The View From North Central Idaho

I just got back from the theater.

Son James loaned me the book in early January (I think). Then nearly every time he saw me he would tell me how many weeks and days I had left to finish the book before the movie came out. I finished the book last night so we went to see the movie tonight. It was the second viewing for James.

I was a little disappointed in the book. "What's the big deal about?", summed up my opinion. Okay, yeah, there are some good characters and the twist at the end is interesting. But it's not that good.

The movie was awesome. It wouldn't have been quite so awesome if James hadn't insisted I read the book first. The attention to book details in the movie was incredible. And it's the type of story that doesn't quite make sense until you go through it a second time knowing that many of the little details have a lot of significance.

Perhaps there is a physical principal involved: information spreads at the speed of light, while ignorance is instantaneous at all points in the known universe.

Dmitry Orlov
February 13, 2009
Social Collapse Best Practices
[Of course. Ignorance is the default state so it doesn't really need to "spread". But giving Orlov some slack there does appear to be a very strong tendency for people to cling to their ignorance despite the availability of information.--Joe]

Boomershoot 2009 is now less than four weeks away.

Last weekend (five weeks from the event) I visited the site and found there was still lots of snow but it was melting fast. Comparing the pictures from five weeks prior last year and last weekend things looked pretty close to the same:

The difference was that it was up to 54F during the afternoon last weekend and there was a lot of runoff with culverts overflowing and the creek near flood stage:

This is the culvert I installed a few years ago.

The culvert here is running full and the excess is running over the entrance to the field.

The creek is at near maximum capacity.

In the morning I walked to the Taj Mahal figuring I wouldn't need snowshoes because the snow by the road was only about ankle deep. As I got onto the north slope near the trees at the Taj the snow was over knee deep and because it was so warm my feet went all the way through it to the ground. It was a lot of work and in the afternoon I put on my snowshoes before walking in.

But it turns out I was trading one type of work for another. Because the top layer of snow as essentially slush it would push right through the webbing of the snowshoes and ride on the top of them.

I had what felt like 10 pounds of weight (probably more like five) above and beyond the snowshoes that I had to lift with each step.

Before reporting all this I decided I would wait a week and see if the warm weather continued. It was possible that by this weekend the snow would be, essentially, all gone.

It didn't work out that way.

Monday it never got above 28F.

On Tuesday I received a Winter Storm Watch for Boomershoot country:

Here is a current Winter Storm Watch for Boomershoot (Lenore, ID) until 10:00pm, Wed Mar 25 2009, from your local National Weather Service office.

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MISSOULA MT
318 AM MDT TUE MAR 24 2009

...EARLY SPRING SNOW STORM TO IMPACT THE NORTHERN ROCKIES LATE TONIGHT THROUGH WEDNESDAY NIGHT...

.A STRONG LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM IS EXPECTED TO MOVE SOUTH FROM BRITISH COLUMBIA INTO THE NORTHERN ROCKIES THIS EVENING THROUGH WEDNESDAY EVENING. HEAVY MOUNTAIN SNOW IS POSSIBLE ACROSS NORTHWEST AND WEST CENTRAL MONTANA AS WELL AS CENTRAL IDAHO. SURFACE WINDS WILL BECOME NORTHERLY AS THE SYSTEM PASSES. THIS COULD PROVIDE GOOD UPSLOPE LIFT AND POSSIBLE MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOW ACCUMULATIONS TO THE CAMAS PRAIRIE AREA IN NORTH CENTRAL IDAHO BY LATE WEDNESDAY.

OROFINO/GRANGEVILLE REGION-LOWER HELLS CANYON/SALMON RIVER REGION- 218 AM PDT TUE MAR 24 2009 ...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM THIS EVENING THROUGH WEDNESDAY EVENING... MODERATE TO HEAVY SNOW ALONG WITH GUSTY WINDS ARE POSSIBLE WITH THIS STORM. 8 TO 12 INCHES OF SNOW ARE POSSIBLE ON THE CAMAS PRAIRIE...AS WELL AS THE THE WHITE BIRD GRADE AND GREER GRADES.

