Escape From New York

Romero: You touch me... he dies. If you're not in the air in thirty seconds... he dies. You come back in... he dies.
Romero: [Romero takes a package out of his shirt and unwraps it to reveal the President's middle finger, complete with ring] Twenty seconds.
Hauk: I'm ready to talk
Romero: Nineteen. Eighteen.
Hauk: What do you want?
Romero: Seventeen. Sixteen.
Hauk: Let's go. Let's go!

That Was Sure Interesting! Power To The People!

The Illegal Immigration Amnesty got nuked.

All because we the great unwashed demanded it so hard we melted the Senate's phone system down!

Good for us! About time the Senate got a bit of a reminder that they SERVE. And they serve at our pleasure. They do not RULE.

Aside to Michele Evermore, kudos to Sen Harkin for voting to kill this thing. My Senators both wanted this bill, and hard. I wanted to get rid of Nelson from before, but Martinez was a surprise. Me thinks he'll be outside looking in next election.

The local press tried to make a stink about a Panama City sheriff operating a task force that hit construction sites and arrested illegal aliens. Guess what? It's getting hard to find illegals on work-sites now. They talked to a Mexican and he cried about how he couldn't find work around there anymore and couldn't send money to his family in Mexico.

Two things, first I don't care because you are committing a felony just by standing there and second, I don't approve of hiring people whose main impact on the economy is to export their wages. To be good for OUR economy, they have to spend them bucks here. But even if they spent it all here, they are here illegally and must go.

Anyway, our worker is whining, the press is crying and the local residents? Celebrating! Building contractors are complaining that they can't get things built. Awwwww, poor babies. Isn't hiring illegal aliens illegal? I think you should shut up before someone remembers that and fines you out of business and puts you in jail.

I know lots of people in the construction industry, my father in law for one, and they have all been talking for years about how wages have dropped through the floor because of all the illegals. I find I am fascinated that the "rah rah union" Democrats don't support the skilled construction contractor in the same manner as they support the UAW. Oh wait, no bribescampaign contributions come from the contractors like the UAW pays. I totally understand why the Republicans are for the illegals working construction, big construction companiespay big bribes make large campaign contributions.

14% approval rating for Congress? Yikes! With numbers like that I could run Hitler in Tel Aviv and win.

Dude! It's HITLER!
But he's not an incumbent?
No...
He's got my vote!
But it's HITLER!
I know, but he's not an incumbent.

That skit gets lots of laughs if you play the pro-Hitler voice with a Yiddish accent.

Fire Rocks!

That's my charcoal starter! No fluid required. Crappy photo provided by LG8600.

Mayor Bloomberg Leaves The Republican Party

There are times when I am just stumped. From the way he'd been acting, I had assumed he was a Democrat.

Wait! He was, until 2001. Then he changed his party affiliation so he could run as a Republican because the Democrats weren't letting him run for mayor.

I guess in NYC even the Republicans are Democrats. Rudy Guiliani, I am looking at you! But we knew that already, didn't we?

I've said it before, there's no point in having two parties if they behave the same. I don't want bipartisanship, I want bloody fights for every scrap of law! Sell C-Span like pay per view to see the robot-zombie Ried fight against, oh, whomever.

Arrogant McSister Update

Remember when I said that McSister said the title of the Civic would be handled, "this week"?

She e-mailed me today telling me that the contact information I e-mailed her didn't include the point of contact's e-mail address.

Um, yes it did. Besides, how damn hard is it to Google "New Mexico DMV" and get all the contact information you could ever need? That's how I got Gloria Gonzales' e-mail in the first place.

Her requesting Ms Gonzales' e-mail address today indicates that this is the first time she has even attempted to get her ducks in a row.

If the roles were reversed, I would have had that title ordered the day I found out it was not at mom's condo, a month and a half ago.

From The Earth To The Moon

Been watching the HBO series on DVD.

It's a bit emotional for a space buff like me.

We want to go to the moon again? Why are we discarding the Saturn/Apollo combination out of hand?

A totally new design is not required. The savings in just electronics mass and the use of electronic replacements for many systems that were solely mechanical in 1969 gets nearly six men to the moon!

