A couple minutes before midnight (Mountain Time) Kim called to ask if Othello was on highway 26 going the right direction.  She didn't remember it going the other direction.  It was there and she was on the right road going the right direction.  She just needed to stay on 26 until she gets to Colfax.  Colfax is “home territory” and close enough that Barb can rescue her if necessary.

She should be home by now.

That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.

 Samuel Adams

Hi Dad. The pass was bare and dry.  No problems at all.  I got a late start but I would have been stuck in traffic if I had left earlier anyway.  I was wondering... Does I-90 turn into highway 36?  Or is it 26?

Groan.  I-90 goes until it turns into Chicago.  And she needs to turn off I-90 at Vantage to get on highway 26.  She accepts my correction gracefully and goes on:

Is Wenatchee between home and the Tri-Cities?  Because I saw a sign and wondered if that would be a quicker way to get home.

Wenatchee is way north of where she wants to go.  I reply, “No, that is Washtucna you are thinking of.“

Oh, that's right.  Okay.  Well, I'm doing just fine.  Love you Daddy.  Bye.

I'm over a 1000 miles away from my namesake (Kimberly Joe versus Joseph Kim), who has no concept of impending doom, and now I'm supposed to sleep?  At least we have two kids in reserve who probably will live to see their 25th birthdays.

The trip from Pasco to Albuquerque was pleasant enough considering all the violations of my 4th Amendment rights in the process.  Ben and William met me at the range and I put 50 to 60 round down range with my Microsoft Gun Club Object Embedding Tool (a special edition Olympic Arms PCR-1).  AKA an AR-15.  We are at about 5000 ft above sea level here and the setting on my scope for 500 meters is about right for 650 yards.  The wind was just about head on and even with the 50 grain bullets I didn't have to compensate for the wind but the tiniest bit.  I was shooting at a steel plate that was about 18 inches square and once I got on target I could hit it every time.   It was a bit boring so I started practicing shooting faster.  Could I get off two accurate shots before the sound from the first one came back?  Just barely.  Cool!

I shot Williams Garand too.  I've never had my hands on one before.  Odd that it kept shooting low for me.  The first shot was close and thereafter even though I kept raising the point of aim it would hit way too low.  I must have been flinching or something.  Very odd.

Ben and William took me out to dinner afterwards and we talked about guns, Henry, and Boomershoot.

The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.  The balance of power is the scale of peace.  The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some WILL NOT (original emphasis), others DARE NOT (original emphasis) lay them aside... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world depraved the use of them;... the weak will become a prey to the strong.

Thomas Paine
Literature
Thoughts on Defensive War (1775)

Kim is off to Seattle in her car you would have trouble trading for a family meal at nice restaurant.  She should arrive about midnight.  She 'needs' to help out her roommate who was visiting her ex-husband when she had a miscarriage of someone else's baby.  Or some such thing like that. 

I'm off to New Mexico tomorrow morning and can't hang around to rescue her if she has problems on her way back.

I wish she wouldn't worry her parents so much.

Henry, my “opponent” on a variety of subjects from government mandated ID cards to gun control, shows up on this page.  At least it is his name -- “Henry Boitel”.  His name is among the “Special Thanks“ credits for a movie called “Inside Deep Throat” along with well known (in some circles) actresses Marilyn Chambers, Nina Hartley, Candia Royalle, and others.  He's a lawyer so it's possible probable that he did some lawyer type work for them rather than contributing “original material“.

It's also interesting that my website gets the highest ranking by google for a search on his name.  I could do “interesting” things with that if I wanted too...

An explosion may be defined as a loud noise accompanied by the sudden going away of things from the places where they were before.

Joseph Needham
Science and Civilization in China

His alternator did something odd while he was delivering the Tannerite.  It probably had something to do with the Duke's of Hazard type driving across the creek or out through the scab patch to the Taj Mahal.  Anyway, about 1:30 AM this morning he made it back to Redmond and posted a summary of his lazy Sunday.

The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military. The hired servants of our rulers. Only the government -- and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws.

Edward Abbey
The Right to Arms
[New York, 1979]

