New toy

A real one this time. Picked it up last week at Gander Mountain. It's a Tasco 1X dot scope. Future plans are for it on a KelTec 9mm carbine but I decided to put it on my 10/22 instead.

I picked up a standard Weaver base today and had to do a little surgury to get the sight to fit. Managed to strip one of the screws on the sight so I'll replace that tomorrow.

Sight picture is fast. No real weight added.

No sure what the camera focused on.

Must go shooting...

Alito

Like a lot of people, Harriet Miers didn't motivate me one way or the other. If I were President (that would be so cool!) and I had the chance to nominate someone to the Supreme Court I would want someone who had a verifiable track record of abiding by the Constitution and NOT legislating from the bench. I would have preferred a female appointment like Janice Rodgers Brown or Priscilla Owen but Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. looks to be even more qualified than Judge John Roberts.

GOP Bloggers has the specifics on Judge Alito. Harry Reid has already come out against him. That is usually enough for me :-) Time for Senator Frist to get his act together and get Alito confirmed.

The 25 Scariest Movies

Thing1 sent me this list from IGN. Some are actually very scary movies. Some, like Gremblins, don't belong on this list. I would have not had The Shining as #1. It was kind of scary but not that scary. I preferred the TV version with Stephen Weber myself.

My #1 would have been The Exorcist. That movie scared the, you know, out of me. Still does.

IMDB has a poll going on. Jaws is on it? Great thriller but not a horror movie.

Happy Birthday

To me!

44 years on this earth. The wife was nice enough to get me a new toy tool. Makes me want to cut something up!

Fall is here!

It's really been here for awhile but my maple tree is showing it's colors.

Carnival of Cordite #36

For your reading pleasure.

Time to get the new dot sight mounted and try it out!

Mr. Speaker

He's also my representative! And now he's blogging!

A new cartoonist

To me at least. Found him in a post on LGF.

Take a look.

Lawyers = Sharks?

Dilbert knows :-)
A strip that will never be in the paper

Principal curbs kids' Internet activity

at home.

Thing1 sent me this link today. From the article-

...Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.

While public and private schools routinely block access to noneducational Web sites on school computers, Pope John's order reaches into students' homes....

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I like the fact the the school is paying attention to the fact that there are predators online. On the other hand - our kids should have the same first ammendment rights as we do. Unless there is some agreement signed when enrolling at this school that the principal can regulate legal activities outside of school then I think the principal is overstepping his bounds and authority.

The EFF looks to be somewhat involved. I wonder if the ACLU will step in? With Christmas coming they may not have time with all the nativity scenes that will soon be up. I'm sure someone will be offended and the ACLU will sue someone. Or maybe a terrorist detainee will complain that his Koran was mishandled.

Lego-Mania

I'm a big Lego fan. Thousands of pieces inhabit the house. All kinds of strange things get built.

Ran across this in a thread on LGF. I think I have the pieces to do this...

USA Today - Racist?

Or maybe they don't like Condi?

Check this out!

Women and Guns

Not what you think. This is really cool!

Good Thought

From LGF

For home defense; "a handgun is something you use until you can get to your long gun".

Time to find a good long gun. The single shot 20ga. doesn't really count.

Carnival of Cordite #35

Available here!

My first coyote

I saw my first coyote inside the village limits today. My town is about 35,000 people, some small 'forests', and pushes up against some large forest preserves in places. The coyote was no where near any forest. One of my neighbors told me awhile back that she had seen one strolling down the street. I figured she saw someones dog. Maybe not...

It might be easier to get that short range weasel gun I was thinking about for Christmas now...

Knives and Distractions

Some interesting rules for knives in the kitchen.

I keep my knives away from the wife. She has a habit of trying to remove the tips of her fingers. With her knives she'll start to hurt and stop before she gets all the way through. A band-aid will usually solve the problem.

With mine - she'd be needing stitches.

Best Ranger

If you've never seen this competition set your VCR/TiVO/PVR for tonight. Starting at 7:00 Central on the Discovery Channel and going on for 3 hours it shows America's best competing to see who is really the best.

I watched this a year or two ago on ESPN and it was amazing what these men went through. The online description for tonights episode doesn't say what year they are showing. Hopefully it's the 2005 competition that Blackfive wrote about.

Update: According to Titantv.com it's the 2005 competition. The PVR is set!

Be careful what you print

And what printer you use. It's easier than you think to track it down.

How many knives

Are you carrying right now?

I got asked this as I was walking out of the computer room at work today. I thought for a second and replied two^[1]. The questioner figured 3 or 4 or 5. I guess my reputation precedes me. It's always better to have a knife and not need one than to need a knife and not have one.

Here is what I have on my today. Well most days.

A Leatherman Squirt and a SOG Blink. Both are socially acceptable in the workplace. The Blink, since it's an assisted opener, sometimes startles people till you show them it's not an automatic.

Les Voorhies makes my 'Sunday go to Church knife'.

Notes:
^[1]This count does not include the three in my daypack :-)

Free Microsoft Support

Lots of links here.

