i am proud of my governor... go ahnuld

a snippet from a killer speech delivered tonight at the RNC. can't wait to get home to see this on the toob. radio is cool, but doesn't carry the visual impact of a good orator.
and i quote:

If you believe that government should be accountable to the people, not the people to the government.. then you are a Republican! If you believe a person should be treated as an individual, not as a member of an interest group.. then you are a Republican! If you believe your family knows how to spend your money better than the government does.. then you are a Republican! If you believe our educational system should be held accountable for the progress of our children.. then you are a Republican! If you believe this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope of democracy in the world.. then you are a Republican! And, ladies and gentlemen… if you believe we must be fierce and relentless and terminate terrorism.. then you are a Republican!

There is another way you can tell you're a Republican. You have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people, and faith in the U.S. economy. To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: Don't be economic girlie men!

remember this guy, and the humor surrounding the intellegence of installing a jet engine on a go-cart? a likely darwin award winner, i believe was the consensus.

so, how about if you install a jet engine on something useful? like, say, your mother-in-law's wheelchair?

read about it here at the BBC

hooray for cable tv

so, there are a few truths about me. one of them is that i hate television, in a knee jerk way. there are shows i enjoy, but i can't stand the incessant commercials, often time taking 8 minutes at a whack. so i'm not usually forthright in support of television. but tonight, i have to say... HOORAY for CABLE TV. if it hadn't been for cable, i wouldn't have been able to watch the two speeches given today (hey, i haven't gone to bed yet, so it's still monday to me). i thought that senator mccain gave a very good speech. he had a problem talking over the crowd's approval, but he didn't have any trouble at all taking a very well aimed and delivered shot at that sack of guts moore, who was sitting in the press box by the way, and that excorable polemic of misrepresentation, innuendo and lies. and rudy, well, that guy did an outstanding job. i listened to his speech twice. ah the miracles of modern tv.

i feel kind of bad. well, not really, but i am trying to put a good face on it. i've been growing weary of the nonstop partisan harping, yelling, and general tenor of the politics of those on the opposite side of the rail from me. so i decided to try to keep my big mouth shut for a while, and not add to the white noise that surrounds the majority of political rhetoric until i had something of my own to add, rather than simply parroting the same thing everyone else was. i am now adding my two cents, based solely on my observations and opinion devoid of any input from talking heads.

mccain made a pretty low profile presentation right up to the end of his speech. he talked about unity, and the need to look not just at today, but next week, month, year, and beyond. he made the case, quite well i must say, for attacking iraq, and he also used the democrat's own ideals and speeches in an effective way to show that there really is one america. he also made the case that because we are one america, the folks out there protesting the course of the current administration best get with it, since there will be no differentiation between the "us" and "them" of politics when the terrorists strike next. he also made a good case against appeasement... and in one thing that really surprised me, he used the word love several times. as in, love will overcome hate, stuff like that. then he fleshed out the comment by explaining love of country and freedom will overcome hate for hatred's sake. very effective, but who was he trying to reach, teenage voters that haven't made up their minds yet? must be the nihilist buried deep down peeking out of my psyche.

and rudy.. dayam that dude killed 'em tonight. he took everyone back to those dark hours after the WTC attacks, and told how the prez helped. and he talked about how bush responded to the new yorkers, and how the whole country responded. he kept it moving, joking here and there, and then taking a sharp stick and jammed it directly into kerry's eye. rudy said out loud, for the whole world to hear, what most of us on my side of the fence have been saying to all that will listen...kerry cannot be entrusted with the future and the defense of this country. we need a strong leader that will stay on the job, decisive when needed, but always on topic. i loved the line that after looking at kerry's voting flops, edwards' confusion about there really being two americas was explainable. and that they would need two americas, so kerry could vote one way in the first, then turn around and vote the opposite way in the other. great theater, and great delivery of a great line. go rudy! if cheney drops for whatever reason, we would be well served to consider rudy as a suitable reliever.

ok, down under until something sparks me. i wonder how long i'll be able to stay civil, and not revert to my true colors and attack mode. we'll see. interesting experiment. too bad there weren't enough others on both sides trying it. might make this a more civil and civilized election. naaaah.

the modern Navy Seals

here's a picture sent to me by my bud the egg. as usual, click for a larger image

today's joke ... thanks bill

A rancher goes to the bank to borrow money to buy a bull so he can increase his stock. The transaction is made and the banker who lent the money comes by a week later to see how his investment is doing. The farmer complains that the bull just eats grass and won't even look at the cows. The banker suggests that a veterinarian have a look at the bull.

