Archive for November, 2008
- This is be the only post for the week. I’m taking most of the week off from work and want to take a break from daily blogging as well. My blogging batteries need to recharge.
- The one thing I really appreciate about an ABC college football broadcast is the way they are able to incorporate the sounds of the game. The do a great job of blending in the crowd noise, the band, and the occasional screams from the cheerleaders.
- However, it still annoys me that the down and yardage to go doesn’t display right after a play.
- Texas Tech sure didn’t look like a top five team on Saturday.
- WOW. McNabb got benched.
- I just remembered that this year the annual Texas and Texas A&M football game will be played on Thanksgiving night, as opposed to the day after like the usually do. So that means I get to watch my favorite pro football team and college football team play back to back for the first time ever. But the truth is, I prefer the game to be played on Friday so I can spread my football watching out a bit.
- Impressive: Florida State safety Myron Rolle earned a Rhodes Scholarship. Link He actually had to miss part of Saturday’s game because of the scholarship interview, but was able to fly to the game and get on the field in the second quarter.
- It seems weird that Joe Pa coaches from the press box.
- When I see those Burger King commercials with someone dressed as the Burger King, I tend to think the person on the inside is a female just by looking at the legs.
- With my mother gone and my sister now living in NYC, it’s up to me and WifeGeeding to cook our own turkey this year. This should be fun, and I’ve already visited Butterball.com to do some preliminary research. I found out you can even sign up for text messaging on their mobile site.
- I absolutely love the bread at Outback Steakhouse.
- Facial asymmetry. Link
- Einstein also had a messy desk. Link
- This is a really cool video about the California wildfires. If anything, check out the 47 second mark just to see how close the fire was to the freeway. [Thanks, Warren!]
- See cities in 360 degrees. Link
- Wordless interviews. Link
- Earth 31 million miles away, you even see the moon pass by. YouTube
- Pole Fitness (dancing) is taking over Utah and may become an Olympic sport. YouTube
- Stuff starts to slide everywhere on the rough seas when this cruise ship hits rough waters. Video It’s a bit of a long video, but if you just watch the 1:47 and 5:21 mark you’ll see the chaos.
- Bruce Lee plays ping pong with nunchucks? YouTube
- Great pranks between MIT and CalTech. Link
- The craziest dog and duck video you will ever see. YouTube
- This site provided an interesting analysis about this blog. Just type “www.bagofnothing.com” and click Typealize.
November 24th, 2008
A couple of years ago my father-in-law and I were cleaning out a barn in East Texas and came across a garbage bag that included this newspaper. It’s dated November 23, 1963 with the price of $0.05. It’s now stored in a cool dry place.
If you are interested in a high-resolution version of the pic just click here.
On the radio the other day I heard that Lee Harvey Oswald’s daughter actually grew up in Dallas and graduated high school in 1980. Can you imagine the amount of teasing that she received?
November 21st, 2008
The choices are . . .
Popcorn & Cranberry
Yam & Jam
Dawn & Early Light
Roost & Run
Pumpkin & Pecan
Apple & Cider
Whitehouse.gov
November 21st, 2008
Movember (the month formerly known as November) is a charity event held during November each year.
At the start of Movember guys register with a clean shaven face. The Movember participants, known as Mo Bros, then have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their Mo (Australian slang for moustache), raising money and awareness along the way for men’s health and the fight against prostate cancer.
Why?
Men lack awareness about the very real health issues they face. Many feel they have to be tough – “a real man” – and are reluctant to see a doctor about an illness or to go for regular medical check ups.
The aim of Movember is to change these attitudes and make men’s health fun by putting the Mo back on the face of American men while raising some serious funds for the number one men’s health issue, prostate cancer
Link
November 21st, 2008
Who’s Eugene Allen?
He worked as a butler in the White House for 34 years and recently sold the movie rights to his story to Columbia Pictures.
There’s a small writeup about it here, but the Washington Post has a much nicer write up here which comes with a nice photo gallery.
Two parts of the story stood out. He had the same birthday as President Ford, and Mrs Ford was the only one who remembered it at the time. Also, Nancy Reagan invited him to eat at a state dinner with her and her husband right before he retired. He said he was probably the first butler to ever be invited to a state dinner.
November 21st, 2008
- I can’t tell if I’m getting sick or is it just allergies. You just gotta love North Texas when it comes to allergies.
- Watched a Robert Ballard special on the National Geographic Channel the other night. It turns out when he said he was looking for the Titanic, he was actually looking at submarine wreckage for the Navy. He worked out some sort of deal with the Navy did did allow him to hunt for the Titanic after he finished working for them. It was really fascinating.
- How old is the Internet? Link
- Who says you can’t combine bowling and archery. Link
- I was watching the news about the fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average last night and an analyst stated, “It’s as if the last 11 years haven’t happened.” That put things into perspective for me in how far the Dow has dropped.
- I can’t believe the heads of the big three automakers went to Washington asking for money and not being able to explain how much they need and what exactly would they do with it. Comic
- A tiny mechanic. Link
- SisterGeeding in the the David Letterman audience the other night. Before the show he took questions, but never called on her. Too bad, because she had a really good question: Do you already have a guess for what kind of pie your mother is going to make for Thanksgiving? In case you don’t know, every Thanksgiving Letterman has a satellite feed to his mom’s house and he tries to guess the pie that she made.
