Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, October 5, 2016

murder-she-wrotemagnm

  • I’m not sure the statement or the question, but one day my answer will be, “You can try to reheat french fries or freeze what’s left of an ICEE, but they just aren’t as good the second time.”
  • I thought the lead story for the ‘CBS Evening News’ would have been the VP debate since their own Elaine Quijano was the moderator. However, it was the second story, the lead story was Hurricane Matthew. I didn’t pay much attention to the debate, but like how Quijano ended one Q&A stating the question was about North Korea, indicating neither answered the question directly.
  • Speaking of Hurricane Matthew, I found this on Reddit – Hurricane Matthew passing directly over a weather buoy
    plot_met
    plot_wind_pres
  • Of course each party would, but they could have waited until after the event – GOP website declares Mike Pence winner of VP debate before it begins
  • Kaine and Pence both wore ties the color of their opponent’s party. That made me laugh because I feel like the decisions on a tie for such an event is a subtle attempt to try to woo the opposing party.
    • And that’s a nice segue to this article: Why red means Republican and blue means Democrat
      • In fact, there was a period when some of the networks, like NBC and CBS, had this color scheme reversed. In 1980, for example, NBC anchor David Brinkley declared the NBC map to “look like a suburban swimming pool” as Ronald Reagan’s big win over Jimmy Carter turned the NBC map almost entirely blue.
        Networks introduced colored maps to their election night coverage as a visual tool to distinguish themselves in the era of color television; CBS was first in 1972, and soon the others followed. By 1996, the television map color schemes aligned to what we are accustomed to now: red for Republicans and blue for Democrats.
  • My manager asked that I schedule some time to take off work. We can roll over 40 hours of vacation time each year, and for me to not lose any time, I have to burn 112 before the end of the year.
  • GIF – A small model experiment which shows you the importance of front-loading a trailer.
  • Baylor’s Title IX coordinator quits; results of recommendations cited
    • Crawford “was disappointed in her role in implementing the recommendations that resulted” from an independent investigation of the university’s handling of sexual-assault allegations committed by students, including football players, Baylor said in a news release late Monday night.
    • Late Monday night is 11:49 PM, per WFAA’s Mike Leslie. That’s a very odd time for a news release.
    • Crawford will be on ‘CBS This Morning’ this morning and she didn’t sign a confidentiality agreement (Baylor wanted to pay Crawford $1.5 million, with an additional $50,000 for signing a confidentiality agreement. Crawford then asked for $2 million; Baylor refused). Bills will be spilled – there’s even secretly recorded audio
      • Last month KWTX obtained a secretly recorded audio tape of a meeting between Crawford and members of the athletic staff in late July in which Crawford expressed frustration with the administration.
    • You can buy a Bring Back Art Briles shirt here.
  • Google kicked off its Pixel event with a ‘Silicon Valley’ intro
  • ‘Extinct’ species of tree found growing in Queen’s garden
  • Ben Stiller revealed his fight with prostate cancer yesterday. Until reading this Buzzfeed article, I didn’t realize about one in six men will get it.
  • The Magnum, P.I. theme song got stuck in my head for some reason yesterday and that lead to wonder how the series ended. (I think it’s because I saw something that reminded me of “scuba girl” featured in the show opening – here at the 14-second mark)
    • T.C. faces a reconciliation with his estranged wife. Magnum gets some surprising news about his theory that Higgins is really Robin Masters, when Higgins admits, finally, that he is indeed Robin. However, Higgins later recants that admission at Rick’s wedding. Magnum discovers that his former wife and her second husband have died, leaving the fate of his daughter, Lily, in his hands. Magnum decides to re-enlist in the Navy, at the rank of Commander, in order to give Lily a more stable home. The series ends with Magnum, in his Navy dress whites, and Lily leaving Hawaii for another naval base.
    • And now other Magnum stuff that got my attention when I was looking up that answer:
      • Magnum ‘Reboot’ Focusing on Iconic P.I.’s Daughter Eyed at ABC
      • One of Obama’s friends bought Robin’s Nest last year.
      • The answer Magnum provides for quitting the Navy, “I woke up one day at 33 and realized I had never been 23.”
      • The voice of Robin Masters, heard only a few times per season, was provided by Orson Welles
      • John Hillerman (Higgins) is still alive at age 83. The last I heard he was living in Texas, possible North Texas. I didn’t know he attended the Universit of Texas for three years.
      • Not sure why it surprises me, but Tom Selleck is 71 and the guy that played T.C., Roger Mosley, is 77.
        • Mosley is a licensed private helicopter pilot in real life, but when on the set of Magnum P.I. he was not allowed to do his own stunts. A pilot wearing a body stocking with muscles would be used instead.
      • There was a ‘Murder She Wrote’ crossover
        • “Novel Connection” — Jessica Fletcher comes to Hawaii when an attempt is made on Robin’s guests. The plot concludes on Murder, She Wrote in the episode “Magnum on Ice”.
      • The show also recognized the existence of the fictional elite state police unit that appeared in the series Hawaii Five-O. In the pilot episode, Magnum references the unit’s chief McGarrett by name. This was a tribute to the long-running show starring Jack Lord, that ran on CBS from the fall of 1968 through to the summer of 1980, to be replaced, in essence, in the fall of 1980 by Magnum, P.I.. The successor series to Hawaii Five-O paid tribute to Magnum, P.I. in the 2013 episode “Hoa Pili,” when the cast flew over the island in a helicopter to the sound of the Magnum, P.I. theme.
      • Didn’t the character Remington Steele also have some long series secret? And I think there was something about revealing MacGyver’s given name.
      • Here’s how the series ends, note there’s a little something at the end of the credits. I do like how you see Selleck in an Indiana Jones outfit in one brief scene as he was originally cast as the character.

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5 Responses to Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, October 5, 2016

  1. Bryan says:

    Love the Magnum PI tribute!

  2. John Mackovic says:

    I'm also a big Magnum PI fan.

    – The Indiana Jones outfit was from an episode where they look for buried treasure or something, and was obviously a shout out to Raiders.

    – I tend to fall on the side of Higgins not being Robin Masters.

    – Jonathon Hillerman was five years old when the U.K. entered WW2 in 1939.

    – In the finale of the penultimate season ended with Magnum in a coma after being shot, there's a fan theory out there that the final season was just a dream he had while in the coma and he never woke up.

    – There was also a Simon & Simon crossover.

    – Did you see the sunrise this morning?

  3. Mr. Mike Honcho says:

    Awesome Magnum PI content. Loved it!

    Free advice: Take all the PTO you are given and roll over as little as possible. I know people that get paid for vacation they don't use. I know others that lose it completely if not taken. I highly suggest that you take all you are given, in the year it is given. IMHO, its meant to be used, and maximum benefit to your self is when you use it for leisure time.

    • Geeding says:

      Thanks for the advice, Mike. It's something I really should follow. I guess the reasons I don't are two fold. One, working from home gives me a lot of benefits which relate to me not taking time off. But that's not really being able to escape from work and get away from things to refresh and refuel and appreciate life, so l should use that benefit. But I also have this fear of being laid off, and since my earned PTO is guaranteed if not used (company policy), I use it as an insurance policy in case I need to find work. You made me realize what I should do is balance things better, I need to take time off while holding a reasonable amount back to actually enjoy life.

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