Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Memorial Day cynic

Yes, I confess, I'm a cynic. After a full military career, during which I fought in a foreign war (Vietnam), and after growing up amidst the tales of my family's military contributions, I just couldn't see going through that again. Of course I value the efforts of my Nation's warriors, and my flag is flying high today, but I just can't get excited about it these days.

The attitude of the Commander In Chief may be worst than mine, since he chose to snub the Tomb of the Unknowns ceremony in DeeCee, something not many of his predecessors ever did. He chose instead to attend some sort of memorial service in Chicago. Who knows what they celebrate there? The service of Daleys? Of Al Capone? Of the Blackstone Rangers?

No, the C-I-C desperately wants no part of the military, but I guess he hasn't figured a way around that part of the Constitution yet.

This should stimulate...

some HOLSTER purchases.

Most of these waistband negligent discharges are of the booger-hook-on-bang-switch variety, but most are preventable by the simple expedient of wearing a decent holster on a good belt, or, if the weapon is small enough (mouse gun), using a decent pocket holster.

I carry one of two mouse guns, either a Kel-Tec P3AT (now back at the factory for repair after a kaboom on the range), or a NAA Guardian in .32NAA. Either one of those resides in a DeSantis pocket holster when I carry it. I also carry either of two compact pistols when a mouse gun isn't enough, either a Kel-Tec P11 9mm, or a Ruger SP-101 revolver. I have Uncle Mike's belt-slide holsters for either of them.

I'm not a big fan of "paddle" holsters, but they can be secure enough.

I make ONE exception to my holster rule, and that is to use a canvas work vest for carry. The Carhartt canvas duck vest has 2 stout inner denim pockets, closed by Velcro tabs, which either of the two compact guns listed above fits into. It's really a holster, just doesn't look like one, because the gun fits in with the pointy end at a corner of the pocket, and the velcro locks it in that position. The stout and thick vest doesn't "print" the gun on the outside, either. It's only drawback is that it's too warm to wear it about 6 months out of the year.

The problem with waist-band carry is that unless you wear your belt really tight, the gun shifts around as you move. If you reach up high to get something off a shelf, for example, the gun might shift enough for you to want to grab it, and that's when things can get ugly.

If we get to hear any more about this now-eunuch gunsel, it will probably be that he was some gangsta-type, and had a large gun in the front, right under his belly-button, was wearing loose, baggy pants, and had no belt. He might have been breaking other rules of carry, such as carrying a single-action semi-auto chamber-loaded, cocked and UN-locked.

You breaks da rulz, sometimes there are consequences. 

Back from the dead...

No, not I, it is my Honda HR-214 mower. After I recovered my back sufficiently to work on it, I put the long-disabled electric starter back into operation, and then quickly determined that the engine still had compression and ignition by spritzing fuel into the side-draft carburettor throat and cranking. The engine would run as long as I kept up the spritzing and cranking. It seemed to be a case of the carb refusing to meter the gas/air mixture properly. I ran the entire tank's fuel though the carb float bowl and drained it off (Honda provides a drain plug just to do this), but that didn't clean the offending detrius out.

A lawnmower engine is built with the intake manifold going on first of all the equipment bolted to the engine block, and I was facing a huge chore dismantling the mower just to get the carb off for rebuilding, so I shopped it at a reputable local garden equipment shop.  I had the carb rebuilt and a full PM done, including a full power wash top and bottom. In the busy season, they had it done in 24 hours!

I got the mower back, and the electric starter only turned the engine over twice before it caught, then ran flawlessly to cut my wet lawn.

Best $140 I ever spent. The meck-a-neck says the 28-year old mower might soldier on another 28.

Now, about my 32-year old McCulloch chain saw....

Steampunk alert

TONIGHT!

The History Channel show "Modern Marvels" (new edition, premiere tonight) will feature "Super Steam", a smorgasbord of steam-era technology.

2100 PDT (9pm Pacific for you landlubbers).

Maybe it's just me, but a draft beer and a bacon double cheeseburger would go down well while watching this, it seems to me.

Take two of these, and call your doctor

Doctor, because you should have a monster belly-ache from swallowing all this secular progressive hopey-changey bullcrap.

How timely, these two reports. They make a lovely conjunction.

First, a note from PawPaw that the "R" word (Repeal) is firmly on the Nation's lips. GOOD!

Second, a note from the Conservative UAW Guy that private paychecks are at their lowest in recent times, and gummint paychecks/handouts are at their highest.

The conjunction of these two blinding bits of information means that there are rocky times ahead for the USA, and that the Nobama administration will be staying up nights trying to figure out how to baffle us with newer, more stinky piles of bulltwaddle.

...and, need I remind you that such conjunctions also mean it's time to go to the range?

Blog has been cheaped out

 UPDATE: 052610 1708 PDT: Turns out, it wasn't about money. It was worse. It was about design. Typepad decided, without informing me directly, that it was going to impose design changes, and completely change the way the blogs it sold were set up. Without knowing about that process, I just kept on keeping on until the deadline passed, and the changes were imposed. After my inquiry, I was informed that I had to re-design my blog, so I hacked away at it this evening, and the post above this one is in the new design, as similar to the old design as I could get it. Now I want to republish the entire blog in the new design, but I can't find the button or instructions to do that, either. If I were king for a day, I would line up all my subjects, and ask them this one question, "Do you embrace change?" If they answered "Yes", off to the rack with them. The correct answer is "Not always, and never before proving that such change brings measurable improvement."

