IT Insights Blog

Several weeks ago, as Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm, was making a beeline for Florida, I grew concerned for my IT instructors living in the Miami area. Fortunately, most came through without too much damage. The rest of the state wasn’t as fortunate. As the storm rolled northward, the devastation and flooding became horrific. The preliminary damage estimate for the U.S. already exceeds $50 billion.

Forty-four years ago today at the Houston Astrodome, Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King engaged each other in a titanic tennis showdown the likes of which had only been seen, well, OK, a few months earlier in California. On that occasion, on Mother's Day 1973, Riggs defeated superstar Margaret Court, who won the Australian Open, French Open, and US Open that same year.

Everyone — or at least the subset of everyone who is some level of employee in some organization somewhere — wants to work at a great job. If you have to get up in the morning, take a shower, put on clothes, eat some breakfast, and be at your desk before 8:30, then that desk might as well be somewhere that you generally feel good about going to and being at. It's just better for your overall well being.

One of my favorite weekend activities is watching sports. I confess that, unlike millions of other sports fans, I tune into ESPN regularly — but then I still find rotary phones cool. I enjoy the thrill of highly-trained athletes pushing their limits in pursuit of victory and leaving their all on the court, the field, the diamond, the ice, the track and anyplace else they compete.

It's a special day in the history of, well, maybe not the entire world. Thirty-two years ago on Sept. 13, two of the most famous plumbers in the hallowed annals of drainage embarked on their most epic task. Fungus is a matter of occasional concern for some of us, but these guys really had their work cut out for them. Equipped with nothing but their wits, fists, and rather extraordinary jumping ability, brothers Mario and Luigi set out to liberate the entire Mushroom Kingdom.