A few weeks ago a letter appeared on the bulletin board in the company breakroom. It was from Maria, the intrepid Mrs. Chalko. Her husband Nick is our very own sir-yes-sir Marine Corp Major — and also a fine software engineer. Nick was called up from reserve duty earlier this year, and he’s been gone for several months.
This whole weekend I was sick. Starting with severe Friday night shivers during a date at the movie Robots (we had to leave early, but got vouchers for next time), and continuing with one-sided late-night conversations with the commode, I was convinced it was food poisoning. I don’t know why, I suppose, but it made the most sense to me that these dramatic things I was doing were related to bad half-and-half in my Starbucks Americano. I kept reciting everything I’d eaten in the last three days to Karen, who eventually told me to get over it and just get used to the idea that it was the plain old flu. I protested, explaining that it couldn’t be the flu. It just couldn’t. She said okay, then. Flu poisoning. I got he idea and shut up. I’m happy to be feeling better. And next weekend’s date night will be much better than this weekend’s was.
My friend Heath Kemper is in town, and we were very happy to have an occasion to visit. He’s from Oregon, and we sometimes laugh at the cultural differences between the two states. This evening a group of us had dinner together at Fresh Choice, which is a Northern California institution. I tried to prepare Heath by describing it as “just like Hometown Buffet, only instead of mashed potatoes and gravy they have soybeans and tofu.”
My friend Jeff Kain send over a link to the latest item in the Star Wars merchandizing universe: Darth Tater. It’s a Darth Vader version of the beloved Mr. Potatohead toy! It’s a strange contrast to see an evil character in a children’s toy, but that doesn’t seem to stop Progress.
My colleague Brent Bingham sent me an interesting link to a site called Newsmap by Marcos Weskamp:
This year I received one main Christmas present from everyone on both sides of my family: the DK-3 Screwdriver Antenna. Yes, this does add about 1,000 Geek Points to my Lifetime Score.
I noticed that ecto references del.icio.us, so I had a look: it’s a community bookmark service!
A long IM chat with Jeff Bennett this morning got me musing about church issues, and so at lunchtime I went back to some familiar websites for fresh perspective.
My lucky pinch of chad
On Voting Day, Karen and I went early to our local precinct at a nearby elementary school. The polling station was in the library. We waited in line amidst the shelves of American Girl and Hardy Boys books, and eventually presented ourselves to some very nice senior citizen volunteers. They carefully and thoroughly (and slowly) cross-checked our names and address and then gave us our old-style ballots, the kind with pre-perforated little rectangles — chad!
This is a typical dialog when I order coffee:
Howdy.
Good morning! Can I get a drink started for you?
Venti Americano.
Name?
Bryan.
Ryan. Venti Americano. Got it.
And thus, the problem. It seems that when I am asked my name, what people hear me say is “Ryan” instead of “Bryan.”