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(and Go Ducks!) I'll be shoving off presently for Multnomah Channel Yacht Club, where I am helping cook the New Year's Eve feast, then I bartend for the evening, then tomorrow, go over to the traditional Japanese New Year's celebrations at my mom-in-law's. Think LOTS of raw fish and teriyaki and tempura and (back on the diet Jan 2d!) and bowl games.
Taking two days off from the computer, but if I just HAVE to post, I can do it on my new phone/PDA.
Two new daily reads for me. On the blogroll they go, too.
First is Cogito Ergo Geek (Latin mottoe, translates to "I think, therefore I am a geek") and Shooting the Messengers, which Jerry the Geek referred to, and I totally agree with Jerry, it's a first-class read. BTW, Jerry, I DGAFF if he's on Blogspot, and isn't THAT "shooting the messenger". Heh!
The short answer is, "Don't Ask"
This actually happened to me two months ago. True Story. Reminded of it by reading Connie DuToit's post on crappy customer service (which has drawn out a LOT of war stories in her comments).
Back to the UPS story.
The Rivrwife and I headed off in late October for two weeks of motoring in the great Northwest. Of late, the Rivrwife has developed a liking for Almond-flavored champagne, and there is only one winery that makes it, Wilson Creek Winery of Temecula, CA (just the other side of the Coast Range from San Diego). Forgetting about our upcoming sojourn to Seattle and British Columbia, she ordered a case of the wine from them.
We remembered about the order while enroute to Seattle from Portland. I said, "no sweat, Honey, UPS advertises this service called Delivery Intercept, so we will have the package intercepted." Problem solved.
Nazzofast there, RD, problem NOT solved. You see, the wonk at the Whiteboard lied through his teeth. A lie of omission. "Delivery Intercept" isn't available to everyone, just a certain class of shipper, and as it turned out, the winery hadn't booked that level of service. Since there was no way to get the package delivered to a neighbor's, for example (adult beverages are signature service only), our only choice was to let the route driver attempt delivery three times, then the package was supposed to be held at the UPS terminal long enough for us to return and claim it.
So, we return, still supposedly within the window of time for running down to the UPS terminal and getting the wine, but guess what? They had already re-shipped the package back to the winery! They didn't wait the full time, and when I looked up the track of the package, it actually went back the day after the third attempt.
The winery, wanting our business, gladly re-shipped it to us, but they didn't make much, having to eat three times the shipping cost.
So, what do we have here? The pleasant wonk at the Whiteboard lies through his teeth, then UPS terminal managers fail to adhere to company policy on retaining undelivered packages for the guaranteed time, and the whole UPS experience has failed us. A commenter in CdT's post said that the USPS is about to go the same way, because they have set upon themselves the burden of competing, on an internal cost basis, with the other delivery services (the commenter works for USPS). Well, they can't do that. The USPS has to carry letters and junk mail as well as packages, so they will NEVER be able to compete with package delivery companies which only have to deliver packages. Comparing them is apples and oranges, and the idiots in the Dot Gov who dreamed up the requirement that the USPS' services cost no more than UPS' or DHL's or FedEx's must be smoking some whacky tobaccy.
(Insert favorite rant about unrealistic idiocy in government cutting across party lines here)
The Rivrwife's best buddy, Roxanne, has a daughter whose boyfriend is in a motor pool unit in the USMC. He also likes cookies, so, about a month ago, the two women decided to cookie-up the whole MoPoo.
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UPDATE: 123007 1025 PST: You MUST read Jerry the Geek's comment below. That's an order!
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Here are the cookies stacked up:
...and here they are en-bloc with the rest of the patrol looking on from inside their hootch:
Note that the cookies are packed in Ziploc tubs, with popcorn to keep them whole. Great logistics, and I didn't have a damn thing to do with it. In fact, I was denied my role as Chief Cookie Inspector. Never had even one, they all went to the troops.
Santa cover, MG240, Stars and Stripes, and some awesome rolling stock. Great picture!
This is REALLY handy. We've all seen the Russ ammo which comes in the sealed cans, but up to now, I hadn't seen any in .22 Long Rifle caliber. Here it is.