Modifying a proven system is a much smaller risk than designing from scratch anyway.

Arrogant Bitch McSister

What a little shit.

I have attempted to call her and e-mail her for weeks now. My tone has changed from friendly to business to are you getting this to I guess you are ignoring me.

Since the last got a reply, what would you think she was doing?

She claims we should have something from the retirement folks, "soon."

The title for the Civic should be taken care of, "this week."

The condo has made little progress because, "it's too hard." Yeah, milk it baby. Mom is the only relative you hadn't alienated, I can see why that would be hard.

I left a voice mail a few weeks ago telling you that I didn't have the money to go to the memorial, and you didn't call me back like I asked. But I can see you have been getting the messages because you refer to them in your e-mail.

I don't give two shits what you think if I don't come to the memorial, Ms Queen Shit. Did you ask if July 28th was good for me? Nope. You picked it because you could schedule the use of a shelter at Brookside on that day. I hate to break it to you, Ms High and Mighty, but some of us just don't have the financial flexibility to drop everything and wisk 1600 miles to spend an afternoon around people we don't know and prolly wouldn't care for if we did know them. Things that you are missing about my situation when you get all upset about it. Ames is farther from Holiday than Denver, it's a longer trip for me. With a single income, we only can afford one "go somewhere" vacation. I used that money to get to Denver to say goodbye in May. And because you didn't uphold Mom's agreement about paying me back, I lost the money spent to get out there. I and I told mom you would do that too. Then I have to see if The Lovely Harvey can take time off during the week that straddles the date you picked. She works for a university and there are numerous black-out dates for vacation because of their class schedules. If you had asked, instead of dictated, you might have learned that the end of July, beginning of August is a start-week, that means no vacations for anyone. What that means is to travel the longer distance than you, with less money than you, I also have to find someone to care for The Boy while I am gone, again. We used up a lot of favors the first time, I tried to explain that.

Nobody wants to listen to me about that. My worthless father and his mother, Maggie, both imply that I am less of a person because I don't have a job. McSister cannot fathom sacrificing financial and personal freedom to care for a loved one. That's really odd, because that's exactly what she did to take care of mom.

Anyone want to bet on whether July 28th meshes perfectly with McSister's work, home and financial schedule?

All this shit has me in a wonderful mood. I can't sleep and I am on a short fuse because I am exhausted.

The air conditioner is toast, in Florida, in June. Oh, I don't have money to fix that either.

Father's Day

Father's day for me was good and bad.

Good in that I am a father, so The Boy's love of me was really felt. Even though I was an ogre for most of the damn day. He got me a DVD of one of my favorite movies.

Bad, in that I was in a pissy mood all day. A mood that wasn't helped by calling my own father. I think I will take the hint from that side of the family and just stop attempting to contact them. They sure don't try to get a hold of me.

McSister, the executor of Mom's will, has hired a probate attorney. She doesn't seem to have done anything else about getting Mom's estate in order. Like mailing a simple request for a title for the Civic Mom gave me. Gonna be fun attempting to register that without a title. Prolly never going to see that title and have to sell off the parts.

And I suspect that there will be no disbursement from the retirement accounts. It seems like every time I depend on my blood-relatives to merely do what they say they are going to do, the fuck me.

Your results:
You are Wash (Ship Pilot)

Wash (Ship Pilot) 85% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 65% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 65% Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 60% Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 60% Alliance 55% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 50% River (Stowaway) 45% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 35% A Reaver (Cannibal) 20% Inara Serra (Companion) 15%

You are a pilot with a good if not silly sense of humor. You take pride in your collection of toys. You love your significant other.

Click here to take the "Which Serenity character am I?" quiz...

Planet Earth

Watching the DVD of the Ocean segment of "Planet Earth" at Marv's last night.

Included near the end is aerial footage of two blue whales cruising along. The narrator, Sigourney Weaver, tells us that we know almost nothing about them, where they go or where they breed. We watch the footage for a bit more, she notes that they eat plankton, more footage and then, "There used to be 300,000 blue whales, now there are less than 3% of that number left."

