Chronology and Opinion: The Cabinet Man's Maryland CCW Denial

OK, it’s The Cabinet Man (formerly 'Emergent Behavior'...). Fuze has asked me to post on his blog concerning my trials and tribulations of (not) getting a CCW in the State of Maryland. Here it is. It’s long. It’s direct. It’s painful. Get some caffeine and dive in.

So, where to start? Let’s try about 1995. It was about this time when I first tested the CCW waters in Maryland (MD). I dutifully went to the Maryland State Police (MSP) barracks and picked up an application. Whoa!! Fingerprint cards! References! Proof of assaults! Befuddled, I called the NRA for help contacting a gun-friendly attorney in MD. I got a name/number and called [name withheld]. My conversation with him was disappointing since I had never been robbed, mugged, or raped. I gave up.

The year 2000 found me back in MD after a two-year respite back home in Colorado. I decided again to get the permit. I completed two courses at Gunsite: 250 Pistol and Arizona CCW. I applied for and received (non-resident) permits from AZ and FL. I rounded-up some sympathetic character references and submitted the hefty – and incredibly intrusive – MD CCW application. That was 14 July 2003. The cover letter for that application follows. (NB: I hadn’t received my FL CCW yet.)

I am enclosing my application for a concealed handgun permit for the State of Maryland. I have included all of the required items as listed in the “Maryland State Police Handgun Permit Qualifications” page of the Maryland State Police Internet web site.

I am a strong believer in the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States that protects an individual’s right to bear arms. As a human being, I have the right to defend myself against illegal deadly force once all non-violent means of avoiding the confrontation have been exhausted. As a law-abiding citizen of the State of Maryland, of sound mind and solid character, I am well within my rights to request of the State a concealed handgun permit. I am a knowledgeable, safe, and responsible gun owner. I have spent countless hours at the firing range becoming proficient with the use of my handguns.

To further refine those skills, I recently attended the intensive five-day “250 Defensive Pistol” course offered by The Gunsite Academy in Paulden, AZ. (Please refer to the attached photocopy of my graduation certificate and course syllabus.) This is a nationally recognized training program routinely attended by police officers and members of the U.S. Armed Forces in addition to civilians like me who desire training in defensive handgun use prior to seeking concealed handgun permits. On my own volition, I have studied numerous cases of self-defense in the State of Maryland so I would be cognizant of the legal limits and ramifications of the employment of deadly force. I am well versed in the concepts of “avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation” and I am fully aware that the use of firearms is a defensive measure of last resort.

As part of this application, I have included a photocopy of my recently issued Concealed Weapons Permit (CWP) from the State of Arizona. (Arizona issues CWPs to non-residents.) A minimum of 16 hours of instruction from a state-approved training facility is required to qualify for an Arizona CWP. I received this training at The Gunsite Academy as well. (Again, I have included a photocopy of my graduation certificate and course syllabus.) This non-resident permit is honored in nine other states including Virginia. It is my hope that the State of Maryland would extend to me the same courtesy as these states – of which I am not even a resident – and issue a concealed handgun permit to this Maryland resident.

In the first week of August 2003, I received a call from the local MSP barracks. They wanted an interview with me, which I scheduled for and attended on 11 August 2003, the results of which are included below. This is an e-mail I sent to my Support Staff (all of my character references and other people involved/interested in the process.)

Fellow Character References -- and Devil's Advocates, too:

OK, just an update on my Maryland CCW efforts.

Last week I got a call from the Maryland State Police (MSP) barracks in [town name withheld]. They wanted me to come in for an interview with Sergeant X [name withheld]. This was a bit unexpected since there was no mention of this anywhere in the application. Not knowing exactly what was to be discussed, I prepared a set of "interview style" questions for myself and answered them as I saw fit. I then sent out copies to a few of my best devil's advocates asking for review, revision, and addition. After scrutinizing/discussing the questions, I felt I was ready for anything.

It was totally unnecessary. Sorry guys. (However, the advocate that tossed-in the ex-wife question gets ten bonus points!! You know who you are...)

The interview was merely a fill-in-the-blanks type of thing. No questions about "Why..." or "What if..." Just stuff like "How long did you live in Colorado?" and "Are you still employed at [company name withheld]?" Sgt X was acting as the "coarse filter" before the application got bubbled up the state-level rubber-stampers. He asked about Gunsite and my AZ CCW. He asked about my drug and alcohol use. He asked about ex-wives. He asked about past assaults and current threats. It was actually kinda' boring.

Then he said, "Let me shut the door so I can vent." That gave me a scare but it turned out pretty cool. Seems the guy's one of us. NRA member. Believes that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right, not a collective one. Thinks that Kimber makes a damned fine 1911. (I have to agree!!...) But here's the clincher -- and I quote: "Maryland has the fifth highest violent crime rate in the US. If we could get some more concealed carry permits out there, maybe we could make a dent in that." BOO-YAH!! Run for something Sgt X, I'll vote for ya'!! He said that of all the people he's interviewed over the years, I have better quals and training than 99.9% of the applicants. If it was up to him, I would walk out of his office permit in hand. Works for me!!...

Unfortunately, that was the end of the good news. He said that without proof of previous threats and assaults, it's unlikely I'll get past the review board in Jessup. (Same thing I heard from the NRA-referred attorney a few years back.) He said he'll hold the permit until Friday in case I "think of something" -- and to call if I did. I replied that unless I get robbed, mugged, raped, or shot between now and then, there'd be nothing else. (I don't know if that was bait but I'm not biting if it was...) He said that he'd embellish his report as much as he could. He also said he'd contact [ex-wife] for info on past domestic violence. I called [ex-wife] and gave her the heads up. She was cool about it.

So it looks like I'm back to "low- to mid- probability". One thing that was unsettling about the whole thing -- and obviously unsettling to Sgt X -- was that rate at which permits ARE issued. If you're a cash business operator, a security guard, or a body guard, issuance is almost guaranteed. There are no training requirements. (Apparently the applicants have to qual at the MSP range and 70% of the rounds have to hit paper -- not just center of mass!! -- at close range. No duress, no holster draw, no time limit. Unlimited re-tries...) What's worse, he said, is that he's almost forced to approve foreign nationals hired as guards for embassy officials and other foreign "dignitaries". He said last week he had to approve a permit for someone from Cameroon. He couldn't even do a background check. He said, and I quote again: "That guy could be a mass murdered for all I know and I have no way to prove otherwise."

Sgt X was VERY cool and I don't think he was trying to blow sunshine up my skirt. He was a straight shooter (no pun intended) and I appreciated that. But I don't know how that leaves you guys in the picture at this point. You'll probably want stand ready in case the state does decide to contact you, The Appointed Few. (And you know who you are...)

So, until something else happens,

Ciào!!

In late September 2003, I received my FL CCW. It was too late at this point to add that to the application so I figured I’d hold onto that tidbit of info until the inevitable appeals process, which started when I received my Maryland rejection letter on 9 October 2003, almost three months after submitting the application. I notified the Support Staff accordingly:

"DISAPPROVED"

Yup, I got my rejection letter from the MSP today. I'm not surprised but I am disappointed. The letter claims that I do "not have a good and substantial reason to wear, carry or transport a handgun". I know what they've done, too. The application states that I'm required to submit copies of documented threats and/or assaults. Well, thankfully, I don't have any of those. Seems the State is more interested in putting the cart before the horse!!...

I have the option to request an appeal to the Handgun Permit Review Board within ten days. In the interest of "due diligence" -- or at least exhausting all reasonable options -- I'll probably appeal. Hell, I've come this far I might as well go as far as I can without ending up in court -- which is the only recourse I'll have left if I'm turned down by the Handgun Permit Rejection Review Board...

So, I guess you character reference folks are off the hook. It appears that the only person they attempted to contact was [ex-wife]. (It makes one wonder what effort they really expended before rubber stamping "DISAPPROVED" on my application!!) I thank you all for your efforts and your patience. I guess I'll take it from here.

Cross your fingers and wish me luck!!

I sent in my request for appeal/review, which resulted in a face-to-face meeting in Jessup on 5 November 2003. Two days later I received another rejection letter. I sent the Support Staff the following e-mail:

OK Guys,

More info -- and little of it is good...

As you all know, my CCW application was rejected due to "insufficient reason". In other words, I haven't been threatened, mugged, robbed, raped, etc... In Maryland's twisted "cart before the horse" laws concerning CCW, the state -- not me -- is the one to determine "apprehended danger". In other, other words, if the state thinks I'm safe, then I don't get a permit. No matter that I could be assaulted ten minutes after leaving the state police barracks. After that, I could probably get a permit. Maybe...

Well, as is my right, I appealed my application denial to the state handgun permit section of the Maryland State Police (MSP). I was called in for a meeting in Jessup on Wednesday (5 Nov). The meeting went OK, I guess. The person with whom I was supposed to speak (the individual that reviewed my appeal) was not there that day so a stand-in took his place. This kinda' ticked me off but I was in no position to argue. Well, the meeting turned out to be nothing more than them telling me why my application was denied. A simple, 45-minute expounding upon "insufficient reason". Whatever. The trooper was nice and she was sympathetic to my plight, as was the previous MSP sergeant that first interviewed me.

Unfortunately, I got the same response as before: "If we were a 'shall-issue' state or even just had laxer rules, you'd be at the top of our list of people to get a permit. You're well trained, you're taking this seriously, and, by all appearances, you're the kind of responsible person we wish we had more of." (Yeah, OK, so give me my permit!!...) I thanked her and headed back to work.

Next step: appeal to the Maryland Handgun Permit Review Board (HPRB). I'm sending in my request for appeal tomorrow. I should have a meeting date within two weeks. The review board is, as has been described to me, an informal court hearing. The 5-member board acts as judge and jury and all the MSP people I've talked with so far are brought in to discuss my case. A court recorder is there to keep records in case I appeal to the 'real' courts. This will be the first time I actually get to state my case. I've typed a rough draft of what I'm going to say and I'm trying to keep it under seven minutes. I don't want them dozing off...

Unfortunately, an appeal (literal and otherwise) based on the 2nd Amendment will do me little good. In 1979, an individual sued the HPRB in "Onderdonk vs. Handgun Permit Review Board" claiming that his 2nd Amendment rights had been violated by the denial. Unfortunately, Onderdonk's application denial was sustained. The HPRB won that case because the court stated that the 2nd Amendment applied only to the Fed Gov and not the states. Nobody has challenged this decision under Article VI of the Constitution and/or the 14th Amendment. So my appeal will have to be based on something else. I'm shooting for (pardon the pun!!) a case based on the rights to self-defense. It's weaker than the 2ndA argument but no point in beating a dead horse.

