That's weird.

I just finished painting some shelves - a project started late last week and finally completed tonight. They are a beautiful, semi-glistening white.

I didn't mention it on Turkey Day, but you can see my lame attempt at fortune cookie art over at the fortune cookie blog. It was a special Thanksgiving contribution.

I can't really say it was cold-blooded killing. It was more of an accident; however, the fact remains. While driving to work this morning, I took an unusual route. I went by Jack in the Box to get a Meaty Breakfast Burrito, since I ran out the door this morning before eating breakfast. Wanting to avoid traffic, I decided to take Old Virginia Street to work. I don't know how fast I was going, but it was obviously too fast (I'm sure I wasn't speeding, though). Four birds, sensing death in the air, flew from a fence along the road. For reasons that defy explanation, the birds flew in front of my truck. Three of the birds successfully crossed the street. One did not.

A dull thud echoed from the grille of my truck. I could see a small, black, lifeless creature in my mirror as I continued to drive on my way. One bird returned to the fence, looking sadly down on the fallen friend.

It was by far the saddest thing that's happened to me today. The good news is that I don't see any damage to the front of my truck. If only I had skipped that delicious breakfast burrito the bird would still be alive. Surely his blood cries from the dust for justice. No, no! It was an accident! Surely that bird won't hold me accountable! If he would have stayed on the fence he would still be alive! Oh, my heart is troubled. But the burrito was delicious.

I have to say that of all the types of fruit, pears have the most pathetic cores.

I find this whole Sony fiasco to be quite hilarious. Sony says that the copy-protection is necessary to protect their intellectual property. To the best of my knowledge, no one found out about the controls from making tons of illegal copies of Sony discs. It seems to me that this proves the point that not all their customers are a bunch of crooks and thieves, as Sony seems to think based on their actions.

My position remains that people (with a few exceptions) will legally obtain their music and videos if given a product worth paying for. A .99 download of a crippled product doesn't seem like much of a deal to me when I could buy a physical product (CD) for less money.

If they insist on treating their customers like thieves, then I don't think anyone should be surprised if their customers start acting more and more like thieves.

This week I gave blood. I collected as much as I could in a Mason jar and took it to United Blood Services. (I'm just kidding - they rejected it the last time I tried donating that way.) I gave a whole-blood donation for the first time in a while. I usually give a double donation where they take the blood out and separate it in a centrifuge, keeping the red cells and returning the plasma mixed with a saline solution. When I donate a double I usually feel good afterwards and recover quickly. The whole-blood donation makes me tired. I dontated on Tuesday, but I think the effects are just now starting to wear-off completely.

While living with my parents, waiting for our house to be built, I created this incredible potrait of Emilie playing Monopoly on the GameCube. I did it exclusively using a mouse, so even though the general quality is pretty poor, the relative quality is not too bad.

It's finally available. The first solo BradCast. It's dull! It's boring! It's not worth listening to! You don't care, though, do you? You're going to listen to it anyway. And you'll be embarrassed for me.

It weighs in at about 6.2MB and is 12 minutes 49 seconds.

Links that go along with the podcast:

Bear hit by car in Pleasant Valley
Fatal accident in Pleasant Valley
FTF cache for the evening

You may recall that President Hinckley encouraged members to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year in the August First Presidency Message. He wrote, "If you will read a bit more than one and one-half chapters a day, you will be able to finish the book before the end of this year." I regret to say that I slacked. A lot. Nevertheless, I came up with my own schedule to finish by the end of the year and so far I'm right on track.

It's an older news story, but I found it interesting that Doubleday has their own version of the Book of Mormon, which can be purchased on Amazon.com among other places. Although it is still broken down by chapter and verse, all footnotes and cross-references have been removed to make it easier to read. This is the first commercial edition of the Book of Mormon and "the first time since its publication in 1830 that a trade publisher has handled distribution of the Book of Mormon outside the Church." Who knew? Not me.

I spent some time tonight updating the baby page. I added a couple more images, but nothing earth-shattering (fortunately!).

I've been trying to lay off the Jack Johnson for a while. Instead I've been listening to Charlotte Martin, whom I like, but she unfortunately doesn't have a very expansive library of music to choose from.

I don't have much to blog about, except to say that spud guk is seeping from my pores.

I finally put up what I have for a baby page so far. You can go there by clicking here. There is also a convenient little link on each page. The page is basically text and pictures from Emilie's scrapbook pages, but it does the trick! I still have three pictures to add, which I will hopefully do tomorrow.

I had a most excellent burger today at Sierra Gold. I was treated by my friend and co-worker Pastor Dana Jones. It was a very good burger, even if a little over-priced.

It's late, so this will be a short entry.

All in all, this was a good weekend. I received an ample supply of Idaho Spud candy bars; however, the method by which they were obtained was cheating. The good news is that they are very genuine Idaho Spud bars. Delicious and gukky!

I'm experimenting with my shoutbox. It appears that the problem I was experiencing last week is a permanent issue in that there is a force on the net that is running persistent attacks. I put my shoutbox back up for a few minutes today and almost immediately started getting 'box-spammed again. I had to make some changes to hopefully curb the profane activity. It remains to be seen whether my fix will stick. The shoutbox is up again and I am monitoring it carefully.

Now that it's a new month and I have a new supply of bandwidth, it's about time to make podcast #3. There's still something fishy going on with the bandwidth on my site - much was used by podcast downloads, much was caused by Slappy's spam-attacks, but there is another mysterious issue that I'm trying to figure out. Rest-assured that once I figure it out my joy will cause temporary incontinence.

Congratulation to Slappy for being the biggest tard ever!

Slappy continued to post relentlessly to my shoutbox even though I took it off the page. He went directly to the URL and continued to post dozens of messages that no one would ever see (except for me as I was deleting them). Additionally, he was trying repeatedly to go to the comments on the page. Comments are not available on the page. As a result he could not spam my comments. This did not stop him from trying! He used up massive amounts of my bandwidth while attacking my page.

Dear Slappy, may you contract bird flu and have endless diarrhea full of live birds.

There is some good news, though. With the booooring World Series over we can finally get back to what's really important: HOUSE. There's a new episode on tonight!

Tomorrow we have our last baby class. I have to say, I'm going to miss those great videos that they show us! Hey, Emilie! CONTRACTION START!!