Bag of Randomness
Monday, November 3, 2025

A friend of mine will be turning 50 this week, but his wife threw him a surprise birthday party that I attended. He’s lost over 100 pounds over the last year and a half. No one is a bigger Star Wars fanatic, and all his Star Wars t-shirts are too baggy on him. So, his wife asked everyone to gift him a large men’s Star Wars shirt, hoping he would be gifted 50 in total. Gosh, that’s sweet.

I absolutely love how Jeep leaned into this article written about them without exactly embracing it.

Believe it or not, Orson Welles’ ashes are buried in an old well.

Wellsnet.com

That was a crazy World Series game seven to watch. My heart goes out to Blue Jay fans.

Interesting, the Longhorns didn’t play one game in Austin in all of October; their last game in Austin was September 20. I just kinda assumed all teams would play at least one game in their home stadium over the course of a whole month.

Here’s Mikey Gow’s Wikipedia page. This is how he learned to throw with both arms.

At age 9, an injury prevented Gow from using his right arm for almost a year. His mother suggested that he try throwing with his left arm. He developed the use of his left arm but he claims that his right arm is stronger and more fluid.

Speaking of quarterbacks, I researched Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia. I was surprised to learn he’s 26 and playing in his sixth season of college football. I understand there’s a COVID exception rule, but that just doesn’t seem right.

A collection of Halloween stuff that caught my attention.

We have progressed from data collection to data analysis.

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— Jess Calarco (@jessicacalarco.com) October 31, 2025 at 7:31 PM

Nice idea to break the monotony of office work.

Remember them from Sesame Street?

I love it when a community comes together.

Football in November, per classic NFL Films.

Football field art, in case you were wondering how it was done.

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Monday, November 3, 2025

Bag of Randomness
Halloween 2025

Today is Halloween. So, I guess it’s officially Christmas at midnight? Sometimes it’s hard to tell it’s Thanksgiving with all the Christmas commercials.

If you only knew the contempt I had when someone put a popcorn ball in my trick-or-treat bag.

If you’re a kid of the Eighties, I’d recommend the Colin Hanks documentary John Candy: I Like Me. Gosh, that’s a great title. But I never heard this detail about his death until the documentary, but it’s mentioned in this article as well. Definitely a much better way to be found dead than what’s rumored about David Carradine.

I’m really not liking this Skydance Media merger. Stephen Colbert is a part of my nightly routine, and his show is being taken off the air. And ever since Bari Weiss was tapped to be the CBS News editor-in-chief, they have been ousting some of my favorite correspondents. I’ve been a big fan of the revamped CBS Evening News, especially with John Dickerson. But he will be exiting the network at the end of the year. I also adore the lovely Michelle Miller, but she has been shown the door. Her partner, Dana Jacobson, was also booted, and word has it that Gayle King (whom I’ve always been lukewarm for) will be gone next year. CBS Sunday Morning  and 60 Minutes are Sunday bookmarks for me, and I’m scared they will be revamped. If Scott Pelley and Bill Whitataker leave, I know for sure the news division is done for.

Camouflaging cars and swapping license plates: How agents make immigration arrests

The secret lab where America tests its nuclear weapons

In the middle of a dry lakebed northwest of Las Vegas sits a lone section of a bridge, its steel girders bent like spaghetti. Nearby are other oddities — a massive bank vault with no bank for miles; the entrance of an underground parking garage with no lower levels; and domes of rebar and concrete that have been ripped open, leaving their insides exposed to the desert sky.

Great couple’s costume if you know a bit of baseball history.

Dallas Cowboys talk on an NBA set. I didn’t know Shaq was a fan, but Chuck ain’t wrong.

Personally, I think this is better than The Great Pumpkin.

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Halloween 2025

Bag of Randomness
Monday, October 27, 2025

Yup, still unemployed. Hopefully, something will materialize soon. I’ve re-evaluated my process and made some tweaks. Hopefully, my luck will change soon. I’ve been working on a few things to improve my skillset; I just haven’t been sitting around. There is a certain type of “education” one receives by earnestly looking for employment for four months.

I’d bet good money that Dak Prescott will reach out to Cam Skattebo since he had the exact same compound fracture. That’s the kind of man that he is, a class act. I just wish he had a defense. And, a better running game.

I heard that Times Square got its name because the paper used to be located there. Feel free to fact-check that.

The last two times the exterior of the White House, and I’m speaking of the Executive Mansion, not any wings, was in 1829 and 1948. Andrew Jackson added the north portico to keep visitors from getting wet on rainy days. It was something Thomas Jefferson had suggested for improvement when he lived there. Congress appropriated $24,729, approximately $850,000 today. Surprisingly, I found out Truman paid for the balcony himself, and this was two years before the inside was gutted out, which I wrote about in my previous post. He didn’t bother asking the Republican Congress for the $16,000 to fund the project, since “no” was a foregone conclusion. Today, that would be about $266,000. He came up with the cash by making cuts to the president’s household account.

Truman had two main reasons for adding the balcony, other than it being a personal perk for whoever was living there. First, there was the design element. “Design experts” said adding a balcony would make the mansion’s south front more architecturally pleasing, that the long vertical lines of the original six stone columns (which survived the Brits burning the place in 1814) look better when broken up by a horizontal line across the middle, such as a balcony.

