Concealed Carry Holder Databases

I suppose I should be really pissed about a Memphis newspaper publishing a list of concealed carry permit holders. It's irresponsible, violates the permit holders privacy, and does nothing to improve public safety. In general it actually reduces it because some of those people have guns for a reason. Like hiding out from abusive ex-husbands.

I say I should be pissed, but I'm actually envious. You see in Delaware you are required to post your name and address in the News Journal before you even submit your application for a concealed carry permit. State law mandates this for us, only in slow motion.

The Press Conference

I caught bits and pieces in between watching other better programming. The fragments I've seen have been utter bullshit. Obama either talked long enough that no one noticed he didn't answer the question, or he commits multiple logical fallacies to shift blame/justify himself, or he just has no idea what he's doing.

I swear the man said things like "what we need to do next is" when he's about to spend 800 billion-with-a-B dollars. There is no "next" after that. Once you spend that much, you're done. You're out of cash. You might be able to re-regulate, but you can't spend more money. If you're going to put that kind of money down, you need to do it right the first time.

Needed Improvements

I'm thinking about making some changes to my 1911. After looking around for hipower carry gear and coming up empty, I've realized that I want the 1911 to be a viable open carry gun. It just isn't. The first step is the GI sights which are starting to get to me. I'm seriously considering an upgrade to King's Tappan Combat Sights, which look like this on the gun:


They're express sights so you dot the "i" with gold front and white bar on the rear. Unlike most express sights like the XS units, the Tappans still have a workable post and notch as well. They're only about $30 although I'd need to budget for installation as well. I want to make a few other changes to the pistol, like new springs and possibly breaking a few sharp edges on the frame and mainspring housing. I've also relabeled my mags so that I can track any feeding problems with them on the mags themselves. I numbered them previously, but I never had a notebook to keep a failure record with so having mags 1, 2, 3, and 4 meant nothing.

I'm also need to get the sling mounts on my .22 rifle. It came without, but I finally have all the parts to fix that problem. Sling, swivels, and studs all came from different places, but now they're all in my basement. The bad news is that I need a vice to drill the pilot holes for the studs. I don't have one. So I'm either going to wait until I can visit my parents or I'm going to have to front burner putting together my own work bench.

If I get things together, I might be able to do the 1911 sight upgrade myself and the simple stock work to add the sling studs.

Getting Back into the Range

I got to the range for the first time in far too long on Saturday. January was just too cold to get me outside for an hour at a time and December was dominated by the holidays. I did ok. Just ok. Sometimes you have a tack-driving day and sometimes you have days like yesterday where you keep everything on paper and call it ok.

I did get to cycle a box of the Winchester 147 grain hollow-points I've bought as self-defense ammo through my Hipower without a hitch. I disregarded Ommelanden's 10 round rule and shot 15 rounds out of each of my mags. Nobody noticed. I'll probably do this again before I really consider the system trustworthy, but since that gun has never malfunctioned on me, I'm pretty confident in it. Now I just need to figure out a lock box so I can stow it in the bedroom safely in case things go bump in the night.

Prime Time Annoyance

Obama's holding a press conference in prime time tonight. He appears to be following the Jimmy Carter rule book on how to annoy the electorate. You either already know what's going on in Washington or you don't want to know. Both groups will still want to watch their favorite shows tonight. Instead we will be watching Obama look presidential and try to sell his stimulus bill to an increasingly cynical populace.

A Steaming Pile of Glorious Crap

No not the stupid stimulus package. That's just a steaming pile of stinking pork. No, Amy and I finally got around to watching Live Free or Die Hard. The movie was a mix of completely stupid scenes followed by completely stupendous action sequences in which most of the named characters should have died at least twice. This is a film where breaking someone's fall generally means banging off of big solid pipes and duct work on the way down. But if you really want to see Justin Long, Mac from those Apple ads, get beat up and knee-capped then this is the DVD for you.

Sick of the Game Already

The Cardinals seem to be getting kicked by the refs when they're already down. The redbirds were just called for roughing Roethlisberger after the Steelers QB intentionally grounded the ball to avoid the sack and loss of yardage. Enough. I set the DVR to record so I wouldn't miss the commercials and went looking for something else to do.

So on a completely different subject I stopped by Circuit City this afternoon to peruse their increasingly discounted wares. It made me realize why the chain went under. Even with a 10-50% discount, they weren't offering me any real deals. I did get to play around with some netbooks though. One was a Lenovo and the other an HP. The Lenovo felt squished and forced into its form factor, the keyboard wasn't very good and the touchpad was worse. The Lenovo's touchpad buttons were stuck so far down, they were actually on the corner of the case. Using it felt like the computer was trying to crack my thumbs open like little eggs. The HP was something I'd consider buying though. Its keyboard is wonderful and I typed on in as well as any other laptop. The touchpad was decent if a bit small and the buttons were placed to the sides of the pad to save space. I'd consider buying it if I wasn't waiting for the netbook tablets.

Yes a netbook tablet is essentially an overgrown iPod Touch, but I'm fine with that. I want the bigger screen, the real keyboard, and I still consider a notebook computer the size of a small science textbook "small." Amy dislikes netbooks because she prefers full laptops with horsepower. Eh. She might have a point with how slow the latest Firefox is running on my computer at home. But I still like 'em.

UPDATE: The Cardinals lost but kept it close, good for them.

Reepicheep Lives!

After the disappointing performance of Prince Caspian, Disney backed out of the Narnia movies leaving Walden without a distribution partner. Fox just picked it up, meaning that the Voyage of the Dawn Treader will still get made. This is a good thing as Dawn Treader is most people's favorite book. They're also going to be putting the movie in theaters around Christmas instead of during the summer movie season.

I actually liked the Prince Caspain film a fair bit. I like the book, but it a kind of a narrative muddle. A large part of it takes place in flashback and the Pevensie kids only appear at the end of Caspian's story to set things right. They tried to streamline this in the movie by starting the movie with Caspian's flight and then bringing the British kids into the story earlier. It sort of works. They still don't get Peter's character anywhere near right, but the other three kids are better. I really liked Edmund and the mice.

I think the next movie will be very interesting. They won't have to play with the story so much in order to create huge visuals, those are already in the book. We'll see how the work the book's episodic nature into the movie though.

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.

Standing Atop the Entertainment Industry Yelling Stop

Big Hollywood has had two decent articles so far this month. One is a rather bitter screed from television's Dirk Benedict about how the new Battlestar Galactica sucks. And he's right, it does:

It matters not to Suits if it is Starbuck or Stardoe, if the Cylons are robots or lingerie models, if the show is full of optimism and morality or pessimism and amorality. What matters is that it is marketed well, so that all you people out there in TV land know that you must see this show. And after you see it, you are told that you should like it. That it is new and bold and sleek and sexy and best of all … it is Re-imagined!

The other is from comicbook writer Bill Willingham who points out that comicbooks, by surrendering their moral voice, have largely flushed themselves down the drain. He thinks that this period in comics history will be referred to as "The Age of Superhero Decadence" and from here on out he will decline to take part. Instead he will write stories with backbone.

