Black Friday Workday-2

We didn't go to the mall for discounted big screen HDTV's, we went to the Range to finish building our firing line cover. The turnout was pretty good, at least twelve guys. I brought my hammer, nail diaper, and ladder - but it's a kinda short and useless ladder. A shortbed pickup doesn't allow for the kind of loading a real carpenter requires. Good thing I'm not a real carpenter.
Anyhow the ridge-line was finished and the rest of the stringers, and some kind of electrical project was undertaken by our former Lineman. I think it maybe has to do with speakers for an announcing system - or maybe it's just getting power down from the old trap field so we can run a computer for scoring Matches.

The real carpenters started laying down plywood and making cuts - either some of the plywood wasn't square or our building wasn't. There was one pneumatic nailer and the rest of us hammer-heads just banging away making noise.


It feels good to have all the plywood overhead, next comes tar-paper and shingles - I hope it doesn't fall down in a big wind. :-)


Now that that's done and I'm still intact and not in too much pain, I decided to take up my Redneck Friend's offer to go dirt-riding at Hollister tomorrow. It's been too damn long since I went riding.
Amazingly I managed to kick it over after about the third kick and once I remembered to engage the choke-button. Blue clouds of beautiful hydrocarbons dotted the driveway and the air rang with the bring-ring-ding of the classic, clattery two-stroke exhaust rattle. God I love that sound! It signifies flashing rushes of fast-forward speed and sheer terror when the beast comes on the pipe.
I had to change the air-filter since it was a filthy mess - and after I removed the seat to get at it, a piece of the foam tore off in my hand! Hmmm...kinda crusty in there! Then I went to oil a fresh one that I had washed some time in the last century and it too began to disintegrate when I squeezed oil into the foam! Aaack! So I grabbed a Yellow-Brand one (Uni) instead of the Orange-brand ones (Twin-Air), and that one didn't go to Hell immediately - yay!
Some fresh pre-mix blended (40:1 with Yamalube) down at the local pump and the mighty KTM 300 will bellow through the woods again, tearing at the earth and smiting Hippies!

Early Christmas

The thirty-seven-odd days of Christmas have begun already, and some glad years it's Ho-ho Sainty Nicollo coming down from the frosty Alpine fields with a box of coconut-crisp candy and CD's of Enya, other times it's Jumpin' Krispy Kringleski crossing the icy Fjord with a flagon of Lutefisk and carols of ABBA dancing across the tundra - and other times it's that bastard neer-do-well sidekick, coal-black and beetle-browed Rumplepursesnatch, with a stale bottle of Schlitz and a wet stogie sneaking around in the dark putting nails in tires. I "get" the coal bit.
Actually this issue had been noticed and repaired once already by the Ford dealer before my quick jaunt up to Reno for the Gunbloggers Rendezvous. It had held as long as I guess it could, and brought us home safely in the evening before expiring. Walking out on the cold Sunday morning we found my poor truck on bended knee, like a small circus pachyderm since it's that size and color - and the weight of it was upon the rim and crushing the bead. Toast was the tire, and the rest were close as I examined the wear-lines. Great bowling-balls of Elephant Crap!!

The downstairs roommate-girl's Civic was parked close-by and didn't leave much room to maneuver. My guess, she was still away at her boyfriend's playing find the salami. I opened the clamshell passenger-side doors (that also prevented much maneuvering), to retrieve the jack and cranking tools underneath the back seat. With a twist and a drop I slid the jack forward up under the frame rail (not like my buddy Christian who stuck it against his body panel and jacked his door up to the crumple-zone! Ha! Me smart!) and cranked it to take-up the weight. Futile effort I suppose as it had lain there like that overnight. And somewhere along the way in that awkward-dorky, reaching position I charley-horsed my back shoulder-blade muscle. Or sub-fluxated it - or whatever the Chiropractor calls it. Ow! Double f*ck!!

Nothing much was gonna happen so we went out to lunch, and on the return I picked up a couple rubber chocks at NAPA to jam behind the rear wheels hoping to secure it. We went over the Christmas list and wrapped our cheap-ass presents for Family and Friends. Done! Ha!! Time for a beer.

