A Shooting Memorium

Stephen Camp died a few weeks ago at the age of 59 after a sudden brain aneurysm rupture. Camp was one of the foremost online authorities on the Browning Hipower and being fan of the gun, I had the pleasure of corresponding with him a few times about holsters and related gun accessories. He was a great, helpful, and humble guy. The gunblogosphere was much quieter about this than I expected. I'm guessing this is because Stephen was a gun board fixture not really a gun blog fixture.

Accordingly my hipower joined my buckmark at the range yesterday for my going-to-be-a-father's day shoot. I shot competently. That's the general word I'd use to describe most of my shooting. At 8-10 yards, I can easily cover the group from a single magazine with my hand. Unless it's the buckmark, then it's more like my palm. Not exactly precision target shooting, but not bad.

I wish I could say that inspired by Stephen Camp's memory, the 9mm was a veritable paper slaughtering deathray. Not especially, no. Having two different grain weights of ammo going through a fixed sight gun probably didn't help either. But I'm going to be naming the hipower Stephen nonetheless.

Death of Blogger

It seems that Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, passed away a couple of days ago. I knew he had cancer, but I didn't realize his case was this severe. From diagnosis to his passing was only 4 months.

Michael wasn't the only God Blogger fighting cancer. David Wayne, the Jollyblogger, has been fighting colon cancer for almost 18 months. He reflects on Michael from the point of view of someone else fighting the disease.

Playing Catchup

Well I'm still alive. The month of May was pretty crazy for me. I spent two of my four work-weeks in either training or a symposium (more on that later). My workload was much heavier than usual and I only had half as much time finish them. So I dug deep and finished everything by their suspense dates. And now June is here and it looks like I might be able to catch my breath at work and have energy left when I get home to write something for everyone here.

Hopefully you'll see more blogging here in the coming days. Some of it might actually be on current topics as a clean out my queue of old posts I never quite had time to finish.

Done with Blogrolling

Well the new service is up. It's also worthless. Not only does it automatically serve up embedded ads which reduce the usefulness of the service, but the whole thing is horribly slow. No thanks.

I've discovered that Blogger has a widget that lets me do the same thing. All I have to do is update my site from 1.0 templates to 2.0 layouts. Looks like I'll have to front burner that effort.

Rin Tin Tin

You Are a German Shepherd Puppy

Intelligent, quick witted, and a bit aggressive. You've got the jaw power to take a bite out of anyone you choose.

What Breed of Puppy Are You?

Amy came out as a chihuahua. Probably something to do with her always being cold.

Back to Email

Well joy, over the Christmas break one of the IT departments in my service chain has decided to start filtering our network access again. Posting will be sparse because of it.

Forfeiting Real Debate

Duffy asked the left side of Delaware's blogosphere a serious question:

Please explain how you will tax corporations and not have them pass that cost on to consumers.

The answers he received were the standard "they're rich so they can afford it" and the always popular "you're stupid!" This explains why I never bother to read anything the left side of the Delaware blogosphere puts out.

There is a good reason why they won't pass all of the costs of their tax increases on to the consumer, but it involves actual economics so you won't hear it from the lefties. It and the rest of the discussion are taking place over in Duffy's comments.

Testing 1, 2, 3...

Well I can get to my email at work, so I'm experimenting with posting
via email. If you're seeing this chances are that I'll be making a
few posts tomorrow.

UPDATE: Well it isn't exactly perfect. The conversion from email to blog post seems to be adding line breaks which screw up the formatting. I also can't figure out how to put in proper labels. But something is better than nothing.

UPDATE2: Figures. Just as I get this setup, somebody has monkeyed with the permissions somewhere up the intertube from me. Now I can use the standard Blogger interface again.

The Missing Blogger

Why haven't I posted in over a week? Well partly because work has me in training that is both interesting and challenging. If it was just one or the other, I'd probably have mental faculties left over to blog. Unfortunately with both my brain is shot and all I'm good for is light reading like Star Wars books or Burroughs' Barsoom series.

The other reason is that I generally post at work while on breaks. Unfortunately my workplace has put in place a new filtering scheme that prevents me from accessing the inner workings of my own blog. I should be thankful since I can at least access my front page. I can't even get to Livejournal any more. All this means sparse blogging during business hours until further notice.

About the Barsoom books, Frazetta may go for a weird saber look on his book covers, I really think the martian longsword is probably more of a cut and thrust. And of course I want one now. I'm so impressionable.

Now Where Did I Put My Time Machine...

111 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

UPDATE: I'd imagine Amybear would fill mine out a little differently, but I really didn't pad my old school husband resume very much. Amybear doesn't make for a very good 1930s wife according to the test, but she thinks that's because she does unconscionable things like work outside the home and manage her own finances. She even deigns to give me advice without my prior solicitation. I agree. While the role of husband and father hasn't changed much in the last 70 or 80 years, the wife's role has changed a lot.

That Fickle Internet

I talked with a coworker about yard work this morning. He revealed that the most common entry link to his blog was from a "scotts patchmaster" search on Google. Especially this time of year when everyone with a patchy yard (like me) is looking for a solution.

I share his pain. The most common links to my blog were for pistol targets or for web searches using odd spelling mistakes. Such is like on the internet I suppose.

Oh and my coworker doesn't recommend PatchMaster. He didn't see any appreciable improvement over normal grass seed.

Facebook

Ah, so thats why I don't use it.

Congratulations!

John the Methodist and his wife are expecting their first child in September. Please go over there and suggest a baby name or else they'll probably use a Watership Down character. Because a kid named Thlayli "Bigwig" the Methodist would have a really rough childhood.

Death by Blogging

John the Methodist thinks I somehow involved with two cases of death by blogging. I deny it completely. Those people obviously said something untoward about Chuck Norris and Chuck acted accordingly.

And you know what we say every time someone dies suddenly by roundhouse kick? It's good that Chuck did that, it's very good!

Friends: Good and Good for You.

43%

Via Hube

Update: If my score gets much higher, I might have a career in the Royal Navy or the RAF.

I Licked My Neighbor Because Big Bird Said To And He's My Leader

For decoding instructions see Steve Lamp.

On Writing

John Scalzi recommends Stephen King's aptly named book about storytelling. I read the book while on business travel a few months ago. King writes in a very open honest style and the book is part memoir, part writing guide, and part introduction to the business of writing. It is a good, well-rounded book.

The Positivity Blog has an overview of King's writing suggestions, most of which are heavily influenced by Strunk and White. King pays homage to Strunk and White. At one point he states that most books on writing are largely full of bullshit. He knows On Writing is no different because it is at least three times as long as Elements of Style.

Sounds About Right

Am-I-Dumb.com - Intelligence Test

Via Tamara

Which Spongebob character are you?

You are Squidward! Lighten up a bit, won't you! You hate your job, but love you clarinet. You also think Spongebob is the most annoying person ever!
Take this quiz!



Via John the Methodist

I'm a Muppet!

You Are Fozzie Bear

"Wocka! Wocka!" You're the life of the party, and you love making people crack up. If only your routine didn't always bomb! You may find more groans than laughs, but always keep the jokes coming.

The Muppet Personality Test

Via Dr. Bunsen Honeydew