I was reminded that Mardi Gras is this week and was offered a gumbo recipe to try. First of all, I seldom use any recipes when cooking. I prefer to use my understanding of food elements or cuisines to develop recipes. Second, I am very serious about food from New Orleans; I enjoy fixing it all, from Cajun to Creole to just plain good. I looked at the recipe and it was interesting, but with no herbs and the use of water instead of broth, I knew it could be better. Now the challenge for me was that on Saturday I was having a pizza bar for my grandchildren.

This morning it was announced that Google and other companies bypassed the privacy settings of iPhone users and computers using Apple’s Safari browser. After the discovery, Google, who has been reprimanded both here and abroad for violating privacy guidelines and policies, removed language from its site indicating Safari users could trust the Safari's privacy settings to prevent tracking. In a separate story Twitter acknowledged that it had copied the entire address books from both iPhones and Android smartphones. The question is, does this matter?

NASA announced this week that it was shutting down its last mainframe, which generated a few memories. The first mainframe computer that I ever worked with was an IBM 360. Granted, I was not allowed to touch it, but after teaching myself FORTRAN, I was provided time to run research programs. Yes, we not only needed permission to gain access to this new computing power but we had to schedule time to do so. Most of the programs I wrote completed quickly and I got access on a regular basis. Yet, if NASA, who runs some very powerful programs, no longer needs a mainframe then who does?

At first I thought cooking this weekend would be light. We ate out Friday and I was looking forward to having lunch at one of my favorite restaurants on Saturday. However, that all changed when I decided to make Pretzel Rolls. One of my favorite burgers on the planet is made with a pretzel roll bun and so few places use that type of bun. So, on Saturday, I decided to make pretzel rolls. Since I’d had a burger Friday evening, I decided to have pastrami and corned beef on my finished roll. I purchased the pastrami as it would take too long to prepare.

In our industry, it is easy to get excited about the future of IP communications and technological innovation. The IP community is healthy and growing faster than most businesses. It is easy as owners and managers to get caught up in the challenges and opportunities, thereby, overlooking addressable personnel issues. As we have grown sales and marketing at Broadvox, I find that I have not asked my team’s opinion of their jobs, my performance or the company in general for over a year.

In attempting to better understand the impact of the FCC rules change regarding InterCarrier Compensation (ICC) and Universal Service Funding (USF), I found myself lost in a sea of IP related missives. Ignoring the obviously flawed reasoning behind the rules change, I looked for studies that could summarize their effects upon an ITSP like Broadvox. On the surface the changes appear to create a level of fairness by addressing unfair termination and access charges. However, the reality is they will negatively impact rural carriers and VoIP service providers.

After a week on the road at ITEXPO in Miami, I needed to take a break from restaurant food and cook. I was pleasantly surprised when asked on Friday to fix crab cakes, which I partnered with a mustard cream sauce. Saturday I made calf’s liver and caramelized onions for dinner. I also made a vegetable beef stew for Super Bowl Sunday. I served the stew for breakfast topped with a sunny-side up egg. Just before the game began, I fired up the fryers to make Buffalo wings, chicken livers, French fries and fried cheese curds (remember we had mostly vegetables for breakfast).

The week was very busy for Broadvox and many of our partners. We were in Miami for the East Coast version of ITEXPO. The crowd was bigger, the sessions attended by larger audiences and the discussion points varied. But like many conferences this year, cloud computing and managed services ruled the day. For me, I learned a very interesting fact from IDC. In polling companies with at least 50 employees, the most important feature of Unified Communications (UC) was instant messaging (IM). At the bottom of the list with only 29% support was presence.

Last year after complaints by a European carrier that new services offered by Google were making it impossible to accurately predict traffic requirements which drive network expansion, I noted the need for Google and others to coordinate new product releases with service providers. This seems to still be a problem. Japanese service provider, NTT DoCoMo, suffered a signaling storm generated by an Android application. While I haven’t seen the specifics, I do know that having networks fail around the world, as we are attempting to generate confidence in using cloud application, is not good.

I didn’t cook much this weekend as it turned out to be a weekend of leftovers. Friday, we ordered Mexican food and since neither of us eats very much we had quite a bit leftover. As a result, I made scrambled eggs with cheese topped with leftover ceviche and sour cream. Dinner was a seafood quesadilla served over chive mashed potatoes for Gay. I had smoky barbeque ribs and brisket with black beans and salsa. Sunday, I made omelettes filled with sautéed onion, tomato, and chopped rib meat and brisket.