Disaster.  I’ve checked on her a couple times since she came home.  She barely talks and looks terrible.  We’re going to watch Paint Your Wagon together now.

Barb attacked me and said, “There’s an upside to the baby leaving the nest.  Put that in your blog!”

Yesterday, 7:29 AM, in my continuing discussion with Henry he asks:

 It would be interesting to hear from others, who follow this blog, as to whether they have a view on what I have just stated.

If you have the energy and the interest why don’t you say a word or two to him?

Thanks.

This link will go dead in four weeks.  But until then the ad above will reach the following areas:

The Exchange serving Spokane, Stevens, Whitman, Pend Orielle, Garfield, Ferry, Lincoln, Adams, Grant, & Latah Counties — Distribution 31,000

Nickel’s Worth serving Northern Counties of Idaho & Western Montana (Boundary, Bonner, Kootenai, Benewah, Shoshone) — Distribution 37,000

Moneysaver serving counties around Clarkston & Lewiston area (Clearwater, Idaho, Lewis, Nez Perce, Whitman, Asotin & Garfield) — Distriubtion 34,600

Giant Nickel serving 8 counties around the Tri-Cities area (Kennewick, Pasco, Richland, Burbank, Benton City, Finley, West Richland, Eltopia) — Distriubtion 33,000

So about 135K people will have the opportunity to see the ad.  Last year I just ran a similar ad in the same areas for two weeks and I got several entries from it.  This year I started a little earlier.  I’m hoping to completely fill up this year–even with the expanded shooting area.  As you might guess the first 80% or so meets expenses and the last few entries are profit.  And I really need some profit to pay back the loan on the explosive storage magazine.

Tonight I got a call from Dave saying he wanted to postpone the Boomershoot Adventure again.  The weather forecast is better than last week but still we expect wind (10 MPH with gusts to 20) and possibly rain.  Now it’s next week or never.  It’s getting too close to the big event and I have other things I will need to do.  It’s got to be frustrating for Dave and his dozen friends too.  Oh well.  What else can you expect for Boomershoot weather?

I just got a call from a local motel.  They asked for Xenia and said she starts work in the morning.  Kim already works there and Xenia decided she wanted money to spend on stuff and Kim helped her through the process of getting hired.  Kim will also give her a ride to and from work so that all works out really well.

Another one is leaving the nest.

heavy sigh

I got an email from Doug, one of my brothers on the farm.  He had some rather surprising news.  He’s now teaching math at the high school.  I’m sure the extra income is welcome but there were other reasons he took the job…

The big news around here is that I am now teaching algebra I, algebra II, pre calc and calculus at the high school. The teacher had a baby in February, they went through 8 substitutes and couldn’t find anyone who could/or would teach. After the last one quit, I called the teacher, she talked with Jerry Nelson and the next morning, I was teaching. The teacher returns May 9, I have taught one week, I am off for spring break now, but I have five more weeks to go.

It is very stressful, but also very interesting. Certainly a once in a lifetime opportunity. I am teaching in Farley’s old room, I have Lisa in precalculus and Amy in calculus. 92 students, 5 classes, I kicked two kids out of algebra I the first day.

Amy and Lisa are his daughters.  Jerry Nelson is the principal.and was a classmate of Barb and I.  Farley was a teacher when Doug and I went to school there.  Doug has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and in Electrical Engineering.  I’m sure the math comes easy for him but teaching it and dealing with all the kids has got to be, as he put it, “very interesting”.  I’ve considered teaching at various points in my life but had the opportunity come up I’m not sure I would have accepted a full load with one day’s notice to start work.  Doug has done some pretty gutsy things in his life though. So I guess this shouldn’t be too surprising.

The customer is always right.

Boomershoot swag now includes baby stuff like a bib and “infant creeper”.

I cut my margins in half for these items.  We need to encourage them when they are young.

How sad.  In Philadelphia of all places–where our constitution was written, debated, and presented to the individual states for ratification.  The people there are practically begging for a police state:

“If you get caught carrying a gun, you should automatically do time. Mandatory. No trial. Just like when you get caught driving without a license.”

“It should be 25 years in prison, no questions asked, if you get caught with an illegal handgun,”

… prospective gun purchasers be required to install a handgun safe box in their home or workplace. The vault-like box must be mounted, secure and inspected by the police before the gun purchaser would be allowed to take the gun home.

I’m reminded of a Machaivelli quote I posted a few weeks back.

