Not The Weekend That I Planned

But I'm not complaining. Sometimes that's how things go.

I was hoping to get up to the Indiana Historical Radio Society's big meet in Kokomo Saturday morning. I'd done a lot of running around (literally) in the last half of the week, trying to get some fixed satellite dishes -- the big ones -- either back in service (after a decade not!) or moved to a new bird (mostly by brute force, which is a pity, since they're all side-by-side-by-side in the Clarke Belt now and if you hiccup, you missed it). So when oh-dark-thirty hit Saturday ayem, I was fighting to wake up. I thought ahead and decided better rested than on the road muzzy, no matter how delightful the destination.

Got up late, puttered around all day and was just heading out for Sam's Gyros (ooo, I likes 'em!) when the phone rang: Mom X. Not feeling too well.

This, for me, outranks...everything. Got her into the Heart Hospital and they checked her over; my sibs showed up and eventually the tests came back...inconclusive. Didn't look too awful and she's pretty close to the place so after much discussion, they sent her home with, "Call us if you don't start feeling better." We got out quite late.

Me, I had to go into work about midnight-thirty: there's a light out at the Skunk Works North Campus. A light 1000' up in the air, on the far side of a hot antenna. So it's got to be shut down and the riggers climb in the "dark" (brilliant moonlight, one of the brightest possible full moons!) to swap it out. That went well, or well-ish (30 mph winds aloft!) and by 3:30 am Sunday, I was home and making for bed.

Now here's they thing. I've been a Skunk Worker for 25 years, all told, and they have a club for the long-term types -- a club that meets once a year, about a three-hour drive away, with a long afternoon dinner/meeting, with a special segment to welcome the years new members -- like me. To get there in time, I needed to get up at 7:30 am.

I managed that. I managed coffee (barely) and a shower (badly) and really, until I tried to brush my teeth with hair gel, I didn't think I was doing that badly; I'd only walked into a door frame twice.

But with Mom on a wait-see and me not tracking, I had to call and cancel attending that meeting. There was no way I was going to be out of state and too hazy to get back superfast and be anywhere near okay about it. I laid back down and was out like a light.

Woke up late this afternoon and weedwhacked the backyard, the second most virtuous thing I've done in the last seven days.

"No plan of action survives contact with sunrise."

Atlas Sequaled

Part II of Atlas Shrugged is headed for theaters this October! Website is in a very early beta state.

H'mmm. OWS. Shruggers. Bartleby, the Scrivener. One of these things is not like the others.

The Glamorous, Fast-Paced World

...of Television Journalism:Why yes, that is a backed-up combined sewer in the background.

(Image grabbed "live, local and late-breaking" in Downtown Broad Ripple.)

Range Report

Checked out some new and/or newly-repaired shootin' arns at the range today:

The Iver Johnson 8-shooter doesn't like cheap .22s. Sometimes it has doubts about CCI Mini-Mags, too. But -- it shoots to point of aim and though the grip angle is unusual, it's not at all bad. DA trigger pull is both longer and less smooth than the High Standard Sentinel 9-shooter, which I took for comparision, but it's not bad, either. I didn't clean the Iver Johnson revolver before taking it to the range, which may make a difference.

Between the two, I have decided .22 revolvers are about as much fun as you can have with your socks on.

Coal Creek Armory's gunsmiths worked over my reblued Colt Police Positive revolver in .32-20. I sent them a barely-functioning firearm -- whoever reblued it had bent the crane! -- and I got back a smooth-running Colt, more than typical of the breed. .32-20 is fun, too: it makes a nice loud boom and even a bit extra smoke, but the recoil is minor.

Last but a standout as well, the Colt Government Model .380 semi-auto. I mostly shoot .380 in short-gripped pocket pistols. This one has a full-length grip and it certainly makes a difference. I only put 40-some rounds though it (I misplaced one box, found it as I was packing up to go home) but it ran like a champ. The sights are good enough for me -- I know some shooters find them a little small.


After "teething difficulties" with the Iver Johnson, I wasn't unhappy with my shooting. Double-action revolvers are, in my opinion, excellent platforms for practicing grip, stance and control. As you learn to hold steady through the pull, you're building muscle memory and confidence that carries though anything you might shoot.

