Get your gun

There is this news reporter in Memphis that created a series on getting your CCW. A how to if you will. A very favorably report to the gun community.

Start here.

The first video, failed to mention that it takes a little while for the entire process. Getting my permit (from the class till it was in my hand) took a couple months or at least one month. It also failed to provide links.

For the second video, I saw some safety violations from the shooter, though it was a good primer for getting a gun. I also heard some phrases I did not understand - "point-on-point vs 3-point sighting". Odd.

Third video, "you must get a safe for when you are not carrying the gun" or so Andy wise says. I don't have a safe. Mainly because I don't have kids and I live by myself. I always either have the gun in my truck , on my body, or on the night stand. I could get a car safe, but I like the idea of quick access regardless of weather I am in my car or not. I guess I could get it stolen, but then again I could also be attacked on the way to my car and need quick access to my gun.

Uhmmmm...stratch the last statement...You have to watch that third video. Wow.

I guess my other response to getting a safe would be, it costs as much as several guns.

Fourth Video, any wise is a better shoot than me...grrrrr. Also, excellent quick review on the use of deadly force. It was quick, but not complete.

via Blake

cube

Surviving Bigfoot

We have covered surviving zombies, werewolves, and vampires; but have never covered Bigfoot that I could find.  For a real life description of the fear that Bigfoot could inflict on you community I would suggest watching the documentary "The Legend of Boggy Creek" (BTW - I watched it during thanksgiving).  This documentary covers how the "Fouke Monster" terrorized Fouke, Arkansas, a small town in the southwest part of the state.

Bigfoot is radically different from the above-mentioned monsters in the sense that he is more of a prowler rather than a predator.  Though the predator instincts are present in Bigfoot, they are mostly connected to small friendly house animals, such as dogs and cats.  He will rip the hides off of your best hunting dogs and scare you cats to death.

Though Bigfoot is stronger and faster than humans, the odds are quickly evened if you have guns and a strong flashlight.  Hunters or young boys typically either sight them alone in the woods or they are heard outside your house when the menfolk are away and only women and children are left at home.  Most encounters with Bigfoot only with a scare, but they also have been known to attack when provoked, as in the "Legend of Boggy Creek".

I see two main methods of defending against Bigfoot: secure castle or owning the night methods.  There are two important things I would like to mention before I begin.  One, these two strategies are independent of each other, but can be used together if you want.  Secondly, strategies for protecting against Bigfoot will also do well in protecting your house and family in many different situations such as riots and other events where society breaks down.

The secure castle strategy, is based on the idea that you cannot fight Bigfoot in it's own environment.  It lives in the woods; has a coat of hair; has better sense of smell, hearing, and sight than you do.   In short, if you attempt to hunt it in the woods you will either not find Bigfoot or you Bigfoot will attack you.  While you most likely will make it out alive, you will still have nothing to show for you pains.  Instead of putting yourself at a disadvantage, let Bigfoot come to you.  Prepare by having plenty of lights, early warning systems (either electronic or animals), and ammo.  When Bigfoot attacks, turn on all the lights.  This will surprise him and take away his biggest advantage, the dark.  If you are lucky, you might even have a trophy to prove Bigfoot exists.

Owning the night would involve filling you property with automated night vision cameras, IR lights, and outfitting all members of you party with generation three night visions.   Once that was done, you can either wait for Bigfoot to attack or go hunting Bigfoot.  Though because you are using fairly new technology to try to even the odds against Bigfoot, this plan is a little riskier.  Though if some elements of this plan were combined with the secure castle plan, you could possibly have a winning strategy with loads of redundancy.

cube

Safe travels and God's speed

Happy thanksgiving!

cube out

Response to a previous post

Cubicle's last post has created commentary that is far in excess of the actual post. I would like to tackle some of it here. Previously published commentary will be in bold and italics.

1. That is nonsense. For any person of right mind i should be fairly simple to see that the terrorist are bad guys and America are the good guys. As to Iraq, it is fairly simple to see that they are caught up in a vicisous tribal warfare cycle that can only be ended by action from the outside. It worked out for the indians (gambling) and it will work out for the Iraqies if they rid theirselves of the bad guys.