Gun Show Control

Alphecca brought up a pro-show story from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. It points out that despite rhetoric indicting gun shows as a huge source of weapons for criminals, the statistics are quite different:

Federal data indicate otherwise. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report, “Firearm Use by Offenders,” only about 1 percent of guns used in crimes come from gun shows...

It would be nice if Delaware's new governor would re-examine issues like the "gun show loophole" instead of just parroting lefty groupthink on the subject. If it doesn't make sense in a state like Virginia that actual has shows, it makes even less sense in Delaware where shows are practically nonexistent.

Evil Evil Subcontractors

Amy spent two hours yesterday yelling at a satellite TV installer over the phone. We decided to upgrade our regular HD service to HD DVR service. This is mostly because Amy will miss her favorite evening soap because of some classes shes going to be taking this spring. It's also because Chuck and Big Bang Theory are on at the same time.

The Borders Rewards program had a discount deal so Amy purchased the service through them for what still was a princely sum. Last night she had cause to call DirecTV to follow up on a service person's phone message. DirecTV had never heard of any planned change to our service. They also told her that the princely sum she had placed on her debit card was almost twice what she should have paid.

A brief investigation followed. Amy discovered that she had not been dealing with DirecTV at all. She had been dealing with DirectSatTV, one of their installation contractors based out of North Carolina. DirectSatTV appears to be run by the devil.

DirectSatTV padded our bill with installation fees and various other items that we should have gotten for free. When confronted with this they claimed ignorance and that they couldn't locate itemized billing records for the amount Amy had paid. They said we did pay too much and reduced the bill by about twenty bucks. Still not even close to what we should have paid. When an actual DirecTV rep was brought in on a conference call, the subcontractor's position became untenable. Sat TV caved only to uncave the instant that the DirecTV rep left. This sort of argument went back and forth for quite while with Amy getting bounced off of DirecTV reps and SatTV reps several times. The dispute was finally concluded by an agreement that got us the majority of our money back through refunds and credits to our future service bill.

The lesson? One, always know who you're talking with. DirecTV. DirectSatTV. Easy to make a mistake, especially when the subcontract is using the DirecTV logo all over their site. Two, never put this sort of thing on a debit card. By the time Amy realized something was up, the transaction had gone through. DirectSatTV already had our money and was going to hold on to it by hell and high water. If we had used a credit card, we could have called up our credit card company and disputed the charge. This would have made DirectSatTV far more pliable.

Celebrity Passings

So both Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan passed away this month. National Review did a brief piece on Montalban as he was a long time subscriber. McGoohan is best known as the king in Braveheart in the US, but his finest work is probably the 1960s British TV series The Prisoner which is currently being streamed from the AMC website.

If It's Not Scottish...

Tomorrow is Robbie Burns Day. It's a day to celebrate Scottish poetry and haggis and is often observed with kilted Burns Suppers. But it's going to be cold tomorrow so I think I'll stick with pants.

Via Slashfood.

Testing 2: JMB's Birthday

Lets see if this link comes through...

Tamara has posted a brief list of John Moses Browning's completed firearms designs in honor of his birthday.

UPDATE: Well I cleaned that up.

Fun with the Boys

Amy and I went to a DelOC gathering at the IHOP on 13 just outside the Newcastle County Airport. Evening is definitely the time to go there as the restaurant was essentially empty but for the gunnies. It was fun and I think Amy even enjoyed herself despite being the only girl.

Oh, and that bottomless plate of pancakes they sell was cooked up by the devil. Which is why I stayed home today with the mother of all tummy aches.

Inaugural Empathy

I feel for all those folks freezing outside down in Washington. Not on purpose. It seems that the heat in my office building was left off over the weekend and the temperature at my desk is just over 50 degrees. Space heater don't fail me now!

Inauguration Day

The attendees seem to be full of hope and change. It seems the park service is planning for the attendees to be full of something else as well. Amy stumbled across a blog showing some of the preparations made on the National Mall:


7000 Portapots all in a row.

Tax Code

Instapundit linked to this USNews report on the complexities of the tax code. A nice tidbit contained within is that 60% of filers use hired preparers and an additional 22% buy software. I'm one of the 60% and I think the article misses the point.

I'm a pretty normal Joe. I'm not self employed, I itemize because of the house and my charitable contributions, and I have some tax-deferred income for retirement and health care. I have never had trouble with the federal tax form. All my trouble is with the states. This is compounded by the fact that I live and work in two different states. Every year I have to file two interrelated state tax forms. After software failed me a couple years ago, I've used preparers ever since.

My taxes get done faster because total preparation time is reduced to about an hour and I avoid procrastination. They save me money by both finding additional deductions (or moving deductions around) and insulating me from any possible preparation errors. It worth my while both financially and psychologically.

But in the end reforming the US tax code won't fix any of this, because it isn't where the problem lies.

Google Comes Through... Sort Of

It appears that I can still post to Blogger by using Google Docs as my intermediary.  Unfortunately, as you can see, some of the formatting on my posts seems to be getting screwed up in the translation.  Still promising though.

Apolitical Scientists

Lets see if this post goes better than the last one...

From Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy

It's all well and good that Obama has opted to name several well-respected scientists to his administration (such as Chu at Energy and Lubchenko at NOAA, among others), but in placing Holdren at the top, in what is effectively a cabinet-level position, I think that the Obama Administration does not understand, or is not concerned about the, the problem of science politicization. However bad the Bush Administration was in this regard, I have no confidence that Holdren will help the Obama Administration any better...

Perhaps Obama understands it better than Volokh Conspiracy members. If you have politicians appointing scientists to key positions that control vast quantities of research dollars, you will politicize science. If you have scientists making policy and legislation recommendations that will have huge impacts on the US economy and US population, you will politicize science. Perhaps Obama realized that politicizing science is inevitable and it's far better to have someone who plays the game well.

Great Targets

I'm pretty sure Ommelanden doesn't allow human silhouette targets, but most of these aren't actually human anymore. The zombie target is very obviously teaching bad technique though, don't they know only head shots count with the walking dead?

Buy A Jake's Hamburger Today

From Jake's Hamburgers:

Jake’s Hamburgers in Delaware announced today that they will be holding a fundraising event on behalf of the family of Delaware City / Volunteer Hose (Middletown) Firefighter Michelle Smith.

The event will be held on Thursday, January 8, 2009 from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. at all Jake’s Hamburger locations in Delaware.

Jake’s will donate 20% of all sales that day to the trust fund that has been established for the benefit of Michelle’s daughter, “The Emily A. Burge Trust Fund,” c/o the Delaware City Fire Company.

In addition, Firefighters will be on hand at each location throughout the day to accept donations on behalf of Michelle’s family.

Please join us in supporting this very worthy cause, and in honoring Michelle’s service to our community. For more information on this event, please contact Jeff Smith by email at jsmith@vhc27.com.

Michelle Smith died when she stopped to help an injured motorcyclist on Route 40 and was hit by another car. She was 30 and her daughter Emily is 12.

