Armed Canadian

"Snickers Bar, Not Dark Chocolate"

2009-07-06T11:30:00.000-07:00

I meant to post this last week but I figured I'd save it for a post-Fourth rant.

Here we have an article from CNN discussing the trend of single black women choosing to adopt children versus marrying and having them. If you've ever heard Chris Rock go off on how some relationships just can't work ("you're a black woman, he's a black man"), you'll understand where the basic point of this article is coming from.

The article even confirms Rock's premise:

"We're seeing more and more single African-American women who are not finding men," Caldwell says. "There's a lack of qualified black men to get into relationships with."

But I am stunned that CNN printed some of the other stuff in here and did so with apparent seriousness. Read on and be shocked.

Yet there are some single African-American women who are not emotionally ready to adopt an African-American child who is too dark, some adoption agency officials say.

Fair-skinned or biracial children stand a better chance of being adopted by single black women than darker-skinned children, some adoption officials say.

Not emotionally ready?!? Is that the new code word for "black racist"? Because that is exactly what it sounds like to me.

It gets better/worse. Very next sentence:

"They'll say, 'I want a baby to look like a Snickers bar, not dark chocolate,' " Caldwell, founder of Lifetime Adoption, says about some prospective parents.

Can you imagine the outcry if any white couple uttered such a thing if they were looking to adopt a non-white baby? You'd have demands for their heads on a pike next to very shrill cries of "Racism!" and so on. But when a non-white person makes such an utterance, its simply news and information for the reader. No controversy, no issue, no big deal.

It is a child not a bloody chocolate bar! I'm amazed they didn't also specify whether they wanted nuts under the wrapper or not.

But the sentence that follows this is the hands-down winner:

"I had a family who turned a baby down because it was too dark," she says. "They said the baby wouldn't look good in family photographs."

If any white person looking to adopt said this, there'd be a guillotine on their front lawn the following morning courtesy of Jesse Jackson with Al Sharpton under the black hood looking to take their head off. Complete with news crews and a crowd cheering them on.

"Wouldn't look good in family photographs"?!?

Words escape me.

I am floored that CNN published this. In any other context, this material would be worthy of a standalone hatred screed on Stormfront. And would fit right in among those white supremacists and their varieties of vile hatred.

But it is perfect OK for a black person to say such things and see them as perfectly acceptable. Simply recognizing the realities of the world as it were. These would be the same people, whom I suspect, would launch into a fit of apoplectic fury at the prospect of a non-black couple adopting a black child because such an act would be "denying them their black heritage" or "deprive them of important black cultural roots".

It is no less racism when it comes out of their mouths and it is way past time people started calling them out on it.

The subjects of these excerpts should be ashamed of themselves. It's hard enough to adopt any child and the fact that these people would pick and choose based on the color of an innocent child's skin as the factor that will determine whether that child is worthy of living with them is disgusting.

The only saving grace is that by their ignorance and xenophobia, those children will wind up in better, more loving and tolerant homes. But I despair for what the poor unfortunate child raised by such narrow-minded, intolerant, race-baiting dumbass individuals will be taught. In my opinion it would be no different than handing a baby over to a openly practicing, preaching member of the KKK.

Now I understand why so many children are in need of foster homes if this is the prevailing attitude among the available population of potential black foster or adoptive homes. "Too black, send'em back!". And pillory me for even suggesting that non-black couples are fine for fostering or adopting black children.

Weren't we supposedly to be over all this now that The One has ascended?

Just goes to prove that racism knows no bounds. Even down to the hatred of children who don't know any better. This affirms what my mother taught me is that racism is a learned behavior and it all starts with the parents.

Glad to see another generation of parents will be perpetuating it. All they need is a nice lawn and a burning cross to complement the landscaping. Except they'd be the one's putting them up and lighting the match.

Cross That One Off

2009-07-06T07:39:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone had a good Fourth of July. I certainly did and I get to cross an item off my "To-Do" list. It took me almost 7 years but I finally got to see the Capitol fireworks display from the Potomac River. And it was quite a sight! The fifteen minutes of the very large Mall show plus a half-dozen or so smaller displays all the way down the opposite shore as far as we could see. It was a panorama of fireworks.

It was worth it. We spent most of the day just sitting at anchor just outside the marina. We had sailed for a bit previously but found it a little too rough for comfort. Still, I was glad we got some sailing in to let my friend Tom and his son experience a little of life under canvas.

I need to recharge the house battery. We ran it dry just after sunset. It might be too far gone to save since I don't know how old it is. If so, there's another $200 for a new house battery. I have some work to do when I get the boat hauled in a couple weeks. Hopefully, that should be the last of the lightening of my wallet for some time.

Back to work.

Green Living

2009-06-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

I'm wondering what the recent visitors of the repairman stripe were thinking as they bopped around my basement fixing stuff and saw the green cabinets and stacks of military green ammunition cans on wire racks? Especially given that several of those cans had a stack of very menacing looking knives of various stripes and styles. To those in the know, we call those "bayonets". Unfortunately, there was no room in the 80mm mortar round case for those since I was trying to hide the stacks of FAL and G3 magazines from those who might be exceptionally curious about the contents of said green cabinets.

I think the Sears guy was fine but the Comcast guy was more worried about the red and white, very ferocious cattle dog we had to sequester in the next room than he might have been about the close proximity of numerous implements of personal warfare, mayhem and destruction. Foster does not like be locked in a room all by himself, especially when there are new friends to be made.

I cannot understand why Achmed fears dogs. As long as the tail is wagging, you'll leave with the same number of holes in your body that you started with. Foster loves to make friends. He'll give up the tummy and give kisses freely so I just can't figure that fear out. Any takers?

Achmed should consider himself fortunate. The last Comcast guy Foster met resulted in a rapid visit to the vet the following week for some overdue canine alteration. I can't say he was fixed because, honestly, he wasn't broken. That much he made apparent to the Comcast guy's misfortune. Pushing 8 years later, we're still convinced that the vet missed one somewhere. The romance never really left Foster's life. And I have the pictures to prove it.

On to other topics...

You don't know how hard I found it on Saturday to not untie the boat and head out for an hour to two to enjoy what were perfect sailing conditions. Steady 10 knots out of the north on the Potomac. Just ripples for waves. Those are conditions that define the term "day sailing". Alas, I promised my wife that after I finished tracing the electrical system and making sure all was working prior to the 4th this week that I would not take her out and singlehand. She quoted the Boater Safety Course on me to back it up! I'm impressed. I kept my word and left her tied up.

But it was very tempting. An O'Day 22 is an easy boat to singlehand provided you can lash the tiller in place while you're forward handling the sails. You need to keep her up into the wind while raising them and that usually requires two people or a means to keep the bow into the wind. Nothing a length of line and two cleats can't handle. As I said, very tempting.

But I'm set for the 3rd and the 4th now. Masthead light is not functioning but since I am under 23 feet in length, I am not required to have one. A handheld light shone on the sails or forward under power is fine. I plan to fix that at haulout.

Which leads to today's minor rant...

For those of you all high and mighty on "green living", shut the fuck up. Buying compact fluorescents that require EPA instructions and a hazmat suit to clean up when broken, driving a Prius that polluted enough water to kill a coral reef in making its frame and batteries and sticking your cardboard into a plastic bin that uses more oil to produce than you will ever save driving said previous electric tinkertoy does not make you a guilt-free, environmentally aware, eco-sustainable, planet-saving citizen.

It makes you a hippie. And a particularly stupid one at that.

My plan is to live the green lifestyle you spout so proudly of from your pedestal. But you have no idea how difficult a problem that really is because it requires thought.

My sailboat, even a lowly 22 foot daysailer is more green that your supposed green lifestyle will ever be. And here's why:

My sailboat is recycled. It is 32 years old and still going strong. How long will your Prius last?
My sailboat is powered by the wind to get anywhere it needs to go. The gas engine is optional. How far will your Prius get on a single charge if we took its gas engine out?
I can travel anywhere in the world on my sailboat without using a drop of oil. That's 24,000 nautical miles and seven continents. What's the range of a Prius on a single charge? 50-100 miles and maybe the next county?
My electricity production is done by solar power. My boat is entirely a closed-loop. A single house battery provides me with all the light I need and the solar panel keeps it charged. So I'm two up on the sustainable living thing. How much oil does your Prius need to charge its battery?
Marine regulations prohibit the discharge of polluted water into any inland waterways. So I'm not dumping toxins into the river. How much CO2 comes out of the tailpipe of your Prius?
White sailboats don't contribute to solar global warming since they reflect heat away from their hulls. Just doing my part for the environment.

Seriously though, before I met my wife I was in the process of planning out my lifestyle. That involved me living aboard a 32-38 foot sailboat in Annapolis. While that seems insane, the cost advantages were (and are) very compelling. Done right, I could have retired in my 40s with enough money in the bank to let me sail anywhere in the world and live a life of reasonably luxury anywhere I landed for the rest of my life.

While my list of point above might seem like hyperbole, they really aren't. In looking to live in what is essentially a floating prison, you learn to prioritize and one of the things high on the list is power. Since boats at sea can only carry a limited amount of fuel and have limited room, you have to figure out your power usage accurately and plan accordingly. In doing so, you begin to weight the pros and cons of various approaches but when it comes right down to it, a sailing liveaboard is about as green as you can get.

When most people talk about "living off the grid", crusing liveaboards have no choice but to do so. Wind generators and solar panels are regular features on these boats and done right, can provide all of ones power needs. These are not new ideas. Crusing boats have been doing this stuff for over 20 years.

You can power everything from a generator hooked up to your engine (called an "auxillary" in the sailing world), you have to deal with your available fuel capacity, how long you'll be at sea and the possibility of these two very expensive pieces of mechanical equipment breaking and leaving you in the dark. Hence why most boats and smart owners use two or more systems for keeping the lights on.

And nothing will teach you more about the reality of so-called "green living" than planning the power budget for a sailboat as a liveaboard. If you think the solution to all the world's ills are wind generators and solar panels, you haven't studied the problem. Crusing sailboat owners have done so and know the subject backwards and forwards.

I find it funny in Googling "off the grid" solutions for power generation for houses that except for the house in the picture, I'm looking at the same techniques and equipment sailboats use. If you think generating all your home power from solar and batteries alone is sufficient and easy, I guarantee the price tag will knock you flat.

It costs thousands in a sailboat to use solar as a primary power source and you definitely won't be running a refrigerator, hot water tank or air conditioning unit with such a setup. If you can't do that in a oddly shaped 35x14 foot space with every top surface covered in high efficiency panels, you sure as hell aren't going to do it in your suburban McMansion without an acre or two nearby. And an expenditure equal to a significant fraction of the value of the house without you making significant lifestyle changes.

Solar is used to keep batteries topped off. Batteries are the primary source of power. When you need extra, you need a diesel powered generator (up to a few kilowatts) or a wind turbine.