Notice that it says "through Wednesday Evening"? Wednesday morning I had received several more updates with the last saying:

...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 5 AM PDT THURSDAY ABOVE 2500 FEET...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MISSOULA HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW ABOVE 2500 FEET...WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 5 AM PDT THURSDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.

TOTAL SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF 6 TO 12 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE ON THE CAMAS PRAIRIE...AS WELL AS THE WHITE BIRD AND GREER GRADES. THE HEAVIEST SNOW IS EXPECTED THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING...BUT INCREASING WESTERLY WINDS THIS MORNING WILL CAUSE BLOWING SNOW AND REDUCED VISIBILITIES AT TIMES.

Notice it says "above 2500 feet"? Boomershoot is at 3000 feet.

Thursday it warmed up again into the mid 40s.

Friday the storm warnings started coming in again with four to eight inches of snow predicted. Saturday, as I was having my snow tires removed and the summer tires put on, the snow storm hit Moscow (my home, 40 miles west of Boomershoot and 400 feet lower in elevation). This morning we had 3.5 inches of snow in Moscow and it was still snowing.

Although I didn't visit the site this weekend I'm nearly certain we have more snow this year at four weeks out than we did last year at five weeks out. And, if you remember, last year we had a white Boomershoot.

The extended forecast for this week is for the low to be 37F on Tuesday the highs in the 50s through Monday. So the new snow and some of the old could be gone by this time next week. But I don't trust weather forecasts more than about three days out.

It could be you will need snowshoes for Boomershoot 2009. I don't even have enough for my own staff. You will have to bring your own.

Caleb says he would sell off body parts to acquire the Browning 1917 I posted about the other day.

It turns out he probably could just sell a kidney and keep the lung and piece of his liver and still have some change left over after purchasing it. I inquired as to the price and got this reply:

$6000 and it comes with a ton of extras: This is a Colt 1928 variation with safety; flash hider only 635 built and in this variation the right side plate was build with a much stronger design. We had the weapon changed to 8mm due to cheaper and more readily available. Only a few were built in semi auto we’ve seen them go for between $6000-$8000 without as many extras. Pictures are available upon request.

Tripod is a colt the 1928 version with Colt brass logo on rear leg. (These sell for $1000-$1200)

(7) 250 round cloth belts

Condenser hose and condenser can

(2) Oak 250 rds ammo boxes

1918 Browning loader w/ 8mm conversion with transit box. (these sell for $1000)

Custom 2 piece Mahogany transit chest on a removable roller base. One box holds weapon and the other all other parts

Two manuals

3000 rds of 8 MM

We don't need to bend the truth, make up facts, and just paint things with rhetoric. There are facts, figures and numbers we can rely on (without twisting them) and make reasonable, rational decisions. As a gun toting liberal, I pride myself on using my mind to understand issues. The anti-gun crowd simply refuse to look at all the information available, which is purely and utterly overwhelming in favor of conceal carry laws. That is not progressive thought, and it's not liberal. It's shamefully anti-science.

BlackPR
March 25, 11:02 PM
In the comments to A bulletproof bottom line
[Or, to distill it even further and put the onus on them, you can ask Just One Question.--Joe]

Breaking shit sounds easy, but it's not. It's actually pretty hard. The reason being because there are people just as smart as me, if not smarter, designing this specifically so it doesn't break.

hunter006
March 27, 2009
My job as a SDET
[hunter006 is a co-worker of mine. We are, in a sense, on opposite teams. It's an interesting relationship. I give the other team full access to every detail of the design and implementation. All the documents, all the source code, all the threat models then at any time completely and honestly answer any questions they might have about the system including things like, "Where do you think the greatest weakness are?" And "How would you go about breaking this?" Any success they have means more work and possibly poor performance reviews for me.

