Episode 8

Welcome to Fireball Brady. It's a podcast. It's been a while, but I'm back.

This is Fireball Brady himself. I'm over here at the Gillespie Clan household,

drinking alcohol and speaking with none other than Jessie.

Jessie, you had an interesting day today at school. Why don't you tell me about it?

I believe that it was implied that...

Well, wait, wait. Tell us what happened.

No? Okay. I had my teacher of the Photoshop artistry class that I'm taking tell me

that I shouldn't worry about whether or not I was going to get an A,

that I should just do the work and turn it in, and I would get an A.

I took it to mean that it didn't matter how crappy I did, I was going to get an A.

What? It was as soon as I came home.

When I came home and said what happened, it was presented that maybe it meant that

it wouldn't matter how badly I did in my scale of things,

there was no way that I could actually do poorly enough to not get an A.

Okay. Yeah.

So what are you thinking of now, that you've had a drink, you've sat down and been able to breathe a little bit?

You're probably right.

Okay.

Her stuff is so good that she will be a pro someday, and she'll make lots of money.

Let's just leave it at that.

Her portfolio is gorgeous.

However, she takes personal things like that a little too, well, personal.

Anyways, that was a little bit of in-house cleaning.

I'm over here stealing bandwidth.

Actually, I've asked to borrow it.

They've given it to me.

I still don't have internet at my house.

Why is that?

You're not working.

Because I'm a cheap bastard.

No, uh, actually...

And, wait, wait, how many access points are there around your house, Chris?

Actually, there's only one, but I have to go all the way up to the end of my driveway to access that access point.

You're just gonna be the creepy guy sitting in the car with a laptop.

Actually, someone got arrested not too long ago for doing that.

But I won't do that. I won't get arrested, because...

I'm smarter than he was.

Anyways, couple things, and I'll discuss it with you guys.

Normally, you'd be hearing me and Handsome John, but Handsome John's not here, so...

Recently, like in the last week, this is kind of a sad thing.

A lady gets in a car accident.

She's holding her baby.

Nine-month-old child.

She's driving, her brother-in-law's driving, and his two-year-old's in the car seat in the back.

A guy plows through them right after running a stop sign and is drunk.

Kills the baby.

The little two-year-old boy's in serious condition, and he's not expected to live.

Everybody else is in critical condition in the hospital.

The drunk driver got off, you know,

without any major damage to him.

Now, question.

First of all, obviously, the drunk driver needs to get nailed.

He needs to go to jail forever.

Preferably die.

I would pay for the .22 caliber bullet.

I would shoot the gun.

It's that simple.

And then I would impound his Camaro,

and I would fine his family until they came and picked it up.

Little rough, little harsh.

I know, that's okay.

Regardless, you're upset.

Yeah, that's the mood I'm in.

Yeah.

Well, here's the next question.

She's driving in a car as a passenger.

The driver knows better.

She should know better.

When she comes out of the coma,

should she be fined or be brought upon charges for involuntary manslaughter,

reckless endangerment of a child, or anything of that nature?

Or is the $101 fine for not having the child wear a seat belt

and the fact that her child is now dead enough punishment?

I would think that the fact that her child is dead

is a pretty decent level of punishment.

Now, her brother-in-law, the driver of the car,

who allowed her to sit in the front seat with the small child,

$101, reckless endangerment, manslaughter.

Not his child.

It's his car.

If he would have been pulled over, he would have been fined, not her.

Not even $101.

I think that as a parent, it's her responsibility, her decision.

I think that $100, oh, yeah, by the way, that child is dead.

That's something, see, for me, part of me, the legalistic side of me says,

fine them both, charge them with manslaughter,

or whatever vehicular, whatever, I don't know what the exact term is.

But part of me says, you know, the compassionate side of me,

which is that part right there on the tip of my finger,

says, okay, they've experienced quite a bit of pain in that family.

Let's not go ahead and confound the pain by the fact that this guy's son

is probably going to die, and have him go to jail for it.

