The IPSC match results are posted now. I knew I didn’t do great but it was worse than I thought. I didn’t realize what was going on until about half way through the last stage when I was having problems hitting some steel targets. I wasn’t doing proper trigger preparation. I had lots of penalities from misses which hurt badly. More actual time on the range is required.
I’m attending another match this Saturday at SVRC. I’m hoping to spend some practice time at Wade’s later today.
I’m about to head off to the range for a special IPSC match (they call it “Action Pistol” to be more PC). I think we are going to have five classifier stages. I reloaded lots of ammo and have been dry firing quite a bit recently. I got lots of sleep last night and after a shower and breakfast I’m ready to go. I may “crash and burn”, but I’m as well prepared as I have been in a long time.
I completed the Distance is your friend class of the Looter Shooter rifle postal match today. This was inspired by the events following hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. I wasn’t able to conjure up a hurricane here in north central Idaho but we did have rain, wind, and a flood watch:
URGENT – IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED
FLOOD WATCH
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MISSOULA MT
224 AM MDT SAT OCT 1 2005
CLEARWATER-LINCOLN-MINERAL-SANDERS-
124 AM PDT SAT OCT 1 2005 /224 AM MDT SAT OCT 1 2005/
…FLOOD WATCH IN EFFECT THROUGH THIS AFTERNOON FOR
PORTIONS OF EXTREME WESTERN MONTANA AND NORTH CENTRAL IDAHO…
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MISSOULA HAS ISSUED A FLOOD WATCH FOR PORTIONS OF EXTREME WESTERN MONTANA AND NORTH CENTRAL IDAHO THROUGH 6 PM MDT / 5 PM PDT/ THIS AFTERNOON.
A VIGOROUS UPPER LEVEL SYSTEM…WITH AN ABUNDANT SOURCE OF TROPICAL MOISTURE…WILL CONTINUE TO MOVE OVER THE WATCH AREA THROUGH THIS AFTERNOON. ADDITIONAL RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF UP TO 2 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE IN THE AFFECTED AREAS. THE OCCASIONALLY HEAVY RAINFALL IS EXPECTED TO CREATE CONDITIONS THAT ARE FAVORABLE FOR THE FLOODING OF SMALL STREAMS AND DEBRIS FLOWS.
THOSE LIVING IN AREAS PRONE TO FLOODING SHOULD BE PREPARED TO TAKE ACTION SHOULD FLOODING DEVELOP.
These shooting conditions were a contributing factor to me choosing the Quote of the Day for today.
I had planned to shoot it at the Boomershoot site and do at least one set of targets out to 700 yards. That just didn’t work out. My schedule is such that I wouldn’t be able to get out there before the results are due. Instead I went to the Lewiston Pistol Club range where the most distance I could get was 200 yards.
All pictures are clickable to get a higher resolution. Click on that picture to get a still higher resolution image.
It was wet:
It was muddy:
It was supposed to be shooting from behind cover. I was peaking over the top of a hill and looking down the road toward the oncoming “looters”:
I shot the match with two different rifles. One was an AR-15 that I have been having problems with the scope off and on. I thought it was fixed but it was broken again today. It’s time to send it in for repair. The picture above was taken looking over the top of that rifle. The results are for my .300 Win Mag (picture taken a different day at a different range):
Some of the following targets have a couple .223 holes in them in addition to the .30 caliber holes. Please ignore those.
100 yards. 20 points 2X (yes, I put an overlay over both holes and they both more than touch the duck)
~125 yards. 19 points.
~150 yards. 20 points.
~180 yards. 20 points 2X.
200 yards. 18 points.
Total: 97/100 4X.
He must have known I was an hour’s drive away. He showed up at the house yesterday when I wasn’t here. He knew that for every tear he causes my daughter I cause a drop of his blood to be spilled. I’ve been watching very closely and haven’t seen any tears yet. She’s sad, but not crying (at least when I have seen it). She’s an extremely stoic person. I should have told him a drop of blood for every frown…
Ry saw it prerelease and so did Kevin. James and I went to the first showing in the area and got back about an hour ago. It was very good. James had a few nits to pick but I shot down most of those. I had one nit to pick and James shot it down. As expected with anything that Joss Whedon helps write is going to have some great dialog. This was no exception. Jayne, as usual, is so incredibly self centered and delivers his lines with such timing and such a straight face that the audience bursts into laughter. I think my favorite was when someone (trying to avoid spoiling it for someone) says:
Someone: “Do you really think any of us are going to get out of this alive?”
Jayne (looks around, pauses): “I might.”
My favorite lines of the movie were the following (as best I can remember):
Someone 1: “If I had known this was going to happen I would have done things differently. Back on the ship I would have been with you.”