It is amusing to see people touting wind as the next big thing in energy. Apparently these folks have never opened a West Marine catalog or picked up a copy of Cruising World. Wind turbines on a boat can produce a nice chunk of power. As long as the wind is blowing, you have lights. The downside of wind turbines and what they don't talk about for home use is noise and limits to usefulness.

A 36 inch sailboat wind generator at speed will sound like you're living next door to a neighbor with a Cessna in his garage. Yes, the blades make noise and as wind speed increases, so does the noise. Newer turbines have addressed this in various ways and look very appealing. Not cheap though.

There are two types of wind generators for power generation and each have their pluses and minuses. I personally prefer constant output generators since they don't require as much circuitry to handle them and tend to be more maintenance-free. But they don't produce as much power as the variable rate turbines. And both types of turbines do need someone to keep an eye on them since if the wind speed gets too high and the turbine doesn't have self-feathering or lockdown ability, they can literally spin themselves to death.

It's not fun dodging shrapnel as a two thousand dollar wind turbine explodes next to your head.

Still, one or two turbines can keep your batteries topped off and your lights on without running your diesel generator with all that icky oil. Just as long as the wind is blowing fast enough. 10+ knots usually.

After power, sailboat living just generally requires downsizing. While the period after my ex-wife and I separated wasn't fun, it was that period that taught me that I could indeed liveaboard and got me pursuing it. You see, after she left, she took the bed with her. So I had no reason to go into the bedroom and since we only had one bed, I slept on the futon in the living room. The kitchen was at my back and a small kitchen table was nearby. Despite the fact I was in a 1400 square foot apartment, I actually only lived for the better part of a year in a 12x14 foot room and used the rest of the space for storage.

That changed when I started dating my wife-to-be but for a very long time, I lived in a space typically found about a small sailboat. And enjoyed it.

It was refreshing to just pare away the non-essentials. How much counter space does one need to cook small meals once a day? How much space do you really need for a place to sleep? How much room do you actually have to set aside for your favorite books and a computer. "Not much" turned out to be the answer for me.

So I found myself contemplating and actually planning a "green lifestyle" long before the term was fashionable. Not that I considered it such since the "boat bum" lifestyle had some appeals all their own. Not everyone walking around downtown Annapolis could claim to have a view of the Bay and the Naval Academy from their home. $8000 per year for the liveaboard slip may seem outrageous but it was a lot cheaper than rent. My boat payment, insurance and slip fee would have been significantly less than my apartment rent at the time. And I would have had no utility bills since shore power was included in the slip fee and I would have had my own onboard power options.

With the advantage that if I tired of my Annapolis view, I could have St. Michaels a couple hours later and Baltimore the following night and back to Annapolis in time for work Monday if I so chose. I think a lot of people can see the appeal in that.

It never got out of the planning and phone call stages (just starting to call boat brokers) when I started dating my wife. But this desire has never let go and so far, she's been receptive to the idea of our weekend home in the future being a 30-40 foot sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay.

Our 22 foot sailboat on the Potomac is merely the first step in that direction. But on its own scale, it is just as much a green lifestyle as that future sailboat will be. The nice thing about sailboats is that there are lot of 20, 30 or even 40 year old boats out there that will work just fine depending on your desires and pocketbook.

The boat I was looking to liveabord ran between $15,000 and $28,000 depending on condition and equipment. A Gulfstar 37 center cockpit. Saw one recently on Craigslist in Annapolis for under $20,000. No one can argue that would be a cheap home after five years. Hell, a lot of new cars nowadays aren't that expensive. $25,000 for a house that you'll own free and clear in 5-10 years depending on how you structure the loan and $8-10K per year in rent and maintenance? Not a bad deal in my book.

Admittedly, there are downsides to this but your outlook and expectations matter a great deal in what you get out of it. I've been very pleased with my experiences aboard my new "old" 22 footer so far. I had my netbook playing movies on the cabin counter while I checked out the onboard wiring. Forward hatch open, 85 degrees outside and it was comfortable down below. Motion of the boat within the slip didn't bother me at all.

You scale that up to a small apartment and you'll have a hard time prying me off on weekends. The next step after that is to cast off the lines and not look back until I've reached St. Thomas.

Bet a Prius can't do that. So knock the "I'm green and doing my part!" (not to mention channeling Robert Heinlein) stuff off until you've actually tried it. Until your house is fenstooned in solar panels with a few wind turbines in the backyard, you've pried the engine out of your Prius and using it as a decorative yard display and an axe is lying next to the power pole you've just chopped down, can it. You're no more green than a Saudi Sheik with a fleet of oil tankers and an oil refinery dumping CO2 into the atmosphere faster than cows can fart.

I don't believe in all this eco-conservation bullshit and neither do you. Unlike you, I'm willing to admit it and actually give it a try someday.

What's your excuse?

Random and Messed Up Thoughts

2009-06-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

Great, now we get to be bombarded for the next several days on non-stop Michael Jackson coverage. If I was Farrah Fawcet in the afterlife, I'd be pissed right now. She deserved better than what she got. It's terrible to die of anal cancer and she kept her dignity only to be upstaged hours later. The Universe can have a sick sense of humor.

Get ready for "Wacko Jacko" TV right up to the funeral coverage. And I can't even enjoy a diversion of looking for Amish porn on the Internet because my home connection is down. Thanks Comcast! Then a couple weeks of shuffled programming on the cable networks for biographies, retrospectives and tribute shows.

I had an extremely wrong thought pop into my head when I heard he died on the drive home last night. It involved me with the ability to draw comic panels and hot flames.

C'est la vie. I hope the guy found some peace. Unfortunately, we get to live with the fallout.

On an unrelated subject, for the next person who suggests that universal healthcare is a wonderful idea, ask them how good Medicare/Medicaid would be if it was 7 times larger than it is today in terms of cost and inefficiency? For a really fun response, ask a member of the AARP that question and then be prepared to duck.

If the questioner still believes universal healthcare won't suffer those issues, write them off as something other than human. You need a brain for that and they'll be clearly lacking. Why do we have universal suffrage again?

Sorry, in a messed-up mood today. Going to try avoiding some channel markers tomorrow to work it out.

Lost Another One

2009-06-24T08:02:00.001-07:00

I don't know if anyone noticed but Daryl "Shifty" Powers of "Band of Brothers" fame died last week at the age of 86.

As some of you may not know, he was given a gift of an M1 Garand that matched the last three serial numbers of the rifle he carried throughout the war. It was an incredible gift and I felt it was fitting given his service to this country. The story is worth reading.

Men like you will be missed, Shifty. Another one lost of the Greatest Generation. We will never see another like it.

Just Add Rum

2009-06-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

Somehow, I don't think my wife will let me take this cruise. The prices for the various options are actually quite reasonable.

Hopefully there will be no pirates on the Potomac this weekend. I cannot be legally be armed since I am in the safe, crime-free utopia of Washington DC.

Good weekend everyone!

Crossing the Rubicon

2009-06-18T13:50:00.000-07:00

The title of this post is a common expression. Most people don't know what it means. It has its roots in the Roman era of Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon river in Italy in 49 B.C. which at the time was considered an act of war. It has come to mean reaching a "point of no return", such as initiating a war.

In this post, "war" might be too strong a word. Perhaps not as we are in a culture war.

I am starting to believe this is a war we will ultimately lose.

I read letters like this over at Kevin's. It has been a common, yet underground, theme for months. People are angry, upset and tired about the continued, unwarranted and unwanted intrusion into every aspect of our lives. For gun rights supporters we always were aware of such things. But now it has gone way, way beyond that. We always thought that any attempts by government to rule us and gain control would be incremental because that was they it had always happened. Based on our experiences in guns and numerous other areas, control and advancement of government power always seemed to creep forward because the people would never stand for a Hitleresque, Maoist or Chavez-style power grab done in plain sight.

Not anymore. It seems as of late our elected officials have decided to simply sidestep the issue and move on without any pretext at all. They just going to do it in the interest of all of us.

TARP. Phone calls to our representatives nearly melted down the Capitol switchboard. They did it anyway. They got the message the first time, threw in some bribes and magically the exact same bill passed without resistance not a few days later. Did Congress twitter all their constituents or something?

AIG and others were "too big to fail". So the government propped them up or let them die and be absorbed by others. And despite tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars injected into these companies we have no idea if any of it will have any effect at all.

GM, Chrysler and Ford were in trouble. We were told that if they were to go bankrupt, the results would be catastrophic for the nation. So we injected $15+ billion dollars into them despite us saying back in the fall that it wasn't going to work.

End result was those billions wasted without even so much as a "Sorry" and two out of three in bankruptcy anyway. Except now with the government hand involved, they are dictating the terms under which those bankruptcies will be discharged. By hook or by crook, they will get what they want and will do it at all taxpayer expense. Ford, smartly, saw the writing on the wall and decided they would sit that one out. I hope Alan Mullaly gets a hefty bonus for saving his company from the road to Hell. And the government calls these bankruptcies a necessary step and act like it was all planned. Leave it to the government to spend $15 billion dollars to prove themselves wrong and make it look like a success.

And now it is healthcare. So far, that price tag is $1,000,000,000,000 and climbing. Yes, one TRILLION dollars. And that number will only cover 16 million Americans over a 10 year period and still leave 35 million without health insurance. Think about that for a moment. If one trillion dollar is the price of a decade's worth of health insurance, what would the cost be for everyone? That number should scare the living daylights out of you.

Especially when we do not have a trillion dollars now or a decade in the future.

All of these things, healthcare, bailouts, spending to save us from catastrophe, cannot be sustained. It is being placed on the taxpayer Visa with a promise to pay in the future. And when that bill becomes due, we won't even be able to make the minimum payment due demanded by China to cover a fraction of the interest let alone beat down the principal. When the rest of the world figures this out, and they will, we as a nation are going to be well and truly fucked.

You haven't even seen a crisis yet.

It isn't a surprise this is happening. It was expected. But not the scope or speed of it. It seems everything now has to be rammed through. Every thing is a crisis that our benevolent, all-knowing, wise and all-seeing government will be able to fix for us. Just trust them and we'll get through this.

We've gotten what we deserve. An empty suit with no legislative accomplishments to his credit but with a silver tongue managed to convince enough of the populace that he would solve all their problems and lead this country into a better place. So guess where the blame lies? Not with him but with us.

A minority of us are screaming about the train wreck that is coming and no one cares. And that is really the crux of the issue. Actually, it is worse than lack of caring. It is the ultimate outcome of a generation of "me, me, me!" come full-circle.

Not only does the public-at-large not care, I am in agreement with other bloggers like the Geek with a .45 that they will happily thrust they wrists forward and accept the chains willingly. As long as they have food, a roof over their head, the pablum of television to soothe them and a nebulous promise of being taken care of whether it be financially, health care or job-wise, they will accept servitude readily.

I feel that this is the outcome just based on casual conversation. Any of you ever talk about these issues and have the other person say, "Well that's true but I've got mine. If it is going to happen anyway, I might as well get something out of it."? They're close to retirement and looking for a piece of their contribution back or young and never had it to begin with. They don't care about it being taxpayer money or your money or even their money. Just get a piece, to hell with the others.

