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Today’s Earworm

 

Mmmmphhh.  I need some juice of the blessed bean, stat.

 

Taking Care of Our Own

Guys, it’s time to give back to someone who’s given a lot to all of us.

Tam is one of the nicest people I’ve met.  To be honest, reading her blog, along with Brigid, Jay, and the Atomic Nerds, is the reason I decided to take a whack at this particular hobby.  She’s been a wealth of advice and entertainment for a long time.  Meeting her and shooting with her was the highlight of the Lucky Gunner Shoot for me last year.*  She’s a daily read for me and a lot of people.

Life has thrown Tam a curve ball recently, and it’s a hard one.  She hasn’t asked for it, but she could probably use a bit of help from all of us who call ourselves The People of the Gun.  Nothing in medicine is inexpensive, and anything we do would only be repayment for years of excellent writing and whit from Tam.

So if you’ve got a few spare shekels, why not go on over and help out a member of the tribe?  I’m in.

*Seriously. Any day that you spend loading M-16 magazines with Tam and Oleg, then have Tam offer to share her guns with you is a good day.

Thoughts on the Day

  • You know it’s been one of those weeks when you consider it a victory that you only spent 7 hours on Thursday working on the problem you’ve been working on since Monday.
  • Hmm, the support person from the vendor didn’t want to talk with me on the phone today, preferring instead to use a chat line and talk to the support engineers via their cell phones and headsets.
    • Do not try to play “Who Can Be The Bigger Bastard” with me when it’s your job to make me happy. You will lose.
  • Irish Woman must have known I was going to have a rough day.  She got up early and made me a hot breakfast.  She even offered to make me coffee.
  • Strategy change on the AR-15 build.  With every other person on earth rushing out to buy anything at all that looks like an evil black rifle, availability and prices for parts for my varminter upper are getting thin on the ground and out of my budget. I may bite the bullet and buy a complete upper so I can shoot until I get the build done.
    • I already have all the parts for the lower and a box of PMags.
  • If I can smell your cologne on the other side of the pump when we’re both filling our gas tanks, then you might consider cutting back a tad.
  • Apparently, when you’re a labrador puppy, everyone is your playmate and the world is your toy box.

Today’s Earworm

Today’s Earworm

 

Some days there just isn’t enough coffee.

30 Days of Generals and Admirals – Day 5

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. — Geogre Patton

My Take – The way I say it – Don’t tell me how to suck eggs, just show me the eggs and tell me they need sucking.

Leadership is developing people to the point that once a problem is recognized, they know how to take responsibility for it and fix it on their own.  Management is identifying the problem, telling your people how to solve it, then watching them to make sure they follow directions.  People crave leadership; they resent management.

Thoughts on the Day

  • 14 hours working on the same problem with no results does not a happy DaddyBear make.
  • Tonight, I no longer needed the Weirding Module.
    • It may have been impolite to whip out The Voice on the poor guy on the other end of the support call, but after 13 hours, my patience was worn a tad thin.
  • Hint to vendors – When you send out replacement parts, make sure they’re actually functional before you slap the shipping label on them.
  • My sister asked me tonight what pistol she should get for her and her daughters.  I repeated a few things I’ve been told by others and steered her over to The Cornered Cat.
    • I probably should have told her to get the heck out of California while I was at it.
  • For some reason “This too shall pass” kept running through my head today.
    • Not sure if I meant the issue with my system, or the Obama presidency.

Status Quo Ante Electio

Well, it’s over.  Mitt Romney ran a good race, but when the votes were tallied, he lost.  Badly.  Seriously, given the state of the Union after the last four years, he could have at least made it close on election night.

So we have a Republican House, a Democrat Senate, and a Democrat President.  In other words, pretty much what we had on Monday night.  Obama will continue to ignore his opposition in Congress.  Fast and Furious will never be fully investigated, and neither will Benghazi.  Even if the high keening I hear from the Internet was right and voter fraud was a problem, again, nothing will happen.  Eric Holder will never lift a finger to penalize the people who kept him in a job.  Obama will use Congress’ intransigence as an excuse to expand an already imperial presidency.  And the rest of us will quietly slip into economic oblivion as we continue to bump along the bottom.

To the Republicans, all I can say is “Thank you, and good night”.  You got beaten badly in 1992, 1996, 2008, and now 2012.  You almost lost in 2000 and 2004.  Face it, you don’t have what it takes to fight for a presidency.  You were handed an election that should have been a walk-off home run, and you hit the umpire in the crotch with the bat.  Unless you pull your thumb out and stop giving us milquetoast candidates that blend in with the background, we are through.  Seriously, if the next few candidates don’t breathe fire, I’m looking elsewhere for my source of junk mail.  As for your ‘leadership’ in the House, you better grow a bloody spine.  My suggestion is to pass a budget resolution every week until the President and Harry Reid get a clue and make a credible counter offer.  For those of you in the Senate, the word is “filibuster”.  Look it up and use it prodigiously to discourage the lesser natures of your Democrat colleagues.

Oh, and here’s a hint:  NO-ONE CARES ABOUT THE CULTURE WAR WHEN THEY’RE WORRIED ABOUT HOW THEY’RE GOING TO KEEP A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS AND FOOD ON THE TABLE!  QUIT IT!

To the President, congratulations.  I hope the next four years age you terribly.  As for me, I’ll be up here with the rest of the monkeys screaming and throwing waste every time you step out of line.  I wish you and your family no ill, but I hope that by the end of this term, you regret ever getting into politics.

For the rest of y’all, thank you for letting me vent my spleen and cry in my beer a bit.  Strap yourselves in, this is going to get a bit bumpy.

30 Days of Generals and Admirals – Day 4

We must forgive our enemies. I can truly say that not a day has passed since the war began that I have not prayed for them. — Robert E. Lee

 

My Take – It is a very strange thing that we do when we fight our wars.  In more distant times, a conquered people would be annihilated or driven off of their land.  But some time in the 20th century, things changed.  When we defeated Germany and Japan, we didn’t herd their people into slave pens or strip their lands to bare earth.  We spent our treasure to fend off famine in both countries and almost started World War III on multiple occasions to keep West Germany free.

Look further back in our history to our own Civil War.  The immediate aftermath of the war was almost as bitter and destructive as the war itself, but you will never find more patriotic Americans than you will find south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Former Confederates were able to look beyond the war and see the brotherhood of Americans that they were a part of.

In this tradition, we need to sew up the wounds that this most bitter campaign has opened.  No matter who wins, the Republic will survive, so long as we don’t let it die.  Our traditions, our history, and our values all point us to the right way to end this, and it’s not with blood in the streets or harsh words in the press.  Only through remembering that we are all part of the same family of humanity, the same tribe of Americans, can we get past this.

Thought for the Day

Perkele.