New York’s finest. ‘The ONLY ONES’.

This morning, a group of people were shot at the Empire State building where a former employee had some beef with a current employee.  Some people have some serious issues ‘upstairs’.  Fortunately, they stopped him before it went too far.  Here’s something that this story can remind us of:  they cops are human.

“The police are the ONLY ONES capable of being responsible with firearms.”  Have you heard that used before? (paraphrased)
From CNN Breaking News Alerts:

New York authorities say the gunman who opened fire Friday outside the Empire State Building had been fired from his job a year ago. The person the gunman shot and killed was a former colleague.

 Police who killed the gunman may have hit several of the eight people wounded, Mayor Michael Bloomberg says. All those wounded are expected to recover.

(Emphasis mine.)

Remember…   they’re the only ones responsible enough.  Isn’t that what the antis always say?  I’m surprised Bloomberg even admitted this.  Will there be charges against the cops who shot innocent bystanders?  Never.  What would happened had a civilian shot innocent bystanders?  Come to think of it, has anybody heard of ANY instances where a civilian has shot innocent bystanders while acting in a good Samaritan capacity?

Dr. Joe’s Cure for Everything

This from #GBC:

13:25 <+Tango> FarmDad: your morning sickness link = Dr. Joe’s cure all.
13:25 <+Tango> Sorry.  ‘cure for everything’  http://www.joehuffman.org/JoeSpeak.htm
13:26 -!- FarmDad is now known as FDafk
13:26 -!- Farmmom [~chatzilla@cloak-3F2A59CA.dyn.centurytel.net] has quit [Quit: ChatZilla 0.9.88.2 [Firefox 14.0.1/20120713134347]]

And somehow that didn’t make the /topic

Not suspicious at all

There’s nothing suspicious about a handcuffed left-handed man in the back of a police cruiser shooting himself in the right temple with a gun the police missed while searching him.
Nothing at all.

 

“As protocol he was handcuffed behind his back and double locked, and searched”, said Sergeant Lyle Waterworth, Jonesboro Police.

Somehow minutes later police say  they heard a thumping noised, turned around and found Chavis dead, shot in the head, in the back of the squad car.

Just because my kid’s awesome.

I have no real reason for posting this other than because I want to.

On Saturday we went on the Heber Creeper.  This is my son’s picture my sister-in-law took.  I think I’ll call it “Just chillin!”

gunblog bleg – knife edition

Everybody wants a supercool tactical tanto edge kukri with duratitanium edge with multiple rails for the upcoming holiday.

I want a carving knife.  Just a regular old knife that’ll fit either inside of my pocket OR clip to the outside.

A few years back, I bought a S&W SpecOps knife.  It was ok, but nothing special.  I liked the fact that the handle was metal.  It looked like it was cheap plastic, but definitely wasn’t.  What I hated was that the small hex screwheads were all some screwed up size.  So out of the 3 sets of hex drivers that I had, NOTHING was small enough to tighten them up and they came undone fairly frequently.  I don’t want to spend an extra $20 just to keep my knife usable.  I stopped using it when the outside pieces of the handle were starting to ply away from the core of the handle making the entire thing loose.  Very uncomfortable having a ‘loose’ knife rattling around down there with an assisted open.

So I’m looking for a new knife.  I started carving out a 1911 from a block of wood for my boy.  It’s not turning out too bad using a wood file and a flat chisel…  but the chisel is hard to maneuver and the times I came REALLY close to hacking myself open was scary.  Knives are far easier to manipulate.  I do NOT need it to be some ultra-ninja-tacticool (but rails would be SWEET!).  It just needs to have a GOOD blade that holds an edge and has to be a decent size.  Nothing Crocodile Dundee-esque.  I do not want a fixed blade.  A good, solid buck knife would be nice but the only thing I ever see are the ones that sell for $20 and are mass produced by some little factory in China.

Give me something good!  What are my options?

Update (6-18-12):  I drove out to Smith & Edwards and took a peak at their knives and when I saw it, I had to get it!  The sheathe sucks on it, so that will be replaced by a local leatherworker.  The blade is THICK and the entire knife has a great heft to it.  It whittles just fine, but with the blade being wider than most others, some tasks are more difficult.  It cuts up dinner just fine, flora or fauna.  My F-i-L cooked up a pork butt in his new smoker, so we ate pretty good and the knife hacked through it without using hardly any force.  Of course, I can expect that coming off of the factory floor so we’ll have to see how it handles in the real world over time.

The sheathe that comes with it doesn’t hold the knife in tight so if you shake it, the knife freely moves within.  That’s not good!  I’ll get one made that secures halfway down the blade and fights TIGHT around the belt so it doesn’t move at all.  The goal is to wear it as part of my EDC set and that’ll let that happen just fine.  Right now, no matter which shirt I wear, it hangs down about 1/2″ below the edge of the shirt.