I've heard a lot of such talk over the past several months.

40% of our electorate has no income tax burden to speak of. They don't make enough to qualify or the tax credits they receive reduce their tax burden to zero. "Tax credits" is a code word for "refund". Except when the amount of the tax credit is greater than what you paid, it isn't a refund. It's wealth redistribution.

Where do you think that $8000 home buyer tax credit is coming from? Thin air? Anyone taking advantage of that credit (and I know someone who has) is collectively reaching into our pockets to cover that windfall. We as a society are paying a percentage of their American Dream. I can't blame anyone for doing it but unlike the rest of the country, the government cannot create wealth to offset its expenditures. All it can do is tax or not tax, spend or not spend.

And 40% don't care one way or the other because they benefit regardless.

In this country, 40% is more than sufficient regardless of political ideology to drag the rest of us down. As long as they have a roof, food and entertainment, where it comes from is immaterial. They will vote it and demand it. And because the representatives in government enjoy their jobs, they will give it to them. Directly from our wallets and purses if need be.

I believe we now stand on the shores of the Rubicon with a choice to make. And I fear the choice has already been made and we are approaching the opposite shore, waist deep and not even looking back.

Of course, we're screaming from the back ranks, begging our leaders not to do it. But they choose to ignore our cries because they know what is on the opposite shore is better for us. They know best. And they will do it.

I think this health care debate, which has not fundamentally changed since the early 1990s, will be the final shove we need. I think between the damage already done and what they want to do that we will not be able to recover. Our country is already being irreversibly shaped into a future we don't want and are likely powerless to stop. The effects of these current policies will be far-reaching and their unintended consequences have yet to be seen. The die has already been cast.

Does anyone honestly believe that the government will rehabilitate GM or Chrysler and then divest themselves of their stakes and influence and allow them to go back to being private enterprises competing against Ford?

Does anyone honestly believe Obama can actually achieve savings from Medicare and Medicaid to pay for his $1,000,000,000,000 vision of insuring a fraction of Americans when GAO reports year after year after year have consistently pointed out problems with the system and fixes that need to be made that have never materialized? What makes now so different? Because the "right people" are in charge?

Does anyone honestly believe spending money we don't have is going to make things easier and better in the future? Or do you believe our kids and grandkids will just punt the problem to the next generation in the belief that it is someone else's problem?

If any private individual or organization attempted to operate their finances the way the government calls a spending increase a "tax cut" because they decided to only rack up $75,000,000 in charges instead of the $100,000,000 they proposed, they'd be bankrupt or in jail. And yet, we let them do it. The notion of not spending money they don't have never occurs to them. After all, votes are at stake.

Have you noticed that over the past few months the justifications for these various actions have more or less dwindled away? What was a primetime speech from the President to explain why such actions were necessary just doesn't happen anymore. We are merely informed of what is going to happen, some brief platitude about "saving our country" and that is that. No one even feels the need to justify their actions to those who placed them there.

I think because they know now and have found the American version of ruling through fear. For us, it isn't gulags, party membership (although that's on the radar) or purges but economy, money and jobs. Invoke the spectre of us losing one or all and the slaves fall into willing rows, ready to accept their chains. Especially if accompanied by a "submission tax credit" or "happiness stimulus".

I always thought our Rubicon lay decades in the future. Preferably with me as an old man or gone and waiting for the next round. I believed that bright shining line of "No further or else!" would be a dim glow on a hazy horizon.

No longer.

I am told by my mother-in-law that the Republic will endure, that it always managed to weather its doldrums and come back strong. After all, it survived the Civil War, two World Wars and the Great Depression. It will survive this. Unfortunately, I do not believe that despite my most desperate desire to do so.

I think next year we will begin to have an answer to our future. If come 2010 we let the same people run the show, I feel that we will not be turning back from this course. I think even if there is sufficient outrage come 2012 to oust the lot of them, short of a new government capable of having the courage to actual roll back these excesses and tell the American people "No more! We are doing this to save the Republic. It will hurt for you, you will suffer but we must stop this!" and actually do it, there will be nothing we can do. Such courage has not existed within government in a long time.

By 2012, as I echoed at Chris Byrne's, we will begin to see the ramifications of today's policy choices if left unreversed. We will begin to see the unintended consequences. And this is assuming that no other crises arise to draw us down even more rapidly than we are headed now. A few more Holocaust shootings and another Virginia Tech and we might even lose our last box of persuasion.

The soap box is fun to stand on but without a new Publius, it will not work despite Geek's belief to the contrary.

The jury box is fading. The law, like our government, is becoming too frozen and set in its ways to do the right thing.

The ammo box, despite the damage it would cause, has watched its time go long past. I think in this political climate even if 10,000 armed citizens showed up on the Mall in defiance of everything to have their voices heard, we'd witness troops gun them down and treat the survivors just like the Taliban at Tora Bora. I have no doubt that active armed resistance would be crushed and I think those watching on the sidelines would cheer the government on in doing do.

Lastly, the ballot box is showing signs of being ignored. Yes, we will still use it and think we are making a difference but at this point I think even the most ardent leftist would agree that it is pretty much being ignored. It doesn't matter to them anyway since their people are in charge.

All that remains is for us to finish our journey across the Rubicon and then there will be no going back.

By 2015, I don't think we'll recognize this country. Oh, it will still be called the "United States of America", it will still have a Constitution and people will still go about their lives but it will not be as it is today. We will be a beaten people, unable or unwilling to fight back, living in fear and being happy for what little we've managed to hold on to and what is being given to us. Many of us will still protest but we will be marginalized and dismissed as "paranoid" at best. Or maybe enough of us will be charged and jailed under numerous anti-terrorism laws that already exist today to cow the rest of us into submission.

Our economy will be gone. Our savings will be taxed, taken and spent. We will live on the largess of the Chinese and any bank who holds our bonds. We will be enslaved. Or we will be bankrupt and we will be two people, poor and those in charge, and a nation of laws and not men on paper only. 200 years of prosperity and the greatest experiment in human history cast aside in the name of "social justice" in the span of just 24 months.

We're halfway there. I feel the end coming. I will see it in my lifetime. I figure we've got 4-7 years.

And then the Rubicon will be behind us and we cannot go back.

I hope I'm wrong.

Pitfalls of the Potomac

2009-06-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

The weekend was wonderful. Some things I'm learning about sailing on the Potomac River...

One: You better have your head on a swivel when entering the main shipping channel. There is a LOT of big boat traffic like the Spirit of Washington, water taxis, dinner cruises and so on. Rules of navigation require sailboats under sail to stay out of their way since they are restricted to the channel and sailboats are not.

As a result, you develop a sense of time/distance estimation. You better if you don't want to get run over.

Two: Solar panels break when stepped upon. In other words, if it is working fine where it is, don't move it. That mistake cost me $50.

Three: Channel markers do not move. The second-worst sound you can hear in a boat is the crackling of fiberglass as you run a near 2000 pound sailboat against an immovable steel pole. So far, I am only enduring wounded pride and minor to no damage to my rub rails. I was lucky and was able to fend off the worst of the collision to have it run along the hull rather than take it broadside. More importantly, have the impact occur well behind the chainplates in a non-loading bearing area. I could have sworn I saw the hull flex at impact but it appears the damage so far is minor. Hence why it is the second-worst sound you can hear.

The worst sound to hear is the gurgle of water in your hull after said impact.

The lesson learned from that little disaster is don't attempt an upwind tack near a channel marker in light and variable winds in a 1 knot current flowing in the direction of said channel maker. For future reference, continue beyond the marker and either attempt the tack upwind in a steady wind nowhere in line of the marker or jibe to downwind, pass the marker and then head back to windward once well clear of the potential boat killer.

My reactions were good in getting the beam away from the mark and pointed downwind but bad for attempting the maneuver that close to begin with. Like any mistake, it is a lesson that was driven home rather loudly and one that will not be soon forgotten.

Lesson learned: Channel markers are not your friend.

Four: Landing jets make one of the coolest sounds you'll hear. I didn't know what it was at first. Then my friend Tom pointed out this whistling, echoing, high-pitched rush of air with no wind associated with it was the jetwash from the landing airliners. The odd thing is it is like lightning and thunder. There is a delay between the time the jet passes overhead and when you hear that sound. Roughly 20-30 seconds. And you have to be more or less directly under the plane as it passes by to get the full effect.

If you have a chance to sit directly in line with the landing flight path at Reagan National, give it a try. It's kind of nifty. Apparently you can hear it at the right spot at Gravelly Point but in the water directly south of the runway lights on the southern end of the runway is perfect. You swear you're in some banshee infested echo chamber.

More to come.

"Heather Thompson, They Won't Tell You the Proper Solution"

2009-06-09T07:41:00.001-07:00

My wife turns the Today Show on in the morning. Most of the time it is background noise in between the local traffic reports and the lapping of dog kisses in my ear. This morning, however, featured a segment about a woman who is living fear after her abusive ex-husband was just released after serving 15 years in prison for nearly beating her to death.

You can view the segment here.

What really irritates me about programs like the Today Show is they spend all this time harping on notions like "Aren't you afraid?" and "What do you think you'll do?". Meanwhile, this woman's husband is sitting beside her and all he can get out is a few wimpy sentences after being directly challenged on what he will do to protect his family if this ex-husband comes around.

This woman, Heather Thompson, lives near Atlanta, Georgia. What the husband should have done was look that limp, left-wing pansy Matt Laurer in the eye and told him point-blank that he and his wife both have Georgia carry permits and will shoot the ex-husband on sight if seen approaching them. Since the abusive ex has a restraining order already against him, I'd say he'd be able to make a case that such an act was justified since most abusers violating orders of protection aren't generally interested in idle chit-chat with the women they cowardly beat into a pulp.

Seriously. Just once I want to see a guest on one of these programs proudly announce they own a gun and will use it to defend their family from harm. If for no other reason to see the slack-jawed, horrified silence from the puff piece hosts at being confronted with a challenge to everything they think is proper and correct. I'd cheer.

Instead, I was yelling at the TV in my best Ron White impersonation, "You live in GEORGIA! Get a permit and get a gun!".

Heather Thompson, if you're out there and happen to stumble across this, good for you for not letting your scumbag, bully boy (he is not a man) ex-husband scare you out of your home. Then go here to see how to acquire a concealed firearm permit for your state, shop for appropriate self-defense firearms for you and your husband and learn how to use them. Should this man ever darken your doorstep and threaten you or your family again, you will have much better odds the next time around and hopefully never have to live in fear again.

Take control of your safety and your life. You don't need to live in fear. Especially not in Georgia. If anyone needs a concealed carry license and self-defense firearm, it's you.

Prepared for the Outback

2009-06-05T05:56:00.000-07:00

Everyone loves gun porn, dog blogging, cute cat pics. But the best porn is when we combine them. So for a little light Friday enjoy, here some dingo gun porn...

