Bag of Randomness for Friday, May 3, 2019

  • Typically, I prefer not to buy clothing online because I’m so particular about how it fits I like to try them on first. However, I saw an Amazon Basics shirt on Amazon at the right price point I decided to give it a try. The shirt (a package of two shirts, actually) was too large and I attempted to return the item. Amazon provided the full refund but told me not to return the product. They make so much money it’s probably cost-effective for them not to process a return.
  • I was just writing about duels last week, but this one was performed with swords and no one died – The Last Duel Took Place in France in 1967, and It’s Caught on Film
  • I rarely pay with cash anymore so I don’t get to root through coins often. It’s fun looking at dates and it’s especially fun when a foreign coin makes an unexpected appearance. I thought I had a normal U.S. penny but to my surprise, it was a once cent Greek Euro. The ship is an Athenian trireme:
    • A trireme (/ˈtraɪriːm/; derived from Latin: trirēmis “with three banks of oars”; Ancient Greek: τριήρης triērēs, literally “three-rower”) was an ancient vessel and a type of galley that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.
  • Engadget – From today, you can use Google’s AI to create a unique “poem portrait,” an ethereal image of your self-portrait overlaid with an exclusive poem generated from a word of your choice
  • LiberallyLean posted a very old picture of the Cotton Bowl yesterday when inspired me to dig into the stadium’s past and look up stuff about the Alamo.
    • I ran into this circa 1936 aerial view of Fair Park with several buildings labeled.
      • One of the items on that map was a replica of the Alamo (left, center). I had no idea North Texas had any Alamo replicas, which inspired me to dig a bit deeper.
        • Here are several pictures of Dallas area Alamo replicas with a few photos. Both were in Fair Park. As far as I know, neither had a basement.
          •  The first one was a gift to the city by G. B. Dealey and the Dallas Morning News — it stood stoically at the entrance to the fairgrounds from 1909 until 1935 — and the second one was a rebuilding of the first which was torn down to make way for the splendor of the Art Deco Centennial extravaganza and lasted from 1936 until 1951.
        • To my surprise, Plano has one which used to be something akin to a Dave and Busters but now part of an auto dealership. Apparently, it’s behind Target. I have no idea if it has a basement.
        • While in the Alamo internet wormhole, I found out a Ford dealership used to be immediately next to the actual Alamo in San Antonio. It’s crazy how they use to park cars in front of it.

