Bag of Randomness for Thursday, October 5, 2017

  • I think there are only two pictures of the Las Vegas killer that the news have been displaying. Both of them are somewhat out of focus and he looks a bit wasted. I’m surprised there are better pictures of him in the age we live in with camera phones and such.
  • One of the more touching stories I heard of the massacre was a woman running for cover but stopped to render aid to a victim. She knew there wasn’t going to be any hope for the victim, but didn’t want him to die alone.
  • I received an email from a legal representative yesterday requesting I take down something I posted about back in February 2013. I complied.
  • Within the next ten years, dashcams will be a standard feature on all new automobiles.
  • Man, time flies. Next week will mark the ten year anniversary of when Greg “The Hammer” Williams was fired from The TICKET. I only know that because of this article about Corby.
  • Why Christian conservatives supported Trump — and why they might regret it –  “Because I’m a Christian, I’m able to say that Christian people can be idiots.”
    • When I first saw this article I thought it wasn’t going to be very substantive; however, I found it to be pretty insightful. It’s an interview with a conservative Christian author who didn’t vote for Trump but understands why many Christians did.
  • Sometimes I asked friends questions they may feel are odd. Stuff like, “How often do you call your parents?” Since mine are no longer living and I’m still relatively young, I wonder how often I would call my parents. In college, I always called home Sundays at 8:45 PM to catch up on things.
  • Google has an interesting new product, Google Clips. I think it’s one part neat and one part creepy, and at $249, very pricey. Here’s a WIRED article about it.
    • Google Clips is a camera, but it only has some of those parts. There’s no display. There’s a shutter button, but it’s completely optional to use. Instead, it takes pictures for you, using machine learning to recognize and learn faces and look for interesting moments to record.
    • Here’s how it works: you turn it on by twisting the lens, then you set it down and forget about it. Clips then watches everything it sees in its 130-degree field of view and records little seven-second moving images of stuff it finds interesting. It learns faces over time and tries to take more photos of those people and fewer photos of strangers. It can also recognize pets.
  • How Dictionary Editors Find Meaning in the Age of Internet Speak – Is it the modern lexicographer’s job to protect the English language, or to document it?
  • Women who escaped Edmonton prison arrested at escape room
Posted in Personal | 3 Comments

Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, October 4, 2017

  • Before going to school yesterday, BoyGeeding lost his first tooth. He asked WifeGeeding to pull it and told me bluntly told I couldn’t because I didn’t know how. Sadly, he lost his first pulled tooth before bedtime and put the note you see above under his pillow.
  • For some reason, this week feels like it’s going extremely slow for me. My father told me not to wish my time away, but this week feel like purgatory.
  • I’m surprised both our kids start doing their homework on the ride home from school.
  • During National Night Out, WifeGeeding snapped a nice picture of a rainbow.
  • One thing I’ve noticed about National Night Outs, I can always tell who’s in sales. It feels like a lot of people want to get to know me only to get my contact info to sell me insurance or something of the like, not to be neighborly. There’s just something insincere about their approach and the small talk they bring up. Some people are made for sales, I’m not one of them.
  • While watching President Trump toss paper towels into the crowd yesterday, it made me think he must shoot the basketball well. Seriously, he has a nice release and rotation with his shot, it was very fundamental. But it was somewhat funny when he was thanking several Coast Guard members who were actually members of the Air Force.
  • Last night I watched “Finding Your Roots” for the first time. It’s a PBS show that reveals the ancestry of celebrities in a personable one-on-one fashion. For a while, I had the ancestry itch and started to scratch it. This episode was focused on Larry David and Bernie Sanders. I thought it would be entertaining to see how Larry David would react to discovering his roots and it was really darn interesting.
    • David said his mother kept to herself a lot, that she was very secretive. As a ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ fan, I kept thinking of how Bea Arthur played his mother in the series. David’s mother was so secretive, it wasn’t until her death that he learned she was older than his father by three years.
    • David’s mother’s name was Rose, or so he thought. Records show it was actually Regina. It floored him, but he said it was also typical of his mother to withhold that kind of information.
    • We all know Larry David is Jewish, and he knew his family were immigrants. But he found out on his paternal side, his great or great-great grandmother was actually born in Alabama. And get this, it turns out his great or great-great grandfather fought for the Confederacy. His reaction was priceless and it played out like an episode of ‘Curb’. He started to ponder about the butterfly effect and how everything played out.
    • Finally, at the end of the episode, they talk about his DNA. Each guest on the show has their DNA scanned against all other guests who have appeared on the show to see if there is a connection. It turns out him and Bernie Sanders are actually cousins and neither had an idea despite people talking about how similar they look alike. I don’t think they are first or second cousins, but it was neat and the first time anyone two people on the show were found to be related.
  • Nobel Prize in physics awarded to 3 Americans for work on gravity waves
    • Normally when things like this are announced I have no familiarity with the winners, but I instantly recognized one of them yesterday. It made me feel just a tad bit nerdy but in a good way.  Kip Thorne was the astrophysicist who worked as an executive producer for the Christopher Nolan’s movie Interstellar.
  • Brent, if you are looking for date night ideas for you and your wife, here’s a suggestion – – ‘Reluctant Convert’ is a well-worn but worthwhile C.S. Lewis story on stage
  • IRS Awards Equifax $7.25 Million No-Bid Contract to Help ‘Verify Taxpayer Identities’
  • Yesterday, I thought I saw a hidden paid ad on LiberallyLean.com for the SPCA.
  • Someone wondered about the analytics of shared readers between my blog and LiberallyLean.com. I’m not good with analytics, but a cursory look at my stats say about 141 visitors on average come to BagOfNothing.com from his website, which makes up about 36.57% of my daily traffic.
  • A few more thoughts and tidbits from my book about the relationships amongst presidents:
    • Before running for governor, George W. Bush had a friend who gave him all sorts of historical information on what happened to sons of former presidents. Many had failed careers, became bankrupt, and succumbed to depression and addiction. That data bothered him.
    • When George W. Bush was running for office, Clinton never underestimated him and actually admired “his game”.
    • When George W. Bush won the election and was invited to the White House to meet with then-President Clinton, they totally hit it off. I mentioned before there was a bit of a grudge before, as Bush really disliked Clinton. Bush asked Clinton about a very veiled shot he took at him about Monica Lewinsky and if it hurt his feelings or below the belt, and about some of the more direct attacks on his character. Clinton said he wasn’t bothered by it and really admired how well Bush played it to his advantage. Bush also complimented Clinton on his ability to deliver a speech and asked how did he improve so much because he used to be such a bad speaker. Bush specifically referenced the 1988 Democratic Convention speech in which Clinton was booed off the stage.
  • This GIF of a gas station attendant reminds me of the “No ticket!” scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Posted in Personal | 3 Comments

Disney Cruise Ship Backs Into A Dock

Language warning, better yet, watch it on mute, the guy is annoying.

Details

And up until today, I never knew the existence of a harbor pilot and their role. Obviously, I don’t spend much time around water.

I like this definition, which was the first result I found on Google:

A Harbor Pilot is an Air Traffic Controller for the sea, minus the part where they doze off in the middle of a shift. As a merchant ship pulls into port, the Harbor Pilot climbs aboard and helps guide it safely to shore. During this process, the ship’s Captain never relinquishes control.

Per this 2012 NPR article:

The giant ships cannot enter the port without the assistance of a harbor pilot, who boards the towering vessels in open seas. The average salary of harbor pilots nationwide is more than $400,000.

Posted in Interesting | 1 Comment