Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, March 21, 2018

  • My physical therapist engaged in some small talk yesterday and asked what I did over the weekend. I mentioned Lou Ferrigno was at the Texas Pinball and he said that for the longest time he never knew he played the Hulk, he just knew him from ‘The King of Queens’. Apparently, Ferrigno played himself and was the neighbor in the show.
  • A Coppell high school student wearing a University of Texas t-shirt was doing his physical therapy the same time as me. He talked about the different college campuses he toured. When he talked about the University of Texas campus, he said everything felt close together, that it felt small and crowded. I’m not sure what his definition of small and crowded is, but then again I attended Hardin-Simmons, which I thought was extremely small. Funny thing about HSU, they also refer to themselves as “The Forty Acres“.
    • After the original land grant of 16 acres grew to 40, the campus was nicknamed the Forty Acres. Forty acres was the traditional size of homesteads in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Now encompassing more than 200 acres, the main campus sits on 66 acres.
  • Growing up in Mineral Wells, I don’t recall any of my friends touring college campuses, or at least making trips which required a flight. Most knew where they wanted to go, which was basically A&M, Tarleton, or starting their basics at then Weatherford College. It’s been unique living in the Metroplex and attending church with affluent members and hearing stories of their kids touring the campuses of legendary to places like UCLA, Penn, Pepperdine, Stanford, Michigan, and other “unreachable” places.
  • U2’s new tour will feature augmented reality and longer sets. I’m a bit worried about the augmented reality thing, everyone is going to have to have their cell phones out and that will be distracting.
  • Fox News analyst blasts network as ‘propaganda machine’ while announcing departure
  • All the Things the Star Wars: The Last Jedi Novelization Adds to the Movie
  • Harrison Ford will be 76 – Steven Spielberg Will Start Filming Indiana Jones 5 Next Year
  • Lindsay Lohan Appointed New Spokesperson of Lawyer.com
  • 32 Teams, 7 Days, 1 Gym -For true madness, see the N.A.I.A. basketball tournament in Kansas City.
    • Many call the more popular — and more lucrative — 68-team N.C.A.A. basketball tournament “madness.” But compared with the N.A.I.A. event, that is just a three-week, 14-city corporate show. The N.A.I.A.’s version is truly nuts: 32 teams, seven days and one shared hotel. It is a virtual assembly line of college basketball, and for the true hoops fanatic it is basketball paradise.
  • Hang in there, Austin.
Posted in Personal | 3 Comments

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

From Academy Award® -winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom), Won’t You Be My Neighbor? takes an intimate look at America’s favorite neighbor: Mister Fred Rogers. A portrait of a man whom we all think we know, this emotional and moving film takes us beyond the zip-up cardigans and the land of make-believe, and into the heart of a creative genius who inspired generations of children with compassion and limitless imagination.

That kid in the wheelchair later inducted him into the Television Hall of Fame.

Somewhat related:

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Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, March 20, 2018

  • For work-related issues, I had to travel to the Dallas Federal Building. I’ve been there twice before over the span of five years, but can never remember how to get there so I relied on navigation. I found a decent parking spot, walked into the building, went through security and had my laptop x-rayed, walked into the elevator, and when I noticed the elevator didn’t have a button for the eleventh floor, I realized I was in the wrong building. Despite inputting the correct street address on Google Maps, it kept directing me to the county courts building.
  • I parked in front of a meter. I had change, but I couldn’t find a place to insert coins on the meter, so I had to pay for parking by downloading an app. As I was doing so, a young adult male started to smash one of those green rental bikes with a brick. Another man confronted him about it, and it appears the bike didn’t accept the dollar he paid to rent it so he was trying to get his dollar back or something. It was an interesting confrontation. The bike smasher didn’t seem mad or upset he was being called out, and the man calling him out didn’t seem intimidated by a man with a brick in his hand.
  • GIF – Penguins can jump better than I thought.
  • IBM just unveiled the ‘world’s smallest computer’
    • The computer is 1mm x 1mm, smaller than a grain of fancy salt, and apparently costs less than ten cents to manufacture
    • IBM claims the computer has the power of an x86 chip from 1990. That puts it exactly on the edge of enough power to run the original Doom (the original README.TXT for Doom says a 386 processor and 4MB of RAM is the minimum).
  • I’m a big fan of mine
  • Masterpiece Rental: My Life in the ‘American Gothic’ House
Posted in Goofy | Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, March 20, 2018