Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, June 4, 2019

  • 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.
  • Baltimore Mayor Jack Young Suggests Public Boxing Rings To End Street Beefs
    • 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.
  • Northern New York News – White elementary students instructed to bid on black classmates in mock slave auction
  • 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.
  • Up to 25 cups of coffee a day safe for heart health, study finds
  • The CMC Cartonwrap 1000 scans  items to be packaged and makes a custom sized box
  • Every Creature in the Star Wars Movies | Star Wars By the Numbers
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Bag of Randomness for Monday, June 3, 2019

  • 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?
  • Boooo – NTTA Toll Rates to Increase this Summer – On average, TollTag rates will adjust one penny per mile, from 18 to 19 cents.
    • I’ve said it before, I’ve always felt a toll is a form of double- taxation and should at least be a tax-deductible expense.
  • Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower speaks with CBS News’ Walter Cronkite on the 20th Anniversary of D-Day on June 6, 1964.
  • If he only learned from an unfortunate event of a former rival and predecessor
    https://twitter.com/artimusfoul/status/1135212507319144448
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