ATFE inspector Susan gave me permission to store explosives yesterday. 

Things are coming together.  The rest of the target components arrive in the next few days. 

I’m headed out to the site today to do some electrical work and prepare for building massive amounts of targets.  If the ground is dry enough I will deliver some crates and partially completed targets.

I think I will be able to get rid of the one tree that is in the way today.  This will be a big improvement in the shooting at the more distant targets.

I spent most of the afternoon yesterday gluing the lids on one end of 3” long by 4” (inside) diameter tubes.  These will become targets for Boomershoot 2004.  Daughter Xenia glued a few on too.  We almost have enough of the 4” targets now.  We only need another 65 or so and that diamter will be done.  We still need to put the ends on 380 6” diameter targets and 180 8” targets but neither the tubes nor the ends have arrived yet.  I expect they will arrive this week or next.  I need to buy some more glue too.  We have gone through a lot of it.

I’m looking forward to the magazine inspection by ATFE inspector Sue this week.  Getting that taken care of will be the completion of another essential milestone on the path to a sucessful event.  Sue has always been fun to talk to and had useful suggestions too.

http://www.lewistonpistol.org/2004/ActMar.htm

I did really, really well on one stage and it brought me up to overcome my poorer showing on the other stages.

550 pounds of KClO3 is being delivered today.  They tried to deliver it on Tuesday but Barb was in class instead of home like she usually is on Tuesdays.  Then she misplaced the delivery notification paper.  Didn’t find it until last night after I got home.  Anyway, all is well.  This is THE critical item for Boomershoot 2004.  Everything else (except the weather) has back ups if something doesn’t come through.  Once I get the KClO3 actually in my hands I’ll feel a lot more at ease.

13:00 Update — it has arrived.

It’s been months since I last had time to shoot in an IPSC match.  I don’t know the final results yet but I’m sure I did well, second place is my guess.  I’m especially pleased since it had been so long since I had been to a match.  Here is an old video of me shooting a stage:

http://www.lewistonpistol.org/2002/NoWayJoe.avi

It’s great fun.  Shoot all the “bad guys”, don’t hit any of the “good guys”, do it as fast and accurate as you can while still being safe.

I managed to keep Kim at home long enough to use the pickup for a couple hours.  I drove it about 200 yards when I noticed the oil pressure was zero.  I stopped and checked the oil.  It didn’t even touch the dipstick.  I found 1/2 quart under the seat and called Kim to bring the van so we could go get some more oil.  We filled it with oil and I showed her how to check the oil and add oil.  She claimed she didn’t know how to read the guages and that she didn’t know she needed to.  I’m sure she and I talked about it while she was in drivers ed but, in her mind, it wasn’t her fault.  There was no obvious damage done so Kim has her wheels back with instructions to check the oil EVERY time she puts gas in it.

During spring break I will get into a shop to see if they can’t get the oil leak fixed.

Ry had done some very promising tests with a new explosive mix a week ago Sunday.  It looked like there was probably a way to eliminate the potassium chlorate from our mix.  We went to the range this last Sunday to tweak it a little and improve things just enough to meet our needs.  It was a failure.  We couldn’t even reproduce his results from the previous week.  We are 8.5 weeks from the event and we are out of time to experiment.  I decided we needed to order all the materials for the stuff we knew would work and did so this morning.  Containers, chemicals, everything with a lead time associated with it is now on order.

The ATFE inspector is scheduled to come out before the end of March to “bless” the new magazine.  We will be able to store stuff in it immediately after the (successful) inspection. 

I talked to my brother Doug this evening who says a lot of the snow has melted off, so the grass we planted last fall could start growing almost anytime.  If we get some good warm weather between now and the boomershoot (May 6, 7, & 8) then the new grass on the new shooting positions might actually be useable.

I listened to part of President Bush’s speech this morning.  Interesting stuff.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,112326,00.html

I’m glad he brought up the full faith and credit issue. He probably realizes that at least parts of the “Defensive of Marriage Act” could (should in my opinion) be struck down because of the “full faith and credit” clause in the U.S. Constitution (see the text of the speech for a little bit more on this).

