I checked with Cingular, Inland Cellular, Qwest, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Only Inland Cellular and Verizon have coverage at the Boomershoot site. Inland Cellular is analog only. Last year I had coverage with my AT&T phone. I switched over to Cingular and now have nothing. I will get a cell phone just for the event and give the number out to all attendees.
Category Archives: Boomershoot
Tannerite and the law
I just noticed an interesting search hit on my blog. Someone in the Texas Attorney General is researching Tannerite. It doesn’t look like it was a casual search either. They looked as deep as the first 60 Google hits.
I’m not a lawyer but from my reading of the law in some states the use of Tannerite is illegal without special licensing. The Tannerite web site appears to claim this is not true. If you use Tannerite please get a legal opinion you can trust before using it in your political jurisdiction.
Domain Name state.tx.us ? (United States)
IP Address 204.64.42.# (Texas Attorney General)
ISP STATE OF TEXAS GENERAL SERVICES COMMISSION
Location
Continent : North America Country : United States (Facts)
State : Texas City : Austin Lat/Long : 30.2779, -97.7379 (Map) Language English (United States)en-us
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Javascript version 1.3
Monitor
Resolution : 800 x 600 Color Depth : 32 bits Time of Visit Mar 29 2006 6:42:35 am
Last Page View Mar 29 2006 6:44:43 am
Visit Length 2 minutes 8 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL http://www.google.co…en&lr=&start=50&sa=N
Search Engine google.com
Search Words tannerite
Visit Entry Page http://blog.joehuffm…08-89f4fcb3a234.aspx
Visit Exit Page http://blog.joehuffm…08-89f4fcb3a234.aspx
Out Click
Time Zone UTC-6:00
Visitor’s Time Mar 29 2006 8:42:35 am
Visit Number 70,181
Delivering a message
As pointed out to me by Ry in this post about plagiarism, a hot topic around these parts lately, apparently the AP has a policy of not citing bloggers as a source:
the AP apparatchiks admitting to taking our work and using it without attribution, stating “we do not credit blogs”.
Emphasis in the original.
I can’t imagine why it is but for some reason I now have this image in my mind of an approach a friend of mine was inclined to implement in a different situation.
We had a former mutual friend (let’s just call him “Walter”) that we were in business together with. He sold out the company and walked away with several million dollars while my friend, my brother, and many other co-workers, and I got nothing–even our contracts for royalties on the products we owned and were being sold by the new company (lets call it “Symantec”) were worth nothing. Symantec and it’s slime ball president (lets just call him “Gordon Eubanks”) wouldn’t allow us to audit the books even though our contracts said we could. It was this event along with election of Bill Clinton (spit, spit), and the events of Ruby Ridge that inspired me to take up guns, and later explosives, as hobbies. Anyway I ran across a shirt at a gun show that I just had to buy. Not for me but for my friend that was still on speaking terms with “Walter”. I showed the shirt to him and asked him if he would like to have it. “YES!” was the immediate reply. I told him I would give the shirt to him on one condition. The next time he saw Walter he had to be wearing the shirt and he had to tell “Walter” that I had given him the shirt. “Deal.” It wasn’t long before he came up with an alternate delivery method for the “message”. My friend said the proper delivery would be to attach the shirt to the front door of “Walter’s” new multi-million dollar house on the lake with knife driven through the shirt like a large tack. To the best of my knowledge the message wasn’t delivered in that fashion although I derived a great deal of pleasure over just the thought of it.
For some reason that same message and the same delivery method are what comes to mind when I read what the AP apparatchiks policy is in regards to crediting blogs.
And what was the message on the shirt you ask?
The only reason some people are alive is because it’s against the law to kill them.
Boomershoot 2006 blogging part VI
There are only six shooting positions left for Boomershoot 2006. Get your entries in really soon if you want to participate.
Here is the latest word from the bloggers that have mentioned Boomershoot 2006:
Visit to Boomershoot site
Barb and I had lunch with my parents on Sunday. We stopped by the Boomershoot site on our way home so I could measure the shooting line in both the .50 BMG and smaller caliber shooting areas.
I have plenty of room for all the .50 BMG shooters as well as the people with ‘normal’ guns. I currently have only 11 out of 60 slots left with at least one more entry “in the mail” so I expect Boomershoot 2006 will be completely filled. The shooting line will be over 250 yards long which reminds me that I need to get some handheld air horns for the range officers. The battery powered horn worked fine when the line was only a couple hundred feet long but it just can’t be heard well enough 100 yards away.
