Important technical information

When the baby grabs your Treo and begins gnawing on it, the correct response is not, “oh, just let him play with it; what harm can he do?”

Granted, a Treo without a working microphone isn’t useless, but it’s also not a cellphone any more, either.

They Might Be Giants – Fake Believe

If Never Go to Work convinced me to buy They Might Be Giants’ Here Come the 123s, this tune is making me want to pick up the previous album, Here Come the ABCs. (It doesn’t hurt that James loves the 123s music video DVD included with the CD.)

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Guest editorial

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Media General to cut 11 percent of work force

Media General, the corporation that owns The Potomac News (my former employer), is cutting almost 11 percent of its work force:

The 750 job cuts are paired with other operating cost reductions, as the company faces a slumping U.S. economy and a deepening recession in Florida, where it has numerous operations, Marshall N. Morton, the company’s president and chief executive said in a news release.

“Media General continues to implement its announced performance improvement initiatives across all parts of the company,” Morton said. “Our efforts to reduce operating costs have necessarily included personnel.”

The publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Tampa Tribune and Winston-Salem Journal said it expects annual savings of $40 million from the job cuts, which will be fully realized next year. Media General will post severance charges of between $4 million and $4.5 million in the second quarter.

Staff reductions, which will decrease the total number of employees to 6,150, are spread across publishing, broadcast and corporate operations. The company did, however, increase positions in its interactive media division as it focuses on the Internet.

The newspaper industry’s woes aren’t confined to Media General, by any means: More than 100 Washington Post journalists are taking a buy-out.

Sad times.

Exile on Vinyl

I think this is the first time that it’s been available on an LP, but better late than never for the record-lovers, I guess: Exile in Guyville on vinyl. Amazon seems to be unclear at this point about whether this comes with the DVD or not, and they neglect to mention the additional tracks being added.

You can, of course, also get it on CD. Both are set to be released on June 24.