Your Bag of Nothing for Friday, March 21, 2025

 

 

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Your Bag of Nothing for Wednesday, March

  • The speaker in this TED Talk states that he became a soccer referee to learn how not to take things personally. I think French is his native language. He asked a question that stuck with me for a while: Would you rather be right or happy? If you don’t have time to listen to the whole seventeen and a half minute speech, please listen to the last 82 seconds because he really sticks the landing.I also thought this fact was quite interesting.I’ve never seen anyone post an image of a YouTube transcript. Surely, I can’t be the first. But it’s a first for me, and I think it’s something you might see a lot in future postings. As for that data being correct, you be the judge.

 

  • Last night, PBS had a special on the first flight attendants. I never really thought about it before, but these women were responsible for most likely the first experience of a person being sealed inside a steel tube at 35,000 feet, which can be a pretty stressful experience. The show also had a recording of the captain telling the passengers on the loudspeaker to change their watches to the new time zone. That’s something young folk don’t realize you had to do, and something older folks totally forgot about since most of our portable time-keeping devices are digital and connected to a wireless network.Today, when men and women are hired as flight attendants, they undergo training. Women in that time period would take classes to learn how to be flight attendants in hopes of being hired. My, how times have changed.

 

  • I wonder if our living former presidents ever just talk about current affairs.

 

  • Food for thought, not trying to send a hidden message, just food for thought:

    “The right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech.” Voltaire

 

 

  • According to my freshman year college roommate, there’s no other movie than The Fugitive I’ve watched the most. With that in mind, here’s a clip related to the film that I’ve never seen in which we get to see Tommy Lee Jones get out of character. Speaking of Tommy Lee Jones. I was listening to a podcast yesterday about the movie Crisom Tide. They discussed how great Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman were in their roles, and then read trivia about actors who passed on these roles. Tommy Lee Jones wasn’t offered any of the roles in Crisom Tide, but they did discuss the entertaining thought of Jones playing the role of the captain. It’s not that Jones would do it better than Hackman; just that it would be interesting to see his portrayal of the character. I concur, sir.

 

  • A lot of folks are eagerly awaiting this sequel. I bet Sandler does it justice, but the public just needs to manage their expectations.

 

  • Because there are no other legislative agendas to focus on?

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Your Bag of Nothing for Tuesday, March 18, 2025

 

 

  • Texas lawmaker files bill that would get rid of Texas Parks and Wildlife
    • State Rep. Pat Curry (R-Waco) filed House Bill 4938, which would transfer the functions of TPWD to other state agencies. The bill would also disburse the funds designated to the department to the agencies that take over those responsibilities. If approved, the bill would take effect on Sept. 1, 2025.

 

  • Imagine the nightmare this is for an 82-year-old to get this DOGE mistake rectified. Unfortunately, I bet he’ll be dead before it gets fixed.

 

  • WWJD?

 

  • A bizarre moment for C-SPAN.

 

  • Long ago, I think I made fun of people who professed the greatness of LastPass. I want to make something abundantly clear: I was wrong; I was the idiot. LastPass is one of the best things you can pay for, and I can’t recommend it enough. I have it on all my devices, and life hasn’t been easier. It’s some of the best money I spend. I also want to make it clear I don’t get a commission or any type of referral benefit. I just want to take ownership of my mistake and share a bit of greatness with others to make my life easier. And they are having a sale on something that I think is of little cost and well worth its value. Peace of mind for two bucks a month. Yup, I just came up with that tagline, call me Don Draper.

 

  • It’s kinda sad that you can’t make a “three-hour tour” joke or reference unless you are over the age of 45.

 

  • One thing I’ll never fully understand about Texas is why we have to play this ridiculous game of selecting an electric provider like you’re in a fantasy football league. (Truth be told, I know the history behind Texas electric deregulation, and our thanks go to the hard work of a loyal reader, but I just want to gripe.) Electric companies (retail electric providers (REPs)) sell electricity to you, such as Gexa, Frontier, 4Change, Express Energy, etc. They don’t generate electricity, maintain power lines, or fix outages. They just buy electricity from power plants and resell it to you, adding in their own fees and gimmicks.The “real” electric companies are “Transmission & Distribution Utilities” (TDUs). These are the companies that actually maintain the power lines and restore outages. In North Texas, that company is Oncor. In Houston, it’s CenterPoint. Other areas have AEP or Texas-New Mexico Power (TNMP). In my case, no matter which Retail Electric Provider I choose, Oncor still delivers the power and maintains the infrastructure. If my power goes out, I call Oncor, NOT the electricity provider. Maybe that’s only weird to me? So, Texans go to PowerToChoose.org (the official website of the Public Utility Commission of Texas) to find a deal on an electric provider or risk getting stuck with whatever their provider decides to charge once their plan expires. For the last 11 months, I’ve procrastinated and just been rolling over on my old plan, not bothering to shop around. Turns out, my current rate is 23.9 cents per kWh.

    Meanwhile, there are three-month plans that are as low as 9.7 cents. I could literally cut my bill by 60%, yet I keep putting it off. Ideally, I’d sign a two or three-year plan and not have to think about this again for a while. But the long-term plans aren’t as competitive, and I don’t want to put a reminder on my calendar and renew every three months like I’m on some kind of weird Columbia House subscription service for electricity. If I log into my provider’s website and look at my renewal options, the lowest they’ll offer me is 20 cents per kWh — which is way higher than what I could get if I just went through PowerToChoose.

    And that’s the trap. So many people just renew with their current company without realizing they can seamlessly switch providers with barely any effort. If you forget or don’t know any better, you’re stuck paying outrageous prices while the energy companies laugh all the way to the bank.I ended up going through ChooseEnergy.com, an energy broker registered with the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT), to find a better deal than I could through PowerToChoose.org. Basically, I just cut my electric bill in half for the next two years. To get this rate, I just have to consume more than 1,000 kWh a month. Easy peasy.

 

 

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