Monday was the day of reckoning and labor, and I bent to work jacking up the front passenger side to remove the lugs. Ow! Shoulder still spazzed. Just my luck all my spiffy hand-me-down Snap-On half-inch drive sockets are some damn weird-ass KTM metric Euro-f@#k*%& size - so I popped the beauty-cover off the front hub and resorted to the supplied lug-nut wrench instead of the 27mm socket, or the 21mm, or the 23mm - or whatever the f*ck it is. I don't even have any SAE stuff. The nuts came off pretty easy, but it didn't feel like the recommended 150Lbs torque to me.

Back around the ass-end I fiddled with a flashlight and the wrong glasses, trying to insert hidden Slot-A into mystery Tab-B, with the spindly and finicky jointed-tool that Ford supplies - and finally begun the crank-down of the full-size spare from it's well amidships. Big-ass tires are heavy and filthy, but we got it done with a good clodhopper yank on the lug-nut wrench.

The Costco discount-coupon saved me $80 (luckily they had 'em in stock) - about one-tenth the cost of four new Michelin 265/70-R17 XLT's with an S rating - good for 112 mph, and if I ever get the damn truck airborne off a cliff I might see that before I hit the 32-feet per-second-per-second fall-rate...
Merry Christmas to me! I got ALL my Christmas presents early this year!!

Minutiae

Minutiae. My wife is doing well in her recovery from some dental surgery on Thursday that I didn't mention, and has the rest of the week off. She has plans for me and I'm going to be busy.

Meanwhile today we walked out to find that my truck has a flat front tire (passenger side). and the neighbor who parked her car close-by isn't home. I put the jack under it to take the weight off the rim and the bead, and chocked the back wheels, but tweaked my shoulder in the narrow space and decided it will have to wait to fix it tomorrow. Fine. Just as well. Messy-dirty job.

National Ammo Day!

Yay! I almost forgot!
Tomorrow is National Ammo Day - 100 rounds, it's all we ask.
Of course 1,000 rounds is mo'betta!





UPDATE: I did my duty, but 100-rounds is all I could afford today.

Saturday Workday

Ok the Friday post I deleted was just a hugely stupid arguing-with-the-short-bus kinda thing, a doofus-vent - so here goes with what happened when I got up in the morning on Saturday - it was Range Workday.
We've been making range improvements all this year and last - from the cement slab and containers to the poured concrete firing line (instead of mud and sand) - and now we were really gonna start raising the barn.

About a month ago we'd finally set a few of the vertical posts and beams to see how it was all going to shake-out, and now with about twenty guys going at it in the hot sun we had some major stuff happening. Hammers were pounding and saws were sizzling.

More posts and beams were raised into place and bolted down, and the roof ridgeline was started. Each of the joists was tabbed-down with a steel fastener that required 12 nails - I did that for a while - I had a hammer and I just went around looking for nails to hit.





I pounded bigger nails too. Each of the long beams was firmly affixed to the next by steel strapping that required thirty 10-penny nails each. I traded-off swinging my 22-oz framing hammer with my buddy Wes. We did ten straps - 300 nails, and some of them went into knots and got bent to crap so we had to pull them and do it again. My shoulder is still on Ibuprofen today.

We paused for about a half-hour for some lunch: hot-dogs and chips and sauerkraut. It was pretty warm (in the 80's) and we had coolers filled with water and soft-drinks for everybody. No beer.
It's kinda funny that Liberal hoplophobes always come-up the "drunk redneck shooters" meme - that it's stuck in their spongey gray matter - but I've never seen one, and nobody would allow it - they'd get their ass booted off the shooting-line faster than any unsafe gun-handling - it just doesn't happen. That and nobody in this club is under-educated. There are some blue-collar guys like the current XO who's a carpenter and designed the structure we're building. It's Silicon Valley, everybody messes with computers one way or another. Most are highly educated even if they're doing some other job now - like being a carpenter instead of using their PhD... In this region it's not that uncommon to go into Home Depot and talk to some guy with a PhD who quit the Tech rat-race to simplify - my FFL-guy is a computer scientist with a degree from MIT who shoots Master-class. (Ok, end rant.)
Anyhow it's "winter" now with short daylight hours and it started getting late.



We still have about fifteen feet left of the ridge to complete, but all the rest is done including all the support bracing - it was really satisfying to see how much had been accomplished. Some people had already left, the rest were picking-up and packing-up the job-site as evening came down.

