Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, March 9, 2016

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  • I got a kick out of the guys on The TICKET yesterday when they were talking about areas hit by the storm and never knowing there was a city named Cool, TX, though I can’t blame them. Cool is the first town (population 151 and a total area of 1.6 square miles) you drive through from Mineral Wells on your way to Weatherford or Fort Worth. I had a cousin that would fall asleep quickly on car rides when she was young, and her siblings would always tease her that she missed going through a very “cool” place on their way to Cowtown. When she finally stayed awake and found out what it was, she was pretty disappointed.
  • The best shoes I’ve ever purchased were the wide version of the Merrell Moab Ventilator for my Guadelupe Peak climb. I love those things, extremely comfortable, but they look gawd-awful. I’m trying to find another pair online that’s better looking but it’s impossible, and I haven’t quite reached that stage in life in which I fully don’t care how I look just as long as I’m comfortable.
  • President Obama’s annual medical exam results were released yesterday. It didn’t surprise me he lost five pounds, but I was surprised he grew half an inch. I’m disappointed the article didn’t provide any detail on how that’s possible for a person in his fifties, I only thought people grew shorter as they aged. However, the conspiracy theorist in me thinks this is a real-life version of the movie Dave playing out.
  • I get their overall point, but they should have phrased it differently – GOP Senate group deletes tweet about Tammy DuckworthThe National Republican Senatorial Committee on Tuesday deleted a tweet they sent accusing Illinois Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, who lost both legs while on duty in Iraq, of “not standing up for our veterans.”
  • GIF – How to fold your socks if you are the least bit OCD
  • Today’s dose of TEXAS – Austin mayor and San Antonio mayor declare cease fire in taco war, plan breakfast taco summit – I loved this quote about the article from Reddit, “I served 2 tours in the cola wars and I can tell you that this is only a good thing for Texans, we really needed to avoid to have to enact a draft.”
  • Bill Gates did a Reddit Ask Me Anything (his fourth one) yesterday and I thought this exchange was interesting:
    • What’s your fondest memory at Harvard?
      I decided that I would be different and never attend any class I was signed up for but always attend a class I wasn’t signed up for. This worked out in a funny way when the final exam for a Combinatorics class (which I signed up for) was given at the same table as my Brain studies class (which I attended and did not sign up for). My friends from Brain studies thought it was very strange that I sat on the wrong side of the table and took the Combinatorics exam even when I was the most vocal student in the Brain class.

      How did this even work? You passed the classes you didn’t attend?
      I studied super hard during reading period and almost always got A’s. The big exception was organic chemistry where the promised video tapes of the lectures sometimes had no sound or no video – that spooked me and I ended up getting a C+ in the course!

  • I still haven’t had a chance to watch the new season of ‘House of Cards’ but I hear there’s some Highland Park stuff going on, and they get some facts of that opulent area incorrect. Robin Wright was born there, and her character has roots there.
  • For dessert yesterday, I made the family one of those giant pancakes in a rice cooker. It worked out better than expected.
  • A “Red Bull gives you wings” commercial aired yesterday and WifeGeeding commented that Red Bull should work with Always to have a promotion give-a-way.
  • WifeGeeding’s brother-in-law took his family skiing in New Mexico for spring break but cut the trip short because he separated his shoulder. I don’t have all the details so some of this ain’t going to make sense, but with a separated shoulder, they drove all the way back to East Texas. Once in East Texas, they took him to the ER where they put him under to pop the shoulder back in.
Posted in Personal | 3 Comments

Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, March 8, 2016

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  • WifeGeeding and I tried using a hoverboard for the first time yesterday. She got the hang of it in like ten seconds and in no time started to do tricks (90-seconds of her being goofy). I traveled about a good 18-inches before I called it a day.
  • I keep forgetting ‘Better Call Saul’ is on Monday nights, thank goodness for that auto-record feature.
  • I always get a kick how my kids eagerly run to things all the time, and I wonder at what age did I stop doing that myself.
  • It wasn’t until yesterday I learned that Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign was mocked. I was about seven years old when the campaign started, and from my perspective and memory, it had a real positive impact. Heck, I remember playing in the front yard one day with a friend when two guys in a Camaro stopped and asked if we wanted to try drugs that taste like candy.  We simply said, “No” and then replied back with the same one-word answer for all their other questions, even if didn’t actually answer what they were asking, all because of that campaign. Eventually, they drove off. Thankfully they never got out of their vehicle, but we kept a good distance nonetheless. I can still remember the weird mustache the guy in the passenger seat had.
  • I received the Hardin-Simmons alumni magazine in the mail yesterday. It’s already outdated as it provides an update on the presidential search committee when a new president was announced last month. However, it noted that a current student (a female at that), the student body president, was part of the committee. I wonder if that’s common for most universities to allow current students to be part of the process. And since when did they allow females in a leadership position? That’s a slippery slope they are taking. (Note: If there was such a thing as a sarcasm font, it would have been used in the last two sentences.)
  • A nugget from Peter King’s MMQB – “The University of Hartford has a basketball player named Pancake Thomas. His first name is actually Cleveland. But he got the name Pancake, he told the Hartford Courant, this way: “It was something to do with my mom’s pregnancy, when I was in her stomach. No one knew she was pregnant—nobody, at all, but my grandmother. My mom’s stomach at the time was flat, even when she was pregnant with me. So when they brought her to the hospital, my dad thought she was just having a stomach ache or something. But as he was parking the car, she was in labor. I was just a surprise baby. That’s why my grandmother called me Pancake.”
  • Modified all-electric Corvette claims new speed record of 186.8 mph – Reportedly the fastest for a street legal all-electric vehicle
  • Buzzfeed – 18 Things You’ll Understand If You’re Dating A Texan
  • Today’s dose of Texas license plates
  • Today’s does of Texas license plates II
  • Alaska Airlines is adjusting a plane’s flight plan so passengers can see today’s solar eclipse
  • Jalopnik – The Unlikely Story Of How This Ford Gave Birth To BMW M
  • The Guardian – A fifth of adults have forgotten how to do fractions or percentages
Posted in Personal | 5 Comments