3200 Feet Per Second

Leaning Tower of Fail

2008-06-22T09:16:00.004-04:00

At 8AM this morning, two controlled explosions were detonated with the intention of bringing down two large boiler stacks at the old FMC Steam Plant in South Charleston, West Virginia. I arrived with my family around 7:30, camera in hand to find a small crowd had already gathered. The media was present as well. After all, it's newsworthy when things are blown up within city limits.

You can see a few on-lookers patiently waiting for the sirens that warn of the imminent blast. You can see their safety is assured by blast fences near the bases of the stacks, though only one of them is visible from this location.

So with baited breath, we await the initial blast. And when it came, you could see it, hear it, and most impressively feel it. The paper reported 40lbs of explosives. Which, as a former combat engineer with an awful lot of experience blowing things up, is a fairly small shot. But impressive nonetheless.

And then things start to fall. It was pretty neat. Here's a whole series of photos for your viewing pleasure.

That was pretty neat! It all happened in a space of a few seconds. Except... um... hey, wasn't that one supposed to fall down too?

WHOOOOOOOOOOOPS!

After the dust clears... you can see a nice little pile of rubble and structural damage to the tower's base. But.... I'm thinking there should be more. See. I was a combat engineer. I've blown a lot of stuff up. And we had a mantra for calculating how much explosive we needed to use for a shot. This mantra was, "when in doubt, use more."

I immediately knew... EPIC FAIL. So, I was chuckling as all the viewers kind of stood there staring at the monolithic tower waiting for something else cool to happen. Like, maybe more explosives or maybe a strong gust of wind. Or maybe even one of the engineers to walk over in his hard-hat, purse up his lips, and give it a final poof and blow it on over. I verbalize this. "Epic. Fail."

The guy beside me in the crowd goes "huh?"

"Buddy, right now, lawyers are being called. Insurance companies are scrambling. Engineers are swearing. Epic. Fail." And I very briefly explain to him my background working with demolitions.

"You mean that's it?"

"Yup. Now we have six months of structural analysis and engineering to figure out how to deal with this. In the meantime, they've got a very dangerous situation with that tower. They won't be able to let anyone in or out of that area until they square this away."

"Ahahahah." And off he goes to relay my revelations to his family.

If you look closely at this image (sorry it's a little out of focus) you can see a green blob in the lower left corner. That's an engineer who actually walked up to the base of the Leaning Tower of Fail for a look-see. What cracked me up, was that he was dutifully wearing his hard-hat. As if that would protect him from several hundred tons of concrete if that thing dropped on his noggin.

So, my parting image, is that of the Leaning Tower of Fail with Union Carbide's building #82 providing a reference on the right side of the frame. Using that as a reference, you can see how the tower is slightly leaning off to the west. Whooooooops.

UPDATE!

The Leaning Tower of Fail has fallen! I saw it go down on the news. I guess they pushed it on over with a Dozer or something. The footage of it dropping didn't include an earth shattering kaboom (a~la Marvin Martian) so that's the assumption. Either a dozer did it, or someone went over and huffed and puffed.

Time Magazine is despicable.

2008-04-21T21:59:00.002-04:00

I saw the image below. And it brought tears of anger and sadness to my eyes.

I fear that words cannot adequately express my anger at the sight of this magazine cover. What those men sacrificed on, and around Suribachi that day transcends politics and agendas. The nobility of their sacrifices merits the humility and eternal gratitude of a nation that enjoys the freedoms resulting from their blood.

That anyone would usurp their valor in the name of advertisement sales is an insult of the gravest order. Time magazine has made it be known that the blood of our country's finest amounts to nothing more than a sensational advertisement for a bogus geopolitical cause. They have announced to the globe that nothing is sacred, and no heroism is beyond the reach of depraved sensationalism.

The knowledge that fine Marines who fought and bled on that island have and will see the icon of their sacrifice bastardized in the name of some pet cause wounds me deeply. My brothers, I apologize to you for what my generation has allowed your country to become.

While the folks at time magazine will never understand the idea behind the phrase, rest assured that some of us do. Semper Fidelis.

Kimberly Annette Yanov

2008-02-04T14:39:00.001-05:00

Kim,

Twenty years ago today,

Would I have imagined that I'd never hold you again?
Never gaze into your almond eyes?
Never run to you as my only refuge in my maelstrom?
Never chase you through the freshly mown grass?

Could I possibly have known that I'd think of you daily?
That I'd still feel the emptiness?
That I'd pray for the infrequent visits you pay me in my dreams?
That I'd still feel the burning scar left on my soul as your mother wailed in my arms?

Would I have ever imagined the damage loss can do?
That a major portion of my life would be shaped and twisted by pain?
That I'd spend years in a chemical haze running from it?
That I'd be so angry at the numbness which caused the precious memories fade?

Would I have ever invisioned the rage I'd feel at the world?
The rage at how unfair life and death can be?
The rage at forces that would take you from us all?
The rage at god for not allowing me to take your place?

Would I ever have conceived the ache that persists?
That I'd still drive lonely stretches of road conversing with your memory?
That I'd still see glimpses of your face in the crowd?
That I'd still be crushed when that glimpse crystalizes, and is not you?

Would I ever have believed that I've gone on this long?
That I could survive even one more day?
That I could defeat the temptation to pass through the barriers and join you?
That I could find comfort without numbness?

Would I ever have guessed that I'd still feel guilty?
Guilty for not being there when you left?
Guilty that it was you and not me, when you were so deserving of life, and I was not?
Guilty for not following you to the next world?

Would I ever have understood that I could feel love again?
And that it is real?
And that she would pull me from the storm?
And that she would return life to me?

Would I ever have accepted that I could be happy?
That I'd ever have a beautiful family?
That I'd wish I could introduce you to them as my dearest friend?
That my happiness would be tainted with guilt?

Twenty three years ago,
I swore I'd never let you go.
I have kept my promise.

Christmas Eve...

2007-12-24T00:56:00.000-05:00

Ok. So it's Christmas Eve. And as such, I feel like sharing the events of a Christmas Eve past.

Date: December 24, 1990.
Place: USS Tarawa. Persian Gulf.

You have to understand. We were not happy. It was Christmas Eve, and we were stuck on a Navy tub bobbing around thousands of miles from home. We were packed into berthing areas like sardines. It smelled like ass and feet. Lines for chow ran up, and then back down the length of this large ship. Everyone was miserable.

I was attached to Headquarters Company 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines. We shared a berthing area with a Recon platoon. Let me tell you, those Recon guys are crazy batshit insane. We generally left them alone, and they left us alone. We didn't want any part of their reindeer games.

The mood on the ship had not been pleasant. On multiple previous occasions, we'd had force-on-force fistfights in the ship's large, spacious well-deck. Maybe two weeks prior, I was involved in a brawl which basically boiled down to Golf Company 2/5 versus Headquarters and Fox 2/5. Yeah. That was about 200 guys on one side, versus about 100 on the other. Fighting. Brawling. Blood. Marines like to fight. And we'd been cooped up on that damned ship for too long, and we were starting to fight each other just to combat boredom.

Now, back to Recon. Recon platoon had a little desk in front of their berthing area where they kept some paperwork and such. On this desk, in the holiday spirit, they'd placed an inflatable Santa Claus. Well, at some point after evening chow, Santa Claus was discovered deflated. Deflated by an apparent knife wound. All hell was about to break loose.

Probably an hour after this discovery, an officer appeared in the berthing. He was wearing the telltale scuba-bubble insignia that indicated he was Recon. As he enters the berthing area, one of the Recon guys yells "ATTENTION ON DECK." The Recon lieutenant did NOT put us "at ease" or issue an "as you were." No. This man had something to say.

"GENTLEMEN. SANTA CLAUS HAS BEEN KNIFED. AGGRESSION. WILL. BE. MET. WITH. AGGRESSION!"

Forty guys yell "HOORAH!"

"YOUR HONOR AS MARINES, AS RECON, AS THE ELITE AMONG THE ELITE HAS BEEN ATTACKED. YOU HAVE BEEN ATTACKED UNPROVOKED BY A NUMERICALLY SUPERIOR FORCE. WE HAVE FACED NUMERICALLY SUPERIOR FORCES BEFORE, HAVE WE NOT!?"

"HOORAH!"

"Intelligence reports indicate that Golf Company, two-five has perpetrated this attack, completely unprovoked. Gentlemen, you know what must be done. You know where. You know how. YOU ARE RECON AND YOU WILL AVENGE SANTA CLAUS!"

"HOOOOOOORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Within a few minutes they'd assembled and developed a plan of attack. And clonkclonkclonk down the ladder-wells they went with a mighty war-cry. We could hear the sounds of battle below us for a good ten or fifteen minutes. It sounded truly fearsome. Yells. Screams. The sound of limbs and heads hitting steel decks, pipes, racks, bulkheads, and whatever else was around. Eventually, Recon emerged up the ladder-well, clearly victorious. Celebratory "hoorahs" and assorted other motivational terms were commonplace. After a minute or two, one of the NCOs yells "Squad leaders, get me a head count!"

There's some commotion, and shuffling, and general sounds of organization happening. And over these general and familiar sounds, a question begins to get repetitive. "Williams? Where's Williams? You guys seen Williams? Last time I saw him, he had that skinny guy in a headlock beating him with a combat boot... anyone see Williams after that? Williams?"

Uh oh. Recon had an MIA. And we had a front row seat. The Recon NCOs were absolutely flipping out at this point. One of them gave a quick motivational speech. "WE NEVER LEAVE A BROTHER BEHIND. NEVER. WE WILL RESCUE WILLIAMS!" And with another "HOOORAAAAAAAAAAH" and the clonkclonkclonk of boots on the ladder-wells, down they went to recover their MIA marine, captured in the heat of battle by Golf Company.

Unfortunately, they returned empty handed. Dejected. Bloodied and defeated. We could hear the NCOs debating involving the lieutenant. Involving an officer in this sort of thing, particularly an MIA on a friendly ship was NOT going to be pretty. Fortunately, this dilemma was solved for them fifteen minutes later.

The ship's MPs brought Williams back. He was naked. He was glowing green. He had "F-A-G" written in giant block letters on his chest and back. MPs drug him over to Recon's berthing. "This guy belong to you?"

"Yeah, he's ours, what the hell?!"

"You care to tell us why his glowing naked ass was running around on the flight deck during flight ops? The 'exec' is a bit pissed."

I couldn't hear the rest of the conversation. I was knotted up on the floor laughing. But, I caught enough of the story to figure out what happened in general terms. Williams was "captured" by Golf 2/5. They stripped him down and wrote the epithets on his chest and back in permanent marker. They then cut open a dozen glowsticks and dumped the glowing yellow-green liquid all over him. After that, they drug him to one of the hatches that opened on the flight deck, and threw him through it, and then held it closed behind him. After that, a cobra pilot on approach, preparing to land on the deck reported a "glowing naked green guy" hiding behind a parked/tethered CH53 helicopter sitting on the flight deck. From there, the ship's Executive Officer ordered the ship's MPs to detain and question the "glowing naked green guy," and bring him someone's ass on a silver platter.

I don't know about asses on platters, but I know I couldn't breathe for a couple of days because my abs hurt so bad from laughing.

Oh yeah, and Christmas day sucked. It's always going to suck when you're thousands of miles from home, friends, and family.

