Holly Hold On Tight: Part 2 by Pascal Parker

Author:Pascal, Parker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Parker Pascal
Published: 2020-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

13

Your Heart is Going to Kill You

The best thing about Thanksgiving, as far as Julian was concerned, was the leftovers. And the best thing about Black Friday was Holly’s stubborn insistence on brick-and-mortar-style shopping. Free of his wife’s watchful eye, Julian could have his turkey sandwiches with all the extra mayo his heart desired without worrying about her disapproving looks or comments about cholesterol or fat content. He was on his third sandwich of the day, and he slathered a thick layer of the good stuff (not the low-fat variety) on both pieces of bread before piling on the slices of fried turkey breast. A few grinds of pepper and a wilted lettuce leaf later, and he was back at his computer where a half-empty bag of chips and a Sprite Zero awaited.

It had been one of his most successful Black Fridays ever, thanks largely to his own ingenuity. He’d been working on a little java applet in his spare time and had been testing it for the past few months, but today was the real crucible.

It worked like this: He watched the online circulars for the items he wanted that would be on sale. Then, late at night on Thanksgiving Day, he’d add those items (not yet on sale) to his online carts at the various stores. Then he went to bed. The rest was up to his applet, which completed the buy process at a few minutes after midnight (taking into account the different time zones in which the home offices of the various retailers were located), after the items went on sale. This happened in the various browser windows he left open, each with a loaded virtual shopping cart, all while Julian slept.

And it worked like gangbusters! He’d been congratulating himself all day, spending most of his time browsing stores for things he could now buy with all the money he’d saved. There was one exception. His purchases didn’t go through at one of the online stores—the biggest of them all, in fact. As best Julian could tell, the failure was attributable to the virtual cart being empty at the time the applet had executed. He surmised that this particular retailer had reset his cart after a period of inactivity, and that was something else he’d been occupying himself with today. Where there was a will, there was a way, and Julian had the will to find a way for next year. He was already testing some draft code that would refresh his cart or perform some random mouse clicks every so often.

All the shopping and debugging was just the thing to take his mind off the previous night’s fiasco. Seeing Lance with another woman had put Holly into a state he could only describe as morose. To Julian—though he could never admit it to Holly—the impromptu trip to Stallings and its unexpected outcome had been both an affirmation and a tremendous relief. The streak of darkness in his wife’s otherwise wholesome persona was confirmed, this time first hand.

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