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.
Category Archives: Home Life
Our Jeep trip through the mountains
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
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
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
My brother found another picture of his daughter at West Point. She is in the foreground just right of center.
Testing an UltiMAK prototype
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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.
Xenia is my wittiest child
Of course she is sitting on my lap as I write this too.
Her cat, wanting attention came up to us meowing and then started “sharpening his claws” on my knee. “OWWW!!!”. Xenia started giggling. I glared. Her mood suddenly became somber, grim even, and barked, “Bad cat!”.
This was all the more funny because it isn’t the first time she has done something like that. Another time she was telling me about how her cat talks to her. “Oh? What does he say?” “He thinks you’re stupid.” Glare and the mouth opens to return her to her proper place of respect for her parental units. Before the first word can get out she blurts out, “But I don’t believe him.” She saved her ass. Damn, she is fast.
My last platelet donation
I had problems the first time. It was a little better the second time, but it still wasn’t good. Once when Barb and I were driving by the Red Cross Donation center I pointed it out to her and said that was where she could pick up my body if they managed to kill me. She didn’t think my joke was nearly as funny as I did.
This morning I donated for the third time. The nurses/technicians seemed to recognize me and remember notes they had made on me from months ago (I think the last time was October). Not a good sign I suppose. They started out really slow and gave me lots of Tums (for the calcium which mitigates the problems with the anti-coagulants) but after a few minutes I started having the tingling in my lips and they slowed things down even more and gave me more Tums. Every 30 minutes or so it would happen again. Then I started sneezing. One of the people came over and asked if I just wanted to call it quits. I said it was just allergies. She said it was one of the symptoms. I only had about another 20 minutes left and I said to go ahead and finish up. I made it through and as I was being disconnected they told me that it would be best if I didn’t try to donate again. She thanked me for persisting but said it’s hard on me physically and probably mentally as well. Some people don’t have problems with donations of any type, some donate whole blood without any problems (I am one) and can’t donate platelets and some people can donate platelets but have problems with whole blood. She recommended I stick with just donating whole blood. I’m okay with that and, of course, so is Barb.
Birthday party pictures
Visit to Teakean Butte and the Taj Mahal
Barb and I approached the butte from three different sides without luck. Barb commented that this was a Ry type adventure. Those that know Ry will understand. We had driven by a driveway with a name I recognized as a Boomershooter so we turned around and went to ask his advice. Jim told us we couldn’t get to the top without crossing some private property that did not belong to him. He suggested we walk most of the way to the top on his property so we accepted his offer. Elevation wise we were within about 600 feet before we turned around and came back.
Pictures are here. The weather was just a bit unsettled but pleasant enough for a hike. It made for some nice cloud pictures. If you know what to look for in the first four pictures you can see the Boomershoot site.
We went on to the Taj Mahal to test the new mix. The material did not turn into a solid mass like some of the previous mixes had. It was just slightly caked however. Overall it looked good:
Another really good sign was that the small sample I had left out had not spontaneously combusted when it was exposed to sunlight for a week:
Next I fired a shot from the .22 that should have hit with a velocity of about 1170 fps. It did not detonate the target but it did tip it over. I loaded the high velocity ammo and shot it three times on the edge. It did not detonate. I put the target upright and it then detonated on the first shot. Estimated target velocity–1540 fps. The edge hits were going through three layers of cardboard so I suppose it’s possible that the extra cardboard slowed down the little 38 grain pellets enough to cause the failures. At this time I am pleased with the new mix and packaging. It’s rare that we will ever store things more than a week and if it still detonates with a 38 grain bullet at 1540 fps that is probably good enough. In another couple of weeks I’ll do the final tests.
We stopped by the new shooting positions we created last fall and looked at the grass Ry had planted. It seems to be doing well. In another six weeks (Boomershoot 2005) I expect it will be usable.
Badger Mountain hike
Barb, Xenia, Sara, and I went for a hike on Badger Mountain today and we took a few pictures. The girls wimped out part way up. Barb and I went to the top and came back down a different route. There was supposed to be a geocache up there but we were unable to find it.
I made a phone call and got someone arrested
Monday evening a friend of Xenia’s sent me a couple chat sessions she had with a 14 year-old boy in Tennessee with a somewhat cryptic message:
If you need information I will give it to you.
It seemed very odd. It’s extremely rare that I get email from her and in general she seems to be afraid of me. I started reading the chat session and realized this was something very important. I called my daughter to see what she knew about the situation and after chatting with her a little while called her friend’s father. Basically he knew all about the situation but didn’t quite know how to execute on the appropriate plan of action. I asked if he wanted to me to handle it and he said that would be fine.
I composed the following email (with names and other identifying information removed) that night.
The following message and attachment was sent to me by XXX XXX who is a friend of my 16 year-old daughter. The attachment contains two instant message sessions between XXX and 14 year-old YYY YYYY in —, TN.
XXX is also about 16 years old. She lives with her father, AAA, in Moscow Idaho. Her phone number is: 111-111-1111
Some of the more interesting bits of information in the attachment are the following messages from YYY:
Mm, and school has been taxing, what with the tauntings and whatnot of my peers. Ah, well. Let them feed my anger all until senior year. Joke’ll be on them.
Hahaha. -Strokes all of my school blue prints.-
I’ve not said any details, and if I did shoot a school up.. I wouldn’t come out alive.
I would kill that bitch, if I could make that detour before sending the school to Hell.
Columbine’s gonna’ have NOTHING on me.
Additional information XXX provided for me:
Firstname Middlename Lastname
Home: 731-222-2222
Home Address:
— — —
—-, TN 00000
E-mail: —-
Birthdate: —My cell phone number is 208-301-4254. My work phone number is 509-375-2201.
Please don’t hesitate to call me if I can help in any way.
-joe-
The next morning I called the number I found for the police in that town to try and get an email address. The lady that answered responded with an appropriate amount of concern but said she didn’t think the address was in town and that I should call the sheriff’s office. She gave me the number and said to press “15” when I got the automated receptionist. I did that and it ran a number of times and then transferred to what the machine said was the receptionist. That rang a number of times before it said to try later. I called again and this time listened to my options for who to contact. It turns out “15” was for the prison tower. “20” sounded like a better option which was the detectives office. Another woman answered and listened for about 30 seconds before telling me, “I’m going to let you talk to my chief.” Fine. Three times I get to tell this story and all I really want to do is get an email address. But the chief came on and he listened carefully. I finished my story and asked for an email address. He gave it to me without any hesitation and I asked him to send me a confirming email if he got it. Otherwise I was going to call back in 10 minutes or so. He agreed and three minutes later I received this:
Message received. Am contacting investigators immediately. Thanks for your help. Will advise if further assistance needed.
About 40 minutes after the first message from the chief I received the following:
Subject well know by school officials. Officers on the way to take him into custody. Will advise.
A little less than five hours later and I received this:
Subject is custody of Juvenile Court. Mental health counselors and parents are also involved. Thanks for your concern. You may still get a call f/ one of the investigators.
Then a couple days later I received this:
Just a final follow up;
YYY has been charged in Juvenile Court. He has been removed from the school system and ordered to counseling pending the hearing. He is considered a realistic threat. Thanks again for your quick thinking and concern.
Game over — I hope. Xenia’s friend is apparently a “little freaked out” but realizes she did the right thing. Xenia seems to think it was no big deal. Her friend had a problem and Dad took care of it for her.