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.
Firing watch.
January 5th, 2012Getting high.
January 5th, 2012My 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.)
Dirty deeds, dunder jeep…
January 5th, 2012Worth noting:
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.)
“Gun” death.
January 4th, 2012I’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.)
Daylight come and me wanna spam blogs…
January 4th, 2012Has anyone noticed that the most recent crop of spam posters seem awfully obsessed with Harry Belafonte?
Is this an awesome country or what?
January 4th, 2012I 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.
Just in case you were wondering.
January 4th, 2012List 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.)
Random notes for January 4, 2012.
January 4th, 2012I’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.
Starbucks control.
January 4th, 2012TMQ watch: January 3, 2012.
January 3rd, 2012The New Year has begun. Our grand vacation from daily cares is over. And once again, we go back to the TMQ well…
Da Bears!
January 3rd, 2012Reports 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.
A small rant.
January 2nd, 2012If 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”?)
The firings will continue until morale improves.
January 2nd, 2012I 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:
- Tampa Bay fired everyone just as hard as they could go. They fired old Raheem and they fired Jimmy Lake. And they fired some people that they didn’t even know. (17-31 over three years.)
- Bill Polian out as vice chairman and his son, Chris Polian, out as general manager in Indianapolis. Apparently, according to that article and this one from ESPN, there’s at least a possibility (maybe a strong one) that Jim Caldwell will keep his job as head coach. It looks like Irsay was convinced the main problem with the Colts this year was not having any decent backup for Manning, and that he blames the Polians more than he does Caldwell for that. I’d have to say that seems to be a position that can be defended.
Gee, Officer Kroenke.
January 2nd, 2012We 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.
New Year’s Resolutions 2012.
December 31st, 2011- More range trips.
- More range trips with the younger set.
- Shoot more matches. I’d like to do a Steel Challenge match using the .22LR guns I have; another USPSA match would be fun, too.
- Go to a Project Appleseed shoot. They were doing shoots in Smithville late in 2011; that would have been an easy drive, but I couldn’t make their schedule work with my academic schedule. I’m hoping for another shoot somewhere close this year.
- Take at least one of the younger set with me to Project Appleseed (subject to parental permission).
- Get some nice gun leather. I’d like to get a good gun belt to start with. After that, I’m thinking something that will fit the Single Six and possibly the New Frontier: I wonder if I can use the same leather for both. (Galco has a holster for the Single Six, but does not list one for the New Frontier.) I’d also like to get a holster that will fit my S&W Model 29 and Model 25, which I think should be feasible; they’re both 6″ N-frame guns. As for sources, there was a guy in Wimberly but he’s apparently closed. I think there’s another guy in Lockhart, but I need to check on that. And I really want to order a 1911 holster from Dragon Leatherworks, too. I’ve heard Dennis on Vicious Circle, and he seems like a really nice guy. Plus every single review I’ve read of his work has been more than positive; try “ecstatic”.
- Do more research on gun leather before I buy anything. For example, when Skeeter Skelton talks about the “classic Tom Threepersons design“, it sounds cool. But what exactly does that mean, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of that over something like the “Austin” holster? (You know what I really need? “Gun Leather De-Mystified”. Or maybe “Gun Leather for the Complete Idiot”.)
- Get good optics on the Bushmaster and the M&P15-22.
- Get more magazines (including a drum) for the Thompson. If I can find a deal on vintage Thompson magazines, I do have a Dremel tool…
- Build out that AR lower that’s sitting in the gun cabinet.
- Figure out a way to discretely keep the Marlin 336 in my car during the work day. Tinted windows combined with a case, maybe?
- Either get one of the Ruger Scout Rifles (if I can find a deal), or do something about building one of the other .308 bolt actions out into a scout rifle.