IT Insights Blog

Here's one of those things that's hard to figure, given that we haven't pinned down a workable time travel technology yet. Were all of the presumed yokels, bumpkins, and rustics who cultivated our genetic code down through the centuries really overawed, alarmed, shaken to the center of their being, moved to human sacrifice, and what have you, by the brief darkening of the sun for a few hours?

Microsoft Outlook, the Microsoft Office "professional e-mail and calendar app" has enjoyed a surprisingly long tenure as the Microsoft e-mail tool of choice. The earliest versions of Outlook, including Outlook for MS-DOS, Outlook for Windows 3.1x, and Outlook for Macintosh, probably sound like something Ferris Bueller would use to send e-mail. And some of that history hasn't been entirely erased: You can still get Microsoft Outlook 97 — shrink-wrapped and in its original jewel case — on eBay for just $6.99.

Good stories typically have a beginning, middle, and end. Occasionally in modern publishing we have lost track of that fact, largely because the Oxford linguist and fantasy novelist J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote a book so long that post-World War II paper shortages forced his British publisher to divide the manuscript into more readily publishable thirds. The runaway success of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings eventually gave rise to a belief that everything should be a trilogy.

I recently read an article about a research physicist in her 50s, Gillian Reynolds-Titko, who, after a successful 20-year career with an international chemical company, was downsized. A layoff for any middle-aged employee is always tough to handle. There are lots of questions about making ends meet, how to afford medical insurance and — perhaps most frightening, “How do I land another job at my age?”

Oops! Today is National Book Lovers Day in the United States. We love to read any day of the year, but setting aside a special day to celebrate books is like giving us an open invitation to ignore the world. So, yeah, the latest awesome novel to cross our desk completely captured our imagination, and the day was almost gone before we realized what had happened.