IT Insights Blog — training

The dog days of summer are about to be replaced by the cool nights and changing leaves of autumn. The baseball season, however, is still rolling forth, with games continuing through the end of September. The Boston Red Sox have more wins (93) than any other team in baseball at the moment, though the rival New York Yankees are hanging in there and actually have more wins (82) than any team but the Red Sox.

Once upon a long-forgotten time — well, mostly forgotten, at any rate; we couldn't tell you this story if nobody had ever remembered anything — a massive invading army of from Persia attempted to overwhelm a vastly outnumbered detachment of Greek soldiers at the coastal pass of Thermopylae. A company of about 1,000 Greeks, notably including 300 Spartans, held its ground against a Persian force more than 100 times as large for three full days of battle.

Fall is just around the corner, meaning that it's almost college football season. Some people question why that matters to anyone. Other people spend hours driving and walking to and from large outdoor stadiums so that they can sit cheek-by-jowl with strangers for up to three hours and yell at slightly-more-than-teenaged young men who are running around on grass plowing into each other at full speed.

There's an old 19th-century Christian hymn written by British-born immigrant historian John Jaques that attempts to frame the oft-thirsted-after concept of capital-T "truth." In Verse 1 of "Oh Say, What Is Truth?," Jaques declares that truth is the "fairest gem that the riches of worlds can produce," while in Verse 2 he acclaims it the "brightest prize to which mortals or gods can aspire."

So we know how much you all love the IT Insights Blog, and we did just take Friday off at the end of last week. Unfortunately, however, there's more vacation in store for the blog team. Normal operations will resume on Aug. 20. We didn't want to leave you with nothing while we're away, however, so each day this week we'll post a photo of some of the sights we're enjoying, along with a link to a classic IT Insights blog post. Relive the hits, people!