Via The Delaware Curmudgeon

The People's Choice Awards

Amy is unfortunately an awards show junkie, so we're currently watching the People's Choice Awards on CBS. It's both annoying and depressing.

Annoying because they keep throwing word's like "the People's" in front of everything like it was a communist party meeting. I'm waiting for them to call for the Proletariat to rise up and overthrow the Bourgeoisie. Thankfully they're too busy being smug about the results of the presidential election.

Depressing because we already know who is going to win everything. It's simple, the winners are the ones who bothered to show up. Presenters for one thing are also nominees in the other categories. There are all of 20 famous people in the auditorium and everyone else is a seat filler.

Can we start calling it quits with these BS award shows already? How sad is it when you're being shown up by Nickelodeon's Kid Choice Awards?

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.

Stuff Blowing Up Good

I have no sympathy for Hamas. Before they took power, there were 15 mortar attacks on Israel from Gaza per month. Right now they're firing 300 per week into Israeli population centers. It isn't working. Meanwhile the Israelis are putting videos like this on YouTube:

You don't get massive secondary explosions like that from hitting apartment buildings full of grandmothers and their cats. You get that by hitting volatile chemicals and explosive materials. Somehow I doubt there are that many fertilizer plants, grain silos, and oil refineries in Gaza.

The Redneck Pilgrimage

My brother and I went up to Cabela's in Hamburg, PA on the day after Christmas. I'd never been and we both had the day off. In retrospect, we should have picked a different day we both had off as the store was mobbed. It is an impressive establishment. As seen from afar:

That Cabela's sign on the back of the store is the size of a large house. If you want a better perspective on how big the store is try the view you get when you walk in the door:


If you look down the middle of that picture, you see what I affectionately refer to as Mount Taxidermy. From this distance it looks like rectangular lumps of gray rock with ice and fluffy things on it. It's actually about three stories tall and is covered with life-sized animals like mountain goats, moose, and bears. It's bigger than my townhouse and you wouldn't know it from the front door.

By the way, the whole left side of the building? Gun counters. I've never seen that many guns in my life. You could put the inventory from every gun store in Delaware together and you'd still have counter space left over. And unlike the wussy sporting goods stores in this state, they sell handguns as well as hunting rifles and shotguns. (UPDATE: A coworker asked me if the guns section was like the Gun-Lots-of-Guns scene in the Matrix. Yes, that image captures the volume of firearms quite nicely. Cabelas had a lot more wood-stocked hunting rifles than Neo though.)

I hope they build one in Delaware eventually. I'm sure they could put one downstate somewhere. Every hunter, shooter, camper, and fisherman from the entire Delmarva peninsula would shop there.

Useful Presents

My sister was without power for several days this year when the remains of Hurricane Ike tore through Cincinnati. With that in mind she gave everybody Red Cross Emergency Radios this year.

The radio gets AM, FM, and weather band along with a flash light and ports to charge other small electronics like cell phones. You can put it out in the sun to charge or hand crank it. Reception doesn't seem to be great, but it is still much better than nothing. The unit itself is the perfect size for a small disaster kit and will certainly be included in mine.

Merry Christmas!

Here's a Goodwill Towards Men moment:

Last week, this area — Northern New England — was hit by a serious ice storm and over a million residents lost electricity due to downed power lines. I was lucky — I only lost mine for about 15 hours but many, especially in New Hampshire, were without electricity for many days.

One thing I’ve noticed in the past is that public service utilities all help each other out during these crisis.

Yesterday morning I saw a rather impressive sight. I was driving down Interstate 91, going to work, and in the north-bound lane was a convoy of what must have been over 50 electrical utility trucks belonging to Hydro-Quebec. Hydro-Quebec must have sent all of these crews to help out in hardest hit New Hampshire and after spending many days in this area assisting our local power suppliers, they drove up I-89 and then were heading home on I-91.

I also saw a convoy of cherry pickers returning home from helping out up North. It was Tuesday on I-95 near Newark and there must have been 20 trucks. I was really stunned and couldn't imagine what all those utility trucks had been doing. Turns out they were out helping people. Thanks utility service people.

Making Your Own P90... Sort Of

Take apart an airsoft rifle, insert Ruger 10/22 parts, reassemble.

Gun News from the Old Stomping Grounds

In this case, the Brookhaven PD (in the same school district I grew up in) are refusing to return lawfully possessed firearms to their rightful owner.

In [Thomas] DeOrio’s case, Brookhaven police seized his collection of handguns and rifles in October and turned them over to the sheriff when his girlfriend filed for a temporary protection-from-abuse order. Shields said she perceived something he had said to be threatening. Three days later, after a court hearing, a judge dismissed the order, records show.

Via Snowflakes in Hell and SayUncle.

My M65

After a trip to H&M made me realize what I really wanted, I looked around for an M-65 vendor. Everything local (essentially just Joe's Army/Navy in the Newcastle Farmers Market) only stocked Rothco merchandise. Rothco's sizing consistency and attention to detail is somewhat lacking. Too the internet!

After asking around, I finally settled on a Alpha Industries Knox Armory brand M-65 from Silbermans Army/Navy at Workinggear.com. The price was reasonable and they had a good return policy if the sizing didn't work out. I ordered it and they told me they'd ship it in a week. Then they told me it would be another week. Then another three days. Then another day. Then they canceled my order because they couldn't get the product from the manufacturer. If I had known that they have the jackets in stock, I never would have ordered from them in the first place. Even now, the jackets they know they can't get are still listed on their website. Wonderful people those Silbermans.

I order a Tru-Spec M65 from TacGear.com instead. It was at my door in a few days. Nice coat and I really like it. Despite tru-spec's advertising, it is not mil-spec.

• M65s have a vestigial cuff on the sleeve used to connect the sleeves to gloves in order to make the jacket more weather tight. You can see them in the picture on this page. These are never used and often just get in the way. Tru-spec omitted them entirely. Good for them.
• Most of the velcro on the jacket seems to have a larger range of adjustment than normal. Fine by me.
• The jacket liner has additional buttons so you could, in theory, wear it as a jacket all by itself. Why anyone would do this when the liner sleeves are several inches too short is beyond me. I wish the liner had elastic cuffs and extra pockets like the Alpha Industries liners. I suppose if I want those features enough I could just buy an Alpha liner and put it into my Tru-spec jacket.
• The liner sleeves button into the jacket using cotton straps with button holes sewn in them. Usually it's buttoned in with loops sewn on the liner sleeves. The former works and the latter doesn't so I'm happy.

About my only complaint is with the pockets on the jacket and it isn't Tru-spec's fault. The M65 was designed in that post-war period where officers hates seeing soldiers standing around with their hands in their pockets. Like the CWU-45/P flight jacket and M65 field pants, their solution was to design the pockets so you couldn't do this comfortably. These were the same people who made sure that the MA-1 flight jacket had a sleeve pocket big enough to hold a pack of smokes. Funny how priorities change over time, isn't it?

Tennant and Tate in Comic Relief

Always interesting to see David Tennant nee MacDonald use his real accent. Also nice to be able to fill in the missing tidbits of Doctor Who that show up during the Children in Need specials using Youtube.

