Post Office lines

It seems to me that some people always find something to complain about.

This morning I went to the post office to mail something to China. I don't know any body in China, except maybe my pen pal from 6 years ago who I sent one letter and she sent me two. By the progress of her English it's possible she isn't even in China anymore.

So why was I mailing China? Well it just so happens that one of my friends ordered a phone on eBay and not surprisingly she bought it from someone who lives there. Also not surprisingly the phone stopped working after 3 days. It doesn't even turn on! So my friend arranged for it to be sent back to China of course, with the hopes of being reimbursed her money.

The post office near my house is always full! I can barely remember a time when I have gone there and the line hasn't been all the way to the door. I don't go that often, so I'm wondering if I always choose the wrong time to go. In any event, its Christmas time now, so I suppose the line in the post office is always full at this time.

For the first 20 mins, it was a nice quiet wait. I was upset that the line was that long, but I found it within myself to consider the poor clerk who had to be assisting everyone. He seemed so knowledgeable and was doing what I thought was a great job!

But the quiet wait was promptly interrupted when a loud mouthed lady walked in and after a few secs started talking about how horrible the P.O. is and how they need to have more than one person at the counter. She went on and on and I wondered to myself how was she helping the situation. Chances are she was ticking off the man at the counter and casting a dull mood across the room. I could see more and more people show visible signs of agitation since she started lambasting the P.O.

Poor postal guy!

When it was my time, I tried to be as polite as I could be, because at least these people deserve some kind people to deal with. I wonder how patient I would be If I were in their shoes (another guy finally appeared at the counter). But I was impressed that they kept their cool and did the best job they could, in my estimation.

I really like the Post Office personnel. I like the system in general. My package to china was insured and I got a tracking number for what I thought was a good price.

PHP Firefox Search Plugin

I started a new job today and as I was setting up my workspace, I decided to create a simple php search plugin for firefox. You can usually locate these search engines in firefox at the top left corner.

It turns out this is a very simple process and involves creating an open search xml document. From what I understand even internet explorer supports this format.

The hardest thing was to get the php icon afixed to my plugin. I downloaded the ico file from http://www.php.net/download-logos.php. I then wrote a quick php script to base 64 encode it so that I could plop it into my xml document without having to worry about hosting the image somewhere.

Unfortunatly, since blogger doesn't let me upload arbitrary files for linking into this post. I had to upload my work to my server. If you are interested you can find it here http://fiwizone.com/alex/phpNet.xml

Much later after doing some poking, I found out that there was an open search document for php.net already written and posted on the php.net website. You can find it at http://us3.php.net/phpnetimprovedsearch.src

Jamaican women

We are currently in Phildelphia visiting my wifes mother. I find it pretty interesting that 3 years ago my wife, her mother and her grandmother all lived together as single women. My wife's mother got married about 2 1/2 years ago and her husband (then living in the United States for 20+ years) wisked her away to the United States, leaving the house one single woman less. How fitting then that I should take the next single woman and wisk her off as well.

So grandma unfortunately is left all alone at the house. Well sort of, she also has another single women in the form of her neice and her neice's son.

Right now I am talking to my indian friend and she wants to know why jamaican women are so domineering. Her theory is that its because they grow up in single family homes. I suppose that might make sense. If there is no man to take out the trash and do the disciplining the women have to step up.

Las Olas Art Festival

So last week Sunday, we were carried off by the lovely Such to downtown Ft. Lauderdale. As Such puts it, I am so lucky to have her as a friend as I finally get a chance to go out to nice places. She is constantly ragging on me for living in Ft. Lauderdale for 2 years and still having never been to Orlando, or South Beach or even downtown Miami. But no longer can she rag on me about downtown Ft. Lauderdale. It was fun! We went to see the Las Olas Art Festival. The art was pretty good, but the highlight for me was spending time with family and friend.

Upon arrival, we saw a starbucks stand serving complimentary coffee. I am not a coffee drinker, but who can turn down free starbucks which usually goes for as high as $4/cup. They were serving a new type low fat coffee called "Skinny Cafe Mocha" Its made with 2% skimmed milk and sugar-free syrup. Who ever heard of sugar-free syrup, I think that is the ultimate oxymoron. It didnt taste that bad though, and reminded me of the Swiss-miss mocha flavor.

One of the most interesting oddities about the ordeal was that just about everyone had their dog out from the french-cut poodle to the pitt bull. I think I will put it on my calendar to visit next year when they have the festival again.

Married life is good!

So far marriage life has been good. Take for instance January 1st, the start of a brand new year and also coincidentally my birthday. Despite feeling pretty guilty about it, I decided to fore go the usually watch night service celebration. This is where christians go to church and share testimonies and sing to ring in the new year. Not a bad idea, but after all the excitement of the wedding, honeymoon and post-honeymoon, my wife and I decided that it would be more beneficial to catch up on much needed sleep.

At 12:00 am January 1 2008, I was curled up on a comforter (we had yet to purchase a bed at the time) and zzzing away. I barely managed to talk to my dad who is always the first to call. My wife handled all the other calls while I laid my head down on the pillow. It's so good to have a wife! Later that morning, when I finally thought it was time to awake I noticed same wife walking into our bedroom with breakfast! Ham and cheese on toast with scrambled eggs, hot chocolate and a fruit platter of apples, mellon and strawberries. It was delightful. I had breakfast in bed although there was no bed.

For the next couple hours the wife and I just relaxed as married people do and then having worked up an appetite we journeyed down to Ft. Lauderdale for lunch turned dinner. She drove! Did I tell you its wondeful to have a wife. My richer friend Such, treated us to chinese food at P.F. Changs. I happended to mention it was my birthday and so the waiter served us dessert on the house. It was this wonderful flavour of icecream served with blue berries, raspberries, strawberries and bananas wrapped in some pastry thing. I ordered some kind of chicken and drank an orange marguirita. It was definitely a pleasant meal.

The ride back up to Boca Raton, where we live, was really nice. I decided to drive on the beach road. We stopped at one of the beaches, but my wife was not impressed and since parking was $2/hour, we decided to not stay for long. As we neared home, we stopped at the furniture store, which apparantly was open, and purchased our bedroom set. The funny thing was they were running a promotion that allowed us to get the set with no money down and 0% interest for a year. I had the money to pay for it but I decided I would rather invest that money especially because of the monthly payment. We qualified for a $0 monthly payment. So I don't even have to pay a cent till December. How sweet is that. I promptly stowed the money I was going to use on that away so that it won't get spent on rash consumer type spending.

So finally we got home and I must admit it was one of the best birthdays that I have had in 25 years. Very relaxing, lots of good food and just a great vibe.