Handgun Reliability

2007-12-12T21:42:00.000-05:00

All the manufacturers make the claim. They all claim that you can trust your life to their pistols. Well, how does that stack up to our experiences? Can their claims be trusted? I decided to find out just how we perceive this reliability. So I conducted a poll on The High Road, which is a very popular firearms forum with many tens of thousands of users and shooters.

I have to provide some caveats for the poll though. It was COMPLETELY unscientific. It's results can't be relied on for much of anything. I asked the same question for each manufacturer and a specific "line" of their pistols. You can see the raw results of the poll below. You'll have to click it to view it properly.

Now, these results can be misleading unless you understand the questions, and the way I framed them. The questions asked are EXACTLY as you see them in the results graphic above. What is NOT mentioned, is that I did not define "serious reliability issues." So the respondents are using their own definition to formulate their response. Also, there's no accounting for "break in" or other factors which may or may not have been a factor in a respondent's decision on which box to check.

I decided to sort the data, and put together a graphic displaying percentage results per shooter. For each line, I totaled the number of respondents which claim to have either had no problems, or serious problems, and then derived a percentage. For example, we had 50 respondents claim to have Sig P series. Five of them claimed to have had serious reliability issues with them.

Again, there are controls missing which may skew perception. We do not know if those five people claiming to have had "serious reliability issues" owned ONE Sig, or FIFTY Sigs. Obviously, someone who's owned fifty Sigs, will have a much higher likelihood of owning at least ONE which had a reliability problem. So we cannot tie these results to the reliability rates of the guns. I repeat... THIS DATA LOGICALLY CANNOT BE TIED TO THE RELIABILITY RATES OF THE FIREARMS. It can only serve as an unscientific indicator of the shooter's experience. How many guns with which he has experience, is not known nor displayed. Once again, you'll have to click it to view it properly.

I don't know about you, but this is a bit frightening to me. Sig Sauer's marketing slogan is "To Hell and Back Reliability." Yet one in ten Sig shooting respondents claim to have had "Serious Reliability Issues." And my god, look at Kimber.

I'm not advocating that you make purchasing decisions based on this information. In fact, I highly discourage you from doing so. This poll was unscientific, it's data collection method had no controls. There was no entity verification. There was no verification that a respondent had even ever SHOT the firearms about which he responded.

But if nothing else, it's an interesting look into perception and reliability.

And a cartridge in a bare tree...

2007-12-08T19:48:00.000-05:00

When I first said it, it made my ten year old groan. Then I actually did it. Then I took a photograph of it. I'm sure one day this will all come up in a certification hearing. Though, I suppose my family could provide plenty of ... ammo ... for the courts in the event they ever decide to officially question my sanity.

Then there's the tree. Ok, yeah, we went "Griswald." Why does the tree always look so much smaller out in the field than it does when you get it in the house? So yeah, our tree bends over at the ceiling because it's too tall. Or maybe the ceiling's too low. Either way, I find it hilarious.

Then there's the Christmas Tire. Yes, you read that right. Christmas Tire. This could probably find its way into Jeff Foxworthy's act. But you need some background for the Christmas Tire. I'm a scrooge. A grinch. HUMBUG. Now, my wife is quite the opposite. She's all about the Christmas spirit and all of the nonesense that goes with it. It drives her nuts that I'm not. But she's a creative girl. She asked me one day, "hey, the solstice is on the 21st, right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, after the 21st, the days start getting longer, right?"

"Uh, yeah"

"So if I took one of your race tires and made a wreath out of it, would you celebrate the season, because it signals the slide towards riding season?"

She kind of had me. I had to concede and be less grinchy.

Brass

2007-12-02T20:59:00.001-05:00

Big heaping piles of it. Pictured (via horrible cell phone camera) is a large box, overflowing with 9mm brass. I've been decapping and resizing it to prepare it for reloading. I bet there are five thousand casing there. I have yet to trim and tumble them. Man am I going to have one huge freakin' pile of 9mm ammo when I'm done with that lot.

Button Buck.

2007-12-02T20:50:00.000-05:00

I got a little button buck yesterday. That's not interesting. I don't think that deer hunting is particularly interesting at all. For me, hunting's about putting marksmanship skills to practical use. And here in WV (at least in this area) it's a rare shot on a deer beyond a couple of hundred yards. The VAST majority of shots on deer around here will likely be closer to 50 yards. I think missing a deer with a slingshot at 50 yards would be inexcusable marksmanship. I've never missed a deer. I've never needed more than one shot on a deer. But the longest shot I've ever had was maybe, 85 yards. That particular shot did actually require a degree of marksmanship because of the angles. It allowed me about a four inch target to make a clean kill. I hit exactly where I was aiming. But I digress...

Shooting a button buck at 65 yards (my shot yesterday) isn't really any display of marksmanship at all. So, that's not the interesting part to me, even if the bullet actually did pass directly through the deer's heart. Yeah, ok, it was a decent, if not easy shot. But what IS interesting to me, is that I recovered the bullet when field dressing the deer. It was a 150gr soft-point. When recovered, it weighed 79.5 grains. More than half that bullet's mass was just gone. Wonder where it went? The bullet opened up like a flower. It did exactly what it was designed to do, how it was designed to do it. But where'd the mass of that bullet go? Interesting. And I have no answer.

"You a cop?"

2007-11-22T02:45:00.000-05:00

So I'm a professional geek. And I have this t-shirt. It's all black, and says simply RTFM in block white letters. It's an industry acronym I'm sure some of you have heard. It stands for Read The F###### Manual. It's a standard response for that annoying user that's asked you the same question five times over the past four days which is plainly answered in page one, paragraph one of the manual.

My laundry cycle has just worked out several times over the past few months such that I happen to wear this RTFM t-shirt on range day. I assure you, it was not a conscious choice.

I do a lot of draw-fire speed drills when I'm shooting pistols at the range. I generally hit my target, and do it reasonably fast. My split times aren't anywhere near competitive, but I'm not exactly slow. I also practice firing from retention a lot at very close range - 3 yards or so. Around here, not many people shoot like that, so it tends to attract some attention. I've found that ringing a 12" steel plate @200 with irons on an AR does too, even though it's nuthin' special. But I digress...

The past three range trips where I've worn that RTFM shirt and shot pistols, people have approached me to make smalltalk. You know the deal. "Whacha shootin? I have a $some_pistol, and it's a real good shooter. Hey, what's the deal with that crazy fast thing you're doing with the target all close?" Et cetera. I'm always polite. I take the time to explain the tactical merits of shooting from retention up close. I enjoy talking about their guns more than I enjoy talking about my own. I know my own guns. Theirs I may know nothing about. I digress again...

Anyway, the question's asked every single time. "You a cop?" Sometimes, it's in the form of a statement. "You must be a cop." My response to this is always the same, and I have to admit, I get a little mental chuckle out of it.

"Nope."

*uncomfortable silence*

I'm CERTAIN they think I'm lying and are wondering why.

But it just dawned on me. Every single time I'm wearing that shirt, during the uncomfortable silence following "nope," they're STARING INTENTLY at the letters RTFM on my t-shirt. And... I just started cracking up for no apparent reason a few minutes ago, completely confusing my wife. They're staring at RTFM trying to figure out what agency RTFM is.

Suddenlink is horrid.

2006-12-19T14:53:00.000-05:00

So, if you're in WV, you're dealing with Charter cable being bought up by Suddenlink. Well, let me relay my experience with suddenlink.

They suck.

I cannot get support for my service because their input forms on thier website are hosed. They require that you input your zip code before they'll even give you a phone number to call. When I put my zip code in, it either tells me it's invalid (gee) or "an application error has occurred."

Pa-Thet-Ic.

So I can't even call them. I'll find the number via some non-internet means and call. But how pitiful is that?

Uptime. Suddenlink apparently can't keep cable connections up. And when you call, you get some flunkie who doesn't know anything about anything networking. The only thing they understand is the script in front of them which is basically a block of "if(){}elsif(){}" stuff printed on paper. I don't know why they even bother using people. The people are apparently trained to behave like software.

LISTEN SUDDENLINK, SOME OF US KNOW MORE ABOUT NETWORK SYSTEMS THAN YOUR TIER 3 BUSINESS SUPPORT. WE DO NOT ENJOY TALKING TO ROBOTS. EVEN IF THEY ARE OF THE HUMAN VARIETY.

So.... apparently lead time for a site visit to get a suddenlink wire monkey out to check the power/signal levels on the circuit's somewhere in the neighborhood of five days. And yeah, it's one of those "we'll be there sometimes between 1PM and 12:30PM. (yes, that would mean the next day.)

Here's my advice people. If internet connectivity is important to you and you're in West Virginia? Go with (in this order of support/clue) nTelos DSL, Fibernet DSL, Verizon DSL, ATT Dialup, Suddenlink Cable.

Yes, I'm about this close to cancelling my suddenlink account and returning to dialup service since DSL can't reach me.

Ronnie? Ronnie who?

2006-07-06T23:53:00.002-04:00

I have no idea what reminded me of this. But recently a childhood memory came to mind. It's pretty messed up. And if this blog has any readers, they're well aware that when I say "messed up," I generally mean it.

Here's the scene. It's maybe December, maybe January. The previous night, freezing rain accumulated on everything for several hours. Following that, there was a light dusting of snow. The road that ran past my house ran uphill at a moderate incline for maybe a tenth of a mile. After that, there was a moderatly flat sweeping left-hand turn. After that, it was about a 10% grade straight uphill for about a quarter mile with a slow S turn in the middle.

Now here I am, maybe 11 years old. School's canceled. I walk outside and realize that the road is two inches of solid ice with maybe a quarter inch of snow on top. In my limited experience, one thing was certain. A runner sled would flat FLY on this surface. So I go into the garage, get the sled, and treck the half mile or so up to the top of the hill. I gather my nerve, and down the road I go. I'm certain I reached speeds of forty to fifty miles per hour coming down the road. Of course, it felt like I was approaching the sound barrier, but it was just awesome.

So, after a couple of runs, I invite my friends Matt and Ronnnie over to share in this wicked sledding near my house. They show up, and an entire day of some of the best sledding I ever experienced ensues.

Well, dusk arrives, and we're all exhausted. It's a long walk up that slippery hill. Matt and I have had enough. It was oh so fun, but neither of us had another walk up that hill left in us. Ronnie on the other hand, wanted to take one last run. Matt and I agree to wait on him to take his last run, then we'll all go inside and grab some hot chocolate courtesy of my mom.

Ronnie disappears around the curve, going up the hill, and Matt and I are left on the moderate grade just before my house. Really bad ideas start to appear in my tired brain. "Hey Matt, look at these big round ice-blocks the plows left beside the road."

"Yeah, what about 'em?"

"Let's set up a slalom for Ronnie. He'll come around the curve, and he'll have to juke left-right-left-right to get past 'em. It'll be cool."

"Hmm, yeah, ok, let's do that."

So Matt and I set up this chicayne. We stage these two-foot by two-foot by six-foot walls of ice halfway across the road. We stagger them about fifteen feet apart, and each one on alternate sides of the road, extending about halfway across. Not really understanding the physics involved with a sled going forty miles per hour, we didn't realize that it would've been impossible for a formula one race-car to make turns so quickly, let alone a runner sled struggling for grip on solid ice.

