There is something to be said for that new President smell

 So, there's a new guy in the White House. He, of course, turns out to be an old guy who has been in DC for half a century. I'll give him a chance, and we'll see what he does. However, ignoring him altogether, I have to say I'm glad the previous resident is golfing more. He never did much for me, and I think he hurt a lot of my issues, more then he helped. 
We'll all wait and see, this could be a non-event or the beginning of something we'll come back to in ten years and point out as being the big pivot point.

I'm going to go make some soup.

Gun violence dropping, but citizens don't feel it is

So, since 1993 gun violence has dropped but only a very low minority believe the stat. Could it possibly be due to over exposure of gun crime by the mainstream media?


"Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49 percent lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation's population grew," according to the Pew study. "The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75 percent lower in 2011 than in 1993."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/07/181998015/rate-of-u-s-gun-violence-has-fallen-since-1993-study-says

Ukraine and the former Soviet States right now

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it. - Tom Clancy  vis Admiral Painter, The Hunt for Red October

My prayers are with those poor Ukraine troops in Crimea. The next 24 hours are not going to be good for them, any way this plays out.

There are some simple secrets to happiness in this world,

and the dogs know what they are.
A blogger I read online* has lost a dear pet, one that was only with her for a too short time. Barkley was written about in her blog, weaved into her stories of work and life, recipes and range trips. He was an erstwhile shadow and thanks to Brigid's wonderful skills as a writer and willingness to open her life bare to her readers, I feel like I know a bit of her and her wonder dog, Barkley. He will be missed by a large online community of readers and as Brigid feels the pain and anguish of losing a loving companion, the rest of us will stand with her as she looks beyond today. Brigid, Thank you for sharing, thank you for being there for so many of us, hopefully we can return some of that goodwill now that you need it in return.



* I discovered Brigid's blog at a low point in my life; having quit a job I really enjoyed, and that paid better than any other job I have ever held, because of a terrible supervisor who was driving me over the edge.
I needed an outlet to blind me temporarily from my worries, something to distract me as I carried on a belabored job search for close to 7 months. Brigid, more so than any other blog I stumbled across**, through her poetry of writing and alliteration was able to sweep me off into her world for little peeks at her past and present. These were brief instances of joy and happiness as I slogged through my day-to-day search for meaningful employment and ever larger worries that I was going to run through my savings and no longer going to be able to make my mortgage payments, or keep my kids fed. She wove her stories well, and they frequently included Barkley, as good a dog as there ever was.
Now I have a good career again, having changed ships from IT server management to SAP software support. But, I still frequently lurk on Brigid's site, b/c she is still a great writer and can make me smile. Thankfully my Feedly app keeps me up to date on the go, as my new job requires me to rarely sit still. That's how I found out that Barkley, brave as he was, had passed. He is now out of pain and Brigid soldiers on, but as someone who has lost beloved animal companions, I know it isn't easy. The loss is real, otherwise the companionship wouldn't be real.

** Another thank you to Brigid is due as I think of it; she opened up an entire online community that I have taken to heart. These people who live around the country, some around the globe, have become part of the tapestry of my life. Reading their posts is far more fun for me than surfing the web randomly, and as I have never been one to much enjoy TV, they, in a way, keep me social. Other than my wife and kids I tend to never go out and do anything with anyone. No offense to them, I love my family and they are the width and breadth of my joy in this life, but a person craves friendship as well. My friends I made in school all reside back home in South Carolina, far from Central Ohio where I have hung my hat permanently and I don't make new friends easily.
I am a bit of an introvert after all (shocking for a server admin, I know).
Yet, that part of my brain that requires 'other' companionship can be fed virtually, I have found. It makes me a healthier person. I tried for a while to be an active member of them and to blog myself, but alas, I am no wordsmith and I lack the gumption to keep it up. I enjoy reading them still though, and keep telling myself...one of these days...when the stars align and they have one of their blog meets, I'm going to drive a few hours, stroll in and have a beer and a cheeseburger with these people who have added so much color to my life. One of these days...

