Must be one heck of a table (and please use a coaster)

It costs more than $44,000 in tuition to attend Kean University for four years, and many of the school’s students struggle to pay the bill.

But the taxpayer-supported school in the township of Union spent $219,000 so far and has authorized up to $270,000 — about the average price of a house in the nearby working-class neighborhood — for a custom-made, circular conference table that seats 23 and features data ports, microphones and an illuminated map of the world in a glass panel at its center.

The table was bought without competitive bidding, which is normally required under New Jersey law for purchases at state colleges and universities. Instead, Kean hired a company in China to manufacture the table. The school recently established a branch campus there and wants to strengthen ties with the Chinese government.

Full Article

Posted in Interesting | Comments Off on Must be one heck of a table (and please use a coaster)

Bag of Randomness

eohZwLa

  • Yesterday I discovered that my last eight or ten tweets haven’t been posting to my account because they all have been pictures that I was sending to the now defunct Twitpic.
  • I’ve never eaten at the famed Joe T. Garcia’s.
  • The Wonder Woman movie may actually be pretty legit now that Michelle MacLaren is set to direct and develop it.  If you aren’t familiar with her work, she executive produced and directed a lot of ‘Breaking Bad’  and ‘X-Files’ episodes and directed episodes of ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘Game of Thrones’.
  • Off hand, I’m not thrilled with the choice of Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch starring in the next ‘True Detective’.
  • I recently watched the Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt movie Edge of Tomorrow and was pleasantly surprised, it’s a highly under-rated movie.  You can think of it as an action packed sci-fi Groundhog Day.
  • Barry over LiberallyLean.com will often make the point about how he doesn’t understand how any grown male over 40 cares about who wins a professional sports game.  Lucky for me, I have about nine-and-a-half months left.  My passion for all sports has declined over the years as my perspective of what’s really important has broadened, but for me, it reminds me of the bond I had with my late father.  We didn’t connect on a lot of things, but watching the Cowboys together is a feeling I never want to slip away, and I like the feeling I can be connected with a community and not have to have tuition dollars tied to it.
  • Funny thing, but even though I can see why people would root for a college team for the reasons I stated for a professional team and many more legitimate and sentimental reasons, I always get the feeling college fans are the kind of folks that can’t let go of their youth and refuse to think that the best time of anyone’s life is the college years.  Whenever I see someone’s house flying a flag from their college I just want to go all Elsa on them and yell “Let It Go!”.
  • And yes, I like the Longhorns and I never was a student (except for a business certification class), but to me, it’s more of a state pride thing that started when I learned how neighboring states would meet almost halfway on a neutral field to a game.  It may not make sense to you, and it’s not suppose to, but it does to me.  And the way college sports has changed over the last thirty years, you might as well call it professional.
  • I mentioned the best years of anyone’s life may be in college.  While an undergrad, I was a leadership minor and had the Dean of Life (or whatever his title was) for a class.  He was told us that if we thought college was the best years of our life, we might as well point a gun to our head and pull the trigger.  That moment had a profound effect on me as I went through a mental checklist of things I thought were important moments and achievements in life.
  • How Austin’s McGarrah Jessee advertising agency celebrated the hiring of their 100th employee (YouTube).
  • I haven’t informed or educated myself well enough about the whole Ferguson situation to form an opinion.  Sure, I have my initial thoughts and feelings on the matter, but it’s based on speculation and assumption.
  • Charles Manson gives hope for all single guys out there.
  • Chicago radio hosts find out they’re fired live on air
  • Probably one of the top four most awkward moments of the Clinton presidency – GIF or YouTube
Posted in Personal | 7 Comments

