David has some new wall paper up on his office wall (and here). He calls it “Wall o’ Freedom”.
Very nice.
But I’m biased.
Category Archives: Boomershoot
Boomershoot 2010 work
On Saturday daughter Kim and I went to the Boomershoot site to do some prep and infrastructure work. We also did the data reduction thing on this visit.
Kim folded another 300 boxes to be used as target containers:
That is a total of 1135 boxes we have ready for next year. We plan on making another 1007. Those numbers just boggle my mind. The first three Boomershoot combined only had about 1/10th that number of targets.
I dug up the barrel used for cleaning water storage:
I rubbed the skin off my right thumb digging the hole. Kim offered me some gloves before I started digging but I figured my hands were tough enough to handle it. I was wrong.
I didn’t dig the hole entirely by hand…
I managed to misjudge where the barrel was and mangled the barrel with the backhoe pretty badly. But I didn’t damage it enough that it required repairs or replacement:
We thought we had a leak because the drain tile should have filled the tank with spring run-off but there was no water in it when we wanted it for Boomershoot 2009. As near as we could tell we did not have a leak at the outlet pipe as I suspected:
I now suspect that the tile overflow was actually more of a bypass than an overflow. We put in several gallons of water that we know went into the barrel and will go back in a couple weeks and see if there is still water in it. If there is then I will just modify the inlet/overflow and fill up the hole again.
Also on my next on-site visit I will be taking the bulldozer over to enhance the shooters berm. It needs to be made deeper and a little wider.
More evidence of gene sharing
A couple weeks ago I wrote about evidence that niece Lisa shared genes with me.
Today she applied for a concealed weapons permit.
Which reminds me. I never mentioned that at the last Boomershoot daughter Kim was stopped by the police while driving to Orofino. I think it was a headlight that was out…
Anyway, the police officer said nice things to Kim about having a concealed weapons permit.
I’m so proud of both of them.
Data reduction
On Friday my officemate told me Kris had just stopped by and left something for me. I found a damaged Pocket PC with a note on it asking that I do an Idaho Stress Test on it. I contacted Kris via IM for more details. The screen had been damaged and was completely non-functional. There was company sensitive data on the device which needed to be destroyed and Kris wanted me to do this for him.
On Saturday daughter Kimberly and I went to the Boomershoot site and, among other things, destroyed the data for Kris. I also had a hard disk that was in similar need of “data reduction” and we deleted the data on both items at the same time.
Tomorrow I’ll deliver the pieces Kim and I found to Kris but for the rest of you here are a few pictures assembled into a video:
iPhone killer
If you ever heard me say I was working on an iPhone killer this wasn’t what I meant:
I wouldn’t do that.
I would perform an Idaho Stress Test instead.
Don’t be stupid
Playing with explosives can be a lot of fun. But don’t be stupid.
I don’t know for certain but that what this appears to be:
Federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents continue to investigate an explosion in Harrison County on the morning of Aug. 1.
Bryan Byrne, a sergeant with the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department, said multiple calls came in to Harrison County Dispatch reporting an explosion that shook houses and rattled windows in the area.
An ATF agent sent to the scene collected evidence from a blast area near Baker Hollow Road. The area where the explosion took place measured about 50 feet in diameter, with trees in the vicinity charred as high as 15 feet.
Kathy Goldman, wife of Harrison County Commissioner James Goldman, told her husband she thought a liquid propane tank had exploded.
The Goldmans live about a quarter of a mile from the site of the blast.
“I wasn’t home, but my wife was. It scared her to death,” James Goldman said. “It was a pretty strong explosion.”
He said an ATF agent from Louisville took a sample of the ground and sent it to Washington to be tested. From what he could tell, Goldman said it appeared to be a homemade bomb made in a plastic five-gallon bucket.
If you are going to be detonating things that make house rattle then get the permission of the land owner and you might want to call the cops yourself, before someone else does. Even if no law was broken or property damaged it wastes a lot of time and money of the cops. If they find out it was you they are going to make your life miserable just because they would rather be eating donuts, writing tickets to increase government revenue, or inspecting the local strip club for touching violations.