Hard News or Partisan BS

It seems that the National Geographic Channel's recent program "Guns in America" is the latter, featuring an entirely one-sided presentation coming straight from the script of the Brady Campaign. Stick to filming cute dogs and cats please.

Bush Pardons Gun Owners

I don't know what to make of this article, it starts off with a blatant untruth:

So, after George W. Bush, a strong defender of the Second Amendment, took office, Mr. Collier wrote to the president seeking a pardon, saying he wanted to go hunting with his kids.

The untruth is that Bush is not a strong Second Amendment defender. Good stuff has happened during the Bush Administration, but Bush and Administration officials have not generally been behind them. The reason the Assault Weapons Ban died is because the Republican congress did not give Bush a renewal, not because Bush vetoed it. Likewise the Justice Department brief in Heller was completely underwhelming. But Bush has successfully given several people their rights back and I guess that's something.

Handy Things for the Trunk of Your Car

Yesterday's really useful item was a spare headlight bulb. I pulled into the parking lot at work and realized my driver's side headlight was out. Not a horrible problem, but since I'd be driving home in the dark I popped in the spare. The last time this happened I had to hit a Walmart on my lunch break.

The nice thing about my car is that you can change the bulbs without tools. The not-nice thing is that you can't do anything of the sort with the taillights. Changing a taillight requires disassembling most of the trunk liner then using at least two different metric wrenches to dismount the tail light assembly. Space is tight enough that you can't get around the two wrench requirement with an adjustable crescent wrench either.

The Two Days the Earth Stood Still

Hube says the new one is crap and makes no sense. Yup. Allow me to explain using the premises of the first and second movies:

1. In the 1950s movie, spaceman Klaatu comes to Earth because, with the advent of nuclear power and modern space travel, mankind is on the cusp of great developments that will lead us to the stars. However if we do go to the stars acting like warmongering monkeys, the stars will repay us by destroying mankind ruthlessly and completely. Klaatu then benignly demonstrates how powerless we are in the face of truly advanced civilizations like his and leaves it up to us to reform.
2. In the recent film, Klaatu comes to Earth because we're screwing up our planet's ecology (just like his people once screwed up theirs). Habitable worlds are rare and Klaatu will destroy us utterly if we continue to abuse ours. Klaatu doesn't so much demonstrate his power as attack the mankind only to finally relent.

Setting aside the fact that Michael Rennie is a better actor than Keanu Reeves, the first premise works and the second does not.

Among it's many problems is that if you have the ability to use nanites to fundamentally rearrange matter, as Keanu Klaatu does, you can basically do anything. Liveable worlds would not be scarce because you could terraform them. Formerly liveable worlds would not pose a problem either because you could fix that damage in short order.

Klaatu's concept of property and value is similarly broken. Earth is a precious commodity and we're misusing it. In some sort of warped communist morality, Klaatu is justified in killing mankind because others can use Earth better. Because intelligent life isn't a precious commodity I suppose.

Thankfully while the first movie is still held in high regard almost 60 years later, the second movie is being widely panned. There is justice in the world.

UPDATE: John C. Wright throws his well-written prose in the ring and links to reviews at Dirty Harry's Place.

Next Major Internet Trend

Mani-rolling. Barry Manilow was a guest on Graham Norton over the weekend. Actually the guest. Turns out gay Irish men dig Manilow too. I did learn that Manilow made a living writing advertising jingles before making it big. Some are still in use. I was really surprised, just like when I found out that John Tesh wrote that NBA on NBC theme.

How Honest are Your Cops?

The Atlanta PD is trying to castrate their city's new Citizen Review Board. It seems the board doesn't like it when cops shoot innocent senior citizens and then try to cover it up.

And in other news, cops in Odessa, Texas received a rude awakening when the house they raided looking for a pot grow turned out to be a sting on them. The TV program KopBusters had set up a fake grow using lights and small evergreen trees. After several months, the local PD took notice of the IR source and raided the house. The problem? PDs cannot use passive IR scans as evidence without a warrant and hence they cannot use them to get a warrant. What was used and who lied to get it? We'll see.

No word on whether Miss Anonymous's basement herb garden has gotten undue scrutiny from any of Delaware's finest yet.

Via SayUncle and the Smallest Minority

The Return of Jim Darkmagic

The guys are Penny Arcade are getting together with Scott Kurtz, Wil Wheaton (!?), and someone over at Wizards to create another D&D podcast. The last series was really fun, especially with Kurtz and Gabe drawing the action as it occurred.

Handy AR Info

This site has a broad overview of raised weaver/picatinny rail mounts. It includes cheap and not so cheap. Good stuff and very useful if you plan to ever scope your AR-15 like I do.

Beautiful Scenic Newark

...where two college students are robbed and pistol-whipped in the wee hours of the morning on Haines Street. But, but, it's a gun-free school zone!

As an aside, thanks to the News Journal's PC reporting policy, you have look elsewhere to find out that the two men were white. Even though we get a complete description of their wardrobe, which they can change in seconds, we don't have any idea of their skin color which they cannot.

Fun at the Hardware Store

I think I've already covered making bows and arrows, but this site has a neat piece about recycling hacksaw blades into cheap survival knives that is worth a look. They even have functional sawtooth backs. I've heard that if the hacksaw blade just isn't good enough for you, sawz-all blades work too and they're even sturdier.

Shatner's New Show

Chris Byrne says that Bill Shatner's new talk show on the Biography channel is actually pretty good.

There is no filter to William Shatner. He is showing you everything, with complete honesty. Sure, there's charm and wit and social grace; but there is nothing being concealed there.

I'll have to check it out.

A PSA I Can Stand Behind

Via Geek with a .45

Meta Comics

Schlock Mercenary linked to IsItFunnyToday, a sort of webcomics comedy value aggregator. Unfortunately right now it doesn't contain many comics or have enough people voting. I also suspect that comics that aren't very funny won't bother to draw many people in to vote for or against them. Would you put yourself through rating a ton of Sluggy Freelance just so that you can quantify how long it has been sucking?

Finding a Reason to Hate Something

Markos Kloos gives a list of reasons to hate just about any firearm make and model over at Munchkin Wrangler.

Prevailing Standards of Noncomformity

Quotes of the Day featured this Bill Vaughn quote today:

"If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity."

By that definition I was a nonconformist in high school. It was the early nineties, but I still wore pants that fit and shunned flannel. The "non-conformists" who made up the majority of my high school population didn't really notice though. They were too busy being true individuals just like everyone else.

Justice in the Burial

Nine of the ten terrorist suspects in Mumbai were killed by Indian security forces. None of the Muslim cemeteries in Mumbai will accept their bodies. Now none of the Muslim cemeteries in India are permitted to accept them either. That's a sticky wicket for a religion that requires them to be buried before sundown. Perhaps the Pakistanis will ask for their men back?

