Interesting 4th of July Weekend

On Friday, my wife gave our dogs rawhide bones to keep them busy while we sat down for a minute. They enjoyed them immensely but we usually take them away after 45 minutes to an hour so they don't overdo it. Apparently, this was a little bit too long. Loki threw up about a cup of rawhide in the kitchen.

On Saturday, I went for a ride with my father-in-law in his official looking crown victoria to pick up my sister-in-law. On the way, an aggressive driver was behind us. He honked at us at every red light because we weren't going fast enough. My father-in-law did a great job of ignoring him. We stopped at an intersection to make a left. While waiting, my father-in-law took his foot off the brake to inch upwards while we waited for traffic to clear. The aggressive guy behind us must have seen this and without looking started to proceed. He bumped into us at about 10mph, a decent nudge.

When my father-in-law and I got out, the kid thought we were cops and changed his tune immediately. I say kid because after exchanging information and viewing his license, he was seventeen years old, just got his license, and was still in his "probationary" period. There was no real damage to either car so we told him not to worry about it, to slow down, and that he was driving like a dumbass. Suddenly, he seemed extremely grateful and apologetic. It's amazing to me how aggressive people are with their cars and then, when it actually comes down to the inevitable accident, the road-side epiphanies they have.

Saturday night, we went to a party at a friend's house and surprisingly there was a moderately famous industrial metal band there hanging out. My wife is a fan of theirs. As we showed up, one of our friends went to give me a hug but she had a shish-kebob skewer in her mouth (which I didn't see and she was too drunk to realize). I felt it snap through a few layers of cheek-skin. Ouch!

Anyway, we had brought our dogs to the party and the husky was being great. The Kelpie was being her usual satanic self so we had to bring her home. On the way out, the singer of the band was telling us how awesome he thought the husky was. I made a passing reference to a line from Ben Stiller's "The Heartbreak Kid" and he caught it, "it smells like the devil's lettuce out here." He seemed like a nice guy. I would've liked to stay but the Kelpie was losing her mind chasing after this little pug that was also there.

On Sunday, we first went to my niece's fourth birthday party at my brother's ex-wife's house. It was kind of awkward since our entire family hates his ex-wife but it was for the baby. We keep it very civil so the baby doesn't know. They don't do the best job keeping up with the house so my wife and I abstained on the non-catered part of the food. We got her a pink Barbie hot wheels Jeep. She was elated and it was great seeing my family. On the way there, I got an email from Apple saying that my new iPhone app was approved and "Ready for Sale" in the iTunes store.

Later that night, we returned to the city for my wife's side of the family and my sister-in-law's birthday. It was great seeing everyone there too.

Fingernails

I had dinner with my parents last weekend for Father's day. Somehow, during conversation, the reason why I stopped biting my fingernails came up. When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I had a problem with biting my nails. I'd always do it and my dirty fingers were always in my mouth. I shudder to think..

Anyway, my mother made me a deal I could not refuse. Exasperated with trying to get me to stop, she said, "If you never bite your nails again, I will buy you a video game." The video game I chose was somewhat new so it was still full price. I chose Contra for the NES.

I never bit my fingernails again. I wonder if it was the sheer awesomeness of Contra or my amazing will power... definitely Contra.

If I Was Dying Tomorrow...

If I was dying tomorrow and for some reason the entire world would listen to the last thing I ever said, it'd be, "it's OK to let other people think differently than you." If anyone reads this, what would yours be?

Cancer Sucks

Two weeks ago, my mother was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer. Last Friday, she went into surgery to have a double mastectomy with reconstruction. My wife and I joined her and my father in the waiting room while she was waiting to go into the operating room. She wasn't nervous. She was calm, collected, and prepared. She had so little time to prepare for this life-changing surgery and yet her determination to get rid of the cancer conquered any fear she had of the sacrifice to come.

Her doctors at MSKCC were fantastic. Everyone including the nurses were extremely friendly and caring. She was awake Saturday and feeling good despite nausea from the anesthesia. She said it felt like she worked out too much. She still had excellent mobility in her affected arm. We did whatever we could to help her back into the house on Sunday but she didn't really need any help. Her nausea subsided by Monday morning and she was eating a sandwich by lunchtime; in great spirits.

In the coming months, my mother will be subjected to chemotherapy and possibly radiation. It will obviously be very rough but I know that she will be just as brave going into it as she was with her surgery. She is looking forward to the final reconstructive surgery.

I truly admire my mother's strength and my father's steadfast support of his wife. It goes without saying that they are my heroes.

Lottery Customer Service Response

In August of 2008, I sent an email through Megamillions.com inquiring if they had an RSS feed of the winning numbers. I was developing a tool and a feed would have been really helpful for it. So I asked them using their online contact form, "Do you guys plan to have a feed of the winning numbers in RSS, XML, or any other format available?" I entered my state as NY and my regular contact info. I believe it routed my question to the lottery email address shown in the image below. This re-routing must've been the problem.

Four months later, in December, I received a rather cryptic response, "Megamillions.com is not a NY site. Write to Megamillions.com." Now the first problem was, I did. The second problem was, WTF? That's your response? It doesn't even make sense. You could've at least sent a LITTLE customer service smoke my way.

Whatever, I found the feed on the site and my app is working fine to this day. It's definitely the weirdest email response I've ever gotten.

The Fruit Cup Incident

This occurred about a year after I met my wife. I was living at my mom's house and I was really hungry one morning. All we had was a massive one gallon can of fruit cup in heavy syrup. For the purpose of this story, lets call the manufacturer "Mel Donte." My favorite!

Undeterred by my wife's prophetic advise, I ravenously gorged myself on fruit cup and drank what had to be a quart of the heavy syrup. I finished the entire gallon in the name of silencing the infernal rumbling in my stomach. It went away. Just as she predicted, over the next twenty minutes, a different rumbling returned only much lower and much stronger in intensity.

Before long, I was glued to the bowl with a steady flow of undigested fruit cup leaving my body. It took two days for my digestive tract to start functioning again. I tried to eat dinner that night. I never want to see undigested spaghetti in the toilet bowl again.

My wife will never let me forget The Fruit Cup Incident although she never once said "I told you so." To this day, I can't even so much as look at a fruit cup container without getting nauseous; just the words "fruit salad" sends shivers down my spine. I relearned many valuable lessons that day.

Survivor's Guilt

Four people got axed yesterday and today one front end web developer from my group got let go. There are also rumors of one manager quitting. It sucks to see friends go. I found out that my last job was just replaced with an unpaid internship too.

I hope there are no more layoffs.