Of course, if you have my turn of mind, you expect that future Socialists in Government in this nation will impose not only Gun Control, but Ammunition Control as well (and maybe the ammo laws will arrive before the new gun laws).
What to do? Man learned to dig in the ground Looooooooong before he learned to make firearms, and this "canned" ammo is perfect for putting into the ground. Depending on where your cache is (not on your 4,000 square foot home lot), it stands a good chance of NOT being discovered until you need it (and you will, when you finally decide that the Constitution must be rescued by force of arms).
Caching, it's not just a yuppie game.
Now we have the late Benazir Bhutto talking to us from beyond the grave. She is alleged to have sent Wolf Blitzer of CNN an email "to be opened only in the event of her death", in which she blamed President Pervez Musharraf for her assassination, BEFORE SHE DIED!
This is political gamesmanship in the extreme, and if true, it raises the suspicion, in my mind, that she courted death as a martyr. She knew that Musharraf was too strong to bring down by any means she could devise or any coalition she might string together in that fractious land, so she (at least) considered playing the ultimate card, the martyr card, thinking that she could beat both Musharraf AND the Islamists in that final hand of showdown poker with that card. The Islamists, of course, would have to recognize her martyr status, since martyrdom is their main psy-op weapon AND their main philosophical go-to device.
Of course, this is all contingent in believing CNN, who INVENTED managed news.
The way I see it, the believability factor here is somewhat less than even.
This is entirely too dramatic. Reminds me of old cowboy movies, this "deliver this letter to the Sheriff if the cattle baron's gunslingers kill me" sort of thing.
OK, on to some family experience with the Bhutto clan. When I was a lad, my brother and sister and I went to school in England while my Dad was stationed there with the Navy. We went to English schools. My sis had a classmate whose father was killed on orders of Benazir Bhutto's father, a Pakistani strongman of the era who was later deposed and executed by the next strongman.
Lest readers get carried away with ideas of sainthood for Benazir Bhutto, read deeply in Pakistani history about the family and the political movement (the Pakistani People's Party) it founded. You will find that it resembles some other revolutionary movements very closely, and those were all Marxist.
The recent history of the Islamic sector of the world is best simplified into analyses of conflicts. When the history of Pakistan is reviewed, that analysis breaks down into political strongmen vs. Marxist revolutionaries, just as the conflicts in Iraq and Egypt have developed (look up the Ba'ath Party).
It's all in the history books already. Nothing new here to see. Move along, please.
Note: It bites running out of powder on a 50-round reloading run, getting only to the 46-round mark (and one was a barrel-heater load 20% short. Marked it well with Sharpie).
Note: if you change from seating in hard brass (Lake City and OFV) to soft Federal, you might cam over when seating, and that round has to go into the boolet puller...do it twice, though, and there's no excuse.
Note: been pumping the one-armed shoulder-wrecker for a month now, and I STILL don't have my rotator cuff back in shape for it right-handed.
Note: how do you lube the throat resizer ball? It bites taking the die completely apart every 20 rounds to do that. Lubing the inside of the case throats is supposed to be enough, but isn't. Maybe polish the ball with jeweler's rouge on one of those Dremel felt pads?
Note: now that I'm out of IMR 4831, should I get more or try some other wide-spectrum rifle powder like IMR 4895? The modern books don't have a lot of loads for 4831.
Note: I just bought a powder trickler, but find I'm much faster with the tapped-spoon system. Is there a trick to using the powder trickler to make using it a faster experience? Maybe it just doesn't do well with cylinder-form powders.
Note: buy a whiteboard for the wall behind the bench, to write loads on. They can be transferred to computer later.
Note: put reloading websites in my PDA favorites, so I can pull them right up without so much Google fumbleaya. Maybe start a loads folder for the PDA. Does anyone have an Excel Template for load data?
Bah, oh-two-hundred, need to hit the rack.
I filed this one under "humor" because the entire (bleeping) world refuses to take the mouth harp seriously.
Honest to Hohner, a harmonica CAN sound good, and even land the artist in Carnegie Hall. Remember the old musician's advice: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, man, practice!"
UPDATED! SEE BOTTOM OF POST.
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I don't think she is a martyr, but by way of coming to that conclusion, we have to review our International Relations 101, which I took as a freshman at Mizzou in '61.
