Paul is spending his summer blogging for Global Voices Online, a roundup that he draws from this infinitely expanding blogroll.

I teased him about how attractive he will be as a Wall Street analyst after marinating in all that bad news for a summer.

Tom shares his well-honed Outlook Tactics, and Windows-based Outlook users would be well advised to give it a readthrough. I have had conversations with Tom about this in the past, and this set of approaches he outlines is well thought through (except for his inadvisable archive deletions – this is someone who may never have employed CYA as a work tactic).

Of course, I also feel compelled to note that Tom’s done a bit of customization; hopefully, as he’s on the other side of the Great Passport Wall (a topic which I have tweaked Tom about in the past) some Outlook team members will implement his customizations as a default.

Sumit’s unexpected-by-me memorialization of his recently deceased wife, Kathryn Oates, 1970-2005, caught me utterly off guard and prompted a solid half-hour of spastic and vocal weeping which disturbed at least one of our cats, and prompted insistent, worried questions from my own wife. Sumit’s characteristic grace and intelligence are present in his eulogy for her. Listen closely, though, for his shining words cloak his pain. I feel it nonetheless.

Viv was rightly mystified at my reaction – after all, Sumit is not a close friend, and I did not even know that he was married. Her concern is well-grounded. My grief is both sympathetic and personal. It’s a direct reaction to my own experiences of loss, and as Sumit’s blog material is generally not personal, the post caught me unawares. I was immediately propelled into an accelerated experience of my own concerns and fears about the inevitable experience of losing my own loved ones.