I’ll also be picking up the Folding Hunter later on.  One for work, one for play!  The employer’s not a fan of ‘weapons’.  Mine’s only a weapon if you’re made of pork, beef, or wood grain.

Tales of the Terminal

Tonight, I read a post over at Borepatch’s that linked to a new blog that I’m adding to my RSS feed.  Six is a fellow that lost his mother in a roundabout way to cancer.  Cancer beat her mentally before it could beat her physically.  Instead of posting something depressing on his blog, I’ll put it here so he has the OPTION of reading it.  It’s something I don’t recall ever putting in writing in the past.  So, here goes…

Six, I truly know what you’re going through (and a little about what she was going through).

My mother died when I was 9.  It was emphazema, but she also had lung cancer.  It was a race and Emphazema won out.  Shortness of breath that only got worse.  A machine chugging away at night extracting oxygen from water for her to breathe.  Eventually, she collapsed and I was the one to run next door to call 911.  My parents weren’t the most check-balancing folks out there, so luxuries like a PHONE weren’t always available.  I don’t remember a lot about the hospital but hanging out in the waiting room with my siblings.  I met a lot of family in that time.  I didn’t understand it at the time, but they all flew in because they knew it was the end.  At one point, someone, I don’t remember who, walked me in to the bed where my mom was.  She was surrounded by her siblings and they walked me up to hold her hand.  She squeezed my hand, but never opened her eyes.  I would find out later, that was the end.  I was momma’s boy, no doubt about that.  heh…  there’s a first.  I’m crying while I write this.  I’ve never done that before…  Anyhow, late that night, while I was at home, I think it was my older brother woke me up to tell me that she’d died.  March 22, 1988.  She was 45 years old.

Through excellent parenting choices by my remaining parent, I went back into foster homes that August.  I say BACK because I was when I was 5 and 6 years old already.  When I was in high school, I was on foster home 12 or so.  This couple were my parents, now.  They didn’t care if I took on their last name.  They just said I would be welcome there as a foster child if that’s what I wanted.  No strings attached.  I moved in my sophomore year of high school, so about 15 years old.  When I was about 22, my foster mother got lung cancer.  They found it while I was in the Marines.  I found out she had it when I got home on terminal leave.

Cancer is an ugly, ugly disease.  Hers was terminal as well.  Towards the end, the chemo had her hair and the pain had her consciousness for the most part.  At the end, it was so bad that the morphine had to be administered through the skin as a cream.  I think it was something stronger, but I don’t remember.  You had to wear thick thick rubber gloves so you didn’t touch it.  It would get rubbed on her feet and it was the only way you could give her relief from the pain.  When it was really really bad enough, the moaning could be heard through the floor to the second floor of the house.  Her toes curled so tightly, almost like they were atrophied because she was in that much pain.  Her legs would also curl up because of the pain.  She wanted to curl to the fetal position, but she wasn’t strong enough to do so anymore.  This went on for months.  She died with the family in the house.  Hospice was nearby and what a wonderful service they provide…  She was able to be in the ‘comfort’ of her own home at the end.  She died about September 22nd, 2011 or thereabouts.  We never even told her about 9/11 because of what we thought it would do to her.

Cancer is the most vile of diseases.  I very literally watched my mother die from it twice.  Granted, they were two different people, but the effect remains the same.

Six, I like your take on it and how you’re dealing with it personally.  You are not doing trying to second guess her too much and I think that is wise.  After seeing what I’ve seen with this disease, I hope I would behave exactly as you hope you’d behave…  but I haven’t seen the world through the eyes of one of them.

God speed, sir.  I wish we’d met (virtually) under better circumstances.

In Flanders’ Fields

Remember what today is for.

by John McCrae
Written in Flanders on May 3, 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Happy Memorial Day

What’s so happy about it?  It’s a holiday about those that have died in military service to protect our country and/or freedoms that we enjoy every day.  Doesn’t sound like a joyful occasion… but it is!

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died, rather we should thank God that such men lived. — Gen. George Patton

I’m celebratin’!  I can do that because of what they’ve done.  To NOT do that, to me anyway, means that their deaths were in vein.  I’m going to find a cemetery nearby, take my son, and give some flowers to someone that deserves it.

Nastiness in a taxi

A little story that I wanted to share, but forgot about.  I suppose it was my mind trying to use a coping mechanism.  Or something.

During the Boomershoot ‘vacation’ while we were having car problems, we hung out at the Best Western for 2 days.  After we woke up the first day, I wanted to head to the Blazer to get a few things, namely my tablet’s charging cord and my laptop.  The change of clothes to something CLEAN was nice as well!

I talked to the front desk and asked if Orofino had a taxi service knowing darn well there’s no possible way since there’s a few hundred people at the most.  To my surprise there *IS* indeed a taxi service!  The BW’s front desk gave me a phone number written on a post-it note.