If my appeal is denied by the HPRB then my only remaining course of action is to sue the HPRB myself. That's where it will end. I have neither the finances nor the time to go thru such a hassle. Given the precedence for losing such a case in the courts, I probably wouldn't even try anyway. So this is it folks. You'll only get one more e-mail from me on this subject. Either I'll let you know that I got it or I'll let you know that I'm moving. Wish me luck.

Ciao for now...

On the evening of 3 December 2003, I had a meeting in the Annapolis MSP barracks with the HPRB. The process is pretty simple. The MSP are the defendants and I’m the plaintiff. There were five HPRB members and a recording secretary. The MSP representative – who happened to be the MSP sergeant from Jessup that was unable to attend my review meeting – took the “whole truth…” oath and proceeded to review my application and the reasons for their denial. Afterwards, I took the oath and finally got to say my peace. You might recognize a few quotes and ideas I plagiarized from various pro-2nd Amendment and pro-freedom types including, but not limited to, the Honorable Judge Alex Kozinski, L. Neil Smith, Jeff Snyder, Vin Suprynowicz, Claire Wolfe, and Aaron Zelman:

Nature provides every one of its creatures a means of self-defense. It can appear in the form of stealth and camouflage. Or sharp teeth and claws. Or keen senses and fast legs. Or hard shells and bad odors. However, man has very few of these traits and the ones we do have are often inadequate to the task. Instead we have been given a more potent means of self-defense: our brains. Rather than wasting valuable energy by running away from every unknown object, we can discern what is a threat and what is not. Rather than standing naked in the cold, we clothe ourselves and devise tools with which we can build shelter. Rather than being defenseless, we fashion weapons best suited to the threats against our lives. After exhausting all attempts to minimize those threats, by way of avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation, a handgun – a readily accessible handgun – is by far the best defense against these immediate and sudden threats. If that were not true, our police forces would be armed otherwise.

When I first started this process several years ago, I contacted an attorney familiar with Maryland’s handgun laws and expressed to him my desire to obtain a concealed handgun permit. He asked me a number of questions and, after a few moments of silence, made the following statement: “Too bad you’ve never been mugged, robbed, or raped.” I am actually quite pleased that none of those things ever happened to me and it was at this point that the reality of obtaining such a permit within Maryland became painfully clear. Instead of walking away from the idea, I chose to pursue the matter as thoroughly as possible. I obtained a great deal of high-quality training with my weapons and continue to maintain that hard-earned proficiency to this day. I reviewed the law – both civil and criminal – as it applies to self-defense. I applied for and received permits that legally allow me to carry a concealed weapon in 25 states of which I am not even a resident. Yet, those efforts did little to secure for me such a permit in my own home state of Maryland.

As it was explained to me, Maryland requires an applicant for a concealed handgun permit to produce evidence of prior threats and/or assaults before a permit can be issued. On top of that, the burden of determining apprehended danger is not upon the citizen but upon the State. Yet, in this “cart before the horse” scenario, the State is rarely present when an unarmed, defenseless citizen is made aware of the apprehended danger standing before him in a darkened parking lot. To assume that this soon-to-be victim cannot determine whether or not his own life is in danger is fatally myopic and a serious breach of trust on the part of the State. I understand that the State wants a compelling reason before it issues a permit. But I ask you, when are the interests of the individual citizen ever compelling?

As this application process continued from one hurdle to the next, I admit that I was tempted to abandon it altogether and carry a concealed weapon based on my 2nd Amendment rights: without a permit and without anyone’s permission. But, you and I know the illegality of such an act inside the State of Maryland. Being fully aware of the legal implications had I been caught, I wisely chose not to do so, for I value my freedom greater than anything. But I also value my life. In this “lesser of two evils” scenario, the State has forced me to make a decision. Which is more important: my life or my freedom? I feel this is a decision that no citizen of the State of Maryland – nor any American – should have to make.

It is sometimes said that democracy needs to be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for lunch. Similarly, why should the rights and privileges of the law-abiding be curtailed, restricted, or denied based on the actions of the criminal element? In a state of more than five million people, it is difficult for our legislators to avoid creating law that is “one size fits all”. The regulations concerning the handgun permit application process are an example of laws that, at times, can and do discriminate against qualified citizens. However, in their wisdom, these same legislators empowered this panel to decide which of those applicants have been unfairly disqualified by the law – as I feel I have been. It is not hyperbole when I say that you ladies and gentlemen hold over me the power of life and death. I urge you to consider my case solely on the merits of my case. The Maryland State Police personnel I have spoken with during this process have admitted that, by virtue of my extensive training and responsible mindset, I am well qualified for a handgun permit. Were Maryland a “shall issue” state, they would have absolutely no reservations about issuing my permit.

I presented you with some Internet articles describing a recent trend in home invasions: the home ambush. Emboldened criminals now break into a home, wait for the resident to return, and then have the resident at their disposal for further ransacking, robbery, or, even worse, murder. I also presented a notification I received from my apartment complex concerning break-ins during daylight hours. This is the third such notice I’ve received in a year. When will it be that thugs break in to my home, notice my impenetrable 800-pound fireproof gun safe, and lie in wait to ambush me? I am very discrete with my firearms whenever I leave or return home with them. But it’s not a stretch to assume that someone might follow me back from a gun shop or a shooting range only to mark my home for a future ambush. Sure, I can defend myself once I cross the threshold of my front door but how will I do so if I cannot make it to my gun safe first? Worse yet, what level of violence could I expect from these burglars in an effort to force me to open that safe and, likewise, force me to explain to them the operation of every firearm I own? If I’m fortunate enough to survive these encounters, am I to sit idly by, incapable of reaction, as I watch my firearms be stolen? In this scenario, if I am unarmed when I open the door to my home, I am helpless in the face of the ambush, the coercion, and, possibly, my own death.

As a self-sufficient and independent member of society, I make very few requests – and even fewer demands – upon my government and my fellow citizens. One might say that as I appear before you now, I am in no position to make demands. But I disagree. As a law-abiding citizen and a human being, I demand that I be allowed to defend myself against illegal deadly force, wherever I may be at the time, at home or elsewhere. Self-defense is a right bestowed on us by God and by nature and this right exists well beyond the walls our homes. For the State to deny me that right is at best careless and, at worst, complicit to gross negligence. I urge you to find in the law and in your hearts the mandate to do what is right. I urge you to exercise the authority given to you by the State to grant me a concealed handgun permit.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your time and for giving me the opportunity to state my case.

(Before you get too excited, I know that no gun safe is impenetrable. Give me a break. It’s rhetoric, OK?!?! The same rhetoric that gave my state legislators “wisdom”. Yeah, right…)

During my presentation, I noticed the expressions on the faces of the board (bored?) members. I got the impression of, “How many times do we have to hear this shit?…” It was a bit disheartening and I tried not to let it disturb my rhythm. After my statement, the MSP sergeant and I were allowed to make closing statements. His was simple. Mine was this:

The definition of civilization is not “a society devoid of crime”. Throughout history, all civilizations, great and small, have had to endure crime. A better definition of civilization is “a society that respects an individual’s life, liberty, and dignity.” However, a society that deprives individuals of their natural right to self-defense against crime violates all three tenets of the superior definition. If I cannot defend myself against violence outside my home, an act best accomplished by means of a concealed and readily accessible handgun, then society has marginalized my existence.

All of the words I have spoken this evening, with the exception of an occasional paraphrasing, have been mine. Now I offer you a quote from the author Lee Harris concerning his definition of “Societal Forgetfulness”:

"Societal Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe."

By issuing me a concealed handgun permit, you can help break the pattern of Societal Forgetfulness that has numbed individuals into abdicating their responsibility for self-defense. By issuing that permit, this application process can come to fruition, here, tonight. You have the power and authority to do this. On behalf of the State, use that power to honor my life, liberty, and dignity as an individual and as a citizen.

At that point they asked me a few questions. One of the board members was unaware that a non-resident could hold a CCW permit. (This was in reference to my remarks concerning my AZ and FL permits.) Then, the director of the board asked me, “Do you believe that anyone, excluding convicted felons, should be issued a CCW?” I said, “Yes, if they request one.” I chose not to go into my “nobody should need a damned permit!” libertarian tirade and stopped at that. He thanked the MSP sergeant and me and said I’d hear back concerning the board’s decision in about two weeks.

On the way out of the Annapolis barracks, the MSP sergeant and I were making small talk. He said, “Good speech. You almost had me convinced.” I chuckled and said something to the effect of, “Only ‘almost’, huh? I guess I didn’t word it correctly!” As we were parting ways in the parking lot, I closed out the small talk with, “Well, maybe the board was convinced and they’ll issue me that permit.” He said, “Won’t really matter. We’ll appeal it anyway. Good night.” WTF!! At no point in this entire process was I as pissed as I was then. You mean to say, after all the I’ve been through, he’s going to plan an end-around appeal in the case of issuance?! Oof-dah….


(This has now been sitting around for a week waiting for this last bit…)


So, it came in yesterday’s mail. “The decision of the Board is to affirm the action of the Superintendent of the Maryland State Police.” In other words, my application denial was upheld by the HPRB. I know they received the message I had hoped to send in my “speech” because they summed it up as such:

The applicant concedes that he has not been subject to threats of violence or to assaults. However, he contends that the world has become a dangerous place, and that without “a readily accessible firearm,” he as well as other citizens in our society stand “defenseless” against general risks of violent confrontation. Mr. [name withheld] contends that unlike other states, Maryland has handgun laws which “discriminate against qualified citizens,” and he asserts that his “Second Amendment” rights should override the local laws.

The letter then goes on to explain how my “assertion” is unfounded by referencing “Onderdonk vs. Handgun Permit Review Board” and “Snowden vs. Handgun Permit Review Board”. I knew I had these two precedents hanging over my head when I went into this. I correctly assumed they would be the “blocking issues”. With this, my pursuit of a MD CCW is over. I cannot afford the time nor money to take it beyond this. They win.

I feel like I should be angered by the HPRB’s decision but, for some reason, I’m not. I guess they were just doing their job. (Nuremberg comes to mind…) However, I will admit to being horribly disappointed and just a bit disgusted. As a relative newcomer to the liberty/freedom/Libertarian band of the political spectrum, I’ve been learning a lot about How The System (Really) Works. Not in a “conspiracy theory” sense, mind you, but from a pragmatic – and, yes, cynical – perspective. I’ve read about rights encroachment; from the totally benign to the tragically fatal. But now the story I’m reading isn’t about some distant Other Person; it’s about me. I’m the one that’s been told ‘No’. I’m the one that’s been politically marginalized. Maryland has deemed that the needs of the collective override the needs of the individual. I didn’t just lose an appeal for a concealed handgun permit. I lost a bit of freedom, a good chunk of an inalienable right, and a prime opportunity to be a responsible citizen. I lost the recognition of being a valued individual in the eyes of The State. All issues of my military service aside, this is the first time I’ve honestly felt, in my guts and in my bones, that I’m not a free man.

