IT Insights Blog

About this time last year, intrepid TestOut account manager Wendy Edwards used some MoonPie snack cakes as a promotional giveaway at a conference. For those of you not in the know, a MoonPie is sort of like a jumbo s'more, only frozen in time instead of fresh from the campfire. The basic blueprint is two graham crackers (cut round), with a marshmallow pattie between them, with the whole thing dipped in chocolate. It probably either sounds delicious or repulsively sweet.

It's been raining a lot this spring. Here in TestOut's home state of Utah, the rain is good for everybody and in no way a bad thing. Meteorologically and topographically speaking, Utah is generally considered to be some variation of high desert. We have mountains and forests and lakes and rivers aplenty, but also tens of thousands of square miles of arid canyon country dominated by thinly vegetated sandstone and even a few actual large deserts where there's pretty much nothing but sand.

Does anyone else remember the days when most (if not all) of the things that you could "subscribe" to were printed on paper and delivered either a) to the front porch (or the driveway, the rosebush next to the picture window, the low-hanging branches of the maple tree on the front lawn — it's hard to aim things from a bicycle seat or the back of a station wagon), or b) to your mailbox? Newspapers, magazines, catalogs, or maybe the latest selection from Book of the Month club.

Every U.S. IT Insights Blog reader within the sound of our keyboard has doubtless already completed and filed his or her federal income tax return. It would be plain irresponsible, after all, to wait until the last second to square things up with Uncle Sam. No doubt if we were to drive past the local post office after 11 p.m. tonight, there would not at all be an unusually long queue of vehicles waiting to use the all-hours mail drop to be assured of getting an April 15 postmark.

Someday, perhaps even someday soon — pause for raucous laughter and bitterly aggrieved forehead slapping — American author George R.R. Martin will finish writing The Winds of Winter, then start and finish writing A Dream of Spring. Then A Song of Ice and Fire, the internationally famous high fantasy saga that began in 1996 with A Game of Thrones, will finally be complete. It's been eight years since publication of the preceding volume, A Dance with Dragons, so, well, let's all be patient.