Still on the road, but I want to get a quick post up now.
I just found out that one of my close friends was murdered yesterday.
I don’t have a lot of details. There have some press reports, but they don’t name the victim. Law enforcement is still carrying out the notification of the family, as far as I know.
Once I have more details, I’ll post a full obit here and at the SDC blog.
Traveling once again. Blogging will be intermittent until September 14th or possibly later.
Before I begin this latest entry, I want to give folks a brief peek behind the scenes of how the sausage is made.
Every once in a while, I run across a story that might be blog worthy, but that I won’t blog because I think the details are just too much for my readers, even with a warning. There was a flaming hyena I saw the other day, but didn’t blog for exactly that reason. I realize my readers are all adults (well, I hope so anyway), but there’s just some things that I don’t feel like I need to blog.
This story is right on the edge, for what that’s worth.
William Monroe Palmer is the president of the “San Francisco Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board”.
Allegedly, he picked up the young woman two days later, (allegedly) got her into his car, (allegedly) took her back to his place, and (allegedly) spent the next five days smoking drugs and having sex with her.
At one point, she was told she had to be resuscitated from an overdose. The drug use made her unsure in her decision-making, she said.
“I felt hesitant, but I took my clothes off because he told me to take my clothes off,” she said. “I felt very messed up, I couldn’t tell if I wanted to have sex or not.”
…
Meanwhile, her mother reported her missing on July 3, panicking about her daughter’s whereabouts. Four days later, an unidentified man called the mother and said her daughter was at an art studio near Market Street.
The mom called the police, who found both her daughter and Palmer together. Officers handcuffed Palmer and placed the woman in a mental health hold, but he was eventually released.
But wait, there’s more.
Palmer later tried to visit the woman at San Francisco General Hospital using his official position, but was turned away. He reportedly even emailed the district attorney’s office that he was “deeply” concerned about how police had ended his “trauma-informed intervention” in the woman’s life.
According to Palmer, he said he took care of the woman. He spotted her and got her out of a situation she didn’t belong in, he said. He allegedly took her to acupuncture sessions, and Palmer said he gave her a drink that he claimed turned people into a “total different person.”
“I’m her life coach,” Palmer told the Chronicle. “I talked to her and told her the things that she needed to hear to snap out of the lifestyle she was in and to get into the life that she wants to be in.”
He refused to confirm whether he had sex or did drugs with her.
But wait, there’s more.
But wait, there’s more. He was appointed to the board because they were looking “to include people with ‘lived experience’ to shape the jail system.” What was his “lived experience”? If you said “doing time”, take two gold stars and advance to the next blue square.
He had served 31 years of a life sentence in prison for a crime he committed as a teenager.
There’s an effort underway to remove him, but (quel fromage!) that’s not an easy thing for the SF Board of Supervisors to do.
…
This blog turns 17 years old today.
Seventeen years of, as someone once put it, “looking at obituaries and which coaches got fired“.
I’m still not burned out. If the posting frequency has decreased a little, it is partly because of Bluehost issues, partly because my life is a little busy, and partly because there’s just not as much worth blogging about.
But from July 28, 2009 to today is 6,209 days (using the date calculation features in Excel). There are 7,452 published posts. That’s about 1.2 posts per day, every day, including weekends and holidays. I think that’s something I can be mildly proud of.
I added both an “NRA” category (for general NRA things) and a subsidiary “NRAAM” tag for annual meeting coverage. This should make things easier next time I want to print off my NRAAM coverage for a press pass (though they never ask to see that). But that won’t be for a while: the next two annual meetings are in Atlanta and Orlando.
FotB Andrew sent over a link to the HouChron‘s coverage of the meeting (archived).
Oddly, I never made it back to the press room after I picked up my credentials. The last time I went with credentials, the snack and drink offerings in the room were mingey, and I intended to see if they were better this year.
The quality of the tchotchkes seemed off this year. Mostly pens, pins, stickers, and morale patches. And paper. So much paper. Oddly, also, a lot of lip balm. Hogue was giving away those really nice gun mats again, in two different sizes, which I would say was the best giveaway of the show. Buy stuff from Hogue. Second best: lens pens from Holosun. Buy stuff from Holosun. Also, I really like the foam earplugs Aguila hands out: they are cheap and disposable, but they’re also compact enough to slip in a go bag, just in case I get a chance to shoot and didn’t bring my full range bag.
I did buy the Hi-Lux scout scope (previously). I got it at a slight discount as a show special. Rings are on order. (Ruger‘s customer service was incredibly nice and helpful when I called them to ask what rings I needed.)
Note: for most vendors, it is this blog’s policy that we will pay full retail for products, or a “special show price” that’s generally available to everyone at the show. I won’t accept free merchandise from most vendors. Though if SIG wants to send me that .22 Creedmor for review, or Glock wants to send me a gun, or CZ wants me to review those Spitfire inspired CZ 75s, I won’t turn them down.