Some have criticized me for that comment. “Come’on man, it’s just a permit! How can it be that important?” To explain the concept to you readers would be preaching to the converted. To explain it to the “unwashed” would be frustratingly wasted breath. Even my Support Staff have a range of opinions from “Hell yeah, I’ll vouch for you!” to “I’m not sure this is really what you want to do.” I try to take it all in stride, good and bad, and slog on towards what I’m convinced is right. Yet, it’s a surprisingly lonely march. I’ve been in conversations that have ground to a complete halt at the mere mention of the permit. I’ve been warned not to bring up the subject of firearms around various family members. I’ve been accused of having a one-track mind.

In fact, I do have a one-track mind. I think about freedom a lot. I ponder the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – and never for a second wonder what the authors really meant! I research the concepts of malum in se, malum prohibitum, and prior restraint and the implications they have on our liberties. I long for a place where a man can be himself without the leering and suspicion that are directed towards those of us that choose to be independent, open-minded, and – aghast! – armed. I fantasize about what would be said by Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, and Patrick Henry were they to suddenly appear before the core of our federal government during a State of the Union address. I question the need for background checks and waiting periods and fingerprints and government permission. And while I would certainly mourn the absence of Zantac, titanium bicycle frames, Sleater-Kinney CDs, and smokeless gunpowder, I dream about traveling back in time to a young America that was sending the British tyrants packing. Oh, how that must have felt! Yeah, I think about freedom a lot.

Maryland is not a free state. It’s that simple. I don’t hate the participants in the democratic process that made it this way. They’re sheep and they simply grasp for political expediency. But along the way, they’ve blindly shoved many of us aside and trampled our rights in order to (artificially) quell their fears and to abdicate their responsibilities. I’m deeply saddened by their moral depravity and lack of understanding. I respect those 2nd Amendment warriors that choose to stay in Maryland and keep up The Good Fight but I’m tired. There are people better suited to this form of battle than I am.

Maryland has been good to me professionally and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the company of friends and loves along the way. But it’s time for me to move on. I don’t know when and I don’t know where. Perhaps back home to Colorado or one of the other wide-open Rocky Mountain states. I considered joining-up with the Free State Project folks in their endeavor to make New Hampshire a welcome home to all liberty lovers but the call of the West is once again echoing loudly in my ears. I need some elbow room and some peace-and-quiet. Time to reflect upon and reenergize from my losses, to lick my wounds, and mend my battered notions of right and wrong. For those of you who are worried, I can assure you that there won’t be any one-room cabins and long-winded, anti-establishment manifestos (other than this one, that is…). I’ll find a way to keep this stubborn, “old school” engineer a productive member of the work force. I’ll find a way to keep in touch with my friends and family left stranded in Maryland. I’ll find a way to enjoy the freedoms I haven’t lost. Those who know me know that I always find a way!…

TCM

The car gets a Christmas present too

Colorado's patented Passive Snow Removal System ("We Don't Plow and We're Damn Proud of It. It'll melt on its own. What are you, from California?") forced me to take our sedan out for its Christmas present. It is having a better year than the rest of the family put together.

In a mild left turn, it slid on passively-to-be-removed snow and struck the curb, knocking a chunk out of the curbside-front alloy wheel and gouging its tire.



I can ratiocinate with the best of ratiocinators, reciting marginally relevant facts merely to soften the blow: I knew I needed new tires all around anyway, have only been putting it off. That gouge had been there a long time, not safe driving on it. Lucky there wasn't a kid on a bike at that intersection. And so forth.

And there's plenty to ratiocinate. A salvaged, refurbed alloy wheel, $169. New TigerPaws all around, just under $300. Front-end alignment, labor, disposal, etc. Total hit $640. Ho frigging ho. Merrry Christmas, Taurus.

Strangely, the folks who usually work on the Fûz fleet had all the work done minutes after Barbaloot picked me up from leaving the sedan at their shop. This is not their SOP.

Nice rack, huh?

Your humble narrator was awarded the MSM last Saturday.

Fatherhood, the greatest job in the world

Firstborn's cast has been off for a week, and she's back to her normal high-speed low-drag self. Middlechild has begun occupational therapy, wherein we urge her to sit on a basketball when she has difficulty containing her energy, and to crabwalk to the bathroom in the morning to brush her hair.



Boy is being very boyish. Some pics of him are coming soon.
Fetus kicked Barbaloot in the ribs today.

I haven't posted anything in weeks, but I have a life, Christmas is coming, I'm supposed to be learning Photoshop and Linux, Christmas cards should have already been in the mail, and we've a new Baby in the house too (AMD Athlon XP 2500, 512MB, GeForce 2, dualbooting Win2k and RedHat 9) and Hallelujah, Comcast's cable modems have reached the neighborhood. We're considering it.

Disneyfication not only sucks, it isn't necessary

Disney lobbies Congress to extend the duration of copyright, to 'protect' their intellectual property rights in the absolute worst sh1t they've ever made, which turds happen to be stories they've grafted on to characters they've appropriated from history and literature rather than created themselves. They'd be better off dropping the campaign, and diverting their political contributions into hiring a few more American writers, actors, voices, and animators, and let them create something original and worth copyrighting.

If copyright law is amended, one useful change would be to prohibit taking any work already in the public domain, or work that is declared open by its owner, back under copyright by publishing a work derived from the original. "You want to Disneyfy the Prioress' Tale? Groovy, baby, just, well, you can't copyright it. Canterbury Tales are open. You won't make enough off of it to hire Amanda Bynes."

Need some examples? On one hand, Pooh, Tarzan, Hercules, and Aladdin, shamelessly derived from stories by A A Milne or Edgar Rice Burroughs, hotwired from the rich but abandoned parking lot of Arabic culture, or nicked from Greek myth.

For example, an insipid animated episode wherein the aforementioned Burroughs character was confronting a blond, voluptuous white-skinned jungle priestess commanding an army of leopard men to seize him for her mate. I turned the television off, over the protests of all the airbreathing offspring units, and it had nothing to do with how the priestess was attired. Intellectual property is too generous a term for this stuff. Where exactly is the intellect?

On the other hand, Fillmore, Kim Possible, and Buzz Lightyear, original Disney works or derivatives of original Disney works. With the inane exception of Lilo and Stitch, they are good or at least entertaining programs (Señor Señor Senior suspends Kim Possible over a pond in a Bondian moment: "The piranha won't be delivered until next Tuesday. But these koi haven't been fed in days."). Granted, it's not the one-liner quality you'd expect from Buffy, but consider their audience. As a side benny, these programs keep Ricardo Montalban employed as voice talent.

Disney's live-actor fare falls somewhere in the middle, aimed at raging-hormone pre-teens and obsessing over dating and parents who just don't get it.

Their best stuff was probably produced by accident, by and for a company that owns so many channels on the satellites and in cable headends that their program directors are desperate for material to fill them: consider how often they rerun material like the twin girls who played basketball, or Cadet Kelly. The kids will notice but they don't care; I do. Had Disney been paying more attention to their content suppliers and compelling them to adhere to Disney traditions, Fillmore would not make it through. All of it would be crap.

Another troubling aspect of Disney's dominance is their revival of the studio system---they're cultivating a cohort of child actors who are moved from one Disney program to another. I hope I don't read about these kids thirty years from now like we hear about Michael Jackson and Liza Minelli today.

Twenty-first Century Shmoo

We were repairing some cracks in the concrete porch here at chez Fûz, because the earth beneath it was not compacted properly. Twice, by the way: twice did the earth subside and cause the porch to crack in half, twice did we show this lousy work to the builder, twice was it repoured under the builder's warranty.

We tired of this when it cracked the third time, so Barbaloot called in the mudjackers, who bored holes through the porch slab and pumped in a cement-sand mixture under pressure. We are told that it will not move again, but it's not exactly where we wanted it. A crack remained, more than a cent and a half wide, showing where the roving half of the slab used to be part of the rest of the house. The mudjackers told us to fill the big void with expanding foam, and finish the crack with cement caulk.

Expanding foam, after a few minutes of working with it, impresses me as the Twenty-first Century's shmoo, a Swiss Army substance so to speak (duct tape is the Twentieth's). It will do just about any damn thing.

We're always looking out for useful tools and substances in case of emergencies. We'd appreciate any comments our readers may leave here, describing the unique uses to which this wonder substance has been put.

Firstborn's broken ankle suggests: could you set a fracture with it? How about it, Dave? Grunt Doc?

Could you use it to fashion expedient insulated housing? A flotation device? There are some limitations: once you start the can, you'd better finish it, because it glues its own can shut.

Is this stuff worth the weight and the bucks to stuff a can of it into a bugout kit, or a crisis kit you'd keep in your car or at work?

"Dad . . . our secret mission!"

The pumpkins grew well in our backyard this year. They volunteered from seeds left from last year's Hallowe'en jack, and Barbaloot cultivated them into giant smothering vines that dominated the irrigated bed.

I planted the idea with Firstborn that this form of wealth must be shared with the community. By the dark of night, we would secretly plant seeds from this year's crop at various places around the housing development, along the trails and footpaths that snake through the various filings and under the powerlines. She liked the idea so much that I couldn't beg her off of it any longer, cast or no cast.

Tonight we did it, with a red-filtered flashlight and one of Barbaloot's garden trowels, and the tap-clunk of Firstborn's walking cast.

We smelled but did not encounter a skunk. That was useful cover, though, because any neighborhood dogs we disturbed were disregarded as still apesh1t over the skunk.

The strongest argument in favor of human cloning I've heard so far

We need a large number of Alex Kozinski clones to write more court opinions like this one:

We reverse Stewart’s conviction for machinegun possession under section
922(o) as an unlawful extension of Congress’s commerce power . . .

Iraqification? (revised much)

The buzz today is that the United States is pressing for the provisional government of Iraq to take form and take charge as quickly as possible, to "Iraqify" the occupation of Iraq and relieve the US and coalition of much of the political burden that comes with that occupation.

That would be a mistake, for one big reason. Modern "Iraq" is much like Yugoslavia. It was a political creation fusing different peoples with different religious and ethnic traditions. When the strong leader who forcefully held this mess together departed the scene, centrifugal forces flung them apart. Many of the people held together involuntarily as Iraqis didn't want to be Iraqis in the first place, they were forced into it; the rule of Saddam Hussein merely aggravated it. Guarantees of individual rights under a brand-spankin' new constitution will not assure the minorities that they can safely assign their loyalty to the provisional Iraqi government.