When people do stupid stuff some nanny statists will use it as an excuse to attempt preventing people from doing something stupid. And that makes me rather grumpy. You won’t like me if I get too grumpy.
$139 fraud lesson
I delivered over 1700 cardboard boxes and other supplies to the Boomershoot site today. I folded a couple hundred of the boxes and stored them away in crates. Then I visited my parents who live a couple miles away.
They asked how everyone was doing, did son Jamie (he used to be called Jamie rather than James and his grandparents still use that name) like his job okay? How long has he worked at Microsoft now? I told him everything was going fine, Xenia was a little depressed because her new husband is leaving for Iraq very soon. James, Kim, and Lisa (another grandchild) had housewarming party at James’ new home near Seattle. Blah, blah, blah…
As it got late I told them I really had to leave so I could be home in time to eat dinner with Barb who would be getting off work soon. I had stood up, put my hat on and took a step or two toward the door when Dad told me to sit down because he had another story to tell. The following are his exact words as best I can remember them:
I got a call the other day. He said, “Hi Grandpa, this is Jamie. How are you doing?” I said I was doing okay and asked how he was doing.
He asked me if I could keep a secret. I told him I thought I probably could because I had keep a secret or two in my life. He said that he wasn’t doing so well. He was in jail in Ottawa. I asked how that happened. He said that he and a friend had gone to a concert and when they came back over the border they were stopped, searched, and his friend had some marijuana in his backpack. They were both arrested and he needed $2800 to get out of jail.
He asked if I could help him out and I said I thought we probably could. He wanted the money sent via Western Union and he needed it right away. So your mom and I drove to Orofino went to the bank and got the money. But we started thinking that we should have asked a few more questions. “Why didn’t he call you?”, for example. But we went to the Western Union office at the IGA and told them what we wanted to do with the money and told them the story.
The woman there said to be really careful because there are a lot of people trying to commit fraud with Western Union. But we went ahead and sent the money but told them not to give it to anyone at the other end until we did some more checking. They gave us a toll-free number to call to okay the final delivery of the money.
We came back to the house and called the guy in Ottawa that was supposed to pick up the money for Jamie and I asked him, “How tall is Jamie?” He didn’t answer. I asked him some other questions too but he didn’t answer those questions either. He then got upset and asked, “Why are you asking me all these questions? Did you send the money or not?” I told him we didn’t and he hung up the phone.
I called the Western Union number and they sent the money back. I called the Orofino office but they wouldn’t do anything further until we came in and showed them picture ID. We didn’t get back into town until yesterday and they wrote us three checks. The biggest check they can write is $1000 so they wrote us two checks for $1000 and another check for most of the remainder. It still cost us $139 but that wasn’t too bad. It would have been a lot worse if it had been the whole $2800.
You, know if the police had been able to get together on that they could have caught them when they went to pick up the Western Union money. But he said he needed the money within two hours. I told him there wasn’t any way I could get the money that fast. But he wanted it right away.
I asked if they had reported it to the police. He said no. And I said the FBI, if no one else, would be interested because it was Interstate wire fraud. Dad said he would let my brother Doug tell them. I asked if he had told Doug. He said no. Brother Gary was there and he piped up that this was the first time he had heard the story too. He had seen Mom and Dad leave for Orofino the other day but they told him they were going to the Builder’s Supply. They did go there, but that wasn’t the primary reason for the trip into town. They were trying to keep the secret for James.
I think Dad and Mom are a little embarrassed. They are 86 and 84 years old and not thinking quite as quick as they used to. We discussed lots of ways it could have been prevented from going as far as it did. I made sure they had the cell phone numbers for everyone in our family so they could call us directly to check things out. And I told them I didn’t think James had ever been to a concert other than little things in the park and that he had never been to Canada let alone a part of Canada 2000+ miles away.
I’m writing this down so brother Doug can get the story as I heard it as well as getting the details from Dad again. Plus I’m sure my parents aren’t the first people these criminals have tried to scam and if they aren’t stopped and other people get some warning there will be others they are successfully with. This is to help warn others about the scam.
