Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, March 12, 2024

  • I’m usually concerned about getting up and running the first Monday after the change to daylight saving time, that I’d be dragging or it takes a few days to get adjusted. But for some reason, I wake up more alert and refreshed. Maybe I’m getting too much sleep.
  • Do people use iPads anymore? In the future, I bet regular consumers won’t use or purchase them, but we’ll see them used in all sorts of ways in business. I don’t mind at all using them to fill out paperwork in the waiting room at a doctor’s office. I hear all the major airlines use them to replace physically bulky user manuals.
  • It seems like all the Brits are turning on Prince William. Sources to BagOfNothing tell us Kate and William haven’t lived together for a while. She lives in Windsor close to her parents. He lives in Kensington Palace and Amner Hall. That’s about a 40-minute drive in good traffic.
  • I had a dinner date last night with someone I’ve been texting with for a couple of weeks. She was one impressive woman, incredibly smart, compassionate, and resilient. Her profile pics looked great, but she was much prettier than I expected, definitely the prettiest woman in the room. I just wish the waiter would have gotten my order right and the atmosphere wasn’t so loud. I’m not good at this stuff, but I hope to get to know her better. But, I also know she’s pressed for time.
  • I’ve been on a bagel kick lately. I’ve played around with both whipped and non-whipped cream cheese that comes in a tub. The last time I was grocery shopping, I noticed that the cream cheese that comes in a block was only $0.99, so I bought a couple. I provide all that context just to let you know I learned that while both products are cream cheese, the block is much denser. I thought the non-whipped tub variety was exactly the same as the block but they came in two forms to access easier to spread or help with measuring when it serves as an ingredient. The tubbed variety has a slightly higher water content which makes it spread more easily.
  • I ran across the photo at the top of this post yesterday. It’s of Civil War veteran Jacob Miller. As you can probably guess, he was shot in between the eyes. You can read about him here and here, but here are some random details that caught my attention.
    • “At last, I became conscious and raised up in a sitting position. Then I began to feel my wound,” Miller recalled. “I found my left eye out of its place and tried to place it back, but I had to move the crushed bone back as together as near together as I could first. Then I got the eye in its proper place. I then bandaged the eye the best I could with my bandana.”
    • Fearful of being taken prisoner by the Confederates, he set out on a 15-mile journey to Chattanooga. Miller could only see a few feet ahead of him by holding open the lids of the swollen eye. Miller managed to stumble along, but on the way, he ran into a Confederate soldier who was out front scouting the lines and the rebel soldier took mercy on Miller’s plight. He gave Miller a drink of water from his canteen and pointed in the direction of the Union Line.
    • Miller passed out along the roadside and was picked up by a man on horseback 
    • Surgeons were sure Miller would die if the bullet were removed, so they left it in until he reached home. Once in Logansport, doctors Graham Fitch and Henry Coleman successfully removed about one-third of the musket ball. “Seventeen years after I was wounded a buck shot dropped out of my wound and thirty-one years after two pieces of lead came out,” Miller said.
    • “Some ask how it is I can describe so minutely my getting wounded and getting off the battlefield after so many years My answer is I have an everyday reminder of it in my wound and constant pain in the head, never free of it while not asleep. The whole scene is imprinted on my brain as with a steel engraving. I haven’t written this to complain of anyone being at fault for my misfortune and suffering all these years, the government is good to me and gives me $40.00 per month pension.”
    • His fellow war veterans nicknamed him “Center Shot”
    • Jacob Miller died Jan. 13, 1917, at the age of 88. 

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