The next week the banker returns to see if the vet helped. The farmer looks very pleased: "The bull has taken care of all my cows, broke through the fence, and has even serviced all my neighbor's cows!"

"Wow," says the banker, "what did the vet do to that bull?"
"Just gave him some pills," replied the farmer.
"What kind of pills?" asked the banker.
"I don't know, but they sort of taste like peppermint."

the next installment of alaska trip pix

oh, i know it would be better to put these in a photo album and invite you to come look at them. easier on the bandwidth challenged, if nothing else. well, i could, but then it may be sometime after the next forever before i got around to editing the pix to make them small enough to view and captioning, etc. so i'm doing them in dribs and drabs. hope you don't mind. after all, this is an ego-centric exercise here anyway!

and as always, if you want to see a higher resolution/bigger version of the picture, click away and you will be swept thru the magic of the internet to a bigger pic.


this totem pole in ketchikan was pretty neat. they have a plaque next to it explaning the thing. i also took this as an 8 pix panoramic shot, and the program welded it together seamlessly. may have to find a place to host that picture, since the photobucket folks trim at 250k. i'm going to have it printed on 10x18 photo paper, it's that good.



this is just inside the entrance to the tracy arm fjord. this channel was carved out by glacial action, and is at places over 1000 feet deep, near the edges!!! and several thousand feet deep in the center of the channel. now that was a lot of ice. all along the route to the glacier at the head of the fjord you can see ice floes, their evidence of passage, or waterfalls. it was about 6 in the morning when we turned into the passage, and this was taken about 5 minutes later.



this is just one of the glaciers feeding into the tracy arm fjord. the further in we went along the channel, the colder it got. there was probably a 20 or 30 degree F temperature change from the open ocean to the glacier face. This ice field covers the side of the fjord from near the water to over 1000 feet in elevation, with the field thickness about 50 to 150 feet thick. as you can see, it's just around sunrise in the fjord. great picture even if i do say so myself.

interesting article on mccain/bush

Rich Lowry over at NRO has an interesting article about the whole mccain/bush issue that the kerryites have been trying to pump up as an example of dirty politics and veterans stuff during the current campaign. worth a read.

darn it. somebody beat me to it

suppose i'll have to work on another invention now. seems Sheldon Brown was first out with Product W. i have to say that i've used Product W many times, and while it certainly is a performance enhancing and mood altering drug, the stated side effects are not only true, but seem to be pandemic throughout the entire census of Product W abusers.
bothenook sez...check it out.

and for further proof of Brown's genius, i present the Universal Torq-grip tool. gee, i wonder if my boss would let me buy a couple of these for working on the reactor? i especially like the "universal alignment" feature of this amazing multi-tool.

"it was a dark and stormy night"

more foolishness from my buddy uncle sid, stolen from the submarine bbs. link is here. if you have time, and would like to read some really great stuff, not all of it submarine related, check out some of the other things sid has on his website by following his links on the post.

more from our alaska trip

this image was taken at sunset, while we were heading north through the inside passageway somewhere along the coast of british columbia. that evening, as we passed further north, i was not able to see one light on either side of the ship. what a wild and unpopulated, beautiful place.



click on picture for a larger image

a very special picture from the old days

ok, i stole this picture from martini's bbs, linked to the left. i've often told the stories about coming into port on my submarine, and we knew we were almost home when the dolphins met us out near the farallon islands, and swam along side in the bow wave. what was really cool was when they would ride the wave across the bow from port to starboard or vice versa. this is from the sargo (ssn-583), with no vintage date.



click for larger image

an interesting article by one of g.w.'s compatriots

Frontpage Magazine has an interesting article by a fellow flier of g.w.'s... this article was originally published in the washington times newspaper. it is posted here for any that are curious to read what the president's compatriot has to say. pretty interesting read. let me know what you think.

omar thinks he has why we went to iraq figured out

there is a blog out there at iraq the model that i read every day. a couple of iraqis started this blog, and they have been reporting on life in baghdad regularly for some time now. i think it's worth your time to stop by if you haven't already.
anyway, this blog entry has me chuckling. imagine going to war with iraq, because halliburton might/might not own part of the heavy metal music industry, and they want the youth to get tattoos and buy their music. great tongue in cheek commentary on what's going on in iraq with it's youth. we are spreading our poison, one kid at a time!