Don't try to build or rebuild a democratically governed Iraq. We should, instead, partition The Country Formerly Known as Iraq along those ethnic lines again. While the country is still reeling from its violent recovery from Saddam Hussein, we have the opportunity to draw some wide chalk lines on the map, to shove these people back into ethnic/religious cantons. Provide incentives for people to move themselves into cantons that identify with them.

The canton will issue passports that don't even mention "Iraq" on them, to people who can verify their birth there, through a combination of family members witnessing for each other, and whatever Iraqi official documents can be rounded up. Each canton's passport will have to be unique in size, shape, color, everything to impress on the bearer that he's no longer Iraqi. He's a Baghdadi, or a marsh Arab, or a Kurd, or so forth. Self-erasing temporary passports can be issued to people who can't prove their birth or affiliation with the canton, to help sort out the interlopers from neighboring provocateur countries.

Regulate the hell out of movement of goods and people between these cantons. Allow unfettered telecom and commerce from any one province directly to the rest of the world that speaks the same language and observes the same religious customs, but limit the bandwidth among each other (direct all telecomms from one canton to another through a coalition-controlled portal), until they've settled down.

Build quickly on each province's independence, give it incentive to control its own borders, let it issue its own currency or use a Western one. Westernize it out of sight of its like provinces. Make it a damned-independent canton with a government so close to the governed that merging it with other like provinces would be perceived by the guy in the street as a step backward.

Some of those cantons will be delighted to have budding independence and might need occasional restraint---the Kurds in particular. Some will want to do some stupid things with that independence, such as the Shi'a maybe getting cozy with Iran.

Some of those cantons will remain holdouts of Saddam's loyalists, if not Saddam himself. As the other cantons mellow out and can be managed by coalition partners, US forces can withdraw and concentrate our forces on those holdouts.

Divide and liberate this stretch of land, and quit calling it Iraq altogether.

Sauce for the gander

We've had an official change of heart regarding Rush Limbaugh's pain-med dependence, prompted by Swen's report.

If anyone is bothering to tabulate the blogosphere's sentiments, put me down for Send him up.

Two broken tarsals

Chez Fûz now nurses a Firstborn child who broke two bones in her ankle while playing in the school playground.

She's a trouper about it. She winced and barely slept the night after it happened. Now she hobbles around as if it were only a heavy weight on her foot, barely an inconvenience.

Thank you, I think

TriCare, DoD's servicemember health insurance, is now available to drill-status National Guardsmen and Reservists. It was included in the DoD supplemental appropriations for our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, which President Bush signed into law.

I think the President opposed it, as did SecDef. Barbaloot on the other hand likes the idea.

Fûz is ambivalent. On the one hand, it's very inexpensive insurance at the prices being quoted, for a household that seeks to control costs until I find permanent employment. On the other hand, it further cements the relationship between health care and employment, a shotgun wedding arranged by US tax code.

I was content, Barbaloot somewhat less so, with the private-sector bought-by-my-own-goldurned-money catastrophic health care. The insurer actually checked my health out, asking me about various and sundry conditions before quoting. Barbaloot's reservations concern their refusal to cover one or two conditions, not even quoting a high premium to cover them. Overall, though, it did what we needed it to do, except pay for birthing Tadpole, who wasn't foreseen at the time anyway.

I could not use the fact that I carried my own health care as a bargaining chip with an employer---save money on your health plan and split the difference with me through my salary? Why, that's against the law, Fûz. Even the insurer's application warned me against it.

TriCare, offered as a benefit where I'd pay thirty percent of what the DoD pays for it and they pay the rest, is worth almost all of what I gross as a drill-status Guardsman. It was pushed through by some powerful lobbies, not just those lobbying for the National Guard, but by some members of Congress who are otherwise No Friends of Mine: Senator Patrick Leahy and Representative Diana DeGette, to name two.

Both worked for giving TriCare to the Guard, but are active against my RKBA, in ways that interfere with my ability to train privately to save my own a$$ and those of my team through the application of rifle fire. My AR's are very sensitive and take exception to phrases like "no legitimate sporting purpose" or "weapon of choice of gang-bangers."

Forgive me if I imply any disrespect to them and to anyone else who voted specifically to make me eligible for TriCare when I come off active duty. None was intended. But I can't get very excited about taking up a benefit that almost exceeds the dollar value of my normal peacetime level of service (which level of service I'd like to get back to before I retire, by the way) and in a way that furthers the nationalization of health care. There's got to be something in it for them and their agenda. So I'm grateful, but with serious reservations.

Next time Congress wants to do drill-status Guardsmen a favor, fund a live-fire shooting range, equipped for sidearm, carbine, shotgun and LMG, on every Guard and Reserve facility. Staff it (hire retirees and disabled vets! Another lobby to pander to!) so we can sign in on our own time, sign out a piece and work with it any time from 0500 to 2300. We'll police our own brass and clean the pieces; hell, we'd even buy our own practice ammo from the Gummint, at five-percent over Uncle Sugar's price, to defray range operation costs if necessary.

Possibly some answers

Barbaloot and I have been distracted for some months now, because Middlechild's teacher has raised concerns with us about her behavior in school. Her academic progress is good, but she disrupts class, cannot pay attention, shows affection at inappropriate moments, and becomes absorbed in fantasy play.

Asperger's syndrome? The onset of autism? Dammit, what?

A psychologist has seen her and compared notes with the teacher. Barbaloot's sister independently guessed too. The consensus is sensory integration dysfunction.

Easily treated by an occupational therapist, such as Barbaloot's sister, though there may be an underlying cause we can't see. Federal monies are released to school districts to provide therapy, including a so-called sensory diet. By the end of the school year, the behavior might be resolved and the academic progress will not be at risk. Other kids in her class will no longer be molested.

Ah, the catch. Federal monies are strung with a gamut of meetings, conferences, and paperwork that can take weeks to grind through. To me, this condition sounds like a developmental or even medical one, which schools would be wise to detect, and possibly treat, but it is primarily medical and not educational. The FedGov has too much influence on how medicine is practiced today.

At any rate, we've begun the process and are anxious to learn what we as parents need to do for a bright but out-of-sync child.

More fun than you thought you could have wearing a helmet

A mountain-bike/pistol biathlon of sorts will be conducted by the Wildlife Hunters' Association of Colorado, on 6 December. I've got plans but wish I hadn't. More info forthcoming.

Update: direct from an organizer. Entries accepted up to the start of the event. Awards for the winners, men’s and women’s classes.
Questions? Please call 303-795-9677 and ask for Bill (or leave a message), or e-mail BLLEW(at)RMI.NET
Call anyway; I need a head count. Please arrive at least a half hour before the scheduled start. Assistance with timekeeping and scoring gratefully accepted.

Certificate of Appreciation

After work today, I stopped at the Commissary to pick up, at Barbaloot's direction, our Thanksgiving turkey. Plus cookies for the girls' lunches, 'Murcan cheese and broccoli, large eggs, and so forth. It's easier for me to get home half an hour later than usual bearing groceries than for Barbaloot to drag Boy with her to the King Sooper's, and still pick up the girls from school on time.

The turkey was sixty-eight cents a pound. The cashiers were polite, cordial even. The grocery bagger was careful and made eye contact with me. After I tipped him and walked my own groceries out to the car, the tang of winter air on my nose punctuated a paragraph God had been quietly composing for me all day.

You, Fûz, have the Life of Riley. You are so very lucky.

And I am. I'm jobless, strictly speaking, and in a way that Official Jobless Figures do not capture and probably wouldn't understand. On 28 March 04, I'll be unemployed again and I have no idea what I'll be doing. But here and now, I enjoy what I'm doing and it doesn't drive me to Zantac, I put my kids to bed every night, another kid is on the way, the mortgage is being paid, I can get these thoughts out of my head and record them here without fear of retribution.

I'm grateful. That gratitude must go first to the taxpayers of the United States of America. I recall somewhere the idea proposed by a libertarian gadfly, that anyone receiving a subsidy, service, or other payment from the government should be asked, not required but merely asked, to sign a statement saying he or she was grateful for the benefit he or she received from the nameless hundreds of thousands of people who actually paid the taxes to make it possible.

Since the FedGov is in no particular hurry to start asking for such statements they won't even prepare blank forms to take them, so I hacked one together by myself. Technically, I receive the privileges of Tricare, the Commissary, and Class Six all in consideration for military service rendered, but since I feel lucky and grateful today, I'll express the gratitude anyway.


If you are a recipient of a similar Government-provided charity, feel free to copy/paste this certificate and replace my name with your own, or work up a competing design. Meanwhile Barbaloot and I consider with whom we will share our fortune, and our turkey, this Thanksgiving Day.

Consciousness-raising

My good friend Sandy is devoted to a unique charity. It depends on money, as they all do, but depends much more on pure word of mouth.

Talk to your spouse and to your friends about child organ donation. Think about it now, before the prospect of losing a child is even on the horizon.

A glum week to be sure

if my antelope is the only bright spot in it. Send Alphecca some cheer, see another pic of me and the antelope, and read Jeff's weekly Gun Bias review. Please donate to his nitrocellulose meditation fund too. Turn that frown upside down, Jeff!

Never watch either one being made

Laws and sausages, that is. But Firstborn, Middlechild and I enjoyed the hell out of making them. The girls took turns cranking on the Porkert Number 5 grinder on Saturday afternoon. Here's the lot of them:



After dinner, they did not like the look of the hog casings filling with red goo, and opted to watch an old Maurice Sendak animation instead.

About twelve pounds of sausage resulted, including chorizo, Italian, and Weird Contrived Hickory-smoked with Cranberries.

The right to confront one's accusers, the obligation to confront the accused

DenPost's Diane Carman made sense yesterday.

Her column leads me to one of those posts that in the beginning seems to demand word counts of DenBeste proportions to set forth, but by the time I mull it over and struggle with it to commit it to words, it's over as quickly as marital sex.

Here goes: Bravery is difficult. It sets the mature and the confident and the innocent apart from the unsure. We pay bravery lip service in the abstract and the general, though every one of us has failed it at least once when the concrete and personal need points its gnarled finger to a single one of us. If bravery were easy, everyone would be brave, but it isn't so we aren't. But that is no reason not to insist upon bravery, even from the victim of a horrible crime. That bravery may be the only tool a victim of rape has to get justice for herself.