Obiglatory EDC post; Whats in your pockets?

So, its cold, I'm tired of shoveling/driving in snow, and as I'm a little cabin feverish I thought I would keep my mind busy by showing random people whats in my pockets every day.
So, I'm pretty basic; as you can see I carry a slim bi-fold wallet by Wenger, my Zebra F-301 Bold which is an awesome roller ball pen, a cheap AA LED 3-mode high-lumen flashlight, my iPhone 4s in an OtterBox and my CRKT M16-10KZ folding knife. These are with me anytime I step out the house and I'm wearing pants. This has been my EDC for going on 5 years now, except that I switched from a Surefire to the cheap CREE b/c the el-cheap-o light has way higher lumen count and a strobe mode.
I own another cell phone, which is my 'personal' number (the iPhone was issued by work), but the fact that I didnt have it with me for this picture just goes to show its not an EDC. I have the voicemail for that phone tied into my Google account and I have a tendency to leave that cell at home more than I carry it.
I have a laptop bag that is usually within easy reach that has a duplicate flashlight and a little bitty Buck knife, an extra pen and micro first-aid kit with some bandaids and alcohol wipes, but since I dont walk around with that bag on my shoulder all the time, I don't consider it part of my EDC. Don't get me started on the "get home bag" in the trunk of my car b/c again, I dont consider that to be EDC and the contents of that bag changes based on the seasons of the year.

Notice no keys? Thats right, as soon as I get where I'm going the car fob comes out of my pocket and gets thrown on my desk at work, or dresser at home (I also hate walking around with coins in my pocket). During the winter the key fob stays in my outer coat pocket. We have an electronic lock at home, so I type a code to get in the house or garage.

What do carry every day?

OHIO House Bill 203 Status Unclear

So, here I was assuming that since we have a GOP house, a GOP Senate and a GOP Governor that HB203 and its needed CCW reforms would roll right on through to Ohio Law. However, it passed the House with flying colors back in November of 2013 and is now sitting unassigned to a committee in the Senate. In other words, its been pigeon holed. Some newspapers in Cleveland wrote op-eds claiming its a "stand your ground, kill the little kids law" (which isn't true) and now it looks like the Senate is going to stay away from it to avoid trouble in an election year that would see 1/3 of the Senate members up for re-election.
Great.

This law was supposed to:
1. Have all county sheriffs use the same application form
2. Make it easier for the Attorney General of Ohio to determine whether another state had reciprocity with Ohio's CCW laws.
3. Makes it simpler to prosecute anyone who lies on a CCW application.
4. Changes the training hours from 12 to 4. This is good since the 12 hour class I took was only 4 hours of information anyway. Making people sleepy doesn't abet learning.
5. Clearly states a number of things that CCW permit holders cannot do (citizens arrests, etc). The gun can only be used in lawful defense during legal activities. If you're a criminal breaking the law, you cant use self-defense as a defense in court for shooting someone whilst breaking the law.
6. Defines imminent danger.
##### THIS IS THE ONE THEY DONT LIKE #####
#7. You do not have a duty to retreat if you are anyplace you are legally allowed to be. Previously you had a duty to retreat if you werent in your home or car. Now the law corrects that problem, allowing you to defend yourself wherever you may be with your CCW, as long as you are legally allowed to be there.
This is not the same as the stand your ground law in Florida and certainly does not provide the legal defense shenanigans that the Florida law provides for. You can't chase someone down, you cant instigate the encounter, you cant insult, shout or be belligerent and THEN pull out your CCW.

This is a common sense piece of legislation and I hope the Senate takes it up soon.

http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?ID=130_HB_203

Recipes for the restive

I got nothing except a recipe from a friend of mine, Gus. I inspired him with my talk of good ol' Southern food on Friday and he went home this weekend and whipped up some tasty goodness. I got his in my email this morning. Enjoy.