On the other hand, if I do my job right they will work their butts off, not find anything worse than typos in the documentation, and have their boss constantly screaming at them because they haven't found any bugs. If they haven't found any bugs then they aren't doing their job, right?

Large bug counts, if found by you, are good on performance reviews. Large numbers of bugs assigned to you are bad. Currently I have one bug assigned to me. It's about a year old and I'm pretty sure someone else fixed it a long time ago when they were working on something related. I just haven't gotten around to verifying and closing it out or assigning it to him. Son James recently told me in his group the average is about 70 bugs assigned to each developer. He has about half that.

I just got new tester assigned to my portion of my current project. She's a sweet young thing and I had a meeting with her earlier this week to explain the design and suggest ways to test it. I didn't show her the proof I have been writing software since before she was born. I'll save that for later when she is putting in long hours and still not finding enough bugs to keep her boss off her back.--Joe]

The story from Missouri has been out for some time.  I want to say I'm glad the report was distributed, because it shows us the bigoted, upside-down views a lot of people have, and that they're eager to act on them.  We knew it already, but we now have a better idea of what to expect.

The people you need to look out for are the several Left-wing groups.  It's been a long-standing MO of theirs to accuse their opposition of doing what they themselves are already doing, or what they're planning.

Jim: If Barney Frank could reach into my pocket he would take everything in my wallet and...
Sean: If Barney Frank could reach into your pocket that isn't all he would grab.

Sean Flynn
March 26, 2009
During a conversation about economics and politics.
[I had lunch with Jim, Sean, and Steve yesterday. It was great. Jim and Sean, always fantastic with their wit and insight, were in top form.--Joe]

From a letter to the editor in the Washington Post:

Mr. Cox took the usual NRA rhetoric to a new level with his suggestion that the "right" to own a gun is more important than the right to vote. Our founding fathers and all of those who worked so hard over the years to ensure the promise of freedom and equality for all citizens would find Mr. Cox's claim to be contrary to everything this country stands for.

Uh... The writer, LASLO BOYD, is totally clueless about our voting history.

Now that we are all socialists now our legislators have dropped all pretenses of being something other than the Central Committee. Via reader Rob I discovered the Senate reviewing how college football picks No. 1.

Enumerated powers? What's that?

I received an email from a Boomershooter saying the 1917 Browning (here, the bottom picture in this post and picture 12 here) he had at Boomershoot 2008 "is up for sale at Cabelas gun library here in Post Falls. Boy it’s a magnet to pull people in!"

Post Falls is in north Idaho near Spokane Washington in case you are interested.

Update: Due to popular request I inquired about the price and got this reply.

I took my daughter to her middle school (6th, 7th & 8th grade) science fair last night.  She did an experiment to determine whether dog saliva has more or fewer germs than human saliva.  You guessed it-- humans' mouths carry more germs.

There were the usual baking soda volcanoes, rotting food experiments, egg-in-the-bottle demonstrations and such.  I also counted four terminal ballistics demonstrations.  Kids took several calibers out to the field and tested them on bricks, cinder blocks, fir timbers, drywall, phonebooks, and one even used a pistol-rated Kevlar vest.  All had the results anyone familiar with guns would expect-- common centerfire rifle rounds pretty much overwhelm any of these targets, while some pistol rounds can be stopped by some of them.

One kid had assumed that a .30-30 would penetrate a hard target better than a .25-06, simply because of the bigger, heavier bullet.  He of course found out otherwise.

While there were no firearms brought into the school, there were several spend bullets, targets showing depth of penetration, and several cartridges were displayed including .50 BMG tracer and a training (inert) round for a 3-inch naval (ship's) gun.

Nice work, kids!

Sorry-- no pictures (has anyone seen a rather nice, new pocket Olympus camera lying on the ground between Moscow, ID and Garfield, WA?).