Always assuming that you are righteous and morally correct is a sign of fascism. There should be some sort of standards to apply who is right or wrong. Never assume that America is always the good guy just because they are cutting your checks. Also, Iraq isn't plagued by tribal warfare. That's Afghanistan. We are mostly facing Zaqarwi's forces and former elements of the Baath party along with some foreign insurgents. BTW, American Indians are the most marginalized minority in our country. They used to be the sole inhabitants, but I guess those casinos really make up for it.

2. No, they don't have to the EXACTLy the same. What i am saying is that if their are no good reasons to have troops in Iraq (where the enemny is and fighting) then we have no good reason to be anywhere. If they army is not fighting the enemy, they they are useless and a waste of money.

You are right. We should just start an endless war to justify our military spending. (Oh wait we did). We can't cut our military spending because if we ever get in a position where we maintain standing armies in only half or three quarters of the world or come anywhere close to reducing our spending to the level of the second highest nation people will cry. And as a soldier I can tell you exactly what our purpose is. We stand ready to fight in order to deter war. When deterrence fails, we quickly and decisively defeat the enemies of the United States. This whole World Police kick isn't actually anywhere in our doctrine or policies.

3. you have a choice. You can either fight this war (iraq, afganistain, war on terror) or you can choose not to fight.If you choose not to fight you loose.

You also have a choice on how to fight, and you can choose solutions that ameliorate the situation rather than exacerbate it. How exaclty are we tying Iraq into the war on terror these days? Because they didn't train or harbor terrorists, it would seem logical that the war on terror could have been fought without invading Iraq. Then maybe Afghanistan would be the terrorist magnet, Al Qaeda wouldn't have a propaganda boost, and we could have better focused our efforts elsewhere.

Why is America a target of terrorism? Prosperity? Or a history of supporting tryants like Saddam? Are there any non-military solutions to terrorism (which is admittedly not exactly a military problem)? And if we are all about democracy and choice, then are we willing to deal with democratic countries that don't necessarily agree with us? Would we respect the wishes of the Iraqi people if they asked America to remove its military and corporations after their country stabilizes?

Pushing the nuclear envelope

An example. Nuclear weapons. Can you see how third world countries would see it as unfair that one country stockpiles nuclear arms and then attacks other countries on the suspicion that they may be trying to assemble one? And not all countries, just specific ones. Now if you are Iran or North Korea or any other country put on notice by Bush, what is your only protection against invasion? Make it appear that you may in fact already have nuclear weapons. That's the difference between Iraq and North Korea. North Korea gets a decade of conferences, and with Iraq there was no negotiation. Saddam could not have done anything to deter our invasion. I think he is as big of a bastard as everyone else, but our willingness to launch unilateral, preemptive wars based on supposition sets a dangerous precedent, and you can expect the rest of the world to react accordingly.

Priorities of a Hegemon

Is it more important to pursue peace, or to ensure that United States retains its role as the economic and military leader of the world? Is it more important to make our country even more rich, or to ensure some basic standard of living throughout the world?

Let's start at the beginning

Why pull out of Iraq?   We just got there.  Why don't we take a FIFO (First in, First Out) approach.  Lets pull out all out troops from Europe, because those troops have been there the longest.  We can send half home and half to Iraq.  Next lets pull all troops our of South Korea, we can send half home and half to Iraq.  We can post some subs to keep an nuclear eye on North Korea.  Next lets pull troops out of Vietnam (I don't really think we have very many there, but I am just mentioning it here for completeness.)

 

Once we have removed troops from all the places they were before Iraq and relocated them to Iraq, I would support pulling out of Iraq.

 

cube

Memphis still on top

OVERALL: (369 cities)

Most Dangerous 25:  Number 16, Memphis, TN

CITIES OF 500,000 OR MORE POPULATION: (32 cities)

Most Dangerous 10:  Number 4, Memphis, TN

 

OVERALL (330 METROPOLITAN AREAS):

Most Dangerous 25:  Number 3, Memphis, TN-MS-AR

 

Here's to a better showing next year.  Go out and commit a crime.

 

Source

 

cube

 

125 down; 9,999.975 left to go

Source: "A raid by federal, state and local authorities at a Wal-Mart Stores construction site in Pennsylvania netted about 125 arrests for alleged immigration violations."

