What I Learned This Week - 8/8/14

1.  496 days until Star Wars Episode VII is in theaters.
2. A local news station now gives weather predictions based on whether or not it is safe to wash your car. Finally.
3. You don’t even have to connect a punch with Justin Bieber to have the interwebz fall bat-stuff-crazy-in-love with you. A swing and a miss will do just fine.
4.  A carved wooden Mike Wazowski can be seen on top of the shopkeeper’s (Oaken’s) display case in movie “Frozen”.
5. For a small population of Facebook, this dorky weekly post is the only reason their Facebook feed is read. Ever.
6. It should be mandatory to watch the 70’s cartoon “Jabberjaw” in preparation for “Shark Week”.
7. This year the NFL will implement RFID’s into players shoulder pads to get better accuracy in stats and real-time position data for each player. This should include precise info on acceleration, speed, routes and distance. I hope one of the networks will manipulate the data to show how violent some of the hits are…..in freight-train units. “Boom! – that was a ten car freight train right there!”
8. It is extremely difficult to say, "bubbles" angrily. 
9. There's a species of fish called "Slippery Dick" and not something you really want to do a Google search for.
10. I am addicted to the photos from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe, which was launched in 2004 and recently reached the best nick-named comet ever - “rubber-duck comet“ (aka: Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko). No, it’s not actually a rubber-duck.
11. William Shatner has regular Twitter conversations with NASA and they are hilarious.
12. Added to my list of “Things I didn’t know I needed until they were invented and revealed on You tube this week”, a robot that pours beer based on your thoughts. Yes. Way.
13. It is not possible to convince an intern that 5318008 is the greatest number ever with a modern calculator or smart phone.
14. Based on a recent study, Virginia has the fastest Internet in the USA at an average download of 13.7 Mbps, followed by Delaware, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Alaska is at the bottom an average download of 7 Mbps, just behind Kentucky, Montana, and Arkansas. I am surprised the slowest is still “fast”.
15. I don’t understand how the impossibly difficult to open plastic clamshell packaging is the cheapest and best packaging method. Maybe it’s because of people like me that use scissors to open it, cutting through the product inside and then has to go purchase another one. Okay, nevermind.
16. If I were to work at a supermarket I would be the guy I recently witnessed restocking milk in my local supermarket who reached back through the display when people tried to grab milk/juice/etc. It was the most entertaining ten minutes I’ve had shipping. Yes, there was wet clean-up needed for some shoppers.
17. I’ve never heard a real person use the word “staycation”. I’m fairly certain it’s a word made-up by news channels and vacation planners to make me feel lazier than I am.
18. There’s a special feeling dread when you ask, “Are you freaking deaf?” to a person you didn’t realize was wearing hearing aids….the large-behind-the-ear-kind that the average person doesn’t miss.
19. I believe Santa is actually a UPS delivery person 364 days out of the year….okay, I get the same feeling from the UPS person as I do Santa. Maybe because I never remember what I ordered.
20. If you refer to your watch as a “magical time bracelet” in a management meeting, people will refrain from asking you questions for the remainder of the meeting.
21. Best line in the movie “Guardians of the Galaxy” is , “I am Groot.”
22. Leatherman makes a belt holster specifically for small bottles of Tabasco. Yes, it costs more than the bottle of Tabasco.
23. Replying to e-mails with snarky comments and a link to http://www.hiyoooo.com/ will make my day.
24. Starting in 2008, a Buzz Lightyear toy spent 467 days in space, orbiting the Earth on the ISS before having a ticker-tape parade in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom thrown in his honor. The toy’s namesake, Buzz Aldrin, was a special guest. Had Buzz Lightyear been a real astronaut, his 467 days in space would have set the record for the most time in orbit by an American space traveler. Reminder, he’s not a flying toy.
25. According to my oldest, maturity is the ability to turn off the lights in the basement and walk up the stair calmly.