All right, Beck, for your birthday, a great story from one of my lectures today.

The prof for our last lecture today works in pediatrics. A few years ago one of her patients, a 15 year old girl, presented having suddenly developed wheezing upon exercise. When she stopped exerting herself, the wheezing resolved. Although wheezing is a classic symptom of asthma, the late sudden onset and the quick resolution of symptoms indicated something else.

So, my prof went down the list. After exhausting many possibilities (emphysema, vocal cord dysfunction, etc.), finally they decided to do a bronchoscopy (basically stick a camera down her trachea.) So they went down the trachea. And got to the first branch, which split the airway between the right and left lungs. And when they got to her right mainstem bronchus, they found something ... a plastic leaf. Apparently she had been chewing on it and thought she had swallowed it. And now it was giving her difficulty breathing (only on exertion, though).

Bottom line: your "six-month old french fry" storyline is completely plausible. Happy Birthday.

(Actually, we were shown an x-ray of an elderly woman who got a piece of meat stuck in her lung which obstructed a lobe as well, but lacking access to the actual picture, as well as quite the same detailed story, I decided to go with plastic leaf girl.)

yo Tony, here's something for you:

WHO THE FUCK ARE THE ARCTIC MONKEYS? FORTHCOMING EP

dammit Tony... I was still "thinking" about that avalanches disc. haha , bastard. I put it down for a second and he's like "yoink". Oh well. I need to save the money anyhow.

PS: is it just me, or is it getting hungry in here?

Yep, liking the new look. I had some earlier issues with the first startup in Firefix. But they seem to have been taken care of. And this whole new page look was a complete surprise. What else are you hiding from us!?

As for the CD shopping, it was a good haul, which included:

M83 - Before the Dawn Heals Us (at last!)
The Stills - Logic Will Break Your Heart
The Avalanches - Since I Left You (I'd been looking for it for close to a year now)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell
The Editors - The Back Room

And yet still so many CDs to buy...

Hey par, your "Change Page Style" thingy isn't very intuitive. It doesn't look like a link or a button and my mouse doesn't turn into a hand or anything on mouseover... I suppose it does have the title text, but still it took me a second to figure it out. I thought my adblock was killing an image or something.

Sweet that delivery got done! That's a crapload of commission for that crapload of water... thanks Tay. Oh, yeah, and sorry about that :)

Thanks for the HB wishes, everyone.

shite. First day of eat-nothing-week is today. So far I'm going on a pint of orange juice. This is already shitty. I do not forsee me lasting until Friday. We'll see how this pans out...

Those bitches be hot.

Happy birthday to the fucktard who made me carry ten bottles of fucking water to the fourth floor of a shitty apartment building today. Keep that up, and you may not have many more birthdays left. haha

regarding debit cards
workining in retail I've had my share of magnetic strip experience. The plastic bag works to an extent. other times a piece of paper of the strip works. or even a peice of scotch tape works (but more often than not the customer doen't like a peice of tape on their debit cards. friction against a shirt works often. in our case we are lucky to have four different places to swipe if the card doesn't like one machine. I can get most cards to work if the customer is patient enough.

Well, Paras - the new message board format looks great! Good job!

And Happy Birthday Matt!