BoyGeeding needed a new pair of shoes for school. He “demanded” they have laces this time.
The pastor of our church (the founding pastor of the church, actually) will be retiring in March. We’ve been searching for a new pastor and the process has been a bit cloak and dagger. The new pastor was introduced to the congregation, someone who was once a member and was enthusiastically welcomed. Before we voted as a congregation to accept him, there was an opportunity to ask him questions. Even though the candidate was familiar to the congregation, he hasn’t set foot in our church in seven years so I was surprised at the lack of substantive and foundational questions asked, stuff I’m used to hearing in my Baptist roots. Stuff like, how did you know God called you into the pastoral ministry and how did you come to know Christ? But then again, I’m a deep thinker.
This will be the first time I have a pastor who is younger than me. I better get used to this phase in life. One day I’ll have a boss who is younger than me, as well as a president, maybe even a mother-in-law.
I couldn’t help but laugh at Zeke Elliott after he made a first down and did his trademark “feed me” routine only to immediately ask to be taken out of the game. Hey Zeke, they can’t feed you the ball if you ask to be taken out of the game.
I meant to mention this at the end of the NFL regular season when it was more relevant. Eagles QB Nick Foles fell four snaps short of a $1 million incentive this season, playing just shy of 33% of Philadelphia’s snaps. The Eagles owner worked things out in which Foles will get the bonus. Back in the old days, when people like Tex Schram and Jack Kent Cooke were in charge of payroll and finances, they’d remain hardline saying business is business. But times have changed and what Eagles owner Jeff Lurie is smart. Now that free agency is a thing, an act like that will help recruit players, they feel their owner will do what’s in the players’ best interest instead of what’s best for the bottom line.
I think the new “It Girl” in television commercials is the TurboTax red-head with glasses.
’60 Minutes’ had a great story on Chinese invenstmenton AI. Two parts stood out. One, as the most populous country, they have a plethora of data to collect from humans doing everyday tasks. And two, they had an AI camera focusing on an elementary classroom and could immediately identify when a student was paying attention, distracted, or bored, which allowed the teacher to identified what parts of the lesson to adjust or how to individually tailor something to a particular student, and to figure out when a student is motivated or identify likes and dislikes. The story mainly focused on one Chinese investment capitalist (somewhat of an oxymoron if you think about it). He talked about coming to America as a child and enrolling in a Tennesee school and how the principal would personally tutor him during lunch to learn English. The individual attention he received floored him and he’s trying to instill that culture in Chinese schools. He went on to become an executive at Apple, Microsoft, and Google; and, has a new book out which I’m intereted in.
Kai-Fu Lee: When I arrived in Tennessee, my principal took every lunch to teach me English. And that is the kind of attention that I’ve not been used to growing up in Asia. And I felt that the American classrooms are smaller, encouraged individual thinking, critical thinking. And I felt it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Wichita Falls news – Police were called to a Texas Walmart after a woman was reportedly drinking wine from a Pringles can and riding an electric cart in the parking lot.
I like following Michael Morrell on Twitter and his analysis on the news, he was the former Acting and Deputy Director of the CIA. Recently, he provided this bit of insight on G.H.W. Bush who requested his presidential briefing to have more humor.
I had a similar experience with “41.” On a paper my team wrote for him on a foreign leader, Bush wrote a note to us saying “To his hobbies, add tennis. Likes to play the net. Weak backhand.” His sense of humor is just one of the reasons he was a great man. https://t.co/57znpZy9kM
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