I don't think that they need to do anything more to him.

And I don't think they're going to, but that's really in the news right now.

So something...

It's like Carrie Schiavo, right up in there.

Yeah, kind of, you know, in a way, yeah.

Completely different circumstances, but still...

It's emotion versus legalism, you know, what do you do?

Yeah, how much mercy do you really need to have?

All right, everybody, if you're listening to this, let me know what you think.

You know how to reach me, it's in the show notes.

Next thing, a couple of weeks back in our newspapers here in the Northwest,

a gentleman is trying to get the laws written to state that longboards,

the long version of skateboards, are illegal,

because his son went down a large hill on a longboard,

smashed into a car, and ended up losing his leg.

Whatever.

No, wait, the kid's 15 years old. Yeah, he's a kid.

You know what? At the age of 15, you have the ability to make decisions right and wrong.

And stupidity and not stupidity.

Those are lifelong qualities right there, developing.

Absolutely. I mean, and you know what?

Had he made the decision not to go that fast on that hill, he'd have one more leg.

His soccer career would still be in fine tune.

It has nothing to do with the fact that it was a longboard or a shortboard or whatever.

I know, he would have been damaged anyways.

Well, I've gone downhill on my bike over 50 miles an hour,

knowing that at any point in time, if a car pulls out in front of me,

I'm probably dead.

Yeah, that helmet you're wearing?

That helmet I'm wearing would crack like a little melon,

would be about as useful as a sponge.

Yeah, absolutely.

No, I think that guy's just looking for something to...

He wants to blame somebody other than himself.

He wants a campaign.

Absolutely.

Well, it's like that guy that keeps campaigning to have the Pledge of Allegiance removed from our schools

because it says, under God.

Yeah.

And he says he's doing it on behalf of his...

Well, it started out as a three-year-old child.

Yeah, but his daughter's now a Christian, living with her mom,

and can't believe what her dad's doing.

I wonder why they got a divorce.

Well, probably because the guy was a dick.

Don't hold back, Brian.

Tell me how you really feel.

Where's my hot dog?

It's over there.

Oh, is it?

Okay.

All right.

Other things to talk about, technology.

This is going to be a short podcast.

Compared to my usual 45-minute-to-an-hour deal.

I don't know.

Once we start talking about technology, though.

Who knows?

I did a...

Somebody I know did a Microsoft usability study recently on Microsoft Windows Vista,

and specifically on their new BitLocker hard drive encryption technology,

which sounds like it's really cool.

Well, anyways, I was talking...

Son of a...

It was me.

I did it.

I was in it.

I was at the usability study.

Anyways, I was talking with the engineers who were actually developing Microsoft Windows Vista.

And I was asking them, what is really...

What are going to be the hardware requirements?

I mean, I've read that it's going to take a gig worth of memory, and, you know, this and that.

And I said, how big is the operating system?

And they had me go...

They went and showed me on the machine that I was working on,

it's 11 gigs just for the operating system.

Eleven!

I've got versions of Linux that run off of a 1.44 megabyte floppy.

I'm going to make the joke.

Go ahead.

It's information highway robbery.

Oh, dear.

Oh!

Bloatware.

It's like a dead animal that's been floating in a creek on a hot summer day.

And we wonder why I'm slowly converting to Mac.

Well, I just bought my first...

Well, no, I got...

I got my first Mac.

I got a free Mac.

And what color is it?

Blueberry?

Blueberry.

I got a Blueberry Mac.

My wife claimed it instantly.

She hates computers.

I get this thing home, and I set it up, and she goes, where's everything else?

I said, no, that's it.

It's just that and the keyboard and the mouse.

She goes, you mean there's not going to be all the crap and wires?

Like on your computers?

I said, no.

She goes, well, what happens if you want to change something?

I said, you don't.

It's...

You can upgrade the memory.

And maybe upgrade the hard drive.

And that's about it.

Everything else is as it sits.

It's just like a laptop.

Well, no, I've screwed with my laptop, too.

She hates it.

Anyway, I turned it on.