Someone 2: “Are you saying… sex?”
Someone 1: “That’s what I’m saying.”
Someone 2: “To hell with dying. I’m going to live.”
In another sequence:
Someone 1: “Landing could be interesting.”
Someone 2: “Define interesting.”
Someone 1: “Oh god, oh god, we’re all gonna die?”
This is a “Space Western”. It’s a good one. Lots of guns and blades and a good message. And as Kevin said in his review:
Go see Serenity. You won’t be disappointed if you like this blog.
Ry posted a link to a picture with three deer in it. I could only find one. Here is a picture Barb and I took last month while in Montana. There are two deer in this picture. One is obvious the other not so obvious. We only saw it because it moved.
Click on the picture for a high resolution version. Hint on the second deer: It’s a buck and it’s laying down.
On Monday I bought my hunting license and a tag for a white-tailed deer. This will be the first time I go hunting. I never really had an interest and in some ways I still don’t. I harvested a deer a couple years ago–while driving Barb’s Jeep. The meat was very lean and quite good. There was no gamy taste as the deer was grain feed off of the local crops. But Barb, for some reason, can’t stand the smell of even the meat cooking in the house when she is there. Kim and James (my two oldest kids) liked it though. Xenia, being a vegetarian, has no interest.
A good part of the reason I got the license and tag is because they are so plentiful on the farm they are pests. They destroy the crops. Helping my brother to thin the herd a little bit will help him out. It looks like I will have more time this year so I can hunt during week days and not just weekends. If I get something I’ll be giving a good portion of the meat to my two oldest kids. Hunting season opens October 10th.
Last week I ordered some new boxes for possible use as reactive target containers for Boomershoot 2006. They arrived today. This year there were some indications the targets were failing to detonate because of they were very thin (some of them were only one inch thick). The new ones have inside dimensions of 6″ x 6″ x 3″. I’ll be doing some tests soon. Perhaps this week sometime. Or if I get an email from someone that wants to help out I might do the tests on an upcoming weekend if that would work out better for someone.
I spent part of the weekend cleaning out enough of the garage to make a path to my reloading bench and finding enough of my stuff to reload some 40 S&W ammo. I reloaded about 50 rounds yesterday and 400 today. There is an IPSC match next Sunday and I needed some ammo.
I’m expecting I will have some bad news to report soon. I can’t really talk about it until it shows up in the papers. I’ve been depressed enough lately and this only makes things worse. I really should go make some explosives and detonate it at both “entertainingly close” and long range just to get me out of my depression.
I got a call from the FBI this morning. It wasn’t anything I can really talk about here or anything that might have adverse effects for me or my friends. He said my name sounded familiar, “Did you call our office last week?”. Nope. I have never called their office. As our conversatiion progressed his voice and his name gradually fell into place for me. It turned out I have shot at IPSC matches with him occasionally. I remember him as smart and somewhat intense. He’s a pretty good shooter too. Small world…
The connection between my ISP and Sprint to the Internet went down about 30 minutes ago. Less than half the people in Moscow can reach my websites, the rest of the world will just have to get by without them somehow until the connection is restored. Last time this happened it was a fiber optic cable that was severed by some construction north of Moscow.
Update 12:00: From our ISP’s website:
Line to the Internet is Down
Starting around 8:20 this morning, our Sprint backbone to the Internet went down. Sprint long distance and cell phones are also down. Sprint is aware of this problem and is working on it. 9/22/05 9:00 a.m.11:11 a.m. We heard scuttlebutt from a usually reliable source that the fiber optic line near Worley was cut, and that they expect it to be back up by noon.
There is a bunch of highway construction going on all along state highway 95. Worley is on 95 north of Moscow.
Update 13:00: From our IPS’s website:
12:40 p.m. Nope. No additional word.
Update 14:05: From our IPS’s website:
1:50 p.m. Verizon says the fiber should be repaired by 2:30.
Update 15:54 From our IPS’s website (heavy sigh):
3:50 p.m. Nope.
Update from the Lewiston Morning Tribune:
Long-distance phone service cut in area
Several communities in Latah, Nez Perce and Clearwater counties lost their long-distance telephone service Thursday morning when an underground line was cut by an Idaho Transportation Department crew near Worley, Idaho.
According to Kevin Laverty, a Verizon media relations spokesman, most Idaho long-distance customers south of the cut line to around Orofino were without service until about 4 p.m. when repairs had been completed.
Affected towns included Moscow, Peck and Orofino, according to Laverty.
Barb woke me up at 2:08 this morning to report the electricity was off. No electricity, no clock, no getting up at the right time to go to work. I offered her the alarm clock on my cellphone and discovered a text message from Ry sent at 0:35:05, “Network down?” That meant the battery backup had failed on our websites sometime prior to that. I went outside and looked around. The nearest lights I could see were about a mile away. No need to report it then since there were lots of people without power. I replied to Ry and we sent a couple messages back and forth.