We hear the clickityclackety of Ronnie's sled coming down the road and start laughing and giggling like little girls. I remember Ronnie's eyes being the size of dinner plates when he saw the first wall of ice and turned to avoid it. And he did avoid it. But there was no avoiding the second wall. Pow. Ronnie hits the second wall. The sled basically stops. Ronnie goes airborne and slams into a telephone pole which bounces him back into the road spreadeagled and unconcious. I will never forget the sight of Ronnie spreadagle, sliding slowly down the road rotating around and around. He comes to a stop about fifteen feet from my driveway. He's not moving. I look at Matt and say "Oh damn man, I think he's knocked out."

Matt turns to me and says "Knocked out hell. He's fucking dead man," then starts madly clearing our "chicayne" off of the road.

"No way, you think? Naw, he's just knocked out."

"Dude, did you SEE that? He's fucking dead man. I'm going home." And off goes Matt walking home, right past Ronnie, dragging his sled behind him.

So I walk down to Ronnie. "Ronnie, wake up. Dude, wake up." Nothing. I think "Crap, maybe Matt was right." So I ... well, er... I just went inside.

"Hey mom, can I have some hot chocolate?"

"Sure, I'll make you some."

At this point I realize that the kitchen window where mom's making me hot chocolate has a great view of the road outside my house. Too late.

"Is that Ronnie out there?"

"Where?"

"Out there on the road! Oh my god! Is that Ronnie!?"

And out the door dashes my mom. Fortunately, Ronnie comes to while my mom's down there freaking out. She brings a very, very dazed Ronnie into the house who can't remember a damn thing. I of course get interrogated. "Dude, I don't know what happened. Matt and I were tired, you wanted to take one more run. Matt went home, I came inside. No idea what happened." No one but Matt saw a thing that could dispute this story. I know Matt never told anyone. I know I damn sure didn't.

If Ronnie reads this entry, I promise it'll be the first time he learns what really happened that day.

Shreddin' the twisties

2006-05-24T23:58:00.000-04:00

The AWR. So coined by personas known locally and internationally as "Pants" and "Slick." The AWR is the "after work ride." Couple of years ago, I managed to raz a co-worker into submission through ceasless nagging and ribbing. On a beautiful sunny day, I'd walk in wearing my leathers and go "hey man, where's your bike?" I did this about every other day for a couple of years. Finally, he went out and bought a CBR600RR. Probably did it just to shut me the hell up.

Well, today, we both rode to work. As such, we decided to do the AWR thing. Went down corridor G, then headed west on route 3 to route 34, and north to Winfield. Was a great ride. Even managed to get over on my tires a bit. I didn't put a knee down anywhere, but we were gettin' through the corners at a pretty good clip. Sometimes, the zen of a good ride on twisty WV roads is exactly what a man needs.

Escape.

2006-05-15T11:42:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine's father was in ailing health. I feel guilty that I hadn't really paid a lot of attention to the guy until he was in pretty bad shape. Once I started listening to what he had to say, I felt like an idiot for not listening all along. He had some profound things to say, and had a way of saying them that was unique.

To elaborate, my friend had hit some really hard times. Some really bad stuff had gone down, and we were at his dad's house. Things were so bad for my friend at the time, that anywhere around supportive family was better than anywhere else. I was seriously concerned he may kill someone. Seriously, it was bad.

In the midst of dealing with this mess, my friend went outside for some air, and to stew in his own thoughts. When he walked out the door, his ailing father looked at me said said, "You need to take that boy fishin." I looked at him quizzically, thinking, but not saying "gee, how in the world is 'fishin' gonna help anything in this mess?"

He continued, possibly in response to my quizzical look. "When that bass hits, a man ain't got a care in the world."

Now, I'm not even an amateur angler. I fish a good bit. But my friend's now deceased father's words have been ringing in my ears for years now. "When that bass hits, a man ain't got a care in the world." The more I think about that, the more true it is. When that bass hits, the universe is boiled down to two points connected by a piece of nylon line. There is no crime. There is no welfare. There is no war. There is no long-running family disagreement. There was no argument last night. There is no poverty. There is nothing but a bass, a line, and you.

The fight might last all of thirty seconds. But for that thirty seconds, there are only two things in the entire universe. You, and that bass. And in the end, if he breaks the line or spits out the hook, it's really the same as if you land him on the bank or in the boat. For an instant, all of existance was boiled down to two points and a line.

Network Engineer's Nightmare

2006-05-05T22:18:00.000-04:00

Literally. A nightmare.

You know how when you get steeped in something in the waking world, sometimes it bleeds over to your dreams. Like, guys who work in supply warehouses start having dreams about millions of boxes. Stuff like that. Well... damnit, it's happened to me.

Recently, I've been doing a *lot* of network design. I've been working nearly constantly with switches, routers, redunant gateways, redundant physical paths, (insert long line of technical jargon like Virtual Router Redunancy Protocol and Spanning Tree Protocol etc...) to the point of madness.

Well, last night, I dreamed I was standing in front a switch. A big Cisco switch. Now, when I say big, I don't mean it had a lot of ports in it. I mean the damned thing was BIG. Like, six feet tall. The data ports on it were three or four feet across. The patch cables that went into it were a good three feet around. The problem in this dream, was that we didn't have enough of these ENORMOUS patch cables. And unfortunately, we had a major uptime requirement that just couldn't be broken. The systems must stay up. There were two of us. And we came up with an idea to keep the systems up. My co-worker would go into the switch (and by into, I mean literally walk into the damned thing instead of log into it) and try to implement a software work-around. My job? Switching frames.

Yes. The frames were about four feet long, translucent, weighed about a pound, and were maybe four inches wide and three inches tall. I could read the source and destination mac addresses that were etched into these "frames." They came out of one giant switch port, and my job was to read the source and destination mac addresses off of them, and carry them over to the correct destination port, and throw them in. Yes. I was a VLAN.

I nearly woke up screaming.

I think I need to find a new career as a construction laborer or something.

So sayeth the flatlander....

2006-05-03T23:09:00.000-04:00

"yeah but your whole state is like goddamned afghanistan with trees and moonshine"

-- unnamed friend from flyover country.

There's literary art in West Virginia. Just ask Bigfoot.

2006-04-20T09:53:00.000-04:00

So, just to prove that we're not all NASCAR watching, budwieser drinking, harley riding on sundays in leather chaps, banjo playing, tobacco chewing, inbred, one toothed, backwoods, bumpkins the State of West Virginia has decided to incentivize the state's youth to participate in the literary arts. Yes, folks, we're having a poetry contest. About monster trucks. Yes, you read that right, monster trucks.

While I'm sure that great literary works have been written about less classy subjects, I'd imagine most of them were composed by drunken irishmen or sailors on shore leave. I, for one, cannot wait to read "Ode to Bigfoot."

Paging Peregrinus... paging Peregrinus...

Cowards! Caving to terrorists LEGITIMIZES TERROR!

2006-04-15T15:34:00.000-04:00

Pathetic.

Some of you may have read that I sent a nastygram to Comedy Central's feedback department about thier censorship of the South Park Episode. I got a form-email response. Note that it took SEVERAL days, so they must be innundated with correspondence like mine. That or they recieved so much, they had to wait on thier legal department to formulate a mass-response.

Anyway, here's the drivel they sent me:

"Dear Viewer,

Thank you for your correspondence regarding the "South Park" episodes entitled "Cartoon Wars." We appreciate your concerns about censorship and the destructive influence of outside groups on the media, entertainment industry and particularly Comedy Central.

To reiterate, as satirists, we believe that it is our First Amendment right to poke fun at any and all people, groups, organizations and religions and we will continue to defend that right. Our goal is to make people laugh and perhaps, if we're lucky, even make them think in the process.

Comedy Central's belief in the First Amendment has not wavered, despite our decision not to air an image of Muhammad. Our decision was made not to mute the voices of Trey and Matt or because we value one religion over any other. This decision was based solely on concern for public safety in light of recent world events.

With the power of freedom of speech and expression also comes the obligation to use that power in a responsible way. Much as we wish it weren't the case, times have changed and, as witnessed by the intense and deadly reaction to the publication of the Danish cartoons, decisions cannot be made in a vacuum without considering what impact they may have on innocent individuals around the globe.

It was with this in mind we decided not to air the image of Muhammad, a decision similar to that made by virtually every single media outlet across the country earlier this year when they each determined that it was not prudent or in the interest of safety to reproduce the controversial Danish cartoons. Injuries occurred and lives were lost in the riots set off by the original publication of these cartoons. The American media made a decision then, as we did now, not to put the safety and well being of the public at risk, here or abroad.

As a viewer of "South Park," you know that over the course of ten seasons and almost 150 episodes the series has addressed all types of sensitive, hot-button issues, religious and political, and has done so with Comedy Central's full support in every instance, including this one. "Cartoon Wars" contained a very important message, one that Trey and Matt felt strongly about, as did we at the network, which is why we gave them carte blanche in every facet but one: we would not broadcast a portrayal of Muhammad.

In that regard, did we censor the show? Yes, we did. But if you hold Comedy Central's 15-year track record up against any other network out there, you'll find that we afford our talent the most creative freedom and provide a nurturing atmosphere that challenges them to be bold and daring and places them in a position to constantly break barriers and push the envelope. The result has been some of the most provocative television ever produced.

We would like nothing more than to be able to look back at this in a few years and think that perhaps we overreacted. Unfortunately, to have made a different decision and to look back and see that we completely underestimated the damage that resulted was a risk we were not willing to take.

Our pledge to you, our loyal viewers, is that Comedy Central will continue to produce and provide the best comedy available and we will continue to push it right to the edge, using and defending the First Amendment in the most responsible way we know how.

Sincerely,
Comedy Central Viewer Services"

Yeah. Wimps.

Oh, and google, you're wimps too. I couldn't upload mohammed.gif. I had to rename it. Damned cowardice is running rampant.

Here, I'll do something you didn't have the balls for:

Comedy Central and Muhammed

2006-04-13T00:35:00.000-04:00

What I pasted into the feedback form on comedy central's website regarding South Park and censorship (apparently comedy central would not let them air an image of muhammed):

"Assuming the plotline of South Park is correct, your cowardly retreat from the first amendment is not respresentative of the spirit of freedom upon which this country is based.

I have changed the channel. I won't be seeing any more comedy central commercials."

I should get a nice drawing of muhammed and put it on this blog.

Sometimes it's a shame.

2006-04-10T20:53:00.000-04:00

It's a shame that the local Little League baseball league is run by petty, vindictive, power hungry little beaurocrats. It's a shame because it hurts the game. It's a shame because it hurts the kids. It's a shame because it's been that way since I played at that field 20+ years ago. It's a shame because I won't expose my son to them. It's a shame because the kid hits every fastball and knuckleball I throw down the pipe. It's a shame because he has all the fundamentals, and he won't be playing.

Busy weekend

2006-04-10T00:28:00.000-04:00

I had a really busy weekend. Trust me, I'm really, not ever, going to use this blog as a diary or journal, but hear me out. This weekend I recieved some cultural exposure that's pretty darned rare for me. You have to keep in mind that if I'm not fighting at the dojo, learning to fight at the dojo, or shooting stuff at the range, I'm probably at work. "Culture" for me means learning the japanese or korean names for various strikes, blocks, pins, throws and holds. And I suppose my use of russian ammunition for my commie rifles is a uh... form of cultural exposure.

My weekend started with a trip (the whole family) to the Clay Center for a performance by the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra. They had a guest piano virtuoso by the name of Valentina Lisitsa. Oh my god could this woman play a piano. Her performace (and the symphony of course) of Liszt's Totentanz literally brought tears to my eyes. It was my son's first exposure to classical music live. After the performance of Totentanz, the symphony went to intermission. I leaned over to my wide-eyed son (who plays guitar, and understands how difficult the mastery of an instrument can be) and said "um... was that just a little more complex than Green Day?" He nodded and replied "uh... yeah," still wide-eyed.

