In the news today:

1. Prince William's breakup attracts media attention. That's right: the story is not about William's breakup, but about the stories about William's breakup. That's some meta-news shit right there.

2. Kasparov, the chess champion, was arrested at a Russian political protest, where protesters were beaten. Good to know that the Russian political landscape resembles that of your average American high school.

3. A coalition of three high schools from across the country took home first place at the US FIRST robotics competition. This wasn't a three-way tie; these groups of kids worked together to get the prize. It's being called the "Super Bowl of Smarts"; imagine if the real Super Bowl worked that way. "And this year's Super Bowl is won collectively by the Broncos, the Lions, and the Bears, oh my!"

Work has been truly horrific this week. It's not bad enough that they can't get enough people to work on weekends, so one of the three leads has to come in to cover; but this morning, the lead who was supposed to come in called in sick. Up until recently, the understanding had been that, if you are scheduled to work on a weekend, and you have the ability to get to work, you do it. Death is really the only excuse for not coming in on a weekend (preferably yours, though allowances are made for those with family members that are also mortal).

Also, it seemed we had quite a few new people working in the hospital last night. This is inherently bad; you don't want too many inexperienced people at a hospital (for obvious reasons). But last night was particularly annoying, since both a computer programmer and a doctor expected me to do their damn jobs for them. I am not a fucking doctor. I can read off test results from the computer, but I cannot interpret those results. Please do not ask me.

Similarly, if there is a problem with the computers, do not ask me to fix them for you. If your job is to identify and fix various problems with either people or computers, do not ask a $10/hour flunky to do these things for you.

And for the love of God, don't drink and drive. Ever. Maybe it doesn't end horribly for you, but there's about three people for whom it did end horribly last night, and now they're not people anymore. Other things to avoid: getting shot, falling on glass tequila bottles, and working in hospitals.