Pots and Kettles

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had this to say about Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress shooting himself with an unlicensed firearm:

“And I don’t think that anybody should be exempt from that,” he added. “And I think it would be an outrage if we don’t prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”

No word on whether Burress wants Bloomberg prosecuted for his well known conspiracy to evade federal firearms laws. I mean I don't think anybody should be exempt from that...

A Concealed Carry Log

Bob Owens reports on six months of carrying concealed around Raleigh, North Carolina. If you're interesting in more local accounts of people carrying in Delaware, open or concealed, several members of Delaware Open Carry maintain them on the DelOC forums.

Via Instapundit.

Illegal Background Checks

Not just for Joe the Plumber in Ohio anymore. It turns out that the Delaware State Police have been doing them regularly. Some concerned citizens have recently started accessing the records via FOIA. It would be nice if we had an attorney general that would actually take the DSP to task for violating state and federal law.

Quantum of Solace

My brother and I took my uncle to see the latest Bond film on Saturday night. I liked and loathed it for reasons very similar to Ryan's. The movie continues to climb into Bond's head and reveal what makes him tick. The plot has a few twists and turns, but Bond takes the same approach to solving it that Alexander used with the Gordian knot. Don't untie the thing, just break it open. This doesn't sit well with his superiors.

I didn't like much of the action editing either. They were often so choppy it was hard to tell what exactly was going on. Some guys got shot, I wonder who they were and who shot them? I suppose this is supposed to replicate the fog of war or something, but I after a while I just found it to be annoying.

The Wii is Wonderful

The events of Thanksgiving were greatly soothed because my Wii occupied the time of the under 12 set. They're totally engrossed in Wii Sports especially bowling, boxing, and baseball. As any parents will tell you, anything that keeps the kids quiet and well behaved is a good thing. It had the added benefit of giving me clout over the children which was handy at times.

Of course the side-effect is that I'm now wii-giver to them. I walked in the door yesterday and the first words out of every child's mouth was "where's your wii? Did you bring your wii?" I haven't felt so objectified since we first got the cat. I'd neglect to bring the wii tonight to teach them a lesson, but then I'd get dirty looks for their parents because they'd have to deal with their own children again.

Marriage and the Slippery Slope

I read two posts discussing gay marriage this week, both are from a fairly Libertarian perspective. The first is recent one written by John the Methodist reflecting on a Florida ballot proposition. The other is an archived post by Megan McArdle which Kim du Toit linked to a few days ago. They're both good reads, but I'm afraid Megan McArdle's work largely trumps John's. Sorry John.

For example take this paragraph from Locusts and Honey:

Another argument is that gay marriage harms the marriages of heterosexual couples. I just don't see this works. The health of my marriage is dependent upon the emotional health of my wife and me, and our ability and willingness to commit to each other. If a gay couple next door gets married, I simply don't see how it affects us. If a heterosexual marriage is negatively impacted by the gay marriages of others, then it was pretty weak to begin with.

An almost direct response to this comes from Megan McArdle (although it's actually about divorce.)

That's ridiculous! said the reformers. People stay married because marriage is a bedrock institution of our society, not because of some law! The only people who get divorced will be people who have terrible problems! A few percentage points at most!

Oops. When the law changed, the institution changed. The marginal divorce made the next one easier. Again, the magnitude of the change swamped the dire predictions of the anti-reformist wing; no one could have imagined, in their wildest dreams, a day when half of all marriages ended in divorce.

I assume most of the people reading my blog are in a situation similar to my own. You have a lot of respect for the institution of marriage. If you're in one, you're probably committed to making it healthy and lasting. John is right, gay marriage isn't going to change that for us.

But that's only for us. What if you're the marginal case? Someone on the marriage fence. In that case gay marriage is just one more example of how marriage really doesn't mean anything in this day and age. Which is sad, because heterosexual marriage is the bedrock of civilized societies. Married people live longer, are less likely to live in poverty, have more successful and well-adjusted children, etc. It's a good thing. But to them gay marriage is just one more demonstration

And really that's struck me about Megan McArdle's post. Ignoring the bit about income tax, her piece largely documents the slippery slope that the institution of marriage has been on for almost a century. Gay marriage really isn't the start of a slippery slope, it's proof we're nearing its base.

Bad Days for Pets

The Byrnes lost a cat to sudden onset kidney failure and have another that is unfortunately on its last legs. John the Methodist's rabbit Hyzenthlay died of cancer.

Milo had a miserable weekend, but is otherwise fine. We went to Amy's parents for a well-attended early Thanksgiving. It was fun for us and Amy got to see a lot of relatives for the first time in a while. Not so much for the cat. He likes his grandparents' place and his grandparents, but he was emotionally overwhelmed through sheer numbers. The three of us are back at home now and he's a lot happier.

F'ing RINOs

While he may be the last great GOP politician in Delaware, where firearms rights are concerned, he is part of the problem. When I first heard of AWB renewals came out, I was inclined to follow the NRA's suggestions and contact my Congressman. After I did and Castle essentially responded with a message saying he though selling out my fundamental constitutional rights was a grand idea, I stopped bothering.

The Fool Speaks the Truth

My favorite line from yesterday's Big Bang Theory was from Sheldon who said, "I am not going to watch the Clone Wars TV series until I've seen the Clone Wars movie. I prefer to let George Lucas disappoint me in the order he intended."

I rewatched the Genndy Tartakovsky short series a while back and while the force powers were over-the-top (especially true in the first volume), they were still awesome and the characterizations were excellent. General Grievous is badass and defeats multiple Jedi at once. Padawan Skywalker impulsively duels Asajj Ventress only to resort to the Dark Side in order to defeat her. It is Samurai Jack in a time Long Long Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away. I can live with that.

The current CGI Clone Wars is G.I. Joe, which is far less cool. The good guys kill robots, the bad guys kill clone mooks, and Grievous always escapes to menace another day. They do a few things right. The plots tend to take place in episode arcs rather than rushed single shots. More importantly they get the clones right, especially in episodes like Rookies. I haven't seen any Mandalorian chants, but the clones are shown as individuals and have faces. There is a lot of foreshadowing that the major set piece in the CGI series will be the Battle of Kamino (compared to the Battle of Coruscant in the Tartakovsky series). We'll see if they include some of the morally ambiguous actions taken on the Republic side.

Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt!

Was someone caught LARPing or was that Google Street View really performance art?

The Magic of the Internet

It has the power to turning one nerd into four:

I was really impressed until I found out he was lip syncing to a Utah-based acapella group called Moosebutter. If you'd like a counterpoint, there's always Hi-Fidelity's Star Trek barbershop:

They do at least one more Trek-based number.

Via Cassie and Miss Anon.

Obama Commentary from Across the Pond

Amy and I watch the Graham Norton show on BBC America Saturday nights. Norton's opening monologue dealt with Obama's win and the election of the first black president, since it was shot shortly after the election. British comedian Frank Skinner was a guest and made this wonderful statement about premature celebration:

You're not really sure what you're getting with Barack Obama... Robert Mugabe is a black president. They're not necessarily good, are they?

Skinner also remarked that Obama's mixed racial heritage is often overlooked, which is a shame for the growing numbers of interracial families out there.

