No More Donations

PayPal has decided to be idiotic about their terms of service, so I have decided that I cannot, in good faith, continue to have an account with them.

A contract which is only binding on one party and can be amended at will by the other is not a contract, but the courts are not fixing it.

All one can do is not do business with them any longer.

I am open to suggestions to replace that donation button with a different service.

Don't Use Your Work Addy

When making a political donation, don't use the email address provided by your employer.

The legal department, over and over, warns that employees using the work email address could be interpreted as the company taking a political stance which could affect business and relationships with vendors.

If your employer is a government entity, which is supposed to be apolitical, then using your work email can been seen as the governmental entity you work for as choosing sides in a political debate.

In either case, you're likely to be fired over using the wrong email address as a violation of policy.

A policy that you are unlikely to be unaware of.

It wasn't your donation that has you looking for a job, it was that policy.

Future Wall Stree Journal Headline

Nike stockholders ask, "When did Colin Kaepernick get appointed to chairman?  Who appointed him?"

Going to be a tense shareholder's meeting this year.

Non Linear

I sometimes think that some trainers are very much like someone who's never been wet teaching swimming after reading about someone who has swum many laps.

They've never been in the water and teach you to swim and don't require you to get wet either.

But they based their lesson plan on the experiences of someone who has swum, so you're good to go!

Printed a certificate and everything.

But can you swim?

Others learned to swim by finding themselves in water over their head.

They sure as fuck can swim... now.

But they lack the credentials.

Think hard before you take advice from someone, especially if they want money for it.

Worry about advice from someone who's many times removed from the event you're preparing to deal with.

Core Constituency

They should change their name to "Stepped On Our..." Dick's Sporting Goods.

They're having a bad quarter.

I see this time and again with virtue signalling.

Alienating a customer while mollifying someone who isn't.

You'd think it would be simple to sort those who will buy stuff from you and those who won't.

Eighteen Month Notice

Haitian refugees from the 2010 earthquake just got their 180 day 18 month notice to unass back to Haiti.

People are losing their minds about how inhospitable we Americans are by telling them to go home.

Just a show of hands, how many years can I sleep on your couch before you expect me to get a job?

How long before you expect me to either move out or start paying my share of the rent?

Is it a lot shorter than seven years?

Let's face it, if Haiti wanted the problem these refugees are avoiding fixed, it would be fixed by now and fixed years ago.  Haiti doesn't want it fixed, and their people are not my problem.  Haitians are a Haitian problem and they can have them.

I am sick of the open borders concept that we have to take everyone who's been screwed over by living someplace shitty.

Tell you what, Haiti.  I have a plan.

You won't like it.

You'll call it racist.

We invade and declare Haiti a US territory then open it up to colonization by Americans.  Put in a territorial governor who's a puppet of the colonists and doesn't give shit one about the native population.

Be brutal to the native population while the Americanization of the place takes hold.  Make reservations for the natives to live on.  After a while, the place will be a prosperous state and part of the America that Haitians so desperately wish to live in.  Except they won't be allowed out of the reservations until they're fully assimilated as Americans.

I know this methodology works.  It was used for pretty much every state west of the Mississippi and east of The Rockies.

And since the world will call me an evil racist for doing anything, it might as well be something that has long term benefits for me.

Meh Never Mind The Prediction

I'm gonna take this down.

Needs work.

Be back later.

Knowing The Why

As a former psych student... near graduate...

Did you know that the way a drill sergeant behaves is carefully calculated?

It's an act.

An act calculated to mold the minds of the typical customer they're given to train.

There's lots of other things they do to recruits to encourage they conform to the mold, but the drill's act is key.

The thing that occurs, of late, is how many firearms instructors I've seen conforming to this teaching model.  I guess it makes sense that they'd use a system they'd seen working first hand; since being a veteran is de riguer for running a training center.

The problem is that this methodology only works on specific kinds of people if you skip all the other conformity items that come with basic training.  Without the other trappings, it's worthless to the others, especially people who're veterans.  Ever wonder why the environment at AIT is so different from basic?

