Our tax dollars at lunch

We don't have to deal directly with state agencies very often. We don't often have to drive nearly 50 miles to wait while the office workers take their two-hour lunch break so we can spent $9.00 per hour per person to look up one death record. We don't often have to look up information in one book (or use a creaking DECpc 466D2 with a Foxpro database) to find out what book contains the death record, fill out a slip of paper, hand it to a person who goes into the back room to find the book that contains the record. We were fortunate. We found what we wanted, the death record of Sandra's great-grandmother in Dorchester in 1943. A copy of the record cost us 18 bucks. Other people waited longer and then had to leave without finding what they needed because they had to get back to work.

It was a fine day, though. The This Old House project was a fun and fascinating place. TV, as we know, changes the scale of things. The yard was smaller that appeared on TV. The house had wonderful details provided by the builders and designers. A few minutes into our tour, Tom Silva showed up to continue some of the finish work. A couple of people in our tour party got his autograph.

The stock market in general and the tech market in particular was shaken by IBM's announcement on Thursday that it missed its first quarter numbers. IBM stock is down more than 20% in the past year. IBM could shed as many as 10,000 employees.

Which means that it's a good time to get a dog. Or cat. Or whatever.