Economy Night Vision

I must admit that the Eyeclops toy night vision optic looks really cool. I wondered if they worked as advertised since I actually saw the advertisement. Judging from the Amazon reviews, they do.

Yes, the optic is somewhat disorienting. Yes, it's a monocular with a narrow field of view and no depth perception. But guess what? All that is still true even with most current gen military systems. Trust me, I've almost fallen down a flight of stairs while stumbling around in the dark using military training units.

Now I'm not saying that the Eyeclops is equivalent to that military unit. It's a toy that is probably too fragile for a $70 item that you're going to give to a 10 year-old. I'm just saying I wish they'd had these when I was that accident prone 10 year-old.

Anti-Piracy Efforts

The Royal Navy has killed three pirates in a brief firefight after responding to an attack on a Danish cargo ship off the coast of Yemen. International sea law will hopefully still allow them to kill the other pirates on the dhow after a proper trial.

We'll see if the US Navy gets into the act anytime soon. The Navy has largely been sitting out the War on Terror (except for supporting the Marines) and anti-piracy efforts would be a great way for the service to become more relevant. Perhaps some of the littoral combat ships could be put to good use. A cheaper (and probably more effective) alternative would be to field some q-ships for anti-piracy operations in hotspots like the Gulf of Aden or the Strait of Malacca. Or maybe just smaller littoral vessels like Sea Fighter.

The High Road

I'm not sure if anyone here frequents The High Road firearms forum except me, but here is an important tidbit of information: it seems the current .org site has been caught up in a crisis of ownership. Or in other words, it has been stolen.

The long time technical administrator has claimed ownership he doesn't actually have and has hijacked the board (complete history). You may not realize this because he's also banned Oleg Volk (the actual owner) and any Oleg-supporting moderators while deleting any posts that mention what is going on. Oleg has set up a .us site as a temporary alternative to the hijacked original using an older version of the database. I suggest you use Oleg's site for the foreseeable future until things can get worked out and both sites are merged after the dust settles. Unfortunately "worked out" in this case means civil and possible criminal charges against Derek Zeanah, the old admin.

New Gun Shop

A few years ago, I spent a weekend visiting (or in some cases just trying to find) all the gun shops in Northern Delaware. It seems there is now a new one, Patriotic Firearms, which just opened in Meadowood Shopping Center on Kirkwood Highway. I'll have to put my day off tomorrow to good use.

UPDATE: Unfortunately the new gunshop isn't open yet. The display counters are in, but there isn't even any signage yet and definitely no actual product.

I hit two Dick's Sporting Goods and Walmart in search of ammo. Ammo sale prices at both are often quite competitive, especially since you don't need to pay for shipping. No dice. Who ever decided on how to price their .223 stock is an idiot. You can buy 20 rounds for $8 (if by the case), or 50 for $25 (no case price), or 200 for $95. This meant the good deal, a case of 20 round boxes, was gone and no one was buying the more expensive ammo. I did manage to pick up the last box of Winchester 147gr 9mm JHPs at Walmart. I've been wanting to run some of these through my hipower to see how it handles them.

Oh and I came real close to buying a "military" jacket at H&M today. It was essentially an all cotton M65-style shell with a button-in polyfill liner. It was a nice jacket, but I just couldn't get myself to buy it. Then I realized for what they wanted (~$80) I could just buy an M65 with a liner and get a better jacket.

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

Amy and I picked this up for Wii on Saturday because we heard it has a great cooperative play mode (it does) and we wanted something to play together. It's a compendium of Lego Star Wars: The Video Game and LSW II: The Original Trilogy. Since then we've played through the first few levels in Episode I. It's a fun platformer. Amy seems to be a darn good shooter, while I'm a better light-saber swinging Jedi. Works for me.

The levels themselves have a lot of replay value. You'll find new things each time and you'll gain access to new areas in free-play mode by using different characters. I've heard things only get better as the Original Trilogy levels are superior to the first game. We'll see what happens when we hit Episode IV.

If there is anything bad about this game, it's how hard it is to find a copy. We tried picking it up at Walmart and GameStop with no luck, but our local Best Buy had a ton of them. It has definitely been worth the $20 I spent once we found one.

Legend of the Seeker

I've watched the first three episodes of the new series based on Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth books. It's alright, but it just seems very pared-down compared to the books.

In the books Richard is an impressive character in his own right. He's smart, inquisitive, and driven. His ability to wield the Sword of Truth is supplied by these traits and by his capacity for righteous anger. If he hadn't been an impressive man, the sword would wield him, not the other way around. As the books progress he has to learn to temper that anger with mercy as he discovers who he really is.

In the TV show, he's just this guy. Not only is he short and wiry instead of a big leading man, but he really doesn't show us why we should be impressed. He's a nice guy and perhaps a do-gooder, but we don't see that drive or fury in him. He is given the sword largely because of prophecy, not because he already demonstrates the attributes that will make him a good Seeker for Truth.

The whole series is kind of like that. Many of the character's backstories have been sanitized for TV. The series has a very Hercules the Legendary Journeys feel to it. The characters walk through the woods a lot and deal with whatever problem comes up that week. It's understandable given that the production teams are largely the same. Perhaps the plot will deepen as it develops while the series progresses? I can only hope.

80s Trivia

Well I got an 87 on this 1980s cartoon trivia quiz. I missed the questions on Rainbow Brite and the Care Bears. I consider ignorance of those programs a virtue not a vice.

Hybrids

Instapundit reports an Autoblog story about the credit crunch ruining GM hybrid sales. Yeah, I'm betting the $1.98 gas I saw on my drive to work today isn't going to help them much either.

Who is the President-Elect?

Obama won and I don't think anybody is really surprised. It was closer than the polling indicated, but his electoral college victory is undeniable. This is a good thing, because I don't think anyone wanted a repeat of 2000. I think we can all be happy that race relations have come far enough in this country that we have elected a Black president other than Bill Clinton (how did that work anyway?). This still leaves us with some significant questions. My big one is "How will President Obama govern?"

Policy wise, he's a deep lefty, but he's also a practical politician. If he has shown himself to be anything, it is a political opportunist. People were amazed that he had never heard Reverend Wright's racially charged bigotry. The man wasn't attending that church for the sermons, although I'm sure he heard them. He was attending it for the votes and power base it gave him. Where he worshiped was a political decision.

So which opportunities will he sieze upon now? Nobody really knows. Is he going to stand up to his own party in congress and govern in a clinton-era center-left manner? Is he going to tilt deeply socialist? The sad thing is we ought to know the answer to these questions. All we've had for two years is good oration, hopey-changey, blank-slate candidate, followed by policy flip-flop whenever he makes a bad call. The only thing he's stood for is that he isn't George Bush. Which I could already tell because I'm neither blind nor stupid. He has no executive experience to examine and the media hasn't challenged him on anything since the primaries. Even then they were in his corner against Hillary. Wonderful.

If this election has shown me anything, it's that I am no longer supporting anything the MSM puts out if I can help it. They were so deeply in the tank this election, that I don't care to consume their product anymore. It's the internet and maybe some Fox News or nothing.

