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• DaughterGeeding’s school’s softball team had a game on Friday night. She got two at bats, but didn’t get a hit. Buy hey, she’s a sixth-grader and was facing a high school pitcher. I’d be pretty darn intimidated as a sixth-grader having to compete against a high schooler. In her first game, several weeks ago, she was playing left field, and a pop fly was hit to her. She made a mistake I made when I first played the outfield in church league softball.  I took a step forward, misjudged the ball, and it went over my head. I never had a chance to redeem myself. However, on Friday night, DaughterGeeding was playing right field. We’ve been practicing catching pop flies. This time, instinctively, she took a step back, waited and adjusted for the ball, put her glove in the air, and caught the ball for the final out of that inning. I was so happy and proud of her.
• DaughterGeeding’s mother does not feel comfortable with me sitting or interacting with her at our children’s games or any event, so I keep my distance. When our daughter caught that out, I wish I could have celebrated with her. I wanted to look at her and smile, acknowledging our daughter’s achievement. But, my ex currently has a lawsuit against me. I fear doing the slightest thing to offend her, and to have to pay for more litigation to defend myself and my rights as a father. It sucks having to fight the instinct of turning me head and smiling at her to celebrate our daughter.
• Our son had a soccer game the following day. DaughterGeeding asked if we could bring our two dogs, and I said sure. Somehow, the ex sat near me; I guess to give the dogs some attention. At one point, she made some small talk as we watched our son, and it felt good, in a weird way, that all of us (dogs included) were doing something together. The family she chose to live with when she first left me has a child that was playing in our son’s game. I have no idea what she’s told them or what they think or know of me. I’m guessing they believe I’m some type of abuser, as she and her family have falsely told others. Their kids who were not playing in the game took interest in our dogs. They had a ton of questions and started to play with them and then asked me if they could take them for a walk. I told them I’d be happy to walk around the field with them as they hold the dogs’ leashes tightly. The parents seemed just fine with it, and we all had a delightful walk.
• I hate it when I’m out shopping and I see something I think my ex will like. That instinct of spotting things I think she would like and gifting it to her is still there. I was the type of husband that would randomly and often buy my wife gifts. I wish there was a way I could easily cure myself of thinking about doing that. At this stage, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to do that with the two girls I’m still “getting to know” better. One of them is really into me. Normally, I’m not good at picking up hints, but she texts every morning when she wakes up and before she goes to bed, as well as throughout the day. She also sends photos of herself and likes to call me handsome. She’s a lot of things I wish my ex was, like affirming, flirtations, and complimentary. But I’m not there yet and don’t want to lead anyone on.
• Netflix has a show called Trivia Quest that I really enjoyed playing with the kids over the weekend. It’s an animated trivia show in which you use your remote to select one of four answers.
• I saw some guy named Jerrod Carmichael was trending on Twitter. It turns out he was hosting SNL and everyone loved his monologue. It made me question if he was a guy that totally exceeded expectations or if it was a publicity stunt.
• During halftime of the North Carolina and Duke game, we made a Blizzard run and took the dogs. To our surprise, the drive-thru attendant spotted our dogs and asked if she could give each dog a “pup cup”. I said sure, even though I had no idea what they were. But each dog got a small tiny cup of Dairy Queen soft serve ice cream topped with a dog treat.
• Guard donkeys sent to protect Northern Colorado cow herd from wolves

I'm fascinated by this. I've only seen prosthetics that fit on the outside of the body, but this one appears to come through the skin. pic.twitter.com/KMSEvDDIXs