 

While this is something that needs to be done, you still have to close the loop.  This problem has to be worked on from the supply side (the border) and the demand side (the corporations hiring the illegals) to be solved.

 

cube

 

Rearing your children, right.

Source: "Tasha Henderson got tired of her 14-year-old daughter's poor grades, her chronic lateness to class and her talking back to her teachers, so she decided to teach the girl a lesson.

She made Coretha stand at a busy Oklahoma City intersection Nov. 4 with a cardboard sign that read: "I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food....""

"...Donald Wertlieb, a professor of child development at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University, warned that such punishment could do extreme emotional damage. He said rewarding positive behavior is more effective.

"The trick is to catch them being good," he said. "It sounds like this mother has not had a chance to catch her child being good or is so upset over seeing her be bad, that's where the focus is." "

Donald must have thought that puppy training book he read was for children. This method of training works with dogs for two reasons. In puppies, they have a short attention span.  If they poop on the floor and you find it an hour later, they will not remember pooping. In other words, they will not associate the punishment with the crime. Human children are not so simple.

Secondly in older dogs, if they do something bad and you punish them by yelling at them, you are still giving them attention and any attention is better than no attention in their minds. While discouraging the bad behavior is good in dogs, you still need to encourage the good behavior, to get desired results.  Again, human children are not so simple.

If you read the rest of the article, the kid ended up turning around and made mamma happy.

I wonder how Donald's kids turned out. If you are going to take finance advice from a person, you are going to want to know if they practice their own advice. It should be no different in the raising of children.

cube

Yep, sure would

Source: "But Dorland said shooting the sparrow to ensure the success of the program was an overreaction.

"I think they were awfully fast to pull out a rifle," he said. "If a person started knocking over a few dominoes they wouldn't shoot him would they?""

The bird knocked over some dominos, these were not just any dominos the 23,000 it knocked down were part of a world record attempt. I would pop a cap in the mo-fo that was screwing with my world record attempt in a second.

cube

Death of the Year

As 2005 winds down, we can again expect all kinds of lists for the best and worst and most significant almost anything of the year. So this is mine. Whose death was the world's biggest loss? I pick Hunter S Thompson. I miss him a lot. Especially for a person that I didn't know. I loved the imminent sense of doom in his writing. He always gave me the feeling that the powers of evil and greed were about to crush everything that was decent and right in the world at any moment. It was inspiring and motivational. I haven't ever read anything else that gave me that feeling. Not even Burroughs. And being shot out of a cannon instead of being left to rot in the ground after you die has to be a mark of greatness. Does anyone have any competitors for this year's honor or any special mentions?

IRS: Please Pay Taxes Electronically

Heh...Heh...no. If you are going to force me to pay taxes through extortion, I am going to force to spend as much of your time and money as I can extracting those taxes. I only respond to market pressures. If you make me pay a fee to do it by paper, I will then send them in electronically (Depending on how I feel that day.)

"Hammond said the electronic payments cost 53 cents less to process than the paper coupons and checks."

Give me my fifty three cents back. I want to be bribed to comply. You catch more with honey than with the stick.

Hammond added that there were fewer errors with electronic payments processing than with paper processing.

So you make a mistake, it costs you more money right? Sucker.

cube

Hybrids

Hybrids still don't save you money.

Source: "Gas-electric hybrids are the most fuel-efficient passenger cars on the road and ecologically there isn't a more viable option. Until something big changes, though, the industry-high efficiency can't economically offset the steep sticker price."

cube

Informal reader's poll

When you read the word torture, what actions come to mind?

I will update this post tomorrow with my thoughts and feelings on the word torture.

cube

France and cars

France has 469 cars per 1,000 people. France also has population of 60,656,178 people. So that means that they have about 28,447,747 million cars.

The average number of cars burned per night during the past two weeks is 488. At this pace, the riots can continue for 163.7 years before France runs out of cars.

Timeline

cube

Those chicks really dig that tea

Check the history here and here.

