Category Archives: Home Life

Stuff going on in my personal life.

Rifle postal match results

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I suck.

As I stated the other day I’m participating in the postal match put on by Analog Kid over at Random Nuclear Strikes.  I didn’t even both to score the target.  But here are the results of the first contest:

I was using a AR-15 carbine.  The larger holes around the orange dots were from something else a few years ago.  Just the smaller holes in the 8.5″ x 11″ paper are important.  I got a few points but hardly enough to matter.  Another couple additional data points–I started with an empty gun, loaded magazine on the table in front of me and from the time I moved to pick up the gun until the last shot was 55 seconds.

Pathetic. 10 shots from 50 yards, “rapid fire”, open sights, center-fire rifle, offhand.  I have hit 18″ targets 7 times out of 10 at 200 yards offhand before (“infinite time between shots). This is terrible performance. I need to practice more.

Updated web sites

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For local people only.

I had severely neglected a couple web sites starting sometime before the Boomershoot and just now got them all up to date.  Match results in particular were way behind.  That has been fixed.  Check out the following for new stuff:

Lewiston Pistol Club
Lewis Clark Wildlife Club

Barb gets a new job for 3X her old pay

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I can announce it now.  She should have turned in her resignation at her old job 30 minutes ago.

Barb has comes through for our family again.  Numerous times in the past I have quit my steady paying job to work for a startup, some of them my own, other times someone else’s and Barb had to pick up the slack in our finances.  Our move to Moscow in fact was because Barb got a job here for 2X her pay in Sandpoint.  And it is that same employer who is now is going to pay her 3X what she was earning in Colfax.  She is a hot commodity right now and we have suspected she was underpaid for a quite a while but we didn’t know the extent.  It’s not quite as blatant as you might think because she was working part time at both the Sandpoint and Colfax jobs.  But even ignoring the benefits she now gets the raw dollars per hour increase was 15%, plus the sign-on bonus, plus the $1600/year educational stipend.  It’s great to be married to someone that can more than pull her own weight when needed.

James and Xenia call home

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James and Xenia left town last week just as Kim was moving back in (merely a coincidence).  James went ‘camping’ with friends at some cabin in Oregon.  Xenia went to summer camp and is then off to Montana with her boyfriend and parents for a couple weeks.

James called and left a message on my cell phone while we were in the mountains far from any cell phone service.  The message was, “Who’s taking care of the dogs?”  Nothing about if we survived our Jeep adventure.  Nothing about how he misses us.  Nothing about how he hates the outdoors unless it is with someone other than his parents.  Nope.  He wanted to know about the dogs.

Xenia is not allowed to use her cell phone at camp.  However she snuck off to her cabin for a few minutes on Tuesday and called–to ask about her cat.

Breast cancer info

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Last night I read this news:

…the link between breast cancer and bras is slightly more convincing than the link between smoking and lung cancer.  They speculate that the cause is restriction of lymph circulation and resulting long-term exposure of cells to toxins, but whether this is the true mechanism or not is pretty irrelevant to the facts above.

I’ve been telling Barb to forget the bra for over 30 years now.  No luck.  Pointing this news out to her last night was no more convincing.  [heavy sigh]

I found this news on the web site of our ISP in a short article by Monica.  Monica has long been someone I found exceptional attractive.  Sure, she is probably as old as I am but she has the body shape that never fails to get my attention.  She appears to be is almost painfully shy but I enjoy talking to her.  I wonder if she has taken the advice on the bra more to heart that Barb…

I needed to talk to her about something today anyway.  I’ll check things out while I’m there.

New geocache

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While we were out in the mountains we placed a geocache.  The listing was just approved.

Kim moved back in

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Exactly one year after she moved out she moved back in.  Time and again she helped ‘friends’ with rent, food, and bail money.  Most of them were not really friends as we know them in our family.  It’s been painful for her and us to see her in so much pain but sometimes you have to learn lessons the hard way.  It’s nice to see her around the house even with the ‘scars’ she carries from the last year.

Our Jeep trip through the mountains

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The pictures are up and tell most of the story.  Basically we went directly east from Moscow to within about six miles from the Montana border and then went north to Superior Montana.  We probably could have done the trip in a two wheel drive car but it would have been a bit risky in places.  Outstandingly beautiful country.  From Superior we went southeast to Missoula and then back west via Highway 12.  We spent just one night, the 4th, in a cabin at Three Rivers Resort.  The others were in the broken down (we didn’t know it until we went to zip the door shut) tent.