I turn on my laptop, and you've got like a 10-minute wait time until it's all done booting

and loading everything that I have installed on this.

And I turn on the Mac for my wife, and it goes ding, ding, ding.

And it's on.

And it's not like it's waiting to load.

It's not like, oh, the little thing with the little sand glass hourglass deal.

On a Mac, it's the pizza wheel of death.

It's the pizza wheel of death.

I have yet to see it.

It's the spinning color wheel.

Yeah, you don't see it very often, but when you do, it's like, ah, shit.

There's the quarter.

Crap.

No, crap works.

Bastard works.

Lots of stuff works, but does that word cost a quarter?

Where?

In my podcast.

But you're not officially part of the podcast.

You'll be part of this podcast.

Whatever.

Needless to say, it's really cute.

It takes up very little space.

The footprint on our house is one square foot.

And it's really nice.

And I'm really considering getting another one.

A little higher powered for myself.

Well, have you seen the iMac?

The 18-inch screen and everything?

Everything's instant.

It's a side monitor and it just hits a little thing and there's a keyboard and that's it.

They're so hot.

I used one at school.

They're hot.

H-A-W-T, hot.

You know, the very first time I used that type of phrase.

I think she's getting excited over a Mac.

And I don't mean just excited.

I mean excited.

Should I leave?

No.

No, no, she's all right.

No, I mean, I'll give you guys some time.

I'll come back in 10 minutes.

No, no, that's okay.

The very first time.

I don't want to be here for it.

Don't worry about it.

The very first time.

The very first time I used the expression, that is a damn sexy computer, was a Mac laptop.

It was the sexiest machine I'd ever seen in my entire life.

They really are.

Leah has one.

She has an 18-inch laptop.

And it wasn't like the new white ones or black ones.

It was titanium silver.

My father-in-law has one.

And he goes, you know, he comes prancing in with his little laptop.

And he goes, he looks at my laptop.

He goes, what are you running?

Because mine looks kind of like it's running Mac because I've got the object off and stuff.

And I go, 2000.

And he goes, when are you going to upgrade to a real operating system?

So he turns on his computer, his laptop.

And he's got the 17-inch widescreen flat panel, the whole thing.

It's a laptop.

And it goes, and it's on.

And he goes, what are you waiting for?

I'm waiting for mine to boot.

Son of a bitch.

Yeah, I really like, for Macs, I like their file structure better.

Like just the, what we would call explorer, they call it finder.

You can choose instead of, let's see here, it's list and detail.

You can do this thing where it loads it into columns.

So you've got your first level of folders.

You click on one and it brings up the next level of folders in there.

You click on there.

So you can see the path that you've been following.

It doesn't open all these new windows every time.

I've been really impressed with that.

And the object dock is really, really nice.

Yeah, I really want to upgrade to, I need to, I know on the one I've got,

it only has 32 megs of RAM.

But from what I understand, it can be upgraded to, like,

quite a bit more than that.

And it's really not that expensive, comparatively speaking.

No, comparatively speaking, yeah.

And that's a solid machine that you bought.

Well, yeah, no.

I turned it, it had been, I got it for free at a garage sale.

And it had been in their storage.

And I said, does it work?

And they said, well, it worked last time we turned it on.

So I take it home and I plugged it in.

And, I mean, there was no question.

It just came on.

It's like, hi, I'm on.

What can I do for you?

Your computer's name is Chuck.

Is that my computer's name?

Yeah.

I will, when I, okay, I don't know how to name my computer.

If it was a Windows base, I could name it Chuck.

I don't know how to tell it that its name is Chuck.

You know how you, let's see here.

And there's no floppy drive.

No.

They weren't one of the first computer systems to completely get rid of a floppy drive.

No floppy.

Right.

So what happens if you have to install something from a floppy?

You're screwed.

You put it on a USB card.

Yep.

Put it on a USB drive.

Right.

Or you buy a USB card.

Or FireWire.

There's no FireWire.

Oh, really?

Really?

