I just received email from a producer at the Seattle TV station KING asking about Boomershoot 2005.  I told them we would be thrilled to have their attendance.  Here is their home page.  The producer is John Stofflet.  Does anyone have an idea as to whether they will be friendly or hostile?

After reading the email to her this morning Barb asked me if there really are people that stupid.  I don’t know about stupid but he certainly is clueless.

I was out running errands when Kim called a little before 19:30 to announce she had arrived safely.  There was lots of laughing and giggling with Kayla in the background.  Barb and I will sleep better tonight.

As of 18:15 Kim had passed San Pablo Bay.

I ordered the boxes to be used for the medium and large sized targets for Boomershoot 2005.  Just 50 each to test and make sure everything is going to work.  Assuming they work as planned I’ll buy enough for the entire event.  Since these are standard off the shelf items there are no significant lead times and zero setup charges–contrary to last years target bodies.

The medium size targets are 6 x 6 x 1 inches.  The large targets are 7 3/8 x 7 3/8 x 1 3/8 inches.  All dimensions are interior.

I just called her.  Says she is doing fine.  She had some stop and go traffic for a while but made it past Sacramento.  She seemed to be in a much better mood this time.

PICATINNY, N.J. — Mar. 04, 2005 — The Army has approved its new long-range .50 caliber sniper rifle, the M107, for full materiel release to Soldiers in the field.

 

…

The M107 was funded as a Soldier Enhancement Program to type classify a semi-automatic .50 caliber rifle for the Army and other military services. It underwent standard type classification in August 2003. A production contract was awarded to Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, Inc., Murfreesboro, Tenn., the following month.

It’s a bit hard to see from the picture shown here but I expect the M-107 is very similar to the gun shown here at Boomershoot 2001:

More from the Army website:

The weapon is designed to effectively engage and defeat materiel targets at extended ranges including parked aircraft, command, control and communications, computers, intelligence sites, radar sites, ammunition, petroleum, oil and lubricant sites and various lightly armored targets.

In a counter-sniper role, the system offers longer standoff ranges and increased terminal effects against snipers using smaller caliber weapons.

The complete system includes: the rifle itself, a detachable ten-round magazine,a variable-power day optic sight, a transport case, a tactical soft case, cleaning and maintenance equipment, a detachable sling, an adjustable bipod and manuals.

The Army plans to modify the M107 in the future by adding a suppressor to greatly reduce flash, noise and blast signatures.

“No one said to take the San Francisco exit on 80.  They just said follow 80.”

Kim is not happy.

A while back I reported a video I had worked on was going to The Whitehouse.  It apparently hasn’t made it that far yet but my co-worker “from downstairs“ just popped her head in the door of my office to report the customer showed it to his boss and was “dancing up and down with joy” about it.  Everyone is very, very pleased so far.

I finally put up Kim’s final target from Monday afternoon.  According to this site she will need to increase her speed by a factor of about 2.4 to qualify and will need to become just a little more accurate all while using a full power handgun instead of a .22.  I expect once a week for a year should do it.

Last night after Kim went to bed I continued to work on her navigation problem.  I started guessing alternate street names and got a hit in a city just outside of Santa Cruz.  The street Kim was to take as an exit off of highway 17 was close by so everything matched.  Kim apparently misunderstood the street name.  She had one letter wrong.  I sent her a message on her cell phone to call me before she left.  She called me a few minutes ago and I gave her the MapPoint directions which avoid I-80/880 through San Francisco which Kayla had given her and instead routed her south on I-5/205/580/880 to highway 17.  We also discussed how she should leave the GPS unit on to enable back tracking should she need that and finally I gave her the lat/long of Kayla’s house.  I think I have prepared her as best I can now.