I expect there will be more to the story. There certainly still are a number of questions. Like how did they find out how my parents had a grandson by the name of Jamie? Facebook maybe? Probably something to do with the Internet. Perhaps even my blog (if you guys are reading this you should know I keep all my blog log files and will cooperate fully with law enforcement).
If anything further comes out that I can talk about I’ll let you know.
Update: Mike sent me an email with this link to news that this scam is reasonably well known.
Boomershoot 2010 supplies on order
I just ordered 1750 cardboard boxes for Boomershoot targets. Combined with what we already have that is over 2400 boxes. That includes a few extras but still… I’m planning on a LOT of targets for next year.
Including miscellaneous other supplies that one order was nearly $760. That doesn’t include the ton (literally) of chemicals, wooden stakes, and numerous other things. But do you know what?
It will be so awesome it will be worth it!
Credit card woes
After the flap about PayPal being anti-gun I decided to put renewed effort into dumping them for doing Boomershoot and Modern Ballistics credit card transactions then tell them why. The problem was finding a good alternative.
I can’t find the email or comment that recommended them but someone suggested I try a particular bank. It didn’t work out. Here is what their policy says:
NO ADULT SITES OR MATERIAL
The Merchant agrees that CartSquare’s services will only be used for lawful purposes. Furthermore, Merchant agrees not use CartSquare products, online shopping carts, or services provided through or in connection with CartSquare to
…
d. sell, distribute, disseminate or link to any sites for marketing, sales or distribution of: adult materials, firearms, explosives, ammunition, liquor, tobacco products, food that is not packaged or does not comply with all applicable laws for sale to consumers by commercial merchants, pharmaceuticals and controlled substances, counterfeit, pirated or stolen goods, any goods or services that infringe or otherwise violate a third party’s rights, registered or unregistered securities, goods or services that (i) you cannot legally sell, (ii) are misrepresented, and/or (iii) if sold via CartSquare or Your Web Site would cause CartSquare to violate any law, statute or regulation;
That’s right. I wouldn’t be able to even link to a site that marketed or sold firearms, explosives, or ammunition. In their minds that is in the same as category as “controlled substances, counterfeit, pirated or stolen goods, any goods or services that infringe or otherwise violate a third party rights”.
What about the people that want to exercise their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms?
I wrote them an email asking abou their policy:
From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 8:25 AM
To: ‘support@nmbancard.com’
Subject: Question about agreement terms.In the terms of agreement (https://www.cartsquare.net/administration/uplinks.php3 ) I found the following:
Furthermore, Merchant agrees not use CartSquare products, online shopping carts, or services provided through or in connection with CartSquare to
…
d. sell, distribute, disseminate or link to any sites for marketing, sales or distribution of: adult materials, firearms, explosives, ammunition, liquor, tobacco products, food that is not packaged or does not comply with all applicable laws for sale to consumers by commercial merchants, pharmaceuticals and controlled substances, counterfeit, pirated or stolen goods, any goods or services that infringe or otherwise violate a third party’s rights, registered or unregistered securities, goods or services that (i) you cannot legally sell, (ii) are misrepresented, and/or (iii) if sold via CartSquare or Your Web Site would cause CartSquare to violate any law, statute or regulation;
My business is a long range precision rifle event with explosives as the targets (http://www.boomershoot.org/). I have an ATF license to manufacture high explosives. I could, but do not, legally sell explosives. I sell people the opportunity to shoot at the explosives I make. I do link to firearms, ammunition, and explosives vendors who legally sell their products. Do you consider this a violation of your agreement?
If so then I will have to find a different bankcard vendor who is more tolerant of people exercising their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
Please let me know.