Here, Foster is well-prepared for a home invasion or day on the range. Relaxing in comfort, his AR-15s and classic M1 Carbine are a paw's reach away. And when he's not waiting for the invading hordes of squirrels to invade his patio, he relaxes on the couch and enjoys some sci-fi with classic Heinlein and "Time Enough for Love", something every dingo needs.

Silly human, guns are for dingoes!

Great weekend everyone! I'm off sailing!

Hole in the Water

2009-06-03T20:04:00.001-07:00

As promised, here she is...

One piece of trivia I've learned is that the District of Columbia has jurisdiction over the Potomac River. So vessels moored the majority of the time on the river must be registered in the District even if the owner or marina itself is not. The Washington Sailing Marina is in Virginia but all the boats there should bear District decals.

It also means that I cannot have, to my knowledge, any firearms aboard since that would run afoul of the District's gun laws. Fun stuff. I'm thrilled to be paying registration fees and title taxes to Mayor Fenty.

Here she is down below...

Looking down from the cockpit through the companionway.

Main cabin looking forward towards the V-berth/forepeak

Looking down at the port side main berth and galley area

Looking forward from the cockpit

And lastly, our neighbors in the slip next door

I think the turtles are a nice touch.

Dilemma No Longer Major

2009-06-03T12:23:00.001-07:00

The dilemma discussed yesterday has been resolved.

My wife and I now the proud new owners of an O'Day 22!

The boat was absolutely beautiful and I do have pictures I can upload later (can't do it from where I am posting). I would argue you would be very hard pressed to find a 32 year old boat in this condition and especially at the price we purchased it for. You can look at it one of two ways:

We bought the slip for $1800 and paid $1200 for the boat.
We bought the boat for its fair high retail NADA value of $2600 and got the slip for $400.

Either way, a very good deal. I would have happily paid more.

In this case, the high retail value does apply. The exterior was dirty but other than a few localized cracks around the stays and shrouds, the gelcoat was in fine shape. Just needs a bath.

The interior was pristine. I do not use that word lightly or to indicate the owner had scrubbed it down to look clean. I mean everything down below was factory fresh. Not a crack, leak or major piece of wear in sight. Cushions were perfect, sails clean and white and all the wood trim in fine condition. I have never seen anything like it in a boat this age. This boat's interior would be at home at a boat show serving as the floor display model. It's that good.

The outboard runs fine, running rigging and exterior covers were typical. All that she needs is new bottom paint and we are scheduling to do that at the first available haul after the 4th of July so we can enjoy the Mall fireworks from the Potomac.

This is my second go-round at boat ownership. My first ended very badly. I used to own a Clipper Marine 26 my ex-wife and I had bought as a project boat needing restoration. We sailed to a marina on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay and proceeded to start work.

After a while, the reality of 55 mile one-way drives on hot weekends to work below at getting dry-rotted wood out of the interior began to take its toll. The hull and rigging were sound but the interior was a disaster due to persistent small water leaks. Over a period of two months, I managed to glass in most of the culprits but never truly eliminated them. What I expected to be a spring/summer project was never completed.

I kept paying the storage fees until I couldn't justify it anymore after almost three years and placed an ad for a free sailboat with outboard. When someone came to take it and I went to retrieve my well-cared for outboard from the on-site mechanic, I learned it had been stolen years prior. I was compensated but the fellow wanted the outboard and opted to not take the boat despite my begging to do so.

A company wound up taking it off my hands and I was glad to see it gone.

This was by the time my wife and I were dating and I resolved to learn from the experience. I vowed I didn't want a boat that required major work unless I could do it from my backyard or a short drive away. I'd rather pay for something that was ready to go just to avoid the hassle and difficulty. My wife felt the same way. We got that wish and more with our new acquisition.

I'm firmly of the belief that opportunities do come your way that are meant to be. Had I been a minute later on the Craigslist ad, I would not have gotten the boat. As you can imagine, the woman who was selling it had received considerable interest in it. I was fortunate enough to have refreshed my browser at that instant, see the new ad pop-up and rattle off an e-mail as fast as I could type it.

The strange thing in all this is the reaction of family, not friends. Friends are loving this. Family, with the exception of my mother, reacted along the lines of "You did WHAT?!?" when they found out we bought a boat. They launched into questions of what are you thinking, you don't know anything about boats and isn't it dangerous? They didn't know that I have sailed before and this isn't some monster yacht. You'd swear they though we were about to risk life and limb.

Sailing is one of the most peaceful activities I've ever engaged in. It is why the bug has never let go since I first started sailing back in 1999. Out there, the troubles of the world onshore and your own don't matter. That blur of green and brown in the distance might as well be another planet.

For me, the journey on the water matters more than the destination. I've been out for an hour and I've been out for a day. The results have always been the same. Nothing but my hand on the tiller, the sound of the wind in the sails and the gurgle of water across the hull. Nothing else matters. Think of it as interactive Zen.

This time I've done it right. The hardest temptation to resist will be to leave work early, shoot 20 minutes away to the marina and head out for an hour before I need to be home.

Here's looking forward to an incredible summer!

Major Dilemma

2009-06-02T05:37:00.000-07:00

This is not about guns. But it is about an activity that makes current gun ownership costs seem pale by comparison.

Sailing.

This is a call for opinions from my three readers who might have an interest in sailing. For those of you not familiar with the topic, some definitions help:

Definition of boating: A hole in the water you throw money into.

Definition of sailing: The art of getting wet and ill going nowhere slowly at great expense.

With these definitions in mind, here is my dilemma...

I have an opportunity to acquire a sailboat. Despite traditionally being the worst time of the year to buy a boat (summer is typically a seller's market), the economy is making some very nice deals available. I have two boats available and I have to make a decision on one of them.

The first is an O'Day 22, a small trailer sailer. It lacks a trailer but is presently in the water in Washington, DC. The boat has been well cared for, includes a low hours Yamaha outboard and is in a slip paid until April of next year. Asking price with the paid slip included is $3000.

The second is a Tidewater 26, a fixed keel racer/cruiser. It is strictly an in-water boat and is presently in land storage in Annapolis. Likewise, this boat has been cared for, includes a good Yamaha outboard. The owner has had offers of $1600 but would be willing to take $2000 cash on the spot.

The appeal of the O'Day is locality. It is where we would like it to be. We would be 15-20 minutes from the marina so heading out to sail for the day is very convenient. And since it is in the water, it is literally and pay and play situation. Virtually no effort for me to buy today, sail tomorrow.

The downside to the O'Day is size. At 22 feet, it lacks full headroom in the cabin. With its short keel, it is really a light-to-medium conditions boat and ideal for the Potomac River. If we got a trailer over the next year, we could move it to the Chesapeake Bay at will but the Bay wouldn't be its best place. It would sail fine there but other boats would perform better in the Bay's usual conditions.

The appeal of the Tidewater 26 is cost and headroom. It has a full 6 feet down below and offers a couple of extra sails. Since it was designed on the Bay, it is well-suited for the conditions there and its sailing qualities, by all accounts, are near perfect. It is an enlarged version of the boat used to train naval cadets seamanship. At a potential low of $1600, it is a very good buy.

The downside is it is on land. I would need to get her prepped and launched (launch is included in the price) and then move her to a new slip. Slip rates are $1600/year and up for boats of this size. Figure $1800-$2000 and that is roughly what I would have to cough up immediately afterward to bring her to her new home.

I can move her into the Potomac but her sailing options would be more limited than the O'Day due to the deeper draft. There are several shallow shoals at low tide that its 4 1/2 foot draft couldn't handle. Plus it would take me 2-3 days at a minimum to sail her out of the Chesapeake and up the river to Washington DC.

But if I leave her in the Bay, I have all of the options the Bay has to offer. Leaving her on the Rhode or South Rivers, I'd have Annapolis an hour to the north, marinas and beaches all along the Western Shore and attractions on the Eastern shore 2-3 hours sailing away such as St. Michaels.

But my drive to get to the boat goes from a straight shot down the GW Parkway to a 40-50 minute drive to the Western Shore. I am specifically avoiding Annapolis and immediate vicinity to avoid weekend bridge traffic. Convenience and willingness to drive to sail for fun can become an issue.

My dilemma is which boat to buy? The O'Day 22 is $3000 and I'm off. Long-term, I could have issues with just feeling it is too small. My wife has liked the full headroom of the 26-28 foot boats we've looked at.

The Tidewater 26 is a little more pricey in running costs due to the extra length but is roomier and sails better. But it would be further away and my out-the-door costs will be between $3500 and $4000.

Help me out! Post advice in comments. Thanks!

Common Sense Does Exist in Maryland!

2009-05-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

On April 23rd, John Culleton posted this opinion on why the so-called "assault weapon" ban (which banned nothing) should be reinstated. It contained gems such as this:

Despite what the president of the National Rifle Association says, the AK-47 is a fully automatic weapon. It has no legitimate hunting use. It is not the equivalent of the old bolt action military rifles I used in my pursuit of deer in Vermont and California, any more than an 18-wheeler is the equivalent of a pickup truck.

Read the rest and get yourself good and lathered up at his hysteria and mistruths.

Now read the rebuttal!

The Second Amendment is about the right of the people to defend themselves against all enemies, foreign and domestic, including, God forbid, our own government, should it ever come to that. We need to remember, always and forever, that the rights of the people do not come from the government. That is a theory of governance which we spent many years and much blood overthrowing. Rather, the authority of the government comes from the people.

I am pleased to know there are still people in the so-called Free State that understand the true source of Constitutional rights and their meaning. Coming from a journalist, this gives me hope that all is not totally lost. Way to go, Tom Harbold and the Carroll County Times!

You've shown common sense still exists in Maryland.

Loopholes and Insanity

2009-04-27T11:10:00.001-07:00

Let us start with the insanity.

Over the weekend, the Today Show once again repeated the claim that the Arctic would be ice-free in the summer by 2013. I guess the reporting on the boogeyman of "global warming", er "climate change", er "The Earth is going to kill us all!" has slackened off a bit.

That's a way to get me to throw dog toys at the TV on a Saturday morning. The funny thing is, that prediction makes it sound more dire than it actually is. They make it sound like all of the Arctic ice is going to disappear. In reality, the prediction is the Arctic ice will retreat to make the bulk of the Arctic Ocean passable where it previously has not been. This predication has been around since 2007.

Big deal. Shorter shipping routes, Arctic tourist cruises and the like. What's wrong with that?

It was after that announcement that the Today show revealed the agenda for bringing it up because a new "scare and guilt them" program on "global warming", er "climate change", er "The Earth is going to kill us all!" about how if the ice melts we'd all be under 20+ feet of water at the coasts. Of course, leave it to the MSM to conflate two issues. First they talked about the Arctic and then ever so slyly shifted to the Greenland glaciers. Since the average person isn't very knowledgeable about science and, more importantly, geography they may not realize they weren't the same thing. But it creates in the minds of the gullible the notion that if the Arctic melts, we're all going to drown.

Sigh. As much as I despise stupid people, purveyors of lies and deliberate deception like this are far worse. I'd go as far as to call it "evil".