So Saturday, we head to guitar lessons. Yes, my whole family takes guitar lessons. The boy and I play guitar, and the wife is learning bass. And if you're in the Charleston area and in need of a good guitar teacher, look up Josh Cannon. Just call Fret n Fiddle in St. Albans and they'll hook you up. Josh can friggin play. I mean, the guy can PLAY. On top of that, he's a helluva good teacher. Very patient with fumble-fingers like myself. He doesn't chastize me for being lazy and not practicing like I should. And that's good. Because I'm not a professional musician, and I have a job, and so on... But I digress.

Right after guitar lessons, we all pack up and head over to St. Albans High School. Karate tournament day. Both the boy and I compete. We both did pretty well. My boy really kicked some butt. His age and experience class is a lot more competitive than mine. It's a bigger challenge for him to place well.

After the tournament, we head out to Scarlett Oaks for a jazz performance by Dominick Farinacci. This guy's a trumpet player, and after hearing that, I'd rank him as one of the best in the world. The guy's only twenty three years old, and he's freakin' amazing. I played a trumpet as a kid and through high school. All told, I played a trumpet for oh... seven years or so. Among my peers, I was pretty damned good too. I usually sat first or second chair in band, and being sorta familiar with how the instrument is played, I can recognize talent and skill when I hear it. Holy crap that guy was good. I mean, I can't say how good the guy was. It's just not going to translate in a text medium. Seriously, to register how good the guy was, take the top of any art or skill, and there's your analogy. The Tiger Woods of Trumpet. (that's actually a very good analogy because they were both very very good at a very very young age) The Michael Schumaker of Trumpet. The Valentino Rossi of Trumpet. The Michael Jordan of Trumpet. You get the point. The guy was good.

Not only was Dominick good, but the piano player and bassist in his band were damned good too. Now, the previous night's performance by Ms. Lisitsa had kind of tained my perception of "good" when it comes to the ivory keys, and no, this guy didn't hold a candle to her, but he was good. He did some crazy crazy stuff with scales and modes. Real zappa style space-stuff.

But the bassist, wow. That guy was a trip. He'd run through these scales, flip modes, do crazy timing stuff (within the time signature) and just flat go OFF. And what impressed me about his playing, was that he returned to what I refer to as "the melodic." Jazz players tend to drive me batshit. They go off in musical space so far, and so wide that all semblance of melody is left alone in the corner holding a sign that says "hey! remember me? I'm that thing called the song? Over here? Hello?" Well, the bassist would return to the melody. He'd go on some magical scalar/modal trip, and come back to the melody several times during his solos. It was cool. Hey jazz players, listen up. Us lay people need that. We're not all beret and turtleneck wearing musical intellectuals. We need you to come back to the melody every now and then just to remind us that we're not listening to random notes in a random key. K?

OLN thinks the whole country has ADD?

2006-01-28T22:43:00.000-05:00

Here's an email I sent to OLN regarding thier Dakar rally coverage.

To: feedback@olntv.com

Subject: Incredibly annoying dakar coverage.

I was forced to turn the channel, switching away from your dakar rally coverage. This is unforunate, as I was really quite interested. Unfortunately, your coverage, consisting mostly of spliced 1.25 second clips back to back, was maddening to "watch." Please not that I use the term "watch" loosely. You cannot watch subjects that are changing at that pace. There's no coherent subject to see.

Please have your producers take note that all of America does not suffer from attention deficit disorder, and as such, can remain focused on a subject for more than 1.25 seconds.

Charleston, West Virginia

The Judo Thing... Revisited

2006-01-28T19:45:00.000-05:00

The year is (roughly) 1985. The place is geography class. Coach Todd catches me leaving class and asks "hey, how much do you weigh?"

"Um... about a hundred pounds, why?"

"We need a wrestler at 105lbs, you ever do any wrestling?"

"No, I haven't."

"It's ok. Practice starts at 4 in the cafeteria. Be there."

"Uhhh, I'll have to ask my dad, but ok."

Flash to the first wrestling practice where coach Todd says "You guys who haven't wrestled before, you're going to be sore in muscles you didn't know you had. This is not a sport for wimps. Spraw drills. gogogogogogogo *SPRAWL* gogogogogog *SPRAWL*"

Well, coach Todd was right. I was sore in muscles I didn't know I had. Now, that was 20 years ago. I thought I was done with wrestling practice. Bzzzzt.

See, before last week, I didn't really know what Judo was. Yeah, I've been practicing Tae Kwon Do for quite a while now, but I had no clue about Judo. I mentioned in a previous post that at my dojo it's now ... er... well... required? ... It's at the least, highly encouraged within the TKD system to have Judo and Aikido skills. Well, now I know what Judo is at it's essence. It's "japanese wrestling." Or at least that's what it feels like. I thought I was done with that kind of soreness back in high school. Well, it's back.

I have honest to god mat burn on my ankle. Real mat burn. Just like wrestling practice mat burn. My ribs are sore and it hurts to laugh. I guess that happens when you're tossed on the ground (thank GOD I know how to fall, or I'd really be hurting) by a 220lb dude. And what's interesting, is that it's not getting tossed around by the big guys that hurts. It's getting thrown by the little guys that'll wake you up.

Some of the more senior guys in the class tell me it takes about six to eight weeks to get up to speed physically. I can believe it. It's so physically demanding that I was asking for an oxygen bottle at the end of class. Keep in mind that I can run 3 miles in about 26 minutes. I imagine part of why it's so physically demanding is that I'm doing it wrong. I'm probably staying too tense, too wound up when I need to just relax and use technique.

We'll see.

Yeager in Winter

2006-01-15T00:13:00.000-05:00

And a Moon Pic:

:

Boy am I gonna be sore tomorrow.

2006-01-11T21:29:00.000-05:00

So, I'd done about a year of Tae Kwon Do training in my teens. I then took, oh, 15 years off for the marines, getting a career started, and various other stuff. During that fifteen years I maybe trained a total of two months. But I digress.

At my dojo, proficiency in multiple arts is... well, not only highly encouraged, but apparently mandatory. There's now a sign up in the dojo basically saying "Tae Kwon Do students: You must have basic judo and aikido skills to test for advanced belts." I'm paraphrasing, but the point is, you have to know basic judo and aikido to attain the higher tae kwon do belts. I think these requirements are new. But again, maybe they've always been there, and I'm just noticing.

So, in accordance with this policy, I took my first formal judo class this evening. It has left me with an impression I feel I should share. Judo is hard. I mean, (so far) it's not particularly hard technique wise, but then again, I'm a total beginner and I'm just learning basics. But the class is really really physically demanding. It felt like wrestling practice. I haven't been to wrestling practice in something like fifteen years. After class, I felt like I was going to die. My god what a workout.

I'm probably going to be hating life tomorrow.

Santa can burn in hell.

2005-12-23T15:13:00.000-05:00

I was seven years old. I had spent over a month defending to many of my friends the existence of Santa Claus. I believed my parents. After all, it was my parents who told me not to lie. They taught me that lying was wrong. They taught me that integrity was a critical character trait.

One day, in late December, over at a friends house, my friends presented conclusive proof that Santa Claus was indeed our parents. They showed me the presents labled "from Santa" that they had found hidden in a closet.

I did not speak to my parents that night unless I was spoken to. I couldn't. My faith in the integrity of the very people whom preached honesty to me was shattered. It was the ultimate humiliation and betrayal in my eyes. I now had to face my peers in school, at church, everywhere to whom I had so staunchly defended the existence of this godlike magical figure. And now I knew the truth. I had taken the word of my parents as truth. And why shouldn't I? As a child, Santa Claus is nearly deified by the marketing machine and to some degree or other, our parents. They lied about Santa, and Santa is everywhere in our society, at least for a couple of months a year. Oh no, what else where they lying about? Did this Jesus guy exist? God? They're so similar...

It took years before I trusted my parents again on many issues. They had proven to me that they were capable of dishonesty surrounding what is certainly one of the more important things in a child's life.

Do any of you guys remember the moment when you found out? I mean, am I all alone in the sense of betrayal I felt? Do you lie to your kids? Grandkids? Part of the giant machine of deception that is the Christmas retail marketing machine?

zen and 62grain FMJ

2005-12-04T22:06:00.000-05:00

So I spent the day on the range today. Then I spent my evening cleaning weapons. But the day on the range was great. No one else was there. I had the whole range to myself. Some kind soul had placed a steel plate at the 300meter backstop. I must've put 100 rounds into that thing from the AR. I had the 308 with me as well, and fired a few into the plate with that. But the 308 is scoped, and sits on a bipod, and well... hitting anything larger than a can of skoal at 300 meters with the 308 is easy enough to be boring.

But it was a great day. Nice and solitary. Lots of copper and lead downrange. Good stuff.

Apparently, some cows at some point got loose from a neighboring farm or somewhere. Because there was cow poop in huge piles all over the range. I had about 300 rounds with me, and had put about 200 of 'em through paper, and I started to get a little bored. Then I thought, "hey, there're huge piles of cowpoo everywhere, what happens when you shoot one?"

I'll tell you what happens. It flies EVERYWHERE. Like, 50 feet in the air. I had to lay my pistol down on the bench after the first shot because I was laughing so hard. (yes, I'm easily amused). So I spent the last 100 rounds of 9mm locating and causing cowpoo explosions all over the range. I did avoid shooting ones that were close to target backstops and other target structures, though. I know I'd be ticked if I went to put up a target and had to hang it in cow poop. It really was amazing how high cow-poo flies when you shoot it.

Is this the origin of the phrase "shooting the sh**?" I mean, it really is a fun, pointless excersize. Really fun. Makes me want to go find a farm.

Proof that people on the internet should be taken with a grain of salt

2005-11-24T23:58:00.000-05:00

I swear I saw this on an IRC channel. It was so funny, I had to preserve it somewhere....

23:55 (Thor_) That's why military rifles are worn out by cleaning instead of shooting

Boredom is bad. Very bad.

2005-11-17T18:04:00.000-05:00

I ride motorcycles. A lot. The weather is not currently condusive to riding motorcycles. As such, I got bored. Boredom is bad. Here's proof:

http://insurgents.criticalstop.com

Humility...

2005-11-14T13:11:00.000-05:00

I recently had quite an excersize in humility. I attended a dedication ceremony for a "wall of valor" in Fayetteville WV. Fayette county WV was dedicating a wall in the public library to its veterans. My wife's family has a cumulative 66 years of military service in one small branch of the family. They had four folks getting thier names put on the wall.

One of them, is a Marine Corps veteran of 22 years. He served in Korea, and two tours in Vietnam. He had so many medals on his dress blues that he leaned to one side when he walked.

Now I'm a combat veteran. I have a combat action ribbon. I've gone overseas with a rifle in hand. But in this company, I really didn't want anyone to know that. My contribution, compared to the contributions of the people at this ceremony, was just, completely insignificant. There were guys walking around with ballcaps that said "BRONZE STAR." Guys wearing tiny Silver Star pins on lapels. I saw one very old man with a pin that said simply, "Anzio." I remember one guy wearing a vietnam hat with a pin "door gunner."

These are guys that were in the shit. They did thier duty. They did what they had to do. They did it for all of us.