Power came back up at about 3:10. Everything appears to be normal at the Huffman-Scott home and websites now.
Update from the Lewiston Morning Tribune:
Moscow residents hit by power outage
MOSCOW — The city of Moscow was hit with a double-whammy by loss of service from two utilities Thursday.
First it suffered a power outage, which began late Wednesday night. Then its long-distance service was disrupted, along with several north central Idaho communities, Thursday (see story below).
Electrical service was knocked out shortly after 11:30 p.m., affecting more than 6,000 Avista Utilities customers, ranging from the Washington state line to one or two miles east, north and west of Moscow.
According to Debbie Simock, a spokeswoman from Avista, the blackout was caused by equipment failure at a substation in the area.
Avista rerouted some switches, bringing power back on for some customers, including Gritman Medical Center, by 1 a.m., Simock said. The rest of the affected areas had power by 3 a.m.
Xenia’s boyfriend John came over to visit yesterday afternoon. Xenia and her John were looking at stuff on the computer and didn’t seem to be needing any of my attention so I laid down to take a short nap. I awoke to find the my legs on the edge of the couch separating the dogs, who were on the floor, from a half grown cat I had never seen before on the couch. The dogs were extremely interested in the cat bug weren’t big enough to jump over my legs onto the couch to make contact with the cat. The cat seemed content with this arrangement. My thought was, “This must be the cat Xenia’s John said he was going to get for his sister. Okay, I’ll be the ‘castle wall’ for the cat. I need to be careful not to crush it by moving my legs quickly.” Xenia and her John were on the other side of the room talking in whispers and I didn’t pay them any attention as I tried to go back to sleep. Xenia then told me in a normal voice, “I updated my Live Journal”. “Okay”, I said, “I’ll look at it later when I get up.” After a minute or two Xenia asked, “Do you like the cat?” “Sure, it seems to be a nice cat.” What did it matter to me? I probably would never see it again after her John gave it to his sister. A few more minutes passed. “Can she stay? Her name is Zandra.” “No.”, was my immediate reply. Why would she ask that? This cat is for her John’s sister. Probably 30 minutes later I got up and went downstairs to my computer. I found this Live Journal posting from Xenia. Zandra was a birthday present to Xenia from her John.
To make a long story short Barb and I ended up giving her three choices:
She chose option 3 amid apologies and tears. We weren’t and aren’t upset with Xenia but her John really stepped into it. That was a major blunder on his part.
She is a nice cat. She is laying on my lap purring as I type this…
Update: It turns out Xenia asked her John to not ask us if she could have the cat. It appears John wasn’t the “bad guy” here. More consultation with Barb is needed before we partake on a final course of action. Xenia got herself into trouble on this one.
Xenia renamed the cat “Zanitia”. I’m thinking perhaps it should be “Xenia’s Folly”, or perhaps “Albatross”.
My wife, Barbara, is a physical therapist who specializes in “home health”. She drives all over the county to see her patients. She works with others who do speech therapists, occupational therapy, and nursing. Many of the patients are on Medicaid/Medicare so in many cases there is government payment for the services. The Danes have a new branch of government supported therapy which the government is also paying for. The next time she complains about her job I’ll suggest she could change her therapy modalities and perhaps go into private practice in Denmark. On second thought, that probably wouldn’t be a very good suggestion to make. Via Clayton Cramer:
Danes take care of disabled to new level
Danish activists for the disabled are staunchly defending a government campaign that pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled people.
Opposition parties call the program, officially known as ”Sex, irrespective of disability,” immoral.
”We spend a large proportion of our taxes rescuing women from prostitution. But at the same time we officially encourage carers to help contact with prostitutes,” said Social-Democrat spokesperson Kristen Brosboel.
Responded Stig Langvad of the country’s Disabled Association: ”The disabled must have the same possibilities as other people. Politicians can debate whether prostitution should be allowed in general, instead of preventing only the disabled from having access to it.”
On probably the second day of class this year Xenia told me she needed ten minutes of video to take into her English class that would “get people talking.” She asked me for suggestions. It’s 58 minutes, not 10, but we came up with Innocents Betrayed. She said she could just select 10 minutes of the video to show. We watched it together and timed various segments. She decided just the first ten minutes would work. I wanted her to skip one of the genocides and show the part about the kids in California who were killed by a guy with a pitchfork in their home. All the kids knew how to shoot but couldn’t get access to any of the guns because California state law requires “safe storage” to keep guns away from unsupervised kids. But it was Xenia’s decision and she figured showing a few more million dead because of gun control would be sufficient to start people talking without getting into little kids with hundreds of stab wounds.
