Todd Bradley’s Galaxy

These are the best athletic shoes I’ve ever bought: the New Balance M1222SG.  I got them at the local New Balance store in Broomfield, where the salesperson took the time to get me just the right pair of shoes.  They feel so good, and I’ve been able to run without knee pain for the first time in literally 18 months (since I screwed up my knee the 2nd time, had my 2nd knee surgery, and then went through rehab).

I leave my instant messaging client, Trillian, running pretty much all the time I’m at work. And among the nice messages I get from family and friends, I also get my share of Nigerian scammers. These scammers pose as young single women from somewhere in the US, who just happen to be out of the country on a modeling job. If you chat with them long enough, you’ll get an urgent request for a Western Union money transfer. But I’ve chatted with enough of them that I can spot the scammers pretty quick. The conversations always start out pretty much the same, like this:

[11:50] west_minstergirl_4_real: hi
[11:50] Todd404: hello
[11:50] west_minstergirl_4_real: ding
[11:51] west_minstergirl_4_real: hi how r u doing?
[11:51] Todd404: I’m exceptional
[11:51] Todd404: how are you?
[11:51] west_minstergirl_4_real: great
[11:51] west_minstergirl_4_real: am fidelia
[11:51] west_minstergirl_4_real: 29
[11:51] west_minstergirl_4_real: from illinois
[11:51] west_minstergirl_4_real: u?

A couple telltale signs: First, they never write “I am Fidelia”. It’s always “am fidelia”. I’m guessing that whatever language the Nigerians natively speak doesn’t start sentences with a personal pronoun. So when they learn their bad English, they leave the “I” out. Second, they often use this “ding” thing, which I think causes a beep in some IM clients (though not mine). And they always use pseudo net speak. It’s never “Hi, how are you doing?” It’s always, “hi how r u doing?”

The above conversation doesn’t show it, but they occasionally misspell the name of the place they’re supposedly from. For example, I was chatting one time with a scammer who chose – for whatever stupid reason – to pretend to be from Schenectady, NY. Now for most Americans, that’s a darn hard city name to spell. But I imagine that anyone who was really born and raised in Schenectady can spell the name of their home town. But this particular scammer spelled it three different ways in the course of a 2 minute conversation.

One day a few months ago I decided I needed a fake persona, too. Just as these scammers all claim to be international models from the US, I’ve decided that my fake persona is going to be a Nigerian. They often write “a/s/l” which – for those of you who are older than 20 means “please tell me your age, sex, and location”. So I started writing back things like “95/M/Lagos”. My fake online persona – the 95 year old male Nigerian – also just happens to be a swimsuit model. Absurd? Yes. But some of the scammers are so dumb, they just keep on conversing with this make-believe swimsuit model.

Not today, though. As I was running some automated tests at work, I got an IM out of the blue that started like usual, but “west_minstergirl_4_real” was a little smarter than most. Here’s the whole conversation:

[11:50] west_minstergirl_4_real: hi
[11:50] Todd404: hello
[11:50] west_minstergirl_4_real: ding
[11:51] west_minstergirl_4_real: hi how r u doing?
[11:51] Todd404: I’m exceptional
[11:51] Todd404: how are you?
[11:51] west_minstergirl_4_real: great
[11:51] west_minstergirl_4_real: am fidelia
[11:51] west_minstergirl_4_real: 29
[11:51] west_minstergirl_4_real: from illinois
[11:51] west_minstergirl_4_real: u?
[11:52] Todd404: am Morton
[11:52] Todd404: 35
[11:52] Todd404: from Nigeria
[11:52] Todd404: how are things in illinois?
[11:53] Todd404: Fidelia? You still there?
[11:53] Todd404:
[11:54] Todd404: hello?
[11:57] Todd404: hello?

All you gotta say is you’re from Nigeria, and the chatterboxes clam right up!

Remember my blog entry about us taking the 100 Mile Thanksgiving Challenge? Well, the esteemed judges have selected our menu as one of the 5 finalists! Here is the voting page, where you can see how we’re doing in the competition, and vote for your favorite (which, of course, should be my own entry).

Well, I set up a little website for Exploding Corpse Productions, at last. Visit it at http://explodingcorpse.com. I guarantee your satisfaction.

Oh, by the way, I created the site with a Mac, using iWeb.

