Inflation

 The legacy news, T.V., radio, print, etc, reports the state of the economy monthly, frequently with a caveat like "Ignoring the volatile food and energy sectors..." which means that if you don't have to eat or drive to work, you're not getting hurt. As much.

Bloomberg is reporting that 3 years of Bidenomics has upped the cost of living by an average of 20%:

Bloomberg reported the goods and services price increases:

• Ground beef costs $5.23 on average, up from $3.89 in January 2020.
• Coffee is up some $2 a pound. Fruits and vegetables are about 14 percent higher.
• Electric bills spiked 25 percent since January 2020.
• Natural gas is up 29 percent since January 2020.
• Car insurance is up 33 percent since 2020.
• Hotel prices are up 15 percent since 2020.
• Grocery and electricity prices are both up 25 percent since January 2020.
• Used car prices have climbed 35 percent since 2020.
• Auto insurance is up 33 percent, and rents are up roughly 20 percent since 2020.

Another way of looking at this is to note that the purchasing power of the dollar has gone down about 14%. I bet you haven't gotten 14% in pay increases in the last 3 years, now have you.

Covid: Are You Sick?

 The problem with the latest variant is that it's frequently difficult to tell if you're actually sick. According to this article in the Mirror, you need to be on the lookout for the following symptoms:

The common signs of Omicron according to the ZOE Covid study are :

• Dry/scratchy throat

• Runny nose

• Sneezing

• Mild muscle aches

• Fatigue

Other reported signs of the variant have been claimed to include congestion, brain fog, skin rashes, conjunctivitis, nausea or vomiting, with some people also experiencing sleep paralysis and night sweats. Most recently, a Berlin hospital revealed that fainting spells could be a sign of the virus as well.

There are also certain symptoms which require urgent medical attention. The CDC asked people to keep an eye out for pale, grey or blue-coloured skin, lips or nail beds, which could indicate worryingly low levels of oxygen in the blood.

In case any of you haven't noticed, it's currently the beginning of winter, which around here is characterized by cold weather, snow shoveling, and very low humidity. Between the temperature, the shoveling, and the humidity, it's easy to develop most, if not all of the above symptoms. The obvious cure, is to hie thee to a warmer, more humid location. Fiji comes to mind. Just as nice as Vera Cruz, but not controlled by drug cartels. 

If you have symptoms described in that last paragraph, you're probably already dead, so don't take them too seriously.

I still hold out hope that a cartel of billionaires will band together and buy a Caribbian island nation, and run it like old Hong Kong as a bastion of capitalism. I'd move there in a heartbeat.

BOR Anniversary

 From the RKBA newsletter I get:

Today in History: In 1787, the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia approves the constitution for the United States of America. (Note that the Bill of Rights appears as the first ten amendments, finalized on September 25, 1789 and ratified on December 15, 1791. The Anti-Federalists demanded the subsequent addition of a bill of rights as a condition for ratification of the initial constitution. The oft forgotten Ninth Amendment – The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people – was intended to counter the disingenuous Federalist argument that the creation of a federal bill of rights would imply that Congress had the power to infringe any rights not specifically enumerated therein.)

-- 
Stephen P. Wenger, W2MRA

My comment:

The argument is hardly disingenuous; An entire political party is based on the supposition that the words “but” and “except” are implied at the end of each amendment, and that limitations may be applies freely and without limit if even the flimsiest excuse can be manufactured.

Treat the BOR like it's a bill of privileges', and people start getting nervous. Let select groups riot without consequences, and they start becoming rooftop Koreans.  Here's a piece from an ammo supplier on how this has been affecting their sales. It's been really good to be an ammo supplier, provided of course, you have some ammo to sell. A cagy Taliban could find a few dozen pallets of 5.56 and 9mm and sell the stuff back to dealers in the U.S. for enough to retire comfortably on.

Abolishing The 1st Amendment

 You do this like you abolish everything else: A little bit at a time. Someone burns down downtown in support of your party, you call for abolition of the police. If someone visits the capitol in support of the opposition party, you throw them in solitary until they agree to cop to something you can give them extra time for. If the people picked up, the day after the demonstration, turn out to be operatives from your party, you drop any charges and quietly send them home.

A few here, a few there, make a big deal out of the ones hardest to identify with, and the rest will fall in line. The Chinese are a bit ahead of us here. If you criticize the Emperor, or become more popular than him, you get picked up and held until you are ready to publicly acknowledge his superiority. If you don't or can't, you stay disappeared. A generous donation to the Emperors piggy bank probably doesn't hurt either.

