Archive for January, 2012

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It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.

Sunday, January 8th, 2012

(Click to embiggen.)

But it is much better not having to curse the darkness, or be afraid of it, because you have the tools to defend yourself and those you love.

(Smith & Wesson Model 36. Uncle Mike’s Sidekick holster. Safariland speedloader. Federal 110 grain JHP. Spyderco Civilian. Principles Of Personal Defense by Jeff Cooper.)

I’m no Oleg Volk, but I’m actually pretty happy with the way that photo came out. I didn’t use the flash; just the ambient light from the candles, and the normal background light from inside my apartment. This was a relatively long exposure: iPhoto says 1 second at f4.2, using the D40X, the 18-55 mm kit lens that I got with it, and a Dolica AX620B100 tripod. I used iPhoto to crop this photo, but other than that it hasn’t been digitally manipulated in any way.

(Explanation of what’s behind this photo can be found over at Weer’d Beard’s place.)

Posted in Guns, Photography, Politics | Comments Closed

Firing watch.

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

The Sacramento Kings fired head coach Paul Westphal after a 2-5 start. Westphal’s record was 51-120 over “2+” seasons.

In other news, I guess the pro basketball season has started.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Getting high.

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

My sister’s latest post is up at the Park City Snowmamas site:

Dealing with altitude sickness.

(I know she was looking for old photos of us as kids visiting Pikes Peak. The thing that stands out most vividly for me from that trip was the g-dd–n splitting headache. Granted, I was only 8 or 9 years old, but that was the worst headache I’d ever had in my life to that point.)

Posted in Clippings, Endorsements, Geek | Comments Closed

Dirty deeds, dunder jeep…

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr. was charged with embezzling more than $300,000 in city funds and filing a false tax return, according to court papers filed Thursday in the District’s federal court.

Worth noting:

Thomas is alleged to have steered more than $300,000 in city funds for youth sports programs to pay for personal expenses that included an Audi sport-utility vehicle.

And:

There is no city law barring someone from running for office even after a felony conviction.

(I would do my usual “these are only charges, he hasn’t been convicted yet” disclaimer here. But according to the WP article, it appears that Thomas has pretty much already conceded that he’s guilty of the charges, and the only thing left is working out a plea deal with the prosecution.)

Posted in Clippings, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

“Gun” death.

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

I’m not sending this one to my great and good friend Weer’d Beard because…well…

A man died after a forklift hit him at a construction site in north Houston Wednesday morning.

…I’m not sure if he’s familiar with Staplerfahrer Klaus or “they tried to KILL him with a FORKLIFT“, and I don’t want to try to explain those references when I’m sending email from the phone.

(Also, I’ve been flooding his queue with “gun” death stories recently, so I figure I’ll give him a break.)

Posted in Clippings | Comments Closed

Daylight come and me wanna spam blogs…

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Has anyone noticed that the most recent crop of spam posters seem awfully obsessed with Harry Belafonte?

Posted in Admin | 3 Comments »

Is this an awesome country or what?

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

I love this story.

Guy needs a visa to go to China. Guy fills out forms, goes to Chinese consulate, finds out he filled out the wrong form and gets runaround. Guy has to go to nearby Internet cafe to fill out correct form. Guy discovers nearby Internet cafe is full of people who are having the same problem with visas and the Chinese consulate.

Guy and his friend rent a van and set up a business right outside the consulate providing computers, Internet access, printers, and Chinese visa consulting services. They charge $20/person (with a $5 discount for Buddhist monks) and are apparently doing reasonably well.

I’m a little shocked they haven’t run afoul of NYC parking regulations or some other picayune law unique to Bloomberg’s paradise, but good on them for seeing a need and filling it.

Posted in Clippings | Comments Closed

Just in case you were wondering.

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

List of fatal cougar attacks in North America.

(You know, I have categories for reptiles, horses, primates, and spiders. Do I need a “cat” category? If so, should I have a “dog” category too? Perhaps “mammals” and make horses, cats, dogs, and primates subsets of that?)

