Month: October 2009

911 is a joke – again

/ hsoi

Reading this article, all I could think of was the Public Enemy song, “911 Is A Joke”

GAITHERSBURG, Md. – A Montgomery County woman is demanding answers about a delayed response to a 911 call she placed from her home. She told FOX 5 she woke up at 5:49 a.m. to find her home trashed and burglarized, and she called 911—but help didn’t arrive until 7:09 a.m.

80 minutes from call to arrival.

[Captain Paul] Starks says an officer was finally dispatched at 6:54 a.m.– more than hour after the initial call.

65 minutes before an officer was even dispatched. 15 minutes from dispatch to arrival on scene.

Granted, this is likely a rare occurrence — but rare means it still happens. When it’s your life on the line, do you want to be that statistical anomaly?

I’m not saying to not call 911 when you need them; you still should. What I am saying is you should not rely on them to save and protect you. They just can’t.

Leslie Cochran in critical condition

/ hsoi

Leslie Cochran is Austin’s most famous homeless person. If you know who Leslie is, you’ll know why. He certainly does his part to Keep Austin Weird.

It’s being reported that Leslie is in the hospital in critical condition. Reports here, here, here. Looks like he received a blow to the head, found unresponsive. The really odd thing is, this happened 10 days ago… why is this only hitting the media now?

I recall the first time I saw Leslie. Moving to Austin. Got a full U-Haul, we’re driving into town to our apartment. We pass this Albertson’s grocery store and see this ramshackle cart outside on the sidewalk and some person holding up a sign in protest of Albertson’s. And we see… it’s a grizzled man wearing a bikini.

Welcome to Austin.

And so that was our introduction to Leslie. First day in Austin and there he is, all leather-skinned and bikini-clad. I never actually shook the man’s hand, but I’ve seen him on and off throughout the city, mostly downtown. Always an interesting guy.

I hope he’ll be OK.

Updated: New story. Sounds like Leslie will live but likely in some sort of assisted facility for the rest of his life. It’s sad to hear, since it’s not really the way he chose to live. I hope all works out OK for him and his family.

Updated 2: Another story. Sounds like he had a brain aneurism rupture, so likely the blow to the head may have been when he fell. Reports however are mixed. That one story says he’s pretty much brain dead and that’s that. Other stories are saying he’s out of ICU, improving, will survive but assisted. Of course, the two stories aren’t totally irreconcilable against each other. We’ll just have to wait and see what else comes to light.

Shiny is the best of all

/ hsoi

Texas. Bigger is better, right? I recall when I first came to Texas being told that yes that’s true, but shiny is the best of all. 🙂

Now with the garage in order and having wired a few heavy-duty extension cords around so I could have electricity where I need it, I figured what the heck…. I took some of the dirty brass and threw it into the case tumbler. I’m not reloading yet, but hey… I could set things up, I have electricity by the table… why the heck not?

Gosh… all that .308 brass is sure shiny and puuuuuuuuuuuty. 🙂

foo.c is supposed to come down to help me get it all squared away. Just a matter of finding time at this point. Schedule’s a bit full. Soon.

Changing attitudes on open carry

/ hsoi / 15 Comments

Robb Allen goes off about open carry… the catalyst for the rant being “one of our own.”

On the subject of open carry, I’m still undecided. I see no reason we shouldn’t be allowed to do such a thing. Open carry (at least of handguns) isn’t allowed in Texas (of all places!), so it’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about. Even if I could open carry here, I’m not sure I’d do it. Why? In a lot of respects, the hassle. I really don’t need to have my life and time spent dealing with people freaking out over me carrying a gun. But on the same token I can see that unless people see guns all the time, they’ll never get used to it; in fact, the less they see, the more the norm becomes to not see guns and the sight of a gun will freak people out.

I think back to some months ago. I was at Cabela’s. I was standing in line in their food court area to get something to eat. I saw a gentleman get in line. I noticed he was carrying a 1911 in a beautiful leather holster on his hip. Everything was out in the open. I had no idea what this gentleman was about. He didn’t have a uniform on; he was wearing a cowboy hat, crisp button down shirt, blue jeans. I didn’t see any other things in his belt, such as a badge. Nothing looked like law enforcement, but he was open carrying. And no one flinched. Well, I flinched… only because I was admiring the leatherwork and trying to steal more looks at the gun itself. 🙂  But then as well, I was also at Cabela’s, likely a place where the folks there aren’t going to flinch at the sight of a gun. So who knows. Maybe people won’t flinch and the notion of hassle is all in my head.

For me, I’ve been changing my clothing a bit. Due to that, I could see myself a little more open to open carry. In fact, lately as I’m around the house the carry gun is exposed. But then someone knocks on the door, or I need to run trash or recycling out to the cans, or want to put some birdseed out for the ducks, or whatever… and before I go out I have to put a shirt over. Being able to just step outside for 30 seconds would be nice. And so, to not be able to do it is a hassle.

Frankly, people in this country seem to like the notion of choice. So in the end, I’d like to have choice: to choose to open carry or not. The only way to do that is to stop prohibiting it. Then to open carry or not is your choice… and isn’t choice a wonderful thing?

