My Wife, the Tease

My wife is such a tease! Last weekend she proudly announced to me that she had washed me tons of clothes so I should have plenty to wear for the coming week (and to take on my trip to LA). However, Monday morning I got up and could find no pants or shirts in my closet (none that I could wear to work anyway). So I checked the laundry room and found a load of clothes in the dryer... still damp.

After cursing under my breath (I didn't want to wake the baby) I turned the dryer on and went back to my morning routine hoping that the clothes would be dry before I needed to leave for work.

So I head back in later and find the clothes nice and dry. Then I start pulling them out. I noticed right away that half the load is towels and the rest of the load is a mish-mash of random clothes incliding several of Terri's sleep shirts, a few socks one of my shirts and a bath mat. If I had been dealing with a teenager, I would have come to the conclusion that this random assortment of laundry had been thrown in simply so they could say that they had done a load of laundry.

All of my clothes that she'd "washed" turned out to be still in the washing machine.

So I ended up having to dig through the hamper to find something to wear that wasn't obvious that I'd dug it out of the hamper.

Yesterday, my wife informed me again that she had washed me some clothes. I was dubious, but I did see her mucking about in the laundry room and I had given her this entire spiel last week and threatened to put it in the blog, so I figured that this time she'd do it right.

When am I going to learn?

This morning I get up and I do find several of my shirts hanging in the laundry room (that as far as they make it most of the time). Along with the shirts is one pair of ugly green pants (I'm not sure why I haven't thrown them out yet). But I figure it's better then nothing until I pull them down and realize that they are the same pair that I gave to Terri several weeks ago for mending because they are missing a button.

So I go digging around the house looking for some pants. I had remembered seeing a basket of clothes sitting on the futon that looked suspiciously clean. So I went and had a look. Guess what? It was the exact same load that I had found in the dryer the previous monday. They'd been sitting on the futon for the entire week I was in LA.

Medical Update

Had to go in yesterday for an "upper endoscopy." If you don't know what that is, it's where they shove a camera on a tube down your throat to take pictures of your stomach.

I had to be there at 6am so that meant getting the wife and baby up at about 4:30 because I had to have someone drive me home afterwards. The wife was not thrilled, the baby was up and ready before we were.

The procedure went well, the put and IV in my arm and started the drugs. Those drugs worked fast! The doc asked me if I could feel it working. I said, "I think so." Next thing I know I'm "waking up" in recovery.

The reason I said, "waking up" is that I thought at the time that I was just waking up, but according to my wife I had been awake the whole time and even talked to the doctor about his findings. Fortunately my wife was there and they gave me a nice little print out of the results, or I'd have had no idea what happened.

What? You want to see the pictures? Well, OK...

The first picture is my normal crico-pharyngeal region.

The second is a 12mm gastro-esophageal stricture where "a 51FR guided bougie was introduced for dilation successfully."

The third picture is a localized erythema of the mucosa with no bleeding in the stomach antrum.

I was still very groggy after the procedure. In fact, I had mentioned to my wife that we'd need to stop for gas on the way home. Later that evening I was going to order some chinese food, but couldn't find my debit card. As I was looking for it, it occurred to me that we had forgotten to stop for gas on the way home and I'd have to do that next time we went out. Then I asked my wife if she knew where my card was and she said that I had given it to her when we stopped for gas on the way home!

Great Moments in Bad Programming

I hate bad programming. Bad programming is simply blatant evidence of laziness.

Here's an example. We have a cafeteria here in our corporate HQ. Everyday, I go get breakfast and lunch at the cafeteria. Everyday I pay with my MasterCard. Often the lady at the register has to run my card through the machine twice because she inadvertantly pushed the VISA button instead of the MC button and the system comes back with and "invalid card" error.

The system can obviously tell the difference between a MC, VISA and AMEX. There are also well established rules about teh format of these numbers. So the machine should just allow the cashier to swipe the card and the program should figure out what kind of card it is and proceed accordingly.

Other people have gotten this right. If you go to a gas station and pay-at-the-pump, you just push the credit button and slide your card. You dont have to tell it what kind of card you have, it'll figure it out.

The programmers of the cafeteria's POS system were probably debating whether to add the code for detecting the card type but figured it'd be easier for them if they didn't and besides, "the cashier can just look at the card and hit the appropriate button," right?

Wrong! What they didn't count on is the fact that these register jockeys are only about half a step up from a (poorly) trained monkey. I swear this lady will look directly at my card, then look at the screen and press VISA even though the card clearly has the MC logo on it.

The moral to this story? When writing code, never underestimate the stupidity of your users and always put in the extra code to cover their idiocy. Trust me, if you do it right, your program is going to be WAY smarter than the average food-service employee.

My Daughter Has a Job

My daughter's job is to play with her toys. She's very good at her job. I can gauge her performance when I get home by how many toys are on the floor and how scattered they are.

At night when she goes to bed I put her toys up. Eventually we'll teach her to do it herself, but for now I do it. I can tell when she's had a good day by the number of toys left in her toy bin. When she's not feeling well, most of the toys will still be in her bin when I get home. On some nights, there's hardly any toys left in there at all so I know that she had a very good day.

Yesterday was a good day. There were hardly any toys left in the bin and the ones that were out were scattered all over the house. She even had to take an hour or so off yesterday to go to the doctor. Even with that, she still managed to put in a very full day with the toys.

I know a lot of people use going to the doctor as an excuse to do only a half-day's work. But see, you can learn something from this baby. She's got such a good work ethic that she won't slack off just because she had to take some time out in the middle of her day to go see the doctor.

So next time you're looking for an excuse to take off work early, just remember my little girl and her toy blocks. If she can get right back in there and finish what she needs to do, there's no reason you can't also.

New Year

Well, it's a new year with all sorts of new possibilities and... oh, wait, it's just the same shit we had last month. Never mind.