I find that I cannot reconcile that we know almost nothing about them and that we have an accurate count.

If we don't know where they go, how do we know we aren't just seeing a very small portion of the population? Sub-populations of killer whales don't overlap much. And we don't know how blues organize. Do they behave like gray and humpback whales and the entire population moves essentially together? Do they form small packs that migrate together?

Gee, we don't know that basic stuff, but we have an accurate population count?

I call shinnanigans.

Yes, I know there is more information about blue whales out there. What bothers me here is that there is no explanation given in the documentary that brings the how we know this, but not that together.

Progress Is Being Made

Got the Magpul MIAD grip for The Lovely Harvey's Recce in. After much fitting and testing (there are three front and three back inserts) she decided that she liked the F3 and B3 inserts best. There is a storage plug that holds three spare rounds for emergencies. Magpul also offers three different plugs, one that holds a 123 battery, one that holds two AA/AAA/N type batteries and one that holds a spare bolt and firing pin.

Pictured is the Body, F3 and B3 on the receiver. Moving away from the grip forwards we have F2, F1 and then F4; moving backwards we have B2 and B1. F1 has a scrap of paper holding it in profile for the camera and I am holding B1 by hand since they have nothing that lets them sit on their sides. F4 is for using this set to mount a MIAD on a pistol-grip forward-grip mount. F2 is essentially the same as F3 without the trigger guard.

I like this grip a lot myself. I think I would go with F1 and B1...

Congress!

When drafting a law to put an end to some crime, could you JUST ONCE check to see that it doesn't fuck the people who are NOT criminals?

This is why we gun folk get so bent out of shape about you worthless sacks. Every time you pass a law about guns, it creates an additional burden on me, the lawful gun owner, and doesn't have any effect at all on the criminal.

The latest push to add mental health records to the NICS check is a great example. What I expect to happen: A lot of people who have been successfully treated and are perfectly healthy mentally now are going to be denied purchase. A few people who have been successfully treated and are perfectly healthy mentally now may have their existing guns seized by the authorities. Fearing this, a large percentage of depressed people who own, or want to own, a gun will avoid getting treated for their disease for fear of having their rights taken away.

There is a reason that the current form ATF4473 has a question 11f;

"Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective (which includes having been adjudicated incompetent to manage your own affairs) or have you ever been committed to a mental institution."

Notice the language, adjudicated and committed. Not admitted to a mental institution, committed. Adjudication and committing are legal sentences, they require due process to assign to a person, and are normally placed on a person against their will.

What the new law proposes is that anyone who voluntarily decides to seek treatment for a problem before someone gets hurt will be forever banned from owning a firearm, or at least buying one. No mention at all of successful treatment of the malady, or in fact, mention of a diagnosis!! Only that a person sought treatment! What if the psychiatrist says you aren't depressed at all, and not a danger to anyone? What if the psychiatrist says you were depressed, probably would have killed someone, but we caught it in time and fixed to problem?

See the problem yet?

I think I would be OK with changing this to a disqualifier where a TEMPORARY bar on purchases is put in force while the subject is undergoing treatment AND where the psychiatrist feels the patient might be a danger to themselves or others. That allows the person who is successfully treated to suffer no stigma for receiving treatment and doesn't dissuade people from getting treatment out of fear of losing their guns forever because they did the right thing and got treated.

There especially needs to be due process where someone who has been added to the NICS mental patient list can get their name removed simply. With the costs assumed by the State and the burden of proof being on the State to retain the subject on the forbidden list.

The C7 Rear Sight

This is the rear sight of my XM177E3. It was mounted backwards from the factory. The concave portion is supposed to face the target, not the shooter. I fixed it! Only shot the detent and spring across the room three times! And found all the parts every time too! A miracle if there ever was one!

This is the same sight set to the long range aperture:

The long range aperture is only 0.0155" taller than the normal range one. The effects are interesting though. I have a sight radius of 14.3125", changing apertures changes the point of impact 1.9335" at 50 yards, 7.7819" at 200 yards and 11.6806" at 300 yards! That means the short range aperture would shoot 11.7" below the point of aim at 300 yards, that changes it from a head shot to a torso shot!