The following day there were into the breathless panic of swine flu. It seems my feelings on that matter are echoed here at work in the form of we are getting seriously annoyed at the panic mongering the MSM is engaging in on this issue of the day. 80 or so deaths in Mexico does not constitute a "pandemic". 20 or so cases here in the US without a single fatality does not allow you to hang that mantra on this.

For a real definition of "pandemic", see Spanish Flu circa 1918 and then get back to me. For the uninitiated, "pan" in "pandemic" means "everywhere". Global. Spot cases here and there and isolated to a few countries even across the ocean is not a pandemic.

So more dog toys got tossed at the TV.

As a result, I needed to work on my anger management in a peaceful fashion so I went to the gun show.

This was more insanity. I can honestly say this trip was mainly entertainment. Since like a lot of shooters I'm sitting on my stockpile, I was observing the behavior of others. I have never seen ammo pallets getting the once over like this since the great Cabbage Patch Doll Christmas panic of 1982. $500 for 1000 rounds of .223 ball ammo? Even more for Lake City SS109. Sorry kids, it ain't worth $600+ per thousand. It was fun to watch others hug the cases to their chest like it was Corrine Marie in her new yellow jumper and low numbered adoption certificate, breathless with Visa in hand.

And yet, by Saturday afternoon the ammo dealers were selling the pallets themselves. Cheaper to sell them at $10 a pop than load them back onto the truck. Ammo tables were mostly stripped bare. By the way, if anyone knows where all the .45ACP has gone, please let me know. Lots of .40S&W and .380 to be found even if at outrageous prices but .45 appears to disappeared off the edge of the world. Same goes for 7.5mm French. I want to find the person who cleaned out my favorite dealer on that stuff. He had several cans of it one day, gone the next.

There's always July and I can wait.

Which brings us to the loophole part. Several interesting rifles presented themselves and next time, I will listen to my instincts and the urgings of my wife to give them money today and go back tomorrow to do the paperwork. A couple of nice Hakims and a very unusual Martini-Henry converted to .303.

Now usually a .303 Martini-Enfield (as such rifles are called) isn't anything to write home about. But this was either a re-arsenal or new build in 1916 which made it a 4473 transfer and the fact, unlike other Martini-Enfields, this one had an SMLE front end on it. My evening research couldn't find any reference to such a conversion which would make it quite a unique addition to the collection. Feed ramp and the gun overall was in great shape. Bluing was intact, probably 90%+. It got my focused attention at $350.

I said it would be there tomorrow if I wanted it. Leave it to me to have permission and then waffle out of guilt. Unfortunately, someone else got the same message and it and its Hakim companion were gone when I returned. A couple of nice Martini-Henrys and a Snider-Enfield tempted me but since there were no Enfield marks on the Snider's lock, I decided I didn't want to take a chance on an unknown rifle.

So I made up for it at the table next door. The only thing nicer than buying guns is buying guns without a background check. There you go anti-rights people! Gun show loophole! Gun show loophole!

I wasn't in the mood for the four hour delay again. As I've said in the past, the whole NICS check makes me feel like a criminal and I hate that feeling. So I'm giving preference to antiques. Guns made in or before 1898 are not considered firearms under Federal law and can be sold cash-and-carry anywhere in the country and even bought and sold mail order.

The dealer had a Steyr Gewehr Model 1888 Commission Rifle. A couple of dents in the barrel shroud but wood was good, bluing was good on the barrel and bore was strong. Made in 1891 and chambered in 8mm Mauser. Next to it was an Italian 1880 Vetterli converted to 6.5mm Carcano with original sling and bayonet. A little back and forth and five minutes later, I'm walking out of the gun show with a rifle under each arm.

Yes, I bought evil, scary 19th century "assault weapons" without a background check! At a gun show! In Virginia as a Maryland resident! Call 20/20! Seriously though, the Vetterli needs some work but the Gewehr 88 just needs a bit of cleaning. I may even actually shoot that one. Both are pretty and sometimes you just need to buy a gun because you like it. Personally, I see old guns as unwanted pets in a shelter: they need to be adopted into a loving home and showered with attention.

Some people may find this disturbing that someone can walk into a gun show and walk out with guns without a background check. You need to understand that at no time were any laws broken. If you are unable or unwilling to at least understand the law as it pertains to transactions involving antique firearms, let alone private transfer laws that apply to modern firearms, don't comment on how such a "loophole" needs to be closed let alone demand legislation by force to do so. You're arguing from a position of profound ignorance and it is frankly getting very tiring.

You also need to understand that on the long timeline of liberty, anonymous firearms ownership is a must. I don't care if you can't see past your prejudices and personal horror that the government may not know who has guns. That's the whole point! As long as there are firearms out there, antique or modern, that cannot be accounted for the possibility of us being pushed too far and fighting back as the Founders intended will always remain.

As a co-worker commented to me, "If someone can buy a gun like that and walk out, what's the point of the background check? Doesn't that go around its purpose?".

Yes, it does. While I am not wholly opposed to background checks and dislike how they are currently applied, he was spot on. Honestly, the point of background checks are mainly for people to feel good that something was done to potentially keep bad people from getting guns. Virtually none of the people who fail the background checks due to being prohibited from owning firearms are ever prosecuted. So have them if you want but don't believe for a second that it prevents gun crime. After all, the Virginia Tech shooter passed two background checks in acquiring his guns and obeyed ever other law in the process except for the felony of lying on ATF Form 4473.

But I will not oppose background checks as long as various means of legal anonymous firearms ownership exist. Private sales, antique arms and building your own guns are all free of government oversight in most states. Including my own. Most people don't get spun up about it. The only ones that do, strangely, are the only ones who know nothing about the laws that exist and think some nefarious activity is taking place.

Somehow, I am not bothered if someone gets their knickers in a knot because I was able to buy a 125 year old piece of history without a government bureaucrat saying it was ok. And just to make sure that knot is good and tight, understand the 125+ year old rifle bought without a background check fires the exact same cartridge that my Yugo M48 Mauser does and was bought with a background check. Assuming the antique is in good condition, it is just as lethal in the wrong hands.

Somehow, I just don't see a drug dealer doing a drive-by with a nearly four foot long, single shot antique no matter how powerful the round. But I'm sure people will be stunned and horrified that this is even possible. And I'm not even a licensed collector!

Most won't even care that in 99.9% or greater of these cases, all these untracked guns will do is hang on a wall or sit in a safe amongst their peers. They're guns and that's all that matters. Logic is the first thing that leaves their brains when that topic is involved.

When all is said and done, I am approaching the glorious "double arsenal" mark. Those of you in the know can figure out how many guns are involved but suffice it to say, a third cabinet is order. They are starting to overflow and getting the guns in and out is like assembling a large wooden puzzle.

I think I can get used to that.

We Demand!

2009-04-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

I have a treat coming to me on Thursday.

My family is coming in for my wedding this weekend. In the conversations leading up to that event, my mother informed me that I had received a letter from the Canadian government demanding to know why I had not voted in Canadian elections for the past several years. According to my mother, this was a legal form that I am apparently required to send back to them to provide an official response for my transgression.

Following the laughter and wondering if it had an option for "Get fucked! None of your business!", I had to shake my head. I'm not sure if there is a specific legal requirement for a Canadian citizen to vote in an election but I wouldn't be surprised if there was one at this point.

Socialism comes in many forms and not all of them are benign. Most supporters of socialism only see the benefits to them. Welfare, social programs, "free" health care and so on. But stuff like this can represent a downside. How can you have a free, vibrant representative democracy (or parliamentary in the case of Canada) when there are laws on the books that force citizens to vote upon legal penalty?

Doesn't that take away your free will and ability to dissent? To say: "I support none of you and will vote with my conscience by staying home on Election Day.". What if the society decides for the good of us that everyone must vote? Will they send police to force you to vote at gunpoint or imprison you in contempt of society until you do?

While I deplore the abysmal turnouts that general occur in American elections, at least you're free here to give the electioneers the middle finger and stay home. Can you imagine the riots that would ensue if there was a legal requirement to vote here? Although many leftist politicians would support such a thing, it would totally undermine individual freedom and liberty to choose or not choose.

So I am really looking forward to getting this letter from my mother. Because I want to see what law, if any, that is compelling me to reply. Because if there isn't one, I am going to thoroughly enjoy supplying them with a suitable response. Of course, my first inclination is to simply crumple it up and bin it. How dare the Canadian government demand an explanation of me as to my lack of voting!

Last time I checked, it was not legal for me to do so as I am an expatriate Canadian living in a foreign country. If they can't check Canadian tax records filed back in 1998 by me that indicated I was no longer liable to pay taxes in Canada because I was a resident of the USA (and paying taxes to the IRS in accordance with Canadian and US tax reciprocity agreements), tough on them.

The opportunities for mischief abound on this one. If I am legally required to provide them a response on penalty of some fine or imprisonment, I will certainly do so. The temptation to head down to the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC afterwards and ask for the form to formally renounce my Canadian citizenship afterwards will be really hard to resist though.

I will let you know if that is the case because I am sure you will want to know just how illusionary your freedom in Canada really is in some cases. I'm not knocking Canada yet but if they've passed a law giving them the power to demand such justifications from supposedly free citizens then my homeland is well on its way to becoming another formerly Great Britain. Or France, depending on what the French in Canada are doing these days.

Hopefully it is some bureaucratic form that some self-important bimbo thinks they can send out because of regulations they wrote internally and not backed by the force of law. If not, it is still tempting to ignore it just to see if they'd be willing to issue an extradition order for an ex-pat in the USA on the grounds they weren't voting. I dare say I might find a few folks sympathetic to my plight here to keep me from being sent back. That whole freedom thing and all that.

I weep for my homeland.

Masochism

2009-04-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

This will not make sense to my non-computer geek readers out there. But I am sure a few of you will get it.

Definition of masochism: Attempting to install OS/2 on a Thinkpad 560Z.

Just had to get that out there.

Pelosi's Compromise

2009-04-08T07:22:00.000-07:00

Never trust the words of any politician. It seems Nancy Pelosi has done a bit of an about-face on the issue of "assault weapons".

From The Hill Blog:

During an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," Pelosi said that the Congress will work to find some middle ground between the previous ban, which expired in 2004, and the precedent laid by the Supreme Court in a ruling enumerating more concrete gunowners' rights last term.

"We have to find some level of compromise," Pelosi said, citing 53 victims of gun violence nationwide in less than a month. "And we have to rid the debate of the misconceptions people have about what gun safety means."

"Yes, it is," the Speaker said when asked if the ball is in Congress's court now that Democrats control the White House. "And we are just going to have to work together to come to some resolution."

Pelosi indicated that new regulations might entail registration and prohibitions on transporting some firearms across state lines.

So we've gone from gun control is off the table in response to AG Eric Holder's comments about reinstanting the so-called "assault weapon ban" to Pelosi stating a compromise needs to be made on this issue.

