Bag of Randomness for Thursday, August 15, 2019

  • Here’s some unsolicited advice – always have a spare bottle of Liquid Plumber or Drano on hand.
  • My drivers license expires in two weeks and I can’t renew online so I’m going in to renew it in person today. I hope I make it out alive, I’ve heard horror stories of three-hour waits, lines out the door, and people having to stand in the heat. I’m trying to go in prepared, I’m bringing in the letter they sent me, printed and filled out a renewal application, and bringing in three forms of identification.
  • Here’s a crazy idea for a science fiction story. All of a sudden transmission data from Voyager 1 or Voyager 2 start coming in faster than it has ever before, and it’s because it somehow returned and is orbiting Earth. Maybe the story starts out sometime in the future and scientists haven’t received any data from them for the last fifty years.
  • For those of you who are appreciate the movie Idiocracy, it’s all I could think about when I read this Wall Street Journal article – Résumés Are Starting to Look Like Instagram—and Sometimes Even Tinder
    • While earlier generations played with eye-catching print fonts and horizontal lines, today’s tech-savvy young people have a new arsenal of tricks. Many throw in headshots. Some add bitmojis, the personalized avatars used in text messages and on social media.
    • Hiring managers say they are seeing résumés in Instagram-friendly palettes of mint green and pastel pink. Some come spiral-bound like full-color corporate brochures.
    • The flashy résumés are colliding with efforts by employers to strip down CVs to their most basic elements—coding skills, college degrees, work histories—to reduce bias in hiring. Many companies run résumés through tools called applicant tracking systems that remove photos and other design embellishments. Others are looking for ways to blind out even names and addresses, which could reveal gender, race or socioeconomic status.
  • Man dies after taco-eating contest at California baseball game
  • My sainted mother would have turned 71 years old today. She was a voracious reader. If you would do me a small favor, to honor her, simply read a magazine article or a chapter in a book.  The photo at the top of this post was taken in Corpus Christi, circa 1979, and that’s me hugging her leg as she’s about to fish with nothing but a bamboo pole.
  • The only reason I’m posting this article is that it might interest two of you out there since it was the first place we worked at after college (and, it was the site of our wedding reception) – Dallas’ Cityplace Tower is getting luxury hotel rooms as part of a redo
    • The new owners of the 42-story office high-rise on North Central Expressway plan to convert eight floors of the tower into a 5-star InterContinental Hotels Group hotel.
    • Along with guest rooms, the hotel will have an outdoor swimming pool, a fitness center, more than 21,000 square feet of meeting space and a top-floor ballroom and banquet space with views of the nearby downtown Dallas skyline.
  • Amazon said this week its facial recognition software, Rekognition, can detect a person’s fear.
  • One-legged high jump
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10 Responses to Bag of Randomness for Thursday, August 15, 2019

  1. Alan says:

    Drano will melt your PVC Piping…..Invest in a small auger and watch a few youtube videos on how to use it. Your wife wil then have immeasurable pride in her manly modern cave man! : )

    • Geeding says:

      I actually had to use the auger yesterday on the upstairs bathroom sink. I think I’ve used it for or five times before, all unsuccessfully, but it actually worked for me last night and the sense of accomplishment I felt was immense.

  2. AndreaJN says:

    I had to go to the Texas DPS (known as the DMV in other states) recently to renew my driver’s license. Well, I didn’t HAVE to go, but I wanted a new picture as my previous one had an unfortunate hair situation. 🙂
    My local office has an on-line thing where you can get a sort of appointment time if you check first thing in the morning. I showed up at the physical building at my time and still ended up waiting about an hour, but it could have been worse. The first time I did it, I didn’t realize I needed to bring my social security card.
    When I actually got to the real employee’s desk, he was SUPER kind, which was a nice surprise. Have fun!

  3. Bryan B. says:

    I’ve never kept Liquid Plumber or Drano on hand because it has never once worked when I’ve used it. I have a small hand auger and a small plastic drain snake that’s about 2 feet long that’s great for hair clogs in bathroom drains. The only problem it couldn’t help me with was a horrendous clog below my garbage disposal that required some disassembly to resolve and eventually needed professional attention because heat had warped the pipes.

    I think I’m going to have to renew my license in person later this year and I’m dreading it.

  4. Bryan B. says:

    Your Voyager return science fiction idea was at least partially addressed in the movie Starman (which I caught on a movie channel free preview a few weeks ago). An alien on another planet retrieved a gold pressed record from one of the Voyager probes and brought it back to Earth.

  5. grace says:

    Here’s to your mom. Surely, she’s been smiling from beyond the veil for the last how many years that you’ve provided something for people to read everyday?! (Of course, she also gives you permission to quit anytime you want — although, selfishly, we’d all hate that).

  6. Ricardo Perry says:

    A good mother is the first person you love and will always be the one who loves you the most.
    To your mom.

  7. Ricardo Perry says:

    Star Trek: the motion picture tried the Voyager story.
    I thought it was a great idea. Unfortunately, the script and the movie failed to make a great idea into a good movie.
    But.. if the Star Trek franchise tried it again, i would def watch.

  8. Ben W. says:

    In honor of your mom, today I read some excerpts from The Portable Abraham Lincoln (a collection of his writings), including the Gettysburg Address, his “House Divided” speech, and his First and Second Inaugural Addresses. Hopefully she would have approved.

  9. Bizarro Big Tex says:

    I remember when the City Place development was announced. It was originally to feature two mirror image towers, one on each side of US 75, with a skybridge walkway connecting them over the freeway. The Texas brothers behind 7-11 were the driving force and money funding the project and planned to headquarter their company there. Well, they got over-extended, had to sell pretty much everything (including 7-11) and only one tower got built. Amazing to think about what it could have been.

    In honor of your mom, I am re-reading Song of Roland (no, not in the original French). Loved that piece of literature growing up.

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