DaddyBear's Den

Thoughts on the Day

daddybear71 — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:14:31 +0000

The tent dried out nicely and is packed and ready to go camping this weekend.
- There was a bit of water to be bailed and mopped up in a couple of low spots on the floor, but seeing as how we got over 3 inches of rain last night, with strong winds, I’m happy with it.
- Irish Woman decided to damp mop the floor of the tent because I’d tracked a bit of dirt in.
  - Apparently I’m the reason we can’t have nice things.
- The people who wrote the reviews for the tent all said that we’d never be able to get it back in the factory bag, and Irish Woman thought we might have to put it in one of my old duffel bags.
- I am happy to report that the tent is not only in its original bag, but has more room in there than it did coming from the factory.
- Don’t tell me I can’t roll up a tent nice and tight, yuppie scum. A decade in the Scouts and a decade in the Army made me a level III tent folding master.
The new dishwasher is in and running.
- I will be having a chat with our feline contingent. It is unacceptable to have mouse nests behind the dishwasher, even if they are abandoned.
Preparations are underway for the annual Hoosier Roundup.
- Posting’s going to be slow to non-existent this weekend.
Our menu this weekend is going to consist of foods I don’t have to work hard to make.
- Yeah, it’s not haute cuisine, but few have been killed by a diet of hot dogs, ketchup, potato chips, and roasted marshmallows.
- I am, however, going to try to make a decent venison stew for dinner one night.
While getting all of the camping stuff out of the basement, I came to the conclusion that we take altogether too much stuff camping.
Good thing I didn’t cancel my flight for next weekend. My trip is back on.
Say what you will about Walt Disney, but the man was a genius when it came to entertaining children.
- Boo has been watching 60 and 70 year old Disney cartoons on Netflix lately, and he’s more interested in them than he has ever been with the dreck that’s on the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon.

Filed under: Thought for the day

Blogs Roundup

daddybear71 — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:04:20 +0000

What he said.
Vexarr gets the slow clap of the day. It’s always within your power to make things better; you just have to be willing to do the hard work and take the risks.
Borepatch has started an excellent series on how to lock down your on-line life a tad. He and I need to sit down with OldNFO and Drang and drink a few beers.
I want this gentleman to teach our military leaders how to deal with those who won’t act right.
Couldn’t have said this better myself. Want a good job? Get a good, real education, learn to do something that other people will pay you to do, and work your butt off.
Spook86 has some good thoughts about the NSA domestic intelligence scandal. He’s another one that goes on the “Bar in a SCIF” list.
Kathy Jackson makes a good point. Maybe you don’t need the full “rappel down the side of the building, blow out a window, swing in, and clear the room before whipping your helmet off to flip your auburn tresses” training regimen, but there’s nothing at all wrong with getting trained in common shooting scenarios that ordinary people run into.

Filed under: blogs

Today’s Earworm

daddybear71 — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:36:47 +0000

Filed under: Earworm

Asking the Hard Questions

daddybear71 — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:56:19 +0000

General Alexander, head of the NSA, will be testifying in an open session of the house Intelligence Committee this week. The following are some suggested questions for the good general:

Question 1 -General, exactly what percentage of your agencies requests for warrants to target American citizens are turned down by the FISA courts?

Question 2 – General, please describe to the committee the programs under which the National Security Agency gathers information about the telephonic communications and Internet activities of American citizens.

Question 2 – General, please describe to us the procedures the NSA has put in place to make it impossible for someone to abuse this data that you’ve put into a conveniently indexed database.

Question 3 – Oh, it’s quite possible that this data could be abused by someone in your organization to target an American citizen for personal or political reasons?

Question 4 – Have you lost your damned mind?

Question 5 – General, do you understand your rights under Article 31 of the UCMJ?

Question 6 – Which one of those yokels sitting next to you is your attorney?

Oh, and “Silently We Defend“, General. Have a nice day.

