I finally updated numbers of the referrals from the various bloggers.  My ISP had some problems for a while and I didn’t have any log files for several weeks.  That has been corrected.  I also changed the target size information.  I may change the target number (up, not down).  I need to run some numbers first.  But my guess is I need more targets now.  The new targets are four and six inch squares instead of four and six inch circles.  The rectangles will be easier to hit.  The largest target is now a 7 3/8 x 7 3/8 rectangle compared to the old 8 inch circle.  So that will be just slightly larger.

I also updated the general information page on what to bring.  The biggest change there is I removed “tarp” from the options to shoot off of.  Shooting off a slick tarp on the built up shooting positions can be “challenging”.  A non-skid shooting mat is preferable.

My family, from the farm, showed up for Barb’s birthday party yesterday and I found out there have been several grass and brush fires in the neighborhood recently.  Most years there would still be snow on the ground.  But this year they are having fire problems in mid March!  I probably will have to take special precautions to reduce the chances of fire this year.  Unless of course it snows on us–which has happened.

I found some more pictures in my camera, browsed through the pictures that were in Xenia’s camera and put a few more up.

Barb’s sister Susan asked me to do this.  Xenia helped with scanning the older pictures.

From Periodic Journal of my wanderings.  Two of my favorite hobbies but I never combine them in any fashion what so ever.  These two did— with disastrous results.  How many safety rule violations can you count here?

 WEST VIEW, Pa. — A Ross Township man accused of shooting his girlfriend waived his right to a preliminary hearing Wednesday

Authorities say a 17-year-old McCandless girl was shot in the groin on Feb. 27 at Timothy Madden’s Perry Highway apartment.

The girl and the 23-year-old Madden were engaged in “bedroom activities” when the gun discharged, police said.

Details are graphic, but police said the incident involved a .45-caliber handgun with a condom on it, and the weapon somehow went off.

“The act itself did involve what anyone reasonable would conclude are some bizarre, strange, sexual fetishes and activities,” Ross Police Detective Bill Barrett said. “(The girl) is very lucky, I think, to be alive. Everyone is amazed.”

Madden said he and the teen are still a couple, and he looks forward to seeing her again soon.

“I’m very glad to see that the person that I love most is doing better, and I’m very glad that she came to see me (in court) and I hope that she does much better in the future,” Madden said. “This was a mistake. It was an accident.”

Madden is charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and corruption of a minor. No trial date has been set.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw doesn’t get it.  There are just so many things wrong with this guys thinking.

Jack Straw has vowed to lead a global drive to force the world’s arms exporters to sign a treaty controlling the £15bn-a-year trade in conventional weapons.

Warning that a person is shot dead every minute in the world, the Foreign Secretary said “more misery and destruction” was caused by smallarms than by tightly controlled weapons of mass destruction.

…

Mr Straw said legally binding controls could be drawn up on conventional arms exports to match those on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. He promised to put the issue on the agenda of the June meeting of the foreign ministers of the G8 group of politically powerful nations, which he will chair.

…

A LETHAL BUSINESS

* In 2003, global military expenditure and the arms trade was estimated to be $950bn

* One person a minute is killed by small arms

* 14 billion ammunition rounds and eight million small arms are made every year.

* There are 639 million small arms on the planet, 60 per cent in civilian hands. There are more guns in the world than cars. In the Democratic Republic of Congo there are 800,000 illegal guns.

* 300,000 child soldiers are involved in conflicts.

* About one million guns are lost or stolen every year.

Guns aren’t the cause, people using the guns are.  And assuming the point about one person a minute is by someone using small arms is true–So what?  If those were all people that needed to be shot then we should be working to increase the rate.  By itself that statistic is totally meaningless.  Beyond that guns and ammo are too easily made and too easily smuggled to restrict any more than you can restrict recreational drugs–including alcohol and tobacco.  Other than increasing his personal power I can’t imagine what he thinks he can accomplish with such an agenda.

Liberate the Mideast, the Midwest, Canada, and then the UK.

I wrote about this last September, but other people have been talking about Zeus which is actually in the field and while very cool doesn’t have near the coolness that Close Quarters Shock Rifle has.  I did some more research on it and found another article.  I can’t talk about the briefing and pictures I saw last summer, but think Startrek Phasor and/or a Starwars light saber:

While I was talking with Pete Bitar, yesterday, I told him that basically, with the XADS Stunstrike CQSR “you’re shooting lightning at people”, to which Pete said something to the effect of “yeah, that’s pretty much it”. What’s interesting about the StunStrike is that the lightning bolt that comes out is visible (just like natural lightning), and has an ending point, like a light saber. Pete told me that the electrical “beam” is both visually and audibly intimidating, and should prove to have a profound psychological effect on people. Basically, it looks and sounds scary, which is usually what you want with a less-lethal device.

