Quote of the day–Xenia Huffman-Scott

I’m not procrastinating, I still have 25 minutes.

Xenia Huffman-Scott
[Xenia was working on a Government worksheet before school that she thought was due the next period that had a question about Microsoft lawsuits. A friend of mine testified in one of the lawsuits and she was hoping I could give her a quick brain dump and she’d be, essentially, done. She was wrong. She had all of winter break to work on it and I told her to go do her own research as best she could with the available time. It turned out the assignment wasn’t due until the next day but it would have served her right if had been just 25 minutes and she wasted two of those minutes talking to me.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Xenia Joy Huffman-Scott

I updated my personal website. It’s pretty badass right now.

Xenia Joy Huffman-Scott
Updated Website
January 21, 2007
[Yup. It’s very pretty.–Dad]

I’ve recovered my hard disk contents

The only thing I know of that I lost is one Moody Blues CD I had ripped. I have it at home and when I get around to it I’ll recover it also. I got off really lucky with no data permanently lost and only two evenings of my time gone.

Email is up and working again too.

A real backup plan must be implemented…

Christmas loot


Christmas 2006 for Joe

Notice the toothbrush in the lower left corner from Barb? That is to counteract all the candy and jam on the entire left side of the picture from all her other relatives.

James got me me the blanket underneath everything that supposedly says “blanket” in binary ASCII but I haven’t verified it yet. James also got me Obsession–The Movie and America: Freedom to Facism

I’m looking forward to testing out the Roomba from Barb. It’s charging now.

I got lots of new music from Barb to keep me entertained on my trips to and from Seattle. Although I’ll probably have just as much fun fantasizing about my future interactions with the felony bigots at PNNL on my long drives. The lawsuit being served is probably my favorite gift–even though I paid for it myself.

I’ve been told the new Battlestar Galactica series I got from Barb is better than the original one. James and I will be watching that in the evenings in Seattle just as soon as we finish off the Enterprise series.

I got all six of the flashlights from our daughter Kim and her fiancée Caleb. The LED one with the crank generator in the top right corner of the picture gets my vote for the best one.

The Boris Vallejo calendar was no surprise but then Barb has been getting one of those every year for nearly thirty years now. No reason to stop anytime soon.

The mug and the plate were hand glazed by Sara and Xenia respectively. That’s an image of Enterprise on a star background on the mug.

Xenia has some pictures of the other pottery stuff she did for Christmas including a better picture of the Boomershoot plate.

Christmas update

Nothing new on the PNNL front just a report on our activities.

Xenia reported on her view of things. She took in a goodly amount of stuff.

We went to my parents place for Christmas Eve where we had very white Christmas Eve including some snow drifts that were probably eight to ten inches deep in places on the county road. There was a snow drift in our driveway too but not a big deal. It was starting to rain when we came back to Moscow and by the middle of Christmas day most of the snow was gone. We had a nice time with all the visitors. Daughter Kim and her fiancée loved the new laptop computer we bought them. Sara has been staying with us and went to my parents place as well as being with us on Christmas Day. Barb’s sister Nancy and her family were here too. Nancy likes to make funny faces and I told her the picture below was was going to be on the Internet in ten minutes. Barb said, “No!” So instead of ten minutes I waited 48 hours.

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Here is another picture of Nancy. This time with Barb while they are in deep concentration in a game they were playing:

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This is Caleb and Kim with our bare backyard in the background

Quote of the day–Dave Barry

You never have to figure out what to get for children, because they will tell you exactly what they want.  They spend months and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-morning cartoon-show advertisements.  Make sure you get your children exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices.  If your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You Can Rip Right Off, you’d better get it.  You may be worried that it might help to encourage your child’s antisocial tendencies, but believe me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you’ve seen a child who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.