One interesting thing that happened before the ceremonies was a conversation I and my son had with the old salty USMC veteran in my wife's family. We were talking, and my son (he's 8) piped up "my daddy was a Marine!" The old vet looked at me, then looked down at my boy and said "are you gonna be a Marine too?" My son looked at him, paused for a second, and said "ehhh, I don't know." The old Marine pointed at his pile of medals on his chest and said "Don't ya wanna get some medals like these?" My son, without missing a beat, pointed at the purple heart on the old First Sgt's chest and said "I don't want to get THAT one."

The salty old marine's eyes kind of glazed for a second. Then he replied "Yeah, I got that one at a place we called 'Heartbreak Ridge.'"

And when the veterans at the ceremony were asked to stand up so that they could be recognized, my wife wondered why I wanted to remain in my seat.

It was good to go to that ceremony, and see that people appreciate and recognize the contributions these guys made, at such a high price. It was good to see the community out in large numbers. Those guys are all heros. I think that many times their contributions are taken for granted. It's good to see that this is not the case here, and in other places around the country.

Fire in the Smithsonian

2005-09-29T00:17:00.000-04:00

About six years ago, I was living in northern Virginia, in the DC suburbs. My wife's family decided to come down and visit. As such, we decided to do the touristy thing and spend a day visiting the various museums and other touristy attractions.

DC has some of the most strict anti-gun laws in the country. As such, I was unwilling to carry a gun down there, and even less willing to carry one into the museums and national landmarks. That's a great way to wind up doing a whole lot of time. So instead, I carried some non-lethal defense with me. I packed a can of pepper spray in the right front pocket of my jeans with about five pounds of keys, nicotine, lighter and other junk. After a couple of hours, I totally forgot it was there.

So halfway through the day, my wife, the mother in law, father in law, several other inlaws and myself have been touring the Natural History Museum for a good two and a half hours. I was pretty damned tired of being on my feet and even more tired of walking. I spotted an unoccupied bench and proceeded to cop a seat. I sat there for a good fifteen or twenty minutes while my wife and her mom went through one of the exhibits. At some point, I shifted my position around for more comfort on the hard bench. Apparently, the keys in my pocket partially depressed the spray nozzle on the can of pepper spray.

So I'm sitting on the bench as my wife and her mom leave the exhibit and are walking in my direction. Then... I got the oddest sensation... in a very sensitive location. (The pepper spray was in my right front pocket, and apparently, the nozzle was pointed left. Work out the geometry.) The sensation started as a mild, and interesting tingling. It rapidly progressed from an interesting tingling to an outright burn. It then proceeded right past burn and on past inferno straight to nuclear fusion. Yes, it felt like my nuts were on fire.

Now, I don't know if you've ever had your nuts set alight. I also don't know if you've ever had them thoroughly soaked in pepper spray. YOU CANNOT HELP BUT REACT IN AN ENTHUSIASTIC MANNER IN THIS SITUATION. Right as my mother in law and wife exit the exhibit, I begin jumping up and down, screaming, and holding my crotch. I think I actually ran in a little circle a few times. Yes, "stop drop and roll" went through my head, but I couldn't see any smoke or flame so I decided in my pain-haze that it wasn't applicable.

Then, I realized what had happened, and sprinted right past my astonished wife and mother in law while emitting a sqeeeling scream. I probably sounded a lot like a fire engine, complete with doppler effect. AAWEEEEEEeeeee e e e e. I ran past them to a bathroom where I dropped my pants, and threw my smouldering uh... "equipment" into a sink and began rinsing vigorously. Thankfully, no security came by, but I do remember getting a very strange look from a couple of asian tourists.

Yeah, all of that was bad enough. But then I had to apologetically explain to my very confused (and probably quite concerned) wife and mother in law what had happened. Thier apprehensive and somewhat frightened expressions rapidly changed to unstoppable guffaws of hilarity while I just stood there and blushed.

So uh, if you're reading this and you're involved with the production of pepper spray... let's work on those safety mechanisms, mkay?

Out Smart-Assed by Springfield.

2005-09-21T16:03:00.000-04:00

Damnit.

I pride myself on my abilities as a smart-ass. I can be the world's biggest smart-ass. I am the KING of being a smart-assed shithead. Really. I' m very good at it.

So, as some of you may have read, I had a little issue with Springfield Armory. Read the "Springfield 1911s are Trash?" entry for the details.

I think I'll elaborate on things a little bit. I bought a new, expensive Springfield 1911 Service Loaded pistol. On my first trip to the range, the damned thing hit like a foot low at 50yds. I was not pleased. I called springfield and they said "yeah, we'll fix it. Send it to us." The problem was, they wanted me to ship it to them on my dime. Nuh uh. No way. Time to drag out my elite smart-ass skills. Here's the email I sent to them:

"You have a very vocal, and very unhappy customer. I just bought a brand new Service Custom Loaded 1911A1. It shoots very nice groups. Every shot in the group is 4 inches low at 10yds. At 50 yards, I'm holding so much kentucky elevation that my sight picture looks like I'm trying to
shoot down a satellite.

I paid roughly $650 for this thing, and what I have is a very expensive fishing sinker. After contacting springfield customer service using the number on your website, I hear that "yeah, springfield will fix it for free, but it'll take two to three weeks."

This is unacceptable. You've sold me $650.00 worth of crap, and it's clearly not a high priority for you guys. Is selling inaccurate crap your standard operating procedure? How the hell do you guys sell anything at all?

I'll be posting this experience (as it unfolds) on every internet firearms forum I can find, and making a point of taking my $650 fishing sinker to the range with me so I can tell everyone on the line that it's a hunk of crap. I'll put a blaze orange sign on the blue case that says
"HUNK OF CRAP" in bold black letters just above the springfield logo and put it up on the shooting bench display style until this is resolved to my satisfaction.

For $650.00 I expect fedex to show up begging me to take your crap back, you guys to make it right, and return the thing to me in a couple of days time. If I'd paid $100 more, I'd expect SPRINGFIELD to show up with a mobile machine shop in my driveway, ready to fix my problems."

Here's the response I got.

"Thank you for your support of Springfield Armory. Your Springfield has an excellent warranty and an even better customer service and repair department to back it up. Our normal lead time is 2-4 weeks concerning an accuracy issue. We will however try to expedite your pistol as quickly as possible. Please call anyone in our customer service department to be issued a return authorization number, or send me your name, address and phone number and I will send one to you via e-mail. Please place this number on the outside of your package and we will have either FedEx or UPS issue a call tag for your pistols return. This will insure you are not billed at all for shipping. I am sure if you are as satisfied with our customer service as you have been dissatisfied with your current problem the signs will be much larger and more positive on your pistol box."

Pay attention to the last sentance there. It's the important one. I sent a response to that, that said to the effect, "as for the tone of my sign, we'll see how this experience plays out."

Well, one day short of two weeks later, the pistol arrived (shipped to the wrong address) fixed. Not too bad. A couple of days later, I took it to the range and test drove it. All's well. All in all, I don't guess two weeks isn't so bad, but for the money I paid, I expect the thing to hit bullseyes right out of the box.

Three days later, the coup de grace arrives at my office. The receptionist informs me that I have a box at the front desk from "Springfield Armory." She then lugs this heavy box back to my desk.

Those smart-assed bastards sent me 80 full color high-gloss (I'm sure it was $200 worth of printing costs) brochures. Presumably to go with my sign. Damnit.

Anyone want a springfield catalog? They're really nice and shiny.

Doing my small part.

2005-09-08T23:30:00.000-04:00

Cell phones on the highway. Annoying. Deadly.

See, West Virginia requires driving skill. Everything is either a curve or a hill, or a curve on a hill. Then, we have some really spiffy civil engineers who do shit like put five on/offramps in a curve, on a bridge, right downtown. YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION TO NAVIGATE WEST VIRGINIA ROADS SAFELY. Period. Cell phones are a major major threat.

Well, I've started a new practice just to fuck with people using cellphones on the road. I've been riding my wife's bike to work lately. Her bike is much much louder than mine. It just absolutely screams, especially at high RPMs. So, riding to work the other day, I come up behind some guy on I-64 driving an SUV weaving all over the road yapping on his cell phone. He had his window down. So I pulled up beside him and lined my exhaust pipe up with his window. He rolled his window up. I downshifted. He sped up. I sped up. He slowed down. I slowed down. He finally exited the freeway looking completely retarded with his left arm cocked all up around his phone and his left ear trying to block the noise from my wife's bike. I hoped he'd plow into the barrier at the exit, but he managed to miss it somehow.

Screw him.
I bet he'd drive better with that cell phone up his ass anyway.

Armchair quarterbacking.

2005-09-06T09:52:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm hearing more and more people calling for the heads of various agencies because of gross mismangement of the NOLA disaster. The heads of FEMA and DHS for example. And of course, Bush himself goes without saying.

I think that's a misguided thought. I don't believe that FEMA or DHS will *ever* be capable of reacting appropriately to large-scale disasters or catastrophic events. THEY ARE GOVERNMENT. THEY ARE BEAUROCRATS. THEY ARE SLOW AND INEFFECTIVE. PERIOD.

So, don't call for the replacement of director this and head of that. Call for the dismantlement and abolition of FEMA and DHS. Use the US military in thier role when needed. The military is not a beaurocracy. (well, ok, parts of it are, but the parts that get stuff done are NOT)

Write your congressman today. Call for the abolition of FEMA and DHS. They do nothing for us, and cost us quite a lot.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking, sorta.

2005-09-05T23:35:00.000-04:00

So as soon as I saw the levys had broken and NOLA was being flooded, I knew exactly what needed done. Why it wasn't done is beyond me.

There was *ONE* appropriate response from the President.

It goes like this.

Call the pentagon, get a Marine Corps Lt. General.

"General, this large circle on the map is your responsibility. I want security, and I want humanitarian aid, I want rescue efforts. All federal resources are at your disposal for these missions."

Within 24 hours, a Marine Expeditionary Brigade would have been pouring into NOLA via mike boats, LCACS and CH53 helicopters. Looting would have been minimal (because I'm pretty sure marines would've shot looters on sight, and those would be thier orders), and proper management, and quick reactions would have been the norm, instead of the rare exception. No one, anywhere, reacts faster and with more effect than the United States Marines.

The wifi commando raid.

2005-08-27T00:13:00.000-04:00

I recently wrote an article in WV Inc magazine talking about insecurity in wireless networks. It recounted an excersize whereby I drove through our metro area and located a staggering percentage of wide-open wireless networks. I should extend a bit on the potential security ramifications of a situation like this.

Open WIFI networks are the only way to be truly anonymous on the internet.

Think about that for a second. Hackers commonly bunny-hop through a series of compromised (hacked) computers, often in multiple countries, to help hide thier tracks. You may recieve an internet attack that comes from some server in Romania. But that server may have been compromised by a server in China. And that server may have been compromised by a hacker sitting in New Jersey. So to make it very difficult to catch him (language barriers, national boundries, jurisdictional legal issues etc...) he connects to China, connects from China to Romania, and uses the Romanian server to attack you.

Yes, this method makes it very difficult, but not impossible to track him down. A good forensic investigation following the chain of compromised machines backwards would in theory lead you from your site, to Romania, China, and eventually to New Jersey if you're a good enough forensic investigator and you have some luck and good international people skills on your side.