Here is a sample of the pictures:


The road


The view

Last post for a few days

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Barb and I are taking the Jeep deep into the woods of Idaho for the next few days.  We hope to exit in someplace Montana sometime on Sunday or Monday.  Obviously there won’t be any posting until we reach civilization again.  The ‘compound’ here in Moscow will be guarded by one of our adult children with training on both handguns and rifles and a goodly supply of ammo for them.  There is a 12-gauge shotgun and ammo as well should there be a need for further “discouragement” of goblins.  And if they wanted to get a little creative they could break out my “chemistry set” since they have experience with that too.  But I would frown on that since the AN supply is limited and it would be a hassle fixing the craters and windows when we get back.

While I’m gone remember what the 4th of July is all about.

Most everything is here

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I unpacked all the boxes I received from PNNL the other day.  Almost everything appears to be there. They even returned an almost empty shampoo bottle and an empty baby food jar that once upon a time had some change in it.  The first box I opened had the following items in it which I figured would be a high priority item to retain “for evidence” or something.  A 100 yard target and a 500 yard target:


Click here for a high resolution version.


500 yard target.  Click here for a high resolution version.


100 yard target.  Click here for a high resolution version.

The second box I opened had the items I most wanted right away–my Boomershoot hat and HP-48 calculator.  And shortly thereafter I found my collection of books on improvised explosives such as Ragnar’s Guide to Home and Recreational Use of High Explosives which I also thought might be something they would want to hold on to. 

It’s possible there is something I have forgotten about but right now the only thing I didn’t find was some paperwork for applying to Oregon for a Concealed Carry License.  That was in the filing cabinet they claimed they didn’t have a key for.  If I don’t get it it’s not a big deal.  I think I have copies here anyway.

Now I have several garbage sacks filled with Styrofoam peanuts to give to UltiMAK.

Another picture of Amy at West Point

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My brother found another picture of his daughter at West Point.  She is in the foreground just right of center.

Testing an UltiMAK prototype

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The UltiMAK office is just a few hundred yards away from my house and I have been hanging out there some recently.  They asked me if I would like to test out a prototype scope mount for them.  They supplied the gun and the ammo I just needed to supply the trigger time.  Yesterday, after taking care of my license to manufacture explosives renewal, I went to the range.  Below are some sample pictures–see the rest here.


A new alloy was being tested on the scope mount. No anodizing on the prototype, just the bare aluminum.


The view from 106 yards away.


About three fourths of the way through the tests the target stand on the right blew over and I took a picture of the targets before I continued.

I was shooting the targets in a quasi-random order. For each five shot magazine I would put at least one bullet on each target before shooting a target a second time. Each shot took, on the average, about one second from 106 yards away.  Each magazine change took about seven seconds.  I went through about 450 rounds nearly as fast as I could reload the magazines and get the gun back on target between shots and magazine changes.

The end result was the prototype worked fine.  It got very hot though.  Even the scope got hot enough that I couldn’t keep my hand on it.  Lyle, at UltiMAK, told me that there have been times during their tests they got the scope hot enough that rain drops boiled when they hit it.  Of course these are intended to be torture tests rather than reality testing.

They really don’t like me

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I received my personal belongs from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory yesterday.  I haven’t opened everything up yet–I’ve been way to busy with other stuff.  But it’s clear they really don’t like me.

In addition to taking three weeks to ship me my stuff they overloaded two of the boxes and they were falling apart on receipt.  Add in they didn’t send me my performance reviews (and some other favorable material) it’s pretty obvious they don’t want me to be having any happy days anytime soon.

One more post then I’m going off to the range soon to put some holes in some cardboad of my own.

See also:

I was fired yesterday
Update on being fired
Termination report delayed
What did I expect?
No performance reviews

Update: It doesn’t appear anything was damaged by the poor packing.

Amy made it to West Point

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My brother sent this email out to the relatives about his daughter:

Amy flew to Newark Sunday and called us after she reached the hotel in
Newark.  We haven’t heard from her directly since, but we did find her
picture on the internet, so we know she made it to West Point.