Dave Barry
Christmas Shopping: A Survivor’s Guide
[See also my next post.–Joe]

Merry Christmas

Being an atheist I don’t usually take much pleasure in Christmas. But this year is something very special. Last year was very tough for us after being fired from PNNL. However this year is much better. I got a good job last April. The lawsuit against PNNL and my former supervisor, Bryan McMillan, was filled October 30th. And then just in time for Christmas I received word yesterday that McMillan and his wife Torrie (community property state, in order to get full access to his assets we needed to fill against his wife too) got served with the papers.

Merry Christmas Bryan!

Sorry Torrie, but it’s not my fault you married someone of such low character that he committed a felony. I’m pretty sure there will be some more unpleasant surprises for you about his character in the coming years as the lawsuit details come out.

To the people at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous that I asked not to mention the details I talked about, you are now free to blog as much as you want.

It’s the accessories that make an outfit.

Speaking of Oleg Volk, Say Uncle points out this picture from Oleg. It makes me wish I had taken pictures of my girls when they shot guns for the first time.

The title for this post is stolen from the commenter dantheserene to Oleg’s post.

Handles

Ry says they don’t have handles and gives this page as reference. However informative and useful the reference I beg to differ with the claim they don’t have handles. Even most Manx have a little something that can be used as the rear handle and the scruff of the neck works well for the second handle. This presumes of course you have heavy leather gloves to prevent the slitting of the wrist of the hand utilizing this handle.

I have successfully accomplished the task with only minor wounds and scars that, after 15 years, only barely show. The biggest problems were the two girls, ages four and six I think, that were climbing on my back and screaming, “Daddy’s trying to drown the kitty!!” Once Barb dragged them off of me things went pretty smooth–all things considered.

Taking power to Seattle

The power is on for both James and I where we work so we need to be back at work tomorrow. James has power at his apartment but I don’t have any at my place so I’m taking my 3500W generator. I should be able to get the gas furnance working and if not my roommates and I can continue to burn wood in the fireplaces. The generator should keep the refrigerators and the computers up. Candles and kerosene lamps for lights and we will be comfortable. We should also be able to run the washing machine if we shut down some of the other stuff to wash clothes. The water heater is gas and hasn’t been affected by the power outage.

We head out in a few minutes and hope to get over Snoqualmie Pass before it snows too much.

Pictures from the Seattle area

See also the Seattle Times article here. These were all taken on Friday December 15 between 8:30 and 12:00. I took the first one and James took the rest.


Typical residental street


Near Redmond on Highway 202 on our way out of town


Near Redmond on Highway 202 on our way out of town


Notice the power line is down on the left as well as half of highway 202 is blocked

No! (to being in Seattle without electricity)

The power flickered many times with the first record in my uninterruptable power supply logs at about 17:00 yesterday. There were numerous 10 and 20 second outages until it went out for the night about 22:30. For James it was very early this morning. Work was closed and although I could have kept our computers up it just wasn’t worth the effort. We drove back to Idaho today to wait for the power to be restored to the Seattle area.

The snow on the pass and all the way to just a few miles west of Vantage wasn’t bad but it was coming down pretty good so we were glad to make it across when we did. The worst part was making it through all the traffic on the Eastside of Lake Washington. With no power all the traffic lights were 4-way stops.

Ry reports in and is doing fine.

Phil at Random Nuclear Strikes hasn’t said anything but I’m sure he is doing well unless he suffered a direct hit from a tree.

Mr. Completely has several reports and seems to be doing well:

James and I took a few pictures and I’ll put something up later. I need to make supper before Barb gets home from work.

Quote of the day–Jeff Cooper

During our recent motor touring, we noticed on several occasions the road sign “Gusty winds may exist.” Now I find that pretty fascinating. The notice that gusty winds may exist suggests some thought be given to the relationship of reality to existence. Whether such winds may or may not exist opens the door to questions about what constitutes existence. Descartes declaimed, Cogito ergo sum (I think: therefore I am). Whether winds may or may not really and truly exist calls for serious thought. I almost ran off the road considering this matter.

