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This morning was again spent installing patches on client computers, and at the last stop of the morning the user told me I could have the candy the firm had provided for Halloween.  I declined politely, but as the install dragged on I started picking at it until all that was left was a Twizzler.  Later that day, I was in my office while a meeting went on nearby.

Coworker #1: What did you think of the candy they gave us?
Client from Earlier: I wouldn’t know. Someone ate all my candy.
Coworker #1: All of it?
Client from Earlier: Except my Twizzler.
Coworker #1: Who took it?
Client From Earlier: I don’t feel comfortable saying.
Coworker #1: What were their initials?
Client From Earlier: Terry Robinson.

And with that a name was dropped from my “I brought in a baked good” mailing list.

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When I do these posts, I usually work from notes that I jot into my reporter’s notebook as I go about the day.  Under the entry marked “10-30” I have just one line written “shrimp and bird cages”.  These lines are usually enough to trigger the mental chain that results in me writing a post but today that seems to have broken.  What the hell did I mean by “Shrimp and Bird Cages”?

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Chris Lutz and I went clothes shopping today and the idea of buying clothes from a store proved very novel.  Sizes beyond 44 rarely exist in department stores and I got to go to a Kohl’s, the magical land where the only thing not on sale are the employees.  I stuck to 44s mostly and Chris walked me through some fashion lessons I felt I should have known for a solid decade by now but he took to his task with missionary zeal.  I learned that there are more colors to belts than just brown and black and that collar stays make you look pimp juice.

Somewhere between looking at sports jackets and sweater vents, the first romantic relationship of my adult life ended.  I’m pretty good at dealing with ups and downs of life so realized that for the next 12 hours the best thing I could do would be to keep myself occupied while my neocortex waged war with my amygdala. I barely made it up my driveway due to the thick, sticky, falling snow and made my first order of business an elaborate lunch of grilled seasoned chicken breast with a Waldorf salad with greens.  Midway through the power cut out and I had a lot of partly chopped vegetables and a now 1/2 cooked chicken breast.  There goes that distraction.  I had the salad part while listening to a book on tape but found myself getting fidgety.  Normally, I’d hop on my treadmill and watch a movie or two to exhaustion but this route was taken from me as well from having no power and no 4 wheel drive vehicles were around so leaving wasn’t an option either.  I remembered that one of my housemates had a rowing machine they’d never used so I retrieved the box from the attic and assembled it.

For the next three hours, I sat in my darkened house using a rowing machine listening to a book on tape about the history of modern violence as the UPSs in my house beeped at their dearth of power as “Terry, you’re lonely” was replaced with “Terry, you’re crazy”.  At least my bad days tend to be interesting.  And I can fit into size 42 pants comfortably for the first time in my adult life.

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After the clarity gained earlier this week, the rest of my time working with the device specialist proved enjoyable.  I learned a lot about device operations and found out he liked photography.  So after lunch on the last day of his visit, I showed him my office where I have some 15 large prints up on the wall.

Him: Did you take these yourself?
Me: Yeah.
Him: And it looks like you don’t much like 8 x 10s.
Me: Nope.  8x10s are nice for something to put on a desk, but 11×14 is where you start showing you give a damn.
Him: Larger than 8×10, I guess I had never thought of getting anything bigger than could be done at Walgreens.
Me: I mostly do super B 13 x 19s.
Him: I have pictures that I could print.  Then I could put them on the wall of my office. *pause* Terry, you have inspired me.
Me:  Thank you.
*handshake*

The Texas accent is what sold his last line.

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All day I was laboring under a device specialist who came to repair one of our larger devices and have been met with nothing but curt snideness.  This afternoon, that snapped:

Him: Why can’t you find me the appropriate fitting?
Me: Because I have no idea what it looks like.
Him: And to think, you have a degree in mechanical engineering.
Me: Woah, I have a degree in Actuarial science. He, *points to boss’s office* is the guy with the useful degree.
Him: So what’s your expertise?
Me: Statistics.
Him: Surely you were trained in this device, though?
Me: Not a lick, figured it out via brute force and from the test method used to validate it.
Him: Looks like I’ve been a jerk to you all day.  I’m sorry.

Things don’t normally resolve themselves that nicely.  I could get used to this.

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Having learned from yesterday’s mistakes, Joe, Whit and I arrived at Great Adventure before the park opened.  I was stymied by the security person who found my knife/carabiner I use as a keychain to pose an unacceptable risk to the park patrons despite yesterday it being fine.

