Friday Donuts

Dear Members and Constituents With all the buzz around cloud computing it occurs to me this term was not coined in Colorado. We would be all about blue sky computing. None of this cloud mumbo jumbo. The latest trend is to call it CAAS -computing as a service. In fact, you can add “AAS” after almost anything and have a trendy acronym: IAAS, SAAS… PAAS –Infrastructure, Software…. Passover? respectively. Case in point, this e-mail was drafted entirely using Dragon Dictation. Sure it has its glitches (below is the unedited output of this application), but it does the job. What if DAAS was added to the lingo? What would donuts as a service look like? Donuts show-up every Friday without you having to go buy them. Wait! We already have that, it's called the Friday Donut Club. This Friday, services were rendered by Melissa Blassingame, donut girl. So, come partake in this new technological revolution and the next time someone asks "how did you get that donut?" just say it's D...

Dear Members and Constituents, What is it about telecommunications and acronyms? Every chance we get we Abbreviate Confusing Random Obfuscating Names Increasing Murkiness (ACRONIM). It seems like we are Deliberately Unclear Mumbling Businessmen (DUMB). Fortunately, I am Outside Frolicking Free (OFF) today, otherwise I too would be throwing-out more than my fair share of Jive Apparently Rooted in Greek Originated Names (JARGON). In any event, I hope you have a Lovely And Beautiful Outdoor Ritual Doing Anything Youthful (LABOR DAY) Speaking of acronyms, three dozen Deliciously Outrageous Nutritious Ultimate Treats (DONUTs) have arrived, courtesy of Irina Khanin (donut girl). Stop by and enjoy one in my name. Happy Friday!

Dear members and constituents, Spring time is definitely here. I've been d reaming o f n irvana u nder t he s un while d oing o ffice n ecessities u sing t echnical s kills I've acquired. Perhaps you are d esigning o ne n ew u biquitous t ransport s ystem, or d eliberately o rchestrating n eat u ndertakings t his S aturday. Whatever the case may be, one thing is for certain, it's good to be alive! Now, if you're reading this e-mail on your blackberry, you're probably a little puzzled. The blackberry does, after all, d eliberately o bscure n umerous u nnecessary t yped s ubtleties (e.g. bold letters, italics, underline, colors...). If my subliminal messaging is working, however, you should be feeling a higher than usual urge for donuts. Your d esire o pens n ew u nusual t ingling s ensations and unexplained visions of donuts dance through your head. Go ahead, indulge -after all, it is Friday! Carlos Belloso does the honors today with four d ozen o utrageously n aug...

Dear members and constituents, What do laser, radar and scuba have in common? (No, the answer does not involve the plot to a James Bond movie). Give up? They are all acronyms... Laser = Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation Radar = Radio Detection And Ranging Scuba = Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus Sure, the world of telecommunications is fraught with them (try to think of the last five sentences you uttered, I'd be extremely surprised if at least one of them did not contain one or more acronyms), however they've been around longer than you may realize. Early Christian inscriptions in Roman catacombs used the image of a fish as a symbol for Jesus because of an acronym—fish in Greek is ΙΧΘΥΣ (ichthys), which stood for Ιησους Χριστος Θεου Υιος Σωτηρ (Iesous CHristos THeou Uios Soter: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior). In case you're wondering, donut is not an acronym (although, understandably, geeky scientists and engineers have from time t...

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...