Oddly, it's worth is restored when teaching cops who are veterans if there's a group because it restores some of the motivators from basic which won't be present for an individual customer.

Obscenities and codified humiliations only work with a relatively small portion of the population and harden the minds of most others against the teaching; wasting their time and money.

I'm not sure it's related, but there's another stream running in trainers concerning the durability of your gun.  The round count for the class is high because?

It's not a gun test!  It's repetition of what the student has learned and getting that teaching cemented so they can practice it later.  It's a learning retention technique.

There's a couple three trainers who don't seem to get that.  The round count and gun endurance attitude are indications that they're teaching repetition by rote and don't know why they're doing it and weren't taught the 'why' of what they're teaching.  If I bring five guns out and destroy three in the class, I'll still learn the techniques.

Many self-taught people don't know why what they're doing is working, they just know it does work.  But it can lead to superfluous actions that aren't aiding the skill-set.

The gun endurance test really comes from the delay to the class when a student's ONLY gun goes down.  If the students bring guns that can go the entire class without breaking with zero maintenance, then the class doesn't have to stop to help anyone get their gun working again.  Time is limited and it's often drinking from a fire-hose paced.  I'll be damned if I can find more than a handful of instructors who seem to know that's WHY you want guns that will tolerate that kind of abuse.  (By the way, they KNOW it's abuse.  Ever notice they almost never provide the guns for class?)

I am also bemused at how several of the instructors who use the basic training template have also missed something taught at drill sergeant school.  "If the student has failed to learn, it is because you failed to teach."

Not Inconsistent

Unions wishing to be made exempt from the minimum wage laws they fomented for might not be contrary positions.

It could be a camel's nose ploy.

Union membership is at an all time low and places like Wal Mart have been notoriously difficult to unionize.

What if you could create a situation where Wal Mart came to you to get unionized and your workers on the floor?

If a union worker is $9 an hour and a non-union worker is $15...

It kind of makes sense.

Not that I'd trust the unions here.  Unionization is super easy, deunionizing is very difficult.  Like becoming a virgin again difficult.  By design.

Gods forbid the workers go, "this sucks we want to go back to how it used to be!"

Too late Comrade!

If It Weren't For Bad Luck...

I'd have no luck at all.

Reatta was shipped to the FFL the buyer suggested...

Who is closed for a whole week!

Oh come on!

I fervently pray that UPS has some procedure for this and can reschedule delivery for when they reopen.

What I Did Yesterday

Road trip and visit to Drum Circle Distillery, makers of Siesta Key Rum.

I learned a lot!

I did not know that molasses is a by-product of making sugar and that black-strap molasses is the dregs of the molasses making process.

I tried a small sample of the rum as it came out of the still.  Yuck.  When its that raw it smells like rubbing alcohol...  I don't have a basis of comparison for the flavor; it really just evaporated off the tongue.  A neat experience though.

I'm not even a rum drinker...

It was very interesting learning about different ways of making rum he'd tried and discarded and the recipes he's still using.

I am not sure why I was surprise, given the number of craft beers, that there's a craft liquor industry too.  Rums like Captain Morgan and Bacardi are the Budwiesers and Millers...  With all the same baggage associated with quality underlined by penny pinching and making a consistent product in great volume.

It's much easier to make a mediocre product cheaply, consistently and in great volume than an excellent one profitably in small volumes.  That's not really a slam on Bacardi and Budweiser but an observation that the goals are not the same between the giants and the crafters.

Troy's tour of his business is a brilliant piece of marketing, even if he doesn't know he's doing it.

Hand out samples in the tasting room... give the tour while the samples have a chance to take effect... get them back into the tasting room and next to the stuff for sale while they have nothing else to do while they wait to make sure they're completely sober to drive.

Brilliant!

They All Hate Us

MS has an "interesting" code of conduct.

As I have said over and over, they hate us.  They only put up with us because we're a shit-ton of people with a shit-ton of money.  Given ANY excuse they will do anything they can to mess with our lives.

I don't recall any open carry demonstrations at the MicroSoft campus...

Purple Sling Review

Erin's clearing house for the donations to Squeaky made mention of Echo Sling.

They donated product to the encouragement raffle.

