IT Insights Blog — TestOut Continuing Education

Fairly often in life, most people end up in this or that situation where they feel at least a little bit overwhelmed and usually a lot underqualified. As the philosopher David Byrne described it, "You may find yourself in a beautiful house / With a beautiful wife / And you may ask yourself, 'Well / How did I get here?" Oh, yeah. It can be a little freaky. As Byrne suggests, "You may tell yourself / 'This is not my beautiful house!' / And you may tell yourself / 'This is not my beautiful wife!' "

The IT Insights blog is taking the day off, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We will be back on Wednesday, Jan. 23. Here at TestOut Continuing Education, we often encourage IT professionals and other learners to do something for themselves ...

A day of reckoning is nearly upon us. Coming up next week, in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, just as men and women everywhere are sleeping off the hedonistic revels of the four-day holiday weekend, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will politely request the attention of people from across the nation and around the world as they make a very special announcement that 3D movie projection ought to be banned forever.

Probably almost everyone who has ever been to Yellowstone National Park in (mostly) Wyoming knows about the Old Faithful Geyser. Millions of visitors have stood and waited for one of its frequent eruptions to spew boiling water more than 100 feet into the air. Old Faithful blows its stack at regular intervals of between 44 minutes and 2 hours, and has done so for decades. The carefully managed area around the geyser's mouth might be the most visited spot in the entire park.

Once upon a time one might have supposed that flamboyant singer and songwriter Elton John, 71 and still not letting the sun go down on he, would someday be best-remembered, years after his death, for one of his soaring rock ballads: "Candle in the Wind," "Tiny Dancer," "Rocket Man." Then in 1994 the energetic performer and eyewear pioneer collaborated with Walt Disney Studios on an animated movie about animals roaming free on the African savannah and "Circle of Life" was born.