(It seems I have a rep at Eagle Creek as "the woman who brings odd guns," and most of the ROs wandered by to see what I'd brought today. It does make for conversation.)

Bobbi And The Marketdroids

Got another one. This one purports to be a quality-based search engine/listing service for blogs and they sent me a burbly letter with made-up words of either praise or slur (couldn't tell from context) for my little petroglyph-boulder of screeds with plenty of bizzaroid robotic-looking touches tellin' me to sign up now and expect scads, scads, scads of traffic. When I replied with a short note, the first paragraph of which read "No," in its entirety, why, they wrote right back with even more BS and puffery.

Okay, jerk: Get. Lost. You just set your bar to near-infinite height. I'm a big fan of capitalism but by Rand and Barnum, effing content-light salesmanship infuriates me. I'm not buying you, I'm not gonna be signin' up 'cos you are so effing charming or clever, or because I like the color of the product or even that it is a fridge or truck or vacuum cleaner with a leather-upholstered humidor; if I wanted a humidor, I would read up about them on the Web and go buy one. Prolly online.

Just gimme the info and step the hell back. Fine, fine, wear a nice suit; I'd appreciate it if you were well-groomed and if the brochure photographs were nicely-composed and on glossy, heavy paper, but gimme a chance to get good notion of the actual product; let me decide if it does anything I want at a price I'm willing to pay.

Or, shucks, go ahead, work your supersalesmanship on me. Schmooze and emote and prattle all you like.

And lose the sale.
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My little, small-time blog is a little, small-time blog. Years ago, there was a big dustup over big ideas in Comments here and I was chided for choosin' friendship over ideological purity. A guy who should know pointed out this blog would never amount to much.

Well, tough. I'll continue to make the same choice the same way. It's a huge world, filled with people who (IMHHO) mostly have the wrong slant on things, but I can get along with most of 'em and when I am forced to chose, I prefer to stick with folks I know or have general reasons to like over persons with whom I have little in common other than aspects of our political philosophy.

If, as some Deeeeeeeeep Thinkers avow, "everything we do is politics," put me down as a member of the tolerating-your-weirdness-if-you'll-tolerate-mine party. --Or tolerating it as long as you leave off hard-selling me what I don't know that I want and doubt I can use, anyway.
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Update: an excerpt from an e-mail received from another marketdroid this morning:

I think a guest blog post that illuminates the the advancement of our understanding of childhood development would be interesting for your audience. If you're interested, I would love to write something for you and perhaps start a friendly dialogue. What do you think?

I think that would be just peachy -- if you will let me redecorate your bedroom, on your dime, in, oh, "Early Spanish Inquisition." And do up your front garden to match.

This is my blog. I don't do "guest posts." Go getcher own, they're free. Y'know what ain't free? The few eyeballs that look at this blog -- who arrive here not expecting some blather on childhood development from a stranger. "Childhood development?" Not my baliwick. They're little monsters, savages, barbarians. I avoid them. I'm grateful some small fraction of parents (like you!) can rear 'em up so they become civilized but really, until they're like 25, 30, 35, if it was up to me, I wouldn't even bother to name 'em and I don't much care to interact with them unless they are really good at being proper Victorian children: quiet, well-behaved and out of the way, a bit less bother than a cat.

Fates alone know what kinda pre-version these people might actually be huckstering, that they want on my blog to do it. Surely it can't be anything proper or decent.

Maybe He Is A Medium-Sized Dog

Or a very small tiger: Huck the cat has decided a great way to show affection is to lay down beside me in the manner of a dog: he relaxes snuggled up close, kind of rolling a bit as he stretches out. He remains the single most muscular cat I have ever met, too. Dozing next to me, he is as long as my torso. Dog, tiger, a miniature Charles Atlas in a fur suit? Nope -- its Huck the cat.

Meanwhile, Rannie Wu seems all the more delicate and elfin by contrast -- but not the cute kind for children's books. Nope, if the Sidhe have their own predatory and (relatively) big cat, it looks just like Rannie.