Kim was supposed to call when she arrived at Aunt Susan’s place near Sacramento. ETA was 18:30. At 19:13 I called her. She said she got turned around and got lost for a while but was on a particular street that meant she only had to make one more turn to be on the street that Aunt Susan lived on. I figured five, maybe 10 minutes maximum and she would be there. At 19:21 I received a call from Kim. Happy moment! Whoops, celebration started too soon. She was lost worse than before. The street she was on changed into some highway and she didn’t have a clue which way to go. From her description of how she got there I couldn’t find the highway she was on. I had her give me her GPS coordinates, used my calculator to convert them to a matching format for Microsoft MapPoint and found her location on the map. Some way or another she had been going west when she thought she was going east. For the next 39 minutes I navigated as she drove. At 19:29 call waiting said Barb was trying to call me. I ignored her as Kim was going through one of many tough intersections. Kim then reported Barb was trying to call her. We agreed to ignore her for a while. Kim ended up in the wrong lane once and was forced to make a turn she didn’t want to. No problem, she took the next easy turn into a residential area on Winding Creek Road and I navigated her past Random Lane (honest!) back to the street she wanted to be on bypassing that tough intersection. At 19:45 Barb called again. Kim had it easy for a while and I took the call, quickly said things were under control and to leave us alone for a while. Barb wanted to offer suggestions and I wasn’t particularly polite in my response. I switched back to Kim and continued to navigate for her. At 20:00 she recognized Aunt Susan’s house. I called Barb and reported the safe arrival.

Tomorrow Kim drives to her friends place in, supposedly, Santa Cruz. Kim just called a few minutes ago with the address but that address and other streets with the directions she has don’t show up on MapPoint. It’s going to be an interesting day for both of us tomorrow.  GPS, MapPoint, and cellphones will get us through.

I just got a call from our oldest daughter–Kim.  She just entered CA from Oregon and is on schedule to be at her Aunt Susan’s place near Sacremento by tonight.  She spent yesterday afternoon and last night with me in Richland before continueing her trip to visit her friend in Santa Cruz.  She quit her job on Sunday and on Monday got her old job back from her previous employer.

While visiting me in Richland we went to the range to start her training towards meeting the handgun proficiency requirements of a being a Federal Air Marshal.  You can see a few pictures in the photo album I created to track her progress.  I have another target I still need to take a picture of which should go up tonight.

Ry, his three kids, and I are going to do some tests with explosives tomorrow.  Lots and lots of experiments to do.  Anyone that wants to stop by the Taj Mahal and watch and talk with us is welcome to do so.  Directions are here.  Give me a call on my cell phone (208-301-4254) first so I know to expect you.  If I don’t answer leave a message and I’ll get back to you with 30 minutes or so.  Don’t show up unexpected or you might not like the welcome you receive.  I get a little edgy when people unknown to me approach when I’m working with explosives.

Lots and lots of MSM stuff as well as still more blogger stuff out there about what Bradley Smith had to say in CNET about the implications of the McCain-Feingold act.  I just can’t get too worked up over it.  And not just because it’s totally unenforceable.  I’m even skeptical that they will even try to regulate the blogs.  Surely they aren’t that stupid.  And beyond that it could just be a big hoax to discredit bloggers.  Probably not, but it could be.  People believe what they want to believe.  And the bloggers want to believe they are so important that the government and/or MSM has to shut them down to get on with “business as usual“.  So the bloggers get all bent out of shape and then Smith is found to have never said any such thing or was high on crack the time he said it or suffering from a brain tumor the size of a grapefruit, whatever.  Where are the interviews with the other commissioners on this topic?

Oops.  I’m too late, others are throwing ice water on the fire already.

Well… Not really.  Although there are some people with rather high emotions about this.  Here is a snippet:

If Congress doesn’t change the law, what kind of activities will the FEC have to target?
We’re talking about any decision by an individual to put a link (to a political candidate) on their home page, set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet.

Again, blogging could also get us into issues about online journals and non-online journals. Why should CNET get an exemption but not an informal blog? Why should Salon or Slate get an exemption? Should Nytimes.com and Opinionjournal.com get an exemption but not online sites, just because the newspapers have a print edition as well?

Why wouldn’t the news exemption cover bloggers and online media?
Because the statute refers to periodicals or broadcast, and it’s not clear the Internet is either of those. Second, because there’s no standard for being a blogger, anyone can claim to be one, and we’re back to the deregulated Internet that the judge objected to. Also I think some of my colleagues on the commission would be uncomfortable with that kind of blanket exemption.

So if you’re using text that the campaign sends you, and you’re reproducing it on your blog or forwarding it to a mailing list, you could be in trouble?
Yes. In fact, the regulations are very specific that reproducing a campaign’s material is a reproduction for purpose of triggering the law. That’ll count as an expenditure that counts against campaign finance law.

This is an incredible thicket. If someone else doesn’t take action, for instance in Congress, we’re running a real possibility of serious Internet regulation.

