Crystal Mackay, Scheduling and Workflow Associate:   “Did ya bring my snoose?” were the first words out of his mouth.  Not something you’d expect to hear from someone who just had his second heart attack and was lying in a bed in the cardiac unit, taped up with tubes, wires, and hoses poking out of every limb… All of which were hooked up to what looked like machines from the inside of a space craft.  The doctors were just running every test possible at this point. Hey Dad, how ya ... [More]

Ken Wassum, Senior Product Manager:   In this city of nearly 20 million people, there is order to the chaos if you pay attention.  Cars, taxis (by the millions), bicycles, carts, and pedestrians do a dance we in the West cannot even imagine. Here you have Bollywood on one extreme and an astounding 55% of the population (nearly 10 million people) living in shantytowns and slums. But this week there are an extra 2,000 people in Mumbai who are attending the 14th World Conference on T... [More]

Ken Wassum, Senior Product Manager:   As a kid I used to sit on the floor beside my father’s easy chair when his best friend, Bill, visited from out of state.  Bill was a cigar smoker and I loved the smell of cigars. When stationed beside the chair I was in position to savor the aroma of these stogies.  The big surprise came the day when Bill leaned over the chair and let go a spit of tobacco juice into a coffee can narrowly missing my head….. I hadn’t been expecting that! New smo... [More]

Ken Wassum, Senior Product Manager   We have become somewhat numb to the fact that 440,000 Americans a year die from a preventable cause – cigarette smoking. That’s 1,200 deaths per day. Use whatever analogy you want -- 48 Amtrak accidents per day where 25 die, 3 fully loaded jumbo jets crashing daily with all lost – you name it. It is a lot of lives tragically lost. The U.S. is not alone in this loss of life. It happens world-wide, every day. A new report issued by the Royal Coll... [More]