IT Insights Blog — Education

TestOut believes in constantly bettering oneself physically, emotionally, and career-wise. In support of those laudable goals, the company sponsors an annual fitness challenge called “Run, Bike, Hike.” The event takes place over several months and is open to employees and immediate family members. It consists of three separate activities: run a 5K race; bike a designated distance; and, the most challenging, hike a local mountain. The whole event is great fun. It’s a time to be out in nature with friends and family and get some needed exercise.

Some readers of the IT Insights Blog may recall being young (or at least younger) and watching the old Inspector Gadget cartoon series. At the start of each episode, the ever-intrepid Gadget would receive his instructions from Chief Quimby in the form of a note programmed — Can you program a piece of paper? Maybe we should just say booby-trapped? — to "self-destruct" after he read it.

Twenty-four years ago, Microsoft launched one of the best remembered ad campaigns in the history of Madison Avenue. The focus of the campaign, albeit elliptically, was the then-pending release of Windows 95, the 15th iteration of the world's most ubiquitous (even at the time) computer operating system. The tag line, "Where do you want to go today," is still alive and well in the vernacular.

A refrain one often hears in educational circles is that U.S. universities and colleges are the “envy of the world.” Based upon the number of foreign students attending each year, there does appear to be some validity to that claim. These institutions are certainly doing something right.

Among his many other admirable qualities, former President Abraham Lincoln of "these United States" is often admired for his well documented sense of humor and fondness for jokes. There's a popular, probably apocryphal story that connects Lincoln and his keen wit to the five-dollar bill long before his face became permanently affixed to that particular mainstay of U.S. currency.