Birthdays

One of my sons was born on Christmas.  There was an abruption (this isn't good) and so it kind of put a damper on opening presents when instead we rushed Cindy to the hospital as fast as we could.  We named him Nole, since he was born on Christmas.  Get it?  It's kinda a dislexic Noel that sounds more masculine.  Get it?

As an aside...I once co-wrote a book called "Running Internet Information Server" and in the author's bio I mentioned my children's names so that they could say, "my name was in a book."  And then of course I would reply with, "Yeah! You aren't on the cover though are you!  Huh!  Are you!"  At which point they would quietly walk to their rooms and plot my death.  But until then...so I co-wrote this book.  And I mention two interesting things that on their face value seem unrelated.  My son's name is Nole...did I mention he was born on Christmas?  The other thing I mentioned is that I went to graduate school at Florida State University.

With all the fame and fortune of writing a book that sold several copies, as you might expect, I received a lot of fan mail.  Most of it was, "Why do I get error 0x3ab93dwg93230 when I browse to my Web server."  Which I of course reply with, "Thanks for the kind words.  I am so blessed with fans like you.  Hugs and Kisses, your friend Matt."  But actually I received a piece of fan mail, kind of.  It said something like this, "Loved your book!  If you're ever in town maybe we can catch a football game together. Maybe I'll name my son "Nole" too.  Go 'Noles!"  For those of you who are familiar with school mascots, you may be aware of the fact that the Florida State mascot is the Seminoles, which is the name of a Native American tribe that I believe is close to non-existence at this point although they are supposed to have had a history of being fierce fighters.  When the crowd is cheering, they don't usually say, "Go Seminoles!"  Instead they shorten it to, "G'Seminoles!"  That's not really true....actually they say, "Go 'Noles!" which is interesting because my son just happens to be named Nole.  But that isn't why we named him Nole.  We named him Nole because he was born on Christmas morning and we thought it was a more masculine, but dislexic twist, on Noel.  There's some irony there.  It's almost amusing....almost.  But I was talking about birthdays...

Anyway, there's another member of my family that has a interesting date for a birthday.  My wife was born on April 19th, which I'm sure you all remember as the day the government attacked the Branch Davidians and fire ensued and all kinds of people were killed or burned.  Not a happy day.  A couple years later, to make Cindy's birthday even more fun, a couple guys blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City.  I suppose things could be worse, I've run into several people born on Sept. 11th over the years.

Boy, that just tore down the whole mood of this post didn't it. 

<forced smile />

Tomorrow I turn the ripe ol' age of 43 (see!  there is a common thread to the insanity of this post).  I suspect some cool things will happen tomorrow...stay tuned.

   -Matt