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries
[Gusty winds do exist. Seattle without power is proof of that.–Joe]

Must be a Google alert

Last night I posted about a letter I received from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This morning they came visiting:

Domain Name   usda.gov ? (United States Government)
IP Address   199.156.60.# (USDA Office of Operations)
ISP   USDA Office of Operations
Location  
Continent  :  North America
Country  :  United States  (Facts)
State  :  Colorado
City  :  Fort Collins
Lat/Long  :  40.524, -105.1396 (Map)
Distance  :  730 miles
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  :  1024 x 768
Color Depth  :  32 bits

Time of Visit   Dec 14 2006 8:37:30 am
Last Page View   Dec 14 2006 8:37:30 am
Visit Length   0 seconds
Page Views   1
Referring URL
Visit Entry Page   http://blog.joehuffm…1d-6c7a83021e29.aspx
Visit Exit Page   http://blog.joehuffm…1d-6c7a83021e29.aspx
Out Click    
Time Zone   UTC-8:00
Visitor’s Time   Dec 14 2006 8:37:30 am
Visit Number   120,426

Finalizing a plan

Barb and I own a little bit of farm land and because of various government programs intended to help farmers (yes stuff related to the subsidies, but also “helpful” stuff mandated by the environmentalists) we get mailings from the Federal government every once in a while. The one I got the other day made me laugh. It must have tickled my sick humor funny bone. This one is from the United States Department of Agriculture. FSA stands for Farm Service Agency:

Dear Clearwater County Producer:

The Idaho State FSA Office has been instructed to devise a plan for closing offices in Idaho. In keeping with that directive, a Committee was formed last spring to identify and prioritize the offices with the State that could be considered for closure. Now six months later, after extensive debates, discussions and arguments, the proposal is out — Clearwater County tops the list as the first office in Idaho to close should that become a requirement.

It is important to note that no directives have been issued to actually close offices at this time. The Agency is simply looking forward, and in an attempt to be ready should future budge restrictions force the issue the office closure plan would be ready for implementation. It is also important that you know that the entire process will take approximately two years to complete. After the plan is finalized in Idaho, it is submitted to the National Office for approval, then on to Congressional Representatives for review, and finally back to the local community for comment. All in all, it can take as long as two years for a plan to be finalized.

[… blah, blah, blah…]

Two years just to come up with a plan??? How long to actually close the office? A decade if they really work at it? If it were a private business wanting to close an office the size of that one the plan would take a couple weeks and by the end of the next month new renters would be occupying the office space.

There are very, very few things government can do well. Examples abound from the airport security issues to prohibition (alcohol as well as modern day recreational drugs) to gun bans. Government is colossally incompetent at nearly anything they do. My favorite example is that for 70 years the USSR tried to increase food production in their country. During essentially those same 70 years the U.S. government tried to decrease food production in the U.S. Both governments failed.

More shooting in the winter pictures

I updated the Lewiston Pistol Club website with results from the last Action Pistol (IPSC) match and threw in some pictures. Not only did the snow not slow us down but Adam shot with his knee all messed up from sword fighting a few days earlier. He had surgery on it a couple days after these pictures. Adam is the guy sitting on toolbox with his left leg out straight in the last picture.

The dance and the skunks

Saturday evening Xenia went to the dance with Jesse. Never mind she is engaged to another guy. Jesse is gay so it didn’t matter. Jesse came over early and had dinner with Barb, Xenia, Sara, and I. I took some pictures and about 21:30 or so Jesse and Xenia left for the dance. Xenia tells the rest of the story with a bunch of pictures. Here are some pictures she didn’t post:


Sara and Jesse


Dmitri and Xenia


One of the skunks

Why we live in Idaho

This is just part of the reason. This was the view out our living room window last Saturday. Picture by Sara.

Xenia coming back from State competition

It’s 2:39 AM at Moscow High School on December 2nd. Xenia and Ms. Cooke the drama instructor. Xenia and Meghan had come in first in the entire state. It’s been a long day and the appropriate level of excitement really wasn’t showing:

Mark of the beasts?

Coming back from the Seattle area yesterday afternoon I snapped this picture. I was trying for 66 MPH but I think I missed.