Last night the Ibuprofen wore off in the middle of the night and I awoke in darkness with an aching shoulder. Yow!

On The Bright Side

The sun is out and it's a very mild day at 3:30PM, so I put on my shorts and flip-flops and walked to the mailbox. We're having a bit of a heatwave, and the nasty-cold and rainy weather has been banished for a while as a high pressure zone sits overhead for the next several days. This Saturday instead of a Match we're going to have a work-day to complete (or get further along-on) the firing line cover. Yay!
On another note it's kinda too late (besides I don't have the money) to go buy a new gun or more AR lowers, and I don't have the high-cap option here - so maybe I'll just get some Chip McCormick or Wilson magazines for the old '43 Colt, and some more 10-round mags for my abbreviated poodlepopper. And more ammo. One thing I've been thinking about getting is a forward grip - and not having any tactical awareness or experience I was considering a couple different ones, the Bobro short SACL, the TangoDown ADM short, and the LaRue LT-690 FUG. I can't see the reason to have a long dangly grip hanging down out front if its purpose is really to drive the muzzle - but I am an idjit about any and all of that anyhow...

UPDATE: Damn I didn't even liunk the objects of my desire... (fixed)

The Audacity of Deceit II - Draft Lies You Can Count On.

Partisan vulture and arrogant power-mad youngster Rahm Emmanuel explains the new DRAFT that will affect all those younger than him - with all the easy authority of the Academically inclined and indifferent to the efects of his Causes.
These are the same people who repeatedly and falsely claimed that Republicans would bring back the Draft and force young people into an overseas War. Here they return to that same theme with a Non-Optional twist. I wonder what other Non-Optional plans they have in store for Citizens the Nation - whom they are supposed to SERVE, not rule.
In the video section towards the end, at 1:52 he says, "18 to 25, three months" - there is what is known to poker players, policemen, and Psychologists a "tell" - when he holds his hand over his chin - it means he's LYING.

This is material that once was at the Obama Transition Team's "change.gov" site which has since been scrubbed, disappeared Soviet-style...
HTStable Hand at Rusty's and to Gateway Pundit where further discussion of the New Party Obama-Stasi is occurring.

Thanks Guys and Gals

All through the dark times of History, when we needed your help you responded.

God Bless the poppies in Flander's fields...

No Guns, No Money - What's Yours is Everybody's

A friend linked me to an article in his local newspaper about future plans and discussions centering on what to do with YOUR money - and not just your "taxpayer-citizen money" in Washington DC that runs the country - YOUR in-the-bank money.

Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration...

The testimony of Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, in hearings Oct. 7 drew the most attention and criticism. Testifying for the House Committee on Education and Labor, Ghilarducci proposed that the government eliminate tax breaks for 401(k) and similar retirement accounts, such as IRAs, and confiscate workers’ retirement plan accounts and convert them to universal Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration...

In a radio interview with Kirby Wilbur in Seattle on Oct. 27, 2008, Ghilarducci explained that her proposal doesn’t eliminate the tax breaks, rather, "I’m just rearranging the tax breaks that are available now for 401(k)s and spreading — spreading the wealth."

Another justification for Ghilarducci’s plan is to eliminate investment risk. In her testimony, Ghilarducci said, "humans often lack the foresight, discipline, and investing skills required to sustain a savings plan." She cited the 2004 HSBC global survey on the Future of Retirement, in which she claimed that "a third of Americans wanted the government to force them to save more for retirement."

What the survey actually reported was that 33 percent of Americans wanted the government to “enforce additional private savings,” a vastly different meaning than mandatory government-run savings. Of the four potential sources of retirement support, which were government, employer, family, and self, the majority of Americans said "self" was the most important contributor, followed by "government." When broken out by family income, low-income U.S. households said the "government" was the most important retirement support, whereas high-income families ranked "government" last and "self" first (www.hsbc.com/retirement).

Analysts point to another disturbing part of the plan. With a GRA, workers could bequeath only half of their account balances to their heirs, unlike full balances from existing 401(k) and IRA accounts. For workers who die after retiring, they could bequeath just their own contributions plus the interest but minus any benefits received and minus the employer contributions.

Read the whole thing - I'm absolutely chilled that they are even discussing this. They have no business even raising the topic.

