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• Yes, that is indeed the legendary Joe DiMaggio in an Oakland A’s uniform. Odd sight, isn’t it?  DiMaggio retired as a Yankee in 1951 but lacked two years to qualify for the league’s maximum pension allowance. The A’s owner had just moved his the last-place Kansas City franchise to Oakland and was looking to make some PR and eventually convinced DiMaggio to sign a two-year contract as the A’s Executive Vice President and Consultant. It seems like the Rangers took a page from the A’s playbook when they moved to Texas and hired Ted Williams.
• Here’s an odd story out of Abilene. The police chief wrote on Facebook that the man at the intersection of Highway 83/84 and FM 707 is not homeless, not wheelchair-bound and makes $1,000 panhandling on the weekend. That man contacted a television news station to contradict those claims and stated, “I think the chief should walk a mile in my shoes.”
• Everyone remembers The Golden Girls on NBC, but many don’t remember the spinoff show with all the girls except for Dorothy. The spinoff show lasted one season on CBS and was named The Golden Palace, which I think sounds like a Chinese restaurant I once ate at in Oklahoma. Worth noting, the show also starred a young Don Cheadle as a hotel manager and Cheech Marin as a cook. Dorothy did make an appearance in two episodes. Oh, and the same theme song was used but wasn’t the beloved version you are used to.
  
• Amazon will fine sellers who ship products in oversized packaging
• Oscar Mayer is releasing a hot dog-infused ice cream sandwich
• Netflix explains why it snuck a physical activity tracker onto some phones – The were researching how to improve video quality when you’re on the go
• My father would have turned 96-years-old today. It is what it is.

• I don’t think this still images adequately captures Morgan Freeman’s facial expression during this scene as the camera pans. I always thought it was a remarkable bit of acting without a bit of dialog.
• Someone did the math and put together this Shawshank Redemption infograph
  • 1/64th of an inch every day for 16.9 years.
• I get emotionally invested in movies and television. WifeGeeding gets emotionally invested in gameshows the likes no one have ever seen.
• YouTube – Tattoo Artists Guess The Prices of Tattoos
• I saw someone on Twitter suggest Scott Bakula play the part of Jeffrey Epstein in a movie. That’s a good casting choice, but I feel kinda bad for Bakula if he was offered it.
• Your Doctor Is Instagram Famous. Do Likes Matter in the Exam Room? – How social media is changing relationships with health care providers
• National Geographic – See a different endangered animal in every U.S. state – This interactive map highlights lesser-known endangered species across America.
  • Here’s the animal for Texas:
    
• Comptroller.Texas.gov – FiscalNotes: The Economics of Texas BBQ
• The largest Presbyterian denomination in the US has ordained a minister of gun violence prevention
  • This is actually a bit of local news as the minister’s church is in Dallas, and the minister is a she. I’m not trying to make light of gun violence or start a theological debate about a woman’s role in the church. However, I’m slightly entertained by the thought of how some of my friends who are deeply ingrained in the Southern Baptist Church and are passionate Second Amendment supporters are going to react.
  • When I looked up the church, I thought the first photo Google associated with it was interesting.
    

• As most of you know, I work from home. It’s summer, so the kids are around and I interact with them throughout the day. Yet, without fail, when I log off my work computer for the day and walk downstairs, DaughterGeeding will ask me, “Dad, how was your day at work.” I bet most parents would give a colloquial response, but I feel like I owe it to her to be truthful and not play her off. I’ll tell her if it was good, bad, fast, slow, stressful, meh, and provide a bit of detail. It’s a daily routine of mine to ask her how her day at school went (as well as her brother). I expect them to be a tiny bit descriptive, just as I am. I can’t expect something different from them than the example I set.
• Arizona man learns mom’s body sold to military, detonated in experiment
  • An Arizona man was distraught to learn that his mother’s body was sold to the United States military for “blast testing,” which involved strapping it to a chair before an explosive device was detonated underneath, an investigation revealed.
• Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation with Richard Nixon
  • The past month has brought presidential racism back into the headlines. This October 1971 exchange between current and future presidents is a reminder that other presidents have subscribed to the racist belief that Africans or African Americans are somehow inferior. The most novel aspect of President Donald Trump’s racist gibes isn’t that he said them, but that he said them in public.
• On July 29, 1858, Europe and North America were connected via telegraph by a 2,500 mile, long, 0.6-inch wide cable. Queen Victoria and President Buchanan exchanged congratulations via Morse code, it took 2 minutes and 5 seconds per letter. The cable operated for less than a month due to a variety of technical failures. And I’ll be honest, I thought it was “Morris code”.
• Four universities claim to be the first university in the United States.
  • Harvard University, founded in 1636, claims itself to be (v.i.) “the oldest institution of higher education in the United States”.
  • The University of Pennsylvania, established in 1740, considers itself to be America’s first university, a title it claims on its website and in other published materials. The university has published a book about being the first university in America, and its website contains numerous instances of the phrase “America’s First University”.
  • The College of William and Mary’s website states, “The College of William and Mary was the first college to become a university (1779).”
  • Johns Hopkins University opened in 1876 and claims to be “America’s first research university”
• If you spot tornado and unsure of its movement, use a straight object like a telephone pole in between you and the tornado and you can see which way it’s moving. If the tornado appears to not be moving or becoming wider, it’s coming towards you, so start moving perpendicular instead of forward or backward.
• Texas might spend up to $20 billion to protect Houston from hurricanes. Rice University says it can do it for a fraction of that.
• The angle of sun and daylight as the year progresses showing day, night, poles and whole the whole Earth.

   

This lens spent 100 years in the dark, the last thing it captured must have been the horrors of World War I … I think it was time to use it for something more light and positive. I took this Kodak Vest Pocket camera lens with me for a short trip to Vienna (Austria) to shoot some test footage. I must say I was pretty amazed by the sharpness and the quality of the image I saw on my screen. It was mounted using m42 hélicoïdal adapter + M42 to C mount adapter + rubber bands from an old bike tire.