Update: Because of the requirement to register to read the entire article I have included the entire article below:

Posted on Thu, Mar. 31, 2005

GUN CONTROL? ASK DN READERS

Daily News readers have big ideas to keep guns out of the hands of shooters.

More than 100 people e-mailed and phoned ideas to the newspaper yesterday. Many said they’re sick of gun violence. Some wonder at the sorry state of mayhem. Most have ideas that can help.

“Why is it easier to get a gun than it is to get a drivers’ license?” asked one reader. “If you get caught carrying a gun, you should automatically do time. Mandatory. No trial. Just like when you get caught driving without a license.”

Many callers urged lengthy mandatory sentences for gunslinging lawbreakers.

“Bottom line – give them some time,” said one reader.

Another said creeps don’t seem to respect the mandatory five-year sentences for gun crimes, so mandatory sentences should be longer.

“It should be 25 years in prison, no questions asked, if you get caught with an illegal handgun,” said one reader. “Five years is not scaring these guys. But if it were 25 years, the criminal might use something else besides a firearm.”

One thoughtful reader suggested that prospective gun purchasers be required to install a handgun safe box in their home or workplace. The vault-like box must be mounted, secure and inspected by the police before the gun purchaser would be allowed to take the gun home.

Do you have an idea to keep guns out of the hands of creeps? Tell us.

It can be a simple suggestion, like banning all handguns in Philadelphia. Or it can be complex, like mandating anti-gun classes in public schools.

Send your ideas to:

Stop Gun Violence
Philadelphia Daily News
Box 7788
Philadelphia PA 19101

E-mail: guns@phillynews.com
(A computer error blocked many of your e-mail suggestions yesterday. If your message was returned, please try again.)
Call: 215-854-2600

Boomereshoot.org is down again.  Ry just brought up the backup server so it should work again before long for most people (I see traffic is showing up already).  If you visited recently you may have to flush your DNS cache (on Windows machines run “ipconfig /flushdns”).  Other people may need to wait even longer for the DNS cache on their companies gateway to expire.  Sorry about that.

There are a few pages out of date on the backup but nothing important.

If you sent email to anyone at boomershoot.org in the last few hours they have not received it and I don’t know when they will.  I expect I will get it eventually.  If the website is working for you then any email you send now should be routed such that I get it soon.

People have been saying it would happen but this is the first time, to the best of my knowledge, it actually occurred:

Police in Malaysia are hunting for members of a violent gang who chopped off a car owner’s finger to get round the vehicle’s hi-tech security system.

The car, a Mercedes S-class, was protected by a fingerprint recognition system.

…

 The attackers forced Mr Kumaran to put his finger on the security panel to start the vehicle, bundled him into the back seat and drove off.

But having stripped the car, the thieves became frustrated when they wanted to restart it. They found they again could not bypass the immobiliser, which needs the owner’s fingerprint to disarm it.

They stripped Mr Kumaran naked and left him by the side of the road – but not before cutting off the end of his index finger with a machete.

Although there are lots of intelligent comments about this on the biometrics email list I am on there was one guy that said:

There is a simple solution to the problem of having your finger cut off to fool the sensor – don’t drive your Mercedes in Malaysia.

This guy has a severe case of cranial rectum inversion.

She seems to like it.

Barb managed to get away from work early yesterday and arrived at my place in Richland about 17:15.  I skipped aerobics and was there about three minutes later.  We had a nice dinner at Henry’s and went to bed by 19:30.  We are still in bed but of course awake since we went to sleep so early.  We both sleep much better when we are cuddled up in the same bed.

Unfortunately I have a meeting this morning at 9:00.  Any other time I would have arrived at work later and spent more time with Barb.  heavy sigh

It’s tough writing now with her so tight to my right side and interfering with the mouse under the covers between us.  And she keeps yanking the covers of me too.  And then there are the ‘other distractions’…

heavy sigh

Ry is now working for Microsoft (see also this posting) again. We became acquainted with each other while working at MS via the MS Gun Club (MSGC) in the late 90’s.  We only met once (which I don’t remember) but saw a lot of each other’s posting in the MSGC public folder.  We were both contractors at MS and Ry had other contracts he worked on in the bay area between his MS gigs.  It was because of me living in Moscow, Idaho that Ry decided to check out the town as a place for him to raise his family.  He drove over for a visit, looked around, and moved his family there.  I still didn’t meet him.  It was at least a couple years later that I was reading a magazine while waiting to get on a plane at SeaTac (Seattle Tacoma airport) to come home to Idaho for the weekend from my job at Chromium.  This guy asks me, “Are you Joe Huffman?”  I confirmed his hunch and asked who he was and how he knew.  It was Ry. He said it was because I looked familiar, it was the gate for a plane to go to the Pullman-Moscow airport, my hat, and I was reading Precision Shooting.  We talked while waiting for the plane and I was thrilled.  He is so smart and so funny.  It was great.  He had just finished an interview at Microsoft.   I suggested he also consider Chromium, he agreed and got his resume in front of the right people the next week.  On the plane I loaned him my magazine and when we got off the plane less than an hour later he had finished it.  Ry reads incredibly fast.  Rather than him catch a taxi to his home in Moscow Barb and I gave him a ride.