Posted in Personal | 1 Comment

Bag of Randomness for Thursday, May 2, 2019

  • WifeGeeding’s uncle by marriage lives out in East Texas and had a heart attack. He appears to be recovering well but it took three calls to 911 before they picked up.
  • One of WifeGeeding’s coworkers referees high school football games. Apparently, yesterday was draft day. High school football coaches draft what referee crews they want at particular games. I really can’t find much about it, but here’s how a Houston area chapter did theirs.
  • Two details I forgot to add about the Sony Trinitron I recently removed from GeedingManor. It still worked, WifeGeeding just didn’t’ want it around any longer. And, I bought it at Incredible Universe, which should ring a bell for some of you longtime local folks.
  • When I turned seventeen, my father surprised me with a new Mac and printer. That means I’ve had this box for 27-years. I used that box to help me move to a dorm, various apartments, back to my childhood home, and to my current home. I recycled it yesterday. It was a nice and sturdy moving box, thicker than most ordinary cardboard boxes.
  • The best moving boxes were old computer monitor boxes. They were huge, sturdy, and had handles on the side which made picking them up and transporting a bit easier. This Gateway box is similar to what I’m talking about, I still have an old Compaq box in the attic in case I ever need it.
  • A heartwarming series of tweets about selling a patriotic necktie on eBay to an immigrant about to become a U.S. citizen.
  • Yesterday evening I saw news footage of former Vice-President Joe Biden walking to his vehicle with a Fuzzy’s Taco Shop in the background. Immediately I wondered why he was in the area but after a little research discovered that Fuzzy’s has locations in Iowa. Man, that franchise has grown quickly. All I ever get there is the breakfast tacos.
  • Senator Kennedy (R-LA) and Mr. Haney from ‘Green Acres’ could be kin. Speaking of ‘Green Acres’, I found it out it streams on AmazonPrime, it just might be time for me to introduce my kids to it.
  • Not that I don’t already write a lot of odd things, but I felt a personal connection with ‘Green Acres’. Oliver Wendall Douglas was a big city man who moved to a small rural town with a wife from another country who had a thick accent. My father grew up in the big city and moved to a small rural town with a wife from another country with a thick accent. All the townsfolks only referred to Oliver as Mr. Douglas, all of my hometown only referred to my father as Mr. Geeding. Like Oliver, my father had to climb up a telephone pole just outside the house to make phone calls. Okay, that last part isn’t true. However, and I never put this together until now, but Oliver Douglas’ wife on the show is named Lisa Douglas. My younger sister is named Lisa and she married a man with the last name of Douglas.
  • For better or worst, I’m going to pull back the curtain a little bit, and doubt I’ll ever provide any detail on the matter, but I’m estranged from both my siblings. I often tell WifeGeeding she had no idea how lucky she is in that she doesn’t have to deal with any in-laws other than the very rare visit a cousin is in town.
  • A bit of background on the contraption used on that kid in the top pic.
  • I’ve never owned a pair of cowboy boots but I hear once you break them in they are extremely comfortable.
  • Why Leonardo’s last statue took 500 years to finish – Da Vinci died before he could complete his massive bronze sculpture of a horse, something that wouldn’t occur until the 20th century
  • Little Black Backpack came on the radio the other day. I haven’t heard that fun little song in forever. WifeGeeding had no idea what it was but was surprised, almost astonished, at how well I knew the lyrics and even incorporated hand motions. It’s kind of hard not to when you get to this part of the chorus “Don’t want to tango with you,
    I’d rather tangle with him, I think I’m gonna bash his head in.” I can’t find a decent version of it on YouTube.
  • This ‘Game of Thrones’ behind the scenes photo is funny if you are a fan of the show.
Posted in Personal | 5 Comments

Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, May 1, 2019

  • First World Problem I experienced yesterday – ordered a Coke with my to-go meal and when I got home I discovered it was a Diet Coke. I detest diet drinks, they leave a weird aftertaste.
  • I think it’s absolutely amazing photographs exists of veterans who have fought in the Revolutionary War. I got wind of this from an old tweet from historian Micheal Beschloss about Captain George Fishley, one of longest surviving American veterans of the Revolutionary War who posed for this photo in uniform shortly before death in 1850.
  • Here are more pics of other veterans of the Revolutionary War. I thought the mini-biography of Jonathan Smith was quite interesting – After the war he became a Baptist minister. He was married three times and had eleven children.
  • GIF – I had no idea you could sew with a Swiss Army knife
  • MIT ‘hackers’ turn Great Dome into Captain America’s shield