Before we get to the "wifi commando raid" I'd like to talk a little bit about the law of averages. Every day, I see a dozen or so vulnerabilities in various pieces of hardware and software announced on various security lists and notification services. Seriously. Every day. The law of averages dictates that out there somewhere, there are a significant number of people who are discovering these vulnerabilities. It also states that some of them are not Good Guys. And likewise, some percentage of those, are Smart Bad Guys. A Smart Bad Guy will sit on a vulnerability he's discovered and not announce it to the community. He'll also wait for the right opportunity to capitalize on this vulnerability.

Imagine the following scenario. Some of the most effective and damaging systems compromises I'm aware of are of the "fire and forget" nature. A Smart Bad Guy discovers a vulnerability in some enormously popular piece of software and tells no one about it. He does his homework, he builds a nice, effective, automatic piece of software that mines some target for data. He then heads off war-driving and finds a couple of open wifi networks. Let's call them "Open WIFI A" and "Open WIFI B." Given that open wifi networks are generally not run by the network security astute, silently compromising some machine, and completely gaining control of someone's home wireless network and router wouldn't be all that hard. (It isn't hard. I promise). He then sets up a data recipient machine on "Open WIFI B." This machine will recieve his stolen data.

Now it's time for the commando raid. There are only three points where he's in any real risk of being caught. One we've already discussed. That's where he compromises "Open WIFI B." Now we get to the second (and least risky) point of exposure for the hacker. It's time to conduct the raid. He returns to "Open WIFI A" (or finds a completely new open wifi) and fires off his automagic exploit/attack. He or walked up to within range of "Open WIFI A," fired off his exploit (this would take all of about two minutes), packed up, and left. Now he waits on the exploit to do its thing.

If he's good, there's a pretty good chance that no one will notice the compromised data leaving the target's network headed for the data repository on "Open WIFI B." He waits his pre-determined period of time for the data to be gathered and transmitted to his data repository. Now comes the most risky part of his maneuver. He returns to "Open WIFI B," connects, retrieves the data, packs up and leaves.

I've talked about risk for our theoretical hacker. But in reality, there just isn't much. In most environments, someone would have to catch him on thier wireless network at any point in this, and be able to triangulate via radio frequency to pinpoint him. And there's no reason 99% of this couldn't be done on the move. In the back of a van. From a car. From a bus. There is no ISP installation address for his car. There's no cable company address on file for it. There's no telephone company address on file. Imagine doing this from under-funded and under-clued munincipalities who have set up open WIFI city wide.

This is a real threat. I'd love to hear discussion on how to counter it.

Skelator or Cupid?

2005-08-22T20:55:00.000-04:00

This is the story of how I met my wife. Based on that, you may think that this will be some really crappy sappy love story. Well, it's a love story (at least in the end), but it's anything but crappy and sappy. I can promise you, that if you ask one thousand people how they met thier spouse, you won't get ANYTHING like this. I've had some strange experiences in my life (for example) and this is definitely one of them.

I've mentioned in other posts that when I was younger, I was a drunk, stoned, thug. Some of this will be re-illustrated by this post. I feel the need to warn you, because this story's going to get a little out there.

Way back in the when, I had a pretty small group of totally toasty burnout friends. One of these was a guy named Gene. If you've ever seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Gene was the real-life version of Jeff Spicoli. Total burnout.

Now Gene and I were hanging out downtown with our usual mallrat/citypark crowds. I can't remember exactly how, but Gene and I wound up with about forty bucks in our pockets. This was roughly half the amount required to obtain a keg of cheap beer. Additionally, my parents were out of town that weekend, and my house was totally empty. Yep, this is the perfect combination of events for some really messed up late-teenage hijinx. The natural conclusion for hoodlum teenagers in this situation can only be one thing: "Duuuuuuude! Keg party!!!"

So Gene and I begin making grandiose plans for a keg party. We did however realize that we were a few elements short of putting it all together.

1. Someone twenty-one years old to buy the keg.
2. The remaining forty bucks for the keg.
3. Guests

Now, the guests part was pretty trivial. In the crowd we ran with, if you so much as breathed the word "keg," you'd have a couple of hundred stoners show up with red plastic cups. Finding someone twenty-one wasn't a huge issue either. We knew people who would buy booze for us in exchange for drinking a portion of it. The remaining forty bucks was the problem. So we began wandering the mall searching for anyone we knew who might have forty bucks available to them. Additionally, we told any attractive female we saw to meet us later, as, we're gonna have a keg party, and it's gonna be way cool.

Gene and I learn from an aquantance that Tommy's over at the park. Tommy usually had a few bucks in his pocket (though getting him to part with it was sometimes challenging) and we figured we could get him to go in half with us on our keg. As we're traversing the mall and passing a set of escalators, we hear from somewhere above, "Yo! Dudes!! Hey! You two! This chick digs you!"

I freeze in my tracks. "Huh? Chick? Digs me? Where?" I half expected one of my buddies to be pointing at some hideously ugly hosebeast and be playing a cruel joke on both me and her. But instead, I look up, and up there on the second floor of the mall, this guy I "sorta" know is holding this incredibly hot chick upside down by her ankles over the railing. "Dude! Seriously, she digs you!"

Now she's screaming like crazy (this is understandable) until he hauls her back up over the railing. I see her beating his back mercilessly while he's laughing and running away. Gene turns to me and says "Dude... Keg party... Tommy's probably got cash duuuude... KEGGGGGGGGG party! C'mon, let's go."

"Uh, dude, there's like four chicks up there, and at least three of 'em are hot. We gotta check this out."

"KEGGGGGGGGGGG party!"

"Keg party can wait, hell, let's go invite 'em."

So I go up the escalator to introduce Gene and myself to these chicks. I pick out the one I like (petit dark haired beauty) and gene picks out the one he likes (pretty hot taller chick with big hair). We invite them to our "keg party" (which, you'll remember, hasn't completely come together yet) and get thier phone numbers. Sweet!

Well, the day runs long, and it turns out Tommy would've loved to have helped us with our keg party, but he was broke. Everyone was broke. We couldn't find forty bucks anywhere. No keg party. As gene so eloquently put it, "bummmmmmmmer duuuuuude!" So we formulate a new plan. We'll call those chicks we met on the second floor of the mall. We'll see if they wanna hang out with us, we'll just meet up somewhere and get plastered.

So we jump on the pay phones (days before cell phones) and call 'em up. To our surpise, they're fine with it. In fact, they don't care where we go. So we just decide to go hang out on the riverbank and get drunk.

Then we hit a little snag. Gene and I had one mode of transportation between us. It was my 1982 CB900 Honda motorcycle. I somehow have to get four people, plus at least a case of beer to some (largely law-enforcement free) location on the river that's not too far from civilization (I was aware that chicks might get a little freaked out when taken to some place that very well may be the set of deliverance) where we can all get smashed on cheap beer and act like idiots. I actually solicited the girl I wanted to hook up with for location suggestions, which to my suprise, she had. Plenty of 'em. One of them was right beside this fairly well lit marina. I figured it was the perfect place. No security, no law enforcement, decently lit, close to convenience stores and munchies. It was a good place to get drunk.

We had the who, we had the where, we worked out the how. Gene and I would ride to the marina and pick up a case of beer on the way (courtesy of a bum that'd buy for underaged kids in exchange for a pint of rot-gut) and I'd drop him off with the beer. I'd then go get my chick, return her to the marina. Then I'd go get Gene's chick, and return to the marina. We'd all get drunk. After that, it'd all be improv.

There's a problem. I don't know how to get to a place called Tornado. Yes, that's the name of the town. Tornado, West Virginia. And yes, it is definitely in BFE. Fortunately, Gene knew where it was and had a general idea of how to get there. So we modify the plan a bit. We'll stash the beer at the marina. Gene will ride pillion to Tornado. I'll pick up the chick, tote her down the the marina, then go back for Gene. After that, I'll go get Gene's chick.

So we ride out to Tornado, and I ride past my chick's house (being warned not to let her dad see the motorcycle, he hates 'em) and we pull off the road and stop. While we're standing there smoking cigarettes, a 1970-something Vega made entirely of bondo rolls up. Inside, there are two people. Ever see the He-Man cartoon? Remember skelator? He's driving. Remember the captain caveman cartoon? That's the passenger. Captain caveman says "Hey, thassa purty nice bike ya got thar. Whar y'all from?"

We answer, explaining that we're from Charleston, and here to meet this chick et cetera. He says "Y'all want a beer?"

I remember thinking "Damn, this chick lives in a cool neighborhood" as the guy passes a couple of budweisers out the window to us.

Then, out of nowhere, Captain Caveman pulls a sawed off, 12 guage shotgun from between the seats and points it at my chest. "Git n thu car."

"Dude, fuuuuuuck you." Gene and I sprint to the motorcycle, jump on, get it fired up and headed out of Torndado without crashing or dropping it somehow. I was scared shitless. Unfortunately, the roads were wet from a recent rain. Otherwise, I would've completely ROASTED that Bondo Vega getting out of there. That bike was pretty damned fast and I was pretty damned scared. But big heavy cruiser bikes don't handle so well on wet roads. I would've crashed for sure.

So I'm getting the hell out of dodge, and sure enough, the Bondo Vega is following us. I'm completely freaking out. Gene is completely freaking out. I could hear "jesus! mmmmmmfmfmfm fuck! mfmamadfa goddamn gun! mfmfmfm" over the wind noise and Gene's helmet. Maybe it was Gene. Maybe it was me. One of us was babbling incoherently about guns and crazy fucking rednecks.

Vroom. The Bondo Vega passes us. This is a relief. It's a relief because they didn't shoot at us as they passed, and because now that they were in front of us, I could see what they were doing. After about a mile, I hear BOOM and see sparks fly out from under the car. I scream "DUDE! THEY'RE FUCKING SHOOTING AT US. THEY'RE GOING TO FUCKING KILL US!"

Gene screams back "NO MAN, THAT'S JUST FIREWORKS, THEY'RE TRYING TO SCARE US!"

I reply "THAT WAS NOT A GODDAMNED BOTTLE ROCKET THEY POINTED AT MY CHEST! WE'RE GOING TO DIE."

Then, inexplicably, the Bondo Vega pulls off at this country store, and we just ride right on by. And we kept riding. Right back to town. I get to a pay phone and call my chick. I get her on the phone. "Um, listen, you wanna party with us, you're going to have to get your own fucking ride. I am never going back out there again. Ever. Your neighbors are fucking crazy, they tried to kill me and Gene."

She was incredulous, and clearly didn't believe our story, but agreed to find her own ride. So we had a pretty interesting evening, got drunk, got busted by the cops. Got drunk after that (she had this brilliant idea to only have HALF the beer with us, so when the cops made us pour it out, we still had another 12 pack stashed in the bushes, which we opened right after the cop left) and generally had a fun, drunk evening.

We wound up hitting it off really well. Dating even. For at least a month, I flat refused to go to her house. She had to meet me somewhere. I was never going to set foot in Tornado again. That didn't last. A couple of months later, I was practically living with her. I stayed there most nights. I was there most of the time, had an awful lot of my clothes there.

One day, she says "Let's walk down to the store." She wanted some soda and smokes. The store's about a mile from her house down country roads, and the weather was nice, so I agreed. On the way back, about halfway, the Bondo Vega rolls up. Skelator's alone in it. It slows down. Skelator yells out the window, "Hey Beth!"

I'm shitting myself again. I'm elbowing her and muttering out the side of my mouth, "That's him! That's one of the crazy fuckers that tried to kill me and Gene!" She just kind of looks at me like I'm crazy.