For the ladies:

Link to Adagio Homepage
Tea

Link to Black Page
Black Tea

Link to Flavored Page
Flavors Tea

Link to Oolong Page
Oolong Tea

Link to White Page
White Tea

Link to Green Page
Green Tea

Link to Herbal Page
Herbal Tea

Link to Rooibos Page
Rooibos Tea

Link to Decaf Page
Decaf Tea

Link to Teaware Page
Tea Pot

Guys,
In this case the juice is worth the squeeze.

cube

50 cent

Did you know 50 cent has his own video game?

Neither did I. He basically hunts down the people who shot him. Awesome.

cube

Funny headline someone should write

"Seniors running out of time to apply for prescription drug coverage"

cube

Your logic lacks...logic

I am sure I am not the only one to see the giant, inescapable hole in the logic of the teachers who are on strike in Oregon

Source:" In Sandy's 4,200-student Oregon Trail District, where the strike is in its third week, teachers are afraid they will be replaced, transferred or otherwise penalized if they, their students or their schools fail to measure up under the law, which sets stringent new standards for performance. "

You know the best way to fail at something is to not even attempt it. That is what is happening here. They are afraid of the consequences of their actions if they fail. They are guaranteed to fail at teaching the kids, if they don't, you know, teach the kids.

Secondly, there is not jack they can do about NCLB. It is a federal issue, the state can do nothing about it. They may get their other demands, but the schools system will only lose money if it fails to follow the guidelines of NCLB. If the schools system loses federal money, they either have to cut costs or raise local taxes, neither of those are good options for the teachers.

cube

veuillez arrêter frapper français

 or "Please, stop bashing French" (translation provided by babblefish)

Normally, I am all for bashing the French. You know the familiar lines.

Cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys (that one is my favorite).
They smell bad (though I have never been to France to confirm this).
We (USA) will defend our freedom and yours (ok...ok...I just made that one up).

You have heard the old jokes.

Q.How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris?
A.Nobody knows, they never tried.

But while I thought that the riots were really funny, I quickly found it in bad taste when after the first few days the jokes, pokes, and jabs did not stop. Seeing someone fall down and laughing at is only ok if the person did not get hurt. It is fairly obvious that France's problems are not temporary and are not going to go away.

Just as it is obvious that their problems are permanent, it is also obvious that their problems are partly caused by their selves. Unfortunately, I think that we have probably permanently damaged the link between us and France to the point that they will not listen to advice from us. Secondly, even if that is not the case, they are too proud to listen to use anyways. Even though, we probably have more experience integrating different people than any other country in the world. Then again, you can offer a hand, but if that hand is not taken, there is not much that can be done.

While the French have not anything to help their selves out, the riots are not entirely their own fault. Just like the victim may share some blame for the crime that was committed against them, the final and ultimate blame rests with the rioters their selves.

I would just like to point out the riots are still going on.

cube

I am part of a social experiment

My company has been doing some weird stuff lately. First, Monday was a causal day. Though, it cost money (a five dollar donation to help a person who has lost a son, niece, and has gotten cancer all within the last year.) Then they announced that Tuesday was also a causal day. After that, they announced that Wednesday was also a causal day and then (you guessed it) they announced that Thursday was also a causal day.

Not that I am complaining, though I have been wearing the same pair of jeans all week. (Note: Monday I forgot it was a causal day, how I am supposed to remember stuff like that over the weekend). My wardrobe is designed around the clothes that I wear most. Work clothes (basic business causal), casual, and work out. I have three pairs of comfortable jeans, that is only enough to wear for six causal days (I normally only wear clothes twice, then I consider them dirty, except white tee shirts those are dirty with one wear.)

Why are they screwing with me? I figure they are attempting to see what happens when they go to a causal setting. Productivity may increase? I doubt it, mainly because I have been trained to wear only causal days on Fridays. If you make another day a casual day (other than Friday), I think everyone is going to respond as they were trained, to do nothing because it is a Friday.

An alternate theory of mine, is that one of the bigwigs wife left him. No wife, no laundry, and casual day for me, though this theory was dismissed by coworkers.

cube

FedEx Forum

Last night I had the privilege of seeing the Memphis Grizzles absolutely kill the Seattle Sonics in the best basketball stadium in the entire world.  I base that statement on the fact that it is the newest that I know of in America and America is going to have the best basketball stadiums in the world. 