Imagine a mob of Allah worshiping thugs trying to storm a US embassy calling us heathens and blasphemers.  A couple of Marines on the roof then educating them on the name of the one true god, Uncle Sam, and strike them down with lightening bolts from above.  I get all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it.

It’s been known for a long time that picture ID is almost completely worthless.  Numerous papers have been written on the absolutely appalling performance of people who check photo ID.  But this is a little extreme even from my jaded viewpoint.  Numerous checkpoints didn’t even notice the gender was wrong:

The appallingly lax state of security at Britain’s airports has been exposed once more after a teacher flew from London to Spain using her husband’s passport.

Geraldine McCauley, 41, passed through three security checks at London’s Luton airport and Spanish passport control, before realising she had accidentally travelled with her husband’s second passport instead of her own.

Despite the heightened threat of terrorist attacks on UK targets, not one member of staff noticed that she was carrying a passport bearing her husband’s photograph.

I find this incredibly funny:

I saw it coming in November

At about 7:30 central when my fundie meighbors were celebrating the coming apocolypse. I knew then and I know now we’re going to get some nasty foul shit shoved down our throats.
If we aren’t headed to full pitched civil war by this time next year, then it’ll surprise the hell out of me.

The Promise of America

has become an oily, black, bottomless cesspool.

THERE IS NO POLITICAL SOLUTION NOW. We’ve passed that point.

Bouncy Ball, the only time people will be marching in the streets is on their way to the local GITMO.

Did they forget something?  Like maybe it was their political party that has been restricting weapons for the last 20 years?  So who do you think owns all the personal weapons, knows how to use them, and who the instructors are?  I just wish they could see this as a “teaching moment.”

Kim du Toit and friends have their favorite quotes from this same thread too.

She slept for nearly 12 hours straight then wanted to leave immediately after putting in her contact lenses without breakfast or taking a shower.  I got her to eat an apple and talk with me for a few minutes but she really wanted to go home (her home, not Barb’s and my home).  Oh well.  She gave me several hugs, got directions, and left.  Heavy sigh…

I dropped off the three girls (Xenia and her two friends) in Sunnyside, about 35 miles west of Richland, where they were spending the night with a friend. As I start back to Richland I call and leave a message on her voicemail. She should have been in Richland by then and I hope she has just left her phone in the car while she is visiting a friend in Richland. About 10 minutes later she calls back and is quite agitated. She left Interstate 84 and has been driving on Oregon highway 207, as per her mother’s directions, for about 30 minutes without seeing signs for Pasco, Kennewick or Richland or even Washington State. It turns out she has been driving south on 207 instead of north as her mother believed. Kim is not happy with mother. I tell her not to call her mother and detail her faults. Barb has had enough “fun” for her birthday without dealing with an angry daughter that knows how to push all the “right” buttons. I tell her to drive north, back the way she has come, and I can probably meet her at about the same place she got confused before. I headed south and pulled into a rest stop on I-84 at 19:46, four minutes after she arrived. We utilize the facilities, she ate a cereal bar I had in the van, and then we look at the map together. I give her a walkie-talkie and I lead her back to Richland.

At 21:02 she parks in my driveway–finally. She’s been driving almost constantly for 14 hours. She only stopped for gas and to wait for me at the rest stop. Xenia and friends had put the sheets in the washer before we left but I hadn’t made it back to put them in the dryer yet. Kim doesn’t care, “The bed has blankets, doesn’t it?” “Yes.” “That’s all I need.” I persuaded her to take out her contact lenses, she can use my spare case and solution so she doesn’t need to go back out to the car. She didn’t want any food, just sleep. She kicked off her shoes and got into bed with all her clothes on.  I try to ask her about going to breakfast with me in the morning but she had the blankets pulled almost all the way over her head, like her mother does, is very groggy. I kiss her forehead, turn out the light, and close the door. My baby is safe for the night.

And I’m not there to comfort her.  I can only listen to the reports on the telephone.

• High wind warning in effect for her area of operations (home health).
• Truck accident completely blocks a road to one of her patients.  Her Jeep is able to cross the ditch and bypass the truck by going through a field.
• Bloody nose starts after a sneeze.  Massive amount of blood all over the inside of her Jeep and her clothes.  Quick Care tells her to go to emergency room.

Just wait until she finds out what her siblings have planned for her at the party on Saturday in Potlatch (call Nancy Amos if you want to attend).

Kim has called me several times this morning to check on minor details.  She is making good progress and is making her way through Oregon now.  I’ll feel better when she parks her pile of junk car in the driveway in front of the house and gives me a hug.

Today is my wife’s birthday and I am unable to be with her.  Tomorrow night I will be home.