That's interesting.

They've got USBs and no FireWire.

Yeah.

But maybe they do have FireWire.

Maybe it's FireWire and not USB.

It's like, you know what FireWire looks like.

Tell me about it.

I want to get one tattooed right here.

That's what I was going to do.

Oh, it's you.

You're the one who told me about it.

Yeah.

FireWire on one side, USB on the other.

Somebody isn't real excited about that idea, though.

Well, it's going to be, well, see, it's so small.

It's not like it's going to be a real big tattoo.

It's going to be a real fluffy and long.

Okay, I have mine short.

I want people to see it and go, what is that?

So I can upload stuff.

You were watching The Matrix and you said, I know code food.

You're like, I want that!

In more ways than you'll ever know, this whole idea of uploading.

See, I need to learn how to fly a chopper.

Oh, yeah, no problem.

Rock and roll.

Yeah, but think about all the crap you have floating around on your hard drive.

And you're like, dude, where did that come from?

How do you un-upload from your brain?

Can you imagine defragmenting your brain?

Actually, your brain's probably...

I would be scared to see what the analysis of fragmentation on my brain would be.

There would be an awful lot of red.

I don't know, can you defragment a drive in Mac?

Yeah, no.

No, it's based on the Unix operating system, Unix file system structure, and it does...

Well, that's the Mac OS X.

Right.

That's not 8.1, which is what I've got.

They're pretty similar.

On the surface, they're similar.

Oh, no, that's true, yeah.

There are a lot of applications from the 8.1 that won't run on OS X.

Uh-huh.

But you can get this thing for it that Amos got for me,

where you can run the applications from 8.1 and 9 on 10.

So is it like an emulator?

It's kind of like an emulator, but it functions...

You don't have to boot up anything.

You just go double-click on the folder, on the file, and...

That was another thing.

You don't uninstall.

You just go ahead and delete the folder.

If you don't like something...

They're self-contained.

So if you want to install something...

I actually read a great article on people who were taking their iPods to Apple stores,

plugging them into Apple computers that were set up for display,

and just dragging whole file structures into their iPods, taking them home and uploading them.

Yep.

Okay, on another thing.

I'm going to go back to news for just a second, folks.

Everybody heard about 4th of July, North Korea shooting their missiles.

You didn't hear about it?

Yeah, I heard about it.

Okay.

Just basically, you know, Tim wagging in the wind saying,

Look how big I am.

Uh-huh.

And he's about 5'2".

He's about 5'2", and the guy's going,

What? What's he doing over there?

Well, here's the funny thing.

Have you guys read much up on the leader, Kim Jong-il?

It sounds like a dirtbag, but...

I'm thoroughly illiterate on almost everything but Photoshop and oil painting right now.

Perfect.

What you need to do is rent a copy.

And I'm telling all my listeners this.

Rent a copy of Team America, World Police.

You will get the best interpretation, the most accurate description of the leader of North Korea.

Yeah, I haven't heard that either.

Only thing I've heard from that is Texans singing,

I'm so ron'ry.

So ron'ry without you, so ron'ry.

Now imagine Corbett, Raleigh singing that.

No.

Did he do that?

I'm so ron'ry.

That's wrong.

I know.

In more ways.

Yeah, wrong, period.

All right, now we're going to talk about some local news that pissed us off.

We're going to talk about that guy with the son that's a skateboard.

I know I've talked to you guys before.

What pissed me off the worst over the last six months was the day that the Iraqis first voted.

You know, they called the purple a bigger Thursday.

Oh, yeah, I remember us talking about that.

You were here when you talked about that.

Yeah, I know.

It just pissed me off beyond belief.

You know, the Seattle P.I. or Seattle Times, I forget, had the big, giant front-page article on travesty.

It was a whale hunt.

No, not the whale hunt.

Of bears drowning up in the Arctic.

No, polar bears drowning.

It was terrible.

Anyways, Brian.

What if a polar bear drowns in the Arctic?

Does anybody care?

Maybe that's a problem.

