Two weekends ago, when we went down for the NFC Championship game, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny and I were eating oysters and drinking our lunchtime cocktails at a restaurant called Bourbon House. It happened to be the next shop down from the place where our dear friend Stacie had her rehearsal dinner, and my view out the window happened to be a place where the ladies dance in an exotic style. Penthouse Club, I believe it might have been called.

This reminded me of a story I had forgotten. Our friends from Boston — Josh and Lisa — newlyweds themselves — arrived to Stacie’s rehearsal dinner a little bit early. Not finding anyone there yet, they decided to go grab a drink somewhere close, and Lisa suggested the place right across the street.

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I just received this invite to a lunch today. The emphasis in the message is mine.

From: ______________
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 9:04
Subject: BRAG Lunch today

The BRAG Lunch is a monthly, informal round-table lunch
for developers within the Greater Baton Rouge area. It is FREE and open to
developers of all skill levels.

______________ will be starting us out talking on the
Liskov Substitution Principle and we’ll see where we go from there. Should
be yet another great meeting. If you would like to come, please use the
eventbrite link below to register so that we can get a rough estimate of the
space needed.

We hope to see you there!

Liskov Substitution Principle?

Let’s go to Wikipedia:

In object-oriented programming, the Liskov substitution principle (LSP) is a particular definition of a subtyping relation, called (strong) behavioral subtyping, that was initially introduced by Barbara Liskov in a 1987 conference keynote address entitled Data abstraction and hierarchy. It is a semantic rather than merely syntactic relation because it intends to guarantee semantic interoperability of types in a hierarchy, object types in particular.

Well, I hope I would be able to hang in the “we’ll see where we go from there” part of the conversation, because I don’t see myself elaborating on the nuances of Liskov.

Unfortunately, I have something that I have to do at lunch today. But hey, it’s nice to be invited.

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Greg Oden has issued a statement about the nude pictures of him that have been released in the public sector.

I want to apologize to everybody, Portland, fans, the organization. It was very embarrassing. It was something that happened over a year-and-a-half ago. It was taken and sent over a year-and-a-half ago. I’m very sorry and I’m definitely embarrassed for my family and everybody around me.

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First of all, this is worth (another) watch:

Second, here’s a video I took from Canal Street about an hour after the game. Be warned that I had been drinking for about 10 hours at that point, and that I know I drop at least one F-bomb. And it doesn’t come close to doing justice to what it was like there, but hopefully, if you’re interested, you might get some sense of it.

Canal St. After the NFC Championship Gamee from ben schultz on Vimeo.

Canal Street, 1/24/2010, about an hour after the New Orleans Saints won their first NFC Championship.

I also have a couple of short videos from before the game on Sunday posted over here. And if you’ve really got some time to kill, check the other video galleries from that page. Other than “2004,” they’ve all got new stuff posted.

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I have to admit, the Saints conference championship has been very moving to me. I’m surprised to find myself a lot more affected than when LSU won either of their football championships. Perhaps, in my mind, the Tigers were always a good team that would one day find their way back, while the Saints seemed to anyone to be one of those franchises destined to muddle through in mediocrity.

Being in the city after the game Sunday night was amazing. It’s possible that there’s never been a single city at a single point in time that was so collectively happy. Maybe a lot of cities were that happy when the Nazis finally surrendered, but then again, there were a lot of grieving parents in that mix. As I posted to Facebook, the Greeks weren’t that happy to have beaten the Trojans (although I think I put the Spartans. I doubt those were the same people, but that doesn’t really matter.)

Even with more printings, it’s impossible to find a copy of Monday’s Times-Picayune. People are already selling them for $25.

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If I were a betting man, I would say that I have a photograph of the worst example of burnt food in a microwave oven that you’ve ever seen. If you can’t stand the suspense, scroll to the bottom of the post to see it for yourself.

Last Saturday, we had a few people over to watch the Saints game. We ate buffalo wings and white beans during the day.

Culinary aside: I (incorrectly) predicted that after a day of eating wings, beans, and drinking, that Mrs. theskinnyonbenny would have horrible complaints about my flatulence the next day. I thought for sure that she would screech that I needed to see a doctor about the unnatural churnings of my body. But it turns out that it wasn’t too bad.

V didn’t go hungry throughout the day, but he wasn’t much on hot wings and white beans either. So in the evening, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny popped some leftover macaroni into the microwave for him and set the time.

Both she and our friend Lisa heard the microwave beep a few minutes later, and they assumed that it was finished. In the course of three minutes, V was running wild in a different part of the house, so they went outside to drink, leaving the food in the microwave for when his little brain got back around to the request.

Some number of minutes later, Mel went into the kitchen and discovered smoke pouring out of the microwave. She roused me from a half-drunk full, content laziness on the couch by yelling, “YOUR KITCHEN IS ON FIRE!!!”

I went in, opened the microwave door, and was immediately engulfed by smoke. It wasn’t just normal smoke — it burnt the eyes and lungs most horribly. Perhaps it isn’t funny, but I had to chuckle at Mel’s frantic attempts to herd the unherdable children out of the kitchen. They were running wild, wondering what all the commotion was about. Somehow, I noticed that there was still another 47 minutes to go on the microwave timer.

While I was fumbling with trying to get the trash can over to the microwave, she snagged a potholder and had the smoldering mess out the back door in record time. But by then, the smoke had filled the kitchen, and filled the ceiling area upstairs.

Six days later, the smell is almost — but not quite — gone.

So on to the picture…

You will notice that there isn’t much of the tupperware left. Nothing was thrown away. Any missing tupperware is melted into the burnt macaroni.

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Sunday night, I went outside to feed Blossom, and as I reached for her bowl, I stepped in a pile of dog poo.

I hit a big pile, and my foot landed on it so squarely that it sunk down into the poo, surrounding the bottom edge of the shoe, and threatening to suck it off of my foot as I tried to raise my leg.

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I know that it’s been exceptionally cold everywhere, and you don’t want to read a post about how the puddles were actually frozen when I went outside to see how Lily was getting into the yard next door. And I can handle the cold. I’ll bundle up and go out in the upper thirties, no problem.

But I learn to cope. I don’t have gloves, but I have a reasonably warm coat, and with the hood up, hat, scarf, sweatshirt, and two sets of pants, It’s warm enough.

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