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Dear Toyota,

I know you'd like to hear some good news for a change, but here's a news flash of a decidedly unfriendly kind.  The problem with the Prius brakes isn't confined to the 2010 Prius.  I have a 2006 and it, too, is afflicted with the "soft stopping" problem.  And since nobody seems to have notified the engineers in Japan of my visit to my dealer last year, maybe a little public outcry will help get the message through.

I bought my pre-owned 2006 Prius in early 2009 with about 24,000 miles on it.  About a month after taking posession I noticed a problem with the ABS brakes.  It was the weirdest thing.  They actually failed to work when I hit a bump or pothole.  Go figure.  ABS Brakes that don't work.

I won't belabor the brewing smartphone and cellular carrier battle by publishing yet another "Deathmatch: Motorola Droid versus iPhone"   Galen Gruman of Computerworld already did a reasonably thorough job covering the technical differences between the Verizon-based Motorola Droid and the AT&T-based Apple iPhone.  Writing for Infoworld, Gruman produced a slightly less weighty, though more vendor-inclusive piece entitled, "Ultimate Mobile Deathmatch: iPhone -vs- Blackberry -vs- Droid -vs- Pre".  Between these two sites you will likely find as much information as you need to understand the technical specifications and design choices of the many, varied smartphones now on the market.

Yet for all the detail Gruman included in his respective articles, I found his conclusions lacking in substance.

Gruman spoke definitively about a number of Droid design aspects he considered lacking or poorly implemented, conclusions I found flatly ill-informed and misleading.

Please pardon this interruption in your normal daily routine as we pause for just a moment to ponder a sloppy, dopey trend in modern popular speech.

Today we turn our attention to variations on the phrase, "We've got to...", a lazy overcomplication of the more simple, and more appropriate, "We must..." or "We have to..."  (By the way, the phrase "have to" is itself something of a source for heated debate, but for now we will let it slide.)

You know the phrase to which I refer.  It's everwhere these days. 

"We've got to..."  "They've got to..."  "I've got to..."  "He, she, it's got to..."

Think about it for just a moment the next time you open your mouth and utter any variant of this phrase.  Pause to think back to your 3rd grade teacher of English or Grammar.  Take that contraction and expand it out to its component parts.

We are one out away from the Yankees winning their 27th World Series title.  Carlos Ruiz is on first base with Shane Victorino batting.  One ball, two strikes, and two outs face the Flyin' Hawaiian.  He hits a foul ball.  He foul tips the next.  This continues for the next couple of pitches.

I knew the game was over a long, long time ago.

It fell apart when Pedro Martinez just couldn't cook up enough of that “Pedro” special hot sauce to power his sub-par fast balls.  Teams that let the Yankees get away with loading up four runs early in the game just ain't gonna bring home the bacon.

So what went wrong?  Why did the wheels come off the wagon?  What happened to prevent the Phillies – arguably a better team - from being the first National League team since the mid-70's to repeat their World Series victory of 2008?

In a word, the Yankees were the superior team in this series.  Period.

Okay, what does that mean, Steve-O?  You can't just say they were the "superior team" because they won.  Why did they win?  What did they do that the Phillies didn’t?

Let's start with pitching.  Everyone thought it was going to be CC Sabathia's show.  It turned out to be AJ Burnett’s and Andy Pettitte's show.

The Phillies just couldn't compete with the Yankees’ starting pitching.  Cliff Lee is just one man.  He’s an amazing pitcher, but he’s no Steve Carlton.  Even on short rest, Lee is still just one man with just one chance to pitch in just one game at a time.  After that...  Well, the Phils wound up pinning their hopes on an aging, slowing arm of a once-great Hall of Fame pitcher better known as "Who’s Your Daddy?"  Joe Blanton was Joe Blanton.  He was "okay."  But he wasn’t near enough to stop the bleeding. 

Cole Hamels?  Don't get me started.  There are gray cells misfiring in that lad's head.  Somebody needs to give him a free pass to the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs to help him figure out just why he prefers living with the big team.

(ALERT:  What follows is intentional overuse of big words.  Get your dictionary ready, friends.)

I sincerely doubt that anyone will ever haul me into court accusing me of pitch-perfect application of the English language. I did my undergraduate work in Sociology, not English.  Consequently, I have held no illusions that I would one day become the next internationally renown author of the "Great American Novel."  Writing long-winded, excruciatingly detailed, ponderously boring reports comes naturally.  Debate is innate.  But lilting, rightly crafted prose?  That, as I have been told, is a real struggle for a gasbag the likes of me.  (Or is it "I"?)

Have I ever been a credible purveyor of the Queen's English in daily life?  Barely.  Growing up in the South Philly region poisoned me for life with a genetically grounded propensity to shorten words inappropriately, dropping a few too many "g"s from words otherwise ending in "ing."  Further, though I have been known to occasionally play at being a wordsmith, my income these past two decades has been largely based on my success manipulating bits, bytes, bandwidth, and the fine art of coaching tomorrow's leaders, not my overpowering prowess with simile, syntax, and structure.

Nevertheless, this knowledge will not stop me from bellying up to my God-given responsibility, doing my part to protect the vast, unaware proletariat from eviscerating the effervescence of effective English under the blunted blade of a lazy lingua.

Perhaps I am merely living up to the hopes and dreams of my late mother-in-law.   As a retired teacher and former English major she never missed an opportunity to insure that I paid proper respect to the use of such benchmark components of speech as "good" and "well," as in, "I am doing well", not, "I am doing good." 

(A sadly belated "Thank you," Ruth Edna, for insuring that your son-in-law broke free from his Philly cheese steak moorings to bask in the glow of an occasionally more refined presentation.)

There are now some applications of our native tongue that even I - a professional geek and sometime leadership development wonk - immediately recognize as sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.  My eyes have been widened to the prickly reality that although some words "can" be used in certain contexts they most certainly should not.

Take the word, "hugely," for example.

If we told you that HomeFront could help save you as much as 50% on your annual telecom costs, would you believe us? 

It’s true!  At one client we slashed nearly 50% off their annual bill.  All we did was roll up our sleeves and get busy.  We did a detailed analysis of their needs, scoured their current contracts, and then negotiated with several providers on their behalf.  This story will help you understand how we do what we do and why we are so successful doing it.

If you ride the IT leadership merry go ‘round long enough you will eventually find yourself faced with the challenge of reigning in your telecom and data communications expenses.   It’s called “cost creep” and it’s what happens when you ride with the same carrier or provider over a long span of time.  You know how it goes.  You negotiated a contract that was great three years ago but never went back and revisited it as your companies needs changed.

Whether wireline or wireless voice, or any form of data, one of the largest technology line items for any firm is the cost of the communications infrastructure that ties together locations, mobile workers, and distributed systems.   When businesses are slashing and burning overhead merely to stay afloat, one of the most enticing cost centers on the chopping block is telecom. 

After all, Verizon is no longer the only game in town.  Whether from a wired or wireless perspective credible alternatives are plentiful.

Or are they?