Anonymity, such as that little piece of it I kid myself that I have at this weblog, is the opposite of bravery. The anonymity of rape shield laws is meant to take away the sting of an embarrassment that the victim likely did not bring upon herself. But the dullness these laws leave in place of that sting does not benefit the victim in the long run, nor other victims struggling with the choice of staying silent versus coming forward, nor other women who know they may someday suffer the same crime.

Regrets for the misspelling.

What we're reading

Middlechild enjoys The Picture of Morty and Ray.

Firstborn is working through The Tin Woodman of Oz (we used to live just down NY 13 from Chittenango, Frank Baum's birthplace). Then she finishes a Harry Potter and promises she'll try The Hobbit.

Boy, well, he enjoys anything read to him.

I'll start The Bride of Texas after I'm done gut-checking myself on Atkins induction. Czechs in the Civil War? Gotta be good.

the pelvic thru-u-u-u-sts, they really drive you insay-ay-ay-ay-ayne

This blog is in urgent need of jpegs, mpegs or written procedures of the MOPP Dance.

It's just a step to the left . . .

Good friends and egg-salad sandwiches

My good friend Daredevil looked me up recently. He's still in the tech industry, living in the Bay Area, and business brought him to Westminster. He called me up to take dinner.

Daredevil and I used to teach seminars together. I was Lewis to his Martin, Martin to his Rowan, Madden to his Gifford, Satchel to his Paige, you get the picture. A room of twenty or so people would sit in a meeting room at a Courtyard by Marriott, or a Doubletree, or whatnot, for three solid days listening to us describe how IEEE 802.7 broadband local area networks operated, or how to shove an entire band of cable TV signals down a wavelength of a singlemode fiber. And they paid for the opportunity.

His girlfriend at the time was becoming jealous of me, we spent so much time together. But hey, no wiry blonde in dire need of having her meds adjusted can compete with golf in Palm Springs on Super Bowl Sunday (it was a ghost town), for example, or golf in Orange, Connecticut on an autumn evening, or freezing our asses off in Hartford, or blackpowder hunting for deer, or a tour of Johnson Space Center, or dropping dollars in the gentlemen's clubs of Houston, Baltimore, Denver, the LAX vicinity, Hartford, et cetera.

We eventually were bitten by the sales engineering bug, and sought positions over there, in the early Nineties. He relocated to take a position with a business unit in Fremont, I stayed in Pennsylvania, and we hardly saw each other. As business those days took off, he followed his career to other companies in the area, and I eventually did too. But we stayed in touch, some times better than at others.

Since telecom started sucking, we've both been battered around, but he's sticking it out in the industry while I've practically forsaken it for Guard-bumming.

Thanks for dinner, Daredevil, and may business bring you to the Front Range again soon.

Frightfully busy

The meat grinder has arrived, and it's built like a Massey-Harris tractor, in the Czech Republic. The obligatory multi-Euro-lingual packaging announces that Germans call this machine a fleischhacker.

The temping job is going very well, and will carry our house well into the new year, after Tadpole is born. I'm now steeping in the culture of Air Force Space Command.

We launched a new blog, targeted towards my AF community, hoping it will catch on so I can unsubscribe from several military email distribution lists. So posting here has been light and may remain so until:

• the antelope is ground to sausage,
• the mudjacking of our front porch has settled and I can caulk the gigantic crack that still runs across it,
• I roll a few hundred rounds of .357 Magnum for another guy in the shop,
• trick-or-treating is over,
• we figure out what to do with the eight pumpkins that dominated our backyard---two are carved for jacks already,
• I finish reading the New Atkins Revolution and count down to Induction,
• it goes on and on.

Beater

is an Argentine Sistema Colt pistol, a licensed copy of the M1911A1 manufactured for their Policia Maritima. I ordered her when a lot were being imported at about $250 each.

She was rusted up, loose, and wobbly. Off I took her to the pistolsmith for cleaning up.



Most of the pistol is the original, except for the springs, the extended safety, beavertail, sights and barrel bushing. The ejection port was relieved and lowered, the hammer bobbed, the barrel link replaced with a longer one that tightens the lockup of barrel to slide. The trigger is lighter. It's beadblasted and Parkerized. It was my carry arm while licensed in Pennsylvania, and before I adopted Biter.

Here's a close-up of the rollmarkings, highlit with discarded loud-yellow nail polish.

Yo! Earthlink! Comcast!

We really really really want a cable modem to get us to Earthlink.

Comcast has the franchise for this area. Comcast used to be AT&T Broadband, who used to be TCI. The cable network here is finally getting upgraded to the point that it will carry digital cable (the reverse path is turned up and aligned so modem upstream signals can get from my house to the headend) so DOCSIS should be supported here any week now.

But I have used Earthlink since 1997. I like it. Barbaloot likes it. I've logged in to it with local numbers in every state I've been to, and one foreign country. I'll need local dialup for travel, in addition to a high-speed connection at home, for the foreseeable future.

I want Earthlink to continue to be my ISP, and I want to reach Earthlink through a cable modem.

Can you two arrange a stock swap or something? Jeebus.

rrrrrreeeeeeuuurrrrrr, Part V and Conclusion

The replacement cooling fan for the video processor arrived promptly (thanks again, Kirk), but I waited to see whether the existing one would become noisy again, since I had flossed some graphite into it. It obliged, about a week later. The grinding resumed without any of the graphite appearing to have been slung around inside the case.

I verified that it was indeed the video card's fan that was noising up again, by opening the case with the G4 still running. Yup, that's the one. OK, button her back up, and . . .

I took a quick look at the back connections, and noticed through the grille that the power supply's fan was not turning. This is the fan I replaced earlier in this educational troubleshooting process.

Hmm. Is it controlled by a thermostat? I shut down and dismantled the case to get the supply out. There's a component on the power supply's circuit board that looks like a big thermistor, and it's in a spot right in front of the fan, and a label on the board said this component was "TH1". Strange, though, I've never seen that fan not spinning. I've never heard it suddenly kick a new fan noise on, nor turn one off, as if any thermostat were controlling the fan.

I took the fan out and ran it with the 12V supply from a Zip drive. It spun.

Then I looked at the modular plug where it takes its power from the circuit board. The socket that receives this plug pokes its two contacts through to lands on the solder side of the board. A tiewrap and two screws were all that held the board in place in its box.

First, do no harm, physicians are warned. Don't make something worse while trying to treat it. When I replaced this fan (without troubling myself to be sure this was the source of the noise), I spliced the plug from the old fan on this one. When seating the plug in the PCB socket, it pushed the leads of the socket through the PCB, and broke the circuit traces on the solder side. No juice to fan, fan no spin. You can see shadows cast by the pads of the circuit traces, dead center of the photo. They're about a millimeter up from the board surface.



The basement is chilly, and we had been running this G4 only for short spells, instead of its usual 24/7, since cleaning out the video chip cooler, so the power supply probably hadn't been at risk of destruction. But this situation could not go on.

I found two suppliers of replacement supplies, one different from the other by a thirty-dollar core charge. Still, at those prices let's try to fix the existing supply.

This is when I remembered that the only soldering iron in the house is a butane-powered underperformer. The USAF taught me how to run a soldering iron, giving me my start in 'lectronics, and how do I preserve this essential skill?

I left the G4 in parts, and stopped in to the Computer Store With Real Geek Girls on my way home from work the next day. A twenty-five watt iron, solder, wick, (iron under capital expenditures) and away we go. Different set of Real Geek Girls too, BTW.

Plan A, an attempt to solder the socket back to some traces on the PCB. Still no juice to the fan. One contact of the socket was too far down into the socket to make contact with the fan's plug. Any more work on this board and I'll be burning a hole through it, and setting off the smoke alarms.

Plan B, restore the original plug-and-socket combination originally supplied with the replacement fan (clever how they do that---both a male and a female 4-pin, that will jack into the power supply harness in parallel with a HD inside). There was enough slack to run the fan's leads out of the case and jack them in with the DVD-ROM up high in the case.

Success. G4 is back to 24/7 operation, all the fans spin. Next project: how to upgrade the Linux box for faster mobo and CPU.

Mmmmmmm . . . speedgoat

Several people warned me that antelope meat, especially that harvested on open prairie, will taste strongly of sage, so much that the locals prefer going after elk. To them, antelope are practically as easy and plentiful as rabbits, neither a challenge nor a good meal. It was an exciting hunt for me, and I'm not readily jaded.

Still I was concerned that I would be the only person chez Fûz who would be at all interested in eating this precious lean meat. My experience with kangaroo was non-peak.

I thawed and marinated a short piece of backstrap in Buffalo's finest, Chiavetta's barbecue marinade, a case of which Barbaloot determinedly ordered through the local King Sooper's.



Middlechild is our resident master carnivore, and Pronounced It Good. Put yourself in my place, see what I've seen. A five-year-old girl turns her blue eyes to you, still chewing, saying "more antelope, please."

I am working up the courage to cook this meat without marinade, just laying bacon over it. The meat is tender, sweet, barely a hint of the smells of the prairie where it fed.

A meat grinder is enroute also, that we may try our hand at chorizo and sweet Italian sausage. Sheep casing surely can be found hereabouts.

Miramus grasshopperella

Middlechild found this in the back yard the other day, after a cold snap. It was sluggish, confused, drawing warmth from my hand.

Driving? Miss Denver: the FAQ

Your head is spinning with the pitfalls and possibilities of Fûz's proposed modification to TREX, and how it might affect you if it were adopted. First, this is a proposal, it is not reality. Don’t worry, it’ll never happen, especially if you think it’s good idea. Second, stop the madness and read the FAQ offered here. We also offer maps for both Northbound and Soutbound traffic and how this proposal would Express it.

Let’s say I'm getting on at Arapahoe and getting off at Belleview. Should I pay a toll?

• You can't even get into the Express HOT lane along the proposed I-25 corridor, except at the Northern or Southern ends.
  
• During high traffic periods, why are you trying to get on an Interstate highway to move 2 exits? You are what we call "local traffic." Local traffic should use what we call "local roads."
  

What if I live inside the 470 beltway but I'm leaving town? Aren’t I really Interstate traffic? How do I get into the HOT lane?
You are local traffic until you’re out of town. Make a beeline on whatever local road serves you to the 470 beltway, or I-70.

Who can use the Express HOT lane?
Anybody. Some pay, some don't.

Who pays a toll to use the Express HOT lane?
During high traffic periods, passenger automobiles with only one person in them, taxis and limos with only one passenger and a driver, and trucks with more than four tires meeting the road, including a trailer. Buses, jitneys, passenger autos with more than one person, taxis and limos with more than two persons, and motorcycles always enter the Express HOT lane for free. Outside of high traffic periods, everybody enters the Express HOT lane for free.
Getting out of the Express HOT lane into a local lane, without driving the whole way through the City of Denver, is tolled during high traffic periods, for all vehicles.