Thats a lot of floppies

The whole thing. Wow!

Eat Fresh

I will be on Sunday, October 23rd.

On Sunday, October 23, nearly 19,000 SUBWAY® franchises across the United States will donate five percent of the day’s sales (a minimum donation of $1 million) to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.

I've seen this

Visiting Thing1

We took a ride to visit Thing1 at school on Saturday as we had some things to drop off. He was having problems with his wireless access point (old Linksys BEFR model) so he wanted me to look at that as well.

The WAP was toast so we were off to Best Buy to do some shopping. On the way there the kids decided they were hungry so we stopped at Uno's for pizza. Their deep dish pie has a great crust. I wish I could get mine to turn out like that. This is probably my favorite 'chain' pizza.

Best Buy was nice enough to have a D-Link 802.11g WAP on sale. $20.00 after rebate. Thing1 looked longingly at the 802.11g PCMCIA card for his Dell. I smiled and said that he could buy it himself if he wanted it. He then came up with the novel idea of me buying it and him giving me the after rebate price in cash. I gave in and added it to the pile.

As we walked to the front I managed to acquire a CD that my wife wanted. Amazingly nothing else. $120.00 later ($70.00 in rebates to send for) we were on the way to Target (one of my least favorite stores) to get some stuff for his room. I looked at CDs and found the Barlow Girl's latest Another Journal Entry. It included a 'Target Exclusive' second CD so I bought it there.

Back at his room we set up the WAP. The DHCP server isn't quite as nice as the Linksys or the NetGear I have at home where you can map MAC addresses to the server. We had to assign a fixed DHCP address to each of his devices that were going to be attached and then set the range to cover those 4 addresses. Otherwise it was easy for others to mooch off his WAP.

And then it was time to go. Had to get home to feed the dog. As we walked out I noticed the way he was carrying himself and talking to others that we passed - he's grown up a lot. He's turning into a fine young man.

Carnival of Cordite #34

Go and read

My new favorite color

From Reuters


Smash has more

All I want for Christmas is ...

As we have gotten older the wife and I find that we are getting harder and harder to shop for with regards to birthdays and Christmas. We really don't have the need (or space) for stuff that we don't want or would never use. So last year we decided to buy each other something that we really wanted based on our pre-determined spending limit. My present was a Glock 17. Her's was a rocking chair. Both happy campers!

This year we've decided to do the same thing. The only question is what to buy? Something for my computers? Don't really need anything there as I just built a new one. Unless I build another? Hmm - maybe a dedicated PVR?

Of course there is the Surefire line. Not sure which one. Or one of these with magazines to match my Glock? Or this?

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

He's a brave man

Michael Yon's latest has been posted.

It's kind of amazing to read about the people he meets...

Carnival of Cordite #33

Gun Safety is the topic number 1. Anyone who shoots or just keeps guns in the home needs to go and read.

Carnival of Computing 1.0.2

For your inner geek

Why?

Aren't Chris Muir and Michael Yon available in print form? I realize that Chris' cartoons are a little far to the right for most of the MSM but Michael Yon's writing is riveting and apolitical. It's a must read. Even Chris thinks so.

No looting in Texas after Rita

I wonder if this is why?

A New Door - Day 2

Back when I worked at K-Mart (late seventies, early eighties) one of the departments I worked in was Building Materials. Sold a lot of drywall, paneling, and concrete. And when storm doors were on sale (white crossbuck) we must have sold 30 or 40 a day. Back them they were pretty simple as they were prehung. All you had to too was set the door on the brickmold, square it up and screw it in. Usually took an hour or so.

My new door was like putting together a kids toy on Christmas eve. It's a full length glass door (no picture as a storm blew up just after I got done) that needs to the hinge attached and the frame built. It took ~4 hours to get it right but it looks pretty good. Buffy the Cockatiel Slayer (our Cocker Spaniel) won't go anywhere near it even though she can look right out.

It's real strange - I keep seeing the door out of the corner of my eye and I think its open as there is so much glass. Glass to keep clean... Well - thats the wife's job. :-)

Update: The weather cooperated (it's hot enough for the A/C).

Long day

We have been talking about a new door for the front of the house, well since we bought the house. Sixteen years later we finally got around to it. The orginal door.

An hour later it was all gone.

Old houses are interesting. Even better when they are on slabs. There is no real sill like you have in a house with joists and plywood. Just a little lip made of concrete. Set the door on that and set it square. Couldn't quite make in plumb as the walls aren't really plumb. Got the door to match the wall and screwed it in place. Lots of screws. We decided to replace the locks so the wife went off to Home Depot and brought home a nice Schlage set. Put them in and it looks pretty good.

Tomorrow - paint and a new storm door.

Carnival of Cordite #32

Gullyborg has it. Go and read.

I have to join in his idea of a gun turn in plan.

If you have a firearm that you no longer want, I will happily accept it. You have my word that I will never use it for any illegal activity. Leave a comment and I'll get back to you.

Don't give them to the goverment just to be destroyed. I'll put them to good use.