Secure in our illusions

/ hsoi

Robb Allen makes a point about “security theater”:

The problem isn’t that weapons can be easily brought in and out of theme parks (they are all the time), the problem lies with people accepting the stick in the backpack as ‘security’. People think that’s all it takes to protect them and their own and that kind of mindset spills over into the rest of our lives. We continue to accept these intrusions into our privacy that are nothing more than an illusion. Again, remind me how using a dowel to poke through a diaper bag prevents Thomas the Thug from carrying a 9 into the park?

I say that these types of false securities harm us more than help by lulling the populace into a false sense of safety. Because people allow themselves to be fooled that they’re “safe”, they’re less likely to look after themselves. Then, when all hell breaks loose, they look for someone else to blame then cry for more illusions from the government so that they don’t have to face reality.

So true. But this is how we are in America these days… we want someone else to worry about all the “hard things” because we have more important things to concern ourselves with, like what’s on TV tonight, who to vote for on American Idol, Michael Jackson, getting my “Obama money” (yeah, but where does it come from?), someone else paying for my care and well-being, and so on.

*sigh*

I need to stop else I’m going to get all ranty.

Obviously a terrorist

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Zachary Christie. He’s obviously a terrorist.

How do I know this?

Why, he ran afoul of the Newark, Delaware school district’s zero tolerance policy.

What did he do?

He brought a utensil to school.

You see, 6 year old Zachary just joined the Cub Scouts. He received a folding utensil that can be used as a knife, fork, and spoon. He was so excited at receiving it, he wanted to use it to eat his school lunch.

Obviously a terrorist. Spoons… soon we won’t be able to take those on airplanes either.

As the result of this, the boy faces 45 days in the district’s reform school.

Obviously a troublemaker. Thank God those school officials acted now. Who knows what could have happened if this sort of behavior went unchecked. I mean, the boy takes karate… obviously demonstration of violent tendencies. Then he joins the Cub Scouts, with all their uniforms and handshakes and oaths, learning about camping and the outdoors, maybe even how to shoot a BB gun… what sort of paramilitary training is this?!?! I’ll say it again, thank God for those school officials.

So, what is the mother doing? Homeschooling him, at least while this whole ridiculousness is going on.

Frankly, I hope Mom makes it a permanent setup. Zero-tolerance for public school lunacy, I say.

But you know, easier to hide behind stupid policies that don’t work (in fact, they tend to make things worse) than use your brain. Wither education.

Three holsters compared

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

There are three holsters that are frequently recommended for IWB carry: CrossBreed SuperTuck Deluxe, Comp-Tac Minotaur MTAC, and Tucker Gun Leather’s The Answer. The thing about these three holsters is they are all of basically the same design, but of course have their differences. When you search t3h int3rw3bz for information or comparisons on these three designs, often you don’t get a complete enough picture: the poster owns one of the holsters and loves it or maybe they owned two of them.

Foo.c happens to be one of the few people that have owned all three of the holsters, and he provides his review and comparison of them.

Me? I love my MTAC, but I admit to not owning the other two. SuperTuck always seemed to be “no frills” which includes things like a lack of adjustability. Granted once you get the holster set for your body you’re unlikely to adjust it, but the lack of adjustment assumes that everyone is built the same and wears in the same way. The Answer always seemed to be “all the frills” which isn’t bad either, but it seemed like paying a lot more for little details that I didn’t need. That said, Tucker does some gorgeous leatherwork.

Productive

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

I’ve been fairly quiet today since I’ve been away from the computer most of the day.

The garage has been bugging me lately. Junk has been piling up, hard to get around, and I can’t do things in there. Biggest thing? All that reloading equipment from exodus still sitting there, unused. It’s been getting to me. I took the Speer Reloading manual into the house a few weeks ago and have been reading it. And I think with hunting season upon me I have lofty dreams of my own hunting load. So… before I went to bed last night I decided I was going to revamp the garage.

Off to Home Depot. Buying wood screws, brackets, wood, sundry other things. I also picked up a new Makita cordless drill and circular saw. Some years ago I had a Porter-Cable cordless drill but when it died a couple years back and I couldn’t get replacement batteries I opted to get a corded drill. I made the wrong decision to save a little money and the drill I got lacked important things like a brake and a clutch. So while I was happy with the corded drill the rest of the drill sucked. So the Makita was a great purchase and is very cool, but the battery didn’t seem to last very long. Supposedly it’s a fast recharge tho, but when I put the battery on the charger it flashed the “bad battery” lights at me. Hrm. Not good. I’ll contact Makita in the morning. Never owned a circular saw, but it’s one of those things that the past some whiles I’ve had enough times when it would have been nice if I had one (always managed to get by), so I figured now was as good a time as any to finally buy one.

My ceilings are high so I put the shelves up high all around the perimeter of the garage interior. Just simple brackets, plywood, and wood screws. I was then able to store all the boxes of holiday decorations, coolers, and various other things up high. Threw away a bunch of crap, rearranged a bunch of stuff, and then I was able to give the reloading table a proper home. Ahhhh… 🙂

The garage looks good. Motorcycle looks happy in there (tho it’d look happier out on the road of course). There’s room to move, better organization, and again… a place to reload. That’s the important thing. 🙂