So I bought a sling from them, and mentioned to Matt why.

Plus, PURPLE!

The Tabitha Sparkle carbine has gained yet another purple part.

It's a sling and does everything a sling should.  The material is drag your truck out of the mud bog tough while being pretty enough to take to the fancy bar where they check to see if you're really wearing shoes!

The stitching is strong and well done.  The quick size adjust didn't work the way I expected, so I did it wrong a few times before comprehension struck.  Harvey didn't have any troubles with it at all, so I suspect that it's a "me" thing.

My only complaint is that it's 1" wide.  Military slings are 1-1/4" and so my swivels are a bit too wide and that leads to some bunching and snagging on the rubber coating on the front swivel on Tabitha.

The narrower swivels that came with FuzzyGeff's Weatherby, The Lovely Harvey's 10/22 and the original swivels that came with the wood stocks on my 870 are all 1" and this sling would be perfect there!

There's just not much to say about a sling that works.  There's LOTS to say about slings that DON'T.  This one works, so there's not much to say...

I am very pleased with this sling and it will be retained as part of Tabitha Sparkles next iteration (flat-top middy M4 with purple cerakote).  If you need a strong, tough sling; go here.  And don't let the website fool you!  If you want a color he doesn't have in his store page, a quick email will more than likely confirm he has the color you're thinking of.  Since they are made to order, it's not even more expensive to get an "off list" color.

Bully

I've been watching Deadliest Catch since the beginning.

I've watched some incredible displays of bullying.

Bullying in the name of hazing.

It's disgusting.

And I am not one to say hazing is wrong.  A new guy in a physically demanding job has got earn the respect of his peers and some shit will be flung.

But taking it to a level that deliberately hampers the job at hand?

You know what, bullies are fucking morons.

When that greenhorn says, "fuck it, I don't need this shit," it's not like you can just call Manpower and a new guy steps in.  You're down a man.  Guess why, Stupid.  Because you drove him off and changed it from a 4+1 to 4 on deck.

Of course there's two even bigger morons involved in this idiocy.  The deck boss and the captain.

You dipshits are supposed to be running the show.  Letting the hazing get in the way of doing the job means that you're not doing your job of managing.

Doing it any other way means that fishing is your means of funding being an asshole.

Hostess Redo

Hostess has not been profitable since 2004.  FACT!

They tried everything that businesses try to get back to profitability for five years.  FACT!

In 2009 they declared bankruptcy and were purchased by investment capital firms.  Labor and pension liability costs were determined to be a core cause of the lack of profit combined with a declining market for their products.

By 2011 they were left with two unpalatable choices.  Dramatic downsizing or bankruptcy (again).

They needed the union's permission to downsize because that would have meant laying off a sizable portion of the workforce.  This permission was denied.  Other means of reducing overhead were also suggested and rejected by the unions.

So they went to the courts and asked to be allowed to go bankrupt again and this was granted.

There are three paths a bankrupt company can take.  Get purchased by someone willing to sink some capital into the place.  Completely restructure and become leaner and meaner.  Give up and sell the store.

The first option had been exhausted in the 2009 bankruptcy.

The second option is what all the kerfluffle has been about lately.  The accountants and the courts looked hard at the situation and came up with the now infamous 8% cut in pay and benefits.  The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) says that there's a 27-32% cut to benefits.

The Teamsters took the deal.  The BCTGM did not, and went on strike.

Management at Hostess determined that they cannot weather such a strike and asked the bankruptcy court for permission to begin liquidation, which was granted.

This is the culmination of eight plus years of the union not accepting reality.  Hostess has roughly five times the capacity than it has been producing.  It is not 1/5 the size in terms of employees or pension obligations as when it needed all of that capacity.

Once again, the unions have decided that 0% is more than whatever was being offered.  Even if the 32% cut to benefits is true, 68% is more than 0% and after liquidation ZERO FUCKING PERCENT IS WHAT YOU FUCKING GET YOU FUCKING MORONS!  If you can't work out the math or don't understand that then you're just too stupid to let outdoors without supervision and a helmet.

