The First Bag of Randomness of 2016

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  • Well, it’s time to get back into the swing of things.
  • A reader asked if I kept up my infamous spreadsheet from last year to compare the data from the last two years.  Well, I didn’t keep that one up but I did start a more boring one in April of my weight, blood pressure, body fat percentage. I’ve only kept up with the weight which is charted if you scroll down a bit.
  • I usually just spend New Year’s Eve at home, and the last couple of years I’ve watched the Big D NYE special on WFAA, but it didn’t air this year. However, CBS11 decided to air their own event, but I turned it off the moment I saw one of their correspondents broadcasting live from a Main Event (a bowling and video game place for families with six locations in the area) in Frisco. That’s just a step up from a Chuck E Cheese. That correspondent must have ticked off someone or lost some bet to get that assignment, and I’m sure it was a ratings disaster.
  • I was at our local grocery store to purchase one item and stood in the checkout line behind a couple for two, maybe three minutes.  When it was my turn to purchase the item, the cashier told me, “Hold on, he’s next.” and point to a grocery store employee behind me. I told him I didn’t remember anyone being in front of me, and then he stated that his coworker set his stuff down, went to get something else, and was getting back in his place in line. My passive-aggressive-self drove home immediately, fired up the laptop, and filled out the customer service survey from the URL provided on the receipt. Yeah, that will show ’em.  Don’t worry, I didn’t use all caps, I’m not a savage.
  • With college football coming to a close, I’m going to miss all those AT&T commercials with Bo Jackson and other football greats. I was quite surprised and got a kick out of the one when Joe Montana appears and he and Steve Young share an awkward moment.
  • I stated I had reservations that Michigan State shouldn’t have been included as one of the final four football teams in the college football since they had too many narrow wins, some of them our right miracles. After seeing how badly they lost to Alabama by getting shut out, I was right.
  • Now that Baylor has wrapped up their football season, I wonder when they’ll go public with the results of their investigation of the Sam Ukwuachu incident. I think it’s common practice for most places to keep the envelope sealed if an investigation wraps up before the season, and I would suspect by now the investigation should be complete.
  • Gary Patterson can be a bit of a jerk, and I don’t think he has great game time management skills, but he is an exceptional coach and I have to hand it to him for suspending his star quarterback. And there’s no denying it, but the TCU comeback over Oregon in the Alamo Bowl was fantastic. Sure, Oregon lost their starting QB and center, but so was TCU among others. I did get a kick out of the Patterson bit of changing his shirt for better luck. But the most touching thing about the whole game was the storybook ending of  TCU’s backup QB, Bram Kohlhausen, a walk-on senior whose only start was the Alamo Bowl and whose dad passed away from cancer just before Christmas. After the game he bargained with a guy to get his mom down from the stands to hug her and then said this in regards to the suspended QB he replaced, “I was playing this whole game for Tre,” said Kohlhausen, who had the initials “T.B.” on his wristband. “He was my best friend. He was the one who got us here and showed me how to play like I did tonight.”
  • I saw that Ed “Too Tall” Jones was on Twitter and I started to go through his tweets. One of them was a link to an article about .  He, of course, is the tallest DE of all time.  A total of three Cowboys made the list, though no Cowboy fan would like to claim Mike Vanderjagt.  The tallest player of all-time is Oakland Raider Richard Sligh at seven feet tall.
  • We finally caught up with ‘The Knick‘ by finishing season two. It’s a shame that thing was on Cinemax as it never got good ratings despite being critically acclaimed.  Originally, director Steven Soderbergh and actor Clive Owen signed on because it was meant to be more like a mini-series, with a story arc lasting only ten episodes; however, there is a bit of discussion of a possible season three. As much as I’d like to see more of the series, the finale wrapped things up so well by allowing equal parts of justice, injustice, redemption, and transformation. Doing anything more would be like Michelangelo chipping a bit more at David or Leonardo di Vinci adding something else to the Mona Lisa. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Basically, it’s a hospital drama in the year 1900, and seeing how they go about the practice of medicine is fascinating.
  • Local locker room camaraderie – Dallas Mavericks’ J.J. Barea Locker Room Chair Replaced With A Baby Seat 
  • Today’s dose of ‘MURICA!
  • Only in Tarrant County – Winter Restaurant Week
  • God made Eve from Adam’s penis and NOT his rib, claims Bible professor – The theory, put forward by revered biblical professor Ziony Zevit, suggests God made Eve from Adam’s baculum, or penis bone.  Professor Zevit said this explains why man has no baculum, unlike most mammals, and why men don’t have an uneven number of ribs compared to women. To support his theory, he said the Hebrew word ‘tsela‘, taken from the Old Testament, does not translate as ‘rib’ and instead ‘refers to limbs sticking out sideways from an upright human body.’
  • There’s a lot of buzz, and I mean a lot of buzz, about Netflix’s ‘Making a Murderer, which I think is equal parts “Serial” podcast, ‘Rectify’, and ‘Fargo’. It’s a project that the film-makers and documentarians have been working on for ten years, and here’s the trailer (YouTube) if you are interested.
  • U.S. News and World Report – Politicians May Have to Wear Donor Logos in California – A wealthy Republican wants to require unprecedented transparency in California by forcing state politicians to plaster their suits and dresses with the logos of their top 10 donors — and voters fed up with those politicians may actually get the chance to vote on the idea in November.
  • Today’s dose of TEXAS! – That’s certainly an interesting way to honor Ike, and I doubt we’ll ever see anything like that at an inauguration festivity again – (Houston Chronicle) Kilgore, Texas Rangerettes performing at railroad yards during inauguration festivities for Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • Buzzfeed – A George Costanza-Themed Bar Opened In Australia And All Is Right In The World
  • Florida news – A 270 lb Florida man has been charged with manslaughter after allegedly sitting on his six-year-old son and crushing him to death while he played a video game on Christmas Eve.
  • The Verge – Mark Zuckerberg: I’m building an AI for my home that’s ‘kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man’
  • GIF – Hammer Time
  • GIF – This never happens when I go to the zoo.
Posted in Personal | 4 Comments