/s/ Let me state here that President Biden was fairly elected by 85 million citizens, all of whom actually exist and are not dead, who recognized that Mr. Biden was the best and brightest the country has to offer, and that his running mate is eminently qualified to step in and manage things should this ever become necessary. /s/

May NICS Checks - Still Ahead Of The Curve

 After the 2020 riot-induced surge in gun sales, you'd thing it would take an actual outbreak of civil unrest to top those numbers. You'd almost be right. The Marxists got their people into office, and have throttled back on the rioting, ecept in Portland and Minneapolis, of course, and the rush on guns has dropped off a bit. I, personally, wonder if some of the drop off is due to people recognizing that while you can still buy a gun, finding ammo is at best difficult and expensive, and at worst, impossible.

Anyway, here's the latest:

Still ahead of 2020 if only narrowly. Rumor has it that ammo and components may become generally available in 2 years or so.

Restrictions On Getting To Work

 If the Democrats really wanted us to work for a living, you'd think they'd make it easier to do, but no. Gov Polis is proposing restrictions on the number of people at larger worksites that would be permitted to arrive in single occupancy vehicles. 

CDPHE is essentially farming out to large companies enforcement of something it cannot do on its own; tell people they can’t drive their own cars to work.  

Forcing companies to come up with a plan that meets the standards set by CDPHE burdens employers with making employees obey, says McConnell. This could be as simple as saying “carpool or take the bus or get fired” if the costs of compliance are higher than those of finding more compliant employees. 

I seem to have picked a really good time to quit working (retire). I'm also curious, as a motorcycle rider, how many passengers I would have been expected to bring along on my motorbike in order to qualify as a High Occupancy Vehicle under the proposed rules.  

Oh yes, and all this privatized tyranny is being imposed to fight the bogeyman of Global Warming by cutting Colorados carbon footprint by the amount produced by one Chinese coal fired power plant in one day.

The Future Of Transportation - Elio Re-Invented

 

I'm completely unsurprised to see this, a variation on the Elio 3-wheeler only electrified. Adding the electric package is a coming thing among the amateur car builders. In this case the manufacturer has taken the Elio concept of a fully enclosed 3-wheeler with 2-in-front configuration and tandem seating, and electrified it.

https://www.arcimoto.com/fuv

The big differences are that 1. this one is the very trendy electric, and 2. It's actually in production. Priced at $17K it's not nearly as cheap as the Elio promised, but is probably more realistically priced considering the not inconsequential inflation that has taken place since Elio rolled out its first prototype.

Leaving off the side doors probably keeps the price down and makes sense in a tropical environment like Eugine OR. I could see some gullwing doors in this vehicles future which would make it a real, all weather vehicle. The top on this one is plexiglass and a half side cover is available on the delivery version. 

They promise a top speed of 75 and a range of (up to) 120 miles in town. I wonder what a used one costs, and how hard would it be to convert to a gasoline engine, either small car or motorcycle? Top speed then would be 110 and range essentially unlimited.

UPDATE: A little digging reveals that enclosure is an option. It's a gullwing, and is seemingly available on one side only. Or I could be wrong, both sides could be opening, just not at the same time.

Todays Weather

 Weather Underground is telling me it's mighty cold outside this morning:

-40 and feels like -40 so at least the wind chill isn't too bad. 

It's currently 11:40 AM and my outdoor thermometer is telling me it's +25 which I'm inclined to believe. Still. the screen cap was just too good not to post. 

Daily Grind

 So it's 18 degrees out with 2" of snow on the ground and my trusty snow blower has decided it doesn't want to start. I'm supposed to go get a Covid test today so the doctors can laser my colon Friday so I need to get out. OK no big deal. Just would have been nicer with the blower working.

I got a High Tower Armory bullpup stock for the Hi Point back in January and installed it. From reading the reviews, I seem to be the only person in the country having troubles with it so there's that. Andy Wentzel at HTA has been very helpful to me on this.  I made some minor tweaks to it this month which seem to have fixed the problems, and took it to a club IDPA match. 

Everything worked fine. The only problems were from me needing to adjust to the new balance and functions. Safety and mag release are in new places, the mag release needs to be padded to protect my amputated finger or I need to learn to use a different finger. Either way the process is smoother. Having learned to point shoot the stock Hi Point I now find that the same muscle memory puts the point of impact significantly higher with the bullpup. Need to work on that.

Gun shoots fine, left hand or right, but the red dot is a bit lower on the bullpup so getting on target takes a bit longer. 

Daughter got married Saturday and now I'm a step-grandpa in a vastly expanded family.

Reloading Press

 A friend of mine had 2 of these things in his shop when he moved but had never seen them used, nor any idea what they were for. He figured they had to be good for something and guessed that I might think of something so he gave me one. 