Joe Huffman
208-301-4254
—–
https://blog.joehuffman.org/
http://www.boomershoot.org/
http://www.modernballistics.com/
Their reply:
From: Merchant Support
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 12:28 PM
To: joeh@boomershoot.org
Subject: Your Merchant Account ApplicationHello Joe Huffman,
According to Visa/MasterCard, your business is considered a High Risk Business After reviewing your application we can not continue processing your application through Cardservice International. However, we have found you another company that can approve your application. Please click on this link below or copy and paste the link into your browser exactly how you see it to qualify for our special offer.
http://www.durangomerchantservices.com/Applications/apply_for_free.php?agentid=rwolf@ecommercemg.com
The rates are slightly different, however this could be the solution that you are looking for.Thank you,
Merchant Account Support
support@merchantlane.com
Phone: 1-866-295-5264
Merchant accounts have fees that typically are on the order of $50/month whether you have any business or not. Boomershoot has essentially zero sales 11 months out of the year and Modern Ballistics is shareware and only gets a donation about once every couple of months. Plus the contract terms typically demand third party audits and intrusions rivaling that of a colonoscopy (been there, done that, don’t want to do it again).
Chet, a friend from work, suggested I look at Amazon’s Simple Pay.
It looks as if my businesses just skate by their acceptable use policies but not my friends selling ammunition or a gun raffle for charity (although this might work for charities):
Prohibited Items and Activities:
…
-
Firearms and Weapons – includes ammunition, guns, rifles, shotguns, pistols, other firearms, knives (automatic, spring-loaded knives, throwing, etc.), brass knuckles, or other weapons.
-
Gambling Businesses – includes online gambling (including poker), lotteries (including sale of lottery tickets), games of chance (including sweepstakes and raffles), sports forecasting, or odds-making.
Chet also suggested Yahoo! but from what I could tell they require PayPal, a Merchant account, or $40/month whether you have any sales or not.
I’m going to spend some more time on the Amazon site and maybe convert over to them from PayPal.
Quote of the day–Kevin Baker
I’m tired of gun-bigots. PayPal needs to hear from US – the law-abiding gun owners of this country – that we’re no longer willing to just roll over when we’re abused by the companies we “trust” just because we believe in and practice the rights guaranteed to us under the Second Amendment.
Kevin Baker
July 29, 2009
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
[Read it and follow his suggestions. If anyone has a good suggestion for an alternative I’d love to hear it. I reluctantly use PayPal for Boomershoot and Modern Ballistics and would love to have a viable alternative.–Joe]
Overheard at Costco
Dateline: July 27, 2009.
[There is a man at the register who just swiped his ATM card through the reader. He is wearing a ParaUSA hat and a t-shirt that says, “There are very few personal problems that can’t be solved with a suitable application of high explosives.” Not seen is the STI Eagle 5.1 in a Kramer IWB holster behind his right hip loaded with 19 rounds of high performance .40 S&W hollow point ammunition. Also not seen is on the other hip is a spare loaded 18-round magazine and a Surefire 6P flashlight. There is an Asian woman behind the register who just put a 50 pound sack of Boomerite mystery ingredient #4 into a cart.]
Woman: What are you going to do with 50 pounds of
[Man waits a few seconds for the transaction to go through and the receipt to start printing out.]
Man: No. I’m going to make explosives with it.
[Man grabs the receipt and takes control of the cart with the 50 pound sack in it.]
Woman: How do you do that?
Man: You mix it with Ammonium Nitrate, Potassium Chlorate, and Ethylene Glycol.
Woman: Why do you do that?
Man: For recreational purposes. I make about 2000 pounds of explosives each year.
Woman: What do you do with it?
Man: I put them in targets, place them from 375 to 700 yards away and people from all over the whole world come to shoot at them.
Woman: That sounds really interesting! There must be a website for this, right?
[Man breaks out into a smile.]
Man: Yup. Boomershoot.org.
[Man, pushing cart, leaves the building. No guns were brandished, no cops arrived on the scene, and no shots were fired.]
Update: I forgot about the two Spyderco knives the man was carrying.
Quote of the day–Phil
Oh, sure, they say they’re doing it for folks with paralysis, but you know and I know that just as soon as they are able, GE is going to build a primate powered MechWarrior.
I wonder if SCOTUS will see the logic in rocket launchers as self-defense weaponry then?
Phil
July 15, 2009
Forget Zombies
[Don’t forget destructive devices. I’m thinking about 2000 pounds of Boomerite would be about the minimum acceptable charge.–Joe]
Preparing for shooty goodness
Yesterday daughter Kim and I went out to the Boomershoot site to do some prep work for Boomershoot 2010. She folded a bunch of target boxes:
I killed yellow-jackets, threw out dead mice, put out more rat/mice and ant poison, and replaced the bait in the yellow-jacket trap.