(Of some interest, the Little People do have an associated breed of cats, which I learned this morning is described as black with a white spot on the chest, just like my dear, gone Slinky and Tommy -- so perhaps The Slinker, built to a far smaller scale than most cats, was indeed a Fairy Princess Cat in more than nickname. And her father, a king!)

I Work On Starship: New Content!

Part 14 of Frothup: Dropping In is posted at last!

Internets...Broken...Must

Must...Struggle on...

C'mon, AT&T, try to at least fake it. 1.34 Mbps is not "high speed DSL." You might as well just mail me screengrabs!

We ate the last packet this morning, after a final, forlorn ping came staggering in from Illinois. The RJ45s are rattling like castinets, loose in their sockets. The Cat6 was withered down to Cat4 last time I dared look. Will we escape from this vast wasteland before it hits Cat-nil, rotting cloth-covered UTP flapping broken and bleached under the merciless sun?

Save yourself! The providers have dumped us here to live or die, and it's every modem for itself!

Recent Reading

The Hunger Games -- Again. Read it before seeing the film, read it after. I still think it's a good little book -- and the movie is one of the best cinematic adaptations of a book that I have yet seen. As good a job as Lord Of The Rings -- or a little better: they haven't left out The Scouring Of The Shire yet.

Young Rissa ("The first book in the 3-part saga of Rissa Kergulen") by Indianapolis-born F. M. Busby. In fact, it's the first book in a long series set against a common background with some similarity to my own "Hidden Frontier." An interesting work, a litte old-fashioned in some ways but the general themes are timeless. Well-written space opera, what I would praise as "first-rate pulp," in that it is strongly cast in the gothic mode of good -- or at least non-evil -- vs. evil and the good guys are supposed to win. (Had to go check my library: while Busby wrote starting before I was born, I didn't have any of his novels until recently. The shelf goes directly from "Burroughs" to "Busjaeger.")

Speaking of "Burroughs," (ERB, that is) and pulp for that matter, I just finished Richard A. Lupoff's Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master Of Adventure, an examination of the writing career of an early pulp writer who transcended the pulps. (Even to the point of becoming his own company, still a going concern 62 years after his death. Tarzan.com and related websites make for an interesting exploration). It is a fascinating book; Lupoff admires his subject but is quite willing to call out the low points as well as the successes. --I also picked up Tarzan, which I have never read despite having devoured all the John Carter of Mars* books while in Junior High. --Don't tell me how it comes out! ERB's science fiction is sometimes viewed as unsophisticated but much of it rewards a second look. Those interested in tracing the sources of ideas will find precursors of Larry Niven's "Fleet of Worlds," the group of Puppeteer planets sharing a common orbit and of his torus of atmosphere around a star from The Integral Trees (etc.), both in ERB's 1941 Beyond The Farthest Star. (I'm still irked that I missed the recent Disney John Carter Of Mars movie -- and that it sank so far, so fast, and perhaps more on poor promotion, stiff competition, and hostile reviewers than on its own merits).

Last but not least, Marblehead, also by Richard A. Lupoff, in which a largely fond and unflinchingly honest portrayal of H. P. Lovecraft and assorted other real-world characters are thrown into the midst of a proto-Nazi conspiracy in the late 1920s! HPL could be a fairly strident xenophobe, especially in abstract and in the mass, so a portion of the suspense comes from wondering just which side he'll end up on. Great fun, especially if you are a little familiar with the characters or the real-life events Lupoff is riffing from.

As ever, if any of this piques your interest, please shop via Tam's Amazon link: you get a book, she gets a tiny commission at no cost to you and I get steady rent checks: win-win-win!
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* They claim Barbie is daunting? Try livin' up to Dejah Thoris!

Just Flippin' Sad

Seen at the website for "Occupy Cleveland" (which I admit sounds to me more like a plea to move back to a rustbelt Dem/labor disaster area than a movement per se): "[We] plan a continued presence in the Mayor Tom Johnson/Free Speech Quadrant of Public Square."

What kind of frikkin' world is it when the leftie fringe -- some elements of it, anyway -- is just okayfine with having a "free speech quadrant" of a public square? Heck, when any of us are?