The site is still very wet with ducks swimming in the standing water in the field, and the grass is still brown from the winter. But for the middle of March it’s doing fine. But with the clouds it made for a nice picture from the shooting area:
Chatting with the ATF
I have a minor glitch with the ATF regarding the locks I’m using on the Taj Mahal (my explosives storage magazine for Boomershoot). I was pretty annoyed with things but I tried not to let it show in my email to Crystal–my contact at the Spokane office. It wasn’t her fault and from my vantage point it appeared she was doing everything right. My email was polite but she was smart enough to read between the lines and gave me a call about two minutes after I pressed send. We had a nice chat and I think we are on the path to getting things all straightened out. She gave me suggestion on a “last resort” means to make do with what I have if I can’t get through all the bureaucracy in time. It was something I had pretty much planned on doing anyway with a minor twist. And I didn’t know that it would be officially sanctioned as a means to get around my problems.
If you have differences to work out with the “jack-booted thugs” it’s best to get things straightened out over the phone rather than having their SWAT team explain things to you at 3:00 AM. Crystal has done a good job of keeping me from getting a visit from her friends on the other side of the hallway and I’m grateful for that.
Boomershoot status and blogging part V
46 positions have been filled. There are 14 positions remaining. But I also know of several entries that are “in the mail”. If I have not acknowledged your entry yet and you sent it before March 10th please let me know. I think I am all caught up now but it’s possible I have an entry laying around someplace that I didn’t find on my first pass through the stack of papers on my desk.
I’m asking everyone that will be shooting a .50 BMG to let me know in the next few days. Even if you have already told me before I would like another email. I need to allocate spaces much more carefully this year and I need to make sure there is enough room for the .50 Caliber guys.
You probably haven’t noticed but the Boomershoot website is now on a very high bandwidth ‘pipe’. Videos, sound, and pictures should load much faster than before. Downloading Boomershoot History 2004 (~140 MBytes) is almost reasonable under certain circumstances.
Things still on my list of things to do:
- Buy a box of large plastic gloves for mixing the chemicals
- Buy the cardboard boxes for the target containers
- Figure out how many .50 BMG shooters I can handle
- Chose a winner for the t-shirt slogan
- Create the t-shirt images for Boomershoot 2006
More Boomershoot blogging:
Quote of the day–Outlandish Josh
…this is something we’ve got over the Europeans: the ability to organize a friendly outing of shooting rifles at targets packed with home-made explosives out in rural Idaho is our birthright.
On the other hand, in Cambodia, for the right fee, you can shoot an RPG at a live cow. So there’s that to consider.
Outlandish Josh
March 13, 2006
In his blog posting AMERICA!
From my time at Microsoft
Another post from someone I used to work with at Microsoft. Craig was my lead when I first started at Microsoft. Here he gives the early history of DirectX. I started in May of ’95 and was responsible for the Cirrus chips for DirectX 1. I took the summer off to be with my wife and kids for the summer of ’96 and just barely had contact with DirectX 3. But I was involved with 2 and 5.
The “military coat” Craig talks about is a black M-65 field jacket. I still have my DirectX jacket in my closet with the patches. Ry and I now wear black M-65 jackets with Boomershoot embroidered on them.
Some of the patches for the various versions of DirectX had the project names on them. Some of the project names were Manhattan (DirectX 1 was to “compete” with the Japanese game machines), Orion (reference to nuclear explosion powered space travel), and Orange (as in Agent Orange used in Vietnam to defoliate the jungle). I think it was DirectX 6 that had the project name of “Diesel”. This was a veiled reference to ammonium nitrate/diesel mixture which was believed (nitromethane was the actual fuel) to be used in the then recent bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City. Another time I will tell you of the mementos I made of ammonium nitrate for people on the project and shipped to Raymond to distribute.
See also Renegades of the Empire for DirectX history and lots of stories about Alex, Craig, and Eric.
Update: Fixed the broken link to Craigs post on DirectX history.
Free Boomershoot entry to Mr. Completely
Congratulations to Mr. Completely for winning the title of Biggest and Best Gun Blog 2005. For this he, and his lovely wife KeeWee, will be receiving a free entry into Boomershoot 2006. I’m not sure what he is going to be using at the event as his particular area of gun dominance is with .22LR handguns, but I’m sure we can figure something out. I’ll be having dinner, again, with he and his wife on March 1 so maybe we can work out some details then.
Boomershoot prep
The potassium chlorate was delivered this week. I just need to order the boxes used as containers for the explosives and I will have all but the most trivial items needed for Boomershoot 2006 in stock.
Last Saturday I tested out a flour mill as a tool for getting all the lumps out of the potassium chlorate just prior to mixing it with the other ingredients. It works but requires constant human attention. Dad had an idea that I will try at the next opportunity. In any case I think I can get rid of the blenders which are the biggest power drain and another drain on labor as when they are used they require constant attention as well.