In the following link: http://www.usma.edu/Class/2009/R-Day/RDay05.htm

click on image #145.  Amy is the one with the messy hair.  Judging from
the other pictures, they have been standing in lines all day, so she
doesn’t look real happy, but at least we know she is okay.

Doug

Ry returns

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Friday night Barb and I left Moscow to bring Ry back to Moscow from the Seattle area.  His van died and he wanted his Jeep to replace it.  We arrived about 00:30 Saturday.  Ry and I talked to 03:45 or so.  Ry told me his story of getting fired once for taking a bunch of people to the range to go shooting.  For a week afterward everyone talked about the trip to the range and how great it was–except for one gun-hating bigot who made a complaint to HR about Ry creating a “hostile work environment.”  Since Ry was on contract and not an actual employee they told him the his contract wouldn’t be renewed because of the complaint.  Anyone else have similar stories to tell?  I’m thinking of collecting them and putting together a magazine article…

Barb and I got up about 9:00 and found a park to take a walk in.  We picked up Ry, went to Dixie’s Barbeque for lunch.  Barb “Met the Man” and was not pleased.  That was the first hot sauce she has ever tasted that she didn’t like.  We headed back to Moscow about 14:00 or so.  Ry took this picture and made the post from the back seat as we were driving up the mountain toward Snoqualmie pass.

We arrived back in Moscow about 20:00 or so.  I dropped off Barb at home and Ry and I took daughter Kim’s ATM car (a car you pay no more than your withdrawal limit from your ATM machine) back to where she bought it on Friday.  Ry drove behind me and said it was like behind behind a skywriting plane at an air-show or maybe a fumigation machine.  The car ran fairly well when we bought it on Thursday but it basically was disintegrating before our eyes on Friday.

I took Ry to his place and with a surprising small amount of work got his Jeep to start after a year of sitting in one spot.  There was still lots of work to be done on it and he needed to replace a hard drive on the computer we use for all our websites and email.  He came back to my place and it took us (him mostly) four hours to get the data moved over and everything up and running again.

I took Ry home, came home, and crawled into bed beside Barb at 02:08.

At 9:02:56 Kim called waiting to get another car.  By 11:15 she was driving her “new” car.  It cost 4.5 X what the first one did but maybe it will last more than a day this time.

I stopped by Ry’s place on the way back and woke him up at 11:25.  At about 14:00 Ry stopped by our house on his way out of town to drop off the jumper cables he had borrowed.  He said his van drives like a race car compared to the Jeep (the steering “floats”).  It used to almost be able to make it to Pullman from his place (less than 15 miles) without overheating too seriously.  I helped him fill up two five gallon cans of water to replenish his Jeep on the drive back to the Seattle area.  His trip to Seattle is likely to be ‘interesting’.  He is about 2 hours into his adventure now.

Good luck Ry!

Update: He picked up some onions in Royal City for Dixie’s, through Ellensburg, and at last report reached Issaquah.  He really should be home by now.

What did I expect?

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I received a FedEx package from PNNL today.  It purported to contain my personnel file.  But neither Barb nor I could find any of my performance reviews in it.  The one thing I really wanted.  I’ll look again tomorrow when I have some more time.  Barb said, “So what did you expect?  Did you really think they would give you what you wanted?“ 

As far as the policy and procedures manual they said one doesn’t really exist.  It’s on line and “access is limited“.  How convenient.  They say, “You didn’t follow the rules.  You’re fired.“  I ask, “What were the rules?“  They answer, “We aren’t telling.“

I had a very, very busy day today.  Daughter Kim was having a convergence of crisis’s and I spent nearly the entire day helping with her problems.  Things are mostly under control now.  She really needs to find better friends.

Tagged by the Book Meme

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I got tagged by reasonablenut who in tagging me said , “Joe of Boomershoot fame, just because I’m dying to know what kind of shit that guy reads”.

Hmmm… Okay.  I’m not sure it’s all that interesting but here it is:

1. Total Number of Books I Own.  [groan]  The book shelf behind me is full.  The bookshelf to my left is full and overflowing.  The bookshelf were I used to work is full (they still haven’t sent these books to me).  There are boxes in the garage with books in them.  There are books in boxes in my van which I brought back from Richland a few days ago.  There is a stack of books on the nightstand next to our bed.  I have no idea.  Hundreds?  Maybe a thousand?

