Bag of Randomness for Monday, August 22, 2016

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  • GIF – How many of us feel on a Monday morning.
  • GIF – But sometimes, you just need a little encouragement.
  • Walking out of the donut store and brand new Corvette parked, but the guy that got out of it was wearing a Shelby Cobra shirt.
  • I donated blood over the weekend. The person who did the procedure stated I’d be the last person she’d ever stick as it was quitting time for her and she was about to start a career in IT after graduating college.
  • DaughterGeeding earned a brown belt in taekwondo on Saturday.
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  • NBC has been showing a lot of commercials for ‘The Voice’, but everytime I see Alicia Keys, I’m wondering if she’s trying to cosplay Denise Huxtable with her wardrobe.
  • If there’s a Great Britain there should be a Mediocre Britian.
  • I want to jump off a Olympic diving platform, the 10 meter one, but I think the only place in North Texas to make that possible is at SMU.
  • GIF – When I get angry at someone and imagine me getting in a fight, this is the type of four-hit combo that I imagine I would be capable of doing.  Yet, in reality, I know it would come nowhere close to that.
  • Baylor should take notes – Notre Dame dismisses Max Redfield, suspends Devin Butler
    • Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly dismissed senior safety Max Redfield from the football team and suspended senior cornerback Devin Butler indefinitely Sunday following a weekend that saw six Fighting Irish players arrested over two separate incidents.
    • Redfield was a major contributer to the team, he was their fourth leading tackler last season.
  • And to think they could have schedule both Northwestern (La.) State, Buffalo, or University of the Incarnate Word in 2019 – Three of first four Sooners opponents ranked in top 15 of AP poll
  • KFC’s secret recipe found in a scrapbook?
    • According to the Tribune, the recipe calls for two cups of flour, 2/3 tablespoons of salt, 1/2 tablespoon of thyme, 1/2 tablespoon of basil, 1/3 tablespoon of oregano, 1 tablespoon of celery salt, 1 tablespoon of black pepper, 1 tablespoon of dried mustard, 4 tablespoons of paprika, 2 tablespoons of garlic salt, 1 tablespoon of ground ginger and 3 tablespoons of white pepper.
  • Stranger Things
    • It’s a hit – 8.2 million people streamed Stranger Things within its first 16 days of release, meaning it managed to pick up more viewers than Daredevil, Jessica Jones, House of Cards and Narcos did in their first 16 days. All of which are well known as some of Netflix’s most popular shows.
    • A video of actress Millie Bobby Brown, who you may know better as El or Eleven, of when he head was shaved.
  • Great gesture, but then again, her salary went from $15 million to $14 million – Katie Couric cut her salary at CBS by $1M to save others’ jobs
    • But the anchor insisted “on two conditions,” Berger says in the book — “the money would be directly used to pay for her staff so that they would not be terminated,” and that “this would be done quietly and with no public or private acknowledgment or announcement about her gesture.”
  • Probably old news to many, but one of the Real Housewives of Dallas got her kids kicked out of Prestonwood Baptists private school –
    • “They did not think that my behavior and the things that I was doing on the show were a good representation of the school,” Redmond said during the reunion. “Me calling wine Jesus juice, in their eyes, I made a mockery of the holy sacrament.”
  • Olympics this and that –
    • I’ll be honest, I felt a huge sigh of relief nothing crazy, like a terrorist act, happened. Sadly, it’s how I feel anytime something big like this goes on. I felt the same way after both political party conventions.
    • The U.S. won the first and last gold of the Olympics.
    • Those Brazilians really want to stress they were first in flight.
    • Toykeo won the world over with the use of Super Mario. They should just make him the next Olympics mascot.
    • Even though the U.S. men’s basketball team are all pros and rich beyond belief, it was still cool to see them locked arm in arm and all step on the podium for their gold medal at the same time. It was a big emphasis on “team”.
    • I felt the best coverage was during the diving competition. Whoever NBC had in there three-or-four person team did a great job of explaining to the viewer technique and what to look for. It’s like they understood the vast majority didn’t know what to look for other than a small splash and took the time to allow the viewer to appreciate the sport.
    • On NBC’s website, there’s a place to learn more about how to get involved in each sport and how to make the Olympic team. I really got into field hockey and handball and decided to check out those links. I was surprised that the handball link will provide you the emails of their coaches. I think the men’s coach provided his personal email because it’s a yahoo.com address.
    • The next three Olympic games are in Asia – South Korea, Japan, and China
    • I always thought it was “The Bahamas” but I kept hearing it referred to as “Bahamas”.
    • Ratings – The ratings declines this year have been well noted: NBC has averaged a prime-time audience of 26.8 million. That’s down about 18 percent from the London games in 2012, though it’s off only 8 percent from Beijing in 2008. 
    • Usain Bolt runs as guide for blind Paralympic champion Guilhermina in Rio
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    • One of the more touching moments that I want to make sure doesn’t go unnoticed is the moment after the U.S. women’s water polo team received their medals. Many folks may not be aware of this, but coaches for teams do not receive a medal. Their coach, two days before the opening ceremony, lost his brother. He was found dead in his car on a California beach, apparently dying of a heart attack after paddle boarding. The coach felt it was more important to stay with his team instead of going back home, “The thing I kept coming back to was it would be very selfish to let what happened to me personally affect this group and what we have set out to do. These girls have worked so hard for four years. Some have worked for their entire lives for this moment. So who am I to ruin that for them? I realized that it’s not about me, it’s about the team.” So after receiving their medals, the 13 women lined up on the side of the pool and, one by one, draped their goal medals around their coach’s neck (video).
Posted in Personal | 2 Comments

