Tell us what's happened to you recently (that's interesting)

Yeah, I’m not right beside Disney, kind of in the foothills near there. It’s definitely more wilderness here. We can’t walk there or anything.

Also, my dog is a sweet girl but will go chasing after any prey animal. She likely just charged right up to the skunk and got her nose filled, bark alert at all. She was snorting when she came back and didn’t freak out, she went for a normal pee and seemed fine, no hurry. It was only after she ran into the house we we’re like “Oh crap, did you get sprayed?! You dum dum!”.

Living in Wisconsin, I see bald eagles fairly regularly. My parents live on a lake in northern Wisconsin, and one day I was taking their little dog for a walk when we surprised an eagle on the ground about 15-20 feet away that had been eating a dead fish (we must have been upwind of it, though, as the dog, who was fearless, never barked or strained to go after the eagle). Anyway, when we surprised the eagle it immediately took off, and the sound from it’s wings flapping will always stick with me—WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP! They are, indeed, a very big bird.

Tony

We just ate out at a nice Italian place that was getting a ton of great reviews, and it did not disappoint.

The interesting part is after my 2nd bite of short rib pasta I bit into a bone. Odd I thought, they must have missed a sliver somehow. So I worked it around in my mouth until I realized this was not a bone and it was really long. I ended up pulling out an inch and a half of twisted, sharp, thick wire. The kind you would use to tie something heavy together, not flexible at all.

Kind of freaked me out when I pulled it from my mouth and just looked at it. So I called for a waitress who said ‘let me get you another one right away’ and took the bowl away. I was too stupefied at this point but 5 seconds later I was thinking that very much would not be a proportional response.

I had anther 30 seconds of thinking that before the manager came over, trying hard to disguise how much he was freaking out. They handled it well, comped the entire meal, told us to order drinks and desert, etc on the house. He made a big production of finding out why it had happened and what they were going to do to fix it. Turns out it was the wire basket they use to lower the fresh pasta they make into the water, so he was in the process of pulling all those out and making sure their sister restaurants replaced theirs as well.

Everybody got lucky today. Very glad it didn’t end up in my sons meal or I had a hole punched through my cheek or dug into my gums. My wife is still freaked out imagining my son with blood coming out of his mouth.

It would have been life threatening if you had swallowed it.

There is a pleasant thought. It was pretty big, like kind of amazing it was hidden in a piece of pasta and small chunk of short rib. I think it was probably speared through both, because I was looking at what I was eating - the pasta was Radiatori which I had never had before and pretty neat looking so I was scrutinizing every bite.

So, almost two weeks ago I told a long and somewhat prosaic story about a trip to my local post office.

I shall now follow-up with a similar story about my local post office. Since I love the people who work there, and I love my little post office.

Here’s a visual example why I love this place:

I just think it’s so cute that they make a hand-lettered sign for that. On top of that, this “Trainee” was so freaking nice to me!

Fast-forward to yesterday when I mailed a bunch of letters, including one of my Star Wars postcards (it’s a project…such as it is) to a friend in Canada. I just put stamps on them and put them in the box during a dog walk in the morning.

Later that day I was driving and I realized I had put the wrong postage on the card to Canada. I’d put a Forever stamp on it, but postage for that kind of thing to Canada requires $1.15. I usually know this, since there are a couple of folks I write to in Canada. I’d just forgotten since I was sending a bunch of mail.

Crap. This was a postcard. And one of my really cool Ralph McQuarrie postcards, dangit. Which means no return address. Which means either the person receiving it will have to pay the extra, or it will just…what? Disappear?

So I go to the post office right before closing and sheepishly ask the woman working the register (not the “Trainee” this time) what will happen. She is exasperated. It’s the end of her day. But she can see I’m all worried. I really want this card to get to this person. She needs it. Sometimes people just need to get something in the mail randomly and you can tell. And she doesn’t need to be asked to pay the make-up postage.

“When did you put it in the box?” the woman behind the counter asks me.

“Before the 2:30 pickup. At around 2:15. But that was two hours ago. So it’s probably been picked up.”

