I just attended a presentation by an alumna of my program who is currently doing UI design for TiVo. She had talked to many of her fellow alumni and wanted to impart some wisdom on us, the current students.

The central nugget of said wisdom was, surprise surprise, "the job market sucks right now."

This makes me very happy that I have an in at a certain government agency which, by way of sacrificing accuracy for concision, I will be referring to from here on out as Astronaut Central.

Now if only the guy from AC would actually get around to calling me...

Things are looking up, however! I received an "Investment Update" from my bank wherein they tell me that the economy is getting better. Among other pearls: "Bill Gates may have lost $11 billion last year, but his personal consumption habits probably didn't change much."

Is that true? Can that possibly be true? If you lost $11,000,000,000, don't you think you might tighten the ol' belt just a notch? I think there are just too many zeros on that number for me to even begin to speculate.

Regardless - according to my bank, the economy is getting better.

In other news: according to politicians, my taxes will go down; according to used car dealers, I can't get a better deal anywhere else; and according to some guy from the Ivory Coast who sent me spam today, I can have 30% of his $23 million if I give him my bank account number. Grains of salt all around.