Bag of Randomness

ARo6vhn

  • Posting this week may be sporadic.
  • We didn’t feel any of the earthquakes in the area.
  • I thought the NBC crew was hyping NY Giant Odell Beckham Jr’s catching ability until he made the catch of the decade.  Last night Drew Pearson said, “If I had that catch in my highlight reel, I’d be in the Hall of Fame.” Sorry Drew, you even caught the Hail Mary and that still didn’t get you in, though you should be.
  • Jerry Jones and Jay-Z had a meet and greet last night.
  • Jason Garrett and NJ Gov. Chris Christie had a meet and greet last night.  Speaking of the redhead, I don’t think I’ve seen him so animated on the sidelines.
  • The blocking that Romo got on that last drive was incredible.
  • I can’t get enough of that Landry-shift victory formation.
  • I’ll always remember Bill Parcells saying there’s no reason a team shouldn’t win after the bye week because they have two weeks to prepare for one opponent.
  • I can’t find my smartwatch.  I know it’s in the house because when the battery was alive, it was connected by Bluetooth. It has the feature that would send an alarm to my phone if I couldn’t find my phone, but it doesn’t have a feature that works the other way around.  While in search for the watch, WifeGeeding did find my small digital camera that I use for most of my time-lapse projects, so that’s a plus.  That camera has been MIA for over a year and to my surprise the battery wasn’t dead.
  • Speaking of Bluetooth, the story behind the name and logo is actually pretty cool.  In short, it was created by Swedish company Ericsson and it honors its viking heritage.  Bluetooth is the anglicized name for the Danish king that was able to unite parts of Denmark and Norway into one nation, and the logo is a combination of the king’s initials.  Sidenote: That king was able to convert the Danes to Christianity.
  • Two sitcoms last week, ‘Modern Family’ and ‘Marry Me’, both centered around having a backup turkey.
  • Detroit will easily win another Super Bowl with the way they are taking care of the Bills.
  • RGIII’s special privileges taken away
  • I watched the NFL Network’s ‘A Football Life’ on Lyle Alzado and I had no idea he played for the Broncos and Browns, in my mind he was always a Raider.  I also had no idea he fought Muhammad Ali.  And here I thought Ed “Too Tall” Jones was the only pro-football player to give boxing a try.  I know Alzado blamed his brain cancer on steroid use, but there’s controversy behind that thought, and I’m a bit surprised the special didn’t touch the topic.
  • To avoid offending anyone, a California high school is changing their name from Arabs to the Mighty Arabs.
  • The best song I heard on one of the new classic hip-hop stations was N2Deep’s “Back to the Hotel”.   Here’s an article about the first classic hip-hop radio station that started in Houston last month.
  • Michael Che actually made it through a Weekend Update without flubbing anything.
  • Something I haven’t really thought all the way through – There should be a way to harness all that excess snow in places like Buffalo, melt it, and send it to areas in drought.  It wouldn’t take much to melt the snow, and it could be transported through some kind of water pipeline.
  • Rumors are Bono will take three months to recover from his injuries and the new tour will start in June.
  • 25 Colleges With The Worst Return on Investment – I only saw one Texas college on the list, Baylor.
  • 100-Year-Old Woman Sees The Ocean For The First Time
  • The Internet Helped A Model Save A Paralyzed Stray Dog She Saw Crawling On The Beach
  • Baby Survived Several Days In A Sewer After Being Abandoned
  • The Entire Bible Explained In One Facebook Post. This Guy Nails It.
Posted in Personal | 2 Comments

Integrity

rowlandnpredit_wide-ae030fb5aaa1c047787ca0de69bcf3486cf27d62-s600-c85When an assisted living home in California shut down last fall, many of its residents were left behind, with nowhere to go.

The staff at the Valley Springs Manor left when they stopped getting paid — except for cook Maurice Rowland and Miguel Alvarez, the janitor.

“There was about 16 residents left behind, and we had a conversation in the kitchen, ‘What are we going to do?’ ” Rowland says.

“If we left, they wouldn’t have nobody,” the 34-year-old Alvarez says.

Their roles quickly transformed for the elderly residents, who needed round-the-clock care.

“I would only go home for one hour, take a shower, get dressed, then be there for 24-hour days,” says Alvarez.

Rowland, 35, remembers passing out medications during those long days. He says he didn’t want to leave the residents — some coping with dementia — to fend for themselves.

“I just couldn’t see myself going home — next thing you know, they’re in the kitchen trying to cook their own food and burn the place down,” Rowland says. “Even though they wasn’t our family, they were kind of like our family for this short period of time.”

Full Article

Posted in Touching | Comments Off on Integrity