 

I had nice seats, they were comfortable but not all that close to the game.  The seats were much like uncomfortable car seats, which needless to say those seats were more comfortable than regular stadium seats.   I was fairly high in the second tier.  I could have ordered food from my seat. Waitresses came by with wireless ordering devices, to record my order.  I did not, mainly because I wanted to get up and walk around a little bit to look at the stadium.

 

One other thing I noticed was that there was an incredible amount of advertisements.  On each of the two tiers above the floor there was a thin ribbon billboard that wrapped around the entire stadium.  To find the scores from the rest of the NBA games you had to sort through the many different billboards, advertisements associated with the billboards, and the noise to find what you were looking for.  Movement was always happening on the two ribbon advertisements, the center screen, the two screens on each side of the center screen, rotating billboards on the floor, the players, camera men, cheerleaders, etc., etc.

 

Overall, I would rather watch the game on TV.

 

cube

I ate at a local subway the other day

....and on my way out, I find a flyer for this service (www.backseat-drivers.com).

Basically, it is a low tech way of keeping tabs on your kids driving. Instead of a black box, just just put a bumper sticker on their car and wait for people to report it to the service.

The service costs 4.50 a month. Hmmmm....

Here are some frequently asked questions on their site.

Don't you get false reports filed by pranksters?
Sure, sometimes. But, we have safeguards in place to minimize that occurrence. We require the name and phone number or email address for anyone who submits a report online and use that information to double check reports if they seem suspicious. Our toll-free report line records the phone number from which the person is calling, so we can use that and the information they leave on the report to double check phoned in reports as well. If you want us to do more research on a report, just email us and let us know.

What if I (the parent) am driving the car and someone files a report about me?
Well, we won't say that it has never happened. We have the stickers on our cars too. You could take it as a friendly reminder that all of us can pay a bit more attention on the road sometimes - or you can just delete it and it will be our little secret.

What if our sticker gets damaged during our subscription?
Accidents happen - just send us an email and we will mail you a new one for no fee. If you end up needing many replacement stickers, we will ask you to cover the cost of the sticker and mailing ($5)

The actual size of the bumper sticker is 11 ½" x 3 ¾".  100 stickers would cost 500 dollars and cover 1796.875 square feet, that might be a little extreme.  At a bare min, you should place two stickers on every panel of the car.

cube

Thought that i would mention

Visited the denisit the other week. Lets just say my teeth are like porn to a dental hygienist, despite only brushing my teeth once a day (four mins in the moring with a first gen sonicare)

Needless to say it was another perfect checkup.

cube

New info about france

Rioting Spreads to 300 Towns in France

I will just pull out the parts i found intresting or noteworthy.

"PARIS - Rioting by French youths spread to 300 towns overnight, and a 61-year-old man hurt in the violence died of his wounds, the first fatality in 11 days of unrest that has shocked the country, police said Monday."

"The victim was identified as Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, a retired auto industry worker who died after being beaten by an attacker. He was trying to extinguish a trash can fire Friday at his housing project in the northeastern suburb of Stains when an attacker caught him by surprise and beat him into a coma, police said."

"Attacks overnight Sunday to Monday were reported in 274 towns, and police made 395 arrests, Gaudin said.

"This spread, with a sort of shock wave spreading across the country, shows up in the number of towns affected," Gaudin said, noting that the violence appeared to be sliding away from its flash point in the Parisian suburbs and worsening elsewhere."

As urban unrest spread to neighboring Belgium and possibly Germany, the French government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the violence, despite massive police deployment and continued calls for calm." [emphais mine]

via Rivrdog

cube

Been doing some research

I have been wanting to get involved in some competition shooting. Nothing fancy and nothing that would require me to purchase additional gear or upgrade my (mostly production) gun. My starting off point was this post by texican tattler. I think it gave a good overview of the different options without me having to read the different rule books.

I then looked at my local options and found out that the local IDPA matches are on Saturday and the local USPSA is on Sundays. That ended up sealing it for me, since Sundays are a day of worship. (Though there are USPSA events on saturday within a reasonable driving range, I don't want to leave town.)

So i read he IDPA rule book. The seem uptight on the rules, though in some cases I agree (safety first), though in other cases, it seemed to limit what the course designer could do with the shooting course.

