Bag of Randomness for Thursday, September 17, 2020

I saw a sweet-looking Aston Martin convertible in the grocery parking lot and made a fawning comment about it. DaughterGeeding says, “Hey, you know, Ashley’s neighbor just got a new Ferrari.” Me, “Really? That’s cool, where do the live.” DaughterGeeding replied, “Uh, right next to Ashley,” in a non-sarcastic but blatantly obvious manner.

I made an incorrect statement saying we are in the last quarter of 2020. That won’t happen until October. Sheeesh, this year is dragging on, it will never end.

To my handful of Canadian readers, here’s some of BoyGeeding’s homework he did over your lovely country. Two years ago when I posted DaughterGeeding’s homework about your country, y’all were all upset about how our schools make it look like y’all live at the North Pole. Let me assure you I spoke to BoyGeeding about this and told him that y’all don’t make igloos and don’t live buried in snow, that you have warm temperatures like we do in the spring and summer. I also had him taste some of the maple syrup one of you gifted us three years ago when we met for lunch on election day. I vividly remember us speaking about the election and me saying that he’s got nothing to fear, that Americans wouldn’t be stupid enough to put Trump in office. Welp, that’s what I get for doubting my country. Lesson learned.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Anne Frank were both born 1929. Betty White was also born in 1929, but seven years older than that duo.

Christine Brennan of USA TODAY got reamed about her article, Opinion: Big Ten’s decision to play football signals darkest day in conference’s rich history  Everyone on Twitter and their dog had to remind her about Jerry Sandusky and the Michigan State doctor who molested members of the USA women’s gymnastics.

If you are a fan of the Dogs Playing Poker painting, you’ll appreciate yesterday’s The Far Side. Perhaps my favorite pop-culture reference to this magnificent piece of art comes from Cheers:

  • In the TV sitcom Cheers, Sam Malone loves the paintings (in particular one of Dogs Playing Blackjack) while his more sophisticated lover, Diane Chambers, hates them. Sam says that he sees something new every time he looks at it.

I need to watch Broadcast News. I hear it still holds up.

Samuel L. Jackson will teach you to swear in 15 languages if you vote

If 2,500 people take action via his HeadCount website to register for the forthcoming US elections, Jackson has promised to teach them to swear in 15 languages. Visitors to the site can click a button that allows them to register online to vote, check their voting status and find out how and where to vote in the US. The voting action is a partnership with campaigning site Global Citizen.

Priorities – University of Georgia to allow football — but not in-person voting — this fall

Joel Osteen is selling prayer clothes “inspiration cubes” – www.InspirationCube.com. The video on the website is an SNL skit come to life.

I used to be upset at people like Joel Osteen for doing stuff like this, but lately, I’ve become upset at the people dumb enough to purchase one.

Anyone else shocked Jason Sudeikis won’t be doing this? I thought he did an excellent impression of Joe Biden. But Jim Carrey is a master impressionist, so I won’t sell him short.

Lorne Michaels reveals everything about SNL’s 46th season, including the show’s new Biden.

Watch A Train Full Of Cars Get Slowly Can Opener’d Under A Bridge

The end result of this mess is that this train, with cars marked both Norfolk Southern and Canadian Pacific Railway, sustained more than $2 million worth of damage, most probably not in the cheap corrugated metal train car roofs but rather to the cars inside the train:

This woman is killing it at teaching distance-learning to elementary school students. I think I detect a Wisconsin or Minnesotan accent.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Thursday, September 17, 2020

Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, September 16, 2020

It just occurred to me we are in the last quarter of 2020. Thank goodness. But how weird is this concerning local and national sports. Our local baseball club will end up in last place, but the National League and American League championship games and World Series will be played locally. However, our hockey franchise has earned the right to play in the Stanley Cup Finals but won’t play a single game here at home.

As much as I feel over-saturated by Trump, I’d probably listen to the entire nine hours of audio between him and Bob Woodward because I enjoy presidential history so much. We have one of the most highly regarded reporters in history, a man who already instrumental in helping bring down one president, getting another president to speak freely with him.

