“Rugged enough” means being able to rack the slide on my pistol one-handed by snagging the rear sight on the edge of the belt. [1]

Sadly, the Rockville store (which seemed always slow) closed. I’ve found a few okay belts local, but never as good as what I used to get there.

I’ve just looked, and Tandy is on-line. Even better is that their 80% finished (no FFL needed) leather belt blanks, (with a slot already cut and snaps installed and ready), are on sale now at 50% off. Even better than that is coupon code 9bret-cr-10 , which will give you $10 off (or almost free standard shipping). I’ve got a few on order as of today. Hopefully the quality will be up to their past high standards.

I hope everyone has something to cut the belt to length. If you don’t have the proper punch for the belt holes, in the past I’ve used a pin punch, using a 2×4 to back the belt up and punching from the finished side first, and then again from the back. Leather dye is also available at Tandy, but I’m going to try the shoe “touch-up” dye I have left over from another project. I got that at Wal*mart.

Normally I’[d wait for the belts to arrive to tell you for sure that they as good as I expect, but the 50% sale says it ends this Tuesday (30june2009).

[1] Only practice this drill with the pistol unloaded. Remember the four rules.

That’s like saying that in theory, everyone has the right to free speech, but in the very special place that is the District of Columbia, laws that keep ordinary people from even clearing their throat still pass constitutional scrutiny.

I expected amnesia from the mainstream media, but not this. At the very least y’all ought to join me in burning some powder this weekend. After all, the first anniversary is suppose to be the paper one. Let’s punch some holes in some targets!

Anyway, here it is:

curl -LO $(curl "http://www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts.rss"|egrep -o "http://[^ ]*mp3″|uniq|head -1)

The first curl command uses the L option to allow the request to be redirected with a 3XX response code. Blogtalkradio.com does this.

The O option just assigns a filename based on the original rss feed URL (sans path). This works well unless you get someone clueless who names their files like this:


http://www.blogtalkradio.com/MarketTicker/2009/05/18/TBA.mp3
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/MarketTicker/2009/05/11/TBA.mp3


I’m not going to explain the regex and remainder except to say that the -1 can be changed to a higher number to get more shows unless everything goes foobar because Karl named his files with exactly the same name.

Oh, and the files just end up in your current working directory, and you’ll have to get out of it if you want to cleanly unmount your flash card, but you knew that already.

You’ll need to get curl though. N00buntu users could use something like

$ sudo apt-get install curl

but if they really are n00bs they’ll probably use the GUI tool to get the job done, and then never touch the command line and get their podcasts using Amarok or something. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just that you are not the audience I’m writing for. The audience I am writing for will find their way here using the “search engine friendly” URL.

Oh and since I’m new to this podcasting stuff, I have to ask. With the proliferation of mp3 players like the iPod shuffle that don’t have a display, shouldn’t we be starting our broadcasts with “gun nuts #54 for May 27th” instead of “Goooood evening ladies and gentlemen…“? That would allow a user to shuffle through a bunch of shows to easily find the one he has not heard yet. Much nicer if the shows don’t all sound the same until a half a minute in.

Thanks for making my commute a bit more interesting, everyone.

Not good enough. The next day while the devices are in transit, the boss wants the triple-damn-dog check. Since it’s a single digit’s worth of prototypes, I go ahead. I log into the first future customer’s web GUI thingy with a username and password and get the legal notice. Everything’s fine. I get ready to go onto to the next one. Instead of declining the click-wrap, I take what I think should be a shortcut, and just hit Shift-<reload> to reload the URL in Firefox. Bam! I’m in. Whoops, that’s not suppose to happen!

Closer examination exposes some very lazy programming. Someone’s going to be busy fixing this just before the long weekend. There are also some related browser cookie problems that could be exploited with just the standard mischief. Good thing they have me around to break everything.

On top of that, I’m now getting paid to brush up on MySQL injection attacks.

No, no first-hand knowledge, in advance or otherwise. It’s just that my bullshit meter pegs at full scale when it gets a whiff of a “Clear Catholic”.

(not a “Cleared Christian” or a “Cleared Catholic”, BTW)

I really don’t need your name, a pen name is fine. Just please use the same name every time. Same with the (will not be published) (required) email address. Make something up if you want. Be consistent.

I’ll make a note of these issues in case I ever get around to redoing the layout of the blog.

Me: “So what’s all this about “stress tests”? Isn’t that “newspeak” for a financial audit by the government, except (hopefully) without all the negative connotations that auditing the books of a publicly held company normally evokes?”

Everyone else: <stunned silence>

<awkward pause>

Me: Hey, isn’t that your new GPS navigator?

Is anyone else worried that the newspeak of “stress tests” was adopted so widely with so little criticism? Does anyone else wonder why, if the government needs to audit a publicly held company to bring “transparency”, shouldn’t someone be going to jail for all those less than transparent quarterly reports?

Shouldn’t a publicly held company traded on the stock market that’s open to the public, publish data that allows anyone with a interest in the company review the reports to let them accurately assess the assets and value of the institution and then make a guess at the value of the company verses the price of the stock?

IANAD, but I’m pretty sure that one of the complications is pneumonia. Getting vaccinated against pneumonia. before coming down with any flu strain probably increases your chance of survival. The only doubt I have here is that the news reports on H1N1 don’t usually go into detail about the specific causes of pneumonia (which can be caused by both viruses and bacteria), and the pneumonia vaccine does not protect from every cause.

So why isn’t the fedgov pushing the vaccine? Well, it seems to be in perpetual short supply. The CDC recommend it for only the elderly, and sickly, even though in the very next line they say it’s very safe. Elsewhere, it’s also recommended for medical personnel too. One shot seems to last at least five years, (although they said ten when I got my shot, and others are saying that it’s good for forever).