- Happy Goat. Link
- WifeGeeding noticed that the Arm and Hammer box that we put in the fridge use to say replace after 3 months, but now it says 30 days.
- MC Hammer needs to be on Dancing With The Stars.
- The new Cowboys stadium in Arlington keeps getting all these high profile events, and I can’t help but what a shame it is that the Stadium isn’t located closer to downtown Dallas and Victory Park.
- I can only name three of the Jackson Five: Michael, Tito, Jermain.
- But I can name all of the seven dwarfs.
- 40 Best TV Theme Show Songs of All Time. Link
- There was an episode of Cheers where Cliff was trying to name the seven deadly sins and confused them with the seven dwarfs. The thought of that scene still makes me laugh.
- Here’s a somewhat interesting article on NFL sideline technology.
- I’ve notice stores are starting to move towards the cattle call method to have customers check out. That is, all customers stand in one line (as opposed to multiple lines for multiple separate registers) as a greeter tells them which open register in a line full of registers is available. It may be more efficient, but I do feel like I’m part of a herd.
- A blog about stores that have open signs but are clearly closed.
- This map made me laugh.
- A darn cute picture. Link
November 21st, 2008
That’s a reference to Airplane! just so you know.
Co-pilot had breakdown, flight attendant helped land jet
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) — An Air Canada co-pilot having a mental breakdown had to be forcibly removed from the cockpit, restrained and sedated, and a flight attendant with flying experience helped the pilot safely make an emergency landing, an Irish investigation concluded Wednesday.
Full Article – Updated with correct link
There’s no mention in the article if the co-pilot ever played center for the Los Angeles Lakers.
And when I read this part of the article, I couldn’t help but think what was going through the heads of the passengers.
The Air Canada pilot then asked flight attendants to find out if any passenger was a qualified pilot.
November 20th, 2008
If you find yourself in a conversation with Toronto filmmaker Rob Spence a few months from now, remember to smile — you’re probably on camera. Today at the 6Sight Imaging Conference in Monterey, Spence will discuss how he’s turning his prosthetic eye into a wireless video camera — and his plan to turn the eyes of George Orwell’s Thought Police back at Big Brother.
Spence, 36, lost vision in his right eye at the age of 11, when he was shooting cow patties in Ireland with his grandfather’s shotgun and the gun backfired. He wore a patch for most of his life, until finally having the eye removed a few years ago and replacing it with a prosthetic. Adding a camera to the prosthetic was the logical next step, said Spence.
Full Article
And if you are interested, he has his own blog.
Maybe I should get a video camera installed in my wife’s glass eye – it will be more material for the blog.
And yes, I know this is the second glass eye post this week. I’ve reached my quota for the month.
November 20th, 2008
Coming up with a great technology product or service is only half the battle these days. Creating a name for said product that is at once cool but not too cool or exclusionary, marketable to both early adopters and a broader audience, and, of course, isn’t already in use and protected by various trademarks and copyright laws is difficult—to say the least.
The makers of these 10 tech products—the iPod, BlackBerry, Firefox, Twitter, Windows 7, ThinkPad, Android, Wikipedia, Mac OS X and the “Big Cats,” and Red Hat Linux—all have displayed certain amounts marketing savvy, common sense and fun-loving spirit in settling on their products’ names. Here are the intriguing, surprising and sometimes predictable accounts of their creation.
Link
November 20th, 2008
Beliefnet has chosen 10 nominees for the Most Inspiring Person of the Year 2008 Award. We need your help in choosing the final winner. You may vote once each day for your favorite candidate. Voting will end on December 5th.
Link
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November 20th, 2008
INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles commissioner today backed off its denial of a woman’s request for a personalized license plate reading “BE GODS.”
The decision resulted from a lawsuit filed this week by Liz Ferris, who had that same plate on her car for eight or nine years but forgot to renew it on time for 2008. When she submitted a new personalized plate application, the BMV denied her request because of a recent policy change banning any references to religion or a deity on new personalized plates.
Full Article
November 20th, 2008
The Zagat travel guide Wednesday named The Ritz-Carlton, Dallas the No. 1 large hotel in the U.S. and its Fearing’s restaurant No. 1 in hotel dining.
In its 2009 Top U.S. Hotels, Resorts & Spas survey, Zagat rated the hotel, in Dallas’ Uptown, extraordinary to perfect in each category. Travelers described the food served by celebrity chef Dean Fearing as “last-meal worthy†and “haute Texan†cuisine.
Full Article
November 20th, 2008
MIAMI, Nov 19 (Reuters) – An American teen-ager survived for nearly four months without a heart, kept alive by a custom-built artificial blood-pumping device, until she was able to have a heart transplant, doctors in Miami said on Wednesday.
The doctors said they knew of another case in which an adult had been kept alive in Germany for nine months without a heart but said they believed this was the first time a child had survived in this manner for so long.
The patient, D’Zhana Simmons of South Carolina, said the experience of living for so long with a machine pumping her blood was “scary.”
“You never knew when it would malfunction,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, at a news conference at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center.
Full Article
November 20th, 2008
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