Taco, you glorious bastard...

Steps to a pretty good morning:

1. Get a chicken biscuit from McDonalds on the way into work.
2. Sit down at your desk and eat said biscuit while checking email.
3. Get an email from a guy in California wanting info about your software.
4. Dig around in the code, find what you're looking for, and wonder who the hell wrote it, because it rocks.
5. Check the version history.
6. Find out you wrote it.

Works every time. The chicken biscuit is key. I can't stress this enough.

Goth Chicks

I just don't see what all the fuss is about.

Dear Life: Fuck You.

I have these two friends, Candace and Carl. They're married. Some people do that. You try to talk them out of it, but they never listen.

They've kinda struggled. Neither of them has a college degree, which makes things a little tougher. They've pushed on through, though, and done pretty well.

They had a little girl, Faith, three or four years ago. Faith's cute as a button. Poor thing has cerebral palsy, though, which is a real kick in the nuts. She had to go to a special school earlier this year to learn how to eat. Poor thing usually eats through a tube.

Making ends meet is tough for them, because it costs a lot of money to take care of a kid with those needs. The government helps out a bit. Of course, if they ever have more than a few hundred dollars in the bank, the government aid craps out, so they can never really get ahead.

They take things in stride, though, and they've done really well with her. A few months ago, they built a new house that's handicap-accessible, so that Faith'd have a nice space to grow up in. Carl's gone back to school and is just about to finish up his degree, which'll mean a nice raise, hopefully.

Got a call from them tonight. Faith has a brain tumor.

Dear Life:

Fuck you.

Hate,
Taco

Sibling Rivalry

Last night I was watching the kids while Wifezilla was at work, and I heard one of the kids crying. I went searching for the disturbance and found my son at the top of the stairs, sitting on the floor, shaking, and crying his eyes out.

I sat down next to him, handed out hugs, and settled him down. Then I asked what was wrong. I knew it couldn't be the thunderstorm that was brewing outside. He's never been afraid of thunder.

It was the thunder.

Sorta.

It turned out that after a particularly nasty rumble of thunder, my two year old daughter had told my five year old son, "Godzilla's coming."

The Good, the Bad, and the Fugly

Coyote yelled at me the other day for failing to update my blog for a month. In truth, that's been largely because the world has rained shit hip deep in Tacoland, and I'm loath to write about such things because a) nobody wants to hear it, and b) I tend a bit toward melodrama when I write about myself, and it leaves me vaguely embarrassed later. So I've generally tried to only post things that happen to or around me which I find funny, but there's been a bit of a dearth of funny lately.

But since Coyote's been after me, I figured I'd give the whole thing a go.

The Good: Kidzookie's first day of real school was today. It's kindergarten, but it's at a real elementary school, and they follow the same schedule as all the older kids. I took the morning off to ride down to the school with him and walk him to his class today, since the first day is the only time we're allowed to do that. Both kids wound up bawling -- my son because he didn't want to stay, and my daughter because she didn't want to leave ("No, daddy, I wanna go kinnergarden! I saw a playground and they have crayons!"). It was thoroughly awesome, if bittersweet.

The Bad: I found out this kid who worked on our team last summer got a job with our company. He was a nice enough kid, but couldn't code his way out of a wet paper bag, largely due to the fact that he absolutely refused to admit when he didn't know something. We spent the entire summer encouraging him to ask questions (or, indeed, to answer honestly when we asked questions beginning, "So, do you know anything about..."), but when he left after three months, we had very little from him that we could use. He finished up a master's degree and got hired by a different team in our company, and probably makes more than I do now.

The Fugly: I don't really feel like treading this ground publicly, so instead, here's a place you can buy some fugly underwear.