Looking ahead (01-31-2021)

Good afternoon to one and all who found their way to my tiny virtual blog corner of the universe. Here in Missouri (of the United States), the weather is dreary, gray, blustery and cold. Not the bitter cold of the extreme north or south poles, but cold nonetheless. By now some parts of the country and the world for that matter have endured literal feet of snowfall but within the St Louis region we have maybe had half of a foot cumulative. Some locally enjoy the snow (or at least the appearance of it) and on the flipside some loathe its very mention. At this time…there’s really not much first hand to report on that front so we shall move on.

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MLB Names – They’re All Offensive!

Good afternoon to one and all! Also Happy New Year!!

I have uploaded a project I started working on several weeks ago. It’s a spreadsheet of all the Major League Baseball teams. This spreadsheet contains their origins along with the status of how long their current nickname has been in use. To poke a little fun at my favorite team, the Cleveland Indians, (because they chose to cave into financial peer pressure) I set out to compile a list of why each and every other franchise should be forced to change their names as well. I hope you enjoy the post and as always, I look forward to your feedback. Have a great weekend!

blog_offensive12252020_oDownload

Peace. <<01-10-2021>> #33 https://scottlatta5000.weebly.com/ – Don’t forget to check out my website for links to all my social media and other projects!

Why don’t you write more?

Hello all. As I type this I am three days into a head cold, yes it’s just a head cold. This sucks. I’m not majorly debilitated in any way, I just have head congestion and a little scratchy throat. In years past, before the C word spread over the globe, I would’ve taken some Sudafed and boldly gone out into the world to carry on in spite of the sickness. Ah but this is the broken year 2020 and all the rules have changed. In the last 9 to 10 months, the old world has disappeared like the ice in a fast food cup sitting on the asphalt during the noon day sun of summer. Gone are the days of ‘toughing it out’. Replacing those sickly souls slogging along coughing and wheezing, are the devout hand-washers and toilet paper hoarders. We are sitting at three weeks to go until the end of this blasted year. I had remained virtually (ha, see what I did there?) sniffle-free for most of the year. Almost made it to the end. Oh so close.

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Desktop Picture Purge – April 2020

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No rhyme or reason here…just random shtuff!

Every so often I need to clean up my laptop desktop area. In doing so I tend to notice quite a bit has accumulated there. For your review and judgement, I present the most recent weeks worth of clutter. Enjoy. Stay safe out there.

Peace. <<04-22-2020>>

Going Viral Down A Spiral

This is how the mighty human dynasty ends…behind a fortress of toilet paper rolls. Our defenses weakly fortified with catapults loaded with sanitized goo? Social media is causing the masses to yip and bolt like my cat Sadie when the house creaks unexpectedly. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

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World View – Mid-Month

Good day! Today is Monday and below is a breakdown of the hits so far this month on my blog. During the height of my blog’s momentum a few years ago, I was getting around 400+ views a month. As my monthly entries have fallen off, so too has the volume of web traffic. Of the countries on this list, I’ve only visited one of them…but it would be nice to aspire to set foot on the soil of a few more of these. #DareToDream

Have a great Monday!

Peace.

<<<06-17-2019>>>

Flood Waters 2019

It seems, at least to me, that just about every year I am writing a blog piece about the local flood waters here in Missouri. There would be a certain contingent who would simply shout, “Just move away already!” OK fair enough but I’m not actually in a flood plain and where I live is above the critically afflicted. How the flood waters affect me is more superficial than anything. A few of the most convenience routes are under water causing me to seek alternative roads that may take a little longer to traverse. There are other people, some known, some unknown who are directly affected and displaced or facing total loss of possessions that are in more peril than myself and could use the relief.

Did you get a haircut?

Good morning.

As some of you may know, I recently returned from my belated honeymoon/vacation in Cancun, Mexico. The temperatures were fantastic and the beaches were the softest sand I’ve have ever tread upon. Add in the all-inclusive food and drinks within the resort and it was a pretty spiffy time.

The Freak Show Podcast

Hello…is it my blog you’re looking for?

For those of you that sang that in the voice of Adele in your heads instead of Lionel Richie, please stop. For those of you that read it as Morgan Freeman, good choice! Well Done! Bravo!

What gets you excited?

Happy Friday! Today the calendar reads (not really, it’s an inanimate object after all) Friday, September 7^th. On this date in history many, many things occurred! For instance, the city of Boston, Massachusetts was founded 388 years ago (1630). This is legit because Columbus quasi-discovered America in 1492 so it should be pretty accurate. According to the web, Interpol was formed in Vienna in 1923…kind of important. In 1979, the Entertain and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) makes its debut. Mark Whiten, of the St Louis Cardinals hits 4 homeruns and has 12 RBI’s in the second game of a double header in 1993. Sadly in 2011 a plane crashes in Russia killing 43 people aboard including the entire roster of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl Kontinental Hockey League team.