another side of the outsourcing debate

i'm somewhat ambivalent when it comes to outsourcing issues. i know folks that have lost their jobs to outsourcing, so i can see that side of it. i also ran a small manufacturing company's production department for a time. we made machines that cost about $2000 to build in Hayward California. we had a delegation from china that offered to build our machines, to our specs, delivered to our company, for a little less than $600 each. there were a number of reasons why we didn't go that way, but most of the reasons were administrative. how does a company compete?

anyway, here is an article discussing outsourcing etc from the online mag Insight.

sometimes smaller is better

here is an article from yahoo describing how backyard astronomers with telescopes as small as 4 inches across are finding planets and other celestial objects that the big boys are missing with their huge and hugely expensive telescopes. hooray for the amateurs of the world. a passion to explore, a drive to tinker. look what can be accomplished. i wonder how many of the truly cool things in the world have been invented, discovered, or modified/improved by amateurs with no ties to big research budgets, just a general inquisitiveness (wow, how's that for a 25 cent word) and desire to know the unknown.

i'm having a laugh at the expense of

those kerry folks that are getting so worked up about bush's lawyer and his links to the swiftboatvets.com guys. Here is a pretty good article about that, and the linkages between moron.org and the kerry camp as well as bush and the vets. it's from the outside the beltway blog. good read, and is becoming one of my frequent stops along the web.

a couple from the ny times

so, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that the ny times is firmly in the hands of kerry supporters. editorials such as this one only solidify that perception. i did not at any time see anything in the nytimes condemning or calling for condemnation of that piece of excriment F-9/11, or any of the deplorable ads funded by the grand-daddy of all 527 organizations, george souros' moveon.org. this bunch sure can hand the shit out, but can't take it.

and then i found this times editorial decrying the fact that congress and the courts have botched the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository program. i quote the entire article for those gentle readers without passwords to get into the times:

August 23, 2004
Roadblock at Yucca Mountain

federal appeals court decision has thrown a gigantic roadblock in the way of efforts to create an underground burial site for nuclear wastes at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. A three-judge panel in the District of Columbia ruled last month that regulators could not simply require the repository to contain the wastes for 10,000 years, the standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency, but must instead ensure that Yucca could function acceptably for hundreds of thousands of years. That standard is so outlandishly stringent it may not be achievable. Unless Congress steps in to change the ground rules, the court ruling could significantly delay or even derail efforts to move ahead with an underground repository that will be vitally needed in coming decades.

There seems little doubt that the safest way to dispose of used fuel rods from nuclear power plants and highly radioactive wastes from nuclear weapons production is to bury them deep underground in stable geological formations resistant to leaking. Experts in this country and abroad, as well as many environmentalists, agree on that point. Although Yucca Mountain was partly chosen because of a perception that Nevada lacked the political clout to reject it, the site has a lot to recommend it. It sits on federal land where nuclear bombs were tested, in an arid desert where population density is low, well above the water table and atop volcanic rocks that have been there for 12 million to 13 million years. But technical obstacles, litigation, political opposition in Nevada and the sheer difficulty of the undertaking have slowed progress for 17 years and threaten to prolong the agony indefinitely.

The Bush administration, to its credit, has tried to push Yucca toward a resolution. The Energy Department plans to submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission late this year for a license to build the repository, which would open in 2010 at the very earliest. The commission must then determine whether the proposed repository can meet health and safety standards established by the E.P.A. Unfortunately, those standards have now been thrown out by the courts.

This turn of events can largely be blamed on Congress, which in a 1992 law told the E.P.A. to set standards for Yucca Mountain "based upon and consistent with" the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences, an unusual delegation of authority to a nongovernmental agency. An academy panel concluded that there was no rationale for protecting the public for only 10,000 years given that the peak risk of radiation might be hundreds of thousands of years in the future.