    • The dome wasn’t painted, it’s was a huge piece of fabric. This does remind me of a tradition in my hometown of Mineral Wells. Believe it or not, our high school had a dome roof over the basketball court (The Ram Dome, and yes, the ram was our mascot) and seniors (12-graders, not the elderly) would sometimes paint it with the year in which they were graduating. I was able to find a few old pics. I never said it was a nice dome, nor did I state the seniors did a decent job of painting.
  • Jalopnik – Enough with the ‘Actually, Electric Cars Pollute More’ Bullshit Already
  • Tom & Jerry interpolated to 60fps
  • Random thought – What if HBO released the finale of Game of Thrones in theaters?
  • Game of Thrones cinematographer: it’s not me, it’s your TV settings – You’re the problem, and also maybe HBO’s bitrate
    • After all, Wagner says the show was directed and shot like a cinematic experience that could be viewed in a movie theater, even though it’s predominantly streamed at compressed quality to screens of all shapes and sizes.
  • The Battle Of Winterfell: A Tactical Analysis
    • This specific part makes me want to research Soviet battle techniques as I’m not familiar with this bit of history. The closest thing I could find was this scene from a movie about Soviets attacking German trenches. Battle of Moscow, maybe?
      • On the Night King’s signal, the undead breach the fire-trench the Soviet way: with their bodies. Only upon initiation of a successful breach do the defenders attempt to suppress the force. By then it is too late, and the assault force strikes the walls.
      • Wagner himself also said HBO’s compression of the episode, to help smooth over the streaming process for millions of viewers with varying connection speeds, is another contributor.
  • Old, but new to me (I think), and better than I expected – A Song of Vanilla Ice and Fire
  • I need to read up on my history, I never knew Nixon’s Attorney General (or any AG in our nation’s history), the head of the Department of Justice, the nation’s top law enforcement officer, was jailed. He served 19-months in prison. He died in 1988 and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, based on his World War II Naval service and his cabinet post of Attorney General. I wonder if that ruffled any feathers with veterans, and I freely admit, I don’t know when any veteran or former cabinet official loses the right to a burial with full military honors.

Posted in Personal | 3 Comments

Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, April 30, 2019

  • For the record, and I want to be very clear and put things to rest. I am not a half-whit, I am half-white. Get it right, people.
  • When I first moved to DFW and moved into my own apartment, my first “big” purchase was the largest television I could find, a 35-inch Sony Trinitron (CRT, not HD).  I finally got rid of the thing last weekend by taking it to Best Buy for recycling. They charged me $25 because it was over 25-inches. WifeGeeding has been begging me to get rid of it for years, but I was hesitant since it was upstairs and didn’t want to go through the hassle of transporting the awkward 139-pound behemoth. However, I felt up to the challenge after watching the latest Avengers movie. I’m an oddity in that I like the challenge of moving such objects with no help, usually when no one else is around. This was the first time I did such a thing after my spinal fusion surgery, but I managed and conquered the task. A hand truck (dolly) and a couple of straps greatly aided.
  • To my fellow TICKET listeners, I’m what you call a little slow. It never dawned on me that George DiGianni and the golf show which followed on Saturday mornings were nothing more than paid ads. I always thought The TICKET paid them, but in actuality, they were paying the radio station for air time.
  • Regarding the NFL Draft, I always wondered why the first handful of teams in the first round took so long to make their pick. I found out why in yesterday in Peter King’s weekly article. The NFL asks teams to not turn in their selection until at least five minutes of their 10-minute first-round time limit had passed, so the league could do the TV-presentation stuff and not get the picks all backed up.
  • Poet stumped by standardized test questions about her own poem
    • Poet Sara Holbrook, who often writes humorous verse for kids, had some harsh words for the Texas Education Agency after she discovered she couldn’t answer questions about poems on the its standardized tests — poems she herself wrote.
  • The dead may outnumber the living on Facebook within 50 years
  • No apologies, but this is going to be Game of Thrones heavy.
  • I have no idea how Ghost survived that last episode of Game of Thrones. But I support the theory he bit off the femur of a Wright, retreated to the forest, and just gnawed at it for the whole battle – just a happy dog with a bone. We know he’s alive because he’s spotted in the preview for next week’s episode.
  • When it first came out, my friends and I use to quote Bedazzled quite a bit, in particular, the post-game basketball interview after major sporting events. That’s why I got a kick out of this version of the quote referring to the most recent Game of Thrones episode.
  • Social media, in particular, Twitter, is great for things like Game of Thrones. Not that it should be used or checked during the episode, but to check out the immediate global reaction and feel a part of one large friendly community.
  • I could never watch a television show in this kind of setting, I need it to be quite so I can hear all the dialog and any hooting or hollering would grind my gears. Yet, watching the reaction of this crowd brought a smile to my face.https://twitter.com/NameIsKoushiK/status/1122813948460277760?s=09
  • The moment all Baylor fans have been waiting for. Hey, it’s an honor HSU will never get.
Posted in Goofy | 3 Comments