Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, November 24, 2015

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  • As a child, I used to eat Night Hawk TV dinners all the time, steak and taters the most.  I’ve recently re-discovered them.  One game I play is when I take the clear film off the top, to try to do it in one piece or without ripping any of it.
  • I first got my Chromebook back in 2011 and really have loved using the thing.  Three or four times I’ve broken the screen either stepping on it or doing something else careless with it, and normally I’ll just buy a new one off eBay for about $40 and fix it myself.  But yesterday, after I broke the screen again, I decided to just upgrade to another Chromebook, which gives me another 100 GB on Google Drive again for two years, just like when I purchased my first one.  I could have bought the exact same model, brand new, for just $149 at Best Buy, but instead a spent a few more dollars for a bigger screen and a bit more horsepower, and I love how friggin’ light these things are.  I’d say about 80% of all my blogging was done on my Chromebook.  Since all I use it for is to surf and watch Netflix, it’s great.
  • U2 have rescheduled their Paris/HBO concert for Monday, December 7, 2015.  The concert will still air on HBO the same day at 8:00 PM Central, but it won’t be live as it was originally planned.
  • ‘Fargo’ has been renewed for season three.  And I’m thankful for this bit of news – Creator Noah Hawley is set to return to the critically-acclaimed and award-winning series, along with exec producers Warren Littlefield, John Cameron and Joel and Ethan Coen.  Let’s just hope Vince Vaughn doesn’t get cast.  I also “enjoyed” the death scenes last night.
  • FiveThirtyEight – The Perfect Republican Stump Speech – We asked former Republican speechwriter Barton Swaim to write a totally pandering stump speech for an imaginary GOP presidential candidate — one who espouses only positions that a majority of Republicans agree with. Here’s the speech he wrote, including notes to explain his phrasing, behind-the-scenes pro tips on appealing to Republican voters and the data he used to decide which positions to take.
  • NBC has to give Republicans 12 minutes of airtime because Trump was on SNL
  • VICE – These Are the 100 Most Militarized Universities in America – The 100 schools named in these rankings produce the greatest number of students who are employed by the Intelligence Community (IC), have the closest relationships with the national security state, and profit the most from American war-waging. – These rankings will be a bit surprising at first glance.  For instance, the University of Phoenix is ranked third, Texas A&M lands at fourteen, and Central Texas College near Fort Hood comes in at eighteen.
  • Buzzfeed – One Woman Got 11 Tattoos In A Week To Show 100 Years Of Inked History
  • Anonymous’ unusual weapon against ISIS – ‘rickrolling’
  • Amazon’s Man in the High Castle ads put Nazi symbols on NYC subway
  • An American Christmas Story –  Behind the scenes with the company transforming New York City’s biggest landmarks and stores every holiday season
  • At first glance, I thought it was Air Force One – GIF/Video – What happens when an airplane hits a bird
  • How to poop like an astronautTo get to Mars, we need better space toilets – If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that a healthy human produces about 128 grams (0.28 lbs) of feces a day.
  • What Does 2,500 Calories Look Like? – Ever wondered what 2,500 calories looks like? Use this handy visual guide to see a day’s worth of meals across 3 different macronutrient ratios! – This also has a nice tool to see how many calories you should be consuming that takes into account age, weight, lifestyle, and a few other factors.
  • Stephen Colbert had Sylvester Stallone as his first guest, and Stallone came across more humble and likable than past interviews I’ve seen and even shared some great stories about Carl Weathers from the original Rocky film.  Many think of him as a knucklehead action star and forget that he was nominated for two Oscars .  Stallone was only the third person in Oscar history to be nominated in a single year as both an actor and a screenwriter, he joined Orson Welles and Charlie Chaplin.  That’s some pretty nice company.
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4 Responses to Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, November 24, 2015

  1. RPM says:

    I used to buy Night Hawk dinners until I compared them to others.They are very expensive. Marie Callender's are heads and shoulders above the rest in quality/taste. The next best are Hungry Man but they have an unwavering affinity for a brownie dessert that requires you to skillfully remove it midway through the cooking. That never turns out well. It's a PITA.

    There are a couple HM dinners that have an apple dessert that is good. But for some reason they refuse to swap the others for that or no dessert at all. Someone at HM needs to understand people cook the dinners in microwaves and not an oven, When was the last time you cooked a TV Dinner in an oven?

    Fargo is the best series ever made for TV. That 's a bold statement, but I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. Every episode is better than the last. Can't think of another series that lives up to that standard including The Sopranos and The Wire. Writing, direction, casting. It's simply the best.

    • Hard Count says:

      Another element you left out, at least for me, is that the Fargo writers have kept the language appropriate for home audiences.

      I lived on the East Coast for five years and was in the military for seven years, but I still found the number of f-bombs in The Sopranos tedious; at least one per sentence. I never watched The Wire, but I'm guessing it was just as bad. For me, an f-bomb fueled dialogue is just lazy writing disguised as "realism".

      Sitting in my living room with surly East Coast characters spewing out endless streams of foul language for an entire hour is just not enjoyable.

    • Geeding says:

      You know, I tend to use the oven to warm up a TV dinner often. Two things determine when I use the oven, how hungry I am and what I'm cooking. If it's stake and taters, I want those taters crispy. I think they taste better out of the even and takes away any rubbery effect.

  2. Bryan says:

    I've been on the Chromebook bandwagon for a few years now too. I was tired of my massive Dell laptop and I just wanted something practical for web surfing, Netflix, etc. I still wanted something with a keyboard and I wanted to stay away from a netbook. I really loved the Surface, but the price point was ridiculous, especially with the extra cost of the keyboard. I went with the Samsung Chromebook and never looked back. I'm surprised you've been through so many screens. I've beat mine up pretty good and the only issue I've had is that it randomly started rebooting in the middle of use after I flew with it a couple of weeks ago. It hasn't done it in several days, so I'm hoping it was a fluke. I've also been considering upgrading to a larger version since the prices are so reasonable.

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