I'll take that to go, please.

da da da do do dum dum
da da da do do dum dum

Who would have believed it? The good news is that it wasn't all bad. Nope, it just started out that way. I guess that's what we get playing this lifetime lottery. Yes, I stole some of that line. Come on now, I'm not that creative.

Today I was on holiday. Yep, Holiday. That's what I'm calling it! Plus, I'm pretty sure it was a holiday today, I just couldn't tell you what one. I'm just another part of the unfortunate degredation of our once proud society. But, even so, it was still a holiday!

My day started out with a trip to McDonalds. Originally I wanted some honey buns, what can I say, but I needed some money and the bank machine near the convenient store was a little "questionable". I won't go into details, but needless to say that a last minute change of plans took place. I went to another bank machine, and that brought me to McDonalds. My Sausage and Egg McMuffins stripped me of a little over 4 dollars. Since I had just come from the bank machine, with only twenties in my wallet, I was a little surprised to only receive a few cents back. hmm... this was going to be uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry, didn't I give you a twenty?"
"Nope, you gave me a five."
"I'm pretty sure it was a twenty."
"No, it was a five."
... trainer guy speaks up ...
"You gave him a five. If you want I'll check the tape."
"yeah."
... trainer guy leaves ...
"what did he say?"
... so I'm a little slow! I just said yes cause it seemed like the thing to say ...
"he's going to check the tape."
... trainer guy goes to check the tape
... which is going to say I gave a five
... since newbie cashier guy says I
... gave him a five ...
... trainer guy returns ...
"The tape says you gave him a five."
"I gave him a twenty."
"If you have a problem with it you'll have to talk to the manager at the next window."
... I drive up to the next window ...
"You the one that said you gave a twenty?"
"yes"
"I'm not trying to say that you're lying, but the tape says that you gave a five."
"I gave a twenty."
"The only way to prove that would be for me to cash out the drawer and see if it comes out over."
"ok."
"Do you want me to do that?"
"yes, please."

And to make a long story short, I left my name and number. I wanted to get home because Kip and I had a multiplayer game of Civ 4 planned. After we finally got the game set up, my phone rang. It was the manager from McDonalds:

... it's been a while, so I can't promise the words are exact ...
"Hello, I'm calling for Jack Black"
"This is Jack."
"Hello Jack, this is Jane Doe from McDonalds. We cashed out the register and found that it was $15 over. Since you are claiming that you gave us a twenty, I'll leave $15 in an envelope for you with your name on it. You can just come in and pick it up whenever you want."
"Thank you."

There you have it. In the end they still wouldn't admit that I was right! I was not impressed with their customer service on that one. More to come in a bit...

So, back to Civ 4. After about 15 minutes of playing Kip calls me. "This sucks". And that was that. Multiplayer Civ 4... sucks.

So, what was good about today? Well, I did more research on AJAX (Asychronous Javascript and XML) and some of the various frameworks out there to simplify implementing it. I bought 2 new movies, one of which I watched (The Perfect Man). And... I bought The Matrix: Path of Neo, which I installed but haven't tried playing yet. I'll save that for tomorrow. I'm concerned that I'll find my computer just a little too old for a graphics intensive game, and I'd rather avoid another disappointment today.

Aside from that, as usually, just another day in paradise!

I hope you're enjoying yours.

Ed.