I can’t see getting enough support (2/3 of both houses of congress and 3/4 of the state legislatures) to pass the amendment. So… my guess is that we will soon have a bunch of same sex people holding a marriage license and demanding the “full faith and credit” clause be enforced. In the case of the California licenses there may be some problems, at least for a while if not permanent, because of the law the voters passed against gay marriage. But in Massachusetts it’s inevitable it will happen.  While it’s possible almost anything can happen in any court, include the U.S. Supreme Court, it seems to me that the full faith and credit clause will most likely be upheld.  This will then give us people with concealed weapons licenses a lot of leverage in being able carry in all states and cities in this country and with “our bucket of water“ being carried by some of the anti-gun bigots that are actively trying to restrict our civil rights.

I know… a long chain of events each dependent on all the previous events but it’s a pleasant thought – a bunch of bigots having to face their own hypocrisy.

Ralph Nader threw his hat into the presidental ring.  The Republicians are rejoicing and the Democrats are whining:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64417-2004Feb23.html

This election is going to boring.  And with a Bush sweep he will probably feel he has a mandate to implement a police state should he want it.  Heavy sigh.  At least he probably won’t make much, if any, effort to take our guns away in the near future — at least that is a partial deterrent against a police state.

Not only has MA said it will be issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples in May, but San Francisco has married thousands in the last week and Chicago might start soon:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4251510/

My take on this is that there is a good chance this issue will dominate in this year’s elections. Although I think marriage for same sex couples is the correct way to go I don’t think the population at large will stand for it yet. I think it will polarize people so much that people that would have normally not voted will register to vote and then vote against those pushing for it — Democrats. If the Republicans can find some way to appear sympathetic to same sex couples while still prohibiting their marriage they will win big.

Another coffin nail ready to be pounded into place is the illusion of the Democrats as understanding the little guy and protecting them from the rich people. Both Kerry and Edwards are multi-millionaires and don’t really have a clue of what it’s like to work at a real job for a living.

You could be seeing the final death throes of the party. I’m not at all thrilled about having a single dominate party. Lots of risk there but the destruction of the Democrats is not entirely unwelcome either. The die-hard Democrats that I know are all blatant socialists or communists — more proven deadly and failed political systems have not been invented.

Maybe the Libertarian party can fill the power vacuum that occurs if the Democrats implode. One can only hope and push a little bit here and there…

Ry showed me some neat stuff about the Google toolbar.  I generally don’t install stuff like this, but this feature was cool enough to persuade me to do it on one computer.  The PageRank is Googles rating of the importance of the page on the web.  A page that has lots of links to it from “important” sites will have a high weight itself.  This PageRank is used in generating the sort order for web searches by Google.  Here are some numbers to give you an idea.  The top rank possible is 10.

http://www.google.com 10
http://www.msn.com 9
http://www.cnn.com 9
http://www.uidaho.edu 8
http://www.nra.org 7
http://www.jointogether.org/gv 6
http://www.bradycampaign.org 6
http://www.keepandbeararms.com 6
http://www.saf.org 6
http://www.ccrkba.org 6
http://www.moscow.com 6
http://www.orofino.com 5
http://www.sailorvsthemachine.com 5
http://www.modernballistics.com 5
http://www.boomershoot.org 4
http://www.lewistonpistol.org 4
https://www.joehuffman.org 3
http://www.whenprophecyfails.org 3
http://www.scottfamilyplace.org 3
http://www.palouseshooters.org 3
http://www.jameshs.org 2
http://www.kimhs.org 2
http://www.xeniahs.org 2
http://www.wontfix.com 0
http://www.uidaho.edu/~lisac 0 (new on the web, no links to it — until now)

“Extreme sport” (and all the plurals etc of those words) has received 145 impressions and one click.  “Visit Idaho” got 14 impressions (a fair number of those were mine and Ry’s) and one click (neither was Ry or I).   Neither of the click resulted in them going past the first page they received.