The appeals court ruling that the E.P.A. improperly ignored the academy could make it virtually impossible to approve a burial site at Yucca or perhaps anywhere else in the country. To get out of this mess, Congress needs to change the law and allow the E.P.A. to set the compliance period at 10,000 years, roughly twice as long as recorded human history. That is the period used by the E.P.A. for a separate military nuclear repository and the time frame used by other countries with geological disposal programs. Congress will no doubt be reluctant to tackle the issue in an election year, especially since Senator John Kerry and other Democratic leaders, pandering shamelessly for the electoral votes of the battleground state of Nevada, have pledged to block Yucca.

damn, this paper surprises me every once in a while. not often, but occasionally.

alaska trip pix

took this picture in the evening as we were heading south along the inside passage from skagway and haines area. i took this with my new camera, and at something like 8x or 10x zoom. i love lighthouses, and this one really caught my attention. i have something like 10 or more of this lighthouse, taken as we passed it from north to south.



click on picture for larger image.

at least i'm not bitchin' about moore anymore...

so here's a quote from an article i read today:

One of the places at which their account is dramatically different from John Kerry's concerns the famous "Christmas in Cambodia" trip that Kerry has publicly presented some 50 times as a turning point in his life. Although records show that Kerry was at least half-way across Vietnam from Cambodia at that point — 55 miles — he has often said that that Christmas day was "seared — seared" into his memory. That's because he remembers President Nixon saying there were not Americans in Cambodia at that time. But there Kerry was.

The Swift Boat Vets write that the trip didn't happen — indeed, couldn't have happened.

Reluctantly, the Kerry campaign has conceded that the Cambodia trip was not at Christmas (Nixon was not yet president). They have also had to back off from their first, second, third, and fourth accounts of how Kerry made that mistake. The Kerry campaign at this time refuses to give a date for that event — they now suggest it was sometime during February or the first few days of March. Brinkley quotes nearly two pages of an account from Kerry's journal that seems to place him at least near Cambodia, but not until after mid-March. On this vivid point — the Globe biography calls it the turning point of Kerry's life — the memories of the Swift Boat Vets have scored a direct hit against Kerry's account. That event supposedly taught Kerry cynicism about the word of the highest government officials.

it's by Micheal Novak.
now i'm getting a tad tired of this whole thing, but just about when i'm ready to move on to another topic, WHACK, something else hits. i raised three kids, and when i got a story, and it changed more than once, i knew that at least the original story was a line of b.s.. kerry has changed his "life changing" account about cambodia at least 5 times. so, was he lying the other 4?

personally, i think this whole thing about vietnam is a crock anyway. we all did stupid shit when we were young, said things that made us look bigger, better, smarter, faster. some of these things come back to bite us in the ass as we get older. most of us drop the b.s. as we age, because we mature and realize none of that stuff is all that important. what is important is who and what we are today. kerry has, unfortunately for him, repeated his lines so often in persuit of his political goals that he's begun to believe them himself. danger danger.

but what i'm really interested in, as i've stated more than once in this medium, is in any of kerry's leadership skills and voting records that he has developed as an adult. not a pretty site. he is again listed as the "most liberal" senator this last year, based on voting records. i want to know where all of the money these liberal programs need is going to come from. i'm already paying confiscatory taxes as it is, and they want to make it worse? i know a dude here in sacramento who sold his dad's house and all of his property and possessions, then split is up between the 3 brothers. that way dad didn't have any assets, and the state paid for his care and housing in a nursing home for 3 years, until he finally died. why?? well, i've been told that his dad "earned" the right to have the government support him, and that his dad had worked all those years to have something to leave his kids. Bill doesn't understand why i get pissed every time i see that pickup truck he bought with part of his share of his dad's property. he doesn't understand why i feel he conspired with his brothers to steal the money the state paid to care for his father. if his dad had sold his assets and used those monies to support himself until they ran out, i wouldn't have any issues with the state stepping in. but as it is, it was an "entitlement". oh, and all i ever hear from bill is how bad the taxes are on his contracting business. makes me grind my teeth.

wow, talk about a segue from one rant to another! anyway, i don't see much better out of the current administration regarding spending in the government either. but at least when i sell my real estate investment property, i'll only get hit for 20% vs. the 39.5% capital gains tax since G.W. lowered capital gains tax rates. hooray george.

back to the bookmark project

brain expansion:
Scientific American dot com. great place to get lost for an hour or two. one of my favorite non gun related magazines, and it's on line!


food stuff:
Traditional Navy Recipes. ever wondered how to make REAL Navy bean soup? how about chipped beef on toast, or as we called it in the navy...uh, never mind. i'm trying to keep this at least PG-13.