Bag of Randomness for Friday, August, 19, 2016

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  • One week ago, I wrote that my blood pressure was 163/91 with a resting heart rate of 88 BPM. As an experiment, I thought I’d commit to drinking at least an additional 48 ounces of water a day and track my results with no other modification to diet or exercise. I probably drink about 30 ounces of water a day, but wondered if adding 48 more ounces (coming close to a total of 80 ounces daily) would have any effect. Last night after putting the kids to bed, my blood pressure was 134/74 with a resting heart rate of 91 BPM. I think I’m gonna add water to my diet.
    • I’d like to figure out the percentage decrease, but not sure how. I don’t think you can treat those numbers like fractions.
  • In case you are wondering, I mostly drink a mixture of green and black tea throughout the day and maybe 8 ounces of either a Coke or a Sprite.
  • I don’t have a whole lot of Twitter followers, but I’m sure more than half of them are spam accounts.
  • You may know Eve Plumb best as Jan Brady, of ‘The Brady Bunch’. When she was eleven, and with the help of her parents, purchased a beachside house in Malibu for $55,300. She recently sold that house for $3.9 million.
  • GIF – After that hit in far left field, I was pretty surprised the first baseman was able to field it and tag him out, all on his own.
  • Buzzfeed – 11 Heartwarming Family Celebration At The Rio Olympics
  • I’m not trying to fan flames or advocate, just thought this was interesting for folks on both sides of the gun debate – A priest planned to destroy a gun as a gesture of peace. In return, he got threats
    • A girls’ all-star softball team was raising money to attend a major competition by holding a raffle for an AR-15.
    • Not comfortable the gun was a prize to support children, he offered for the girls’ trip himself, but since the raffle already started that wasn’t an option, so he used $3,000 from the church’s discretionary fund and bought 150 of the 500 raffle tickets. – Donors replenished the $3,000 he’d used from the church coffers and then some.
    • He won.
      • “I’m not sure that’s exactly how God works, fixing raffles,” he said with a laugh. “I like to believe I took a faithful stance. But I think that God would have been on my side even if I didn’t win, because we helped send a girls softball team on their trip.”
    • As the owner of the gun, he wanted to publically destroy it as a symbolic gesture – melt it down, turn it into a piece of art, perhaps a garden tool.
    • It was suggested this was a violation of Oregon’s new gun law by failing to have a background check conducted on a parishioner.
      • The Oregon State Police, acting on a tip from a local gun club official, opened an investigation into the allegation that he’d violated the background check law. A spokesperson there said the case is under review. Such a misdemeanor is punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine that could reach more than $6,000.
    • Blogger Note: In retrospect, I should have made this a separate or individual post. Also, I’m sure that article raised the blood pressure of some of you out there.
  • Buzzfeed – 25 Overwhelmingly Emotional Pictures Of Proud Olympic Parents
  • ‘Catfish’ recap: Knoxville man thought he dated Katy Perry for six years online
  • Time-waster – Search for photos by painting a picture
  • Cut Delkus some slack – What It Really Means When There’s A 50 Percent Chance Of Rain
    • The factor that’s missing in the comprehension of Probability of Precipitation (PoP)? Area. To quote the National Weather Service (NWS), what PoP is actually describing is the chance of rain at any point over an area.
  • A last will and testament of someone before being deployed.
  • In a World Gone Blerg, We Need 30 Rock More Than Ever
  • Who Is the Best Movie Cop of the Past 30 Years? – From RoboCop to Marge Gunderson, we have the definitive answer
  • 1992 Olympic pop-culture flashback – Dan & Dave, a great marketing campaign which didn’t quite work out for the athletes. Dan didn’t qualify for the Olympics and Dave ended up with the bronze. But Dave did win the gold in 1996.

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