I still haven’t recovered from the cold I had a month ago. I’m on a CEO-ordered mandate to not come into work the rest of the week and that should explain my lack erratic communications of late. Having my boss tell me, “Stop coming into work, get better” is the Terry equivalent of exercising the the nuclear option.

Well before I fall back asleep (because my body really is shutting down), here is what happenned yesterday:

I had a bet with my web developer about a piece of filtering code I wrote that was breaking a certain type of link. It turned out that the bet was a draw: yes, it was in my code; no, my code wasn’t broken. I decided to call it a loss and treat him to coffee at Starbucks—we have a nice Starbucks coffee machine at work, but “Cafe Verona” and “Cafe Verona Decaf” does not constitute an adequate set of options.

He ordered his reward, then I ordered the grande mocha cappuccino (yes, that was what the chalkboard told me to order). I then pulled out my wallet to get the Starbucks card. I just have the card as an excuse to treat people to coffee. I’m the only person in my family who isn’t a coffee drinker, I just drink socially, or when I’m desperate.

“Whoops! I have to use my credit card instead.” I then explain to my co-worker what happened to my card, “Normally, I have a Starbucks card but I cleaned out my wallet last month. Now I kept the Starbucks card, it’s just that I had a George Costanza wallet before, which stretched the wallet, and now when I pull this out, all the cards on the right side have been flying out. I guess it flew out recently and I lost the Starbucks card.”

The girl behind the cash register overheard this and laughed when I said “George Costanza wallet.” Apparently the same thing happens to her.

The moral of this story is, don’t clean out your wallet when you’re sick in bed and have nothing better to do with the idle time.

My wallet (slimmed)
North Beach, San Francisco, California

Nikon D70, Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D
1/600sec @ f/2.8, iso200, 85mm (127mm)

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There is a section of my high school called Rowe Common that is off limits to underclassmen. You can’t enter there on pain of death, or whatever. If you were cool and were a freshman or sophomore, you hung out playing four-square in “the Pit” which sits below Rowe Common.

(In my entire time at Shady Side Academy, I think I hung out at the Pit one time.)

One day, some seniors were sitting around bored in need of some light entertainment, one of them got the idea that they’d trick a frosh into entering Rowe Common so they could duct tape them to the wall. They sent an envoy downstairs to the locker rooms.

[How this story and I collide…after the jump]Continue reading →