Funny, I thought compromise involved two or more parties coming to mutual agreement on an issue? I don't recall gun owners talking to her or the Democratic leadership and agreeing to further curtail their rights. What did we get out of the deal? National CCW? Repeal of the Hughes Amendment? Removing of the "sporting purpose" clause from GCA'68?

Nope, no compromise to be found here.

In the politicians world, compromise means "I won't take away as many of your rights as I would like to at this time.".

And she thinks her statement is a compromise?!? Federal gun registration and what sounds like imposing NFA interstate transport requirements on common Title 1 firearms. That's a compromise?!? How is it every time some politician suggests a "compromise" on an issue, those on the receiving end of the compromise find their rights curtailed more afterwards?

This is how freedom dies, folks.

At least Pelosi is back to showing her true colors. We all knew her prior protestations on gun control not being an issue previously was simply her waiting for the right opportunity. I guess she feels this past week or two has given it to her. Fine by me. I, at least, prefer dealing with an enemy whose intentions are clearly stated upfront.

The battle lines are starting to be drawn. I fear we are about to cross the Rubicon into a very unpleasant place.

Playing with the Grandkids

2009-04-02T07:44:00.000-07:00

I am sorry to say that I did not obtain a M96 sniper rifle as I claimed yesterday. I was pulling your leg. Still, it is a nice dream and a rifle I definitely lust after. My wife-to-be, as wonderful as she is, is rather emphatic on the "No!" part when I showed her that gun. When the house is paid for, the retirement funds are there, plenty of savings, maybe then I can afford to go crazy on such a beautiful addition to the collection.

Sorry for any pangs of jealousy I may have induced. Admittedly, it is tough to beat last year's entry.

On truthful news, I am doing gun related stuff this weekend. I am taking an NRA Metallic Reloading course on Saturday. It's one of the things I resolved to do this year. It should be a good day.

Still working on the writing thing and getting the ducks in a row on that. On that, I decided to take a page out of Marko's book with how I want to approach the problem of getting words out. Distraction is my big problem. I had bought my netbook with the intention of using it as a dedicated writing platform. Problem with that was it was a little too small. I loved the weight, just couldn't type well on it.

The laptop that replaced it suffers from the same problem as my desktops: it's a full-fledged computer with the Internet. Doesn't take much to switch away from OpenOffice and wind up on Wikipedia.

Marko recommends the Alphasmart Neo as the best writing tool out there. As I've worked through this, I'm starting to agree with him. However, the price tag of the Neo can be a bit of a put-off, especially if it is something you might not keep at.

Marko refers to the "cult of the Neo" among writers. He has mentioned in passing that the Neo is merely the latest in a line of similar machines. What many people don't realize is that line goes back to the early 1980s. So I got thinking and figured if it was good enough then, it should be good enough for now.

The Alphasmart Neo is the lineal descendant of the Tandy Model 100. The features that the Neo crows about such as battery endurance, portability, dedicated purpose were all features of the Model 100. The Model 100 was the first notebook computer. Everything the Neo is can be traced back to the Model 100.

Well, as a little digging will show, the Model 100 family of machines still enjoy wide popularity despite being nearly 30 years old. They also enjoy one advantage over a Neo: cost. A used Model 102 costs a mere fraction of a Neo and will give you a lot of its functionality. eBay is your best friend.

So I've been on a eBay spree as of late. I've manged to pick up four of these little gems of different models so far. A Model 100, a Model 102, an NEC PC-8201A and a Tandy WP-2. The Model 100 is strictly a collector's item. The Model 102 is nice but I've found for tinkering I prefer the PC-8201A. It is the last one, the WP-2, I want to talk about.

The WP-2 is an uprated and stripped down Model 102 in many respects. The WP stands for "word processing" which is exactly what the machine is designed to do. Like the Neo, the WP-2 is geared for the sole purpose of writing text. It runs, like its siblings, on 4 AA batteries. Unlike its brother, the Model 102, the WP-2 can only do word processing. It lacks a programming language and other utilities. But retains all of the formers's communication abilities. It also features an even slimmer form factor than the 102 in an attractive black case and has an 80 column display instead of the 40 column found on its predecessor.

It can also be expanded to twice the memory of the Model 102 and the chip costs a pittance. While it can't approach the Neo for capacity, I'd argue the 40-50 pages of text that can be squeezed into a fully expanded WP-2 is sufficient for most purposes. And you can't argue with the price tag.

I got my WP-2 shipped for $20. The unit is in near-mint condition. I've seen several units as well as the later WP-3 units sell for similar prices.

I'm not knocking the Neo; it's a great piece of hardware. But a 25 year old design can do the same job for a lot less money. Of course, the downside with these older machines is having to figure out how to get data from them to your PC. You need to use the serial port, a null modem cable and some terminal software. For a lot of people today that is just too much. If you grew up with computers the way I did, not so bad. Or you can just use a NADSBox and merge the old and the new.

Admittedly, if you get a NADSBox, you've just eliminated the cost incentive as it costs nearly as much as a Neo itself but gives the WP-2 (or any Model 100/102) essentially unlimited capacity. But if you're willing to spend $15 on a null modem cable and can use a terminal program, a Model 100/102, WP-2 or WP-3 is a writer's bargain.

Personally, I prefer playing with the older hardware. I much prefer the form factor of the Model 102 and WP-2 over the Neo. And I can hack the Model 100 hardware. That's the other reason I got them. But for writing, I bought the WP-2. It just needs a new battery backup, commonly available at CVS or Radio Shack and easily installed, and its ready to use. Writing on the go. I may bring it with me on my honeymoon.

Marko prefers the trendy modern, I'm going to try the old and stodgy. Perhaps someday the Neo can tells its descendants, "Back in my day..." but I suspect a Model 102 will be lurking in the background still creaking along and shaking its head.

Out with the new, in with the old!

Speechless

2009-04-01T07:03:00.000-07:00

I love my wife-to-be. She gave me my wedding present last night.

I cannot believe she actually bookmarked the rifle and then ordered it for me. She gets wide-eyed at the cost of an AR-15. I am speechless beyond words.

She will be getting lots of roses for the next few months as well as some very nice jewelry.

I love you, sweetheart!

"Make It Faster. See You in a Week."

2009-03-30T14:42:00.000-07:00

Those title words are words I owe my career to.

I mentioned yesterday that I learned more in a semester of high school computer science that I did in college or professional development put together. This is not an exaggeration. The foundation that set me on the professional path I wound up on I owe to one David Scott, mathematics and computer science teacher at Pauline Johnson CVS in my hometown.

In Canada when I was growing up, we took five years of high school, not four like here. That has since changed but back then, we had a Grade 13. This final year was used to get the credits needed to get into university by high school students. Note I said university. College is not the same thing. So many kids would do their university entrance courses over Grade 12 and 13 so as to not overburden themselves.

In my fifth year, I decided to take Computer Science. This course was only offered once per year and was limited in enrollment. The prerequisites were steep. You had to have taken three years of computer courses leading up to it. Introduction to Computers and basic and advanced computer programming courses. Plus, the teacher for the advanced programming course had to agree that you'd be a good student for the course. In that area, I had no difficulties.

Besides that, the course itself was legendary. Prior year students glowed about it. You had to take it if you were serious about computers. They wouldn't say why though other than you got to see and do really neat stuff. That should have been my first warning but I took their advice and signed up.

Back then, they used a networked version of Unix called QNX (still made today) on custom Unisys hardware. We programmed in interpreted Pascal. This was my first introduction to the Unix command line, I might add.

We entered the course and the thirty odd of us spent the first two weeks getting back into programming mode with simple exercises. Since it had been nearly a year since advanced programming, this was necessary. This was simply to warm us up. Then the course really got started with us feeling pretty cocky since we were acing the quizzes we had been given.

Such ignorance is the stock in trade of 17 and 18 year olds.

Mr. Scott stood at the front of the room and announced our first assignment. We would work in teams of four. It was simple pass or fail, another unique aspect of this course. You would succeed or fail as a team and it was up to you to divide and manage the work. Then he laid the ground rules for this assignment and all that would follow.

We were free to ask him any questions about the assignment. We could request clarification, details and/or bounce ideas for solutions off him. But at no time would he provide anything but hints and he would not say if our ideas were correct or not. That was up to us to discover on our own. He would also provide no sample code. It was up to us to use the knowledge of our previous coursework to come up with solutions. We were free to implement the solutions any way we wished as long as it used Pascal and was documented in the manual that was available in the class (and only available in the class).

With the rules explained, I embarked on what was the toughest semester of my life. Ever.

Our first assignment was simple. He handed out a list of 30 names and addresses and told us where the file was on the network so we could copy it. He then stated our assignment was to sort this list of names alphabetically, last name first from A-Z. We nodded expectantly.

Then he said, "See you in a week." followed by silence.

Imagine a classroom of high school students sitting there waiting for more and nothing more coming. Someone piped up asking what he meant. He repeated his instructions and referred to the rules. What were we waiting for?

We had no idea how to proceed. Any questions on how to do this were vague reference to remember how to read files and do comparisons. It was up to us to apply them. Pass or fail was simple. Run the program from our terminal in front of him outputing the sorted list to a file or screen. 100 or 0. There was no middle ground.

I can honestly say the first two days in our groups were spent doing the 1990 equivalent of "WTF do we do now?!?". Then we picked at it a piece at a time. Opening the file, reading it, loading it into an array. Then looping over the array, figuring out how to do string comparisons. Then the brilliant idea on swapping data between positions and writing the new list back out. Bloody brilliant and elegant.

It was the hardest week of my scholastic career. But we persevered and at long last, believing in our brillance.

We had invented the Bubble Sort.

Understand, we had no knowledge of algorithms. We did by trial-and-error and much brain sweat and learned what is commonly available in any basic computer science textbook. But we didn't know that then, Mr. Scott wasn't telling us and not that it would have helped because such texts were nowhere to be found in our school library. Trust me, I knew the science and computer section inside and out. Besides, we looked.

Evaluation day came and with great relief and pride, we demonstrated our incredible achievement. We glowed with pride as we described our slick technique of copying the array contents internally. He simply smiled and gave us a pass for our successful run. In the end, everyone passed and all breathed a sigh of relief.

We then spent a day analyzing our solutions. Turns out, all of us had come up with the same thing. I guess we weren't so brilliant after all. It was also the first time I learned the term "bubble sort" and we went through how it worked on the chalkboard as well as its history in computing.

Still, we were immensely proud of ourselves. From nothing we had managed to solve this difficult problem. We deserved some credit.

Then Mr. Scott turned to the class and gave us the look we would soon learn to fear. Then he uttered those deadly words, "Make it faster. See you in a week.".

Jaws hung open, mine included.

Make it faster? How?!? The rules still applied and any queries for specifics were vaguely rebuffed. We were stuck.

That next week made the first look like a cakewalk.

Evaluation day came again. We had to demonstrate the speed increase empirically. We did. We were stunningly proud of our achievement. We had passed two for two.

We had invented the Improved Bubble Sort.