Woodward did share one cute story on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He mentioned the president would call at random hours. One night his wife answered and the person on the other line asked, “Is Bob there?” She asked, “Who is this?” and he simply replied, “Donald Trump.” There was no White House operator connecting him. It’s a bit like Michael Douglas in The American President trying to order flowers. I’ll be honest, I’m a little surprised he didn’t just say “The president” or “President Trump.” But I wouldn’t be surprised the reason a White House operator didn’t connect him, which is recorded in several of his tapes, was that he was calling from his still unsecured mobile phone.

Woot was selling an HP financial calculator yesterday. Who the heck buys one of those? I can somewhat reason that high school students still need the old TI graphing calculator. But university students or professionals would be the only ones using a financial calculator, and I reason they shouldn’t. If you are a finance professional using a financial calculator instead of some special made app or software, I’d question how professional the professional is.

When I was a finance major, our professors told us to buy the HP version, otherwise professionals wouldn’t take you seriously. I was a rebel and bought the TI version, which I still keep in a desk solely for sentimental reasons. In that rare instance when I want to finance a car I’ll bust it out to see if I can still see if I can work out the calculation correctly, which I cross check from readily available free tools embedded on just about any bank website.

I’m not sure if this is photoshopped or not, but I wouldn’t risk charging my car no matter how safe I was told it was.

Rum produced on Isle of Rum for the first time – A group of friends created Askival Rum after discovering the spirit had never been made on the tiny island.

Bankrupt Chuck E. Cheese Parent Wants to Shred 7 Billion Tickets

Chuck E. Cheese’s parent company asked a bankruptcy court to approve settlements to destroy 7 billion paper Prize Tickets that have built up in the company’s supply chain as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

CEC Entertainment Inc.’s vendors now hold “enough tickets to fill approximately 65 forty-foot cargo shipping containers,” according to CEC’s emergency motion filed Monday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

It will cost $2.28 million to destroy the tickets, or $1 million less than CEC would have paid if the Prize Tickets were cycled through the entire supply chain, James A. Howell, CEC’s Chief Financial Officer, said in a court filing Monday.

The Billionaire Who Wanted To Die Broke . . . Is Now Officially Broke

It took decades, but Chuck Feeney, the former billionaire cofounder of retail giant Duty Free Shoppers has finally given all his money away to charity. He has nothing left now—and he couldn’t be happier.

Hey, somebody grab some paper towels, please!

View post on imgur.com

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, September 14, 2020

 

I put the wrong date up top. But I saw someone linked to this from another site, so if I update the title, the URL will be updated and the link will become broken. So, I’d rather admit to a mistake and avoid any broken links.

One thing I don’t think I’ll ever be on board with or would want to buy – an electric toothbrush. They seem too gimmicky.

I watched Drew Barrymore’s inaugural daytime talk show. It was exactly as you’d imagine it would be. It feels like Josie Grossie is all grown up and on her own. Her show uses technology in which the guest appears to be on set but is only there virtually. It was pulled off flawlessly. The guest even walks on stage and you can’t tell they really aren’t there. There are different kinds of brave. Her, not having any talk show or interviewing experience and starting a show during a pandemic without a studio audience, is a certain type of brave.

Here’s a tiny turtle scaling a wall. Too bad the GIF isn’t long enough for us to see the little fella complete his task.

‘Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ mansion hits Airbnb for $30 a night

It was worth the click just to see what the inside looked lie. Nothing grand, but I had an itch and it was scratched.

Netflix has a new documentary which is supposed to delve into the ‘human side’ of the Challenger disaster. Hey Netflix, please don’t. Shelve it. It’s 2020 and we are only 49 days away from the presidential election. We’re already dealing with a pandemic. The economy is in shambles because of its volatility. Everything is a mess right now. Literally, everything. Our pets’ heads are falling off. I’m sure the documentary is great. No doubt it’s going to pull at our heartstrings. But we can take only so much depressing things at a time.

