I still don’t know if someone at my alma mater, Hardin-Simmons University, has been pulling a joke on me for years or if there’s a “glitch” in their system which needs fixing. Years ago, they use to send “future alumni” recruiting stuff addressed to my (now dearly departed) dog, Tuna. So, we’d get mail addressed to “Tuna Geeding” inviting him to children activities. This week, I received an invite to play in an alumni basketball game and to make an appearance at another game to be honored at halftime. Here’s the thing, I never played college sports other than intramurals. It’s not the first time I’ve received stuff about being a former HSU basketball player, but that stuff is fun showing to my college friends and me making up stories of games and practices which never happened.
Those AT&T “Just OK is not OK” commercials crack me up, especially the one with the tattoo artist who says, “Stay in your lane, bro.” And do you know who needs to stay in his lane? That blogging lawyer over in Wise County. As of late, he’s been blogging about Nixon’s treasonous actions with North Vietnam. Hey, I’m the local blogger who writes about presidential history and trivia. You don’t see me making posts about random courthouse or legal items or female teachers getting in trouble for having inappropriate relationships with minors. You know why, because I stay in my own darn lane, that’s why.
I did write about my discovery of Nixon sabotaging the Vietnam War peace talks two years ago today, of all days. The Wise County lawyer claims Nixon’s actions didn’t come to light until 2016, but that’s as misleading as anything coming out of the mouth of the current White House press secretary. In my post, I included this 2013 BBC article about the last batch of LBJ tapes being declassified in which he states Nixon “has blood on his hands.” It does an excellent job describing Nixon’s treason and how LBJ flirted with the idea of landing Marine One on top of a Chicago hotel to avoid war protestors and entering the 1968 Democratic Convention to re-join the presidential race. As for why LBJ didn’t expose Nixon:
Johnson felt it was the ultimate expression of political hypocrisy but in calls recorded with Clifford they express the fear that going public would require revealing the FBI were bugging the ambassador’s phone and the National Security Agency (NSA) was intercepting his communications with Saigon. So they decided to say nothing.
Also, in 2013, I posted this interesting picture of Republican candidate Richard Nixon meeting with LBJ in July of 1968. Oh, to be a fly on that wall.
That Wise County lawyer also recently mentioned Dave Campbell’s Texas Football. About a month ago, I noticed they moved their headquarters less than a half-mile away from GeedingManor. They put a big fancy sign on the side of a nearby office building.
It’s become a thing for former presidents and their wives to be buried on the grounds of their libraries. However, George W and Laura. Bush will be buried in Austin at the Texas State Cemetery. The Carters will be buried in Plains, GA instead of Atlanta, where his library is located. As far as I know, the Clintons, Obamas, and Trumps haven’t made their intentions of a final rest place public.
A 10-minute supercut of every time someone says “Some kind of…” on ‘Star Trek Voyager’.
The Dallas Morning News recently had a large layoff, which included Eddie Sefko who covered the Dallas Mavericks. I thought it was cool of Dirk to acknowledge it and wish him well on Twitter. I also thought it was cool and classy of Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle ending a post came media conference by saying, “I miss @ESefko very badly. He’s a man of the highest integrity. That’s a great man and I just want to say it’s a privilege to work along side him the last 11 years and I’ll miss him very much.”
Dak Prescott’s first name is actually Rayne, his middle name is Dakota.
It’s the 20th anniversary of The SopranosHBO’s Twitter account. I’ve yet to watch an episode. To mark the occasion, they asked people to submit their first names and they would respond with a Soprano-like nickname. A plethora of celebrities and companies participated and it was really fun reading the banter.
This quote from the CEO of my company really stuck with me. I’ve thought about how people always try to interpret things like body language, silence, facial expression, and such, but the way she phrased it got me to thinking about it differently. Probably because she leads a small government contracting company and she and the executives are doing what they can to make sure no one has to go without a paycheck, she realizes how silence or the lack of communication can be interpreted into a slew of good and bad things. So far, I think she and her leadership team are doing a great job at being transparent and communicating.