gun nut stuff:
Kim du Toit is a crazed gun nut. this blog is one of the gems i've found since hitting the blogsphere in the last couple of months. great stuff.

mechanical stuff:
Yesterday's Tractors John Deere Tractor Discussion Board. yup, i'm a nuke that works on tractors. not just any tractors, but 3 green beauties, ranging from a couple of these:


40's vintage Model AW's to


a 40's vintage Model B.
DISCLAIMER these pix are lifted from the web. i have a bunch of pix of pop's tractors, i've just been too lazy to scan them in. END DISCLAIMER
why?? because we use them for hay rides during pumpkin season at my father-in-law's farm in fremont California.

oh my.

well, i found the ultimate book for foodies. i may have to buy it just because.

interesting blog entry

an interesting assessment of the hype and hyperbole surrounding the infamous kerry river rat exploits. oh, here's the link.

a little music humor.

gotta love those swiftboat dudes

a quote from:

"Their online dialogue is punctuated with questions about why the "mainstream media" have been mostly ignoring this story — and why the 13 pro-Kerry vets are automatically assumed to have more credibility than 264 anti-Kerry vets. Just imagine the coverage if 264 vets who served with Bush in the Texas Air National Guard made similar charges. For those bloggers, this story has become a test of the mainstream media's credibility — and its liberal anti-Bush bias."

prestopundit blog.

you can read more by the swiftdudes at swiftvets.com. a peek at the photo here is instructive.

holy smokes. first hand account of fighting in mozul

this blog entry is incredible. got this from macbeau's, who got it from somewhere else. a very intense accounting of a fire fight on the streets of mozul. get some.

quote for the day

this quote is for every one of our kids out there on the sharp end of that very pointy stick:

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do voilence on their behalf."
George Orwell

have some free time today?

ok, here's the cool thing about the internet. the cruise ship that we took, Sapphire Princess, and all of the princess ships for that matter, have bridge cams.
they are going into the tracy arm today and the cam is at this link. just select sapphire princess, and this morning in about 5 hours you will be able to watch the ship transit the Tracy Arm up to the glacier and back with 60 second refresh on the image. it took about 4 hours all told when we went. one of the most memorable moments in my recent life.

howdy howdy howdy

well, we made it back in one piece. a week long cruise is not enough when visiting alaska and british columbia. here are a few samples of our trip. i'm working on gettig the images formatted and labeled, and when done, they will be placed in a photo album for all. oh, and the camera worked like a champ. wish i was a better photographer (i.e. trained on all the tricks of the trade), but i think i did ok.

click on images to see a larger version. none are bigger than about 250k, but before manipulation most are in the meg or better size. you should see the resolution. unbelievable.

The Blue Angels were were performing at seattle's SeaFair while we were loading up on the cruise liner to head out. we didn't get to see very much of the air show, since we were on the waterfront, and they were performing over lake washington. but they did buzz us a couple of times, and this image was shot as they were flying towards Mt. Ranier. fun to watch.

this is a small iceberg, probably about 35 or 40 feet long, by about 15 feet across. look at the blue. i was just blown away by the colors we saw in alaska. we were told that the blue ice is from the bottom of the glacier, where it had been compressed. this is in the Tracy Arm, on our way back out from getting up close and personal to a "floating" glacier, one that rides on the water at it's terminus. spectacular.

this is where the ice came from, a glacier at the head of Tracy Arm. the weird looking structure you see in the upper left corner is the bridge of the ship. and it's not a photographic trick. we were that close. this transit from the ocean, up the tracy arm, and back to sea was my favorite part of the whole cruise. i say again, spectacular.

howdy from the high seas

well, here we are, transiting from skagway to victoria, bc. we'll be at sea all day today and get into victoria around 5 pm (1700 for those of you who know how to tell real time)tomorrow. it hasbeen a glorious trip. the weather has been perfect, no rain, no cloudy days. just beautiful sunsine. we've seen orcas, humpback whales, and tons of dolphins racing the ship. we are on the 8th cruise of this new ship, and you just have to experience it to get the full impact. can you tell i'm loving it?
i haven't seen a newspaper or television news since we left, and i intend on keeping that streak going all the way until i get home. i did notice as the screen came up here at the old shipboard internet cafe, that julia child has passed away. so long julia, you gave thousands of us youngsters great meals by showing our moms that while beenie weenies are good, there was a lot more good food easily made. so long madame. you will be missed.
well, enough pratting about. i'm on my way to the sun deck, a tall (did i mention tall?) long island ice tea, some sun and a couple of pools full of boisterous youngsters.
did i mention tall?