(Explained.)

Posted in Geek | 2 Comments »

Random notes for January 4, 2012.

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

I’d been sort of vaguely following the LA arson case. I knew that they had arrested some German guy driving a van with Canadian license plates, and apparently he was somehow upset over his mother’s immigration issues or something. I didn’t realize how messed up things were until this morning: not only is Mom an illegal alien, but she’s wanted in Germany on 19 counts of fraud (and apparently Germany has requested extradition). It appears that she ripped off a bunch of renters and landlords (I think the NYT said something about her pocketing security deposits), and failed to pay for her breast augmentation surgery in 2004. And the LAT hints that she may have been in business as a “sensual Tantric masseuse”.

Obit watch: Ronald Searle.

Firing watch: Bears offensive coordinator Mike Martz and quarterbacks coach Shane Day. The Sun-Times seems to be spinning this as “resignations”, but I’ve seen reporting elsewhere that puts it more in the “you can’t fire me, I quit” category.

NYT headline: “Rangers Coach a Conspiracy Theorist“. Awesome. Does he believe the towers were brought down by the burning mind control agents on the airliners? Sadly, no. His conspiracy theory is much more boring: the officials made bad calls in order to make the game go into overtime.

Posted in Art, California Über Alles, Clippings, Firings, Law, NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Starbucks control.

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Choosy arsonists choose Starbucks Frappucino bottles for their firebombs.

“They are excellent for what you need, because it is a weak-sided bottle with a screw-on cap,” Mr. Barry said. “It is small enough to be concealed in your pocket and it fits in your hand, so you can throw it almost like a Nerf football. It’s a small projectile you can get a good grip on and you can toss it.”

(See also: this thread on gasoline violence over at Weer’d’s place.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Politics | 1 Comment »

TMQ watch: January 3, 2012.

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

The New Year has begun. Our grand vacation from daily cares is over. And once again, we go back to the TMQ well…

(more…)

Posted in Austin, Clippings, Food, NFL, Politics, Sports, TMQ watch, TV | Comments Closed

Da Bears!

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

Reports indicate that Jerry Angelo is out as general manager.

If Pro Football Talk is to be believed, Lovie Smith is next out the door.

ETA: Nope, looks like the Bears love Lovie.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

A small rant.

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

If you apply for a concealed handgun license in the great state of Texas, you can do most of the work online. You still have to take a class, and you still have to submit certain things (certificate of class completion, fingerprints, photo) offline for understandable reasons, but most of the process can be done online.

So why in the name of all that is holy is it impossible for me to do a DBA search and file for an assumed name online? No, I’ve got to take time off work and go down to the county office. Or apparently, I can pay someone $99 to do this for me. No, I can’t even mail this s–t in.

(My amazing psychic powers tell me that Lawrence is going to come back with a one word answer: “Money.”)

You folks in other states: can you file DBAs online, or do you have to physically trek down to some county office?

(Ha. I clicked on a link I found at another site: “The Official Website of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Forming a Business, Step-by-Step”. Yeah, that would be a 404 error. Is this what we call “ironic”?)

Posted in Guns, Politics | Comments Closed

The firings will continue until morale improves.

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

I had a pretty good day. Bad news: I had to work. Good news: nobody else apparently did. Better news: since nobody else was working, they started letting people (including myself) leave for the day at 11 AM. Even better news: because I left at 11 AM, I was able to spend much of the rest of the day leading my nephews on my sister’s side of the family on a grand expedition. (Slightly bad news: guns were not involved in this expedition. But we had fun anyway.)

The only drawback was that, being on a grand expedition, I wasn’t able to blog the NFL firing news beyond the Rams. Most of these have made FARK, but just for the record:

Posted in Clippings, Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Gee, Officer Kroenke.

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

We have our first sports firings of 2012: Steve Spagnuolo and Billy Devaney of the St. Louis Rams.

2-14 this season, and they didn’t even get the first pick in the draft. Spagnuolo was 10-38 over three years.

Posted in Christmas, Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

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