She responds "Hey Vic! How's it going!" and the proceed to make small-talk while I'm turning alternate shades of green and white and trying not to piss my pants.

After a few seconds of this, Vic says, "Y'all need a ride?"

Beth responds "Sure Vic! Thanks" and gets into the Bondo Vega.

While every fiber of my being was screaming "noooooo! You'll Die! It's a conspiracy! Beth's in on it! This bumfuck town wants you dead!" I climb into the Bondo Vega. I have to sit in the back. Sitting in the back, I have to straddle a five gallon vat of peanut butter. Skelator/Vic proceeds to explain that he's been living off of the peanut butter for about a month, and it's suprising how filling it is.

As we're driving down the road, Vic tries to run over a few neighborhood dogs while explaining some things to me. "Man... that night a while back... Me'n Melvin was all messed up on coke and acid. And someone'd just stole all our weed. We seen that shiny bike and figured it musta been you. But we figured out who dunnit. No hard feelings, man."

I just responded "uh, yeah, ok," being somewhat suprised to be alive. Vic drops us off without incident, waves goodbye, yells "Fuckin' scrounges!" and squeals off in the Bondo Vega chasing another neighborhood dog down the road. I guess "scrounge" is Skelator's word for "dog."

Months and months go by. It's now November. It's hunting season. I'm coming out of the woods at sundown about a mile from Beth's house after a fruitless day of deer hunting. It's damned cold. As I come out of the woods, what do I see? The Bondo Vega. The windows are all fogged and frosted up. I quietly slip around behind it and see the driver's side window down about three inches. Inside, Skelator is asleep.

Now, I'm no pussy. And pulling a 12 guage on two guys like that's kind of an aggressive move. It's not the kind of thing one forgets about even if you're stoned and drunk quite a lot. So I crept up to Skelator's window and slid the barrel of my .270 winchester deer rifle in through the window, and laid that cold, hard steel right on Skelator's head right behind his left ear, and thumbed the safety off. *click*

Skelator wakes up pretty quick and turns around and looks at me. When he sees me, a rifle bore that must've looked like a 55 gallon drum, and a large scope, his eyes get the size of dinner plates. I said "No hard feelings, man," and quietly backed into the woods.

I've seen ole Vic a few times since then. I never go unarmed in Tornado now. I haven't since that November day. You can bet your ass, If I'm in Tornado, WV for any reason, I have enough firepower concealed somewhere on my person that Dick Cheney is pressuring CIA analysts to find it. Every time I've seen Vic, there's been an exchange of nods. You know the nod. That "yeah, I see you. Not starting any shit. Just recognizing that you're there and we're still at peace," nod.

Beth and I are now married. We've had some screwball experiences that rival this one. But I'll leave those for other blog entries.

Springfield Armory 1911s are TRASH?

2005-08-22T10:24:00.000-04:00

ARGH!

I just bought a brand new "Service Custom Loaded" 1911A1 .45 from springfield armory. Right out of the box, it shoots 3" low. That's 6" low at 25 yards, and over a foot low at 50 yards.

I call springfield. Yep, they'll fix it for free. But I have to allow 2-3 weeks turnaround time. I read that to *really* mean 5-6 weeks turnaround time. So unless I want to be separated from my firearm for a month or so, I'm stuck with a $650 fishing sinker. So here I am, trying to decide to send it back to springfield, find a local gunsmith and pay throught the nose, or tie it to the end of some 50lb test with a big pile of chicken liver and throw it out in the Kanawha River.

This is a crock of shit. Every Sig Sauer I've ever shot has printed a cloverleaf on the bullseye from 25 yards right out of the box.

Net result? I wouldn't buy a Red Rider Carbine BB Gun from Springfield Armory.

** Update. I sent a screaming gripe-mail to springfield. Now they're at least going to pay my shipping both ways. However, now it's 2-4 weeks. *grumble*

** Update. Springfield is paying my shipping. It's 8/26 now, and they picked it up today. I'll update when it comes back, and how it shoots when it gets here.

** Update. It's 9/6, and the springfield is back. No idea how it shoots. I'm out of town and won't be able to shoot it until Sunday. I'll check it out and post again. This is 13 days from when springfield picked it up. Not too bad. Better than the time they promised they'd have it.

Ok damnit, It's time. Red.

2005-07-10T01:13:00.000-04:00

It's time. I've threatened to post something of value here for some time now. So I think I'll tell the story of "Red." This is by far, one of the most bizarre things that's ever happened to me.

I should preface this by saying that during most of my teen years, I was a hellion. I was a thug. I was a druggie. I was The Guy Every Girl's Parents Warned Them About. These days, I'm lucky to have a beer once in three months. I guess I just burned myself out early. I got to a point where pot and alcohol just weren't doing it for me anymore, and I had to choose between cleaning up, or stepping up to something really fun like cocaine or heroin. Instead, I chose the Marines, but that's a different saga.

"Back in the day," every day started for me pretty much the same way. I'd wake up, call my buddy Shawn, we'd find some way to scam up a few bucks (usually 10 bucks was enough to have a Good Day), head downtown, score some weed and a few 40oz bottles of schlitz malt liquor, get stoned as fish and a nice alchohol buzz going, and then we'd start looking for a party to crash. Well, one summer morning, I called Shawn. "Hey man, mom gave me five bucks to eat today."

"Dude, I'm broke, but uh, you need to come over anyway... I think we're gonna go to Ohio."
"Ohio? Someone's got weed in ohio?"
"Well, I'm not sure. But Henry's going to Ohio, and Henry's always holdin'."
"Be there in an hour."

Now, I don't know Henry. I did later find out, that at the time of this conversation, Henry was awaiting trial. Get this: Awaiting trail for firing a fully automatic rifle at a DEA helicopter that was flying a little to close to his pot field. Henry was going away for a very, very long time.

Well, anyway, I head over to Shawn's, and Shawn and I head over to this guy Henry's girlfriend's place where we get stoned as fish waiting on him to show up. He shows up, and after introductions, a few hits off a bong, and a few beers we head off to someplace in southern Ohio in Henry's two-seat Ford Ranger. I believe we wound up some place in Scioto county.

Henry, while seeming to enjoy our company just fine, wanted some female companionship. I was a little concerned about the logistics of having the three of us, plus some chick in this two-seater Ford Ranger. A Bentley it was not. Henry was unconcerned and noted that we'd "make do." So we head over to Rio Grande college (I believe it's somewhere in Ohio....) where Henry parks the Ranger in one of the dorm lots and disappears inside assuring us that he'll be right back. Three hours later, no Henry. So we get annoyed and decide to go try and find him. We go into one of the dorm buildings, and start walking floors. On the second floor, we found a little more of Henry than we'd been expecting.

Henry... was standing outside a dorm room completely nekkid, with a couch pillow over his "equipment" pleading to someone on the other side of the door to "c'mon, at least gimme my damned clothes back!"

Have you ever laughed at full throttle for twenty minutes straight? It's really hard. It eventually hurts a lot. But we couldn't help it. Shawn and I were rolling on the floor laughing. Henry must've threatened our lives a dozen times trying to get us to shut up, but that just made us laugh harder. Being threatened by a skinny naked guy armed with only a couch pillow just doesn't inspire a lot of fear.

We finally, yes, get this, walked back to the truck. Henry's clothing situation was unchanged. In all honesty, Henry sorta ran to the truck while Shawn and I tried to walk through fits of hysterical laughter. I think Henry's plan was to sprint to the truck, and jump inside. But he'd lacked a little foresight, and forgot to ask Shawn for the keys. So he had to cower beside his truck with his pillow for a few minutes while Shawn and I caught up.

Then we hit a little logistical snag. Neither Shawn nor I were willing to sit in the truck beside a naked guy with a pillow. Shawn and I wound up in a ten minute argument about which situation was "more gay," sitting next to a naked guy with a pillow, or one of us sitting on the other's lap.

We finally wound up flipping a coin and I had to sit next to the naked Henry on the ride to KMart to get henry some clothes. It was fortunate that he'd left his wallet in the truck, otherwise it likely would've been turned into beer money by whatever bimbo Henry was visiting. Neither of us would wait in the truck with Henry, so we left his naked ass sitting in the truck alone while we went in and picked up the most outrageous outfit we could find. We picked out converse shoes (chucks), black dress pants, and a bright orange hawaiian patterned shirt. He was pretty pissed when he saw what we'd bought him, but he had to wear it. What choice did he have?

So, Henry's problem with being solely in the company of males was still unsolved. But Henry knew some other girl in the area, used a pay phone, gave her a ring, and we picked her up about twenty minutes later. Boy was this one ditzy chick, but we'll get to that later.

So allow me to describe the seating arrangement in the Ranger, as this will come back into play shortly. Henry drove. I rode in the middle. Shawn sat on the right, with the bubbleheaded ditz on his lap. It wasn't comfortable, but Henry had a pretty fat sack of weed which kept us otherwise occupied.

So Henry tells us our destination. We're going to see "Red." This is the part where things get a little odd. We drove out some BFE country Ohio road for what seemed like a month or two. Henry slows the truck down, and turns up what I thought was a gulley, but turned out to be "Red's" driveway. Henry had to shift into four wheel drive to make it up the gully/driveway. I wasn't sure we were going to make it even with the hubs locked in.

By this time it's getting dark. I'm having trouble picking out the terrain. What I see at the top of the gully is a trailer, a barn, and a van. We get out of the Ranger and walk up to the trailer. I hear: "Who's out there.?"

"It's Henry, I brought some friends."

"C'mon in."

I swear, before my ass has even landed in the kitchen chair in this trailer, a six foot five guy with red hair and a red beard, both down to his belt, shoves a joint the size of a watermelon in my face and says "hit this." I'm guessing that was his narc detection method, assuming that a narc wouldn't smoke it. But I take a few hits off of the massive doob, and boyngngngn, I'm *really* stoned. This guy had good shit.

Red, Henry, and the ditzy bubblehead are engaged in conversation about god knows what for some period of time while Shawn and I sit mostly dazed gazing around at the place. Something, Was Not Right. I can't put my finger on it. I'm really stoned, and that could be it, but no... something's not right. After a few minutes, I realize that all of the furniture in the trailer is on one side. "Hmm." I thought. I continue to look around for some clue as to what's off about this situation while the conversation buzzes around me. While gazing around, I notice a photograph of Red on the wall. In this photo, Red is wearing a KKK uniform, and holding an AK-47.

Uh, yeah, the alarm claxons are going full tilt at this point. What the hell has Shawn gotten me into? Right after I notice that picture, it dawns on me exactly what was wrong. The whole trailer was sitting on about a fifteen degree slant. The furniture being all on one side was not fung shui. It was the work of gravity. Right after I discover this, Red, Charlie, and the ditzy bubblehead announce "we got some bizness to take care of."

Red says "Sally! Hey Sally! We got comp'ny. Git out here." He then turns to us and says "y'all c'n stay here and hang out with my wife. If'n yer hungry, she c'n cook ya up sumthin. She's a helluva good cook." At this point, Sally emerges from the other end of the trailer. I tried to hide my astonishment. I looked over at Shawn to try and send a "Dude, what the fuck!?" expression, but his eyes were the size of dinner plates. He was clearly as shocked as I. You see, Sally was black. I couldn't help myself, my eyes slowly made thier way back up to the picture of Red in the KKK uniform, then back to Sally, who smiled at us, politely said "Hi," and proceded to offer us dinner. We weren't hungry. Apparently ones appetite falls off slightly when you've stepped into the damned twilight zone. I barely noticed Red, Henry, and the bubblehead leave through the front door.