I also did an inventory of boxes, chemicals and target stakes. I want all of those on site before the rains start this fall. I don’t want to worry about being able to get a supply vehicle through the snow and/or mud to the Taj Mahal next spring like I did this spring.
We now have 675 boxes all folded and put in crates ready for Boomershoot 2010. I need to buy a few hundred more, get them folded, put in crates, and maybe even load some of them with lime before next spring. Lots of other things need to be done too. I want to improve the shooters berms. It needs to be deeper in places. Our “well” isn’t working and I have suspicions that the solar panels the recharge the batteries are not working either.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics rules all. But that is sort of what Boomershoot is about, right? It’s about moving things from a high energy state to a lower energy state. I just sometimes wish there wasn’t so much effort involved in achieving the high energy state.
Quote of the day–ErnestThing
When a bullet passes through air, it creates a high pressure area in front of, and around it, and creates a slight increase in temperature as the bullet impacts the molecules in the air. The pressure and temperature difference creates enough of a disturbance to bend light slightly. The result is a what appears to be a wavy donut that enters the bottom of your field of view, arcs upward above the target, and drops down into the target. (I call it a “wavy donut,” JD calls it the “undulating donut of death.” I like his better.)
Seeing this phenomenon with my own eye was really amazing. I knew how rifles worked, I knew the physics involved, I knew the trajectory was parabolic, and I’ve seen many charts of bullet flight path; but it’s still hard for your brain to wrap around the idea of a tiny thing flying through the air at 2800 feet per second. Actually seeing it happen seemed to dispel the magic the non-logical part of my brain was convinced was involved. Squeezing a trigger here, didn’t just make something happen there; it began a very simple set of physical principals that ended in a predictable manner that I could view with my eye.
Plus, it was wicked cool.
ErnestThing
May 11, 2009
Boomershoot 2009
[Yup. It’s wicked cool alright.
On the longer shots you can see the bullet arc up above the target and the wind push it off to the side. Then, if you called the range and wind doping right you are rewarded with seeing that wavy donut drop into a little white box on the hillside and transform it into a red flash and a cloud of water vapor 20 feet tall. You and your partners are in the middle of whoops of joy when the boom hits you. The boom is a deep earth shaking sound that video cameras and sound equipment somehow cannot adequately capture with enough fidelity to duplicate the thump to your chest you feel when you are there live.
There are still two positions available at Boomershoot 2010. They are positions #2 and #4. Even though they are in the “.50 Caliber Ghetto” smaller caliber shooters may use them with the restriction that the tree line targets are not available. Sign up here.–Joe]
Highly exothermic materials
I wonder what caused someone to do this search:
| Domain Name | usbr.gov ? (U.S. Government) | |||||||||||||||||||
| IP Address | 140.214.41.# (Department of Interior) | |||||||||||||||||||
| ISP | Department of Interior | |||||||||||||||||||
| Location |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| Language | English (U.S.) en-us |
|||||||||||||||||||
| Operating System | Microsoft WinXP | |||||||||||||||||||
| Browser | Internet Explorer 7.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; InfoPath.1) |
|||||||||||||||||||
| Javascript | version 1.3 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Monitor |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| Time of Visit | Jun 19 2009 11:00:01 pm | |||||||||||||||||||
| Last Page View | Jun 19 2009 11:00:01 pm | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Length | 0 seconds | |||||||||||||||||||
| Page Views | 1 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Referring URL | http://www.bing.com/…danger&go=&form=QBRE | |||||||||||||||||||
| Search Engine | bing.com | |||||||||||||||||||
| Search Words | tannerite fire danger | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Entry Page | http://blog.joehuffm…ory,Boomershoot.aspx | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Exit Page | http://blog.joehuffm…ory,Boomershoot.aspx | |||||||||||||||||||
| Out Click | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Time Zone | UTC-8:00 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visitor’s Time | Jun 19 2009 11:00:01 pm | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Number | 531,582 |
The Department of Interior did a search at 2300 on a Friday night for “tannerite fire danger”. Tannerite, as most of you know, is a binary explosive used for reactive targets. It is frequently assumed that Boomershoot uses Tannerite. This is not true. We use Boomerite.