— BagOfNothing (@bagofnothing) April 1, 2022

pic.twitter.com/sMqzP28G7w

— Public Freakout (@Publicfreakou1) April 2, 2022

• I received that in the mail yesterday. That’s a unique way to drum up the funeral business.
• I like April Fool’s Day, but have grown a little tired of how businesses have tried to capitalize on it. Years ago, I tried to talk LiberallyLean into posting on each other’s blog as an April Fool’s bit. For instance, if you would have visited his blog, it would be a Bag of Randomness post by me, and you’d see his Random Thoughts here.
• DaughterGeeding’s teacher emailed her parents, letting us know she helped clean up some spilled Cheerios without being asked. She a softball game scheduled this evening.
• When the world-wide-web started to become mainstream, I got a kick out how the NCAA promoted FinalFour.net during March Madness. I just checked to see if the website is still active. It’s not, and neither is FinalFour.com.
• Yesterday, The Hardline talked about the 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping, which was the first I’ve heard of it.
  • The 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping was the abduction of a school bus driver and 26 children, ages 5 to 14, in Chowchilla, California, United States, on July 15, 1976. The kidnappers held their captives in a box truck buried in a quarry in Livermore, California, intending to demand a ransom for their return. After about 16 hours underground, the driver and children dug themselves out and escaped. The quarry owner’s son, Frederick Newhall Woods IV, and two of his friends, brothers James and Richard Schoenfeld, were convicted of the crime. Each received a sentence of life with possibility of parole. By 2015, both Schoenfelds had been paroled. On March 29, 2022, Woods was recommended to be released on parole.
• DC Police Find 5 Fetuses in Home of Anti-Abortion Activist Lauren Handy
• Texas power grid, energy sectors facing elevated Russian cyber threats during war in Ukraine
• Texas A&M offers Ukrainian students full tuition and room and board – Texas A&M University System announced it would pay up to $25,000 in tuition, fees and living expenses for its Ukrainian students. So far 14 eligible students have been identified and more are expected.
• He Teaches Police “Witching” To Find Corpses. Experts Are Alarmed. – At the National Forensic Academy, crime scene investigators learn to dowse for the dead, though it’s not backed by science.
  • Vass, a 62-year-old wearing a blue CSI-Death Valley cap, is teaching his students witching, aka divining or dowsing. It’s a centuries-old practice in which a person walks a straight line holding two bent pieces of metal, or sometimes a Y-shaped twig, until they signal the presence of whatever is being sought underground. Water witches dowse for groundwater. Others use divining rods for seeking precious gems, oil, gold. Or, as in this case, human remains.Dowsing for the dead is not exactly endorsed by scientists or forensic experts. But it is a highlight for some students attending the National Forensic Academy, a 10-week training program sponsored by the University of Tennessee. Since the academy’s inaugural class 20 years ago, school administrators say, more than 1,200 crime scene investigators from agencies in 49 U.S. states and five foreign countries have attended the program, which currently costs students $12,000.
• Jada Pinkett Smith Seemingly Laughed After Will Smith Slapped Chris Rock At The Oscars, According To New Footage Taken From The Audience – The footage surfaced online shortly after it was revealed that Will was asked to leave the Oscars following the incident, but that he “refused.”
  • In case you don’t want to read through the fluff in the article, here’s a direct link to the Instagram video.
  • In the video, filmed by someone sitting behind the couple, Jada leans forward in a motion that suggests she’s laughing after Will walks away from Chris, who can be seen and heard joking about the slap.
• Gosh, he’s still quick.

Here’s Mike Tyson showing two dudes how to properly set up and throw an uppercut. At about fifteen seconds in, it looked like 1986 there again for a fleeting moment …