Kim didn't show up on time and was some place other than her house because of some dispute with her roommate or her roommate's boyfriend or the seven cats or some such thing.  We couldn't even find her.  She left her cell phone in our living room so we couldn't call her.  This was very much unlike Kim and I was worried about her.  James has spent the night and of course Xenia was her so the three of us picked up Sara and left nearly 40 minutes later than we planned.  I asked Barb to keep calling people and asking about Kim.  Kim called about 12 minutes later.  She was very apologetic. Someone had borrowed the cell phone she had borrowed to use an alarm.  It was in another room and no one heard it go off or had turned it off.  I told her to just meet us there.  We arrived on site and found the ground wet and very soft.  I nearly got stuck going through the wrong part of the creek on the way to the Taj Mahal. The creek was completely dry five weeks ago.  We starting setting up.  Xenia and Sara pounded the stakes in the ground.  James and I setting up to make explosives.  Kim showed up still in her pajamas.  She hadn't even gone to the bathroom yet this morning and she had her toothbrush and toothpaste with her.  She and I went to my parents place to get ten gallons of gasoline for the fireballs and we both used the bathroom.  Dad wanted to show me the new tractor and so I lost another five minutes there.  We got back to the Taj Mahal and still had more setup to do.  It probably took another 30 minutes before we actually started making targets.  We are at least an hour behind what I had planned.  Kim forgot to take her medicine and had to walk back to her car and walk back out again, we were probably 20 minutes without her.  Once she came back however she really cranked out the targets.  If it hadn't been for her we would have been very, very late getting the targets done.  As it was we were about 20 minutes later than what I had told Dave.

I did the shooters meeting while Kim took Xenia and Sara to my parents place then came back to blow the air horn for the ceasefires.  Xenia and Sara had homework to do and had their jobs completed.  Dave and ten others set up and started shooting.  After ten or fifteen shots a boomer detonated.  It wasn't as powerful as I expected.  People started saying they were hitting them without getting a detonation.  I was worried.  Something wasn't right.  We called a ceasefire and James, Kim, and I examined the targets.  There was a problem.  They were getting solid hits without detonations.  A closer examination showed why.  We took apart each target, while crouched in the mud, fixed the problem and remounted the box on the stakes.  The wasn't something Kim or James had done wrong while packaging the material.  They did it exactly as I had told them.  It was one of those things you never would have thought of until you did the tests.  Moving the targets 300 yards and a few hours in the space time continuum had screwed us.  I'm so incredibly glad we did this real world test three weeks before the big event. We only had 50 targets we needed to rework while 11 people were waiting on us rather than 600+.targets while there was 100 people waiting.  The boomers started going boom.  Frequently there would be 'smoke' (water vapor actually and powdered lime) from multiple boomers in the air at once.  They eventually stopped shooting about 15:30.  They said all the targets were gone.  James, Kim, and I started setting up the fireball targets.  There were still several targets left.  Some completely untouched. This is tyipcal.  It's tough to see everything from 375 yards away.  Dave and his gang drove across the bridge and walked out to the target line. They lined up about 25 yards from the berm and I ignited 11 flares behind the 11 gallons of gas behind the 11 reactive targets.  If you look closely in this picture (click on the picture to get a hires version) you can see the flares.  In this next picture the hot spots have grown some:

The second guy from the right is dodging some material that came back his way.  Kim said she got hit with some dirt.  Everytime we have shot stuff up close she gets hit with something.  Always before it was a prill of ammonium nitrate.  No AN prill this time but at least she has her 100% hit record intact.  There were lots of big grins on the people's faces when they left.  A couple of them signed up for the event on May 1.

The complete photo album of the adventure is here.  Click on the pictures to get a larger version.

Ry showed up as we were almost comletely done with clean up.  He was delivered some Tannerite.  We did some very quicky tests and found it was no more senstive to impact than our mix and couldn't really tell it apart in terms of power.  It's far, far more expensive however.  It's a binary explosive and can be shipped via UPS so it's a great product for a lot of people but it's not a market I want to get into with our mix which has four ingredients.  Ry's alternator light came on just as we were about to leave at 18:00 and he still had 8 hours of driving ahead of him as he has to go back to Redmond and Microsoft tonight.  He figured he could make it to Moscow on his battery and figure out things there.  I brought the kids back to a nice meal Barb had prepared for us.

I'm tired and it's been a long day.  Enjoy the pictures and start planning a Boomershoot for your future.

The weather forecast (Orofino which is a little warmer) is fantastic. 

High 64° F
Maximum RealFeel® 73° F
RealFeel Shade® 65° F
Winds SE at 1 mph
Wind Gusts 2 mph
Maximum UV 5
Thunderstorm Probability 0%
Amount of Precipitation 0.00 in
Amount of Rain 0.00 in
Amount of Snow 0 in
Hours of Precipitation 0
Hours of Rain 0

Gusts of 2 MPH.  There have been boomershoots where the wind never went below 10 MPH.

The van is packed, I'm ready to go.  Pictures and report sometime after we get back.

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
I feel my heart start to trembling
...

Carole King
I Feel The Earth Move
From the album Tapestry
[Today is a Boomershoot Adventure day]

You will never succeed in getting at the truth if you think you know, ahead of time, what the truth ought to be.