Nearly every year we have one or more fires associated with Boomershoot we have to put out. Most of the time it is because we are doing fireball targets. Sometimes it has been because a tracer caused a fire. But sometimes it was because our reactive target either caught fire instead of detonating after being shot or because the explosives spontaneously combusted. One of the ingredients in Boomerite is potassium chlorate. Potassium chlorate is one of the main ingredients in matches. It is believed it is the potassium chlorate that causes Boomerite to spontaneously combust. Tannerite (the last time I checked) does not use potassium chlorate although it does share ammonium nitrate with Boomerite. I suspect Tannerite is less likely to cause a fire than Boomerite but any time you are working with highly exothermic materials the risk of a fire or explosion is present.
If you use highly exothermic materials in association with your gun fun please be careful with it. Be prepared to put out a fire. If you spill some of the materials then dispose of it by soaking the area in water or dispersing and burying the chemicals.
We don’t want the Department of Interior or anyone else banning the use of Tannerite on their land.
Quote of the day–thumper242
Checker asked about my Boomershoot shirt, then asked how far I think I could shoot. Maybe answering in kilometers was a bad idea.
thumper242
Via Twitter, June 19, 2009
[thumper242 has attended many Boomershoots and has been a valued staff member for many years now. BTW, he uses a .300 Win Mag shooting Black Hills Match ammo.–Joe]
Boomershoot 2010 entry is open
A few minutes ago I sent the following out to the Boomershoot Announcement list:
I opened up Boomershoot 2010 for 2009 participants yesterday to give them 24 hours prior to the general public to reserve their favorite positions. As of this minute 92% of the positions are taken. There are only six positions left. Sorry about that.
First come, first serve for the remainder:
I am sure there will be cancellations and positions will become available throughout the year so don’t get too bummed if you don’t get a position today or tomorrow when I expect the last of the positions will disappear.
Joe Huffman
Boomershoot Event Director
I was a bit concerned that with the economy and ammo price/shortages I wouldn’t get as many people signing up this year. I was wrong. 92% full within a few tens of hours after opening it up for registration–over 10 months in advance.
Update (50 minutes later): The event is 96% full with only three positions still open.
Boomershoot 2009 photos
David has been posting a lot of really nice Boomershoot 2009 photos recently, Matthew has one here and here, and now Xenia has posted a couple as well.
I really like this one:
Failed fireball.
From Xenia’s Live Journal but taken by her sister Kim.
It gives me some clues as to what went wrong with the fireball target this year. It looks like, as Ry reported privately to me a month ago, that half or more of the explosives failed to detonate. I know we had a problem with the targets made on Saturday. There were way too many targets on the hillside with solid hits in them that failed to detonate. Every single one of them was made on Saturday. I think the explosives were packed too tight. I need to maintain better quality control.
Dates for Boomershoot 2010
I’ve had numerous people and even the owners of one motel* contact me about the date for Boomershoot 2010.
I’ve set the dates to be April 23rd, 24th, and 25th. Go ahead and make your motel reservations if you plan on attending.
I’m still working on the entry form software and waiting for a quote on the price of the dinner. I thought I would have all this done weeks ago but it just hasn’t happened. Maybe this weekend I’ll get it done and open up entries.
* A portion of the motel owner email:
Joe,
We are owners of the XXX Motel in Orofino, Idaho. We appreciate you sponsoring the Boomershoot because it gives us great business during the month of April. We have some great people who have been coming here just to participate in the Boomershoot.
We have had several requests asking if we know when the 2010 Boomershoot will happen. So we thought we would contact you and see if you have set any dates for the 2010 event? Some of our guests reserved rooms already just taking a guess when it would be.
Please let us know when you have chosen the dates.
Thanks,
ATF approved gun bloggers
Did you know that some gun bloggers had to get ATF approval?
Yes, it’s true. Here is a picture of some of them.