Filed under: Politics

Thoughts on the Day

daddybear71 — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:47:15 +0000

It’s summer. Why does the boy get up as soon as the sun rises? Does he have solar cells or something?
It never fails. I found out that I probably wasn’t going to be making a business trip 5 minutes after I bought my non-refundable airline tickets.
To the people driving on the expressway this afternoon:
- We got over two inches of rain in the hour it took to drive home, with driving winds and hail.
- Slow down. No really, if you see a line of us going about half the speed limit with our four way blinkers on, slow the hell down.
- Turn on your bloody lights. If your windshield wipers are on, your lights should also be on.
- If you think you need to drive less than half the posted speed, pull over and read a book until the rain calms down.
- If there is a relatively thin, but long, branch blocking your lane of traffic on a two lane road, do not try to pull around it in a rain storm. Get your butt off the driver’s seat, move the stick, and stop being a hazard to everyone else on the road.
- If you look in your rear view mirror and see Mr. Big Flashy Firetruck coming up fast, pull the heck over. Someone’s life may depend on it.
The new tent was still up when the storm hit.
- We got a little rain yesterday, and I wanted to let it dry out today and put it away tonight.
- The winds and rain pulled out a few of the stakes, and that let the wind fold it in half and lay most of it on the ground.
- Irish Woman was almost in tears when I got home. She thought our new tent was horribly broken.
- A couple of guy lines pulled tight, a couple of flexible tent poles unbent, and the tent popped right back up. No damage.
- I’m impressed. Half the tent was down in a driving rain with the rain fly pulled halfway off and loose, and there were only a few small leaks in the tent.
Dear Weather Channel – 20% chance of showers, my ass.
Our nightmare of taking a few minutes every evening to work together and talk quietly is almost over. The new dishwasher will be installed tomorrow.

Filed under: Thought for the day

Thoughts on the Weekend

daddybear71 — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 01:32:34 +0000

Yesterday was not my day to exercise my rather limited people skills.
- I’m married to a saint, have I ever said that?
We put up the new tent on Saturday so that we could figure out how to do it and to give it time to air out.
- Remember the Weasleys’ tent in Harry Potter? It’s about that size, only orange.
- The queen size inflatable bed that Boo and I used in the central room looked small on that floor.
- I scoffed at the “Sleeps 10″ label, but you could probably fit a few more than that in this thing if they liked each other.
Boo and I slept out in the new tent last night.
- He wanted to stay up late to watch out for ‘mean bears’.
  - Little does he know…..
- We apparently did have a visitor last night, because Irish Woman found a half eaten bag of hot dog buns up in the backyard tree. I’m guessing raccoon and a trash can.
We took the kids to a ‘couples shower’ yesterday at one of the local fish and beer establishments.
- I was amazed. We can never get Boo to eat fish of any kind, but he ate an entire catfish filet on his own.
- The place was really hopping. Our party didn’t have to wait in line with the rest of the patrons, but by the time we got our food, the restaurant was 90 minutes behind on orders and was suspending new orders.
- Yes, I know all that fried food is going to kill me someday, but I eat it maybe twice a year and it is soooooo goooood.
- I’m glad neither of us drank last night. There were a lot of very inebriated people at the beer garden before we left, and I counted six police cruisers on the road between the restaurant and the highway.
I showed Girlie Bear how to change the oil on my truck this weekend.
- She was amazed at how dirty used oil is. Said it looked like chocolate syrup.
  - That is no reflection on the condition of the truck. The oil wasn’t that thick, and I’m right on schedule to change it at about 6000 miles.
- She new believes that one of her life goals should be to buy an old truck, tear it down to the frame, and do a rebuild on it. It’s so good to work with someone whose soul hasn’t been crushed by reality yet.
Going against my wishes to not get anything but a card for Father’s Day, Irish Woman got me a gift card to the new Cabela’s.
- I spent it on toys for Boo. That’ll show her.
- The store was absolutely packed. I’m guessing I wasn’t the only dad who got a gift card today.
- Their new gun section was well stocked with just about anything I could think to look for.
  - Prices were a bit steep. A Remington R1 1911, which was retailing new for between $700 and $800 in early 2012, was priced at $1300, and that was pretty representative of the lot.
- They do have a very nicely stocked used gun section.
  - Wartime production Mosin-Nagant 91/30′s were priced at $169.
  - They had both Yugoslav and Chilean Mausers available.
  - They had one Enfield Mark 5. I had never seen one of those in the wild before.
  - I saw no 8mm or .303 in the ammunition section.
- If you’re looking for rifle ammunition or shotgun shells, the drought is over.
  - Remington 00 buckshot for $139 for a case of 100 shells.
  - .270, .308, and .30-06 were plentiful.
  - No .22 at all
  - An ammo box of 500 cartridges from PPU, marked as “.30-06 for the M1 Garand”, was going for $409.
  - Some 5.56 was available. 20 XM193 were priced at $13.00.
  - Pistol calibres are still in short supply. The only common caliber I saw that seemed plentiful was .40 S&W.
- There were a lot of rarer calibres available that I don’t see on store shelves too often.
  - 10mm
  - 7.62 Nagant
  - .41 Remington
  - Also some odd manufacturers. Anyone have any experience with Herter’s or Geco?
- Reloading supplies seemed to be plentiful, but I saw no primers or powder.
- The douchebag who called the 5.11 and Blackhawk shorts I was checking out “Shoot me first pants” didn’t like it when I asserted that psychos don’t discriminate based on clothing, rather that they choose their victims based on combovers like his.
- They make bunkbed camping cots. I did not know that.

