The Brad Hole

Sometimes I wonder if I lead a sheltered life. It recently came to my attention that there is a fairly large (at least it seems to me) group of people who love animals in human form. Some of these folks also enjoy dressing up and/or going to conventions - FurryCons. I'm not here to pass judgment. Hey, if that's what you like, go for it. I collect Star Wars action figures, so who am I to judge? But I had no idea - NONE - that there were enough people out there to warrant conventions.

Given that reality, I wonder if there's ever been a time where they've held a "furry" convention in Las Vegas at the same time as a convention for the adult film industry. That'd be one heck of a week to be in Vegas.

Posted by bradman at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If you read the forums on the various Mac gaming websites, you'll occasionally run across someone who believes that the folks reviewing Mac games love giving overrated, blowjob-level reviews of Mac games because there's a Vast Conspiracy or something similar.

I'm here to confirm that it's true. Why, look at what Corey has to say about me. Can you not feel the love?

Of course, it wouldn't be right unless I reciprocated.

Posted by bradman at 04:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As Beth and I were driving back from Costco earlier this evening, we passed by some horse property that had a few donkeys on it. This got me to wondering....

If you breed a horse and a donkey, the result is a mule. I think they should be called "honkeys."

Posted by bradman at 09:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Via MetaFilter, I found this web page. It details a project from the equinox this past March whereby people all over the world went out and took 360 VR panorama pictures. You'll need QuickTime installed to view them, but it's worth it.

Many of the places are quite exotic, and ultimately just serve to make me want to travel there immediately. :-)

Posted by bradman at 01:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

When we last left our protagonists, the future was seemingly full of steak and wine. So let's pick up where we left off.

We went to The Keg last Friday, and enjoyed a very excellent meal. It definitely beat my expectations. It has most of the ambience of your high-end steakhouse like, say, Fleming's but with prices that were more in line with the Black Angus. For the price you pay, it's an excellent bargain and we'll certainly be going back.

On Saturday, we picked up a grill at Lowe's and had Paul and Maureen over for a inaugural dinner, which went well. While it's quite a shift from cooking on the ol' George Foreman grill, I think I've got the hang of it now. Next step: salmon.

Posted by bradman at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today is April 9. That means it's the day after the Big 33 for me. Yesterday was one of Beth's long school days, so we couldn't really celebrate, but tonight we're going to hit up this new steakhouse called "The Keg" (yeah, I don't get it either) and see what that's all about.

Beth has turned me on to the joys of wine, and one of the gifts I got for my birthday was a Viandante del Cielo chardonnay. For those of you who don't speak Italian, it translates roughly to "sky walker". In fact, it comes from the vineyard at Skywalker Ranch in Marin county. Shipping wine involves tricky (and to be honest, stupid) laws regulating where you can send stuff. It seems Arizona can't be on the receiving end, so Beth was able to work it so that it went to her parents in Washington and they then shipped it to her. She's a sly one, but I love her. :-)

Anyway, the wine is distributed by the same folks who do the Francis Coppola line. (That probably shouldn't come as too big a surprise.) Even though I'm far from a wine expert, I know enough to realize that the Coppola line is an excellent bargain for the price, so I'm hopeful that this Skywalker Ranch wine will be pretty good.

Tomorrow, my dad will be coming down to pay us a visit, and more importantly, help us shop for a good outdoor grill. :-)

'Tis the season to be charring...

Posted by bradman at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Today was a bittersweet change for my network setup here at home. I've had an original graphite Airport base station since very nearly the first day Apple introduced them, and it's one of the greatest peripherals I've ever owned, as it has enabled me to surf the web from many places I had previously only dreamed about - the sofa, the patio, the toilet, etc. You name it - I surfed from there.

A few years back, it suffered from the infamous defect where the capacitors had blown and it would enter a state of continuous reset. I had a friend in Austin who worked for Apple who did the repair for me for free, so it remained a happy and productive member of my household.

However, within the past few weeks, it'd gotten worse. It had a tendency to spontaneously reset if you were using it, roughly every 5 minutes or so. Sometimes you could go for an hour with no problem, but it gradually got worse. Yesterday, it entered the death spiral where it would reset. Sticking my ear up to the station, I could hear the caps hissing while it reset - a sure sign that death was near.

So last night, Beth and I went to CompUSA to get a replacement. Since she has an Airport Extreme(tm) card in her laptop, this would allow us a chance to upgrade, so it wasn't a total loss. However, Apple sells their new base stations for $249 at retail, which is pretty steep. CompUSA didn't have the $199 non-antenna version, so that wasn't an option. As it happens, Linksys sells a technically equivalent unit that also functions as a cable modem router, so I could replace my existing Linksys router with this and eliminate one piece of hardware, all for just $79. Que ganga! In theory, I could have further eliminated my cable modem with a 3-in-1 device, but it cost $179, and frankly, it didn't make sense for me to pay $100 more just so I could have one less piece of hardware.

Now I don't mind paying a premium for Apple stuff - it's generally well designed (with a few notable exceptions of first-gen stuff like my old Airport with the cap problem), but I was looking at a $170 price delta to get less functionality. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

So I've retired the old Airport and am humming along with the new Linksys unit. It's not nearly as cool-looking, but it gets the job done.

Posted by bradman at 09:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

While surfing MetaFilter this morning, I ran across an article from the other day about a guy who sells vintage fruit crate labels online. This is interesting to me because Beth bought a 2004 calendar for the kitchen that has a different vintage fruit crate label for every month.

Anyway, it occurs to me that this particular crate label is perhaps not the best logo you could pick if you were going to sell fruit.

Edit: As pointed out in the comments by Adam, this label will probably help sell your fruit. :-)

Posted by bradman at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

"You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine!"

I'm a big fan of April Fool's Day; I think the concept of having one day to pull one over on your friends kicks ass. Last year, we successfully convinced Beth's mom that Beth was pregnant. She totally bought into it and you could hear her literally screaming over the phone. Priceless. I've also been on the receiving end of a few pranks that started on April Fool's Day, as I'm sure Jason can attest. There's nothing like opening up your underwear drawer before class only to find a note saying "Missing something?"

What makes April Fool's Day great can be summed up in one word - "surprise." If you can get someone to fall for your trick, you're money. The problem is, in recent years, the internet has really diluted the power of April Fool's Day. You can't swing a dead cat-5 cable without hitting a website running one or more joke stories. In and of themselves, most of these stories are pretty amusing, and it's pretty easy to pick the fake from the true. Therein lies the problem - as soon as someone becomes aware that it's April Fool's Day, say by reading 50-some joke stories first thing in the morning on the 'net, it becomes all that much harder to catch them off guard.

In that light, I present an April Fool's Guide to April Fool's Success.

1. Find 'em. If you're pulling a physical prank, do it early in the day.
1a. For best results, find someone who isn't net savvy or who you know won't surf the 'net until after you've fooled.
2. Fool 'em. If you're concocting a scheme that involves a web of deceit, aim for simplicity and believability.
3. Forget 'em. If your victim suspects you'll be on the Fooling Warpath, use the psychology of expectation to your advantage.

Posted by bradman at 03:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)