WILD HELICOPTER RESCUE: Firefighters say a 74-year-old woman had to be flown off of Piestewa Peak this morning after she suffered an injury while hiking.
I think it’s interesting Mikhail Gorbachev is still alive, he’s eighty-eight. He looked old back in the Eighties. Huh, lots of “eight” references in this short bullet point.
Not many people realize that Chernobyl kept three reactors operating in the wake of the meltdown — nearly 14 years altogether.
Unit 2 shut down in 1991 after being damaged by a fire. Unit 1 closed in 1996 amidst international outcry about the health effects radiation poisoning, including elevated rates of thyroid cancer among children. The last unit, Unit 3, operated until 2000, when international negotiations finally shut down the plant for good.
The story reminds me of my middle school principal who later became my high school principal and later became mayor of my hometown. He told us if two students were ever so upset with each other that they wanted to fight, he would provide the gloves and referee the match. He said he would rather students fight in a controlled environment than disrupt class or others and be a distraction. I don’t recall it ever happening, but I do recall a few friends trying to work up the courage to talk to him about it.
I often wonder how news organizations will select a profile picture of a politician or celebrity for a story. For instance, there are thousands of pictures of a president, but how does someone decide to choose one singular photo to appear above a news anchor’s shoulder for a 20-second story? That came to mind recently when I saw a local story on the possibility of Senator Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez teaming up to draft legislation. CBS11 used a smiling portrait of Cruz with a U.S. flag as the backdrop (like an official Senate portrait). Next to that Cruz’s portrait was a stern-looking AOC with reading glasses at the tip of her nose and a microphone placed on a table, like something out of a committee hearing. The local news amuses me sometimes.
DaughterGeeding took two of her friends (twins actually) to an indoor trampoline and adventure park for her birthday. As you can see, they had a ball pit. I think my selfie looks a bit artistic. Upon further reflection, I might look a bit of a crazed look like Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining.
One of DaughterGeeding’s birthday wishes was to watch the sunset with the family on the roof. WifeGeeding said the experience reminded her of one of our favorite television shows, “Ed” on NBC (the one about the bowling alley lawyer, or as he would say, a lawyer who happens to own a bowling alley). The title character would often sit atop the roof of Stuckeybowl on a lawn chair with a friend (usually his best friend Dr. Michael Burton or crush Carol Vessey) and sip on some Rolling Rocks in the evening.
Our family has been listening to Hamilton almost nonstop and I’m impressed how well the kids have memorized most of the lines and asking questions about our nation’s history. There are many YouTube videos available which play the songs and display the lyrics, kinda like karaoke, and the kids love them. Well, I ended up getting tickets to next week’s show in Austin as a birthday present to DaughterGeeding. We revealed the present to her by downloading one of the videos, editing the lyrics (and keeping the rhyme), and uploading it back to YouTube include the surprise. This will most likely be our summer vacation.
There’s still plenty of time left in the rest of the year, but I never imagined I would be going to more musicals in a year than sporting events. This will be my third musical of the year.
BoyGeeding received the first buzzcut of his life yesterday, he did most of the work.
Meet the computer scientist using artificial intelligence to help 140,000 paying customers plan the perfect Disney vacation
TouringPlans.com helps you decide which Disney World park to visit by analyzing historical attendance data to predict crowd levels on any given day. Then, for each day of your visit, just plug in all the rides, shows, and restaurants you want to hit up, and it spits out an optimized itinerary that promises to minimize wait times while still getting you everywhere you want to go. It even makes recommendations on how, when, and where to deploy FastPass+, which lets you make reservations to go on the resort’s most popular rides ahead of time.
But wait, there’s more: It’ll alert you if hard-to-get reservations at in-demand eateries like Be Our Guest at the Magic Kingdom open up. A personal favorite feature is that it has a directory of the view from every single Disney World resort hotel, and can automatically send a fax to the front desk requesting a specific room. The site even recommends rooms to request, based on criteria like distance from the food court or time to the bus stop.
I ran across the following question and it really got me thinking, thankfully I haven’t had to break a lot of bad news and when I did, it was already expected – What was the hardest piece of news you’ve had to tell someone?
Nine years ago today I became a parent. Well, I suppose WifeGeeding did as well.
Yesterday DaughterGeeding stopped by my office (I work at home) and I asked her what she’s been up to. She excitedly told me she was practicing pole dancer and she was confused as to why I had such a puzzled look on my face. Immediately I thought I failed as a father. A top goal for any father is to “keep your daughter off the pole.” She found a really sturdy cardboard tube about five feet long and was using it to some sort of innocent pole-vaulting dance routine.
I forgot how much B. A. Baracus feared getting into an airplane or helicopter and how the rest of the A-Team had to either knock him out or drug him to get him on a flight.
The Musers interviewed 22-year-old motorsports team owner George Michael Steinbrenner IV, the grandson of famed Yankee owner George Michael Steinbrenner III. The name skipped a generation with Henry George “Hank” Steinbrenner III. I suppose you can name anyone anything you want, but I didn’t know you could skip a generation with post-nominals formalities or whatever they are called. I feel like they are cheating the system.
For any son named after his father, I wonder if they ever felt the need to make their signature look the same as their namesake. My father’s first name is my middle name. As a kid, I used to try to sign my middle and last name exactly as he did.
Earlier this week, I watched the pilot episode of ‘Green Acres’ with the kids and the very next morning, The Musers talked about the show and wondered if it would hold up. I identified with the show because it was about an older white man married to a woman from another country with a thick accent. The pilot episode was done in a new or documentary typestyle. Here’s a little bit of ‘Green Acres’ trivia for ya, lead character Oliver Wendall Douglas was named after Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Douglas’ father named him after the justice because he decided at birth his son should have a career in law.
Readers Still Prefer Physical Books – Results from a new survey regarding reading habits are out and consumer preference still lies with physical books
I bought the Kindle version of the new Scott Pelley book. I think e-ink is easier on the eyes and I like the ability to highlight a word with my finger and get an immediate definition or Wikipedia entry. However, I do miss being able to look at my bookmark and see how much more I have to go. I know the Kindle provides that feature, but there’s something special about looking at the physical pages and flipping through them which feels more real or authentic.
I don’t have a backstory on this video but I think it’s pure greatness.
Posted inPersonal|Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Friday, May 31, 2019