north to alaska

hi everyone. i'll be gone for a week. finally taking my wife on the vacation i've been promising her for the last 7 years. cruising to alaska after a short trip to see my folks in the puget sound area. i may be popping in every once in a while, if they have a hookup on the ship. see ya. be good to those around you.

more on the swiftboat sailors ad

Here is an article out of the sacramento bee, but it's a syndicated item, so it's probably everywhere. one of the most telling statements is from the rear admiral that started this group:

Retired Adm. Roy Hoffmann, head of the Swift Boat group, said they respected McCain's "right to express his opinion and we hope he extends to us the same respect and courtesy, particularly since we served with John Kerry, we knew him well and Sen. McCain did not."

and why is this such a big deal? well, since kerry constantly keeps referring to his vietnam experience, and ignores the years he was in the senate (because his voting record would kill him if it were too closely examined). and he landed in boston harbor on a small boat, with his "band of brothers" with him, trying to capitalize on his war time experiences. that's why. do i give a shit whether he served or not? not really. what did he do for the country in his adult years as a senator? i'll dig up the itemized voting record. i've seen it published once or twice, so i'm sure it is still out there in cyberspace somewhere. but he isn't using his senate experience as a selling point. and for the dems to be so up in arms over who did or didn't serve amuses me more than words can say, considering the major posturing during the clinton (draft dodger) bush I (wwII pilot) and clinton (draft dodger) dole (wwII disabled vet) campaigns. i guess principles are elastic, kind of like monica's skivvies, eh?

it's a joke, son.

Kerry was going to visita Catholic Cathedral outside Washington as part of his campaign. Kerry's campaign manager made a visit to the Cardinal and said to him, "We've been getting a lot of bad publicity among Catholics because of Kerry's position on abortion and the like. We'd gladly make a contribution to the church of $100,000 if during your sermon you'd say John Kerry is a Saint."
The Cardinal thinks it over for a moment and agrees to do it.
Kerry shows up, and as the Mass progresses the Cardinal begins his homily. "John Kerry is petty, a self absorbed hypocrite and a nit-wit. He is a liar, a cheat, and a thief. He is the worst example of a Catholic I've ever personally known. But compared to Ted Kennedy, John Kerry is a Saint."

random quote, apropos to nothing

"I dropped Juan and Hunter at the Episcopal Care Center and said I'd kill an hour in a bar with Bambi. I spent the hour looking for a bar in a dry county. Life is a gradual release from ignorance."

Bob Braudis, Pitkin County Sheriff, in Hunter S. Thompson's Kingdom of Fear

first pix

ok, this is going to be kinda stoopid, but i had to take a couple of pix with the new camera when i got home from work.

this first shot is a 5 inch target tacked on the wall above my reloading bench. it was taken from across a two car garage at 10x, then the image reduced to 1/4 original size saved on the camera. oh, this is a reloading target. i shot this one at 25 yards offhand, using 230 grain ball ammo, two magazines of 7 each. i'll have to go look to see what the powder/primer/depth values were. this is a keeper load.


and this is a 50 foot target. center of mass was for checking point of aim. the head is 50 rounds of .357 and 50 rounds of 38 special out of a 686 S&W 6 inch barrel. the left side shoulder is 9mm, 50 rounds of 125 grain ball by dynomit nobel out of a borrowed S&W 5906. don't like the trigger on this gun, not very accurate. the right side shoulder is my favorite .45 acp load in 230 grain ball ammo out of a para-ordinace LDA 7-45. it is also 50 rounds. it was a very good day at the range.

oh, i'm not sending any messages here. this target hangs on the garage side of the door into my house.
if you look closely, you can see i was cutting out the center bull by shooting out it's border with the 45, but i got bored with that.. it was a really good day at the range.

cool pic of a B1b breaking the sound barrier

ok, is it just me, or does this jet look like it's wearing a fuzzy poodle skirt and fluffy hat?

ever wonder why the isrealis tend to kick ass?

