskets to hunt-down the great dyed egg. Winter is losing its grip as humans of all sizes change their wrappings to pastel colors and ready for their semi-annual church visit. Soon lawn sprinklers will paint our high desert green again as snow making sprinklers will cease to paint the mountains white. Days grow longer, clothing grows lighter and trees grow leaves. Spring is here and I’ve decided to join the spring break (if only for a day). I’m briefly visiting Caribou Coffee to deliver donuts to my colleagues and then off to enjoy the change of season. Happy Good Friday!

Friends, On my drive to Caribou Coffee this morning I noticed concrete trucks at big dry creek trail. It seems they’re spending a pretty penny to ruin one of my favorite gravel running trails -although I’m sure that’s not how they see it. Kind of like my dog Tocho thinks of Canada geese as “tasty treat factories” or my neighbors frowning on my not separating recyclables from trash I picked-up from the street during a run. The folks funding this project probably are not runners and probably assume everyone will appreciate it -the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Speaking of good intentions, I’ve been in back-to-back meetings this morning so even though I intended to send this out before 8, I’m just now getting to it. And, apropos “tasty treats” I have dozen donuts ready to consume for anyone still planning to make it. Happy Friday!

Friends, The security team' phishing test got me thinking scammers could use a little marketing know-how. After all, if you look at the telltale signs of a phishing campaign, they’re all very solvable. What if we were to start an ad agency that focuses on the phishing industry. It could be called “ 5K Consulting ” (after the 5,000 fish-fed biblical multitude). Our pitch to prospects would go something like this: Phishing is a numbers game where only three numbers matter: the number of emails you send, the number of clicks you get and the number of “phish” you catch. Any improvement to these metrics improves your bottom line. At 5K Consulting, we’re committed to helping you get more clicks. Our proven methods will reduce the number of e-mails caught in spam filters and dramatically improve open and click-through rates. Techniques like “spell check” and “grammar check” are only the beginning. Our marketing experts are fluent in English and will ensure your subject lines and c

Friends, On this second attempt at a Windstream Enterprise “ Virtual Hub ”, it occurs to me these words feel like an oxymoron. After all this is an in-person gathering which is the opposite of “virtual”. If you look around oxymorons (oxymorae?) are fairly commonplace. Here are a couple that come to mind from this week’s news: Trade War . Trade is a mutually beneficial exchange. War is not. Diplomatic Tension . Diplomacy is the act of making nice. Tension ain’t so nice. I think the picture I took this morning of a “ Dunkin’ Sunrise ” also qualifies. If you fancy the big yellow orb in the sky as a basketball, dunkin’ would come at sunset -not sunrise. Whether this note made you smile or roll your eyes, there are a dozen dunkin’ donuts in my car waiting for virtual hub participants to consume them. Happy Friday!

Friends, This week’s news about two stowaway teens falling to their death got me thinking about geography and the accident of birth. These young Ecuadorian men, were only a couple of years younger than I was when I first came to study University in the States. Like me, they hail from a mountain town –theirs smaller than mine, scenically situated near an ancient Inca temple, where my grandfather once owned a bucolic farm. We wanted the American dream, yet our fates are in stark contrast. They got to the airport by cutting their way through a fence -I entered through the main door. Their seat was to be the wheel well of the plane – my seat was… a seat. They only made it 1,000 feet in the air and had $20 to their names   -both these stats were at least an order of magnitude greater for me. We may have grown-up 45 miles apart, but our access to opportunity may as well have been a hemisphere apart. Through no merit of my own, I was also a U.S. citizen and that arbitrary title gave me a