Filed under: Thought for the day

Today’s Earworm

daddybear71 — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 11:00:44 +0000

Filed under: Earworm

Today’s Earworm

daddybear71 — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:28:14 +0000

Watching this with Boo today. He’s entranced. I always wondered if Wonka kept booze or a sword in that cane.

Filed under: Earworm

Thoughts on the Day

daddybear71 — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:56:00 +0000

Listened to The Squirrel Report on the way to and from work.
- From his description of what happened to the squirrel who got zapped on his light pole, I wouldn’t be surprised if Weer’d Beard didn’t read a lot of David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers series.
- I didn’t expect to hear the words “singed the flag and the Virgin Mary” this morning, but there it was nonetheless.
- I don’t do anything to confuse or overwhelm any system that’s monitoring my emails and such. I believe in the power of SQL to filter out such noise if someone is willing to put the time into coding it properly.
- I group firearms training into several groups: Basic Safety and Marksmanship, Personal Protection, and Specialized.
  - Everyone needs Basic Safety and Marksmanship.
  - Most everyone needs Personal Protection.
  - Specialized should be for either job training or for fun. If you’re thinking you want to be a sniper, a door kicker, or just a general professional gun guy, then getting training in those disciplines is a no brainer. If it’s for fun, have fun, but don’t forget that you’re still a computer nerd.
- Of course, do research on your trainer. If he or she is dangerous, ignorant, or just plain whacko, it won’t be hard to find evidence of that on-line. Especially avoid those who say they can train you on anything and there’s no need to train with any one else.
I love working with people who have a devious mind.
It’s Flag Day, Army Birthday, and National Bourbon Day.
- I took part in all three, as a true patriot.
- ‘Murrica
$279 plus tax and shipping for the parts to fix the dishwasher. $279 plus a small fee to install it to get a new dishwasher.
- Guess we’re getting a new dishwasher.
- Update – New dishwasher will be installed next week.
- Irish Woman plans on buying a super-huge pack of paper plates so that we may survive this scourge.
- Girlie Bear is going to be learning an old, lost skill because of this – washing dishes by hand

Filed under: Thought for the day

Recall Alert

daddybear71 — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:11:12 +0000

The Firearm Blog is reporting that Thompson Center Arms is recalling all of their Icon, Venture, and Dimension rifles:

Thompson/Center Arms™ has identified a condition that may cause the safety lever on certain ICON®, VENTURE™ and DIMENSION® rifles to bind, preventing the safety from becoming fully engaged. In this situation, closing the bolt may move the safety to the fire position. The rifle will not fire unless the trigger is pulled. However, out of an abundance of caution, we are taking this action to recall the rifles so that the firearm can be inspected by our technicians to ensure that the safety lever functions as designed.

This recall applies to all ICON, VENTURE and DIMENSION rifles manufactured by Thompson/Center Arms prior to June 13, 2013.

STOP USING YOUR RIFLE AND RETURN IT TO THOMPSON/CENTER AT ONCE.

Because the safety of our customers is our utmost concern, we ask that you stop using your rifle until we have an opportunity to inspect the safety lever to ensure its proper function.

To facilitate the inspection and repair, if necessary, of your rifle safety lever, please contact Thompson/Center’s customer service department to receive instructions and a pre-paid shipping label for the return of your rifle to Thompson/Center. Thompson/Center will repair the rifle at no cost to you, and return it to you as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Additional information will be available shortly on our website at www.tcarms.com. In the meantime, if you have any questions about this recall, please contact Thompson/Center at (800) 713-0355.

Pass it on. Safety is our foremost concern as gun owners.

Filed under: Guns