Todd Bradley’s Galaxy

I encourage you to visit this website, even if you don’t read Japanese:

1-click Award by 株式会社リクルートメディアコミュニケーションズ

Hurray, we’re getting a tax refund!  I decided to use a professional tax preparer this year, and she added up enough deductions for us that we’re going to get a refund.  I had originally expected to have to pay a bunch of money, since I cashed out stock options but didn’t pay tax on the short term capital gains.  But I guess I had enough withholding on my W-2 to cover it.  Plus, I spent a lot of money in startup expenses for my film sound business, that I had a lot more dollars worth of deductions than expected.  That was a nice surprise!

Ooh!  I want one!  Or even a dozen…

Boing Boing: Cookie Millennium Falcon

Today’s my 38th birthday, and I decided to take the day off work to relax doing some of my favorite things.  Beth made me breakfast of waffles, melon, and bacon.  Once I got things straightened up at home for my birthday party this evening, I went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science by bus.  Beth will need the truck later today to run some errands and pick up things for my party, so it’s RTD and foot travel for me today.

There’s a traveling exhibition at the museum about Benjamin Franklin.  There were lots of school groups, so it was a bit of a mob scene, but the exhibit was enjoyable.  I learned a few things about him, like how he suffered from gout, caused by drinking too much beer and eating too much red meat.  The exhibition left out a few key elements about his life, I guess in an effort to be politically incorrect for the benefit of the student groups.  The only mention of his fondness for drink was with respect to his gout.  There was only one sentence about the fact that he owned slaves.  I didn’t see anything about his (probable, though not definite) hashish use.  And, though the exhibit markets Ben as a “party animal” and “skinny dipper” I didn’t see anything about either of those.  I suspect he was a lot bawdier than the exhibit lets on, and I didn’t see anything at all about his sexual fondness for older women.

I’m writing this from one of my favorite spots, in the atrium at the DMNS.  The Denver skyline’s pretty, as always.  But I see they’re building a huge new skyscraper only a few blocks from the museum.  From this angle, it’ll definition dominate the horizon, dwarfing the buildings of downtown and the golden dome on the state capital.  The pond in city park is totally drained, and there are a dozen trucks and heavy equipment on the “lake” bed.  I guess they’re fixing it up in some way.  Hopefully they’ll be done soon so they can refill it before summer.  A groundskeeper is raking up around some brown bushes, on the assumption, I guess, that they’ll bloom in another month or two.  The grass is mostly yellow and grown, but some of it’s starting to green up.  It’s starting to look like spring!  And I guess that’s a good thing, since spring starts in about 6 hours and 30 minutes.

Soon I’ll pack up my stuff and walk a few blocks over to Steve’s Snappin’ Dogs, where I’ll get some lunch and probably read a book out on their patio.  Then my plan is to walk down the block to Hooked on Colfax, have some sweet drink, and so some writing.

Yesterday, I drove north almost to Fort Collins and bought a 1984 Kawasaki KZ550 from a friend of my neighbor.  I don’t have a motorcycle license (yet) so he had to ride it home for me.  It’s now resting safely in the garage until I can legally ride it.  So, I’m signed up for a motorcycle safety course at the end of this month.  It’s a 2.5 day course with a mix of lecture and hands-on riding skills.  At the end of the course, I’ll get my motorcycle license and won’t have to go take the written exam and driving test at the driver’s license office.  Then I’ll be able to ride!

But before then, I need to go buy a helmet, gloves, and a riding jacket.  Plus, I need to add it to my insurance policy and get a new license plate.

Since Beth and I have been living with just one motor vehicle – my Dodge Dakota gas guzzler pickup – for the past year, this will be a nice change.  She’s going on a two week road trip vacation in the second half of April, and now I’ll have an option other than my bicycle and the bus for getting around.  Plus, since it’s springtime, I’m looking forward to doing some riding just for the fun of it.

The motorcycle is in awesome condition.  They guy I bought it from did a lot of shopping around when he bought it a year or two ago, and picked the best used bike on the market.  Since then he’s given it a lot of TLC, replaced some of the older parts, and cleaned it up very nice.  It was his beginner’s bike, and now it will be mine.  I just hope I can keep it in as good condition as he did.

I’m also trying to figure out how to reduce the size of my location sound kit so that I can ride my motorcycle to film shoots and still have all the basics for capturing audio.  That includes microphones, boom poles, a mixer, lots of cables, headphones, etc.  Normally, I’ve got several boxes of stuff in the back of my pickup, and it’ll be a challenge to shrink all that down so it’ll fit on the back of a motorcycle.  But I’m going to try.

The motorcycle looks a lot like this and this, but it has smaller “bullet” style turn signals and the colored accents are red instead of…yellow and brown or whatever ugly color that is in the photos.  I’ll try to post a photo when I can.

From reading up about this bike online, I’m expecting to get around 55 mpg, which is a big improvement over the 15 mpg I get in the Dodge Dakota.  And it’ll be a whole lot easier to park and get around the city!

I learned about two suicides today.

First, I learned by email that an old friend and coworker of mine named Chris Joslyn killed himself on February 12.  Last time I saw him was at my wedding about 4.5 years ago.  We hadn’t really stayed in touch the past decade or so, but worked together at 4 different companies early in our careers (Precision Visuals, Visual Numerics, XVT, and Rogue Wave).  Beth and I had attended Chris’ wedding about 10 years ago, though he got divorced not too long afterwards.  There’s a memorial gathering for him in Boulder this Friday afternoon.

Second, I just read online that Brad Delp, the singer from the band Boston, killed himself on March 9.  He was engaged to be married later this year.  Though the band Boston hasn’t really done anything meaningful in nearly 20 years, Brad’s singing was probably the most recognizable element of the music to most listeners.  I loved that band’s music when I was a teenager and just got re-introduced to it a few months ago when remastered CDs of the first two albums were released.

I rode my bike to work this morning for the first time of 2007. It wasn’t too fast of a ride, partly because I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to really push it, but more importantly because most of the ride was going right into the sun and I was having a hard time seeing obstacles on the road and sidewalk. Plus, as so often happens, the traffic was so heavy along Zuni/Federal that I couldn’t turn where I needed to.

But, my time this morning to work was 35:28. That’s my new time to beat for this year, which shouldn’t be hard.

According to this blog article from October of last year, my best time from home to work is 29:52. So I’ve got lots of time to shave off to beat that. But later in the year when I’m not riding right into the sunrise and feeling more like pedaling hard, I should be able to do it. As long as nobody runs me over.

Cheney Assails Those Favoring Iraq Drawdown – New York Times

“I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting,” Mr. Cheney told ABC News, “all we will do is validate the Al Qaeda strategy.”

My comments: What our Vice President doesn’t seem to understand is that his own strategy has been validating the Al Qaeda strategy all along. We’ve played right into their hands by fighting them on their own terms – increasing rather than decreasing the fear and hatred in the world.

But wait a minute! What does the Iraq drawdown have to do with Al Qaeda after all? Hasn’t it already been shown that there was no significant Al Qaeda presence in Iraq until we invaded the country?

Ever wonder how Bob Dylan would sound singing Dr. Seuss books?  Well here is your chance to find out:

Dylan Hears A Who!

US may grow medicine producing rice – Food Business Review

So let me see if I got this right.  The federal government is approving a modified rice that contains human genetic material in the hopes that it may help scientists invent some unspecified new drug.  But they won’t allow researchers to use embryos that can never become living humans to help them cure Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.