pic.twitter.com/1iBu8jwhgX

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) March 31, 2022

• Streaming service sites with old sitcoms (e.g. Seinfeld, Friends, The Office) should offer an option where they randomly select an episode for you as if you are watching a random episode in syndication. Sometimes I don’t want total control on choice. I know Netflix offers selecting a random show or movie at random, but I’m talking about more specific randomization.
• Why hasn’t a streaming service made a playlist an option? I know you can select shows for a watch list, but I’m talking about a playlist.
• Dyson’s bizarre new headphones have a built-in air purifier
• There were two answers for Wordle yesterday, though I think the reasoning is too PC.
  • For some players, the winning word was HARRY, but for others it was STOVE. In an email response to Mashable, Jordan Cohen, New York Times executive director of communications, confirmed that the answer had indeed been changed. “In an effort to make the puzzle more accessible, we are reviewing the solutions and removing obscure or potentially insensitive words over time. HARRY is an example of an obscure word.” According to Dictionary.com, harry means, “to harass, agitate, or trouble by or as if by repeated attacks; beleaguer.”This isn’t the first time Wordle has had two different answers. In February, Wordle 241 caused an uproar when the answer was changed from AGORA to AROMA.
• I would prefer my son to wait until seventh grade, or possible, his freshman year. I’m scared to hear what his mother thinks. – Americans love football, but differ on whether kids should play – About 50% now think the sport is inappropriate for youth
• 30 Company Secrets Spilled By Ex-Employees That People Are Not Supposed To Know
• Researchers Used a Decommissioned Satellite to Broadcast Hacker TV – What happens when an old satellite is no longer in use but can still broadcast? Hacker shenanigans, that’s what.
• Facebook-hired firm promoted fake TikTok challenge to generate bad press 
  – Targeted Victory receives hundreds of millions from Republican campaigns.
  • Have you heard about that viral “devious licks” TikTok challenge? That’s the one where kids were reportedly filming TikTok videos where they would vandalize school property. How about the self-explanatory “Slap a Teacher” TikTok challenge? If you’re familiar with these stories that paint a very negative picture of the viral video app, there’s a chance you learned about it from a Republican marketing firm that Facebook hired to generate bad press for TikTok. According to a new report from Taylor Lorenz in the Washington Post, Facebook hired Targeted Victory, a marketing firm that was launched by former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s 2012 digital director, to orchestrate and carry out an anti-TikTok campaign.
• Sibling rivalry – Woman celebrating 105th birthday hopes to outlive sister who died at 108
• I’m not comfortable with people vaping in public, so this is something I could get behind – Houston City Council passes law banning vaping, smoking e-cigarettes in public spaces
• I found this on the Texas subreddit. This guy had bad luck. He died three months after the armistice. His cause of death, acute diarrhea.
  
• Imagine if this was your morning commute.

https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1509260563087609857

• Nope

https://twitter.com/scienceClub01/status/1509184050484948997

https://twitter.com/All_Things_Mavs/status/1509334142164643842

• I find it interesting the first vacation destination my ex is taking our kids just happens to be the city in which one of the men she committed emotional infidelity with lives. You can’t make this stuff up. It’s also interesting her sister and her husband are tagging along for the trip. She’s an adult, she doesn’t need help. Most likely, they’ll watch the children one evening when the ex goes out and rekindles her relationship with the man she couldn’t help but reach out to when married to me and who she had her first sexual encounter with.
• Some of the best advice I received regarding my ex is to look at her as nothing but a glorified baby sitter I pay to watch the kids because there’s no way she can love or care for the children better than me. It’s one of the best ways to justify the child support she’s receiving, though it doesn’t appear she’s spending most of it on them. Most recently, I discovered for weeks our son only had two pairs of socks and she wouldn’t even buy our daughter basic softball equipment.
• In the latest trailer for the Top Gun sequel, Maverick, we learn that Val Kilmer’s character, Iceman, has made the rank of admiral.
• Maverick comes out May 27. The Obi Wan series on Disney+ drops on May 25. That will be the most impactful two days in pop culture cinema history, at the least in terms of the continuation of two major icons.
• Texas among most stressed states in U.S., study says
• This should be a fun and interesting thing to watch, at least for me – ‘Benjamin Franklin’ by Ken Burns premieres April 4 on PBS,
  • Ken Burns’s four-hour documentary, Benjamin Franklin, explores the revolutionary life of one of the 18th century’s most consequential figures, whose work and words unlocked the mystery of electricity and helped create the United States.
• Exxon is mining bitcoin in North Dakota as part of its plan to slash emissions
• Formers Cowboys QB and current Cowboys radio analyst Babe Laufenberg lost his son to cancer, I think three or four years ago. Yesterday, he tweeted he lost his older brother (Stanford grad. Loyola Law School) to some “demons”.
• Jim Thome’s wife dominating Twitter after canceling Browns season tickets over Deshaun Watson trade – The former Cleveland news anchor and Miss Ohio has replied to both supporters and haters after dropping the family’s season tickets
  • Andrea Thome, the wife of Baseball Hall of Famer Jim Thome, has been fighting Twitter trolls ever since she announced her family was canceling their Cleveland Browns season tickets as a form of protest against the Deshaun Watson trade. She’s taking out the bad-faith actors in the best way possible: Never losing her cool, answering any questions or doubts they may have and fact-checking them at every turn.