Hercule Poirot Returns!

The twelfth (and I believe final) season of Poirot comes to PBS Masterpiece Mystery this weekend and I'm stoked! It seems like I've been watching the show forever, and it likewise seems to have been away forever. I'm sure I've seen just about every episode, many of them multiple times. David Suchet has been in the role for over 20 years and has truly made it his own. When I view other adaptations of Poirot stories with other actors in the lead role they just don't seem right to me. Two new episodes are airing, the first this Sunday and the last the following weekend. I'm going to have to confirm if this is truly the final season as I read something about that perhaps 9 months or more ago. My little gray cells are buzzing with anticipation.

Farewell to the Receptionist?

I've been noticing lately that many businesses that used to have a receptionist no longer have one. Instead of having a friendly voice to answer all calls or a friendly face to greet all visitors I've seen setups where you walk into the empty lobby and pick up a phone to talk to someone in an office elsewhere in the building. I've also seen setups where you press an intercom button and announce yourself before being buzzed into an empty lobby to wait for someone to come out and meet you. In other situations I've seen various people handle receptionist duties in addition to their regular job responsibilities. The receptionist has become redundant. As one person said, it's just like how Microsoft Word made secretaries redundant. Why have a secretary compose a letter for you when you can do it yourself? Have companies decided having a receptionist is unnecessary? Is the receptionist a victim of the economic recession or of changing times?

The Martian

I finished listening to the unabridged audiobook for The Martian by Andy Weir and I highly recommend it. The story is mostly told from the perspective of an astronaut accidentally stranded by his teammates after a dust storm while on a 31-day Mars expedition. Weir certainly seemed to have researched his subject thoroughly. The novel has enough technical details to satisfy a hard sci-fi fan such as myself but with enough drama to satisfy someone who just likes a good book. It was definitely an audiobook I didn't want to stop listening to. I kept promising myself I would stop at the end of the next chapter (just so I could get some sleep) but I couldn't stop. It's just that good.