Mine was about $10 at a walk-in clinic set up in a grocery store for the day. Probably well worth the trouble even if it’s not effective for the current pandemic.

Chris Core mp3 (was first broadcast on WTOP) Wading Into The Gun Issue

I heard his segment on the way home. When I got a second I pounded this out and sent it. I didn’t have the luxury to listen to it again because it had yet to be posted on their site. Now is is.

Hi Chris,

I listened with interest your segment on WTOP today (Tuesday April 21). It’s so rare to get a balanced opinion about our first freedom from what normally gets broadcast on WTOP, so I want to thank you for being almost there. WTOP’s always-lopsided coverage of that bill that would give DC residents an unconstitutional way to elect a senator while forcing the District to recognize their citizens’ Second Amendment rights is but one example. I believe your co-hosts always address that one as a “…bill to weaken DC’s gun laws…”.

One of your points was that President Obama doesn’t seem that anti-RKBA (Right to Keep and Bear Arms). While it’s true that the President has not spoken much about America’s first freedom, the facts still make RKBA supporters extremely wary. Consider the following:

- President Obama has had an existence before running for the President, and during that time he was unashamedly anti-gun.
- He’s even been a Director on the board of the Joyce Foundation for 8 years. Wikipedia and other sources should have the poop on this gang, the way it was subverted from a charitable organization to it’s present form of funding just about every anti-freedom group on the planet. Everyone from the VPC (who’s head guy holds one of the very few Federal Firearms Licenses in the the District) to funding dozens of “objective” anti-gun studies at universities and hospitals
- President Obama had a chance to sign on to a “friend of the court” letter in support of Heller, but declined. When the decision came out for the pro-freedom side last June he then said that he “supported the Second Amendment”, whatever that means. Waffle.
- Even though he supposedly supports the Second Amendment, he’s called on reinstating the so-called “Assault Weapons Ban” in his policy papers on Whitehouse.gov. Think about this for a moment. If the Second Amendment is an individual right, and if it mentions a “well-regulated (well-drilled, practiced) militia”, and if it doesn’t say a thing about hunting, target shooting, or collecting, perhaps it’s possible that those cosmetically-challenged, semi-automatic, self-loading copies of the fully-automatic firearms used and carried by our self-defense forces might be one of the most-protected types of firearms?

Your second point is that somehow the industry has been “whipping-up” firearms sales. I was disappointed that you did not cite any sources, undoubtedly swallowing someone else’s line - hook, line, and sinker. While there may be some industry ads around, by and large the boom in sales spontaneously occurred after the election. No one’s whipping anyone up into a frenzy except Mr “Bitter and Clingy” himself. If it is the industry, perhaps GM and the rest of the economy needs to stand up and take notice of how it’s done.

While our current President may want to ban anything gun-like, I’m sure he’s well aware of the political cost of trying to do so. President Clinton himself blames the “AWB” for his party’s crushing defeat in the following midterm elections. Most of the people with a (D) after their name who have an inkling to ban things know enough that it’s a election-losing issue at the moment. Most of the remainder (Blue Dog or otherwise) are pro-freedom supporters themselves. I’m pretty sure that the President doesn’t want to stall the rest of his agenda by trying to take us back to the days of un-ergonomic stocks, bans on “that shoulder thing that goes up”, and complete and utter bans on firearms with the dreaded cleaning-rod attachment.

Yours in freedom,

Standard Mischief

I’m trying to get some motor-vation today but all I can manage is this post. The problem with the first link above is that there’s no data that would let you know how old the info is. Blogs, or at least mine are immune because every post is dated.

I did this trip about a year ago, and I’m happy to report that someone has put up signs so it’s a bit easier to keep on the loop. I’ve felt the urge before to spray-bomb the entire loop in orange marker paint. Still, in my GPS notes that follow, I’ve tried to mark out the major turns to keep you on track.

It was a nice day yesterday. The average “serious” speed cyclists on the trail were as rude as ever (I swear, it’s like the bastards think you are fscking Lance Armstrong and the only way they can beat you is to sneak up and pass you silently and suddenly). These idiots are probably only eclipsed by the typical Young Hippie Bicycle Fanatic (of Critical Masshole fame). Motto: “share the fucking road except for those god-damn pedestrians!”

Now you know why I like to keep off the beaten track.

Anyway, I ought to make a clue sheet or something. Tough. Assume the following is going around the loop clockwise:

39.16260,-76.66355 - Start and end point. Parking. Good plane-spotting area.

39.15938,-76.68412 - A 7-11 with gas pumps. All the usual stuff here but be extra careful crossing the high-traffic street. Better yet, stop here first, before parking at the trailhead.

39.17782,-76.69032 - Left turn here

39.17822,-76.69305 - Right turn here

39.19095,-76.69146 - Left turn here

39.19035,-76.68082 - Bear left. Do not bear right and cross the bike-bridge over Aviation Loop unless you want to do the dead-end spur that goes to the main terminal.

39.19132,-76.68034 - If you want, you can go off the trail at this point, and go left on Elkridge Landing Road for 550 feet, (there’s a trail on your side of the road, no need to cross), to a McDonalds (food, free refills, tap for water at the soda fountain) You are about half-way around the loop at this point.

39.19349,-76.67067 - Bird watchers might see an Emu or two behind the chain link fence.

39.19389,-76.66678 - Not a lot of plane action, because of a less popular runway, but otherwise an outstanding overlook.

39.19626,-76.66509 - Farm. Horses. Sculpture in stainless steel.

39.19478,-76.65619 - Rail track crossing

39.16141,-76.64547 - Decision time. If doing the loop clockwise, veer off to the right at this point. If going on to the Baltimore and Annapolis Trail, then go ahead and cross the bridge across I-97 (a/k/a Glen Burnie Bypass).