Oh and it's also time to stock up on some guns. I expect Obama's first acts as President to be a crime bill that is heavy on the gun control and an education bill to replace NCLB that is a teachers union's wet dream.

Coming Out of the Closet

Aerosmith Guitarist Joe Perry admits to being a lifelong Republican and endorses McCain. This is a big deal for a guy who hails from Boston and works in the entertainment industry. Just look at the comments on that article for reasons why.

Via Duffy at Pencader Days.

Happy Halloween

Phillies Win!

I give total credit to Paul Smith and his idolatry before the baseball gods. Also the fans. I suppose some of the Phillies' players and management. Especially that nice Brett Myers. He seems the well-adjusted sort.

Delaware's Latest Shame

Surprise! It has nothing to do with Joe Biden and everything to do with the Delaware State Police violating the law by illegally maintaining government records of firearms purchases. The state requires these records to be destroyed in 60 days. A slip of the tongue revealed that the DSP had maintained a database of records going back over 7 years.

This is not an isolated problem. Adjoining states like Pennsylvania also illegally maintain records databases.

UPDATE: Duffy weighs in on the DSP's computer glitch cover story.

A New Threat from... Paraguay?

It seems that the Paraguaians Paraguese people of Paraguay have held the biggest barbecue ever with 30 thousand people consuming 28,000 tons of meat in 6 hours. That's almost a ton of meat per person! So much meat that perhaps fraud was involved...

Paraguay really should have known better. I believe we all remember what happened to Iraq after they tried to take World Shooting-in-the-Air Supremacy away from Kentucky. You wouldn't think Paraguay would make that sort of mistake.

I still have confidence that good American gluttons from the South, or possibly the Southwest, will put the record back in American hands soon enough.

Chuck Norris Weighs In

You know why the clip ends with him throwing the punch into a freeze frame? Well they tried to start it off this way, but all they got was the force of his chi breaking the camera lens, followed by the pained cries of the injured cameraman. At least this way all that happens off screen. Remember Chuck thought this clip was so important it was worth spilling a cameraman's blood.

More Norris NRA humor over at Tam's place.

Excel Innovations

It's kind of cool that AC/DC has released an ascii art version of Rock N Roll Train via an Excel spreadsheet. But only kind of. There is no way I'm going to run a strange excel file on my computer without disabling macros. I just don't trust them that much, no matter what my virus scanner says. Once I have disabled macros, I've also disabled the video content. At least there's a Youtube version.

Every Weekly Meeting During Grad School

My usual experience in graduate school was that my adviser would tell me to do an experiment I knew wouldn't work. I would go off, do it, report that it didn't work, reiterate why it wouldn't work (but with experimental support this time), and then go off to do it the my way so that it would. Every professor was the same and the key to good relations seemed to be knowing when to stop fighting them.

Phillies Massacre Rays

Amybear is beginning to forsake her DC metro ways. She bought a Phillies cap at Sears yesterday.

I caught most of the game last night. The Phillies just absolutely trounced the Rays. To make my point, Ryan Howard hit two home runs with 5 RBIs but he wasn't the game's most valuable player. That honor went to pitcher Joe Blanton who dashed the Rays' hopes for six innings and also hit a solo home run. What is it with Phillies' pitchers this post-season?

If this trend continues, I may have to see if any of my old Phillies gear still fits.

The Seasons Are a Changin'

The weatherproofing on my old Lands End Squall Parka gave up during a February snow this year. My mother gave it to me one Christmas during college because she thought I needed a new winter coat. I was wearing around a ratty trenchcoat a lot and perhaps she thought my fashion sense was going the way of my father's. I never really loved it, but it was functional and lasted forever. The later is a trait that seems common in clothes I don't like.

My current choices for replacement are the Cabela's Canvas Field Coat (in Saddle) and the Cabela's Prairie Field Jacket. I think the former is better looking and would probably be warmer, except it lacks a zipper or a drawstring waist. The latter has the zipper and shotshell loops which are perfect for trips to the range.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: I left out the Insulated Chore Coat from Duluth Trading Company. Not sure if it has a drawstring waist, but it does have a zipper which should make it a lot more foul weather resistant.

Rube Goldberg Cat Training

Cat eating the potted plants? Hook your blender up a motion detector to freak him out anytime he tries. Or for the 10 cent solution, just apply double sided scotch tape to the counter top. Cats hate that stuff.

No. Not Without Incident.

The Tetragrammaton Cleric t-shirt, perfect for anyone open carrying a Beretta. Equilibrium, what a wonderfully silly movie. Via Lawdog.

UPDATE: On the topic of clothes and carry, don't wear prominent pro-2nd amendment t-shirts and hats while concealed carrying. If they're smart, people will connect the dots and take a closer look. They will most likely find telltale budges if you are packing.

Ace of Cakes

Amy and I love the show on Food Network. Amy discovered turns out that Mary Alice also maintains a Charm City Cakes blog as well. It includes previews of upcoming episodes and pictures of the various crew members that slave away behind the scenes to produce the program.

On a similar food-related note, Kim du Toit (and his wife Connie) both think that Anthony Bourdain's new show At The Table is rubbish. His old show, No Reservations, is excellent. The new one is unfortunately pretentious crap.

Things to Freak Out the Cat

Make gives us the robotic planter box, which seeks to optimize the sun exposure for it's plants by walking to the brightest spots in the room.

Motorcycles

The Administrative Pastor at my church recently started riding a motorcycle. It's his first bike in twenty-something years so he started "small." He bought a Sportster. His wife actually wanted to ride on it with him so he bought the 1200 instead of the 883. I found out all of this, not because Pastor Bill and I are buds, but because he had recently broken his leg.

Some of the men at church in his age group are rather annoyed with him over this. How are they to convince their wives to let them buy motorcycles and relive the glory days of their youth, when a prominent clergyman has had a prominent motorcycle accident? I'm sure large parts of the congregation will be looking to hold Pastor Bill accountable for his behavior in short order. I also suggest they point out that the 20 something church organist zips about on a sportbike and he hasn't had a horrible crash yet. Yet. Maybe that will get them some traction, but having had this discussion with my own wife I kind of doubt it.

On this topic, Jeremy Clarkson recently published a column about motorcycles even though he did his research by riding a Vespa. He explains the advantage of his motorcycling choice:

I also liked the idea of a Vespa because most bikes are Japanese. This means they are extremely reliable so you cannot avoid a fatal crash by simply breaking down. This is entirely possible on a Vespa because it is made in Italy.

Perhaps this explain the popularity of Harley-Davidson's as well?

The Gunshow

I did stop off at the Nur Shriners Temple gun show on Saturday. I was more surprised by what I didn't see than what I did. What didn't I see?

