Spent the weekend hanging out with my brother, his new fiancee, and my cousin. It turned into a surprise LAN party of sorts, and I finally got a chance to see their new house in the city... it's really quite nice. My brother spent some time showing off his new toys as well... he rigged a TV to work as a monitor, and a computer that doubles as a *cough free cough* cable provider. It crawls the internet for movies, shows, and music that he likes, and then downloads, catalogues, and archives them on a server automatically, so he can watch/listen to them whenever. It's like a DVR, but one that knows your favorite shows and music genres, finds the best quality versions of them out there, and even annotates them for you. Most of it is rigged out of electronic bits and bobs, and it has a custom interface he programmed on his own. I keep telling him that he should find ways to market his skills... he's still stuck doing retail work, and he's a bright, creative, and generally gifted guy.
Here, it's shown in Computer Mode, playing Starcraft II...
...and here it was used to play Wii. Being dorks, we had Carl Sagan (riding the Shooting Star bike), Einstein, Don Quixote, and Iron Man for our Miis.
This cat has crazy eyes... one of her pupils is more dialated than the other.
The dog was watching the cats perch on the back of the sofa, and wanted in on it.
He's also got a big, pretty Ragdoll Himalayan cat. He isn't overweight, but just large and dense... felt like he was close to 30 lbs.
We messed around chatting, playing games, and hanging out until the wee hours, after which we crashed (after sun-up) and after a few hour nap went out for brunch at a beautiful old train-station retrofitted to be a restaurant. The food was tasty... though what we thought were french toast triangles were instead fried ham and cheese sandwiches with powdered sugar on top... vaguely reminiscent of the Monte Cristo things they have at Bennigans. After the meal, they certainly took their revenge on me as well... I didn't realize that the Brunch Buffet and an orange juice would cost me more than $20.00. Now I remember why I don't live in the city. >_<;
I absolutely loved the chandeliers, and the stained-glass windows... and all the dark-stained, ornately carved woodwork.
The servers' uniforms and balloons made it look like a fancy Applebees though.