What if I enter the Express HOT lane just before high traffic starts?
You enter for free. If you cross over from Express HOT to local lanes after high traffic begins, you pay.

Who pays a toll to get out of the Express HOT lane into a local lane?
During high traffic periods, every vehicle.

What if I enter the Express HOT lane just before high traffic ends?
You could have waited another few minutes, relieved the rush hour traffic, and saved some money. Listen to the radio or have the traffic authority email the high traffic times to your phone.

What if I don't want to pay the toll, or I can't afford it?
You have several options:

• Go when you want to, but use the congested local traffic lanes, with new vehicles merging on your right at every exit, and Express HOT drivers merging on your left at every third or fourth exit. It's free but worth every penny you paid.
  
• Use E470 or C470 to get to the best local road, or vice versa.
  
• Adjust your driving times so you can use the HOT lane when it's free.
  
• Take a serious look at (gulp) carpooling.
  
• Take a serious look at (gulp) mass transit.

So I'm coming from Albuquerque up I-25. I'm going to Cheyenne. What do I pay, and where?
It depends on when you get here, and how you choose to pass through the Denver area. Assuming it's between 6:30 AM and 8:00 AM on a weekday and you're alone in a passenger car, you have three choices:

• Go straight up I-25, quickly and without dodging local traffic. You pay one toll at the Lone Tree plaza, just North of Exit 191. Stay in the HOT lane until you pass the Boulder Pike plaza and you pay nothing more.
• Go straight up I-25, local lanes, and dodge the local traffic. Count on spending 45 minutes more to do so in lieu of paying the toll.
  
• Take E470, you pay nothing.

Why only a few chances to get from the Express HOT lanes to the local lanes?
Short answer: Because they’re Express lanes. It's what Express lanes do.
Long answer: Much of the danger and hassle of local rush-hour traffic on an Interstate highway comes from mergers and lane changers. The HOV lane that exists today in the TREX stretch of I-25 actually compounds the danger as cars weave in and out and cops try to police it. This proposal limits the impact of high-occupancy and toll vehicles merging with local traffic, by allowing them to do so at only a few distinctly marked places. It also reduces the law enforcement burden---cops will not have to patrol the HOT lane for violators or maneuver in traffic to do so.

Why charge for both getting into and getting out of the express HOT lanes?
We need to discourage through traffic a little because that traffic tends to consist more heavily of trucks that are better off going around town anyway. We also need to discourage local traffic, driven by people who live here and should be familiar with alternate and side routes.

Isn’t this just a 'Lexus lane' scheme, making a separate road available for the rich?
Sure it is. Take your pleasure in screwing the rich, making them pay to pollute less! Take a Lexus, take a Peterbilt truck, take a motorcycle, it doesn’t matter. When does it pollute more: when it’s idling in traffic, or it’s cruising through the DTC at 55 mph? An Express HOT lane lets more vehicles cruise instead of idle.

Any other pollution impact?
By encouraging more through traffic to circumvent the city, this proposal would relocate much pollution out of the city.

How much is the toll?
Just enough to influence your decision of which road to take and when. You pay 'by the axle' to enter, and a flat toll to exit. We’ll study the amount of traffic in the Express HOT lanes and price them to get the most possible use of them at decent highway speeds. That might mean that tolls will vary somewhat with day of the week, month of the year, weather, and so forth.

If the toll varies, how can I budget for it or adjust my work schedule to take advantage of it?
By making tough choices.

Won’t this proposal force more traffic and higher costs on the side roads?
Yes. But it will also collect money that will be shared with the localities to get those side roads repaired and upgraded. Which would you rather do: keep paying insane Federal income taxes and hope that Congress returns enough of it to Colorado for local highway construction where it’s really needed (this is the current system, y’all), or pay tolls and rebuild it as you go, exactly where you need it, with less of the money subject to political shenanigans?

You refer to some "authority" above that would operate this highway. Who are they, what kind of agency or entity would they be?
A non-profit corporation chartered by the State of Colorado, I suppose. I'd ask the Independence Institute.

24w3d

Fetal sonograms can now render in three dimensions. It's spooky, guys. This is what the Tadpole looks like now.

My first speedgoat

Pronghorn antelope, taken North of Rock Springs, Wyoming, by me with a Ruger M77 in 7x57mm at about 200 yards.

Update: The pronghorn fell at about 1800L on Saturday. We started dressing him out right away, so any smell I noticed was that of entrails. I found the exit wound---three of his left ribs shattered at their roots---but no entry wound.

We spent most of Sunday cutting him up and wrapping him for the freezer. That's when I found the entry wound, a neat hole through the right shoulder blade, and destroyed meat on either side of the spine.

Lessons learned:

1. A Kabar knife is too big for taking apart an antelope.
   
2. Have a sharpener nearby too.
   
3. You're going to smell blood and meat on yourself for a while afterward. Hand sanitizer helps but keep it off the meat.
   
4. Range estimation on open prairie like that is tough. This antelope actually gave me time to use a laser rangefinder if I had had one.
   
5. A laser rangefinder could be fit into the capital expenditures budget . . .

"What kind of fool do you take me for?" "First class."

This is the text of an email I received today from Rania_Glornia@geocities.com (probably a forged return) via a RoadRunner server in the Tampa Bay area.

We have just charged your credit card for money laundry service in amount of $234.65 (because you are either child pornography webmaster or deal with dirty money, which require us to layndry them and then send to your checking account).
If you feel this transaction was made by our mistake, please press "No".
If you confirm this transaction, please press "Yes" and fill in the form below.

Enter your credit card number here:

Enter your credit card expiration date:


Well Rania, since I'm paying more than two C-notes, make my layndry extra starch.

Carnival of the Vanities, number fifty-five

Please check out this week's Carnival, hosted at Dancing with Dogs.

Driving? Miss Denver

TREX and E-470 have it all backwards. A beltway is supposed to relieve the downtown of the traffic burden of mainline highways crossing the city. Travelers who want to go through Denver should be encouraged to drive the extra miles, on very nicely built roads with high speed limits, to skip the traffic and the hassle, and even to relocate some of the air pollution away from downtown. Ten bucks of tolls does not constitute encouragement to drive 46 miles instead of 32, especially for heavy trucks whose per-mile and per-minute costs are higher.

So the Fûz Proposal, which is cunning but simple, but cunning, and promotes the Interstate highways as they were intended---regional highways, not local commutes:

• Raise the bucks to pay off E-470 by reserving a High-Occupancy/Toll lane in T-REX. Try express lanes like those for the I-270 spur from the District of Columbia to Frederick, Maryland, just to segregate the local traffic from the big trucks who are mostly passing through. It can be simplex (one way at a time) like the HOV lane up North through the Mousetrap---but Northbound in the morning, Southbound in the evening. It can be toll-free during those times when there's no traffic congestion.
  
• Provide a limited number of places where a car can cross from express to local lanes. Charge a toll at these crossovers, whether the vehicle is highly occupied or not. Some drivers will choose to use the express lanes to penetrate the layers of traffic, then change to local lanes when their exit comes up, instead of suffering the start-stop in local lanes the whole way. For example, pay twenty-five cents to cross to local at Arapahoe to exit at Belleview Ave, instead of using local lanes the whole way from Lincoln Street to Belleview. Charge a toll for any vehicle crossing from express to local lanes, whether the vehicle is highly occupied or not.
  

Instead of E-470's RF toll transponders, how about prepaid cards that bear a large barcode? The traffic authority encrypts the bar code so cards are hard(er) to counterfeit, and sets the tolls low enough so they're not worth counterfeiting.
Privacy geeks can pay cash for the cards to disconnect the driver's identity from gate and time. Flash the card at a reader on the toll gate. The gate flashes back how much value is left on your card for the next gate.

These two incentives will combine to push some local traffic out to E-470, and make any North-South through traveler think twice about going direct through Downtown.

Some through-traffic motorists will spend the extra operating costs, and the extra time, to go around; others will choose to pay the toll to go straight through (the toll booths at the very Northern and Southern ends of the HOT lane will have to be manned, so out-of-towners can buy toll cards, high-occupancy cars are admitted, and local tollers can get their cards recharged). Either way, the long-distance through travelers get to choose.

I'd take a kinder view of professional sports if the Denver Broncos comped the tolls for I-25 through traffic during certain home games. Their advertising budget could handle it.

The backs of the prepaid toll cards are a great advertising space for tow services, DWI public service announcements, jitney services, and so forth.

Local traffic can:

• slug it out on the local lanes of I-25, paying nothing but aggravation and engine hours to weave among each other in slow motion through the Tech Center, or
• they can pay extra to take the HOT lane in to a crossover near their exit, or
• they can pay the extra time and operating costs to use the beltway.

They get 3 options because there are more of these motorists, they tend to be on the roads at about the same times, and their origins and destinations are more numerous. Either way, they get to choose and they can see the consequences of their choices more clearly. No market distortions are hiding the consequences from them.

We can reduce traffic congestion, fuel consumption, and pollution only if the individuals who are creating it have a choice in how to reduce it, and still have lives. Their choices can be informed only by the measurable costs of money and time. Their money and their time, by the way.

Unfortunately, the choices already have been made by our betters, and the highways being built are literally casting those choices in concrete.

If some good come of this, may it be that . . .

We don't recall ever having mentioned Rush Limbaugh before in this weblog. Events compel us.

His alleged criminal painkiller abuse, and the hyprocrisy that would be exposed if the allegations are found true, could demonstrate the falsehood of one of the Right's sacred tenets:

Occasional drug abusers are no better than abject junkies. They can't be ordinary people. They cannot be successful. Drug abusers' faculties, skills, and daily lives will be so disturbed by the drugs, regardless of the level of consumption or dependence, that they cannot function normally. Laws are justified to remove them from society. Businesses are justified in declining to hire people who use drugs because they underproduce, increase the risks of error and accident, and impose costs through increased absenteeism and higher medical burdens.

I don't care what your opinions may be of Rush as a person, or of his philosophy. But you must concede this: his talents as a radio personality are exceptional. He is the best in his field. No amount of money or hype generated by his quarter of the political plane could put him in that position or keep him there long if he didn't possess the talent (that quarter of the political plane is not gifted at hyping anything or anyone in the first place). This talent continues in spite of an alleged very expensive painkiller habit that, according to current (and his own) wisdom, should have reduced him to a pitiable wretch incapable of a top-rated radio program.

