Rotten review of the day

I was amused by the opening of Desson Thomson's review of Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! in the Washington Post:

There are so many layers of bad when it comes to the Hollywood romantic comedy, it would take the film-reviewing equivalent of a geologist to identify them precisely.

So let's not waste our time divining upon which subterranean level of awfulness "Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!" should rest. Let's just say, there is no reason on God's good Earth to see this movie. Not even if your house were to burn down on the coldest night of the winter and the only place to house you and your shivering family was a theater playing this film. Hypothermia would be a thrill compared to sitting through this.

Don't think I'll be lining up to see that one...

School Daze

A couple of years ago my company was looking for a schmoe to manage our company's internal library and archives. This department had basically been driven into the ground by budget cuts, and I think they were just looking for someone to sign the timesheets and not make waves. I was available, and over my halfhearted objection this got tacked onto my job description.

In the end, though, running the Archives has turned out to be one of the more interesting parts of my job. It definitely beats listening to users bitch about their laptops. As I've gotten more into this, I've realized how much I don't know about how to organize and preserve historical materials. So last year I applied for "employee grant" funding to attend two weeks of training at the National Archives. My request was approved, helped along by the fact that I could sponge off my parents and incur no hotel or meal expenses.

So now I'm in DC for about two weeks for the Modern Archives Institute. I'm looking forward to it.

To make things interesting, my assistant on the IT side of things is about to become a father, so he's likely to be out for a few weeks as well. That means our new part-time support person is running the show. It also means I'm probably going to be spending my afternoons on the phone after class lets out. Fun.

On a vaguely related note, I just signed up for the last class in my Technology Management degree. To mix things up a bit, I decided to take Societal Issues in Biotechnology. This ends my long history of avoiding classes in the natural sciences. But working with a biotech startup last semester got me more interested in this sort of thing. And the alternative was an E-Commerce class that probably would have bored me to tears. So this seemed like a good option -- we'll see how it goes.

Be Patriotic -- Support The Economy -- Buy Stuff

Following the excellent example of Tom and Ray, Newton's Kumquat now has its own Shameless Commerce Division. It's actually run by some dude named Dave, whoever he is. In any case, we have it on good authority that more stuff will be showing up when he gets around to it.

When you start your day with an 8-inch knife through your head, things can only look up from there

My uncle is a surgeon in Roanoke, Virginia. He recently operated on this guy, who came into the hospital with an 8-inch-knife jammed through his head. Amazingly, the guy survived.

Historic folk music for 99 cents

The Smithsonian Folkways label is planning to make its catalog of 33,000 American folk and world music songs available at $0.99/pop. Nifty! (Link)

An observation...

I just caught the second half of the State of the Union address. I have only one thing to say about it. I would vote for a turnip before I would vote for W. That is all.

Update: Now my cat is tossing her cookies all over the house. Apparently she didn't like the speech either.