Jim Grundy, a Senior Network Engineer at Farmers Insurance in Grand Rapids, MI, notes that he bears a striking resemblance to our character “Wall,” an ace defender from The Realm adventure on Cisco.com. What do you think? (Jim is the one on the right, BTW.)P.S. Jim, you should definitely download the avatar, and wallpaper for your phone and laptop, from the Bonus Materials area.

SAN JOSE, CA -- So, the waning days of summer are upon us. The evenings are getting cooler in Palo Alto while election season is heating up around the U.S. Talking about politics is a bit taboo generally as it is one of the well-known topics you are supposed to stay away from in friendly conversations. So, with not much going on in the way of technology policy, what does that leave me to talk about in this blog? Gimmicks. You heard me right: gimmicks.My lovely wife and I attended (part of) The Doobie Brothers concert at Wente Vineyards with some of her work colleagues. The setting is lovely there in Livermore and I hope to play the Greg Norman designed golf course there sometime soon. Being a Southerner, I have been taught from an early age that if you cannot say anything nice, don’t say anything at all*, so I will not be reviewing the concert. However, in the interest of the topic of this blog and the aforementioned gimmicks I thought I would post a “separated at birth” gimmick for your viewing pleasure. One of the lead guitarists of The Doobie Brothers, Pat Simmons, reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t put a finger on it. I searched for his picture on the web and “Voila!” it hit me. See the pictures below and let me know if we are dealing with triplets or twins here. : )Pat Simmons of The Doobie BrothersVint Cerf of Google and one of the “Fathers” of the InternetRobert Pepper, Senior Managing Director of Advanced Technology Policy at Cisco (longtime FCC wonk)*Another version of this saying, of course, is “If you can’t say something nice, stand next to me” but I prefer the former.