Barry over at LiberallyLean pointed out this tweet from President Trump and voter fraud. It got me to thinking, if I were a North Carolina resident who voted by mail, how would I verify my ballot was accepted and counted? I found the answer with a simple Google search; they have a website for that, North Carolina Ballottrax. Out of curiosity, I thought I’d see if Texas has something similar. If we do, I couldn’t find in the roughly eight-minute time allowance I allowed myself.

Speaking of Mr. Green, I saw him on CBS11 during what looked like an interview, though it could have been some sort of statement. The tone was much different this time than the last time I saw him interviewed on the news. I believe that was when the Wise County Courthouse had a crabs infestation and Laurie Behringer walked into his office.

Just one observation regarding what I saw. You could tell he was speaking to someone off-camera, but two or three times his eyes diverted to the camera. I was curious if he either felt he needed to speak to the camera or if there was someone behind the camera he was trying to communicate with.

Medical Marijuana Should Be Legal For Toothaches, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Says

Texas’s top agriculture official said during a visit to one of the state’s three licensed growers of low-THC medical marijuana last week that he supports expanding the current limited compassionate access program to include more patients who could benefit from cannabis—including those who would use it for toothaches.

“I would certainly expand medical marijuana. If it’ll help somebody, I’m for it. Whatever it is. I mean, a toothache, I don’t care. If it’s a cure, if it [alleviates] pain, we should be able to use that,” he said.

“I’m not a recreational marijuana, but if someone has a condition that this chemical will help, they should be able to use it,” Miller said.

Times, they are a changing – Vinyl record sales surpass CDs for the first time since the 1980s

Mountain community celebrates Bigfoot as ‘social distancing champ’

More cities and states are opening bars and restaurants despite mounting evidence of potential danger

States that have reopened bars experienced a doubling in the rate of coronavirus cases three weeks after the opening of doors, on average. The Post analysis — using data provided by SafeGraph, a company that aggregates cellphone location information — found a statistically significant national relationship between foot traffic to bars one week after they reopened and an increase in cases three weeks later.

Grandma has a strong sports opinion (1:07 mark). Actually, this news segment is full of them.

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1305586206671949825

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, September 14, 2020

Bag of Randomness for Monday, September 14, 2020

The LA Rams could not have chosen an uglier uniform to open their new stadium with.They looked like old tattered practice unis. Their new stadium is beautiful, but I’m surprised it only holds $70,000 for an NFL game.

I’m not a fan of all the fan noise being pumped into NFL stadiums. Some of it has been too loud.

Every school day, around mid-morning, DaughterGeeding and BoyGeeding like to take a break and go for a brief walk. I’m usually stuck on a conference call when they leave but I was able to break free and follow them on Friday. It was nice to see that as they cross the street, they always hold hands. I doubt this continues for much longer, so I’m trying to cherish it while I still can.

I’ve used a kneeling office chair for the last four or five years. It was cheapest version I could find on Amazon as I just wanted to experiment using one for a full workday. Overall, I like it, but the padding in is cheap. I’ve tried to modify it a few times by pulling the fabric staples out and replacing the padding with an old memory foam pillow. It was better, but still didn’t cut it. I found one with much better padding on Amazon, but thought I’d try Craigslist. Lucky me, there was one for sale and it was less than three miles from GeedingManor, but the man selling it set an odd price. I talked him down to $65.

How a mysterious man fooled a Harvard scholar into believing the ‘Gospel of Jesus’ Wife’ was real

You can modify that headline to apply to a few other stories this year.

  • “How a mysterious man fooled Liberty University into believing the pool boy cuckolding your wife is a virtue.”
  • “How a mysterious man fooled Evangelicals into believing he’s a Christian president”

Today’s dose of capitalism run amok – Louis Vuitton Launches $961 Covid Face Shields

A World War II veteran will get his final wish to have Juicy Fruit-themed casket

https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1304525341835382784

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Monday, September 14, 2020