She smiles. Her name is Dulce. She says, “It hasn’t been picked up yet. Because I haven’t done it yet.”

Then she runs to the back and asks her co-worker Jerry to come cover the counter and hurries up with her keys to the blue boxes up on the hill, above the parking lot. I show her a picture of the postcard I sent. I take pictures of all of them on my phone, because…well…it’s a project.

She pulls out the postcard and shows it to me, leads me back into the post office, takes my dollar (seventy-one cents actually), and says it’s taken care of and not to worry about it.

I love my post office.

-xtien

She sounds sweet. :)

Four year old daughter broke her arm today. Landed on her elbow, pretty obvious it hurt bad. Decided to go to the urgent care center in Brampton (suburb of Toronto), on the guess that the wait time would be shorter than the closer, but busy, hospital. The wait was short at least. The doctor said the break is just away from where it would be much more serious, and the cast goes on Thursday for three weeks only (temporary cast for now). Pretty sad to see her passed out in the car with eyes so swollen, but by bedtime we had gotten her to laugh a few times.

Awww, hope she heals up fast.

I am not saying this to freak you out by any means, but it would have been better if they took the piece of wire you found, located the basket it came from, and determined that they did, in fact, get the entire piece that broke off. Do you happen to know if they made any effort to ensure they got… all of it?

I hope she heals quickly, gets her cast signed if that’s still a thing the kids like.

I would guess she broke some rules helping you.

That’s your takeaway?

-xtien

Disney trip #2 of 2018! I missed #1 last Thursday. Not crowded early on but it’s getting there now.

This happened to me at a tapas bar in Barcelona next to the Sagrada Familia. Got a piece of metal wire in one of my meatballs. I didn’t even get a clear apology from the waiter I called over, he just took the meal away and I think I got a replacement. That was it. I was young and not very bold, in shock, and the language barrier didn’t help either, but if that happened to me now I’d be a lot less forgiving. Still irks me that I didn’t push it because – aside from it being metal wire in food – it was bloody expensive too, 7+ euros each for less than a pint of lager. At least that didn’t have wire in it I suppose.

@rowe33 your daughter knows how to strike a pose!

Well, that would make it all the more awesome, wouldn’t it?

Isn’t she a little short for a stromtrooper? =) Too cute man! Looks like a fun day.

I wouldn’t know what to do in a foreign country with a different language.

We always went right before it opened and left before noon most of the time. Still crowded but you could just watch the lines quickly ramp up.

Autotopia! For the longest time I thought it just had that long walkway up to the cars. Then it got crowded for the first time and I discovered they have a long ass wending path that goes up and around and over and wow, they can sure obfuscate the line length. That roger rabbit ride is probably the best example of this.

We are almost done with our Universal Studios season pass. Before that we did Legoland and before that Disneyland. Might do a year at Knotts next, not sure.

The wife got a small wire in her sesame chicken once. It was take out but she was annoyed enough for us to drive back. We showed it to a manager who brought it into the kitchen. After some yelling she returned to tell us it was from the metal brush they use to scrub the woks between entrees. She was visibly upset and so the wife backed off. The manager said they would throw away the brush and use a new one.

What else could we expect? We still eat there and haven’t had an issue since. But yeah, the thought of what could have happened is scary.

Not super interesting, but I guess it doesn’t go anywhere else. A little bitching, I suppose.

I just paid a guy to write a Python script to import into a larger program (my Cinematic AI thing) and he delivered a Linux script and told me to run it via a virtual box. We have a conference call and instead of apologizing and correcting it he gives me this spiel about how it’s better this way if we scale, a bunch of other excuses.

So now I have to pay someone to convert his script to a Python script. What’s the deal with paying for this? I’m leaning towards still paying him as it only took 8 hours but I’m annoyed and he’s fired.

Just a bit of bitching from the trenches.

Did you specify it had to be a Python script? Or did you assume he’d use Python? Assuming you specified it had to be Python, he has not delivered what you asked for. In which case, I don’t see why you’d pay at this point.