Your Bag of Nothing for Monday, March 31, 2025

  • My best friend in college, the namesake of DaughterGeeding, and I roomed together for a year in an off-campus apartment. We played a lot of Madden football on the PlayStation, and what you see above is the record board we kept. I miss that dude so much. Friendships like that are rare, and I’ve learned as an adult that making new friends is a hell of a challenge, especially the older you get. Trust me, I’m putting myself out there and trying, but I seriously wonder if I’m capable of making another friend as an adult. It seems I bore every new person I meet and don’t leave a good enough impression that they are willing to stay in touch. Everyone already has their own friend groups and is set in their ways. Perhaps I need to focus my energy on other things.
  • The mother of my best friend in college created a scholarship in his name and I’m grateful she appointed me and his closest college friends as trustees. Scholarship application submissions were due last Friday. For the last two years, we’ve allowed applicants to submit a video. I’m happy to report that this year we finally have a video submission. I manage the scholarship website. It’s entertaining looking at the timestamp of each submission. It’s not uncommon to see them turned in hours and even minutes before the deadline. That’s a deciding factor for some of us. For instance, one applicant submitted their application at the end of January. That’s darn impressive.
  • I used AI to make a slight CSS coding modification to this blog. There should now be a bit more space between bullet points. Hopefully, it looks less cluttered and easier to read.
  • I think there are certain things that only I do as a father that my kids have picked up on. For one, I give forehead kisses, especially at bedtime. That goes back to kissing my father goodnight. As I grew older in my teenage years, I became a bit uncomfortable kissing my dad on the lips, but I didn’t want to stop or say anything about it. So, I defaulted to the forehead kiss. DaughterGeeding has started to pull away from them. As much as I want to grab her and tell her that I’m her daddy and I get to do that, I’m going to respect her boundaries. In the meantime, I’m going to cherish giving them to BoyGeeding as much as I still can.
    • BoyGeeding stays over more than his sister. Sometimes when his time is up and his mother picks him up, I get teary-eyed, and he might even hear a little shake-voice as I tell him, “I miss you already.”  Last Friday, his mother was running behind, and he gave me the heads up. I gave him a half-smile, and he mimed a few tears falling down his cheeks and did a tiny imitation of me saying that phrase. That little bit of jovial love hit me in the feels.
  • BoyGeeding had a chess tournament this past Saturday, and it was at this interesting-looking school in Arlington.
  • Despite three rounds of antibiotics, I still have a lingering upper respiratory infection.
  • I need to give a detailed update on my car. The good news is that there’s nothing negative to report. It’s just a fun car to drive, and I love no longer having range anxiety. And, the way things are looking with this Trump economy, I bought at the right time.
  • I’ve always been a fan of magic and lately have dabbled in it. BoyGeeding likes it because his friends at school can’t figure out how he’s pulling off some of his tricks. Yesterday, I learned that there’s a video recording app some magicians use that traces their volunteers and audiences’ eye movements to see what they are focusing on at certain points of the illusion they are pulling off. I guess it’s not too dissimilar to an athlete watching tape of their swing, throw, and other movements.
  • Here’s a new term – BoomeraskingNot boomer as in “OK boomer” — think of it more like a conversational boomerang, where you constantly bring the focus back to yourself.
      • It’s when someone feigns interest by asking a question but doesn’t really pay attention to the answer. Instead, they use it as a way to springboard into their own story or anecdote. It’s a ruse to make someone self-serving and egocentric pretend they’re really a good listener.
  • I’m sure this news surprises no one – Why plans are already in motion for a Trump third term – no matter what the law says
    • Other legal scholars have dismissed the idea of running for a third term as impossible, but for Trump’s most ardent supporters, constitutional roadblocks have rarely been a concern. In fact, the mere suggestion that he might seek to extend his grip on power has already energised his base. And there is little political opposition in sight.
  • The Yankees are using a newly designed torpedo bat, and some are crying foul.

 

 

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Your Bag of Nothing for Friday, March 28, 2025

  • Consider this your daily reminder to take your meds, stay hydrated, stretch, and keep your OPSEC clean

 

  • Just when I thought this administration could be more irresponsible and incompetent, Pete Hegstef tells me to hold his beer. Here’s the direct link to the article. Heads should roll, but there’s a lack of integrity, and it all starts from the top.

 

 

 

  • Some children in West Texas are in the hospital with signs of liver damage from excessive Vitamin A. RFK Jr pushed it as a miracle cure for measles.Cod liver oil contains preformed Vitamin A. RFK Jr recently falsely claimed it wasn’t toxic because it was “food.”

    Vitamin A doesn’t prevent measles infection. If only we had a decade’s proven approach from the Sixties to provide their children instead of cod liver oil.