Gus’ Super-Duper Crab Cakes with Crawfish Tails Instead of Crab

Degredients

1 lb crab meat, but instead of crab meat use crawfish tails

1 rib of celery (Wait, is a rib the whole thing or just one piece you pull off the clump? Just use

 one piece.), cut into itty-bitty pieces about this big

1 carrot, peeled and cut into itty-bitty pieces about this big

½ of a small onion, peeled and cut into itty-bitty pieces about this big

1 clove of garlic, minced

1 cup of toasted breadcrumbs (optional)

3 large eggs

½ tsp or so of lime zest (optional) (Ha! Yeah, no, this isn’t optional.)

To taste:  Salt, pepper, Old Bay seasoning, Worcestercestershire sauce

Destructions

Roughly chop the crab crawfish tails and set aside in a small bowl. Sauté celery, carrots, onion and garlic in some olive oil for a minute or two until soft.  Add to the shrimp crawfish. (Unless your cat ate it all out of the bowl when you weren’t paying attention; if so, go back to Wally World, buy some more, and start over again. Not that this happened to me or anything.)

Separate the eggs (by removing the yolks from the whites, not by placing the eggs in different locations around your house).  Stir the yolks in with the salmon crawfish mixture.  Beat the egg whites to soft peaks and then fold into the moose crawfish. [Editor’s note:  I’m not sure what the point of this step was.  As soon as you start folding, the egg whites begin to deflate.  When I make this recipe again I may omit this step and just stir the whole eggs into the crawfish mixture.  Use your best judgment.]  Season with salt, pepper, Worcestercestershire, lime zest and Old Bay. 

Decide whether you want to add breadcrumbs.  Without the breadcrumbs, the cakes taste great but they don’t hold together well during frying.  With the breadcrumbs, the cakes hold together better but they taste like, you know, they have breadcrumbs in them.  You have the power – you decide.

Form the whale crawfish cakes into patties and refrigerate for about half an hour to firm them up.  Heat some more olive oil in a pan and fry the patties until golden brown on both sides.  Sprinkle with lime juice, if desired.  These would probably also taste good with Hollandaise sauce except 1) I don’t know what Hollandaise sauce is, and 2) I didn’t have any.

Really? The federal budget has nothing left to cut?

Does she really believe that we cant return the federal budget back to where it was 12 years ago? How can someone keep getting elected if they are that inane?      

      House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says Republican-led efforts to rein in government spending are pointless

      because there is nothing left to cut in the almost $4 trillion-a-year federal budget.

      “The cupboard is bare. There’s no more cuts to make. It’s really important that people understand that," Mrs 

       Pelosi, California Democrat, said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN's "State Of The Union".

     “We cannot have cuts just for the sake of cuts.”

       The federal budget has doubled in size in 12 years, from $1.9 trillion in 2001 to $3.8 trillion this year.

let me point that out again.......

The federal budget has doubled in size in 12 years, from $1.9 trillion in 2001 to $3.8 trillion this year.

muwahhhhahahahahahahahaha

President of the United States of America cant do simple math

Raising the debt ceiling doesn't increase the nation's debt, Pres. Obama declared in a speech today.

Really? 

B/c with the current debt limit the Treasury has managed to keep the national debt at $16,699,396,000,000 for the last 4 months. Who wants to take bets that the next time the debt limit is raised that the National Debt won't grow larger? 
Anyone want to take that bet?  Anyone? 

If you make the 'US pool of money we can spend that we dont have' (USPMWCSTWDH) larger, then more debt will be added to the pool. We've done this a hundred times and each time the debt grew larger.

Anyone still want to bet it wont go up this time?


I didn't think so......


Just as a reminder, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has said;

Adm. Mike Mullen: 'National Debt Is Our Biggest Security Threat'

Man feared dead after being grabbed by crocodile, also people breathe air and water is wet.