2. Last Book I Bought.  It’s been a while because I’m so far behind on my book reading.  I think it was a big pile at a used book store.  It included several books on explosives including a couple on detonation theory and practice (which are at my old office at PNNL), American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us,  Dresden : Tuesday, February 13, 1945,  Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War, and probably some others which I forget at the moment.

3. Last Book I Read. The last couple books I completed were probably some on explosives detonation.  I’m currently in the middle of That’s Not What I Meant! (a book on how conversational style makes or breaks relationships),  Emotional Intelligence : Why It Can Matter More Than IQ and the germs book from above.

 4. 5 Books That Meant a Lot to Me.  How about seven?  In no particular order: Stranger in a Strange Land, Atlas Shrugged (this is my son’s favorite book), Atheism the Case Against God, Gun Control: Gateway to Tyranny,  Death by “Gun Control”, The Rape of Nanking, and Unintended Consequences.

 5. Tag 5 People.  Musings of the Commando Kumquat, Silens Refero Lamentari, Periodic Journal of my wanderings, and Mindless Bit Spew. Yeah, I’m wimping out with only four.

Termination report delayed

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I was going to release my report on the investigation which lead to my recent termination at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) but a friend suggested it might be to my advantage to wait.  They had some very good points so I am holding off for a while.  Also the report isn’t really complete without my personnel file.  I have requested that and will include it before I release the report.  All of you who have the URL to the current report please continue to keep it private, hold off on the letters to your congress critters, the press releases, etc.  The end result will be better for everyone if things are done correctly.  That will take some more time.  How much time is an interesting question…

It turns out although it’s been two weeks since I was terminated they still haven’t sent my personal belongings from my old office.  One has to wonder what the reason for that is.  Is it because it just isn’t very high on their list of priorities?  They are very short on office space so it’s not like they don’t have at least some motivation to clear it out.  One amusing possibility which crossed my mind is that they fear it is booby-trapped (it’s not–or at least not that I know of).  The only thing I really want out of there right away is my Boomershoot hat and even that isn’t that big of a deal.

Another thing I requested in my letter to PNNL was a copy of the policy and procedures manual.  Someone recently paraphrased Ayn Rand’s famous quote and told me they viewed PNNL’s policies in the same light–something to be enforced as desired to crack down on people they wanted to get rid of.  I don’t remember it being quite that bad although I remember discussing things with others that just didn’t make sense, things that you couldn’t really avoid doing if you wanted to do your job in an effective manner.  I’ll have to wait and see if they will even send it to me.  It is my understanding they are required to send me my personnel file but I’m not so sure about the policies and procedures manual.  And in any case there may not be any requirement on how long they wait before they send anything to me.  If my personal belongings are any indication it could be weeks.

I should just go to bed

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I worked late to get in a few extra hours and when I left work at 20:00, I could only count seven cars in the entire parking lot (probably 500 or so workers use the lot each day).  I was thinking how different “government work“ is from when I worked at Microsoft.  There I would see the lot a quarter full at midnight and probably 10% full at 2:00 AM.  When I got in the rental car (the van is at the repair shop) I discovered the power locks didn’t work.  Odd… maybe I need to have the key on.  Nope.  The engine needs to be started?  The engine won’t start–the battery was dead.  Stupid me.  I had left the headlights on.  What are my chances of finding one of those seven car owners someplace in the 500 offices and has jumper cables?  Not good.  Probably some of those cars were left there overnight with the owners on travel or otherwise not within miles of the parking lot.  I called Jason’s cell phone.  Jason lives about 15 minutes away.  It immediately went to voice mail.  I checked for his home phone number and realize I don’t have it on my cell phone.  I go back to my office and look it up.  Jason was far more cheerful than I have any right to deserve.  It’s probably a good thing Jason answered rather than his wife Jennifer.  Jennifer is home all day with four small kids and I’m sure she values adult company and Jason’s help with the kids.  I’m stealing him away from her.

Jason showed up, gave my rental car a jump, and I drove back to the house.  I should just go to bed before something else goes wrong today.

Quote of the day–Ry Jones

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I don’t understand what their problem is.  They were wearing seat belts.

Ry Jones
April 8, 2001
Regarding the wife and kids complaints about his recreational driving on gravel piles.
Ry is no longer married.