Insanity:

Ammunition magazines with a capacity of 10 rounds or more — the kind that Oakland parolee Lovelle Mixon used to kill two of four police officers — would fall under a stricter tracking system under legislation proposed Wednesday by two East Bay lawmakers.

Law enforcement officials currently have few tools to keep the dangerous ammunition devices out of the hands of criminals, said Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, the author of the bill.

"This horrible tragedy will pinpoint for us some of the holes in our gun laws," said Hancock, a member of the Senate Public Safety Committee. "There are a number of lessons from this, and I'm prepared to learn them all. We may need to have a hearing on the status of gun control. I'm very committed to looking at this."

...

At a time like this, it's important to find out what's not working," said Assemblyman Sandre Swanson, D-Oakland, a co-author of the legislation. "This could be the beginning of a new era of urban conflict. It's an important warning sign to prepare ourselves for future conflicts that could expose officers and our community to extreme dangers. It's very sobering. We have a clear responsibility to start taking action."

It didn't work. They realize it's not working. So they want to do it again.

That's insanity. The following, from the same article, is a blatant lie:

U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., has also said that Congress needs to reopen the debate on the assault weapon ban, which President George W. Bush allowed to lapse.

President George W. Bush said he would sign an extension of the AWB but it was never put on his desk for a signature.

Typical. One set of laws for us and no laws for them.

Not only do police officers (and a district attorney) buy machine guns for person use from the police department but the police department is fighting the Freedom of Information Act requests:

The court case is the result of a Freedom of Information Law request filed by the Times Union more than three years ago. The city denied the newspaper's request. Last year a state judge ordered the documents released yet allowed the city to redact the names of officers from the records. The newspaper appealed.

In its initial denial, the city said the release of the records could endanger the lives of officers because the guns were used to fight crime.

However, more than a year later in August 2007 the Times Union reported the guns were purchased illegally by officers for personal use, at tax-exempt prices, and that they had never been used for official duties.

The city subsequently changed its court argument to say the documents should not be released because they were ''personnel'' files and therefore exempt from disclosure under a state law that shields police officers employee files from public disclosure. The Albany Police Officers Union joined the case at that point and has cited the fact officers may have engaged in illegal behavior to buttress their argument that the documents are therefore personnel records.

Still, no officer has been fired, disciplined or passed over for a promotion as a result of being implicated in the scandal, according to several departmental sources. Also, the city, in its legal papers, said officers cannot be held accountable for misconduct that is more than a year old.

"Cannot be held accountable for misconduct that is more than a year old?" So they just have to make sure the bodies of all the women with babies in their arms they shoot with the machine guns aren't found for at least a year?

The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls.

Father Robert F. Capon
[Yeah, things are pretty messed up.--Joe]

The ironically named "Freedom State Alliance" has this to say:

With over 30,000 gun deaths in the U.S. each year -- including the 4 police officers shot and killed in Oakland, California on March 21st -- an appropriate response to this carnage should be bold and comprehensive policies to prevent further homicides, suicides and unintentional injuries.

...

Meanwhile, little is being done to address the elephant in the room: the 280 million guns already in circulation and how to reduce this staggering number. Although there are some good gun laws in place, thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of gun violence prevention advocates and survivors, there has been little success in addressing the sheer volume of guns.

...

Japan is a good case in point as to why fewer guns make a difference. With a population of 128 million people, it is estimated that Japan has fewer than 400,000 legally owned guns resulting in a total of 22 gun murders in 2007 according to Japan's National Police Agency.

The United States on the other hand has a population of 306 million, 280 million guns and over 12,000 gun homicides each year. Even if, for arguments sake, we were to more than double Japan's population to match the U.S. population, that would leave Japan with just over 50 gun homicides compared to America's over 12,000 gun murders. It's shameful.

America needs to decide what kind of country it wants to be. Do we want to be a nation willing to be bullied by an extremist lobby and misguided in our way of thinking about our nation's gun problem?