Hey, hippie, it's all a "free speech zone;" it's just not a free camping zone. (To their credit, they do seem to be cool with that, havin' applied for a permit to stick tentage on the sidewalk, and not seeming too miffed that after seven months [!], the local police are not going to renew it.)

But something is deeply sick at the heart of the Republic when we have "free speech zones" on only part of public property. Yeah, even speech I dislike ought not be outlawed, corralled, hemmed in.

OTOH, the Feds do seem to have rousted some old-fashioned bomb-tossers who were hangin' out at OC events -- and then tiptoed all around who/what/why/where (a-hem! Feebs, grow a spine, I don't think this lot were darlings of your boss). Still, they got 'em, and Cleveland's self-appointed Occupiers are probably even more relieved than you are.

It is tempting to suggest political violence is the result of suppressing political speech but in truth, there's always a thug or two who wants an excuse to make things go smash. They may come up with some high-and-mighty talk to justify it but in their heart of hearts, they're still kids with a magnifying glass on a slow summer day -- and civil society is just their bunch of ants. Decent folk won't put up with it. Even decent folk with whom one might disagree on nearly everything else.

We got the Constitution we have because a bunch of people with crazy political notions sought common ground, and a way to allow the freedom to pursue one's own goofball ideas. It's been pushed against ever since.

Might be a good idea to start findin' some common ground to stand on and push back. With gummint overreach and buddy-buddy pattycake with Wall street on one side and the "fight in the streets now" crowds on the other, decency and the ability to let the other fellow be his own special kind of nitwit tends to get crowded out. Don't let it.

I Got...Almost...Nothin'

Other than relief: my basement was spared the Minor Broad Ripple Flood, which put about a yard of water in Downtown Broad Ripple.

We had a lot of rain and "the strip" is nestled cozily up to the canal and the river, so you'll be expecting to hear one or both overflowed.... Nope. Storm drain! Reported to have been fountaining up as much as four feet at one point. The city says "storm gates" were not open; they've vowed to make a thorough investigation -- haven't said they'll actually do anything, though. Worse than it sounds: we still don't have much in the way of separate storm and sanitary drains, so you might not want to go wading.


Another "relief:" got my marching orders from the NRA. Turns out -- quelle suprise! -- they don't want me to vote for poor ol' Dick Lugar (the Senator who can't afford a domicile in his home state), either. Not to worry -- I wouldn't be voting for him even if he wasn't F-rated; his negatives are many. His GOP challenger, Richard Mourdock, is more of an unknown. Six years, slim; try not to let us down -- and don't get too comfy. It ain't a sinecure.


What do these two things have in common? The U.S. Senate and a backed-up, uncontrollably overflowing sewer? You have to ask?

Felony Stupid

Down Terre Haute way, the big story alleges that a TV station "Master Control" operator -- the guy who orchestrates the final product 24/7/365, and tries to keep the robots out of trouble -- got fired and then came back in the middle of the night (when there would be one or two people in the place, one of them doing his old job) and put several rounds through the front door and cars in the lot.

The suspect is in jail now. "Criminal recklessness with a firearm," a felony charge.

I'm tempted to file this under "stupid pranks," except it reflects a level of heedlessness that goes well past a mere "prank."

Rumor claims the suspect either wanted to carry at work or had simply proceeded to do so -- and even the smaller outposts of the Giant Oldstream Media Complex are not, generally, comfy with that. While a degree of apprehension is understandable (the place looks to be a short drive from the middle of nowhere -- scroll down to "about our stations"), carrying firearms at work is not protected by state law; employers have a right to tell you what you can or cannot be having on or about your person while on their dime.

Gun locked in your car at work? Legal as church on Sunday (with a few Fed-type exceptions) and you have recourse if you get the ax for it. On your belt at work, not so much. Don't like it? Find other work. (Or, I suppose, learn that "concealed is concealed" and it's your rules-scoffing rump if you get caught; I wouldn't roll those dice, but I have house payments.)

All that aside, returning after termination and sending a few rounds into the building doesn't do anyone any good; it's just grist for the anti mill. (For example...) Way to go, stupid; not only have you almost certainly put yourself in a world of hurt (and lifetime disarmament), you've done gunnies dirt, too.