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I came into the office from a three-day weekend (I work a compressed four-day week) to find my phone blinking. In my job I consort with a lot with libraries and this message was from a librarian who called to ask if I had any recommendations on what to look for when interviewing an IT manager. The answer was, not really - I'm a web programmer, and haven't spent much time around IT managers - but I know some interviewing tricks.

I gave her three questions. The last was my favorite:

In prosperous times indie filmmaking is a tough field. And these aren't exactly prosperous times. It's difficult to land a distributor, but before that, hard to get into film festivals - even with good press in Variety.

The blogosphere has been alive today with serious discussion of the new iPod Nano's revolutionary design, featuring... wait for it ... curves!

I bought my son a DoodlePro a year ago to keep the boy occupied in church so he wouldn't crawl under the pews. Looking back, I'm amazed at the forward-thinking design, as the curvature of this product is not just a design decision - a sort of packaging meant to keep the innards from spilling out all over the place - but is also a feature. Amazing. I wonder if the iPod people were inspired by the DoodlePro.

My wife had a meeting tonight, so for dinner with the kids I threw together what turned out to be delicious calzones. Much to the surprise of all involved.

Here's a rundown of what I did and what I used:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

16 oz. block of mozzarella
some Parmesan (to preference)
2 eggs

Grate the cheeses, mix in the eggs.

1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp thyme
1/4 cup green onions
2 cloves garlic

I'm a traditionalist. I'm no sucker for post modern flim-flam in my fiction or film - simply tell me a story - formal experimentation is fine - but there'd better be a human story at heart. I believe in decorum - that we can and should be decent and civil with one another. And I believe parents are to raise children, not cater to their entertainments.

Despite my healthy respect for the wisdom of ages contained in tradition, there are sometimes traditions that should die. These are often traditions only a handful of generations old - traditions like the use of the QWERTY keyboard.