One of the things that I don’t think gets enough appreciation at NRAAM is the collector’s organizations, which are grouped together (towards the back of the show) in what we like to call the “collector’s ghetto”. These groups put together excellent displays that take a lot of time and effort: if you ever go to an annual meeting, you should make a point of visiting this section. We had a great time hanging out with my friends in the Association, who were also gracious about offering us water and seats when we needed them. I also belong to the Winchester Arms Collectors Association, and they had a nice (but smaller) display. Both of the Ruger collectors associations were there as well, but I didn’t see the Remington collectors.
Wilson Combat wasn’t there, which disappointed me. I’d been holding out until the meeting to buy a copy of Mr. Wilson’s new book. Now I guess I have to mail order it.
One thing that I thought was incredibly neat was the leather gun racks from South Texas Slings. Here’s how it works: you have two leather straps. At the top of each one is a clip that goes on to the support post for your car’s headrest. At the bottom is a metal clip, kind of like a belt clip but a little larger, that clips on to your seat back pocket. (The clip position is adjustable.) You put one strap on each seat (front or rear).
The straps have two adjustable leather loops. Once you’ve got them attached to the seats, you can just slide your long gun in and adjust the loops to fit. Viola! It’s like a pickup truck gun rack, except made out of leather and for your family sedan, and doesn’t obstruct your rear window!
I find this a very clever idea: I missed out on the show special, but I just ordered a set of these for the Honda. (I don’t plan to keep guns in the car, but I do want a better solution for taking long guns to the range.)
One of our party also greatly admired the work of Modern Rugged Leather, and I concur: they make some nice looking gear.
We were walking around and went past the 4D Reamer Rentals booth. Now, I do not need a chamber reamer at all: I would leave this to a professional gunsmith. But a flyer on the table headlined “Ackely Headspace” caught my eye. Turns out, one of the principals of 4D Reamer Rental is the guy who wrote the book on P.O. Ackley (which I’ve read and recommend). So we had a good conversation.
I do think we saw the Bear’s Leg at the Henry booth, but I wasn’t paying much attention. As someone who is into the .45-70, this really does not fill a need for me. But I can absolutely see a backpacker in bear country carrying this, and I would gladly try one if someone offered.
We had very good meals at Killen’s Barbecue in Pearland, and Goode Company Seafood. We had a spectacularly good meal at the Rainbow Lodge. (I’d been to both Goode Seafood and Rainbow Lodge before.) Our other meal was really just snacks and appetizers at the GOA mixer (previously mentioned in this space), because none of us was really hungry. Breakfast was at the hotel (the Wyndham Downtown) and was good but a little pricey.
The nice thing about the hotel was that it was literally across the street from a church. Since the exhibit hall closed at 5 on Sunday (and we left a little before that, having seen everything) I was able to hit the 5:30 PM Mass (or, as a friend of mine calls it, “the desperado’s mass”, because that’s your last chance for the day).
It really is a beautiful church.
I think this pretty much covers everything I wanted to hit from NRAAM. If I think of anything else, I’ll post an update. And I owe everyone a gun book post (actually, more than one), coming soon.
No, seriously, this is damned special.
Eleven years ago, my great and good friend (and award-winning SF writer) Pat Cadigan was diagnosed with recurrent endometrial cancer. If you look that up, the prognosis sucks.
That was eleven years ago.
Yesterday, her oncologist told her she was cancer free.
Which is the most awesome thing ever in the history of awesome. This is the kind of thing that would make me want to go out in the backyard and fire off a full magazine from my AK-47 (with the shoulder thing that goes up) in celebration, except I think that would hurt Pat’s feelings.
It’s nice to know that Pat’s going to live forever: I figure at this point, she’s frightened Death enough that she, and anybody geographically close to her, is probably safe from the Grim Reaper.
Robert Duvall obits tomorrow, in keeping with the official policy of this blog. This will give some time for the errors and omissions to shake out.
I’m traveling for a work-related event. Blogging will, once again, be catch as catch can (probably more so than usual) through Wednesday.
There just hasn’t been much I’ve felt like blogging about. No obits that I’ve thought were sufficiently notable.
I still can’t upload images to the blog, so no gun book blogging and no random gun crankery. Bluehost support has been as useless as teats on a boar hog, and I’m planning to migrate the blog over to Siteground. The problem is, I want to be fully here when the migration gets done, and I’ve been wrapped up in so many things outside the blog that I haven’t been able to coordinate the migration yet. I expect to do that towards the end of the month.
(I will be leaving town for a few days the later part of next week.)
One thing I will mention in passing: I have rejoined the Richard the III Society. I’ve been an off-and-on member, but I had let my membership lapse. However, this came up when the Saturday Movie Group was watching “Richard III“: Lawrence was somewhat astounded when I told him I had been a member, so I decided I’d sign up again.
(I recommend “Richard III” for two reasons. One, Ian McKellen is great in it. Two, the whole movie is just absolutely bat guano insane, and I loved every minute of it.)
