IT Insights Blog — certification

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to visit with a teenager named Paul. Paul just finished his junior year and has landed a summer job with a local tire repair shop. As a reader, he is familiar with many of western civilization’s great books, and would be considered well-read even for one twice his age. His communication skills are top-notch, and he has a GPA well above his peers. He also possesses another valuable non-teenager like trait — he knows how to save money.

This past weekend I went to see the latest installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise. I have mixed feelings about the movie. I spent the two hours and nine minutes of show time wading through a myriad of tangled storylines and interweaving plot threads, masked by lots and lots of action.

It’s that time of year when millions of college graduates raise their diplomas high, throw their caps in the air, and sally forth to make their marks in the world — or so commencement speakers have told them they will do. If they are like I was, lo those many years ago — and most probably are — then their first thought about those newly completed four, five, or even six years of college is, “Wow! That went quick.” Their second thought, for those without a trust fund, is, “I gotta find a job!”

As stated in Newton’s third law of motion, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This means that in every interaction between two objects, the size of the force acting on one object equals the size of the force acting on the second object.

Every superhero has an origin story: an event, or series of events, that led him or her to put on a costume and start saving the world. Steve Rogers was a scrawny youth who wanted to help Uncle Sam fight the Third Reich. Then he got recruited to a secret "super soldier" project, received a dose of experimental serum, and — blam! — Captain America. Bruce Banner was a researcher assisting in a test detonation of a "gamma bomb." Then exposure to massive amounts of radiation caused him to transform into a mysterious "hulk."