We Had The Boy's Birthday Party Too

At one time he said he wanted a rifle, "Just like daddy!"

He can't have a real one, so I compromised. The similarities in scale and the attention to detail are outstanding. If one were to paint it black, it would be very hard to tell apart from the real thing.

I think he enjoys it...

The Lovely Harvey's Graduation Present

Gonna make her a Recce!

One Hell Of A Quote

"You know, in a way - and no offense to the real people living in and about the bay area, SJBill - this would kind of be a relief. As a city, San Francisco has long ago stopped pretending that they support their military. We could stop pretending that we like San Francisco.
We don’t have to like San Francisco. We get paid to defend them. It’s our job.
The rest of the country?
We’re doing that for free."

Edit:  The links to Lex are dead.  Gods dammit!

Lyrics Corner Bat Edition

Tossed into my mind, stirring the calm
You splash me with beauty and pull me down
Cuz you come from out of nowhere
My glance turns to a stare
Obsession rules me-I'm yours from the start
I know you see me-Our eyes interlock
You come from out of nowhere
My glance turns to a stare
One minute here and one minute there
Don't know if I'll laugh or cry
One minute here and one minute there
And then you wave good-bye...
Sifting to the bottom, every day for two
All energy funnels, all becomes you
You come from out of nowhere
My glance turns to a stare
One minute here and one minute there
Don't know if I'll laugh or cry
One minute here and one minute there
And it hurts inside
One minute here and one minute there
And then you wave good-bye...
*whisper*good-bye

Gaming Idiocy

A thread on the SJ Games forums reminded me of [a] gaming group [I was involved with].

The thread had a GM complaining about tardy and absentee players. I posted that I resented having to clock-in when I was playing with Jon's group. My position was that once you start treating the players like employees, you had better start paying them.

I am now someone who doesn't value a social contract, and other mean things.

I keep forgetting that some people thing gaming is the most important thing they do.

I did it as a pass-time. Something that was fun and inexpensive and consumed many otherwise boring hours.

Getting to a place 40 miles away in the midwest winter by noon on Sunday was iffy. It could take two hours. It could take 45 minutes. You have no way of knowing until you start driving. To be certain I was there to "honor the social contract" I would have to leave at ten AM. If I was late, and my excuse was "the roads" I was told, "You should have left earlier then." Tell me again, [GM], what's this job pay? What time did you leave? Oh wait, you live here. What time did you have to get up to get here on time? Oh wait, you live here. What time did you get to bed last night? Oh wait, you get a minimum of two more hours of sleep than I do because you live here.

Others made it on time? Your wife lives here. [Two players] have no lives outside of gaming. [The wife of one] is dragged here by [them], and gee she looks as thrilled about the hours as I am. [Another] is wholly your sycophant, he'd be here at nine AM if commanded. [The final member of the group] doesn't do anything late on Sat night, and thinks getting up at nine AM is sleeping in. Did I miss anyone?

All that really adds up to is that I am not a good fit with this group. The really fun thing about the stringent rules is they were aimed at [the low dog of the pack], who needed someone from Ames to give him a ride. I still don't understand why six people from Ames had to drive to Des Moines because two people lived there.

In contrast, the Sat gaming group met, "noonish" and nobody got bent out of shape if we didn't get started until two. And since we had the good sense to play on Saturday, we could play until the wee hours without worrying about what time we needed to be at work Sunday, unless we played in Jon's group.

This Is Entirely Too Funny

Click Me.

Immigration Reform

Some politico mentioned that some people were insisting that anything that didn't end in capital punishment for illegals would be called an amnesty.

A swing and a miss...

It's not that we want all the illegals killed, it's just we are now willing to accept it as a solution to the problem. A final solution? Lets hope not.

We really want them sent home, never to return. But we are willing to accept summary executions because the Government has ignored the problem for such a long time!

Vocabulary Corner

"Kakistocracy"--"Rule by the least-able or least-principled of citizens...a form of government in which the people least qualified to control the government are the people who control the government."

Gee, sure sounds like what we have in DC, huh?