One thing is for certain, human beings are “meaning-making” machines and will make meaning out of silence, miscommunication, or communication gaps.
In the summer, the sun never sets at the South Pole. This what a full day looks like.
I remember seeing my teacher’s gradebook for the first time, it looked like the one above. It seemed like a sacred book of secrets which held my past and would shape my feature. I also had that feeling of, “Oh, that’s how it’s done. The Great Oz pulled the curtain back a bit.” Sometimes the teacher would call us up to look at our six-week average before report cards went out, but she used two sheets of paper to cover the names above and below.
I’ve been thinking about the Ferris Bueller line about Abe Froman, The Sausage King of Chicago. I think it implies there are other sausage kings of other cities, yet I can’t name any. However, if there is an actual Sausage King of Chicago, the Chigago Tribune makes the strong argument it would be Vienna Beef CEO Jim Bodman.
I’m taking the bold step of switching my ISP and television from Frontier FiOS and DirecTV to Spectrum. I ran the numbers and I’ll save about $750 a year (taxes and fees included) and will still receive all the channels I care about (with DVR) and my internet speed will go from 80/80 Mbps to 200/200 Mbps with no data caps, throttling, and free equipment (no rentals).
I still firmly believe the U.S. is better off with Donald Trump as president than Ted Cruz.
There will never be another business person I admire more than Herb Kelleher. I could write pages about my admiration for him.
I only worked at Southwest Airlines as a contractor, never as an Employee (it’s part of their culture to always capitalize “Employee(s)”. It was well known he drove an Aston Martin, after all, there was an “Aston Martin Speed Limit” sign in the parking lot just for him. It was also well known if you parked far away from the entrance and he was driving in, he would often give an Employee a ride to the entrance. That never happened to me, but I do recall coming back from a lunch outing and waiting on the elevator. When it opened it was like that scene in Pulp Fiction when the briefcase was opened. It was him. It was the first time I ever saw the legend in real life, my business hero. I felt like I was meeting a mixture of all things Elvis and a bit of that Bill Clinton quality in which you feel like you were his entire focus of attention and felt his affection for you as an individual. Before my brain even had a chance to engage in a verbal reaction he extended his hand and exchanged some pleasantries in such a way that made me feel like he knew me from back in high school. I thought of that moment when I read this piece from the Dallas Morning News’ Terry Maxon:
Everybody who met Herb Kelleher was instantly his friend. He leaned in, offered an observation, a confidence, then let go with his big, drawn-out laugh, a-HAAA-HAAAA-ha! If you said something halfway funny, he rewarded you with another big laugh that ended only when he ran out of air. For the time you spent with Herb, you were the only one who existed. You were his best friend, the person he’d rather be talking to than anyone else in the world. You were awash in the glow of his admiration.
He is probably the second richest person I’ve shaken hands with, the first being Ross Perot when I attended a party at his house. The New York Times listed Herb’s wealth at $2.5 billion at the time of his death.
If you go to www.herbkelleher.com it will simply redirect you to Southwest.com.
The walls of Southwest Airlines headquarters are well known to be decorated with pictures and letters of Employees. One, in particular, got my attention. It was to Herb thanking him for co-founding the airline and making it successful and a great place to work, allowing him to have a career so he could provide for his family, buy a house, and send his kids to college. At the time, I think Southwest had 30,000 Employees. I wondered what it must be like to drive to the headquarters of a business you helped start and to know all the jobs and careers you created, and in doing so, all the lives you impacted because you created a means for them to provide their family.
Some of you may remember I used to write for Southwest’s blog. Here’s an old entry but I see the pictures I posted with it no longer appear.
