Announcement

Due to some recent changes at the cubicle's domicile I will be blogging much less than normal for an extended period of time, (next three months is what is is looking like). I am going to try to keep in blogging shape by posting one post a week, though if it is like any of my other tries at keeping in shape, I will probably fail.

These changes include, but are not limited to; 4 new large clients at work (large as in our business will probably more than double this year if all clients are kept and brought on); 1 large test for a prospective client at work; Christmas; New Years; MCAD (I am still a little....err...grumpy about that, but it is really the only play I see to: A) set myself apart in the field of non .Net programmers. B) Transition from my current main programming language(s) [Visual Fox Pro and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications)]) to .Net. C) Get a job in my girlfriend's town programming in .Net, having very little professional experience in it.); MCSD (This is really the only play I see to distinguish myself from among all the .Net programmers who have their MCAD); and my early Christmas present Gun Tests, from my sister.

If you would like a personalized email stating when I return blogging full time, please send an email to : c y r u s m c k o r m i c k - a t - h o t m a i l - d o t - c o m

Remove spaces, dashes, replace 'at' with '@' and 'dot' with '.' , and that should produce a usable email.

cube

Did you know?

Did you know surefire (most famous for their flashlights) makes suppressors?

Here is their website. Suppressor Science sounds great.

cube

A very interesting paper

Via Bradford Plumer I found this paper Underground Gun Markets.

Here is a sample.


Sorry for the picture. My free version of adobe does not allow me to cut and past. Oh well, you can read the sample just fine if you squint.

cube

Trust your instincts

In the past few months there have been two occasions that have reinforced upon me that I should trust my instincts.

Incident One
I was hanging out with my girlfriend for the day and we were going back to her apartment. It was mentioned to me that her roommate would be out of town. As my girlfriend was opening the door to her apartment, I thought I saw a flicker move behind her bedroom window. My instinct was to grab my girlfriend, go in first, with gun drawn.

Several things stopped me from doing this. As I was trying to figure out what I saw, my girlfriend had already entered the apartment. Secondly, I also dismissed what I saw. Fortunately, it was not a MWAP (mutant with a plan), but my girlfriend's roommate, who had not quite left town. She did leave a message on my girlfriends phone, which my girlfriend did not check. The roommate was in my girlfriends room trying to get on the internet.

I am still of two minds if I had time to react. The opening of the door followed very soon after I saw the flicker. I would have had to act very fast to stop my girlfriend form entering her apartment and to get between her and the "threat". I also believe that I would have had dumb questions ask like, "What?" and "Why?", but I can't really do much about that.

In short, I acted slow and refused to believe what my eyes saw.

Incident Two
Last Sunday, I was leaving a friends house and the weather looked nasty. The plan was for me to lead my girlfriend to the interstate, where she would go west and I would go east on interstate 40. I explained to my girlfriend that she should find the weather as soon as she gets into her car. I figured that everything would be ok once we got moving. It was not until I was in my car and driving that I realized the full extent of what I was driving through.

As I was driving, I found out there was a tornado to the southwest of where we were. I also found out that my girlfriend was going to be driving though the storm as it was coming to her. I was able to get her on the phone and tell her to pull over in Conway and wait it out. Well, by the time she go to Conway she was in the middle of a lot of rain. She managed to make it to a hotel (my suggestion because they have TV's in hotels to watch) to wait it out.

In this case, I failed to listen to what the more cautious part of my brain was saying. I also failed to adjust my travel plan based on new information. To allow your instincts to take over you must first have a certain amount of willingness to change plans. I also failed to impart my exact feelings of fear to others. In other words, I did not let my instincts shine.

Both my girlfriend and I made it home safely, we were much luckier than others.

Source:"A motorist was killed Sunday night when the driver of a van drove into a tornado shrouded by darkness and rain. The storm picked up the vehicle and flipped it onto its top in the median of Interstate 40 near Morrilton."

cube

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