More here with great comments: including this excellent observation "The quote by Rep. McDermott "...we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that's not generating what we now say it should." is simply stunning in its presumptuous arrogance. The Federal government is "investing" $80 billion? Since when is not collecting a tax an investment?"

UPDATE: Here's a glimps of Professor Ghilarducci of The New School for Social Research. Obama's first campaign run was as a member of The New Party -- not quite the same thing but very much aligned along similar paths, New Party, New School, New Youth Cadre -- it just all sounds so similar - and hey they offer a new Master of Science in Global Finance...
The New Party BTW was founded by University of Wisconsin sociology professor Joel Rogers with the strategy of "fusion" in which a single candidate could receive nominations from more than one political party, and occupy more than one ballot line. From Human Events we learn:

A candidate could run as both a Democrat and a New Party member to signal the candidate was, in fact, a left-leaning candidate, or at least not a center-left DLC type candidate. If the candidate -- let's call him Barack Obama -- received only 500 votes in the Democratic Party against another candidate who received 1000 votes, Obama would clearly not be the nominee. But, if Obama also received 600 votes from the New Party, Obama's New Party votes and Democratic votes would be fused. He would be the Democratic nominee with 1100 votes.

Obama's Friday Afternoon Putsch, the Audacity of Deceit

H/T Countertop. It looks to me like they have the first ten plays already scripted and ready-to-run from scrimmage, things are going to happen very fast.

Just hours after being declared the president-elect and before final votes were even finished being counted, the Obama transition team announced with the audacity of deceit a gun-ban agenda designed to ban guns and drive manufacturers and dealers out of business:
Reanimating the Federal Frankenstein "Assault Weapon Ban" permanently.
(apparently he DOES have the votes, so he lied...again...)
Repeal the Tiahrt Amendment.
(releasing federal firearm tracing information to other than a law enforcement for use in frivolous lawsuits)
Closing the gun show loophole.
(No such thing exists, it's a strawman - dealers all have to run background checks)
Making guns in this country childproof.
(Fantasy and Science-Fiction blend to form an impossible equation, not dissimilar from 1984)

Meanwhile inside the Beltway The Gun-ban team is moving fast to remove any internal impediment to their next move when His Messiah-ness comes on board. In German it's called a Putsch.

John Dingell is a liability because of his ability to kill gun control bills, and he has been maneuvered into a corner, forced to defend his Chair of the Committee on Energy and Commerce against Über-Lefty, West-Coast hot-pink Waxman. Behind Waxman stands Pelosi and even Obama, who has named Waxman's former chief of staff Phil Schiliro as Director of Congressional Relations. So how's that "governing from the middle" thing working out so far? Yeh right, I thought so.

Pelosi has long clashed with Dingell and ran Lynn Rivers against him in a primary attempt working to defeat him. The Lynne Rivers campaign was all about gun control. For it to rear its ugly head in this fashion, so soon after the election, doesn’t bode well for anyone.

Now Dinglel is defending his chair and just announced his Initial Whip Team for Energy and Commerce Committee Race. The lines are drawn and Dingell has a Pelosi-sized target on his back -- sheesh, the things they do to the longest serving most partisan member of Congress.

If Waxman succeeds, the overreach is ON. Waxman is the ultimate left-fringe pinko Liberal. He’d repel the Democrats union base and test the strength of Obama’s wins in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, etc.
If Waxman wins expect serious, heavy handed climate change legislation.
If Waxman wins, expect the Consumer Products Safety Commission to take jurisdiction over firearms from the BATFE.
If Waxman wins, expect a gun show ban and a gun control orgy in general -- maybe not so poular among Blue Dogs and their constituents.

So far this is the best sign to see in these early days how serious Obama is about governing . . . and how serious Nancy Pelosi is about keeping her majority.

We're in for a bumpy and possibly very fast ride. Say whatever you like about Lefties and Communists, they plan in great detail ahead of time - otherwise they can't cheat and win.

UPDATE: Picture of smilin' Henry Waxman of District-29: West Hollywood, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills...

No Celebratory Riots

That's cool.

In The Aftermath

If their Messiah Barack Unicorn-Rainbow Obama wins, will the mental-case losers who had their cars festooned with stickers saying "Not My President" have to remove them finally?
And can I buy one now?