*******************************************************************************

It appears that Typepad, my blog engine, has cheaped out on me. I had a "forever" deal with them to blog for $7.16/month. No bandwidth limit, etc. Now, the bastards have figured a way around the "forever" deal.

The blog has been missing it's header for a while, a custom design I put together myself 6 years ago. I have done some research, and find that Typepad is hyping some new program called the "pro edition" or some such bulltwaddle. Only with that "pro edition", which will probably cost me a bunch more than the $7.16/month I currently pay, can I put a custom-designed theme in place that would allow me to put the header back into operation. So what I'm going to do is put the header in as a photo on each and every post.

Heh-heh, I like it. Maybe I should add a pirate flag or something.

Gun retention drills

The right way and the wrong way.

Over at Say Uncle. I listed the steps for the right way in comment #28.

Immigration tidbits

1. Interesting discussion over at PawPaw's, where he points out that CA has a law concerning LEOs and immigrants that is almost identical to Arizona's! The law is quoted by section there.
2. A commenter to this post at RNS brings up a point about the unorganized militia, in this case the unorganized NAVAL militia.

It may be that the only solution to the runaway illegal immigration problem IS militia action. In the first hundred or so years of this Nation, the Federal Government lacked the desire AND the resources to solve various pressing security issues, especially out on our frontiers. The solution then was militia, and we might have to revert to that method at THIS point in our history. If we do, the preparation of the militia-eligible individual for service in the militia is STILL the responsibility of the individual.

If YOU are eligible for the militia, are YOU prepared to serve? This article explains militia eligibility.

A Mexican Immigration story

Several years ago, on one of our frequent trips to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (we own a time share there), my wife and I watched a little Immigration drama unfold.

That story seems a little more in vogue, now that the Mexican Presidente has crapped all over Arizona's plan to control IT'S borders, so I will relate it.

We had just landed at the PV airport on a Saturday afternoon, and deplaned into the shuttle bus, which had taken us into the terminal. Our first stop in the terminal is Mexican Immigration. The 200 or so passengers were formed into about 4 lines, and our line appeared to be 100% US tourists. Right in front of us was a 40-ish guy, with a good tan, and a very light carry-on bag. He seemed to be a frequent visitor.

Handling our line of tourists just happened to be the Capitan of the Watch for the Immigracion. He was a serious-looking guy in his early forties, it seemed. We all had our passports in hand, as required by signs posted prominently.

When the tanned tourist got up to the Capitan, it seemed that the officer studied the passport intently, flipping though all it's pages for several minutes. This is unusual, since they usually just look at the identity page and maybe the page with the most recent stamp on it. The Capitan intoned, "Senor, it seems that your passport has expired." The tourist replied casually, "Yes, but I have applied for a new one." The Capitan just stared at the tourist, obviously a well-traveled man, and then said, "Senor, you cannot enter Mexico on an expired passport, and this one is expired." Like all cops about to make an arrest, the Capitan then pulled out a notebook, and copied some information out of the tourist's passport, then put his notebook away with a flourish. He pulled out a form from his desk drawer, and wrote some information on it, then folded it and put it inside the tourist's passport and said, "Senor, on Monday, you will come, with your Mexican Immigracion attorney, to the Federal Customs building downtown at nine o'clock. You will bring letters of credit enabling you to pay a very large fine." With that, the Capitan dismissed the now-distressed tourist, and gave us his best smile, "Passports, Senor and Senora?"

A true story, it happened in February '06.

Facebook invades your privacy, again

In addition to not wanting to delete your information when you "un-friend" their social network, the Wall Street Journal now says that the network, and several others, allow data mining of your personal information by companies who then sell that info to advertisers.

I've said it before on these pages: anything you put on the Internet, ANYTHING, is probably either being read by someone you never intended to read it, or will be.

You simply cannot belong to social networking sites and have ANY expectation of privacy, period.

Since the method of data mining used here is the cookie system, you MIGHT have some security if you totally disable cookies in your browser, but then, you won't have much browsing functionality, either, since almost all websites that might sell something track you, and won't display properly if you don't allow it.

What browsers need is a better system of warning you when a site tries ANY method of tracking you. Perhaps this is already available, I don't keep up with the daily onrush of plug-ins for Google Chrome, the browser I almost always use these days.

There are also "anonymous" browsers available, especially in the Unix operating systems, but if the data miners want your info badly enough, they can code around almost any privacy protocol in an open-code system, and reverse-engineer even if the code is proprietary, as with Microsoft.

A few rules can help you out. As the WSJ article states, the data mining doesn't start until you click on an ad, so don't click on any unless you are on the website of a company you completely trust with anything you might ever have put on the Internet in any fashion. Set your browser to reject everything that doesn't cause a loss of functionality you can't live without. Try different browsers until you find one which allows the levels of privacy you want, but be realistic: some sites are just going to keep you out unless you share your data.

Data mining itself is the culprit, but if the Government comes to you with a "plan" to control it, ask them if THEY are just going to get your information instead of the miners.