Hopefully, you all had a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day. After last year’s cold rainy Saturday, God back around to loving the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Baton Rouge. We got our usual beautiful Saturday, where you can be cold in the morning and sunburned by evening.

The only downside to the day was that Vanya came up sick, leading to a day spent mostly asleep and mostly miserable. Because of this, I got not so much as a picture of his annual custom shirt, which this year read, “Irish sober people had adopted me.” It was further decorated with a couple of shamrocks, one of which was frowning.

	Tomatillo Marys are similar to a Bloody Mary, but they use fresh tomatillos instead of tomato juice. With Mrs. theskinnyonbenny’s, you can taste fresh cilantro and limes, and the pepper infused vodka gives it a kick. I started my day with four of these.

I also came up with a t-shirt for myself: “Irish you drunk motherfuckers would go home.” And for Mrs. theskinnyonbenny: “Irish I was as clever as my husband.” Alas, the division of duties put her in charge of T-shirts, and she chose to forgo custom shirts for the adults.

The day stared with a surprise arrival by Stacie and Mark, in from Dallas for the big day. Mrs. theskinnyonbenny was finishing her fresh tomatillo-based bloody marys, and they were fantastic.

I tended to go sit with Vanya while he was awake, and as a result, I stayed more sober than usual, and even managed to fit in a couple of 10-minute naps. In fact, I was sober enough that even at the end of the night, I failed to photograph my genitals on the camera that was left behind. I’m not saying that the camera’s photo sensor was completely unmolested, but there’s nothing on its memory chip that I wouldn’t be willing to post on this site. Keep an eye on the daily photos.

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The weekend before last, we went up to Chicago to celebrate our friend Brent’s 40th birthday. I should insert some sort of “holy shit, we’re getting old” type of observation here, but the fact is, 40 doesn’t really seem all that old any more. Besides, I’m only 38.

Our coming to town was a surprise for the birthday boy, and we went early to the restaurant where their family had dinner reservations. Mrs. theskinnyonbenny and I sat at the bar, which was unfortunately located right in the line of sight as one walked in the door. I jokingly suggested a code word — Rosebud — for when I saw their car in the parking lot, at which time we were to hit the floor and slide on our bellies around the back side of the bar.

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Suppose you’re a song, and you live on my ipod. And suppose you’re the type of song that would like to be as highly rated as you can be. In other words, you’re an over achiever of the mp3 community. How do you get that coveted 5-star rating?

If you ever give me cill bumps, that will get you there. If you’ve been in the rotation for 25 years and I’m still not tired of you, you have a pretty good chance too.

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One more Mardi Gras note about my kid, if you can bear it. He was on the local news Tuesday, featured right at the beginning of the story. I’m linking it in formatted for two players, hoping that your browser will at least be able to pick up one of them. If not, this direct play link might work.

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When I left for work today, Vanya was in the den, still in his pajamas, watching a Batman cartoon. When I came by the house at lunchtime, the same episode of Batman was blaring, the volume through the stereo turned up to full blast. I could hear the noisy action from the driveway as I got out of the car. I may never know how the same episode got turned on hours later or how the volume got cranked to the max.

Batman is still the rage in our house. Before the Muses parade on Friday, my sister and I took the little kids to get some grub at a po-boy shop. While we were seated, another guy came through with his face all painted for Mardi Gras. Vanya stared at him a long time, and when he came over, Vanya asked very seriously, “Are you the Joker?”

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You can read the boxscore for yourself, and you’ve seen about the TV ratings already. Here are some stats that you’ll only see on theskinny.

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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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