Friday Random Show Me Search

Finally it is Friday! Thank the all-powerful entity behind the curtain of the universe for making this happen! So today, as I like to do on occasion, I have lined up a number of random phrases or nouns or funny words. From there I plug them into the magical Google search box and see what images are brought forth. Let us begin!

Meg vs Mosasaurus – Tale of the Tape

Good morning! As someone who is easily drawn in by monster movies, I saw The Meg over the weekend. I would wager that a significant portion of the people who saw it had no clue it was adapted from a series of books written by Steve Alten. Like most movies adapted from book form, Hollywood takes many, MANY liberties with the facts and story to fit what they think the viewers will want to see, production value, production costs, etc. This endeavor sadly was no different. For generic ballpark reference, the story roughly had the same characters and a few of the basic elements. But, in my opinion, I felt like most of the major players were mis-cast. And let’s not even get into the shark’s behaviors. Oy vey.

What should I write about?

Good morning. Today is Tuesday, October 17^th. That reminds me, I need to procure a light blue dress shirt so I can complete the ensemble cast for Halloween at work by embodying ‘The Professor’ from Gilligan’s Island the long ago TV show. Forewarned, I look nothing like the actor Russell David Johnson who portrayed ‘The Professor’; may he rest in peace since he passed away in early 2014. A quick trivia question: ‘The Professor’ actually was not his given name on the show. What was his character’s name?

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<<<Jeopardy Theme>>>

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Good morning to the United Kingdom

In reviewing my reader stats, it breaks down what countries the readers are from based on IP addresses I would imagine. The United States far and away is responsible for the bulk of my readership. Usually each month the next country up is the UK (United Kingdom). Sometimes Canada, Mexico or Australia will sneak into that second spot, but for the majority of the time that number two slot is occupied by the UK.

Why am I so focused on the UK this morning? Well, I was curious as to how to say good morning to those good people of the UK since they are also English speaking individuals for the most part. In the US I can say good morning and it covers most of the 50 states with perhaps the exception of some small parts of Texas and Florida (Buenos Dias!) With an ocean and roughly 4,000 miles separating me from those virtual readers in the UK, I wanted to customize a greeting that would translate into their normal every day morning. So after much research, it appears I can tell the readers in the United Kingdom ‘good morning’ by saying: Good morning. Hmmm. Kind of a letdown on that one. I was expecting something cheeky involving ox tails or quips about parrot chirps on a branch or something of the sort. Good morning.  (sigh) Oh well, at least nothing will be lost in the translation.

Please Friday responsibly and let me know if you did something extraordinary with your week!

Peace.

Sunken Ships and Parts Unknown

Good day! At least I’m pretty sure that’s what I meant as an intro. Forgive me as I am mentally running on just a few hours of sleep after a long night in the Cardinal Glennon (Children’s Hospital) ER to have Ayden’s broken arm ‘fixed’.

For some reason, I honestly do not remember at this point, I started thinking about ships underwater. Again I have no clue where the concept sprung from in my brain. So I did a Google search for “sunken ships”. For those who do not know me, I like to Google things I do not know much about or just to expand my current knowledge/ view point of said subject matter. The image search provided many cool and eerie pictures, some obviously from video games.

From there I started wondering, in this day and age of GPS and tracking devices, how many ships annually sink? Another Google search yielded a guess-timate: ‘an estimate of two dozen large ships sink or go missing ever year’ per www.actuarialeye.com. Common causes for these ships to sink or completely disappear are but not limited to: severe weather, hull integrity, fire, collisions, running aground, attacks and intentional sinking (for man-made reefs or related purposes). In my estimation, pretty interesting stuff to digest.

Next I wanted to know an estimate of how many ships worldwide (from this Earth) have been sunk? According to UNESCO, there are an estimated 3,000,000 sunken ships in the oceans dating back 10,000 years. At this point, the Bermuda Triangle idea fell on me like a paper towel soaked in warm mayonnaise. Naturally I searched for the Bermuda Triangle (BT). But my first search was aimed at geography to see where it was actually located; I found out that the Bermuda Triangle stretches from Florida to Puerto Rico to (of course) Bermuda. The triangle is about 500,000 square miles. This numerical figure made me look up a quote attributed to Tom Hank’s character, Chuck Noland, from the movie Castaway.

Chuck Noland: That’s a search area of 500,000 square miles. That’s twice the size of Texas. They may never find us.

The Google information about the Bermuda Triangle, in addition to the countless planes that have disappeared, states that some 300 plus vessels have disappeared in the BT. So if you take the 500,000 square miles on the surface and factor in that parts of the BT are 3-5 miles deep…you can see why finding a plane or a ship would be like guessing the correct Powerball numbers combo to win the jackpot.

With this information now at tips of your brain synapses for your next social gathering, I bid you a fine tomorrow. Because of course, tomorrow is another day!

Peace…and slap-happiness to all!

 

<<09-26-2017>>