Then there were the so-called “savings.” Back before air conditioning, that grand old mansion in D.C. basically turned into a sauna every summer. The solution? Slap some ugly canvas awnings over the first-floor windows for some shade and hope for a breeze. They didn’t just look bad; they collected enough dust to start their own ecosystem. Come fall, the crew would haul them down, find them filthy beyond redemption, and toss them. Meaning every single summer, taxpayers got the joy of buying a fresh batch. By 1946, that little ritual was running Uncle Sam twenty grand a decade, about $305,000 today. So yeah, adding a balcony wasn’t just about a nice view; it was a money-saver that paid for itself.

Here’s a photo of Truman reading on the balcony. I noticed the railings are white in the photo, but I also know that the railings are black today. During Reagan’s term in 1985, they were replaced with a sturdier black version we see today.

President Harry S. Truman and First Lady Bess Truman read books on the “Truman balcony” of White House.

So, that means this photo was taken sometime during Reagan’s first term.

WASHINGTON – UNDATED: (NO U.S. TABLOID SALES) U.S. President Ronald and wife Nancy Reagan stand on the Truman balcony of the White House in 1982 in Washington, DC. Born the son of a shoe salesman in small-town Illinois, Ronald Reagan moved from being an actor to governor of California, to the 40th President of the United States. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)

And that this photo was taken sometime on or after 1985. And yes, I know the caption tells you the exact date.

8/1/1985 President Reagan having lunch with George Bush to discuss the budget on the Truman Balcony

Truman died during Nixon’s term in 1972. He famously hated Nixon. As a matter of fact, Truman told his biographer that Nixon was one of only two people in his whole political career that he actually hated. In case you were wondering, the other was Senator Joseph McCarthy. Yet, you’ll see that Nixon never took it personally and extended grace in a letter to Bess Truman after Harry’s funeral, expressing thanks for the balcony, and in this 1986 letter to Truman’s grand nephew and namesake. I also find it interesting that the personalized stationery says “Richard Nixon”, leaving out any titles or gimmicks like “From The Desk Of”.

 

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Monday, October 27, 2025

Bag of Randomness
Friday, October 24, 2025

As you can imagine, as a lover of presidential history, I have some thoughts about the total destruction of the East Wing of the White House. Let’s first consider that the East Room and the East Wing are two different things, and the East Room hasn’t been touched. Compared to the Residence and the West Wing, the East Wing really wasn’t all that regal and basically housed the theater, the calligraphy office, and the staff for the First Lady. It certainly wasn’t in any state of disrepair, but it was still part of the People’s House, and tearing it down after stating the new ballroom ‘wouldn’t interfere with the current building’ is disingenuous.

On a bit of a lighter note, I can’t help but think what the construction foreman thought when he was first instructed to tear it down. Not to mention, I’m sure the excavator operator triple-checked with the foreman that he was indeed instructed and that it was OK to demolish an entire wing of the White House. I wonder if the demolition for the crew felt weird, that they were literally demolishing a wing of the White House, or if it felt like any other demolition job.

I also don’t like the idea of how it will dwarf the Executive Mansion. If possible, I would have put a lot of it underground, but there may already be tunnels there.

I wonder what happened to everything inside the East Wing and where they are dumping the debris. I watched a special about the major renovation of the Residence when Truman was President, and the debris was dumped near a local baseball field. Over the decades, some folks became aware of it and gathered what they consider souvenirs. I’m sure it’s all being dumped like regular debris, but that’s a lost opportunity. People would pay some big bucks just for a scrap of wood. Or, what about a section of the theater seats? Those would go for top dollar. Here’s what the inside of the Residence looked like during President Truman’s term. During WWII, he didn’t want the White House to look in disrepair, so the inside was gutted as it was falling apart.

A bulldozer removing debris from the inside of the White House, during the renovation of the building. The bulldozer had to be taken apart and moved into the White House in pieces, as President Harry S. Truman would not allow a hole large enough to fit the bulldozer to be cut into the walls of the White House. Credit: Photographer: Abbie Rowe National Park Service
Window openings provide bursts of light into the cavernous interior of the White House, supported by temporary steel bracing. Concrete underpinnings for the walls allow earth-moving equipment to dig a new basement on May 17, 1950. Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum/NARA

Not sure having your brand associated with destroying the White House is the best look.

Of all things for a sitting president to prioritize, geeze.

Leavitt: At this moment in time, the ballroom is really the president’s main priority.

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— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) October 23, 2025 at 1:05 PM

This photograph of the construction of the East Terrace was taken in 1902, during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration.

Here’s the Rose Garden during President Theodore Roosevelt’s term.

Three high schoolers founded a book club that reads some of the country’s most frequently banned books after a state law removing books with sexual content was signed in 2023. Two years later, many of the books have been reshelved and parts of the law can’t be enforced.

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— NPR (@npr.org) October 20, 2025 at 10:10 AM

My former manager from the company that first laid me off in February sent me this yesterday. Here’s the announcement from the Small Business Administration Administrator.

At the 30-second mark, you’ll see why he’s driving so slowly.

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Friday, October 24, 2025