I would of course have to be much closer to him personally, to have seen and listened to him regularly over the span of years since before the abuse began, to have noticed any drug-attributable decline. My listening is irregular but frequent, and is influenced more by steel building design and sources of RF interference than by my tastes. I enjoy his program.

Here's Attaboy's take, much like my own:

Unlike what many liberals think about people like me, I am not a lemming following his every word as I flee into the ocean. His commentary forces you to think. Even those who vehemently disagree with everything he says have to agree that just his presence in the marketplace forces them to look hard at what they believe and perceive about everything.

A more regular (but still impartial) listener than myself, if such could be found, might comment on how often he hands his show off to Walter Williams or Roger Hedgecock, or some other guest host, and even then it would be deceptive, on a Democrat Party order of magnitude, to attribute this absenteeism to an oxycontin habit.

If a serious drug habit like this one didn't topple a very visible radio personality from the top of the charts and the top of his own game (an arrest would---the habit in and of itself has not), why should we accept the assertion that occasional drug use leads inevitably to impairment and destruction, compelling intervention by the State? Why should we accept the routine of offering piss to potential employers, to do nothing more dangerous for them than operate spreadsheets and photocopiers?

Let me borrow again from Joe's Attaboy post:

As I would for anyone who has an illness, affliction, or serious personal crisis, I'm going to pray very hard for Rush, his wife, and his family. In spite of one's political and social positions, I don't think anyone deserves to suffer the pain of addiction.

As Rush's callers say, "dittoes."

And before you go:

• Note carefully that nowhere in the preceding post have I advocated utter forgiveness of people who harm others while under the influence of any substance that alters mood, perception, or judgment. Just read the warnings on the label of any bottle of over-the-counter cough medicine, which labels illegal drugs lack because, well, they're illegal.
  
• Note carefully that nowhere in the preceding post have I advocated the use of recreational drugs during certain activities or for members of certain professions or pursuits, such as surgery, military service, handling firearms or operating 10-ton hydraulic presses. In fact, nowhere above have I advocated the use of drugs for recreation, period.
  

Any posts or emails seeking to break through or ignore the rhetorical fences I've strung around these two points will be summarily deleted.

Update: Robert Scheer agrees with my basic assertion that drug addicts may still be able to function competently.

Limbaugh's experience is the best argument against the demonization of all junkies — this one throughout his addiction held a big job and presumably paid a lot in taxes.

Advantage, Fûz. Found via Dustbury.

Maybe better to be carried by six, after all

Walter in Denver spanks the Post for completely missing the point on fully-informed juries.

No comment

Literally. No comments links are appearing under my posts, again. Last time, some rogue code converted a needed angle bracket in the template into the character entity for an angle bracket, causing an html tag to go unclosed. I found it in the template and fixed it.

Can't find anything of the sort this time. Bastidges.

My capitalist daughters

Firstborn has been suggesting for some months now that Barbaloot and I begin to give her an allowance. I don't know how that notion was planted.

I got an allowance when I was a kid, but only when my father suggested that I give up my newspaper route so I could learn to run a bulldozer and backhoe for him. His bid to run a coal strip mine fell through, though, and he had no work for me to do, so out of compassion he offered to give me five bucks a week until I found something else.

In this shanty, we don't pay or give allowances. Barbaloot and I conferred, and agreed that instead, we would pay for the performance of chores. Some days the cats are not fed because Firstborn just doesn't remember, and the cat litter goes way too long between Middlechild's careful cleanings.

We agreed to pay them in the currency of poker chips.

When I got home from drill last weekend, dinner was not quite ready and the girls were bouncing off of the walls. I suggested that we go to a nearby retailer and get said poker chips.

Once in the store, we had to look for the poker chips. Not in the stationery. Not in office supplies. Oh, there's a nice little safe I was considering for Beater, Biter, and Glamdring (more on the sidearms later). What's the price on that? Hmmmm. OK, girls, let's keep looking for poker chips. As I started down the aisle, Middlechild's hand tugged resolutely on mine. "Middlechild, it's time to look for poker chips. Can you come with us, please?"

Firstborn chimed in, eager to get them, since she had already done enough chores that I owed her a pile of chips already.

"No, Dad. Here."

"What?"

"Here, Dad." She was standing right beside where I had been, ogling the safes. She was also standing right in front of a display of playing cards, and poker chips.

You need to understand this: this girl had never seen poker chips before in her 5 years of life. If she had, she might not know what a stack of them in a box looks like. I didn't think she could read that well either, that she could see from the package's markings that here were her poker chips. Somehow she knew that, well, right here they were. Our search was over.

Firstborn is a quick reader too, mind you, and she didn't see them. But introverted Middlechild homed in on them better than I could.

We picked up a package that is probably worth hundreds of litter box cleanings and months of fed cats. At the girls' request, we had to visit the lobster tank at the other end of the store, because they think lobsters are cute and wanted to say hello to them. Then back home.

The family room floor is clear, and 24 hours later it is staying clear. The cats were fed this morning. Firstborn wants to know how to clean toothpaste off of the bathroom countertop. Middlechild needs a broom just her size to sweep under the kitchen table after meals.

Wymmyn in the Service

James Rummel posts on unsatisfactory findings relative to women in the armed services, and goes directly to at least one conclusion I share.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrruuuurrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuurrrrrr, Part IV

Part III is here, follow links to previous posts of same topic.
The customer support email from my video card's maker reports that they do not provide replacement cooling fans for their products. If it were still under warranty, I could send them the complete video card and they'd repair it. Ahhhh, no.

So until I find a fan of the right dimensions, I have slicked the fan up with both BreakFree (liquid teflon) and graphite grease, slipped inside the motor by a length of dental floss.

As the title of the post suggests, the fan is much quieter. Now the problem has entered a new realm: what if it stops making noise completely? Is it is running smoothly or totally fried and letting the graphics processor bake to thermal runaway?

The hunt for a replacement fan continues. I see kits at the Computer Store with Real Geek Girls, which include a gigantic frigging aluminum heatsink that wraps around the whole video card, and a heat pipe for God knows what, which means I'd have to remove the heatsink that's already there and cram half a kilo of metal into that space. This sounds counterproductive to me. The new heatsink would have to be thermally greased to the GPU. A replacement fan just has to blow air across the existing, greased heatsink.

Update: 24 hours later, the G4 sounds like it did just before the basement cleaning that started this whole mess, and the video card maker emailed back saying they can't even recommend a replacement fan as a purchased part. Too bad, because I read the manufacturer's name and part number from this one, found them online, saw drawings and specs for the fan, yada yada. The video card maker could have made a couple of bucks off of me---I probably would even have found it in my repair budget to have it shipped Second Day Air.

My daughters are acquiring the basics of capitalism while those guys are losing them.

I still got it goin' on

My shop was evaluated this weekend on its physical fitness. USAF and ANG have converted to a more holistic measure of fitness, considering body fat, flexibility, pulse after 3 minutes of stepping, push-ups and sit-ups. A Computer Program rolls these measurements together and outputs a single "fitness age" that is indicates whether one is unacceptably "older" than one's age.

My 43 years of wisdom, experience, and regrets inhabit, I am told, a 36-year-old body. Barbaloot is delighted, of course.

Listen to Stryker

Sergeant Stryker posts on our abridged free-speech rights under the UCMJ. Well done.

Message for Cadre

Cadre once posited that the motion pictures Casablanca and Pearl Harbor represent exact opposites. If you want an explanation, you'll have to wait for Cadre to place them here as a comment; that's his content. However, I'll riff off of that line of thought:

A Congressman is the antithesis of a telephone company.

Ask anyone in the abstract: Are members of Congress crooks? They'll answer yes, they are all corrupt, they appropriate and spend too much money, they don't give enough money to those pet projects to which I owe my job or my college tuition. They're tampering with my Social Security, and shoving Bible statues into public places.

They're all crooks, except my Congressman. He or she renders very good service to his or her constituents ("me"). I generally support term limits, but I don't want those term limits to remove my Congressman from office.

Ask anyone in the abstract: Are telephone companies crooks? They'll answer no, except for my phone company. They charge too much for advanced calling features, they're trying to get into long-distance service while keeping other phone companies out of competition with them for the local market, the majority stockholder is a so-and-so with backroom ties to the legislature. They haven't built out enough phone lines to support the new construction in my neighborhood either. It takes them too long to send someone out to fix my phone, and I heard they just laid off some repair people. I'd rather do business with any other phone company than this one, just to have a choice. In fact, I get my cell phone from such-and-such and long distance from whats-its-name. They're great!

RrrRRrrrRRRrrrRrRRrrRRreeeeEEEEEUUUURRRR, Part III

Part I is here. Part II is here.

I rushed home with the new power supply fan, the existing power supply, and a vision . . . a dream of a quietly-operating G4, repaired for less than ten bucks. Barbaloot was going to an event at our church, so she had time to grab burgers for the offspring units and a sandwich for the two of us. I had to wait, and manage the mealtime for offspring units, before I could move the vision to reality.

Two butt splices grafted the original fan's wiring connector to the new fan. In ten minutes the power supply was reassembled, installed, and the rest of the G4 closed and cabled around it. Booted up.

RRREEERRrrrrrruuuuureeerrrrrrrr.

Unprintable expletives were confined to the basement, while the offspring units watched a Kim Possible DVD upstairs.

I let it run and ignored the noise for the next two hours, either pluking around with other software on the noisy machine, or putting offspring units to bed. The machine's meltdown was imminent and inevitable. Barbaloot got home, ate her half of the sandwich, and asked how it went. I cupped my ear toward the basement. She stepped nearer the door and heard the whine.

"We'll just run with it, I guess. It's not a drive, it's not the power supply, it's not the side fan. I'm stumped." So she opened her Netscape and read her email while we pondered how to recover our stuff if the G4 goes over the edge.

Then I did the unprecedented, the bold---I followed the nihil desperandum outside-the-box follow-the-Force,-Luke hunch that has gotten me out of deep serious before. I started feeling the outside of the unit: sides, top, bottom, while Barbaloot worked. The vibration, in sync with the audible whine, was faint on the bottom and the top. Nonexistent on the front. Rear is too crowded with stuff for a vibration to get through. Sides . . . the side where the power supply and the cooling fan are mounted, nothing. The side where the mobo rests, it's there and strong.

So I turned the unit to the side, and opened the unit as it ran. I gently lowered the side to expose the motherboard. I groundstrapped my hand and started feeling around inside. Drives, nothing. CPU heatsink, faint. Motherboard proper, fair to middlin'. Are you sure there's no CPU fan? . . . Yep. No fan there. What other moving part is there inside this pig?