Her class should be over by now and I haven’t got any calls from the school to pick her up so my guess is things couldn’t have gone too badly for her. I’ll update this posting later today when I get a full report from her.
Next on our list of projects is to take my picture from the fair and the KING 5 Boomershoot video to her chemistry teacher and suggest a field trip on “exothermic reactions”. In an “isn’t it a small world” twist her chemistry teacher’s husband supplies the portable toilets each year for Boomershoot. Also, Barb and I graduated from Orofino High School with him.
Update 1: Xenia called a few minutes ago on another topic and I asked how the English class went. She said when she turned off the video it was silent for 30 seconds. They didn’t know what to say. She didn’t have much time and I’ll get a further update after school. She seem pretty happy with the results though.
Update 2: Xenia reported most people didn’t talk. The instructor didn’t commit himself either way. Many of the kids didn’t get the connection between lack of guns and genocide, “The government would have just done it anyway.” One suggested that taking of the guns was as much a symbolic thing as much as anything, “Maybe because they didn’t have guns they were more likely to feel helpless.” Even if they weren’t totally convinced at least they had some doubt put in their minds about the wisdom of gun control. Video can be a much more powerful media than the written word and JPFO did a great job on this video, although I do agree that the “gun-control enables genocide” could have been expressed better than just giving examples of when that happened. They should also of said that genocide has never happened without there being gun control in place. And more examples of where a relatively small number of private citizens with guns saved themselves (or at least significantly delayed their demise) from government sponsored murder would be welcomed.
Below is a graph of the traffic on my blog for the past week. As I mentioned yesterday there was a spike in activity. If I get much more I’ll need something more than a 2400 baud modem to handle it*.
* No. My websites are not actually connected via a 2400 baud modem. The web server, on top of my gun safe, is connected via a 768K DSL line.
We celebrated Xenia’s birthday yesterday. It was nice to have all three kids in the house for a few hours. Here is one of the pictures I took:
Xenia has information and pictures on her Live Journal.
I haven’t been following the scandal related to the University of Idaho’s University Place project. So I don’t really know what to make of this Google query that showed up in the list of referral links for my blog:
grand jury witness list University of Idaho Foundation (www.google.com)
It could have been almost anyone looking for more information on the topic. It could be a reporter. It could be a lawyer. It could be a “hit man” (or is that synonymous with “lawyer”?) As near as I can tell they are located in North Carolina.
Anytime someone is looking for testifying witnesses I start hearing alarms go off in my head. Any suggestions as to what, if anything, I should do?
I made an animated gif of the blasting of the big rock in our field the other day. The combustion products from the gun show up in the second frame, then dirt is thrown up around the muzzle, then the detonation occurs. This gives you an indication of the time delay between the bullet leaving the muzzle and the detonation of the explosion. I was 127 yards from the explosion. Just a little closer than I really should have been–there were clods of dirt that landed behind us. My brother moved behind my van as the objects fell from the sky. He was concerned they were rocks.
Before.
The jugs have water in them. Except for the red targets all the explosives are under the water jugs and dirt.
After.
Here is a picture of one of the larger plastic water jug remnants:
Click on the pictures for a high resolution version.
See also my previous posts on this topic:
Rocks and explosives video
Little rocks from big rocks and explosives
Earlier this week Xenia and I entered a bunch of photos in the Latah County Fair. She entered most of these. I entered this one:
All got blue ribbons except for three of Xenia’s. The Blue Fairy on the next to the last row got a white ribbon, the one of the cat and the flower got a red ribbon, and one was entered in a different contest which hasn’t been decided yet. She is very talented. Barb and I went to the open house at the High School last night and got to meet all her teachers. She is taking “Yearbook” this year and is one of the photographers. The teacher held up last year’s “Inner Visions” (once a year school publication for outstanding literary works) with this picture of Xenia’s on the cover. We are very proud.
I enjoyed hanging around my picture at the fair last night and listening to the comments of the people when they noticed it. I think I’ll do that some more today…
I had a phone interview this morning with a software company. It seemed to go very well. My skills in the area they need help with are a bit rusty but I know I could do the job. They said they are having trouble finding qualified people so my guess is that I’m in the running for at least a little while. I probably won’t hear back from them for at least a week and then from there even if things went perfectly it would be at least several more weeks before I could actually start work.
Xenia, Xenia’s John, and James were really excited about the job possibility and not just that it’s a job but because what I would be doing in this job (details after it is decided one way or the other). Barb is less enthusiastic because it is out of state. I share Barb’s concern on that issue but it is the number one company I would like to develop software for. That makes up for a lot.