Another day was spent analyzing changes we had made to the sort to reduce the number of comparisons and keep the "bubbling up" of elements (where the sort gets its name from) to a minimum. This time, a couple of teams failed. They hadn't grasped the nature of what they were dealing with.

Then he stood there again at the end of it and did it again, "Change the sort technique. See you in a week.".

I thought torture wasn't permitted in high school but I'd argue for some that they were in the middle of some form of new torture at the hands of this man. There was near pandemonium at that point.

It was at this time I learned why the course enrollment was limited and why it was only offered once per year. People starting dropping it like flies with the realization that if they continued, they would fail and blow their averages. They actually expected half the students who took it to drop the course. So it wasn't surprising that the work groups began to shrink and reshuffle. You had a month when I was in high school to drop a course without penalty. After that, you got an "F" on your report card even if you did drop it voluntarily later. The mad scramble was on since such a situation could ruin your mid-term grades and prevent you from getting into university. Enrollment was limited because only the hardcore, the intelligent and/or the simply masochistic would continue to volunteer for what was the high school equivalent of Chinese water torture and its attendant risks.

In the end, our third assignment was completed successfully.

We had invented the Shell Sort.

On it went. For nearly two months, it was one period of pain and discovery after another. Through much mental anguish and sheer will, I was learning the fundamentals of computer algorithms. By having to play computer, I was becoming a computer programmer. I heard the words "See you in a week." in my nightmares.

At the end of those two months, only twelve of us remained. Including a fellow student I would wind up taking computer programming with in college and commute with for several years. The others dropped the course or were failing out. To this day, it remains but a blur. Snapshots of memory and frantic activity. Only then at the end of that first section of the course did Mr. Scott's steady facade begin to crumble and he explained why he had done what he had done. He explained that a programming language was merely a tool. It wasn't the purpose of the course to teach us to be proficient with it. Instead, he was teaching us to think.

I have never, ever forgotten those words. Because that is exactly what he had done. Sure, the algorithms were simple but they weren't the point. He was teaching us to think about how to solve problems. How to approach them and implement solutions. Once we knew the solution, we could create a working solution using any tool available.

We were being taught how to think.

We all have teachers were remember with fondness or thank later for doing something that helped us learn. David Scott taught me how to learn. He taught me how to think about how solve problems. The programming aspects were secondary. I knew those cold.

But no book could have taught me what he taught me in that semester of Computer Science. It was profound. Even nearly twenty years later, I have told this story to fellow junior programmers and urged them to learn how to think. So many are focused on the language that they've never learned the skills of being a successful computer programmer. It has everything to do with how you approach problems. The language is merely a tool.

That is a lesson that Mr. Scott taught me and I have never forgotten.

My final project for the semester was writing an e-mail system. It even worked. But by then it was easy. I had survived the Crucible and carried its lessons with me into college.

Before that happened, we led our high school to win the regional programming contest and place in the top half at the provincial finals. We were the first school in the history of our city to ever do that. I was the team captain and Mr. Scott was our tutor for that.

The plaque for that achievement still hangs outside the math office at my old high school to this day I believe.

After that, college wasn't even challenging. The only things of value I learned was SQL, systems analysis and some mainframe programming. Only took fifteen years for that last bit of knowledge to be useful.

Everthing else on how I approach and solve problems I owe to one Mr. David Scott. I went back and visited him a few years after I graduated and thanked him in person for teaching me how to think. As great teachers often do, he thought nothing of it and felt we were being overly kind. He didn't feel he had done anything special.

I disagree.

If you're a student at Pauline Johnson CVS and Mr. Scott is still teaching math there, shake his hand for me. Tell him the team captain from the computer programming challenge in the early 1990s that was first to go to the provincial finals thanks him. Check the plaque, he'll be able to figure out who it is. Ask him about teaching the Bubble Sort and see if it brings back memories of QNX and Icon computers. Don't worry if you don't know what these are, they were before your time. But he'll know.

Then thank him for me. He deserves it for a job well done.

Nattering Away

2009-03-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

Things are hectic under the Red Maple leaf as of late.

I feel bad for my six fans for the lack of posting and especially the lack of stuff that goes "Boom!" posting. On the subject of gun posts, the reason is pretty straightforward.

I haven't been shooting. Other than my recent trip to Quantico a couple of weeks ago to squeeze off a few rounds of crappy 8mm Mauser, I am just staying away from the range. The reason is simple and most shooters will understand it. It's simply too expensive for me to do so. With ammo prices continuing their upward trend, the thinking is "Why do I want to shoot off 100 rounds of .223 today when it will cost me another 10 to 20 percent premium later to replace it?".

I'm to the point where my ammo is more valuable in the cans than being sent downrange for my pleasure. I just don't have it in the quantities I would like to feel laissez faire about shooting off a few magazines and not feel guilty. Given I need to keep a minimum of 210 rounds available as untouchable, that doesn't leave a lot out of the remaining pile to waste.

Yes, I could shoot my Mosins but only half of my ammo is suitable for indoor and where I can shoot it outdoor, the current rules disallow Soviet calibers. So they stay locked away. The only guns I can really shoot are my .22s (at least I have an AR upper in that caliber) and my 8mm Mauser. That caliber is still plentiful and cheap as surplus and I have a ton of Romanian steel case.

At the rate I'm going, I won't be shocked if the majority of my shooting turns out to be black powder muzzleloader.

Plus with my wedding on the horizon, I've just been too distracted lately. Especially between that and work. They've been reorg'ing us at work and we're trying to figure out where we fit in. No layoffs (never in the history of the company and states it simply doesn't happen on the public website so I trust them on that) but just that "What do we do now?" kind of mentality. Just grinding.

Fortunately, I am no longer in Robb's shoes with regard to messed-up software development. I feel for him though as I have definitely been there.

So rather than shoot, I've been strumming my guitar and reliving my childhood and formative years, computer-wise. Spent the weekend trying to get three old computers up and running. Here's how we fared...

My Tandy 1500HD is functional but the hard disk apparently weakens with age. I got it with no OS but managed to get FreeDOS running on it prior to it going into storage two years ago. Pull it out and the OS is gone yet again. However, age has caught up to it and now the floppy drive won't boot anymore. Now I have no way to get an OS on this machine short of a floppy drive replacement. Going to try a second hard drive and get it bootable on an old PC and transplant it in.

That's harder than it sounds. Look up the pricing and availability of Conner CP2024 hard drives sometime. Same goes for the Matsushita EME-263G floppy drive the 1500HD uses. This machine may well wind up being a functional display piece. Still, they are pretty machines for their time. The old GRiD laptops, by the way, used the same case.

Had better luck with the Apple PowerBook 5300c. We will pause now to permit the screaming and clawing of eyes to relax. This is actually the 1500HD's stablemate. I got them both for $1 each off eBay. Don't ever offer a cash local pickup option. Yes, I got them both for $2 hence why I'm not terribly upset about functionality or lack thereof.

However, the 5300c is fully functional. I had gotten the special SCSI cable for it so I could hook a CD-ROM up to it. Turns out my old 50 pin SCSI CD-ROM that I use on early SGI workstations works fine on Apple hardware. And the machine boots fine from it as well as the floppy drive.

However, I'm not an Apple guru. My System 7.5.5 CD boots up on the machine fine but since it is marked for PowerBooks other than mine, it refuses to install the system software. Apple offers System 7.5.3 for download but I was unsuccessful in creating a good boot disk or usable CD-ROM image from my old iBook. So I am begging for help from my wife-to-be's office (they're a Mac shop) and their Apple guru. Hopefully I can ressurect this member of the top ten worst Apple computers of all time. Still, learned an awful lot about how Mac OS boots. Just don't have the techniques down to do it on my own.

Lastly, the Thinkpad 560Z. I got three as a trash rescue and cobbled two functional machines together. High-end, ultraportable hardware circa 1998. Pentium II 300Mhz, 128MB RAM, 6GB hard disk, color 800x600 LCD, USB and Ethernet (on the dock only). However, it was made in what I call the Great Software Desert that ruled the PC universe from the late 1970s until the late 1990s. This is the time when magnetic media dominated software distribution. This Thinkpad was created towards the end of the transition period to optical discs being the dominant software distribution medium.

Which means that although it supports CD-ROM and USB, it cannot boot from either source natively. Floppy drive is how software gets onto this machine.

Do you know how hard it is today to find a boot floppy for Linux (or any other OS) that can find and install from a USB CD-ROM that otherwise cannot be booted from? Harder than you might think. I want to run Ubuntu Linux on it and so far that particular combination is not supported with their floppy boot option. Damn Small Linux (DSL) does this but I can't find information on how they built their boot disks. That applies in general to finding a straightforward HOWTO on how to create your own Linux floppy boot disk. If I can find that, I can get my system to work. I just need USB and CD-ROM support.

That difficulty in finding straightforward, non-Linux geek documentation is a complaint I've often had against finding information on doing tasks with the OS. Writing English instructions that a someone who isn't a kernel developer or OS builder is apparently too much to ask. If someone can describe or show me the steps, I can write the documentation myself to save others the pain.

So the Thinkpads are still running DSL until I can find a way to get them to boot from a floppy that will let me use a USB CD-ROM. Interesting tidbit about these machines. To keep weight down, they use a slim external USB CD-ROM. I have several good batteries, the external battery charger, dock, several proprietary floppy drives and two of the slimline CD-ROM drives and three Thinkpads. All total, this lot might fetch $50-$100 on eBay. But the slimline CD-ROMs use a special IBM USB cable that also powers the drive. This cable is extremely rare. So rare, in fact, that you can find the slimline CD-ROMs cheaply because the cable is missing. Useless hardware without it. That cable alone as a replacement part from electronics houses that stock it runs anywhere from $80 to $150. For a six inch cable with a special IBM connector on one end.

The cable alone costs more than all the combined hardware it is meant to be used with. It took me six months to source one on eBay and I paid a hefty premium for it but nowhere as bad as it could have been. Sadly, not atypical. Hence why I'm keeping this hardware together since it is a relatively complete snapshot of the state of laptop technology in the late 90s. Perhaps in 2025 a museum might be interested in obtaining it. I may put OS/2 on one of them just to keep it historically accurate. I have a "blue spine" edition of OS/2 3.0 Warp on hand.

Vintage hardware can be fun. I'm going even older though. Try making a VIC-20 or Commodore 64 talk to a modern PC or just trying to get software that can run on them. That what I mean by the "Great Software Desert". Lots of programs for computers in this era used magnetic media like floppy disks. Media that weakens and goes bad over time. So even though numerous functional examples of this hardware exist and can be had cheaply, it is only going to get harder and harder to demonstrate them in action as time goes on due to the fact that even pristine example of their software will be less likely to be usable because of natural decay.

