Hello, my name is Carlos Delgado of the Toronto Blue Jays. I can put my arm back on. You can’t.
So yeah, went to the ball game. Near as I can tell, pretty much any seat in the Skydome is decent, except if you get high up you can’t tell what’s happening on the far edge of one side of the field. Since our tickets were free, you can imagine how high up we were. Scary high up, that’s how high.
Also scary was the distance we had to go to get snacks, because hey, ball game, need snacks. Due to the incredible attendance levels, we had to go 4 levels down on ramps. Takes a while, I’d say. I decided to have a ball game beer. $6.50, plus I dropped a toonie while paying for the damned thing. Contrast this against the art event we went to before the game, where I could get Steamwhistle for 3 bucks. I like art things. If you have a chance, go to openings. They’re usually on Thursday nights, and they usually have cheap (sometimes free) alcohol. Way good.
Back to the ball game, it was ok. Toronto won 11-1 and they had fireworks when the (4) home runs happened. Getting into the thing was a different matter. You have to check your bags. I wasn’t about to do this, so AngelA waited and I trotted back to the office to drop them off. While I was gone, the guard told her they were doing this because of September 11. Apparently there’s a serious risk of me bringing a rocket launcher to a severely underattended ball game. This is a stadium that has a hotel with rooms facing the field. I don’t believe that the hotel guests have to check their bags. Perhaps the crack security staff didn’t remember that the September 11 terrorists flew first class. Ok, mostly I’m just bitter that I had to run back to the office with two bags while under the influence of art beer.
Today was rapid coding day. I revamped VP’s syndication code while having dinner before heading up to TVA. Of course, I did it wrong. Instead of fixing the code, I got to help out at the local non-profit. All well and good, except I don’t know how much help I’d be if I murdered someone, because that was the likely outcome if I’d have to answer one more phone call. I haven’t talked to that many crazy people in a long time. There are a few types of calls that we get from time to time. It usually takes a few months to collect the whole set. I got doubles. The other fun thing about these calls is that you can tell if someone’s on one of them. My primary duty tonight was to entertain the troops, it would seem. Just to be safe, for the next few days, take my advice and don’t answer the phone. You’ll thank me.
Back to the syndication code thing, I’m starting to learn enough about Perl to learn that there are modules that do most of the stuff that I’ve coded, only better. Today’s lesson was XML::RSS. I figured that since I’m just outputting to a known format, print statements would be good enough, but the code reads so much easier now. Now that I’ve tried generators, I’m going to implement some readers soon. You know, when I have free time.
WHY ISN”T TOMORROW FRIDAY? I’ve been on a “day ahead” cycle all week. Maybe it was the working Saturday night thing. Maybe I should be telling my boss that it’s actually Friday. And that I want company pants.
Oh, pop quiz – who got the “arm back on” reference? The “don’t know it” crowd outnumbered those in the know at TVA 4-3. Sad sad day. I was scared to ask if they knew Stop Drop and Roll. Speaking of “roll”, I saw another “roll/role” mixup in print today, so I think things have balanced out.