The selection for the IDF SF units is done at a very early stage. In most units it's conducted prior to the to the actual recruitment to the IDF, when the future soldiers are still teenagers in high school. In the rest of the units it's done during the basic infantry training stage.

this tidbit taken from the isreali special forces website here

looky looky. i got a new toy

for the trip to alaska this weekend.



here are the specs. neato burrito. the two things that got me were the 10x optical/32x digital zoom, and the fact that it doesn't use proprietary batteries. can you say AA? i can get them anywhere, and with the nimetal hydride batteries i already have, recharging is no problemo. if they die, why, lookie here, a fresh pack of 4 to insert until the recharge is done.

stolen from elsewhere

this is too funny. i know, i know, polite and adult discourse in the political arena, to preclude getting called a hypocrite, but pu..lease, you have to admit this is funny.

thanks Mike.

vuja de!

wow, looks like someone else is reading my blog

two quotes for the day

found at the site listed below. this may become a new feature here.

"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
-- George Washington

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
-- Benjamin Franklin

2nd Amendment comments from the founding fathers

Here is a set of comments by the founding fathers regarding the 2nd Amendment. to quote the author of this webpage:

"If you believe the constitution is a "living document", let's play poker with the rule book declared a "living document" and I will interpret the rules."

to see the whole site for Professor Williams, go here


and here's one by one of my favorite 20th century iconoclasts:

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights."
-- H.L. Mencken

i will never complain about my job again

a light hearted look at some other differences

between the candidates can be found here at the Command Post. i think the funniest thing about this post is the responses. man, some people need to get out in the sunshine and breath non-indoors air every once in a while.
still, the article is illuminating.

and yet another post from the command post. this hits a little close to home. but i do have to say that i try to keep my discourse civil, and resort to schoolyard name calling only when the other person is a real poopoo head.

"if you want to know

what john kerry was like, ask the men who served with him." quote from john edwards. don't think he would like what these men are saying.

thanks to an amigo for the link.

lance may have title stripped

follow the link

sorry ali.

wow. neat and informative site

found here at nucleartourist.com. way more nuke geek stuff than the average folk out there could/would/ or should read. but it has a series of articles from the left column sidebar that explore differences in energy sources, and pros and cons for each, including nuclear. very interesting site.

very insightful essay about "saigon on the tigeris"

found a new daily stop, and that is reason online.

not exactly sure what the controlling political bent is here yet, because i haven't read enough articles to determine it, but i certainly like the lucid and well thought out essays that i have read so far.
bothenook sez "check it out!"

*edit* ok, after looking around a bit, i realize it's libertarian in thought and deed. guess that's why i took to it immediately. any magazine that makes enough sense to people that both rush limbaugh AND the aclu give it kudos is a place for me to wander.

perhaps a new career field for me

if running nuclear reactors ever dries up. of course, i'm talking about being a jester!

and a few bookmarks

reference:
Dictionary.com. i am a horrible speller, and this site keeps me honest. i use it so often that i just don't know why i haven't bookmarked it yet.

decline of western civilization:
Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

self centered egotistic rantings and ravings:
The Best Page In the Universe. maddox has been cracking me up for several years now. now it's your turn to shake your head and say "what an asshole".

commentary and essays
duckseason.org. there are usually more good articles than clinkers here. this rates at least a weekly stop off just to see what's new.

today's bumperstickers are

How Many Roads Must A Man Travel Down Before He Admits He Is Lost?

and

I like you. I’ll kill you last

thanks macbeau

for posting this story about one of the smarter crooks out there. too damned funny

i really like this quote

from an article in The Hill: he's not a hunter, he just plays one on tv. hahaha
freakin' kerry is squarely in the steal my guns camp, and i ain't gunna let it happen if i can help it. education usually, but not always, replaces ignorance.

well, this is good news for the napa valley

and anyone that is anyone already knows that drinking makes you smarter. must have been why i was a genius when i was younger.

