Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• Liberally Lean Pick 'Em Tourney. Last Chance. Join 75 of your closet friends.
  
• Storm damage/Allstate Claim saga: Missed a call from the adjuster and called her back. Still no appointment scheduled. We are now eight days post-storm. But we do have an interesting development which may be of interest to all of you for future reference: I'm bringing in a point guy who consults on stuff like this for a living. Knows home insurance. Knows the rules, regs, and deadlines. Has damage appraisers (who know construction standards and will prepare a "Proof of Claim" using those standards -- heck, I need my own damage estimate anyway.)   Knows contractors. Knows dispute resolution measures. (Did you guys know about the right to an oddly named "Appraisal Process" built into every homeowners policy when you disagree with what they are wanting to pay?)
• And Another. (Yep.)
  
• Can you imagine being so dumb as to pick a fight with a dead body and then even be so incompetent as to lose the fight?:
  
  
• This may be common knowledge, but dispatchers at the Wise County Sheriff's Office can track a location of a cell phone used on a 911 call even if the phone is moving. I've listened to several 911 calls over the last year where I can hear the dispatcher say things like, "I see that you just passed county road 4421."
• I'm not sure why Mrs. LL and the Sophomore In The House are babysitting the random infant in our home these days, but we had another one last night. I at least entertained myself by picking her up and doing my best, "Lookee here, young sportsman. That there's the kitchen area, where Ma and Pa chow down. This here's the TV. Two hours a day maximum, either educational or football." The kid loved it. The others, no so much.
  
• You want this job every morning?
  
• "A Fort Worth police officer has been fired for falsifying time sheets — seeking almost $4,500 for hours she did not work— and failing to submit a corrected time sheet once she’d been caught." 
• I saw this Houston Chronicle headline yesterday ("Alleged lookout man in ATM heist dragged from federal courtroom following outburst"), and realized it was associated with this Texas Monthly story about the bizarre case: 
  
• WFAA's Ron Corning announced on  March 11th that he’d be leaving the morning show at an undetermined time to “pursue some exciting new opportunities.” Three days later he was gone with no good-byes.
• My dad read  John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood and told me about this story, and I watched the beginning of HBO's documentary  The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. The whole story is insane.  (There is supposed to be a movie in the works starring Jennifer Lawrence but there haven't been a lot of updates.)
  
• I'll always be old-school because it drives me nuts that justices on the Texas Supreme Court don't have enough respect for the office to wear a tie to work. 
  
• I'm an incredible tight-wad by nature, but one of the smartest things I've ever done is to splurge by outsourcing my lawn care. They do it far better than me, and I don't have to jack around with lawnmower or weed-eater maintenance. It's the feeling of being in the hot sun and looking down and seeing that your weed-eater just broke off its last line vs. Pulling in the drive-way to be surprised your lawn has become manicured while you were at work. 
• As of this morning, Wise County Jail has 32 people who have been in jail for less than five days. That's a ton of recent arrests.