Everyone at work was just as impressed by Ry as I was.  During the interview process the test manager came into my office and said that he had stopped the typical interrogation process and was going to have everyone else work on convincing Ry that Chromium was the place to work rather than Microsoft where he had received an offer.  A few days later Ry was working at Chromium just down the hall from me.  I found out that as he drove home from his interview at Chromium he stopped off at Vantage to use his minivan as a dune buggy in the sand dunes to celebrate how well the interview had gone at Chromium.  It was nearly midnight and when he tipped it over he had to walk a mile or so on the interstate to find someone who would give him a tow and get his van upright again.  This was just one of many well thought out adventures that I would hear about and occasionally witness.  Barb quickly concluded that he was incompletely myelinated.  There has been no evidence to contraindicate that diagnosis in the subsequent years (see also this posting).

Ry lived on the couch in the apartment I had in Kirkland most of the time we worked at Chromium and we were both laid off on the same day when Eric ran out of money.  I couldn’t tell you the number of times we have talked late into the night until the sun came up.  Such far ranging topics and ideas for things.  It’s always a thrill to be around Ry.  And he has been a tremendous help in the Boomershoot.  He was always ready to help test a new idea for explosives and had lots of ideas of his own.  And I especially loved it when one of us would come up with an idea and the other would immediately modify it to make it something that would actually work.  I would tell him that between the two of us we had a complete brain.

I so glad that he finally got a decent paying job after being laid off at Chromium, but he has moved 300 miles away.

heavy sigh

A middle aged woman and her children have house and cars repeatedly vandalized.  After a mid-night confrontation she retrieves an air pistol and rifle from her house and shoots a few rounds into the ground near them.  The police show up and arrest her but not the vandals.  Read about it here.

Mrs Walker was being driven towards breaking point by groups of youths “terrorising” her neighbourhood. She logged a catalogue of complaints with officers, from abusive phone calls to thefts and vandalism.

Anonymous callers would abuse her son as a “poof”. A wing mirror of her other son’s car was broken off, the garden shed was broken into, ornaments thrown over the wall and fish stolen from her pond.

The final straw came when she noticed that a five-litre plastic container of washing up liquid was moved from the back garden and emptied over her son’s car in the driveway.

She was “fuming mad” when she rushed out of her house at night to confront a knot of teenagers 250 yards away. After an exchange of abuse she returned home to arm herself with a Walther CP88 gas-powered air pistol, which she had kept in her underwear drawer for four months since she had been burgled, and an air rifle.

She phoned the police to tell them that she was going to “shoot the f****** vandals. I’ve got an air rifle and a pistol and I’m going to shoot them.”

Mrs Walker squared up to one 18-year-old, firing off several rounds from the pistol into nearby ground. The youth, Robert McKiernan, now 19, who has a number of convictions including burglary, told her that she was a “psycho”.

She later expressed surprise when an armed response unit arrested her and not the youths. Afterwards she complained to officers: “Police are very sympathetic but the law is on the side of these criminals and yobbos and not the victims. They have all the rights.”

In this country, at least in the habitable parts like Idaho and Eastern Washington, had it been a real gun and she had not shot it they probably would have run away.  They would have never come back and the police would not have had cause to arrest her.  But with a air pistol the risk of permanent injury or death to a health 18 year-old male is pretty low and they probably will now figure this is great fun.  I think I would have confronted them with full IPSC gear in plain view on my belt, eye and ear protection in place, and carrying a shovel.  I would have informed them that if they stayed any longer or ever came back they would be staying MUCH longer.  Probably it would technically be a punishable offense but the police and prosecutors here would almost for certain do no more than suggest you not do that again while thinking that you handled it better than they could have in their official capacity.

Oh, and of course you can count on this arrest and conviction to go on record as a “gun crime” and used as further evidence why air guns and replicas should be banned.