interesting talks over coffee

if you ever met me, you would understand a couple of things right away. one, nobody's a stranger to me, only a friend i just haven't met yet. the other is that i like solving the world's ills over a cup of coffee, usually in discussion with the afore mentioned friends.
this weekend, i sat for several hours having coffee with one of my really really smart friends. he is an artistically brilliant thinker, an egyptian expat who loves the napa valley. he is the embodiment of millennia of culture and intellectual prowess that egypt was so famous for. he brings an entirely new frame of reference to our discussions, and i've learned more about the middle east, and the conflicts there, from him than from all of the reading and watching news and commentary shows put together. he had a friend with him that i met for the first time. this man had been in the egyptian military for many years, rising through the ranks to hold a position of trust in the president's bodyguard. very interesting man.
anyway, we got to talking about how computers are changing the face of the middle east, and how the repressive governments and clerics are tearing their hair out over the free access to information and choices the rest of the world has regarding life styles. pretty illuminating conversation.
but since i'm such a fan of military history and tactics, the conversation evolved to discussions about the current generation of kids. this topic has been hashed out in the press over the last 10 or so years, starting with the "nintendo war" known as gulf I. i wondered aloud what the kids of today are going to be like in 15 or 20 years, when they are the generation entering the board rooms, senate halls, or military upper echelons. these kids learn to not only multi-task playing videos, they learn small and large unit tactics, with a refresh button to start over if they mess up. previous generations either learned quickly, or they died. so instead of having a small percentage of the population capable of making the kind of big picture decisions these kids are learning, we will have an entire generation of them. my buddy told me that one of the true shortcomings of americans, as perceived by the rest of the world, is that we are almost without exception linear thinkers. a leads to b, leads to c, and so on. the lions of commerce and true leaders in government can take disparate facts and information, and assimilate it all into a cohesive campaign to achieve goals. we all agreed that while it's too early to tell what the ramifications are, training an entire generation of youngsters the art of war as taught by sun tzu will radically change the face of business AND warfare in this country. many cultures, mainly asian, teach sun tzu, and hold his philosophy with the highest regard. in this country, he's taught at the war college. but there is a huge difference between teaching cold and lifeless book knowledge, and the excitement of a fast paced video game. there are many gamers out there that don't even realize the games they play are all based on successfully completing the game only if sun tzu's tactics are used. i heard a round table discussion of game tactics a while ago, and the programmers all talked about how they incorporated sun tzu's "Art of War" into the scenarios. even the us army uses video games for teaching small unit tactics to it's budding leaders. it not only lets these youngsters do stupid stuff, and get killed without anyone dying, it also teaches them to think in three dimensions, and use as many as 15 inputs for data. all of which must be kept straight in their head, and acted on appropriately. as a matter of fact, a truncated version of the game used by the army is/was (? i haven't checked in the last year or so) on their recruiting web site. *boink---edit* u.s. army recruiting video games.. it's both amazing and frightening to think what this may portend for our future.

further tom-foolery about mickey moore

“If (Moore) wants to ‘edit’ The Pantagraph, he should apply for a copy-editing job,” the paper said.

the above line is from an article found here. it refers to MM actually "editing" the front page of a newspaper, giving it a headline it never had in reality. the same headline that mm uses as part of his diatribe against gwb. boy, i'm sure glad that what moore does is completely factual documentaries, because if he ever decided to make something up...no, wait. uh, never mind.

special thanks to Lt. Smash for the heads up

ward connerly on bill cosby...good read

Ward Connerly, who is a california institution, wrote a great piece about bill cosby, the naacp, and president bush. i have followed connerly for years, and he consistently makes sense. i like his "there is no black or white or yellow, there are just americans" philosophy. good one ward.

this is scary

Command Post is running a set of articles about the upgrading of the alert level to orange. i'm not too sure i'd want to go to work in the specific areas that Ridge has upgraded the levels at. with the recent arrest in texas of the woman that appears to be linked to al-queda, to the rash of recent crossings of arabs from mexico into the us, it looks like we are getting set up again for some sort of spectacular attack. this is actually very frightening upon close examination. we have a true disadvantage in this fight simply because of who and what we are. how are we going to combat folks infiltrating borders that we don't want totally closed off? might be time to dust off old mabel, and feed a few clips fresh ammo. hey bad guys! come on over. i've got clear lines of fire established. see how you do against somebody that is ready, not innocent civilians going about their daily business.

uh, are the swat teams coming yet? better open a few windows so that i don't have to replace them after they come crashing into the house!!

and one from my bud edvardicus (dwardo)

and of course, no photo stuff would work without at least one from my bud edvardicus. this is my wife's buddy Coltrane. i love this picture. if you knew this dog, you'd understand. hearty well done dwardo. his son ben is currently enrolled in the california academy for the arts, and is quite good with a camera as well. you can see a lot of ben's stuff here.