Marchette Chute

Those of you already signed up for Boomershoot 2005 should have the email about this, but for those that haven't signed up I'll mention it here and when I get around to it put it on the Boomershoot 2005 web page too.  Stephanie has arranged for a group dinner on Saturday night, April 30th.  The plan is that this year we will have all the targets made earlier and we be able to sit down and have a nice dinner with everyone the evening before we crater the field and shake up houses for miles.  Of course if it's anything like most years I'll be back on site building targets again later than night. I'm also going to give a little speech titled Past, Present, Future: Boomershoot and Freedom.  I don't have much more than the title so far but I figure I can start work on it “real soon now”.  I'll put the details of the dinner up on the web site soon so spectators (we have spectators drive as far as 350 miles some years) can RSVP and attend as well.

I haven't posted it on the web site yet but another three shooting positions have been taken.  The reduces it to 13 shooting positoins still available.  I'm receiving about one call or email each day asking if there are positions still available so I expect there will be less than ten by next weekend.

Florida's bill, soon to become law, which explicitly says you may use deadly force to defend yourself from serious injury or death is being called a “right to murder” bill by the anti-freedom people:

"It's literally mind-boggling in its audacity," said Arthur Hayhoe of Wesley Chapel, president of the Florida Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. "If I make a mistake, all I have to do is repeat the NRA's magic words: "I feel threatened.' " I call this the "right-to-murder' bill."

I suspect the real problem is that Mr. Hayhoe is feeling threatened.  After this law has been in effect for a couple of years and the crime statistics come in he will loose all traction with the population at large.  He will be like the crazy guy predicting the end of the world on the street corner.  No one will pay him any attention and that will be a very uncomfortable position to be in.  And of course after making these crazy predictions of the end of the world and being proved wrong he will make even more predictions and push his crazy, disproven viewpoint even more.  It must really suck to be an anti-freedom fighter these days.

First thing this morning I made contact with someone willing to provide hundreds of live bodies for “human subject testing” at minimal cost for one of my research projects.  That's very encouraging.  Then a few minutes ago I got a call from the repair shop--the cost of the van repair is under $2000 including tax.  Still painful but will be able to expand my diet beyond the lentils and potatoes from the farm I was envisioning.

And finally the weather forecast for Sunday, and the Boomershoot Adventure is good.

Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South.  It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone. . . . I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave.

Henry David Thoreau
(1817-62)
U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist.
Journals (1906), entry for 4 Dec. 1860.

I worked late to get in a few extra hours and when I left work at 20:00, I could only count seven cars in the entire parking lot (probably 500 or so workers use the lot each day).  I was thinking how different “government work“ is from when I worked at Microsoft.  There I would see the lot a quarter full at midnight and probably 10% full at 2:00 AM.  When I got in the rental car (the van is at the repair shop) I discovered the power locks didn't work.  Odd... maybe I need to have the key on.  Nope.  The engine needs to be started?  The engine won't start--the battery was dead.  Stupid me.  I had left the headlights on.  What are my chances of finding one of those seven car owners someplace in the 500 offices and has jumper cables?  Not good.  Probably some of those cars were left there overnight with the owners on travel or otherwise not within miles of the parking lot.  I called Jason's cell phone.  Jason lives about 15 minutes away.  It immediately went to voice mail.  I checked for his home phone number and realize I don't have it on my cell phone.  I go back to my office and look it up.  Jason was far more cheerful than I have any right to deserve.  It's probably a good thing Jason answered rather than his wife Jennifer.  Jennifer is home all day with four small kids and I'm sure she values adult company and Jason's help with the kids.  I'm stealing him away from her.

Jason showed up, gave my rental car a jump, and I drove back to the house.  I should just go to bed before something else goes wrong today.

When I arrived at work in Richland this morning my computer had rebooted.  Bad news since I had a job running that takes about a week to complete with no ability to restart at an intermediate point.  It was a little over half done when the power went out for several hours.  Even if I had a cheap UPS on it I would have been screwed.

I took the van in to have some work done on it.  The brake fluid was low and I figured they needed new pads in front and lining in the rear-maybe the rotors needed to be turned too.  The throttle was sticking some and the temperature never went above 155F.  When I dropped it off they said approximately $250.  Not bad.

I got a call a little while ago.  Bad news.  In addition to the things I already knew about I have some leaky seals and hoses that need to be replaces, the transmission needs to be flushed, and the rear brake cylinders need to be replaced.  Total damage estimate is $2400.  Plus, they can't get all the work done today and which means I can't go home until tomorrow night instead of tonight as planned.

The good news is that when I called Barb to tell her the news she told me Hewlett Packard is taking James out for dinner tonight.  He's interviewing for a summer intern job.  He has had a number of disappointments with rejections from Microsoft, Google, and others.  He is a junior with a 4.0 grade average in computer science and you would think he shouldn't have a problem getting a good summer job--but things are a little bit tighter that expected.

In business, your ego is the first hostage you need to shoot.

Chris Phillips
President
Chromium Communications
Sometime in 2000
[Comment by Joe: This was said regarding the need to remove your emotions from the making of good decisions. It applies to politics, science, and home life as much or more as business.]