IT Insights Blog — certification

The Transcona Grain Elevator, built at Transcona in Canada's Manitoba province, is notorious in civil engineering circles for its near collapse in 1913. The structure's bin house — the part that includes the bins, or vertical cylinders (65 of them in this particular instance), where grain is stored — famously tilted 27 degrees to the west in a single day. This occurred shortly after the structure's initial opening, when it was filled with 875,000 bushels of grain.

Lots of things in life have expiration dates. Food and drink items that you buy at the grocery store, for example. The expiration date is printed right on the side of that carton of milk in the back of your fridge. You don't even have to take a sniff to know whether it's still good. (Once in a while, of course, you should probably still take a sniff anyway.) Can't remember when you bought those hot dogs in the cheese drawer? Just check the package.

In 2019, April 26 is still just a Friday. It's also, however, the day that Avengers: Endgame arrives in theaters, and that makes it more than just any old Friday. The way that superhero worship and comic book lore have come to dominate American pop culture in recent decades, you kind of get the feeling that we might someday have holidays that honor the made-up sacrifices of Earth's made-up mightiest heroes. It's an open secret that Iron Man (probably) dies in the new movie. April 26 = Tony Stark Day?

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.