The Anniversary

So today was the day I was going to get married, until plans changed back in November. It’s been an interesting six months, characterized by a somewhat busy semester at school, the frantic preparations for and execution of our week-long international conference at work, and infrequent bursts of effort on my thesis project. On occasion, I’ve even managed to experience a feeling or two, if only momentarily.

Lately I’ve been back at the gym again, which is nice. I’ve even been tracking my calories again over at livestrong.com, but I’ve only been loosely attempting to stay under the recommended daily caloric intake (a little over 1700 calories). Maybe I’ll do a 30-day experiment in June, just to see how effective their recommendations really are.

As for the rest of the summer, I’ll be devoting a great deal of time to finishing a draft of my thesis so I can walk in ready to revise in August. Wish me luck.

Into the Clouds

You were, as the kids these days might say, tardy to the party. In your misguided, frantic, and seemingly pathological efforts to keep everyone’s attention on you, you neglected the ever-important duty of keeping track of what your competition was up to. They one-upped you, and it was almost like you were asking for it.

Some would probably say that your failure was rooted in your pride, that because you felt you could rest on your laurels, you got your just desserts. You know that’s not the truth. You know how vigilant you have been, guarding your turf jealously, steadfastly monitoring the grounds for infiltrators.

But while your eyes were on the ground, your competitors were taking to the skies, building castles in clouds. You probably could have seen that coming. You’re not dumb, you know. You apparently just let yourself fall into the trap of thinking that simply because you were one of the first kids to stake a claim on the block, you earned for yourself some kind of exclusive say in where the future explorations and innovations might go.

We beg to differ.

Your notion of innovation apparently involved incessantly revisiting that first trick you learned to do, constantly adding new zoom-zooms and wham-whams, bells and whistles, pieces of flair. And that worked, for a lot of people. They say you can fool some of the people all of the time, and you’ve carved out your considerably large corner of the market in those people. But some werent’ fooled. Some began to see the emperor’s clothing for what it really was.

And that was when they began to take to the skies.

Don’t worry, though. We see you’re beginning to catch on now, too, and that you’re starting to develop some real estate in the clouds, too. And maybe you’re right; with that significant chunk of the market share you’ve accumulated over the years, you’ll probably do fine even if you are “tardy to the party.”

Congrats on docs.com, Microsoft. You’re moving into the twenty-first century.