Enough to make your blood boil, right?  Except it will be impossible to enforce.  I can register a domain with a fake name and address in a foreign country, host the domain in still another country, then post anonymously to that website with an IP address from a third country, all without leaving my little town in Idaho.  Oh, and the traffic from my bedroom to the other side of the international borders is encrypted.  So how are they going to regulate that?  What authority do they have to regulate websites and Internet traffic of foreign countries?

At another dinner, a year or two ago, with the same friend from last week I had expressed my concerns about how the internet and computers could be a real threat to freedom.  The sniffing of your email traffic, the websites you browse, the things you buy, the people you communicate with, far, far too much information about you is known from your internet traffic.  He dismissed it by rolling his eyes, a wave of his hand and the statement, “Computers and the internet are a far bigger problem for the government than they are for the individual.”  Because to him this was so obvious I decided to think on it rather than push the subject with him.  In the time since then I’ve come to conclude he is right.  Yes, it’s a problem for the individual but it’s a bigger problem for the government.  Look at what bloggers have done in the past couple of years.  Look at the communication we get back from the war front.  Look at the bind the FEC is getting into trying to regulate us. 

Two lesson are important here:

1. The free flow of information is almost impossible to control now.
2. Freedom flourishes when you have the free flow of information. 

Fascists everywhere know the second lesson and are rapidly learning the first.  It won’t be long before the slow learners at the FEC, in the courts, and in our legislatures grasp both.

Update:  See also Kim du Toit’s response.
Update2: Geek with a .45 is organizing the insurrection.

I’ve long a been a critic of airport “security” measures.  But I think the Federal Air Marshal concept has a lot of validity.  I have reservations about the constitutionality of government supplied security for private enterprise, but the functionality of having highly trained, undercover, armed guards seems to be beyond rational criticism.  And of course if something should work you can probably count on the government finding a way to mess it up.  The FAM program is no exception to this general rule.  Michelle Malkin has been following the mess the program is in and reports the potential for Director Thomas Quinn to soon be fired or to resign under pressure.  My favorite option, allowing all passengers to carry defensive weapons on board any flight, isn’t likely to happen anytime soon and having an effective FAM program is probably the most politically acceptable of the various potentially effective options for airplane security.  The sooner we can get the FAM program to be effective the better.  Besides, my 18 year old daughter says she wants to be FAM.  And although she can shoot a handgun she isn’t anywhere near up to the level she needs to be; FAM handgun qualifications are the most demanding of any law enforcement agency in the country.  We are going to the range on Sunday to start her education.  I expect it will take a year to get her up to speed.  She is an incredibly strong willed person and if she really wants this I know she has the physical and mental strength to accomplish it.  We’ll see what happens in the next few months as I chart her progress.

I am always looking for better explosives for the Boomershoot and the other day someone suggested nitroglycerine.  I told him no, it’s just too hazardous to work with.  While following up on idea for something else I ran across this story which I have to share:

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, liquid nitroglycerine was used for “shooting” oil wells to stimulate production. The productive formation might have a large porosity, so it held a lot of oil, but might be relatively impermeable, or “tight,” so the oil would not flow into the small hole with sufficient speed. In limestone, hydrochloric acid was often used, but this was not useful in sandstones. By exploding from 2 to 200 quarts of nitroglycerine, the rock could be fractured for a considerable distance, greatly enlarging the surface through with the oil would flow, equivalent to making a much larger hole. The “shooter” drove alone in a Ford coupe, with the “soup” in the back where the rumble seat used to be, from his source of supply. Nitroglycerine could not be commercially shipped, of course. He poured the “soup” into tin “torpedoes” and lowered them one by one, each fitting into the top of the one below. On the top went a time fuze that ticked away and exploded the charge at a reasonable interval. Then everyone filtered back to the well from their places of refuge. Occasionally, all did not go well, but the “shooters” were well paid and their widows had insurance. There are few graves of “shooters.”

Kim du Toit just pledged the following:

When these boys come home, and I pray they will all come home, I will be there at Ft. Lewis to welcome them. 

Any of you who want to join me on that happy day are welcome to do so. No, I don’t know when it is: maybe later this year, maybe early next year—but I will be there when it happens, regardless of personal inconvenience.

These boys have become our boys, and that’s all there is to it.

I’m pledging the same with the possible exception of pressing government business I need to attend to.  Please join us if you can.