I let my hand rest for a moment on the edge of the rear panel of the unit, which swings out with the mobo side. My right thumb contacted the edge of the . . .


video card.


The component side of this card faces away from you when the unit is open and you look inside. I would never have seen the heatsink with a 38mm fan nested in it. I had to crane my neck around to see the fan. The aliasing of the fan blades, and the label on the hub of the fan, showed that it slowed down and sped up in step with the change in pitch of the grinding noise.

The unprintable expletives were again confined to the basement. "Do you use that mouth to kiss me?" Barbaloot asked.

No amount of blown air would clean it to the point that it would rotate freely under the tip of my finger. Plenty of dust was ejected from its heatsink-cage though. BreakFree quieted it down significantly but I can still hear the speed changes. So after work today, it's off to see DeeDee Who Could Be Cute again.

Lessons learned:

1. Get a dental mirror for the tool kit.
   
2. Get a mechanic's stethoscope for the tool kit too. A tube rolled from a sheet of paper didn't work.
   
3. Somebody really cranked the Torx-head bolts that hold the side panels on this unit. Do they use air tools to assemble computers? Jeebus.
   
   
   
   1. Get a new T10 bit when I go for the replacement fan.
      
   
   
4. Big-a$$ butt connectors don't look quite right inside a computer. Look at some connector kits for those leetle shrouded header affairs.
   
5. Ten bucks is an unrealistically low budget for repair of a 3-year-old computer.
   
   
   
   1. Increase it to $25.
      
   2. The cost of new or additional tools is not counted in the repair budget. Tools go under capital expenditures. Repair budgets in this here shanty are for parts and expendables only.
      
   
   

No Irishman can beat you for dogcatcher this time, Dad! You're a natural!

Let's get this over with right now, so it doesn't come up and bite me in the ass later.

I have behaved badly sometimes. I have done things that were not right which I thought then was playful but now I recognize that I have offended people. And to those people that I have offended, I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize because this is not what I'm trying to do.

There. Didn't hurt. Now you do it.

Babyfood bu|{{a|{e

A Cargill TV ad about the quality of baby food ends with a slo-mo gray spoonful of said product splashing on Mom's smiling face. Some really twisted mind could take that video clip and run with it. Not me, though.

RRReeeerrrrRRRRREEEEEEeeeeerrrrRRRrrr, Part II

Part I is here. Part III is here.

If Apple wants $144.50 for a 4-inch 12-volt fan, they'll want a hell of a lot more for a whole power supply, especially one for a computer that is 3 years old.

So, throwing caution to the wind and sipping Jose Cuervo to stoke my courage, I entered the existing power supply to have a look at the fan. Piece of cake, the case was screwed shut instead of riveted shut, and the fan came out with two Phillips screws. Nothing seemed the matter with it, but who can tell without dropping 12 volts across it and listening to it spin?

Next time I perform surgery on a noisy computer, I'll go to the trouble of checking the suspected component more rigorously. A stack of C cells to spin a fan isn't too much to ask if I'm troubleshooting a part that could cost as much as a whole new computer. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So on my way home from work yesterday (more on that later) I stopped a computer store where they have real geek girls. At the service desk, with the supply in one hand, and the fan from the supply in the other. As soon as I uttered "Power Mac" the guy behind the counter started, as if I had carried in a four-day-old sheep carcass with me. "Why don't you check at the Mac department?"

Riiiiiiggght. A fat lot of good that has done me. I wandered slowly along the power supply aisle. Fans there were, identical to the power supply fan, 8 bucks and up, just the wrong connector on the harness. That can be fixed. DeeDee, A Real Geek Girl Who Could Be Cute asked if I needed help, and I explained the situation. She looked at the power supply's harness and said it looked like an ATX type, but admitted that Macs are different and trying an off-the-shelf ATX supply would be risky. Reader DavidMSC agrees.

The fellow in the Mac department looked at my sheep carcass and said, "We don't handle parts here, you need to see the Service department."

"They suggested I see you first."

An unprintable expression flitted across his face, then he recovered his professional demeanor. "I understand, sir, please check with Service." I ogled a few G5s then headed back.

DeeDee Who Could Be Cute, in a Kathy Najimy kind of way, asked me about my progress while I was pricing open-box specials. I recounted my progress so far, and she offered to work the issue with the Service people for me. Not yet.
"Working the issue with" someone is a particularly Ambitious kind of thing to say. Geeks don't really say that unless they're translating themselves the better to be understood by Ambitious people. So DeeDee Who Could Be Cute may be that dreaded hybrid of Geek and Ambitious, the Sales Engineer. More on the comparison between Geek and Ambitious below.

Second trip to the Service counter. Different guy. "Why don't you check with the Mac department?"

"Negative. Already did that. They sent me back here," I replied with even voice, clenched teeth, and curled lips. He retreated, asked for the supply and walked it back to where the controlled-access geeks are kept. Moments later he came back with the same cautions. "Looks like an ATX, but Macs are different. I can't advise you to do it." Fair enough.

I stuck to the present game plan of buying a replacement fan. DeeDee Who Could Be Cute checked me out and I was on my way with a seven-dollar fan.

Lessons learned:

1. Macs are different.
   
2. It was unwise for Apple to shut down its program to license clones. They could have learned to make their computers, and their parts, less expensively. Off-the-shelf parts would have given them higher profit margins in the near term, or a larger market share, or both. They only partially learned that lesson, witness IDE drives and USB peripherals, and arguably BSD Unix.
   
3. The personal computer is still the most poorly supported consumer product in history.
   
   
   
   1. Who cares? Computers are now priced to the point that it makes more sense to replace them than service them.
      
   2. Macs are different, in this respect, but not by much.
      
   
   
4. The geek will not inherit the Earth, contrary to underground geek prophecy.
   
   
   1. The ambitious already own the Earth. None is left to be inherited.
      
   2. The ambitious are not inclined to share any more of the Earth than they absolutely have to.
   
   
5. The ambitious reproduce quickly enough (remember, they're ambitious) to rule out any likelihood that they will die out, allowing the geek a chance to inherit the Earth.
   
   
   
   1. Geeks do not. Remember, they're geeks.
      
   
   
6. But the ambitious will still need geeks to run things for them. In consideration for this service, they are willing to share some of the Earth with the geek.
   
   1. As the world becomes more complex, the dependence of ambitious on geek will intensify. More geeks will be needed to keep things running at a level the ambitious expect.
      
   
   
7. The ambitious will inherit Mars too, because, well, they're ambitious. They might not get there first, but they'll plant the flag and get their picture taken with it.
   
   
   
   1. Inhabiting Mars involves even greater complexity than inhabiting Earth, so even more geeks per capita will be needed to run things there than here.
      
      1. A geek will be operating the camera, another will be transmitting the image back to Earth, and so on.
         
      
      
   
   
8. If you're a geek, accommodate yourself with the fact that you will not inherit the Earth.
   
   
   
   1. Unless you get ambitious and start reproducing.
      
   
   

Ten seconds on high, or until just before the marshmallow explodes

The microwave smore.

rrrrrrEEEEERRRREEERRuuurrrrrrrrEEErrrrrrEEEeeeeerrrrrreerr

Daughter-units carefully built the case this past weekend that I should clean out the cubbyhole beneath the basement steps, so they could enjoy a Harry-Potter-style playspace. I accepted this value proposition, cleared and restacked all of the junk in the space, and sorted through many papers that had accumulated since the move from Leatherstocking Country to the Front Range. The dust raised in clearing this space out unfortunately settled inside our always-on PowerMac G4.

It now sounds like an elevator, grinding up and down with varying pitch and volume but overall sounding not well. After some browsing and some redneck troubleshooting, I have cleared the cooling fan and the hard drives, and figure it's the fan in the power supply. I'll heed the warnings this time and not enter the supply, unless I get very desperate.

Fortunately also, Apple's support pages show how to disassemble this model and replace the power supply, if I can come up with one. So it's off to some computer boneyard or other to find one, or a close-enough form/fit/function replacement.

This topic continues here.

Helplessness is learned

An animal can be taught to be helpless, in fact it can become helpless in no other way. No creature is born with a sense that it cannot do for itself. If a creature is helpless it necessarily follows that some other creature consciously taught helplessness to it.

Wisdom from Aragorn

If simple folk are free from care and fear, simple they will be, and we must keep secret to keep them so.

Nothing good happened in the Seventies? Utter bullshit

The Fat Guy laments:

Sometimes, I just want to retreat into a little hole and never listen to anything new again, because there's already so much greatness out there that I'll never get to. It's overwhelming, really.

Let's start with Dark Side of the Moon, shall we?

The most miserable part of the Seventies was my adolescence and teenhood. But I'm not the one on trial here. Gimme a piece of that custard pie.

A policy, and a request

We have always left comments at the posts of other blogs, when we post something on that blog here at WUTT! It is both shameless traffic promotion, and a feeble attempt to strike up a new meme with other bloggers.

We ask you to do the same. If you post something on your blog, in reference to a post here, please leave a comment on the post here. Unlike many other bloggers, I do not blog from my day job. Uncle Sugar gets huffy and uses terms like "fraud, waste and abuse" and "Uniform Code of Military Justice" and so on. Between that and putting children to bed, I don't check my referral log often enough to see the waves of excited readers you send to me.

Please place a comment here, with the permanent URL of your post if possible.

There's that reset button again and here we sit without opposable thumbs

Publicola discusses Federal versus state powers, and what the Feds can demand of a state's constitution. You must go.

I am not a number, I am a free man!

Dustbury remarks on a proposal to classify blogs by the Dewey Decimal System. No blog, even a dude, your blog, like, sucks one like ours, can be captured or classified by a single number.

Knowledge springs forth at the intersection of two or more topics. I write about Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, the Stelzer motor, copyright infringement, and telemarketing, as well as shooting. What number would I receive from Central Weblog Classification Authority? A series of DDS? How about a product of them? Or a mean and a standard deviation calculated from them? Naaah.

Each post needs its own classification, in fact it needs at least two. We've admired (but regarded as somewhat anal) the categories that many other bloggers use to classify their many posts. Only recently have I decided that we can begin to do the same at WUTT!

Note that we don't use Movable Type here. Some of the enhancements made to Blogger will make categories possible, though we'll be using NZBear's WMDI meta tags embedded in the post template to do it, and they will not be tallied or accessed through a link in the blog template. It will not naturally occur to anyone looking for ideas on powered armor to say, "Dammit, all I need to do is go to Fûz's weblog! He's got a category of posts on that very subject!"

Don't look for Dewey Decimals any time soon, though, I can barely get through my own blogroll once a week, so have no time to look up each topic and post a decimal category for it.