In those days, the realpolitik of the post-war (WW2) years were still in vogue, and were only starting to change to the New World Order way of thinking. My instruction was in that realpolitik.
Realpolitik is largely gone from the practice of international relations now, even though our friends on the Left constantly accuse GW Bush of practicing it.
International politics is now practiced from a variety of ethics-based viewpoints, ranging from Socialism to eco-Socialism.
That gives us problems where it concerns relations with nations like Pakistan.
Pakistan is a nation which has armed itself well, and therefore plays somewhat of a leadership role among the Islamic states in it's neighborhood.
The first rule of realpolitik is that you play by the rules of the group you are in.
That means that we need to recognize that Pakistan is always going to be a turbulent, unsettled nation, not really amenable to the blandishments of a representative democratic Republic such as this nation is. Islam has something to do with that, since, as a religion, it encourages the settling of conflict by dedication to the use of force (in the name of Allah, of course).
After he seized power, we left General Pervez Musharraf alone at first, following the First Rule, but lately, we had begun to pressure him to allow "democratic elections" with all the possible political leaders as candidates, and we insisted that he give up one of his twin mantles of power, either his control of the Pak Army, or his leadership of the civil government. This was mistaken policy, as events of last night amply illustrate. Realpolitik tells us that sometimes, the best government an unsettled nation can have is a "benevolent dictatorship", and Musharraf was the best example of a benevolent dictator we currently have in the panoply of nations.
Benazir Bhutto was no saint, even though you will now see her portrayed as one in all the media, who know an opportunity to defeat Realpolitik and advance the New World Order when they see one. Bhutto had formed two governments in the past, and both of them were rife with political corruption that led directly to her office door.
In other words, she played by Pak rules. She was no Indira Ghandi (if you assume Ghandi was squeaky-clean, which might very well be a false assumption). She was involved in the hurly-burly of dirty politics all the way. We and the Euros pressured Musharraf to let her back into the country from exile, following the New World Order belief that any Pak election held without her would be corrupt. Actually, given her past record of corruption, had she actually ran in the election, it wouldn't have cleaned it up a bit, because they just don't do clean elections in that part of the world (even when they have 130,000 US troops in the country to guarantee it).
Politics is a dirty business. Islamic politics redefines dirty downwards.
Take it to the bank.
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UPDATE: 122807 0955 PST: Now this article coming out of Pak-land says that Bhutto died from bumping her head on the sunroof lever in an attempt to get out of her car? Major red flag here for me. It is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT for a person to put enough force on any part of the skull with an accidental bump to cause death by depressed skull fracture. I raise the BS Flag on that one. I'll bet you that the pathologist who made that finding is "unavailable" for further comment, permanently. One thing I find strange is that as a hunted figure, Bhutto should have known to stay in her (presumably) armored limo during an attack, as escaping to the outside is almost certain death in those types of ambushes. Where were her bodyguards? There should have been at least one in the car with her, and his duty would have been to expend his life to save hers, so he should have never let her open the sunroof to get out. Too many question here, so I refuse to accept any of the current explanations of her death that come from Musharraf's people.
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Yep, that purple area, encompassing the Willamette Valley, is a Heavy Snow Warning for tomorrow. Of course, it will turn the metroplex on it's ear if it snows that much here, and the "Storm Screamers" from the local TeeVee stations will be out to record the first flake then yak about it all day and into tomorrow.
I'm an actual, By God, NOAA Weather Spotter (call sign, "Multnomah 19"), but I likely won't be sending in breathless reports, because until it overtops my mukluks, I can still get to my shop building and work on my guns and reloading. The shop is heated by propane (another eeeevil petrochemical causing Global Warming).
I have another ace up my sleeve. If it snows enough to shovel, I've been assured that Pope Algore of the Church of Holy Global Warming will be here to shovel it off my driveway and sidewalks. Global Warming must really be hammering us. This will be the second snowfall in a week, and we usually see one every three years or so.
I think this forecast might actually come true, because we have a cold east wind (aka, The Hawk) blowing now, so there will be plenty of cold air in place when that wet Pacific storm starts over the area tomorrow morning.
We shall see.
