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Posted by
Rob Mensching
Wednesday, April 02, 2008 4:08 PM

Under
personal

3 Comments

But seriously.

Yesterday was April Fool's Day. Jenny's family has a long history of playing jokes on that day. My family does not. As a result, I'm not particularly good at pulling off an elaborate (or even simple) practical joke and Jenny has her guard up all day. This year was different.

When I came home from work, Jenny was on the phone with her mother discussing the practical joke that her mom's co-workers had pulled off. Apparently, when she got into work Jenny's mom was told there was a great sales lead for a guy named "Harry Lyon". Jenny's mom immediately made the call and reached a woman. Jenny's mom asked for "Mr. Lyon" and listened to the woman on the other side sigh. "Do you know where you've called?" the woman asked.  "No, I'm just trying to reach Harry Lyon." The woman sighed again and responded, "This is the zoo. We get a few of these calls every year on April first."

Apparently, "Sally Mander" is another common name for a sales lead at the zoo.

I was through the whole first paragraph of my blog post yesterday before Jenny finished talking on the phone. She came over and asked how my day went. This is the point where all my practical jokes fall down. I can't help grinning. So I did my best to keep a straight face and simply turned the laptop so that she could read it.

A couple seconds later Jenny looks at me and says that she fully supports my decision to quit and asks what happened that I chose to make this decision so suddenly without time to discuss it with her. In case you've missed this comment on this blog before let me reiterate, I have an incredibly wonderful wife. There is no better response a man could ask for from his wife.

Of course, I quickly broke out in a grin and Jenny immediately knew she'd be had. She couldn't believe it since she had just finished talking to her mom about April Fool's jokes. Jenny immediately jumped up and called her mom to happily commiserate.

The hardest part about actually finishing the blog entry was coming up with a way to have people know it was a joke without immediately giving it away. The idea of using Twitter jumped out at me since I just joined and started posting to it last Friday. Why not introduce everyone to my new Twitter feed at the same time telling them:

today do not believe everything you read online.

That was fun. I apologize for any trouble my little fun might have caused you. I found many of the comments you all sent me interesting and will revisit some of in future blog entries. In the meantime, keep coding.  You know I am (at Microsoft).

 


3 Comments

Comment by
Sebastian
Thursday, April 03, 2008 2:11 AM

Seriously, this april fools joke sucked. ;)

Comment by
Bryan
Thursday, April 03, 2008 3:21 AM

I thought it was pretty awesome :)

Nicely done!

Comment by
Christopher Painter
Thursday, April 03, 2008 5:50 AM

I wouldn't tempt fate like this. Back in the late 90's, my coworkers once played an april fools joke on another coworker where they pulled him into a room and told him that they had evidence that he had violated system securtiy.

The joke was reinforced by a manager who escorted him out of the suite and closed the door. A couple seconds later the door was opened an April Fools was announced.

He quit one week later...

BTW, one who adopts and depends on WiX would have to wonder what would happen to WiX if Rob was to be `run over by a bus`.

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