There wasn't much conversation. What the hell was I going to say? Would it have been rude to ask a black woman who was being very nice to us, "um, you realize you're married to a racist hatemonger? Do you understand the purpose of that AK47 he's holding? Hello?" So instead of saying all that, I just kept silent. Shawn did too, though I have no idea if that question, or any questions at all were running through his head. There probably wasn't much running through his head at all because Red had left us a sizeable sack of very good weed, and Shawn was smoking it like a locomotive.

So after some period of time that may have been five minutes, may have been fifty years, Red, Henry, and the bubbleheaded ditz reappear. Henry announces that "it's time to go." So we say our goodbyes to Red and his very polite, but very puzzling wife, and head out to the Ranger.

Now the bubblehead is gonna be a pain in the ass. She's totally freaking out. The ride up the gully/driveway scared her so badly she absolutely REFUSES to ride back down it in the Ranger. She's trying to talk me into walking down the driveway with her so she can climb in the truck at the main road, thereby avoiding the amusment park ride that was Red's driveway. I refuse, calling her a wimp. And besides, I needed to roll a joint. Shawn finally shows a little chivalry and agrees to walk with her down the driveway.

Henry and I pile into the ranger, and as he's getting it started, I'm boating a paper preparing to roll a joint the size of a cuban cigar. We start rolling down the driveway, and the cab is bouncing all over the place. I'm trying not to spill the weed everywhere, and I look up and see Shawn and the Bubblehead in our headlights walking down the driveway. Henry says "dude, let's fuck with 'em!" and points the Ranger right at them and guns the gas. So we're chasing them down this gully in a 4000lb truck, while I'm alternately laughing, joint rolling, and looking up at the panicked bubblehead. She's running as fast as she can and dragging Shawn behind her like a ragdoll. It's hard to watch the fun and not spill the weed.

One of these times, I look up, and Shawn is gone. "Dude, did you run over Shawn? Holy shit!"

"No man! I didn't run over him, he just fucking dissapeared!"

"Dissapeared under the wheels? What the fuck?"

"No man, I'm tellin' ya, he just fucking disappeared!"

I realize that the bubblhead is now stationary (as is the Ranger) and she's just staring at nothing on the ground. So we get out, and walk over. Turns out, she was staring at "nothing." The "nothing" in the headlight shadows was an open manhole that was about six feet from the road. She had run, dragging Shawn behind her, right over the hole. We hear "ohhhhh fuck man... fuuuuuuck.... ohhhhhhh.... " moaning out of the hole in the ground. It's pitch black down there, so we have no idea where it's coming from. We know what's making the noise (that'd be Shawn) but we don't know where he is.

After a few minutes, our eyes adjusted, and we managed to get Shawn actually talking to us instead of moaning about dead relatives and stuff. We convince him to stand up (the hole was about six feet deep, and all concrete inside) and we haul him up out of the hole. Now Shawn's bell's been rung pretty badly. We haul him out, set him on the ground, and lean him up against one of the Ranger's tires. His primitive mind must've decided that because he'd been hit in the head, he must be in a fight. He flat cold-cocked Henry. Knocked Henry right on his ass. It was a truly spectacular right hook Shawn threw. This resulted in me spending a good ten minutes protecting the already injured Shawn from a now highly pissed off Henry, while the bubbleheaded ditz babbled incoherently in the wings. God I wanted to choke her.

I get the situation settled down, the ditz to shut up, and Henry to calm down and agree not to kick Shawn's ass (it wouldn't be fair, Shawn's arm was swelling up like a grapefruit and turning strange colors). Eventually I herd everyone back into the Ranger and we decide we need to get Shawn to a hospital. Henry refuses to go to any hospital before we stop off at his house, so we'll take him to CAMC back in Charleston. It's only a couple of hours away. Henry tells Shawn we have plenty of "medicine" and waves a lit joint in his face.

Shawn smoked a lot of "medicine" on the way back. It seemed to help, based on the fact that the moaning would subside for twenty minutes every time we shoved a doob in his face.

Somewhere in Ohio, but very close to the West Virginia line, we start seeing blue-lights behind us. Oh yeah, panic central. I'm shitting bricks. We have all this weed with us, Shawn's all fucked up in more ways than one, none of us are wearing seatbelts, there are four of us in a Ford Ranger, and there's an Ohio Highway Patrolman who's about to have god knows what kind of conversation with us about the whole situation.

Henry starts yelling "everyone be cool, just fucking be cool" and pulls over. Oh, I was cool alright. I was in cold sweats I was so cool. The trooper approaches the window and Henry rolls it down.

The trooper says "License and registration please."

Henry replies "lemme get it out of the glove box, but can you make this quick? We think our friend has a broken arm, and we're trying to get him back to Charleston so we can get him to a hospital."

The trooper shines his light on Shawn's multicolored volcanic arm and says "Whoa! You know, there's a hospital just up this road, you want me to call an ambulance?"

Henry says "No, he lives with his grandmother, and she can't get around very well, if they keep him in the hospital, it needs to be in Charleston."

The trooper says "Ok, one minute." and goes back to his car. A minute later he comes back and says "You realize this drivers license is revoked?"

I literally heard my spinchter slam shut. "Oh god, we're going to jail."

Henry replies "Yessir, but this is my truck, and I really wanted to get Shawn to a hospital, it's kind of an emergency."

To my utter amazement, the trooper says "Anyone here have a valid driver's license?"

I wait a second to see if anyone else is going to pipe up (it's pretty much between me and the bubblehead, because Shawn's in no condition to drive) before saying "Yeah, I do," and handing over my license.

The trooper takes that back to his car for a while and then returns. "Ok, you're driving. Drive safe, don't kill him trying to get him to a hospital." He then hands me my license back, goes to his car, flips a u-turn in the road and drives away. A few seconds later, after some nervous laughter and Shawn asking for more "medicine" we have a chinese firedrill which places me in the driver's seat. As I was walking around the back of the truck, I realize that it's full of black plastic bags. Those weren't there when we left. I poke my hand through one of the bags and pull out a huge bud. Now I REALLY panic. The entire bed of the truck was full of pot. Henry was muling, or just bought a HUGE shitload of weed. I began screaming at Henry for almost landing me ten years in jail. Henry basically replies with "Shut up and drive."

I did. But only to the state line. For some reason, I didn't think I'd be in as much trouble if I wasn't actually DRIVING a truckload of pot. Because, just being there isn't as bad as actually driving, right?

Well, the night ended at the ER waiting on Shawn to come out in a cast. I managed not to go to jail. I never hung out with Henry again. I did hear that he committed arson while waiting on his DEA/helicopter/machine-gun case, and wound up in jail a little early. I never saw him again. Shawn and I started the follwing day with a phone call: "hey man, mom gave me five bucks to eat... got any beer money?"

Been quiet on the western front....

2005-07-10T01:09:00.000-04:00

So yeah, it's been pretty quiet in the systems security world lately. Typical run-of-the-mill virus infections etc... About the only thing interesting on the perimeters are the secure shell scans. Our intrusion detection systems are picking up about 20,000 of these a day various networks. I should probably set up a honeypot somewhere and let one of these systems get hacked to analyze what the kiddiots are doing when they actually manage to compromise a machine with these scans.

Verizon doesn't care about security?

2005-07-03T15:50:00.000-04:00

So, most internet providers have an email address where "abuse" complaints are sent. This is the place where systems administrators can send an email saying "this IP address in your network has a virus" or "this IP address in your network is scanning our systems for vulnerabilities."

Verizon (being an ungodly huge provider) is no different. They also have an address. It's abuse@verizon.net. However, when emailing them about several hundred worm infected systems scanning our networks, my email bounced back to me saying "you're not whitelisted... go to http://blahblahblahblah and jump through these hoops while dancing an irish jig to send us email."

So I jumped through thier hoops. Sending reports like this is part of my job. I mean, chances are they'll ignore them, but I have to at least have put forth the effort to report problems to them. After jumping through thier multi-day hoop hopping process, I resend the abuse reports. Boing. They bounce right back to me.

Apparently, Verizon is taking the "head in the sand" approach to security problems in thier networks. I can just picture a dilbert-esque pointy-haired-boss somewhere who said "We're getting how many thousand emails per week about worms and stuff? What if we made it really hard for people to tell us about problems... then we'd have less overhead, right?" This would be followed by the PHB leaving the meeting thinking "I fixed the internet."

Bravo Verizon. We don't mind your virus infected, worm-fodder customer base constantly filling our logs with thier trash.

I think I'll print out the 300,000 IDS alerts from thier networks in 28 point font and ship them to verizon headquarters in document storage boxes.

For the more geekified among you....

2005-07-03T15:45:00.000-04:00

If you're ever looking for me, and you have enough geek in you to 1. Know what IRC is, and 2. Manage to get logged into an undernet IRC server, you can usually find me in #motorcycles or #linux.

ARGH! PATHETIC!

2005-07-01T15:31:00.000-04:00

THIS IS PATHETIC

I mean, what more can I say.

Great Outdoors Marine - Lavalette, WV (II)

2005-06-10T10:08:00.000-04:00

Well, discerning readers, Great Outdoors Marine, and particularly thier service manager Scott, replaced my boat.

Good show. It's nice to find dealers that actually take care of thier customers.

Great Outdoors Marine - Lavalette, WV

2005-06-08T15:28:00.000-04:00

So I bought a boat. A tiny boat. A pathetically small, insignificant boat.

I bought it at Great Outdoors Marine in Lavalette, WV. I got a 9.9HP mercury motor, a small dinky (but perfectly functional trailer) and a 14' x 36" fisher john boat.

Well, about a week after I buy it, the weld that holds the transom in place, just below the drain-plug cracks. Now my boat leaks.

I call up the folks in Lavalette. "Guys, boat's broken." To thier credit, they had me bring it in, and within a week or so, rewelded the boat.

The weld held for about 4 boating trips, and then broke again.

They agreed to re-weld it.

I took it in. This time, the boat was there for a couple of weeks (I think) and in prime fishing season.

This time, the weld held for an entire one-day fishing trip. I'm neither a welder or a structural engineer, but my hypothesis is that they got the aluminum too hot during the factory welding process, and caused the sheet-aluminum being welded to become too brittle and weak. I hear welding aluminum is pretty difficult, and issues like this can pop up.

This time I called Lavalette Marine and stated that I want my money back for the boat. Not the whole combination of boat, motor, and trailer, but just the boat. They won't do it. They want me to jump through hoops.

I had to threaten legal action. So as it stands right now, I'm waiting for a phone call from someone who can make the decision to give me my money back or replace the boat with a new one.

I think I just want my money back.

I'll update.

Well, I did have a thought.

2005-06-08T14:16:00.000-04:00

Ok, I had a thought for some non-useless material that no one will ever read to post on here. I've had some pretty funny shit happen to, or around me over the years. A few of these stories are pretty good, and probably worth publishing here.

So uh, if I get bored sometime soon, I'll post 'em.

Better put something here.

2005-06-05T20:45:00.000-04:00

So I'm putting an absolutely useless post here purely to consume bandwidth and a few kb of server disk space. As a bonus, it might help confuse and befuddle folks following the digi-trail from my posts on other blogs.

Chance that I'll actually post anything of value here over time: .002%