Ironically, paper and cartridges may be our best long-term preservation mechanisms. Hence my fondness for my 2nd computer, the Commodore VIC-20. A lot of its software was produced on ROM cartridges and those don't go bad. Even nearly 30 years later, I can plug those in and they still work. Same applies for ROM-based systems like the Tandy 100/102, 1100FD and similar machines. Their ROM-based designs allow them to preserve their software and state-of-the-art for future generations as functional time capsules. Same goes for books with programs in them. Even after floppies and cassettes fail and fade away, the option will always remain to let us type in a program and run it to see these old machines in action. As long as they can power up, they can still live on.

Modern technology has also helped us to breathe new life into these machines though. Hobbyists are producing hardware that bridge the gap between the old and the new. Things like Ultimate 1541 and the NADSBox. These devices use modern flash cards to allow old computers to use them as native filesystems or hardware. Thus, a modern PC can be used to transfer data back and forth and the old machines don't know the difference. I think it is really neat and might help keep these old machines alive.

Frankly, I think they make great teaching tools. I'd argue the best way to train future computer programmers is to engage them in the fundamentals of computing. Even a little exposure to the hardware in even obsolete hardware can engage them and make them understand what goes on under the hood. Back when I grew up, this was almost unavoidable.

Today, you can train programmers who have no concept that memory, CPU and disk are finite resources and there are best practices for how to manage them. Understanding how a microprocessor runs a program and how memory is allocated even in an ancient 8-bit processor can be invaluable experience. And lest you think such outmoded technology has any place in our world, I would point out the Sojourner rover that went to Mars in 1995 used an Intel 80C85 8-bit processor. State-of-the-art when I first began using computers. Why? Because it could survive the rigors of the trip against physical forces as well as cosmic radiation. You'll often find that such old hardware going into space for that reason. Modern CPUs have very serious issues in such environments.

Plus, an 8-bit machine is small and simple enough that a group of middle school or high school students, with proper teaching, can write a simple operating system for it. Imagine how inspirational that can be to future computer science majors or simply to spark their creativity and interest in science in general. You can't put a price on that. In fact, I still thank my computer science teacher in my last year of high school for teaching more about computer programming and approaching it that anything else I learned later either in college or in the two decades of professional work since. That's tomorrow's story.

Sorry for the rant. Sometimes I just enjoying nattering way. Then again, isn't that what blogs are for?

Requiscat in Pace, Brian

2009-03-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

It seems that Discovery picked up a stowaway on its launch to the International Space Station on Sunday. A free-tailed bat with what was believed had a broken wing took up residence on the external tank of the Shuttle:

He was dubbed "Interim Problem Report 119V-0080" by the NASA Final Inspection Team and was given a waiver for launch. Sadly, it looks like he probably did not survive what had to be the ride of his life. Space.com dubbed him "Brian". At least Brian got to go out in a way I hope those he left behind can envy.

As a commenter pointed out at Space.com:

It never bodes well when Systems Engineering and Integration performs a debris analysis on you...

I expect the animal rights nuts to start screaming any time now. Too bad we can't strap them to them to the external tank and check their aerodynamic properties. Here's hoping Brian made it through Max-Q and earned his astronaut wings.

Requiscat in Pace, Brian

The Price of Performance

2009-03-16T13:40:00.000-07:00

It seems Robb and I are on similar wavelengths this weekend.

Note to Self: When installing a new video card, ensure you plug both PCI-e tails into said card before trying to use it for its intended purpose. Otherwise, Linux tends to get extremely pissed off and not start the window system.

It turns out that Linux will function just fine in 2D, non-accelerated mode since it doesn't really use the GPU but the nVidia binary drivers get a wee bit wonky when the card is getting only half its required power needs. Two hours, endless frustration and a near constant stream of "WTF is going on here?!?". Shove the machine aside, resolve to pull the card in the morning and take it back for a different brand that might work. Go to pull the card look down and...

...just felt like the world's dumbest moron. Sheepishly, I plugged in the second power cable I had left off and not-so-amazingly, this technology actually works!

Bear in mind, we're talking about a circuit board assembly slightly smaller than a brick that requires more power (20A) to run that a large vacuum cleaner and has a heat sink on it that would get you a nice sum as scrap metal.

But does it ever make those zombies come to life! Getting hordes charging down the street in Left 4 Dead with every setting maxed out and the thing doesn't even hiccup. EVE Online is pushing 60-100fps with loaded scenes and everything likewise turned on.

As far as I am concerned, you can buy happiness. Anyone need an nVidia 7950GT OC?

Which leads me to my thoughts of the day. Do you realize we have a couple generations with us now who will never know anything but this level of computational horsepower and see it as uninspiring and just normal?

On my desk, I have two PCs and three LCD displays. Aggregate storage between the two machines internally, the external hard drive and the NAS is 2.6TB. The machines have 2GB and 4GB respectively. Each machine has a dual-core 64-bit processor running at 2.6Ghz. That's four CPUs. The graphics hardware in each is what I want to focus on.

At current market prices, my new nVidia 9800GTX+ is around $200. Not the fastest board out there but comfortably mid-to-high end. Very capable. Next to that, my smaller machine has an 8600GT. That was a $100 board bought on sale almost a year ago. Decent enough and runs all the software I want it to. The board the 9800GTX+ replaced, my 7950GT OC was on the low-side of the high-end a little over two years ago and cost more than the two boards mentioned above put together.

These graphics cards are inexpensive add-ons. What many people don't realize is just how powerful they are. The 8600GT is capable of a peak of 113.9 GFlops. That's 113 billion floating point operations per second. Basically adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing a floating point number. For you normal folks, a floating point number is a number with decimal places like 23.452. These types of numbers lie at the heart of all computer graphics calculations. When you want to draw a zombie on the screen, all that zombie is made up of in a computer is thousand or millions of these numbers. When that zombie changes direction, all of those numbers that make him up are multiplied with another to represent his new position. Such calculations are made whenever the zombie moves on the screen.

It's heavy duty work. So heavy duty, in fact, that graphics cards are specifically designed to do that one task of managing those numbers very well. Those Intel and AMD processors in our computers, as powerful as they are, literally cannot handle the volume of calculations required to display one zombie, let alone a horde, and do it without stuttering or looking like a stop-action slide show on the screen. That task has been performed for many years by such dedicated graphics hardware.

And the 8600GT is a low-end card by today's standards. It is considered a "budget" card. For someone who wants a decent game experience but not fancy and doesn't have a lot to spend.

Contrast this to my newest 9800GTX+. This card can do a staggering 470.016 GFlops. Four times the performance of the 8600GT for only twice the price. I said it was on low-side of the high-end. Above that are boards like Robb's in the form of the GTX 260 which can put out 803.52 GFlops. At the very high end is the GTX 295 with 1788.48 GFlops or 1.788 Teraflops (TFlops). That level of peak performance costs you around $500.

Roll the clock back 20 odd years to 1985. Cray Research, the undisputed world leader in supercomputing, just introduced the Cray-2. This was the most powerful computer in the world. It was clocked at a whopping 500Mhz, had 2GB of memory (256M words of 64 bits each), had four CPUs, used immersion liquid cooling, drew 196Kw (that's kilowatts) of power and cost 25 million dollars.

It was designed as a scientific workhorse. Weather simulations, nuclear weapons study, geological analysis and physical calculations are no different than those used in computer graphics today. Thus, the level of performance is measured the same way in terms of GFlops or TFlops.

In 1985, the Cray-2 did 1.9 GFlops. You bought 76 Flops for $1. It was the best in the world and remained so for several years.

Today at my local Micro Center, I can buy 1,139,000 Flops for $1. On sale. In the budget bin.

The lowly 8600GT has 15,000 times the performance of the Cray-2 at peak performance at 1/250000th the cost.

The highest end video boards today would place any system that had one comfortably in the top half of the fastest supercomputers in the world in June 2005. Today, those boards are within 1/8th of the peak performance of the 500th most powerful computer in the world.

Could you imagine if you could take a modern PC back in time to 1985 and let Lawrence Livermore play with one of them? Back then, a Teraflop of computing power was a science fiction dream to a software engineer. A refurbished budget PC today for a couple hundred dollars including the video card has hundreds of times the power of the Cray-2 and in some cases, you can't give that hardware away.

People always used to ask when we'd have our own Cray supercomputers on our desks. Folks, we've had them for a very long time and never realized it. What do we use them for?

Playing games.

Same goes for storage and all the other aspects of computing. The one thing that was truly impressive about the Cray-2 other than its speed was its memory. Even by 1990s and early 21st century standards, 2GB of RAM was a lot of memory. In 1985 that was unimaginable. There were programmers that didn't think they could feed problems large enough to use all of that memory in the Cray. 2GB of RAM is pretty much standard today but even in 2000, that was a lot of memory. So the Cray-2 having it back then make it truly awe-inspiring.

What was 25 million dollars not including costs for facilities, power, staff and the millions of dollars of supplemental storage and networking needed to support such a machine can be bought today as consumer pluck-and-play from the parts section of any well-stocked computer store for a few hundred dollars and assembled on a kitchen table in an hour.

Children today don't know how good they have it.

So like Robb, I fully appreciate the advances we've made in computing power. I have more than I ever dreamed possible and can likely ever take advantage of. Kids today have no experience with the advances made in the past 30 years. People my age can remember going from computer kits with 1 or 2 kilobytes of memory in the late 1970s all the way up to today with every stop in-between. We may laugh at Robb's example of Doom but I do remember how cool it was that the computer could do it at all. Let alone Doom 2 with curved surfaces.

Same goes for scientific workstations like Suns and SGIs that cost as much as a house in their prime and today are rescued to save them from the trash by collectors wanting to keep these old machines alive for fun. I know, I have a stack of them in storage. An old SGI Indigo (a collectors item today) that cost $10000 in the early 90s is a wheezing old fart compared to my iPod Touch.

So Robb, I am blown away but for different reasons. But there are days I miss the old Crays. Hell, I still have a letter and a brochure from Cray Research inquiring about what it would take to work there while I was in college. Sadly, that is a collector's item today too.

Off to play Left 4 Dead.

Prediction for Germany

2009-03-11T13:55:00.001-07:00

I wish to make a prediction of what will result from the shooting that happened today in Germany...

I predict that within a month, Germany will announce gun control laws not dissimilar to those that disarmed law-abiding British shooters and basically end private ownership of most firearms by German citizens.

Any takers?

Bear in mind that Germany has extremely strict gun control laws (needs-based, licensing, registration, safe storage, training, club membership, etc). Despite the fact the shooter appeared to have stolen the gun he used from his father, a licensed owner, that won't matter. A demand will be made to do something, "Who needs a gun?!?" the average European will cry and that will be the end of it because politicians will need to be seen "doing something".

So I reasonably expect such a proposal to emerge, be passed and within a year or two, the majority of private firearms in German hands to be confiscated in order to prevent a tragedy such as this in the future.

Just like Ecole Polytechnique.

Just like Dunblane.

Just like Port Arthur.

And now, just like Albertville-Realschule Winnenden.

The pattern is always the same. I expect this to be no different. Such is the progressive mindset.

At least Americans have the good sense to realize it is the man, not the weapon, that performs the evil deed. Alas, Europe marches to a different drum. They can have it.

My sympathies to those families.