- Let’s all cheer! It’s opening day of the baseball season. The weather is crummy in New York, so I don’t know if they’ll get the whole Yankee game in, but they’ll try. It did snow at Shea Stadium on opening day in 1996. I left during the second inning. I like baseball, but I’m not stupid.
- If you heard that Hailey Swindal, who sang the National Anthem at today’s Yankee game is George Steinbrenner’s granddaughter, you probably expected her to be an inadequate singer. That’s what I expected, and I was wrong.
- In case you need reminding, the last two words of the Star Spangled Banner are “Play Ball!”
- March 31, is World Back Up Day. It’s supposed to encourage you to back up important files from your computer. If your computer hard drive fails, it feels really good to know you have a complete back up of all your data including family pictures, music, financial data, work-from-home files, you name it. I know firsthand because I had a computer hard drive fail during warranty so I didn’t replace it myself. When the tech asked me what I wanted to do about it, I said, “Whatever you want. I have a complete back up from yesterday.” Talk about smug!
- March 31st is also Robert Bunsen’s birthday. If the German chemist was still alive, he’d be 200 years old today. Who is Robert Bunsen you ask? Well, he invented the Bunsen cell which is a kind of battery. He also discovered the elements cesium and rubidium and he lost an eye in a laboratory explosion. But if you think the name sounds familiar, it’s most likely because he invented the Bunsen burner, probably still found in every high school and college chemistry lab. And he didn’t patent it either.
- Seven people won the $319 Million Mega Millions Lottery in an office pool. Usually, there are eight people in the pool, but the eighth guy said he wasn’t feeling lucky that day and declined to participate. Turns out he was right. He wasn’t lucky that day.
- If you’re buying portable audio video equipment, here’s a suggestion: what kind of battery the thing uses ought to help you decide which one to buy. I have a four-year-old portable DVD player. I just bought a new, proprietary battery for it. The battery cost $90 and was very hard to find. The whole device cost roughly $200 new, including the battery. A high-capacity battery for my laptop computer is in the same price range. If you can find something with a non-exclusive battery (and good luck doing that), it ought to be cheaper to replace. If not, you may want to look up the cost of replacement batteries for the device you’re considering and buy the device with the least expensive replacement batteries.
- I just figured out something I should have discovered right after we got our first dishwasher. If you eat bran flakes for breakfast (or at any time of day for that matter), you should rinse out the bowl and put it in the dishwasher or you should put it in the dishwasher right away and put it through its cycle right away too. What you should not do is let that residue dry until it’s like concrete and then try to wash the bowl.
- One of the great things about being an adult is that Gym isn’t a required subject for me anymore.
- My daughter is leaving China to come home at 10:00 tonight our time, or 10:00 tomorrow morning in Shanghai.