 

  • I think the American economy will be in dire straits at the end of the summer after all those federal workers lose their jobs and are unable to find another decent one because the job applicant market is flooded. By then, we’ll get an idea of the damage all the cancelled programs, contracts, grants, and slashed funding have caused. It’s not just going to hit big population centers; the rural community will also be hit hard.

 

  • Whatever happened to the five-things  DOGE emails?

 

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Your Bag of Nothing for Wednesday, March 26, 2025

  • There is so much I want to say about the Signal group chat debacle, and I hope I can do it constructively.
    • For one, if this had occurred under a Democrat-led administration, I would be even more disappointed than I am now with the current top leadership of the U.S. government appointed by this new administration. I guess I was more than emotionally let down, I was downright disappointed.
    • If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s hypocrisy. There are plenty of recorded interviews and speeches by all the members included in the group chat criticizing either Hillary Clinton or the Biden Administration for the acts they are most certainly guilty of. No one stands by their word anymore.
    • In most cases involving such incidents, when something goes wrong, there are typically gray areas to consider and some room for interpretation. However, in this particular case, there is absolutely no ambiguity.
    • Is it possible that not a single person noticed an unauthorized individual in the group chat, especially given the sensitive nature of the topic being discussed? The Atlantic editor left the group chat. Anytime someone leaves the chat in Signal, all parties are notified. Not a single one of them noticed someone shouldn’t have been there? And yes, I took the time to verify if the app does indeed work that way.
    • Am I surprised something like this happened? How could anyone not see some debacle coming when you put this guy in charge of our military?
    • And this is only what they’ve been caught doing. Imagine what else they’ve got going on in Signal and other non-secure apps.
    • How can the rest of the rank-and-file military members look at this incident and have any faith in their leadership or any sense of accountability for their own actions if the top brass breaks the law and endangers troops in such a reckless, casual way?
    • And to think this article was published just one month ago.
    • Nothing will come of this. There is no such thing as accountability anymore; with this administration, it’s all about loyalty. Loyalty is all that matters to this president. So, I guess I  shouldn’t get worked up about any of this.
    • Oh boy.

  • I don’t recall ever coming across the name “Mendy” until yesterday. Oddly enough, two blonde women with that name liked my Match.com dating profile. One lives in Denton, the other lives in Terrell,  and they are only a year apart.
  • I know there’s a legal distinction, but DWI rolls off the tongue much better than DUI.
  • Florida debates lifting some child labor laws to fill jobs vacated by undocumented immigrants
    • The state’s legislature on Tuesday advanced a bill that would loosen child labor laws, allowing children as young as 14 years old to work overnight shifts. If the new law is passed, teenagers would be able to work overnight jobs on school days. They are currently prevented from working earlier than 6:30 am or later than 11 pm per state law.
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Your Bag of Nothing for Monday, March 24, 2025

  • That second photo of Tracy Wolfson is so misleading. She’s wearing heels, which throws the comparison way off. Is it too much for me to ask the article’s author to include Wolfson’s height? In case you are wondering, my research department says Tracy Wolfson is 5 feet 2 inches tall.

 

  • The world has been without Rick Moranis for WAY too long. He look great at 71. Glad he came out from shying away the public and hope it’s a step towards a return to acting. Thank you, Cinema Relics, ! I don’t know how you did it, but thanks!

 

 

  • It’s funny to see old Geico commercials air during the NCAA tournament. They are so old that the vertical standard definition bars appear. All that for a little piggy. I haven’t cheered Duke on so heavily in a while.

 

  • I got my first taste of Canva this weekend. It reminds me a lot of Google’s old photo and video tool, Picasa. It’s crazy what you can create with your own pictures and videos. I put a tiny little something together for my church, and they were blown away. Huh, bringing up Picasa reminded me how much I used to use Google Reader.

 

 

  • The Longhorns have hired a new men’s basketball coach. He may be the only active coach in college or the pros to have been a guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

 

 

  • There’s a new Medal of Honor museum in Arlington. As if the Medal of Honor recipients haven’t endured enough torture, they had to sit through Lee Greenwood.

    Those in attendance included former President George W. Bush, Gov. Greg Abbott, U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott and singer Lee Greenwood, but none of those big names owned the spotlight.The night celebrated the more than 3,500 recipients of the Medal of Honor, America’s highest military decoration for valor in combat, whose names are engraved in the 100,000-square-foot museum.

    Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but I took exception to this statement as I count six; and I’m using the U.S. Department of Defense’s website as my source: “The museum stands out from the surrounding stadiums. The grey obelisk seems to float over the neighboring lake and AT&T Way, supported by five pillars representing the five branches of the military.

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