Last Bag of Randomness of 2015

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  • It delights me to no end when I tell the kids they can play with a big cardboard box I’m about to throw out and they spend hours playing in it.  Usually, they use markers to turn it into a spaceship.
  • WifeGeeding’s parents wanted to meet us for lunch at the restaurant in Neiman Marcus at Northpark Center, so we obliged, though I knew I was about to feel a bit out of my comfort zone. When I first saw them, I teased them that they looked like the Ewings, especially since WifeGeeding’s father was wearing a stetson and a sportcoat that had a twist of Western influence in it, though he was sporting it quite well. The opportunity to tease them about being the Ewings arose once more when the conversation of oil prices and their oil rigs and wells popped up.
  • It’s always interesting to look through the clearance racks at Neiman’s and check out the prices.  Even with a 25% discount, this one woman’s vest had a price tag of over $3,700.
  • The restaurant at Neiman’s, as part of a complimentary appetizer, includes a small cup of chicken broth to drink.  I had no idea that was a thing.
  • Since Northpark has a Tesla gallery I decided to check out the car and sit in the driver’s seat. There’s a lot to like about it, but I think it has some bad blind spots in the rear.
  • Random observation: Mothers tend to carry babies and toddlers using their left arm and shoulder and fathers tend to use their right arm and shoulder.
  • WifeGeeding’s father has this gift of approaching people he doesn’t know, engaging them in conversation, and making them laugh and feel as if they have known him for decades. I wish I could describe it better, but there’s such a charm to it mixed with kindness and gentleness and he’s never intrusive about it.
  • The differences between a sportcoat, blazer, and suit jacket
    • Sportcoats – Usually made of thicker, rougher fabric and hearken to a time when men wore jackets while doing “sporting” activities.
    • Blazers –  Once made only from wool, these traditionally are a step up in formality/dressiness when compared to sportcoats.
    • Suit Jackets – Almost always from wool with a few cotton and linen summer versions thrown in for good measure, suit jackets come with matching pants.
  • Is it a well … or a rig? A look at some of the common nomenclature of the oil field – Short definition, a rig drills the hole and the well pumps the oil. But the process is more complicated than that.
  • As if being arraigned wasn’t bad enough, Bill Cosby tripped on the curb on his way to the courthouse.
  • Trump had plethora of reporters and camera operators on his private jet yesterday and said, “Try not to scratch the woodwork if possible.” I live in a very different world than Mr. Trump. I live in a very different world than all the candidates.
  • An interesting quote from a survivor of one of the recent North Texas tornadoes – “We actually went outside and started commanding the winds because God had given us authority over the winds – the airways. And we just began to command this storm not to hit our area. We – we spoke to the storm and said, go to unpopulated places. It did exactly what we said to do because God gave us the authority to do that.”
  • The inside of that truck makes you want to cry – Buzzfeed – It Took 9 Epic Hours To Get This Truck Out Of A Frozen Saskatchewan Lake
  • YouTube – 7-year-old Sets New Limbo Skating World Record – 28cm high, 7cm less than the required 35cm
  • This is one trippy cake – YouTube – Color changing cake icing technique
  • Gizmodo – Disney’s New Rolling Robot Climbs Walls Like a Gecko –  Atop the robot is a pair of steerable propellers that generate thrust, which pushes the vehicle against the wall. and keeps it from falling.
  • Vox – I read 164 books in 2015 and tracked them all in a spreadsheet. Here’s what I learned.
  • Lawn signs are only 98.3 percent useless.
  • Even Sarah McLachlan can’t watch her sad ASPCA ad
  • Today’s dose of ‘MURICA!
Posted in Personal | 5 Comments