I thought this was funny.  I use siteground.com as my web hosting company.  I thought I’d try out their web-based SiteBuilder application.  But when I clicked on it, I got this error message:

Mac computers cannot be used to create sites; They can be used to view the final results.

Please note that finished websites created with this system can be viewed with any browser version 5.0 or better on almost any computer with 800×600 or better resolution.

Let me draw your attention to the new animated logo for Exploding Corpse Productions. You can see it here:

http://www.toddbradley.com/files/ExplodingCorpseAnimatedLogo.mov

Special thanks to Jen Casson for the animation. I added the sound effects.

Chad Johnson’s a good friend of mine from high school.  We played in a heavy metal cover band called DERT and did covers of songs by Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister, and the like.  Later, he gained local notoriety by being in a band called Small Fish in the Eureka, California area.  Well, Chad’s now pushing 40 and makes TV and radio commercials for a living.  Here’s some of his work:
Precision Intermedia a Northern California MultiMedia Marketing Agency

From what I can tell, the music and singing is all him, and almost all of the voiceover is him, too.  Plus, he directs and shoots and edits the commercials.

I bought one of these last weekend.  Now I have 2 Macs, a G5 desktop and this Core 2 Duo notebook.

I’ve been trying to lose some weight this year, and have hit my goal for Thanksgiving with some room to spare.  I’ve lost 24 pounds since mid-April, 18 pounds of that in just the past 6 weeks.  So I celebrated by having a (non-Diet) Coke and some nachos today.
I updated my online wish list with a bunch of stuff I want for Christmas.

I’m going to work a few hours tomorrow (Saturday) so I can take off work early on Tuesday and attend a bris for this little guy.

I submitted an entry to the 100 Mile Thanksgiving Challenge today. Here is our menu for Thanksgiving dinner. My parents are coming to town to join us, which will be nice.

100 Mile Thanksgiving Challenge Menu

by Todd Bradley and Beth Partin

Menu:

• with dinner: Garfield Estates S2 wine
• arugula and spinach salad with carmelized onions, goat cheese, and
• roasted red pepper dressing
• wood smoked pork chops with chipotle cream sauce
• baked butternut squash topped with chive mint basil relish
• mashed potatoes and garlic mushroom gravy
• whole wheat dinner rolls with whipped honey butter
• after dinner: Graystone Vineyards Port II wine

Recipes and Growers:

Garfield Estates S2 wine – Palisade, Colorado – 170 miles

arugula and spinach salad with carmelized onions, goat cheese, and roasted red pepper dressing

• arugula, spinach, and onions – New Moon Farms, Boulder – 7 miles
• goat cheese – Haystack Mountain Goat Cheese, Niwot – 13 miles
• roasted red peppers – grown in Brighton, roasted at the Boulder Farmers Market – 18 miles
• vinegar – far away

wood smoked pork chops with chipotle cream sauce

• pork chops – Long Family Farms, Eaton – 46 miles
• chipotles – grown in Brighton, roasted at home – 18 miles
• cream – Karl’s Farm Dairy, Northglenn – 7 miles
• salt – far away

baked butternut squash topped with chive mint basil relish

• squash – Stevens Farm, Niwot – 13 miles
• chives, mint, and basil – our backyard, Broomfield – 15 feet

mashed potatoes and garlic mushroom gravy

• potatoes – New Moon Farms, Boulder – 7 miles
• garlic – Cure Organic Farm, Boulder – 8 miles
• mushrooms – Hazel Dell Organic Mushrooms, Fort Collins – 37 miles

whole wheat dinner rolls with whipped honey butter

• 100% whole wheat flour – Wheat Land Farms, Kersey – 49 miles
• yeast – Mexico – far away
• organic cane sugar – Florida Crystals, Florida – 1800 miles (the only organic sugar made in the USA)
• cream (to make our own butter) – Karl’s Farm Dairy, Northglenn – 7 miles
• salt – far away
• honey – Madhava Honey, Lyons – 29 miles

Graystone Vineyards Port II wine – Clifton, Colorado – 170 miles

Distances are as the crow flies from our kitchen in Broomfield, according to Google Earth.

P1010047

Originally uploaded by ToddBradley.

Here’s a photo of me standing near a fountain in a creek in Kansas City, Missouri