Bag of Randomness for Thursday, April 7, 2016

ahbncookies

  • I got a neighborhood email detailing a story of how a woman left her purse in her car as she went inside the post office and came back to find her car broken into and the purse missing and then warned us all to be careful. That just seems too common sense to me, I take my purse with me where ever I go, it’s on my person at all times except when I’m at home.
  • WifeGeeding told me a friend’s mother-in-law broke her wrist after stepping in a pothole and falling down. Being the sensitive person that I am, I simply said, “Ohhhh no….I’m a pothole.”
  • My neighbor that is employed (at least currently) by our local NFL franchise is having his house painted. When I checked the mail yesterday, he just parked in front of his abode and then gave all the paint crew Gatorade. He really is a nice, humble man.
  • Yesterday morning I was driving home after dropping DaughterGeeding off at school and noticed a lot of dark smoke coming from the DFW Airport area and mentioned it in a tweet without tagging or mentioning anyone. To my surprise, someone manning the DFW Airport Twitter account replied back to my tweet and addressed me by my first name letting me know it was just a training exercise. I was impressed by the professionalism and the kindness. However, my name doesn’t appear on my Twitter handle or description, so I’m surprised they found it.
  • I can’t remember if I shared this story, but WifeGeeding was recently at our local public library in the children’s section. She was on both her knees looking at books on the lower shelves when some man walked up to her and told her she was bowing in the wrong direction for Mecca. It took her a bit to process what he said and left her taciturn.
  • DaughterGeeding is learning about the planets at school and she asked me what was the hottest planet. As a fan of space, I thought I knew the correct answer and said, “Mercury, because it’s closest to the sun.” It turns out, I’m wrong. Because Mercury is the closest, it has no atmosphere, which is a contributing factor.
    • We know that Venus, the second planet away from the sun, is on the average 30 million miles farther from the sun than Mercury. The natural assumption is that being farther away, it must be cooler. But assumptions can be dangerous. For practical consideration, Mercury has no atmosphere, no warming blanket to help it maintain the sun’s heat. Venus, on the other hand, is shrouded by an unexpectedly thick atmosphere, about 100 times thicker than our own on Earth.
  • The ‘CBS Evening News’ had an interesting story about the Coachella Valley school district in California. The superintendent is a big believer in technology, but 95% of the students live below the poverty line. A lot of students need Internet access but he found many students resorting to sitting outside a Starbuck or outside the school building at night just to get Wi-Fi. To solve the problem, he turned school buses into Wi-Fi hotspots and they are parked in eight different locations, one right outside a trailer park.
  • JFK’s asassination saved Liberace’s life – On November 22, 1963, he suffered renal failure, reportedly from accidentally inhaling excessive amounts of dry cleaning fumes from his newly cleaned costumes in a Pittsburgh dressing room, and nearly died. He later said that what saved him from further injury was being woken-up by his entourage to the news that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.
  • ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ turns 30 years old – This week the iconic “Don’t Mess with Texas” campaign celebrates 30 years of discouraging Texan litter bugs from trashing the highways and byways of the Lone Star State. The Texas Department of Transportation launched the campaign in 1985, with the first television ads running during the Cotton Bowl in January 1986.
  • The teaser trailer for Star Wars: Rogue One is supposed to drop this morning.
  • NBC’s newest Law & Order spinoff is a true crime anthology series
    – Law & Order: True Crime will start with the 1989 Menendez Brothers murders
  • My profession is to keep this kind of stuff from happening – Honda accidentally charges many customers twice for single car payment
  • Russell Crow is hosting SNL. If I were a writer, I’d be scared of offending him, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that can take a joke.
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