The main reason for the Saturday excursion to Boomershoot country was to test target detonation with .223 at the greater ranges. I made some new targets and shot at them from 630 yards with a .223. I made a number of errors and didn’t realize until after I got home that because of the cold (30F) and the exceptionally high air pressure (30.5″ of Hg) the target velocity was probably under 1200 fps. This velocity is below what I would have expected the targets to detonate and that in fact is exactly what happened. I had nearly a dozen solid hits without them detonating. I fired one round of CCI Stinger (high velocity .22LR) from about 15 yards away (probably about 1500 fps target velocity) and a target with three .223 holes detonated. I really want to test the .223 with a target velocity of 1400 to 1500 fps.
Below is the target array I made to make it easier to assure a hit on a target while not having all of them detonate at once causing the neighbors to have things fall off the walls. I had something else in mind, Ry suggested this but figured I would need someone at the shooting line to help get things lined up. While driving home from the Seattle area I figured out a way I could line it up myself. I keep telling him that between the two of us we have a complete brain. Lots of ideas from one or the other of us will be half baked and the other turns it into something quite clever.
From the shooters viewpoint
Side view
Boomershoot 2006 blogging part IV
Boomershoot update
I’ve update several of the pages on Boomershoot.org. The most changes were on the general information page.
The news release for Boomershoot 2006 is available now. See it here. Send copies to whoever, media or not, you think might be interested.
There are still 26 positions available. The last week of February is typically when the biggest surge of entries comes in.
There is going to be a similar event in Missouri on April 23rd. I’ve been giving the organizer a little bit of help via email but other than that I won’t have any involvement.
Update: I’ve been forgetting to mention that the portable toliets have been ordered, the caterer has us on his schedule, and the last of the chemicals have been ordered. The only remaining items to be purchased are the boxes used for target containers and possibly a few more stakes to put the targets on. On the portable toilets… I forgot to look at them at the end of the on Sunday. Did we fill them up? Were there long lines? Do I need to get a third toilet this year?
A call from Xenia’s chemistry teacher
I received a call from Xenia‘s chemistry teacher this morning. Uh oh… This has never happened before. Xenia has almost always been a pleasure for her teachers as well as her parents.
Rather than inform me Xenia had lost control of some explosives in her locker (like I did once when I was in high school) she just wanted to tell me that Xenia is doing great in class. She said she doesn’t get to make many of those types of calls and she wanted to let us know.
I’d like to think it had something to do with the chemistry experiments I do and have had Xenia help with. But while Xenia thinks it’s “way cool” she hasn’t had the slightest bit of interest in the actual chemistry (and here).
Survival blog
James Wesley, Rawles – www.SurvivalBlog.comTM quoted me about people, society, guns, and explosives on his blog today. He also promoted this blog and Boomershoot some too. He said this blog was “wonderfully addictive.” I hadn’t realized that anyone other than me was addicted to it. I met Rawles a couple times at gun shows a long time ago. Nice guy to talk to. I have read a couple versions of his book TEOTWAWKI which I enjoyed too.
The anvil guy is coming back
Just this last weekend I received the Boomershoot entry for the guy that keeps trying to put his anvil into orbit. I don’t know if he is bringing them back this year or not but here is a picture from one of the Boomershoot 2004 launches:
These guys are very curious
These guys have been sniffing around Boomershoot.org for years. But I first noticed them on this blog last December when they were looking for exploding targets. Now they are looking for where their own IP address can be found on the web. Very curious folks they are.
Domain Name
ISP
| Continent | : | North America |
| Country | : | United States (Facts) |
| State | : | Virginia |
| City | : | Dulles |
| Lat/Long | : | 39.0853, -77.6452 (Map) |
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
| Resolution | : | 1280 x 1024 |
| Color Depth | : | 32 bits |
Search Engine
EST – Eastern Standard
EDT – Eastern Daylight Saving Time
Boomershoot 2006 blogging part III
More Boomershoot 2006 blogging:
- Laws and Guns and Blogs
- Range Hour
- Rangeday, Part Deux
- Meandering
- Boomershoot
- Boomershoot (some of the people leaving comments think it is a hoax)
- Press coverage of Boomershoot
- Boomershoot Rifle
Boomershooters from India
There are plans for one or more Boomershooters from India this year. This is going to be the year of international attention–the media from U.K. and shooters from Canada and India. Very cool.
Introspection hint
The more I learn about people and society the more I love guns and explosives. Guns and explosives are more understandable, more predictable, and less hazardous.