I must take care of several things before i enter into the world of competition shooting. First, i am going to get some trianing in the basics. I will aquire as much training as i feel neccsary for me to feel mostly comfortable to go shoot in a competition. For me to train, I am going to need some basic gear which i don't have. I will need a better holster and magazine carriers\pouches. It probably will take a few months before i get around to doing these things, because I am going to prepare for the upcoming flu pandemic before I aquire the tools for trianing.

cube

Why France is at a tactical disadvantage

"Residents gathered at the school gate demanded that the army be deployed or suggested that citizens band together to protect their neighborhoods. Mayor Alain Outreman tried to cool tempers.

"We are not going to start militias," he said. "You would have to be everywhere.""

Failure to fight, is how I would sum that up. No, you could not protect everywhere if you started a militia, but you could protect were you are. Secondly, by protecting where you are you will force the riots to occur in other areas where you are not, while that may seem obvious, I am not so sure the French, understand that. Also, you take quite a load off the already overburdened police by protecting your own areas and allowing them to go on the offensive.

From what I have read it is "relativity easy" to get a hold of black powder pistols, you know register with the government, register with your sporting club, then have you license stamped at least twice a month at your sporting club to prove that you actually are a sportsman.

""They are very mobile, in cars or scooters. ... It is quite hard to combat" he said. "Most are young, very young, we have even seen young minors.""

Can they run faster than bullets?

"Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin denied that police were to blame. The director of the Great Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, who met Saturday with Villepin, urged the government to choose its words carefully and send a message of peace.

"In such difficult circumstances, every word counts," Boubakeur said. "

Maybe you should stage a rally where everyone talks about how the riots make them feel. I will start. The riots make be feel bad, because they could have been stopped if only the government would take responsibility and stop the violence.


cube

Pirates Attack Cruise Ship

Source:"Pirates fired a rocket-propelled grenade and machine guns Saturday in an attack on a luxury cruise liner off the east African coast, the vessel's owners said......Press Association, the British news agency, said passengers awoke to the sound of gunfire as two 25-foot inflatable boats approached the liner. The injured crew member was reportedly hit by flying debris."

Inflatable boats? So basically they could be taken out with a pellet gun. If you are set upon by pirates on the open sea, i suggest this shotgun (Model 870™ Marine Magnum™). It's motto is look good while you fight pirates.

cube

Internet video marathon

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Halloween

This year I actually put forth some effort on my costume (I rented one.) I am the guy on the right. I choose this pic, because I had only three faces to blur out and I wanted you to see the guy who dressed up as Jack Sparrow (the dude in the middle).

Here is a guy who made his darth vader costume.

Here is some pirate grog (it had dry ice in it to make it fog.)

NOTE: This was at work, the grog had some rum in it, and my entire group dressed as pirates (not pictured here), and we won best group. While Jack Sparrow won best male.

cube

Jarhead

The trailers I have seen on Jarhead, the new movie with Jake Gyllenhaal, look promising. I have high hopes for this movie, even while having severe fears about the political cheap shots they will take. The movie is based off of a book written by a marine sniper, which is his account of his time in the first Iraq war. BTW Jake was in Moonlight Mile, which I thought was a good movie, though I had never head of it until I rented it. Jarhead also has Peter Sarsgaard, another one of my favorite actors.

I am hoping that they have some good training scenes, war room scenes, and some awesome action. I personally think this movie is going to be better than Blackhawk down, the last, best war movie I can think of. I doubt it will be better than the Band of Brothers series that aired on HBO (but then again, I cannot name one war movie that I thought was better than Band of Brothers).

BTW Sandcastle, Band of bothers is really cool you should buy that and watch it.

cube

I hate falling back

My energy is totally sapped during the winter, I blame in to congress screwing with the time. If daylight savings is so great, why don't we do it all the time. I think I suffer from subsyndromal SAD.

Under the best of circumstances I have some energy but when winter hits, you might as well count me out after 6 pm. I can guarantee that I will be tired, unsocial, and not really care. This winter I am going to try to be more active and eat a healthier diet that last winter, so we will see if that helps. I am also going to open the blinds in my room so that I get some sun in the morning.

I would try some other cures, but I am to tired to put forth the effort.

cube