Well, go ahead.

The thing that pissed me off recently, and I just found this out today, actually.

I work for the V.A. hospital, okay?

The head of the V.A. was recently in Washington State, last week, as a matter of fact.

And do you know what he did when he was in Washington State?

What?

Went to a Mariners game?

No.

He did some campaigning for a Republican in Mukilteo, for one in Walla Walla, and for one in Bellingham.

At no time during his visit did he stop in and take a look at a single one of the V.A. facilities in the area.

You're serious?

I am serious.

And usually, that kind of, you know, you come in, you do the big politicking thing.

Yeah.

And then you take a big kudos off of sitting at the main V.A. campus saying, you know, you guys have done good, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And it just seems odd to me that he wouldn't even bother to show up.

And we wouldn't have the pleasure of a panicked email saying, clean up your desks, hide all your ugly stuff.

Change that desktop screen saver.

Everything should be a standard desktop.

He might wander by your cubicle.

And no matter how many times we've had that email and that situation, he never has come by my cubicle.

So my George Bush doll is safe.

Your George Bush doll?

I have a talking George Bush doll that's quite amusing.

When did you get that?

It's actually Mary's, but he's been sitting in my cubicle for the past few, well, at least a week and a half now.

Huh.

And he accosts passersby with badly formed phrases.

Now that rocks.

Strategery.

You mis-underestimate my powers.

Exactly.

That's one of them.

I don't know.

It just pissed me off that the guy was in the area and he wouldn't bother to call.

Or not call, but he wouldn't bother.

He wouldn't call.

He doesn't call you in the morning.

He doesn't call.

He doesn't write.

He wouldn't stop by and visit.

The thing that tipped me off to this, there was an article in the PI.

And the guy was basically making this exact same point.

He was like, why wouldn't he stop by the hospital and visit, you know, our sender here.

Here is known nationwide for its treatment of amputees.

Is it?

Yeah.

For a couple of other things, too, that were in that article.

And, you know, he didn't stop by and see any of the Iraqi or Afghanistani veterans that are coming back.

Didn't come see any of the amputees.

He didn't go visit the American Lake Center, which has a hospital there.

It has a huge department that deals with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Any of these things that are, you know, really big.

Deals?

They're really big.

Yeah, I guess big deal is the only way you can put it.

And so that just, it just struck me as odd.

And then I kind of got a little pissed off about it.

Just, I don't know why.

You know you enthrall me and yet you don't call me is making me blue.

And don't do 92.

What am I missing?

Obviously a song.

It's a song that I found on the internet.

Reno, Dakota by this magnetic field.

Reno, Dakota, there's not an iota of kindness in you.

You know you enthrall me and yet you don't call me is making me blue.

And don't do 92.

I can't remember the rest of it, though.

You can sing.

I can.

I heard that.

So did all your group readers, subscribers.

If you guys are reading this, then you've been gypped.

Anyway, it's a short one.

I'm going to kill it for now.

Real quick, if you guys are looking for a great wine, Big Pine Winery in Washington State,

it's over by Chelan, Manson is the little town it's actually in.

If you're looking for good wine, look them up.

Call them.

Tell them Chris Brady of Fireball Brady sent you.

Get the wine.

They are fantastic.

Myrna is one of the owners.

She's a wonderful lady.

Today's beer of choice is Pyramid Hefeweizen because it's what was in the fridge.

Today's hard liquor of choice is 99 Bananas liqueur.

If you like drinking stuff that smells like WD-40, fantastic.

Any part...

It smells like WD-40!

It's not!

It smells like Lassie Taffy when you put it in...

Well, by itself it smells like WD-40, I'm sure.

Okay.

All right.

Any parting thoughts for the listeners?

Not really.

That was amazing, ladies and gentlemen.

That was Brian Gillespie.

Anyways, guys, have a great time.

Be good.

Drive safe.

If you're in the military, you're hearing this overseas, God bless you.

And if you're not in the military and not overseas, God bless you anyways.

Be good.

Bye!