(And, as everyone knows, I am a sucker for lost causes and beautiful women. One of those explains my membership in the Richard the III Society.)
A very brief gun related note: Leupold no longer makes any pistol scopes, and says they don’t have any plans to introduce new ones in the future. As best as Mike the Musicologist and I can tell, Burris is your only option for a pistol scope at the moment.
I was busy over the weekend and didn’t have a chance to follow-up with Bluehost. I was planning to do so tonight…
…but Bluehost emailed me! The direct message I sent this morning to Sachin Puri (“CEO @ Bluehost Group”) asking whose leg I had to hump to get some action on this ticket may have been a factor in that.
Summarizing, Bluehost’s latest theory is that: “a script is being terminated due to execution time limits, specifically during image processing handled by WordPress”. Which is actually a reasonable theory, and explains some things: if the script is being terminated because it takes too long to run, there’s probably a connection to server load, and that would explain why some people see the problem intermittently.
Options to Resolve
Resize images before uploading to reduce processing time. (recommended)
Disable image resizing via a plugin
Consider upgrading to a VPS or Dedicated plan, where you have full control over PHP limits and resource usage.
I’m not really interested in adding an “image resizing” step to my workflow, especially when this worked in the past without that step. I’m also not really interested in paying more money to get back to where I was.
Next Steps & Suggestions
To further isolate the issue, we recommend:
Retry the upload using WordPress to confirm if the problem persists on your end.
Which I would love to be able to do. But as I’ve mentioned to my readers, and as I told the Bluehost support rep, they’ve set the maximum file upload size for this instance to ZERO BYTES.
Today, my blog is old enough to drive.
At least with a provisional driver’s license in the state of Texas.
It was a busy weekend. I’ll have some more updates later. But how about a musical interlude?
And speaking of Tennessee Ernie Williams, this sounds like one of the upper circles of Hell to me. But I can’t pass up the opportunity to quote the phrase used in the NYT headline, “Tennessee Williams on ice”.
I contacted Bluehost last night to follow up on my ticket.
They claimed they emailed me a status update, which I never received. (Yes, I checked my junk and spam folders.)
They also claimed that I needed to delete some “malware infected” files. The specific ones they cited were:
/home4/sportsg3/public_html/500.php
/home4/sportsg3/public_html/sdclog/500.php
I looked at those files. They looked like standard HTML files displaying a “500 Internal Server Error”. I saw no evidence that they were infected in any way. But Bluehost support refused to proceed until I deleted those files and a “security scan” came back “clean”.
Now that I’ve done that, I’m waiting for an update from Bluehost support. Which I probably won’t get, as they keep claiming to send updates that I don’t get. (They are sending the updates to the admin address with Bluehost, which is also where the chat transcripts (that I am getting) go to.)
In the meantime, I talked to Siteground. They offer everything Bluehost does, and will even do a professional migration of all of my WordPress instances from Bluehost to their hosting. Even better, the first “professional migration” is free, and ones after that are reasonably priced. And their chat rep was pleasant and seemed knowledgeable. (Of course, I don’t know if they were sales or support.)
This may be the way I end up going.
It has been close to 24 hours since Bluehost “escalated” my case.
I still can’t upload photos, and Bluehost has made no attempt to contact me: I’ve checked my email, including the junk and spam folders.
That doesn’t mean, however, that someone hasn’t been working on my blog.
I discovered when I went to write today’s obit watch that Someone Who Isn’t Me (SWIM) had disabled all my plugins. Including the one that disables the WordPress block editor, and the spam filtering plugin. Which were the only two I had enabled. Yes, disabling plugins is a good diagnostic step, but once you’ve run the diagnostics, shouldn’t you put them back?
And I think I know why I can’t upload images, not even small ones, at least at the moment: someone set the “Maximum upload file size” to “0 B.” Yes, zero bytes. Additionally, there are about five images in my media library that weren’t there before, and are duplicates of images previously uploaded.
I’m going to give Bluehost another 24 hours to fix the problem before I ask for a status update. That’s 48 hours.
File uploads still do not work. At least, not consistently, and not in a way that I can tolerate.
Sometimes (maybe 30% of the time) I can upload a file, and it appears to work. I can see the file in my media library. I can insert it into a post. But it’s a 50/50 crapshoot whether the file actually displays when I save a draft and preview. Most of the time, I get one of these entertaining error messages:
Screenshot
Screenshot
Screenshot
Yes, these work, but they are very small scren snapshot files. None is over 1 MB in size.
After another half-hour in chat with Bluehost support:
Screenshot
I have to give this support rep props, though: at least he acted on my escalation request the first time. The support rep on Sunday repeatedly refused to escalate.
I still can’t upload files.
Bluehost support claimed yesterday, after 2 1/2 hours on the phone, that they had fixed the problem. It worked for a very short time today, but it has gone back to the same errors I was seeing yesterday.
The workaround that they provided also failed with a cryptic “AJAX” error when I tried using it.