Um, yep. Once you get grabbed by a Salty, your life expectancy drops to near zilch at a dramatic rate. I feel sorry for the guy and his family, but the NBCNEWS.com headline writers have once again come up with a sandwich of "DUH!" in how they write.  Also in the headlines today at good ol' NBC?  Snipers 'deliberately" shoot at UN Inspectors. Um, yeah. That's what snipers do. They don't shoot randomly. Come on NBC, are you even trying?

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/25/20179207-crocodile-attack-australian-camper-snatched-from-muddy-river?lite

I really wish newspapers and media sites would take a little more time and either do the pun thing or at least report the facts. Trying to be a tabloid when you aren't is just lame. Guess they have to avoid talking about the Fed unwinding and the impending economic damage.

Red Head Girl in Bikini

Not really, but that seems to be a lot of what generates traffic for my blog. Odd.
Must be b/c of the Feral Irishman

Be good.

Its stuff like this that feeds conspiracy theories

I'm sure it went down just as presented by the FBI, but its this sort of odd circumstance that gets the tinfoil hat brigade salivating.

Man with ties to Boston bombing suspects shot during FBI questioning

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/22/18418012-man-with-ties-to-boston-bombing-suspect-shot-during-fbi-questioning?lite

This was not an accident, it was parental idiocy and child neglect

So a 5 year old boy in Kentucky shoots and kills his 2 year old sister with his 22LR rifle. It was a bolt action, single shot Crickett. Mom was home. They claim it was an accident; the boy was "just playing with it" and didn't realize there was a shell in the chamber. The gun normally sits in a corner in a room of the home.

1. Why wasn't this gun locked up?
2. Why wasn't the in gun lock on safe? (Cricket has a tubular key lock on their rifles)
3. What parent leaves a possibly loaded weapon around for their 5 year old to "play" with?
4. Why wasn't the child trained to only use the gun under parental supervision?
5. How do you call this train wreck an accident?

These parents need to go to jail. This is classic child neglect for the 5yr old and involuntary manslaughter for the 2yr old. I have nothing but pity for the poor boy who will now go through life as his sisters killer.

If you are in a friend or neighbors house and see firearms out and about, chastise them. We are a community and we should self-police. Although both of my kids are gun safety trained, I still check on the status of firearms before they go over to a new friends home. A little bit of "being the parent" goes a long way in keeping your children safe.

Less importantly, this kind of crap makes law abiding gun owners look bad in the press.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/01/18000685-five-year-old-boy-accidentally-shoots-kills-sister?lite

Changed the look

Changed the look to make it easier on mobile devices which is what I largely use for my IntarNetz scrolling these days. I'm sure no one will mind....

Anybody want to Polka?

I found a fun place in downtown Columbus, that serves good German Bier and Brats and has a dance floor and music for my German wife to get out and dance.
If you're ever in Columbus, check out www.germaniacolumbus.org and see if they have an event when you're in town. The Bier Garten is great, especially being a little green oasis downtown in the midst of all those tall buildings.
Prost!

Right handed but left eye dominant

So I find out out yesterday, after taking my #1 kid to a 4H shooting safety training course that said child is right handed (I knew that) but left eye dominant. Since all I knew about eye dominance I can sum in up two words (not much) I'm looking for help from the intarwebz.
We ended up after multiple iterations and options having the kid shoot with from the left shoulder on a right handed rifle (we had left and right handed savage mark II's available). This resulted in pretty good groupings and the cheek weld was natural while aiming with the left eye, but it still made working the bolt awkward. Using a lefty rifle was tough b/c there was no fine motor control in the left arm, and using the right handed rifle was tough b/c the right arm had to come back from the forend. This worked b/c we were using a bench rest setup and the barrel and forend were supported without the kid's arm.
Of course in a standing or prone situation this would be difficult for a kid to hold up the rifle entirely from the trigger guard area since that would be so far behind the center of balance for the rifle.

So, should we stick with left shoulder, right hand rifle or maybe just move straight from bolt-action to semi-auto to avoid any issues with the bolt altogether?