$5.15 spent so far.    No big loss but no return on it either.

The hits from Kim du Toit have trickled off, three on Thursday, three on Friday, and one today (all Universal time, so today is over).  Shotgun news is still going strong however.  10 on Thursday, five on Friday, and 13 today.  The average for all of this month is 10.3/day, so it’s essentially level.

Today it was reported in the Washington Post:

The highest court in Massachusetts declared today that the state legislature may not offer “civil union” instead of marriage for same-sex couples, in a ruling that guarantees that the first state-recognized same-sex marriages in U.S. history can take place beginning in mid-May.

As pointed out in the article this will be a big debate point in the coming election and cause further division in the politics of this nation.  But it is a major step forward for freedom.  The other states will have to deal with that pesky “full faith and credit“ clause in the constitution that says they must recognize the licenses of other states.  Which will bring up the issue of concealed carry licenses.  Lots of implications here.  Glad to see it.

Now if MA would just get rid of bunch of their draconian gun laws.  Why is it that people seem to only want one or two particular flavors of freedom at a time?  I can’t help but think that people don’t want freedom at all, or at least they only want it for themselves and not everyone else.

I got a call this morning from someone in Pennsylvania.  They were about to make their airplane reservations for Boomershoot 2004 and wanted to make sure there was still openings for the event.  I told him yes, there shouldn’t be a problem if it gets here the next week or so.  Pennsylvania!  First time for that state to be represented.  Cool.

Entries are actually running a bit behind normal so I’m pleased to hear people are in the process of signing up even if I haven’t received the entries yet.  I got a couple emails this week saying “the check is in the mail” so that should help get me to the point where I can order the rest of the materials needed for this year’s event.

I got an email from someone suggesting the targets have various color stripes or other markings on them to aid in the spotter/shooter dialog.  Good suggestion.  We knew it was a problem and planned to put up colored or marked stakes of some sort in the target area to use as landmarks.  But this would be even further help.

Kim du Toit put a link on his blog to http://www.boomershoot.org and doubled the number of page views overnight.  A couple of other blogs put up links as well, apparently after reading Kim’s post.  See http://web.tampabay.rr.com/coastwatcher/ for example.  I am very pleased.  Thank you Kim.  You will be our first representative from Texas.  And it was most pleasant listening to your South African accent when we talked on the phone.  I’m looking forward to seeing you and your family in May.

From the BBC News — Blunkett plans tougher terror law

Home Secretary David Blunkett wants new anti-terrorism laws to make it easier to convict British terror suspects.  He has discussed lowering the standard of proof required by a court and introducing more pre-emptive action.

Just a couple of steps further.  They already given up the right to be confronted with charges and a speedy trial.  From the same article:

The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 allows foreigners who are suspected international terrorists to be detained indefinitely without charge or trial in the event their lives would be in danger if they were dported.

Britain is holding 14 foreign terror suspects under this law, based on evidence which is tested in secret.

They are planning for secret trials and inability to confront your accusors, again from the same article:

Evidence in the new trials would be kept secret from the defendants to protect MI5, MI6 and GCHQ intelligence sources, Mr Blunkett said.

And they have already given up part of the right to remain silent, from the BBC guide to suspect rights: 

The previously important right of silence was amended by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Courts can now draw conclusions from your silence…

And of course everyone knows they gave up their right to keep and bear arms years ago.  It’s likely that it won’t be long before they realize the right to keep and bear arms is what guarantees the preservation of other inalienable rights.  Now would be a good time to review The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek again.  Hayek spells out why socialism is a slippery slope whose inevitable conclusion is the loss of economic and person freedom resulting in tyranny.  It’s not that the proponents of the socialist system were intending for that to happen, but that it is a necessary conclusion of it’s implementation.  And that the good intentioned, probably trustworthy, early promoters, will be pushed out by those who crave the power and will abuse it.  It’s excellent reading material.