I find it very telling the one-man show at the "Freedom State Alliance" (FSA) refers to "the extremist lobby" which is composed of several million members of the NRA, hundreds of thousands with SAF and CCRKBA. And 10 of millions of people that are members at local gun clubs and ranges. I probably have more people attend Boomershoot each year than the "Freedom State Alliance" can count as members.

I find it very telling that the FSA looks at only the GUN related homicides in Japan and not the total homicide and suicide rates which paint a very different picture when compared to the U.S.

I find it very telling that FSA uses the number 30,000 dead. Because that includes legally justified defensive shootings by police officers and private citizens! In order to get the numbers up FSA uses praiseworthy uses of firearms--then they spin it to be something negative.

I find it very telling the FSA laments the number of people exercising a specific enumerated right. What would the the response of the general public if the KKK were whining about the number of blacks running around free and unregulated instead of being slaves?

What this tells me is the FSA is a bigoted organization that must spin and deceive in their attempts to get traction on the destruction of a critical portion of our Bill of Rights.

It's kind of sad irony when the head of the EU is criticizing the socialist schemes in the US.

James Huffman-Scott
March 25, 2009
Regarding EU chief: U.S. economic plans ‘a way to hell’
Via IM.
[There is no way I can add anything meaningful to that.--Joe]

Interesting perspective on the shooting of the police officers in Oakland:

This time, instead of the Gaza Strip in the Middle East, we’re talking about the MacArthur Strip in East Oakland. Instead of the occupation force of the Israelis in Palestine or the Americans in Iraq or Afghanistan, the low income Black communities in America are dealing with the police, FBI, ATF and DEA, to name a few. Instead of a suicide bomber or a sniper holed up in a building, Lovelle turned out to be a suicide sniper who used a gun instead of a bomb to take out enemies of the community.

I wonder how tolerant of that sort of attitude the MSM would be if it were some "gun-nut" or religious group who holed up and shot it out with the police.

I take that back. I don't need to wonder. I remember the MSM treatment of Ruby Ridge and Waco. And in the case of Ruby Ridge the DOJ agreed with the "gun-nuts"--the FBI was way out of line.

Last month at Tam's place people were commenting things we had which were old. It was sort of "back when I was a young'n..." story telling time.

I visited my parents last Saturday and picked up my contribution to the discussion:

I brought it in to work today and asked my office mate if she knew what it was.

Her eyes got big and she said, "Oh my! Is this a punched card? I have never seen one of these before!"

I told her that it was more than that. "This", I told her, "Is proof I was writing software before you were born."

I took Engr 131 fall semester 1973 at the University of Idaho. Punched cards is a tough way to program a computer. There is no back space or delete and retype. There is no "white out". If you make a mistake on a card you get to type a new one (there were rare exceptions but that is beyond the scope of this discussion).

We would leave our card deck on a table in the hall and come back three DAYS later to read the print-out result of the submission to the IBM 360. Usually it was something like ten pages of paper that boiled down to something like "Syntax error on card five, column 17." Or "Program error. Core dump follows."

The next year using a line editor on a teletype that looked like an IBM Selectric typewriter with a box of paper in back was such a thrill. You could get the compile and run results in a minute or two instead of days. And "editing" was just AWESOME compared to punching cards.

In the early 80's I started programming on a CRT. It was still a line editor but listing lines 120-140 only took a couple of silent seconds instead of 30 seconds of clattering with the teletype. I started hearing rumors of something called a "visual editor" about the time son James was born in '84. I couldn't imagine what the fuss was about. "Visual editor?" What is that about? How much better than Edline could an editor be? I didn't bother to check it out for several months.

Even then I would tell people about programming the microprocessor system I had build on a plug-board. I had typed in hand assembled hex codes into a PROM programmer. Then I plugging the PROM into a socket and powered up the system trying to debug it from the deciphering the way the LEDs blinked. Now that was a tough way to program.