• Young people. There were a hundred or so people mulling around the show floor (which was about the size of a basketball court). Most were older white men between 55-75. A few were younger family men in their forties toting their kids about. A very few were my age or younger. This was not a place for young urban males to buy their gats.
• Handguns. I'm guess the show broke down to a third were non-weapons. Military surplus in various forms, books, holsters, scopes, grips, etc. Another third was knives. There were easily as many knife dealers as there were gun dealers. The rest were almost all older shotguns and mil-surp bolt action rifles. There were handful of handguns tables. There were probably a few dozen total hanguns. No luck finding a deal on an older .357 revolver. No-one seemed to be selling cowboy action guns either.
• Modern military arms. One person was prominently displaying an M1A (and wanted $6k for it). Another had a few AR-15s and a weird AR upper that accepted P90 mags and ammo. (Why would you want a gun that is the same size and weight as an AR, but takes more expensive and weaker ammo?) With an Obama administration looking more likely, I expected a lot more of that sort of stuff. I expected someone selling stripped AR lowers in bulk, but I saw 1 stripped lower and it was a novelty item tagged at $250.
• Ammunition. Slim pickings here. There were a few historical ammunition curiosities, like a really old box of .44-40 hunting ammo. There was one table that had a few hundred rounds of 7.62x39. Another sold .30-06 in en-bloc clips for an M1 garand. That was it.

So that was the show. I hit Millers and X-ring on my way home. Millers didn't have much I was interested in, but X-ring had several stripped lowers for under $150 and a 3" Ruger GP100. No sale, but nice to know that this stuff is out there.

McCain Clips

McCain's speech at the Al Smith dinner was a good one, especially where he was ripping on the Clintons:

Delegate Wars

If you wish the presidency were settled in Risk-style (actually Dice Wars) battle royale, Battleground States might be for you. Fun, but time consuming.

Oh and if you want to watch cats flushing toilets to a goofy song, this one is for you.

Geek Shame

Sadly, I understood everything Gabe said in this comic. The boy is in blue Katarn armor which means he's a null lieutenant, so either Jaing, Mereel, Prudii, or Kom'rk. I'm sure Gabe knows which and has instructed his son to act accordingly.

Doctor's Appointments

I've been having knee pain for around a month now. Both of them. It sucks. I can't do any sort of cardio workout and I'm walking around like an old man. I realized that it wasn't just going to go away with rest, so I went to the family doctorphysician's assistant yesterday. She diagnosed me with patellofemoral pain syndrome. Essentially, my kneecap is rubbing on the rest of my knee join and aggravating things. The treatment is mostly stretching and quad strengthening exercises to teach those errant kneecaps their proper place.

Patellofemoral pain syndrome is just a fancy way of saying that the area around my kneecap hurts, by the way. Most medical language is like that. I feel sorry for the people who use the phrase "well at least they have a name for it" related to medicine and illness. Some old lady gets comfort when she finds out that she is tired all the time because of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Except that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome doesn't have a clearly identified cause. Its just the category they put people into who are tired all the time and don't have Lyme disease, etc.

Once you learn the code, medicine gets a lot less impressive. Once you actually work with doctors on a professional level (as I did while researching biomechanics in college) the gild leaves the lily at an alarming rate. Doctors (and especially surgeons) are much more like skilled auto mechanics than white-coated super-scientists. It's a professional degree program, just a difficult one because the nature of the "machine" they're trying to repair.

A Mystery Solved

Ever wonder why you see ads for Sonic on cable/satellite TV even when there isn't Sonic within several hours drive of your house? Some of you may have conjectured that its an artifact of advertising economics and it turns out you're right:

Over the weekend, I ran into one of the writers behind the two-folks-in-a-car Sonic commercials and asked him if he knew.

He said that it's basically a better deal for Sonic to buy ad packages on a national basis on cable TV, which is why all you Sonic-less folks see them anyway. An added benefit, he said, was that this strategy has coincidentally built up hype for the drive-in burger chain whenever it enters a new market.

It works too, every time I travel to an area with a Sonic, I always stop for one of their burgers. What's the point of hitting a McDonalds (unless that region still has the McRib)?

Multivitamin Schadenfreude

Turns out a friend and I both just changed vitamin brands to One-A-Day Mens Multivitamins. We both think they're crap. I had previously used a brand called Nature Made, but switched to One-A-Day because I thought all vitamins were the same. I was wrong.

The big problem is that unlike Nature Made, One-A-Day does not coat their pills with anything. This means you can taste exactly what is in the multivitamins: minerals and organic molecules. Dirt and bark for you non-technical people. Even worse, with out a coating they start dissolving in your mouth so that dirt and bark flavor spreads across your mouth and then lingers. The surface is also porous so it sticks to things making the pill hard to swallow. Nothing like downing a full glass of nasty dirt-and-bark water trying to swallow your morning dose of vegetables.

All this could be avoided with an thin gelatin or wax coating on the pills of course.

If there is any consolation to be had, it's that I only bought a 100 count bottle while my friend has nearly an entire year's supply. Sucks even worse to be him.

Flashlights

I discovered that my old 2D maglite was completely trashed yesterday. One or both of the batteries had leaked and swelled, locking them into the barrel of the light. After attempting to disassemble the unit using instructions from Take-It-Apart, I realize that the light was a hopeless case. The acid had eaten away at the barrel of the light and I was going to have to destroy most of the internals just to get it out. Oh well, time to get another one anyway.

In doing the research on that, I stumbled across flashlightreviews.com. It's a great site and has lots of data amidst it's product reviews.

Palin Having Fun

HAVING FUN with Sarah Palin. Yeah, readers keep sending me reports like this, which I'm not getting about John McCain. She looks like she's having fun. He doesn't. That matters.

Why is Palin having fun but McCain, well, not? The answer is simple, this is McCain's last Presidential hurrah. He's already too old and that isn't a problem that will go away with time. So the pressure is on him, because nobody is going to elect McCain's head in a jar.

Palin? Not so much. If McCain loses she goes back to her overwhelmingly successful job as Governor of Alaska. She puts in four more years there and runs for President in 2012 (or perhaps 2016). Unless Bobby Jindal also runs, she's going to win the nomination in a landslide. Palin's personal situation is win-win. Why not be happy?

The Well-Deserved Punch in the Face

Amy and I watched a movie called License to Wed over the weekend. It is a bad movie, but one scene got me to to stand up and applaud. It's the one where the groom-to-be punches out the bastard minister. Great scene.

I had a similar experience with this story about Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld:

"From two very senior sources - one incredibly senior source - that he went to the gym after. Lehman was announced as going under. He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold. And frankly after having watched this, I'd have done the same too."

Encroaching Alzheimers

Terry Pratchett discusses the progression of his early onset Alzheimers. It's a tough read if you have family members with dementia like I do.

Homicidal Feline Rage

This is why Milo is not allowed on the counters in the bathroom:

A Bad Month for Cats

First Porch Cat passed on the 12, then Mittens died yesterday. September was a bad month for blogger cats.

Reminder to Self

The Legion of Honor Gun Show is in about two weeks on the 18th and 19th at the Shrine Building off of Rt 13 in Newcastle. It's the only gun show I know of that is actually held within Delaware. All the others are across state lines, usually in Pennsylvania.

How Could I Have Missed It?

Truly, Mary Poppins must be a Time Lord.