“Hello?”  She sounded like Marge’s sisters on the Simpsons.  “Uhhh…  yeah.  I’m trying to get a taxi.  Is this the right number?”  “Ayuh…”  “Ok, I need a lift to Tom’s Auto from the Best Western.”  “Ok, I’ll be there shortly.”

I grabbed my tablet and sat at a chair near the doors.  A bit later, a nondescript white sedan pulls up.  I start walking towards it and she starts wiping off the front seat.  Ugh…  granola, cereal, who the hell knows what else?  Does it say taxi anywhere?  No.  She’s dressed to kill, let me tell ya…  she’s wearing what look like nurse’s scrubs for bottoms and what was almost a mumu for a top and she’s lighting one cigarette from the butt of the other.  Since it was pouring out and cold to boot, she had the windows rolled almost all the way to the top.  I rolled mine down and when she saw rain coming in, she shut the window.  Apparently she didn’t want her car to get dirty inside…

We got to the car place, I got a few bags from the Blazer and then drove back to the BW and when I got up to the room, I wanted to burn the clothes.  10 minutes in a car had caused the smoke to permeate down to my skin.  Nice…  sure she was nice.  She was also nasty.

The next day when the car was fixed, I asked them if there was a different person that offered driving services and there wasn’t, however a very nice young lady working the front desk in what appeared to be a managerial position offered to drive me over to the car shop to pick up the Blazer so we could get outta Dodge.  She has NO IDEA how welcome her driving me over there was!

In which I vow to hate Idaho. Mostly.

Continued from Part 1

Sunday

With Boomershoot over, ‘Kurtis’ and I head to Orofino so we can get an early start the next morning home.  On the way down the grade, I feel the Blazer giving me problems.  Seems the problems are the same as before.  WTF?  (Whisky Tango Foxtrot?)  The Blazer died halfway down the grade, right where the Dworshak Dam turnoff is, so we had a safe spot to turn off at.  I panicked, duh, and called Barron.  I’m not really sure what I expected him to be able to do…  but I had to do something.  He showed up with Phil and Scott from RNS.  “We have a Code Dworshak…  gunblogger in need of assistance!”

Right before they showed up, I called a local auto shop who called a tow truck.  The tow truck got us in and then gave us a lift to the Helgemeister hotel or whatever the name is.  We don’t know because they closed their office and didn’t answer their after-hours buzzer.  We walked over to the Best Western instead.

Monday

We ended up being there for 2 days because they had to order a complete distributor.  See, when Kim Hansen Chevrolet replaced the cap in Burley, they also broke one of the mount points on the distributor itself.

Tuesday

Finally, the guy got it fixed.  It was determined to be the same electrical connection to the injectors.  So, off we go.  We stopped in Lowell, ID for lunch at a place called Ryan’s.  Damn good food.  No, it’s not the chain restaurant.  This one is some little rinky-dink side of the road diner…  but with incredibly palatable food.  And a Jackalope.

About 30 miles east of Lowell, ID…  we broke down again.  Same symptoms.  A $350 tow truck ride later, we find ourselves back in Kooskia (pronounced Koos-key for the uninitiated).

Wednesday

Another overnight stay at a tiny motel (the only one in town) and the mechanic has the Blazer and we find the REAL problem.  The electrical connection (the same one that was ‘fixed’ twice in the past) feeds into the engine itself.  Inside of there, those 2 wires connect to a wiring harness of sorts that clips onto the injector.  It looks a bit like the female receiver to a headphone jack with the same type of connection to ensure it holds.

Basically, what had happened was as we were driving, since Idaho has less than optimal roads in the north, the bumping and jarring of normal driving would work the wire OUT of the engine block because that’s where the tension on it equalizes.  As it came out, the tension INSIDE of the engine block on that wire caused the wiring harness to rise up ever so slightly.  When it did this, the connection would get lost and the car would stall.

The fix?  Grab a set of gloves and feed that wire into the engine block as far as it would go.  That would push the wiring harness down, back onto the contacts again and good for another few hours.

We left about 2pm or so on Wednesday.  It happened twice more on our way out.  The first time, simply pushing the wire back in did not fix it… and had me in panic mode.  Again.  ‘Kurtis’ tried it again and it DID work.  Phew, good to go.  An hour later it happened yet again.  ‘Kurtis’ crammed the wire as far in as he could and it never gave us another problem.  I dropped him off at home at about 11pm and I got home at about 11:30 or some such.  I forget.

So, Boomershoot was a very literal blast of a time.  The trip to and from Boomershoot was a huge (and expensive) bummer…  all over a part that costs about $5 at the very very most.

Incredible thanks to Phil, Scott, and Barron who dropped everything to help out even though there wasn’t a lot to help with.

Fellas…  next year I’m bringing a treat.  You’ll like it.