The kid also wants to get into archery and there just happened to be an archery instructor on site yesterday who said we were going to be pretty much looking at a left handed bow as the only option for someone using their left eye to aim.

I spend all these years making sure both my kids are right handed and no one ever told me to also put a patch over their left eye and make damn sure they are right eye dominant. ;)

Anybody have any experience or thoughts? By the way, the #1 child has gone through a couple of doses of vision therapy over the years to cure the kid of being cross-eyed and we have absolutely no interest in trying to go back at 10 years of age and re-train the eyes on something else, so using the right eye isn't an option.
Anyone with any feedback is appreciated.

Repost - Solar Water Heater Offer from DR Power - New update

Solar Water Heater Offer from DR Power

for comments see original post  http://seanownsthemoon.blogspot.com/2010/03/solar-water-heater-offer-from-dr-power.html

I like DR products, made like tanks and made in the USA.

They are partnering with built by a sister company firm that build solar water heaters, selling a DIY kit that includes solar collector, heat exchanger and a water storage tank that connects to your current hot water heater. Plus the solar collector has a small photovoltaic cell that powers the pump, which A: means you don't need to run any new electric for this system and B: the solar water heater only runs when their is sun enough to power the PV cell. So another one on the plus side is that it looks easy to install in that you don't have to re-plumb your house. 

This is all well and good and I have been considering one, especially with the federal and state tax credits knocking about $4K off the price, plus as a previous DR owner, I get a special $450 coupon.

I initially was confused by Sunward's pricing information, but thanks to their help I have seen that it is pretty straight forward and I hope to be able to place an order in 2010.
Heating water in your home and refrigerating food are about 80% of an average homes energy usage. If I can knock a dent in one of those, that's not a bad thing. Running a fridge on alternate power.....now that's for another blog post on anther day.

UPDATE, August 2011: Well, with my change of vocation at the end of 2009 and the ongoing economic troubles making me save every dime I could for a rainy day, I still haven't bought this system.....but I still want to. Anyone out there own one that wants to give a review? DR and Sunward, any chance you'd long term loan me one to try?  ;)

UPDATE, Feb 2013

Their new website does a much better job of marketing the whole kit. I'm seriously considering buying one still, I have about half the $$ saved up, and while I normally don't like debt, I may finance one soon as this would be a good time to become less grid reliant. We've lost our power multiple times this winter and I really enjoy hot showers.

I hate loud cars

http://xkcd.com/1156/

I'm going to use some Pavlovian skills and see if I can't get the kids in my neighborhood to turn down their bass......

Get a grip on reality will you please?

So someone in Turkey bought their kid a LEGO Star Wars set, and when the Uncle came over and saw it he immediately decided that is was a Turkish mosque and Asians being represented instead of...well...fake stuff from George Lucas' mind.He got incensed, spoke to his local community center and now is contemplating a lawsuit for this great insult against Islam.

I'm well aware that ol' GL has co-opted pretty much anything not nailed down in order to add filler to his Star Wars series (And God knows he has re-released the films every time some new tech has come along that lets it come out an iota better for the viewer)
                                                          but to think that he took this

and created this

is really pushing it.

Considering that they dont look anything like each other other than both having domed roofs, I can't imagine they are linked.

So when LEGO comes out with this

I have to say it looks a lot more like Star Wars than a Turkish Mosque (which by the way started life as a Christian Basilica under the Eastern Roman Empire, look it up).

As for the characters looking Asian  sure Jabba has almond shaped eyes, and smokes a hookah, but I have yet to meet a large green worm looking "person" claiming to be from Asia, so I'm going to have to shut that argument down as well.

This is why religious nuts (no matter the religion) drive me crazy. Its a childs toy modeled after a childs movie. No hidden meanings are required. The set will run you $120, which is also crazy as a price for a kids toy in my mind, but hey, if those Danes can get that price, more power to 'em.

Jason Sudeikis now luckiest man alive

Its official, he's engaged and now gains the coveted title of man for whom I am the most jealous.