Update:

The Union rank and file seem to think they won?  Hey, dipshit, you're fired.  You didn't win, you showed every business owner and entrepreneur exactly what they need to do to be rid of you and your extortionate tactics.

It's no coincidence that every single business which is union dominated is in poor financial help.

h/t Mike

Anti-Trust

I may have found the unintended consequence of Obamacare that turns out to be a silver lining.

There was once a time in America where damn few companies were larger than a hand full of employees.

A nation where there wasn't a Wal Mart and the center of a town's commerce was main street.  The local grocery was family and locally owned not part of a national conglomerate.

A nation that was dominated by the middle class and pretty damn conservative because far more people were seeing the everyday aspects of running a business.

Obamacare created a situation where a smaller business is artificially more efficient than a larger one because of the "insurance" requirement.

Anti-trust?  No monopolies if there aren't any companies larger than ten employees.

Union busting.  Small companies don't need their labor organized and legally can't be subjected to collective bargaining.

ADA?  Fuck you, cripples we're too small to care.

And numerous other laws passed concerned with equality.  Worried about sexual harassment lawsuits? If you have fewer than 15 employees you can hire all men and never deal with it.  Same thing if you happen to be racist or worried about racial discrimination suits.  Under 15 and you don't have to record or report the gender/ethnic make-up of your staff.

This may be the biggest union-busting anti-trust law ever passed and it's only because the Dems are incompetent and didn't read it that it will do this!

An Open Letter

Del Ton has, again, resorted to telling customers that they, "are a rifle company not a parts company."

This seems to happen every time the market for rifles heats up a bit.

They even put customers who'd ordered parts on back-order to divert parts to making said rifles.  Sometimes after the customer had called ahead to ensure the parts were in stock.

I've long been a fan of Del Ton, I have used several of their kits.

What I have noticed is that they are only a rifle company when the market is hot.  It's parts and parts kits that keep their doors open when the rifle market cools.

You know what that makes me feel like?  It makes me feel like being disloyal.  Not that I owe them anything or they owe me; but they should think about how their decisions are being seen by the people who literally allowed them to become as large as they are.

I'm of the opinion that you are in the business of selling your full range of products, not just one particular product when the margins are higher than normal.

You want to be a rifle company, fine by me.  Sell rifles.  Colt does this, and if you go to their web page you see what they offer in rifles right out front.  What you don't see is an easy to navigate menu steering the prospective customer to parts, parts kits and assemblies that are not complete firearms.  Your web page is the page of a rifle parts company.

Fix that and we'll see how well you do as a rifle company.

By way of comparison is the M&A Parts web page.  They are unabashedly a parts company, and their web page is organized very similarly.  DSG, Bushmaster and DPMS are "full line" AR companies and sell complete rifles as well as parts, and their web pages reflect that.

Decide on an identity and fix your web page!

Avoid This Vendor

If you happen to buy things from the internet auction site, Gunbroker, I recommend avoiding the seller LG Outdoors from Montgomery, Alabama.

They are exactly the kind of misinformed jerks that give the rest of us a bad name.

It starts when I notice that they will not sell an M16A1 parts kits to, "AZ,CA,CT,DC,DE,FL,HI,IA,IL,MN,NC,NJ,OH,RI,SC,WA,WI, OMAHA,NE, OR SOUTH BEND IN."

I emailed them and inquired. They replied,

"Thank you for contacting us. it is because the bolt in this kit is a full auto bolt and even though it only shoots in semi auto the state of FL does not allow you to have it.  Thanks, customer service"

That is flat wrong.  Wrong on two levels.  First off, there's no difference between a full-auto and semi-auto bolt.  Secondly, if they mean the bolt-carrier then they're wrong about Florida law.

Florida law about machine guns is federal law.  There are only two mentions of them in the entire code.  It's illegal for me to own one unless I go through all the probulation as required by the BATFE.  I may not conceal carry one.  That's it!

At one time ATF considered owning an M16 bolt carrier as "intent" to build an MG.  That's no longer true.  Even if it were still true that would mean they couldn't sell them to anyone in any state!  Unless they had a registered M16...  Which are legal in Florida if you've registered with ATF...

