I'm spending this week in Ventura, Iowa, helping my grandparents bring in the harvest. My dad flew out from Las Vegas to help too. I've spent the last two afternoons chopping corn stalks, which is damned near impossible to screw up, which is probably why they gave me that job...
In a spectacular case of "ruining it for everyone", some jackass(es) decided to set fire to three University of Northern Iowa buildings last night during the annual Homecoming celebration. Fortunately, no one was hurt, property damage wasn't as bad as it could have been, and my tape backups had already run for the weekend, so all the servers in those buildings have good copies on tape. Doesn't sound like we lost any servers to the fires, but I'm guessing some may need a good cleaning to get the smoke from their innards.
The President of our University, Robert Koob, announced his retirement this morning. I introduced him to speak at an event yesterday, and during his talk, he alluded to an announcement that would be coming, but I didn't think this was it. We should be in for some changes at work, which is both exciting and scary. Now we're not only going to be getting a new Provost, but a new President as well.
My old next door neighbor in the ISU Dorms now has a blog. Brian Whitmarsh has set one up using Blogspot, so I'm giving him some linky love.
Holly and I saw Serenity on Tuesday night, and it was great. While I'm a moderate Joss Whedon fan, having watched Buffy and Angel, and most of Firefox, I'm not hard core, but I loved the movie. Holly didn't want to go at first, but after I promised to take her out for a steak dinner, she relented. She never saw any of the series that spawned the movie, but she was forced to admit she "really liked it" afterwards. I like science fiction books, but despise the majority of science fiction movies, mostly because they're bad. They tend to focus on the visual while neglecting the story, and are almost universally dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. For every Gattaca (which I loved) there are ten Red Planets (which I loathed).
In any case, go see this film. It's good, very good. Certainly the best Sci-Fi movie this year, as it focuses more on stories, and not on technobabble or dressing people in shiny pants.
As usual, here's Ebert's review.