Bag of Randomness for Monday, December 28, 2015

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  • It’s an absolute delight to see Christmas through a child’s eyes.
  • DaughterGeeding can be just too precious sometimes, and I certainly don’t deserve her. Driving home after the Christmas Eve service we were teasing that the weather was really bad where he’s at and there was no way Santa could see through the snow while flying. This was just an attempt to get her to say that’s why Santa uses Rudolph as she’s been watching it quite a bit, but instead, she said, “Well, that’s okay.  As long as we are all together as a family, that’s all that matters.”
  • I’m surprised that the 24-hour Christmas music station continues to play Christmas music after Christmas.  Surely they take a huge ratings drop after Christmas.
  • On Christmas Eve, Santa, in a Lowe’s truck, dropped off a new washer and dryer and hauled off the washer and dryer my father bought in 1992.  I think he really got his money’s worth out of those things as they never malfunctioned until about a year ago.  That thing washed my clothes from high school, college, as a working adult, and my kids’ clothes, and the last thing from my childhood home in Mineral Wells that I continually used.  In a way, I felt like it was the last piece of my youth to let go.  Lowe’s offers free delivery but with a catch, you have to purchase all their accessories even if you don’t need them, like water and dryer vent hoses.  The installer saw my hoses were just fine and gave me his unopened package and told me to take it back and get a refund.  Just the water hoses was over thirty bucks, and yes, I did tip the installer.
  • I watching Working Girl for the first time and was quite surprised at all the actors I recognized – Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Melanie Griffith, Alec Baldwin, Joan Cusack, Nora Dunn, Oliver Platt, Kevin Spacey, Olympia Dukakis, David Duchovny, Ricki Lake.
  • I also watched and pleasantly enjoyed the 2015 movie Vacation with Ed Helms and Christina Applegate which is a sequel, remake, and reboot (per IMDB) of the franchise with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo.  Chris Hemsworth is also in the movie and plays a DFW weatherman that is married to Audry who lives in a Plano mansion.  He attempted a Texan accent but for me it sounded more like his Australian twang.  As much as I enjoyed and laughed at the movie, it did bring me down as I realized I’m very much like Russ and his father Clark.  We sacrifice higher paying jobs and other things to spend more time with our family, often don’t feel respected by them and others, get laughed at doing well-meaning stuff, get overlooked, fall on our face trying to fix things or make things right, feel our wives could have done better, people lack confidence in us, and others are reluctant to join us in things we want to do.
  • I watched Vacation by renting it on Google Play and casting it from my phone to the Chromecast on our television.  While it was playing, I picked up my phone to check something and noticed that my phone would show the actors and their character names as they appeared on the screen, continuously.  This is probably old news for everyone else and available on other devices, but I thought it was pretty darn cool.  If I wanted to know more about the actor, all I had to do was select him or her.
  • The coolest bit of trivia from the movie – During the opening credits there is a brief still of the late John Hughes and his family on vacation. John Hughes was the writer of the original Vacation (1983), European Vacation (1985), and Christmas Vacation (1989).
  • The dogs woke me up in the middle of the night to go outside and relieve themselves.  It was a full moon out and the weather was nice, so I thought I’d step outside as well and embrace the solitude.  I looked up at the roof of our backyard porch and saw what I thought was a black cat staring at me.  It didn’t fear me one bit, and for a while, I couldn’t shoo it away. It disappeared for a bit and reappeared at the other end of the porch roof, and then decided to climb up the roof of our two-story house and then climb the chimney. I promise this wasn’t a dream, but it was a surreal experience.  The next day I got an email from our HOA saying beware of a bobcat that was spotted in the neighborhood, so maybe what I thought was a black cat was a bobcat and me and the dogs got lucky.
  • Our area had a lot of bad storms recently, but my area didn’t get the brunt of it.  If you follow local meteorologist Pete Delkus on Twitter, he went after people that called him out for interrupting a spare bowl game for severe weather coverage.
  • Pictures of Pete Delkus baseball cards when he was attempting a career in the sport.
  • Until I read and saw the picture in this tweet from @WestWingReport, I thought JFK was the last acting president to ride through Dallas in an open top car, but it was Gerald Ford.  That lead me to do a little research and I found this DailyMail piece which stated the Ford campaign wanted to use it in a commercial, but it was a turn off for focus group since it was just 13-years after the death of JFK.  In particular, this line from the commercial bothered them, “When a limousine can parade openly through the streets of Dallas, there’s a change that’s come over America.”  You can see the unaired campaign video in the link provided above.
  • Dallas Observer – The Good, The Bad And, Of Course, The Ugly: Dallas’ 2015 Quotes Of The Year
  • The Guardian – Jesus statue’s promotion to army general vetoed by Guatemalan president
  • Florida news – Woman arrested for riding motorized cart through Walmart while eating chicken, drinking wine
  • It was cold yesterday, but I ran the AC a lot more than I wanted last week.
Posted in Personal | 2 Comments

Sarah Palin spoofs Tina Fey

For real, and I found it a bit amusing.

Sarah Palin stars in Independent Journal’s new comedy about a small-town TV writer who moves to NYC in hopes of creating a hit variety show. Also starring Kevin Brown (Dot Com), Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator John McCain

Posted in Political, Pop Culture | 2 Comments