Just an observation about the picture below which hangs on one of the walls of the headquarters of Southwest Airlines (just click to enlarge). The person on the left is Herb Kelleher, a co-founder and Chairman Emeritus and former CEO and President of the airline. You’ve heard me gush about him before, but the person on the right is no other than Neil Armstrong. What cracks me up is that the first human to ever set foot on the moon, one of the most famous persons from a historical perspective, is wearing a name tag. I know he’s not one to be in the spotlight much and he’s aged and all and that “one small step for man” moment happened over 40-years ago, but just the thought of the first human on the moon having to wear a name tag is a bit funny to me.
I’m a government contractor. Fortunately for me, my project is deemed “essential” and I’m still working with pay. Not all my coworkers are as fortunate. A lot of us who are able to work with pay will voluntarily donate some of our earned vacation time carried over from last years so those who can’t work can still get a full paycheck.
Though it shouldn’t, rhetoric most likely will win over any logic or fact.
A new adults-only restaurant named RM 12:20 Bistro has opened in Lake Highlands. The name is biblically inspired:
The restaurant name, RM 12:20, is meant to be pronounced “R-M-twelve-twenty.” It’s a reference to a Bible verse from the book of Romans: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
I had no idea actor/comedian/director/writer Albert Brooks‘ real name is Albert Einstein, something I only discovered because of his brother, Bob Einstein (better known as Super Dave Osborne or Marty Funkhouser), died yesterday.
The family saw Mary Poppins Returns. When I watched the original as a kid, it felt wrong of me to be attracted to the lead character for some strange reason. I felt the same way watching this remake. The family loved the film, I thought it was just OK. As much as I like Emily Mortimer, I thought she was a bit old for the role of Jane. I thought the adult version of Michael Banks should have had red hair, like the kid in the original, and his mustache was distracting because I thought it was going to fall off at all times. It was certainly worth seeing a ninety-something-year-old Dick Van Dyke jump on and off a desk and do a jig. When people say they want to live to close to a hundred years, they mean doing so with the same vitality as Dyke. I read Emily Blundt didn’t watch the Julie Andrews film but instead focused on the books, which has a more direct and eccentric version of Poppins. I thought it showed, in a good way.
How basketball court lines are painted
NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft is sending back some interesting photos of the furthest known object in our solar system (or something like that) but let’s not forget the greatness Cassini gave us. This video is an assemblage of still images.
Absolutely beautiful video created using still images taken by the Cassini spacecraft during its flyby of Jupiter and while at Saturn. Shown is Io and Europa over Jupiter's Great Red Spot and then Titan as it passes over Saturn and it's edge-on rings. NASA/JPL/Kevin M. Gill pic.twitter.com/BWaVP5h6Ob
Those modern-day pictures of Macaulay Culkin are from a new Google Assistant ad.
I’m a fan of the relatively new update to my Google Pixel phone. I can screen any call by having Google answer the call and I can follow along by reading the real-time text it’s speaking to the caller. Depending on how the caller responds, I have a variety of voice-to-text responses, mark it as spam, or take the call. It’s so much fun I somewhat look forward to the random spam call.
Anytime I ask DaughterGeeding if she would like an ice cream cone, she always asks, “Will it have ice cream in it?” I’ve never pulled a joke of that nature on her, so I’m not sure where she picked that up.
If I see a lost shopping cart in a parking lot and it’s between me and the entrance, I’ll roll it back inside. It simply bugs me seeing those out of place and it’s unnerving when one is in a parking spot in which I’d like to park.
Notable probably only to loyal reader RPM and me – Scott Pelley of CBS News tweeted he has an upcoming book, Truth Worth Telling. Pelley hasn’t tweeted anything since June 2017, and rarely tweeted before that, but yesterday he tweeted at least twice. He also created a new Instagram account, the first picture is of his family, and his son looks like a giant in that picture. The book comes out in May.
Beverly D’Angelo has an attractive name, and from my limited research, that’s her real name. Her work in the entertainment industry started as an illustrator at Hanna-Barbera Studios of all things.