Even more fun!

They will sell that kit to New York and Massachusetts.  Look real hard at the picture...  Did you spot the USGI 30-round magazine?  How much would you like to bet that it's not a pre-94 mag?

It doesn't stop with me.

ARCOM is baffled too.  One poster there asked why no AZ and they seem to assume that it was me replying and they were very rude to him about it.

You lose nothing by being polite and you may gain something.  I hope that LG Outdoors is put out of business and the owner starves.

PS: This vendor's auction just reinforces my opinion that if the disclaimer about their policies is longer than the item's description, including photos, you don't want to do business with them.

PPS: They have every right to refuse to do business with me for any reason.  That allowed, I too can refuse to do business with them; and attempt to convince others to do the same.

On the demise of Borders...

Truly it was Amazon.com what killed them.  They failed to adapt to the new paradigm and were as doomed as mainstreet v Wal Mart attempting to go head to head on price.

Brick and mortar v the internet has to be fought in terms of service.

The product will be the same and the physical store will charge more for it.  You have to offer the customer something to make that extra cost worth it.

Ever notice that gun shops stay alive in towns that also have a Wal Mart selling guns?  Gun shops sell expertise (founded or not) and customer care in addition to guns.  You ask the gun counter drone at Wal Mart, "Is x good for y?" and most of the time you won't get an answer.  The gun shop owner has an opinion and will happily share it with you.  Sometimes a BS answer is even better than a real one since the story is worth the time spent listening.

But I digress...

What the Borders failure means to me...

I hate Amazon for buying books.  Amazon is a poor place to go to get books on gun topics, for example.  Will the title, "Guns of the Navy SEALs" cover the Stoner?  The China Lake pump-action grenade launcher?  The cut down M60 they modified in the field?  The XM148?  Buying from Amazon, you don't know until you've paid your money and waited for shipping.

In a store I can see that I those items are not part of this book but will part of a future volume (that sadly didn't make print).  This is the future of books for me.  Spending more money on books that don't add to my knowledge due to repetition and likely more because fewer actual books are being printed.

A contributing factor to Border's demise though: people who treat the place like a library.  It was a business.  A business whose purpose was to sell books, not provide a space for people to read them in their entirety for free.  Every person who sat in the store reading and not buying has no room to complain that the place they weren't supporting financially is now gone.  And don't try to defend them by saying, "they bought other titles, so they were supporting them," in that case they are a bit less guilty.  Consider that the title they read instead of purchased could have been never stocked, saving the place the cost of having it there since they were never going to pay for it.

On Unions

The mental disconnect that far too many people have about businesses is that a business exists to provide jobs to the workers. This is not true.

Businesses exist to provide a profit to the owners.

Jobs are a side effect of a successful business. Think about it. How many entrepreneurs started out as just them and hired workers as their business grew? Most of them. The second most common cause of business failure is from growth and the entrepreneur not being able to make the jump from doing to managing the doers. Yes, success can kill a business.

Everything in running a business comes down to a costs benefits analysis. No matter how many columns are in your accounting ledger, they all add up to one thing, is it an asset or a liability? Income or loss? Plus or minus?

Which brings us back to the price of labor. If I am forced to pay twice what my competition does for labor, and about the same price for everything else, my competition has an advantage over me. He can make his stuff cheaper than I can. That means he can sell his product for less than I can and still make a profit. If my product is interchangeable with his in the eyes of the customer, then he's going to sell more than me. To compete with him, I have to convince the customer that there's something about my product that makes it worth the extra money.

This is where the appeals to emotion begin. I cannot cite facts that my product is truly better, it just costs more because I had to spend more to make it.

If I cannot get my labor costs down to the same level as the competition, I have to find other ways to reduce the cost to make the product. Like cheaper materials. Like designs that are cheaper to make and don't last as long. This path often leads to my product being both more expensive and inferior to the competition. This situation leaves me with only the customers who have fully bought into the emotional appeals.

Remember, a business exists to make the owner money. As a side effect, workers have jobs and earn money too. If the company becomes unprofitable, for any reason, the owners will not be making money. If the owner is not making money, why keep the doors open?