Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• I wrote the bullet point below on January 24th. I now feel like I created Republican talking points because that is all I heard yesterday. Every talking head on Fox News and Far Right Wing Radio compared the coronavirus to the flu.  Please send your thoughts and prayers as I seek counseling during this difficult time. 
  
• There are now 729 cases of the coronavirus with 26 deaths in the U.S. as of this morning. (I continue to love this data-tracking page from The New York Times.)
  
• Would ya?
  
• I tend to voluntarily "self-quarantine" whenever I can just so I don't have to deal with people. 
• To Protect and to Serve: A former Chief of Police in Olney just got sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for doing such things as making a couple he arrested have sex in front of him at gunpoint, and suggesting a woman send him nude pics in exchange for letting her husband out of jail. 
  
• Remember when I told you less than three ago that the upcoming days would change the landscape in the race for the Democratic nominee in a blink of an eye? Even I never thought it would shake out this quickly and this dramatically. In a course of just a few days, it's now over. 

                                               

• Wichita Falls crime blotter this morning: "The victim was able to strike Bolf a couple of times before he pulled out a knife and threatened to stab him." I should say so. 
  
• I noticed BagOfNothing is taking his first whack at coaching his kid's baseball team. I just saw that he wrote this: "I’m hesitant to do such things for several reasons – my back doesn’t make it easy, I’m impatient with kids, I never played the sport, and with similar situations, relationships get damaged."  Uh, oh. (For you Ticket Fans, they use to play an old bleeped CNN Bernard Shaw drop which might need to be inserted at this point.)
• I always look at the Tech Section of the Sunday Dallas Morning News because there is always something good in it. This week, their resident columnist was asked "What is 5G?" Get this: There is actually a spot over by the Hospital District where 5G is available right now so he took his new Samsung phone over to it. He clocked a download speed of 975 Mbps. Did I say he got that right now? You're lucky to get 10 Mbps at your home or office which is hard wired. And the speed of 975 Mpbps is just a fraction of what is coming over the next 2 to 10 years when all of the 5G network should be widespread. If you thought dial-up Internet was from ancient times, what he have now will seem equally laughable in a decade.
  
• Random TV flashback: We all remember the power NBC Thursday night lineup in the 1990s of Mad About You, Friends, Seinfeld,  and Cheers. But do you remember the network tried to replace Cheers, which ended in 1993, with something called Hope & Gloria? It was cancelled after a year and half. How bad did it have to be to not survive in the lineup?
  
• There's certainly a tone of a redneck-making-fun-of-black-people here, but his "Wait for it" in a a country voice has a pretty good visual payoff. Video. (But nothing will ever surpass the Mobile Leprechaun video.)
  
• Whenever I use Apple Pay at Brookshires in Bridgeport I always feel like I'm getting the side eye from someone who thinks I'm being just a bit too highfalutin.