Me: It’s a letter opener.
Security Guard:  *opens it* It’s a knife.
Me: it’s a keychain that happens to have a sharp letter opener in it.
Security Guard: It’s a knife.
Me: Ok, it’s at worst diet knife that is apparently only harmful on Sundays as I got in without complaint yesterday.
Security Guard: How do you close it?
Me: You’re the security expert so sayeth your badge.
Security Guard: Sir, how do you close the knife?
Me: I only know how to close my letter opener.
Joe: Terry, stop.
Me: Like this. *closes carabiner/knife*
(I was being a dick at that point)

There are lockers both inside and outside the park.  Those on the inside cost a $1.00 for the day.  Those in the outside cost $8.00 for the day, or more than my carabiner cost me.  So, I removed the keys and put carabiner into my shoe like a reasonable person would.  I passed through the x-ray machine on the second try but had to gimp-slide my leg through.

Once we were in, we made a mad dash for Nitro which we got to go on twice in a row.  Then we went on Batman: The Ride and The Dark Knight ride all in less than about 30 minutes.  We knocked out three more rides in under 90 minutes and I was happy with our success.  The final ride for the day was going to be El Toro, the wooden coaster where the impossible happened. Joe, Whit, and I queued up and entered two different sections of cart and sat down.  I secured myself in place as did they and before the ride started, the lead operator indicated a seat wasn’t fully engaged and he began walking down the line of cars toward me.  “Oh great” I thought, “looks like ‘don’t get kicked off of a ride for being too big’ won’t be removed from my ‘why I don’t want to be fat list’ today.” as I thought that, the operator stopped at Joe’s cart.  Joe is at least 40 lbs lighter than me yet was ejected.  He walked past me and we exchanged the “what just god would allow this?” look.  Whit looked at me and gave the “That was a twist ending worthy of M. Night Shyamalan” look and the operator strode back to his station.  He gave the hand signal marking all clear, then stopped, saw there was still another engagement issue and promptly kicked me off the ride too.  The universe was again in order.

We walked to Bizarro, saw it was closed, and left the park for the day after going on Houdini’s Great Escape.  This was the pedometer chart for today:

A slightly more intense pace.

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Went to Great Adventure today, went on seven rides of which five were coasters, waiting in lines for about 12 hours in total.  Spent less than 1% of the day on an actual ride.  The graph of waiting can be seen by the chart my pedometer spat out:

At least the company was nice.

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I’m meeting a friend of friend tomorrow who’s vegan and I’ve taken making them a presentable chocolate chip cookie as a personal challenge.  Most dietary restrictions don’t affect my baking.  I can easily make a recipe Kosher, or Hilal by avoiding things like jamming pieces of bacon into it (which has only once been a concern).  Vegetarianism is easy if someone’s an ovalactovegetarian which most seem to be.  But vegan, is a problem.  I lose all cream, sour cream, milk, buttermilk, eggs, gelatin (which is rarely called for but near impossible to work around) and many lesser ingredients like many types of chocolate chips as they’re often made with a trace of milk chocolate.

I have two options, either substitute ingredients into a known recipe or go for a tried and true Vegan Approvedâ„¢ recipe.  I boldly Googled the latter and found a recipe that required no crazy ingredients except the slightly rare molasses and made a batch.  What did it substitute for eggs as its binder?  Nothing.  None of the ground flax seed I’d seen used elsewhere or VegaMazing egg substitute (or some other ridiculous name) I recalled seeing on initial searches.  Maybe I’ll extend this tactic of “just don’t include it” and call my stuffing vegan meatloaf or croissants vegan pigs in a blanket.  The cookies weren’t bad and I was glad to find that Ghirardelli’s semi-sweets are animal product-free.  These cookies did come at a cost: Every time I opened the fridge during and after the first batch I could hear the eggs whisper “who do you think you are?” and “traitor”.  Eggs are douchebags.

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My TF2 team uses a tool called TCAdmin to manage its server installs.  Recently, we’ve had an issue where updates take a very long time to load so I contacted TCAdmin’s technical support.  After a bit of back and forth, their final recommendation was “Try using Opera”.  Really?  This is the best you can come up with?  Tell a vegetarian to try chicken or a Hasidim to try pork to solve indigestion I get but telling a self-respecting Internet Neckbeard to try Opera?  This injustice will receive a blog post, forum post, and a tweet, sir.  Many IRC channels will be hopping mad within the day.

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It was good to see Pat and Clara.  A sentiment I don’t think will ever change.  They let me into their home, allowed me to purchase a salad I didn’t touch, permitted me to sleep in, and let me take their picture.  After finishing my Diet Sun Drop I left for home but before going, changed my cell phone plan to remove the temporary “+ Canada” features I had enabled before leaving thinking I’d otherwise forget to turn it off and be charged for its use.  On the way back, I received two text messages from America’s hat saying how nice it was to see me during my time in Canada.  Two text messages costing a mere $4.00.

Add a calendar reminder next time, Terry.