It's all pneumatic and came with no tooling at all. It indexes through 8 stations and can be made to stop accurately so I thought I might try automating my reloading press. So far I've made 8 shell holders, the ring which will hold the tooling, and a frame to hold it all together. Shells are loaded at the 5 o'clock position, decapped at 6 o'clock where the tall tower is mounted, primed at 7, inspected for primer at 9, etc. 

This is proving to be a non-trivial project so don't hold your breath waiting for video of shells falling like rain at the 3 O'clock position. The primer inspection will be just a poke with a wire which will trigger a light if it goes too far up so that should be easy. All else is done from the top and might be done by mounting the tools on ball screws. I'm thinking it will be run from an Arduino controller so I can include emergency stops if one of the inspections fails or whatever

As I've warned you before, prepare for retirement by starting an unending project so you'll have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and your immortality is virtually assured. If you don't, you'll be dead in 6 months.

What Governments Are For

 Governments are formed by people primarily to do jobs that need to be done, but which have no deliverable product that can be readily sold to show a profit*. National defense for example, paving and maintaining roads, and police work. One has an expectation , in that last example, that the police will, if not eliminate crime, at least minimize it by their presence. Lately we've been getting a dose of what happens in their absence as municipal governments, for one reason or another, refuse to act to stop increasingly violent rioting and looting.

Now in Kenosha, they may have gotten what they wanted in the form of a scapegoat. Not for the looting, which they still seem to approve of, but someone to punish for acting where the government has refused. 

It's still early and the fog of war is still quite thick, but when rioters run amok and the municipal government refuses to stop them, why should anyone be surprised when the citizens step in to deal with the problem? 

*This is probably why government work is so notoriously shoddy. If you deliver a mediocre product, what would the people do, farm the work out to an adjacent government? True, the obvious solution is to vote the incompetent bums out, but how often does that happen? Governments are quite good at only one thing, and that is self-perpetuation.

Lockdown - Day 735

I may have lost count of the days, but I can assure you that all 35 pneumatic tires here are inflated to their recommended pressures. I am also ready to comply with the governors "All masks, all the time" regulations:

I still need to add a stiffener to the stovepipe of the hat.

The first IDPA match since January will be this weekend. I added some upgrades to my gun, but haven't been able to test them, everything being closed. Oh well, I've probably forgotten how to shoot anyway, so it won't make much difference. I did build a couple of shooters in my spare time:

 These are made from 5/8-11 fasteners and are chambered for .22 cal air gun pellets. Motive power is a large pistol primer. Seems a friend of mine had some that got wet and he doesn't trust them any more. So far I've only had one fail to fire.

That white block is the sear. You pull the firing pin back, and insert it between the knob and the breech plug. A little tug, and BAM! The black part of the barrel is a piece of PVC pipe that limits how far you can screw the barrel into the coupling nut. It has a #1 hole drilled through it which is used to swage the pellet to the barrel size so you can load it from the front. I need to fire this through my chrony  since I know you will all be wanting to know the power factor this thing makes.

Plodding Into The 21st Century

In the course of human events here at casa Billll, the kids decided that the wife's TV was in need of an upgrade. Not only the TV, but the furniture it sat on, which would have been too small for the new TV they were envisioning. They also figured that they could include us on future SILs family plan which would expand the available list of time wasters available.

The kids duly took the Wife out shopping to a furniture store where FSIL had some favors waiting and came back with a TV big enough to be watched from across the street. Call me an old fogy, but as a child, the TV was generally demonized as some kind of plot to produce fat, brain dead, kids who would be easy pickings for the onrushing hordes who were probably commies, and wanted our country and our TVs. Thus the admonition to “Go Play” with the word “outdoors” unspoken but clearly understood. The flickering screen was not called an entertainment center, but pretty universally “boob tube.” Oh yes, and back then that referred to the watchers rather than the programming.

They also noted that Wifey's phone was woefully out of date, and arranged to get her a new one. This seems to include new icons, new buttons, the discontinuation of tapping the icons, replaced by swiping them, and several other updates to the point that when the living room furniture had been rearranged to accommodate the new TV, very little in the way of operational training had been imparted. There also seemed to be no operating manual included. All updates were presupposed to be intuitive. Eventually we noticed that the owner needed to set up the phone so it would actually ring when called, something that was not automatically included. There is also some clever combination of swipes required just to answer a call, assuming you knew one was coming in. My daughter spent about 2 hours training d”wife on the phone, and left muttering that training time would come out of the time she would otherwise have spent finding us a nice nursing home. Also the remaining time before she started getting us installed in one.

Anyway, the old TV holder, some 5 ft wide, six feet tall, and 18 inches deep, and the bookshelf next to it had, over the years, become the resting place of every piece of detritus to float through the living room, and when it was replaced with a piece from the basement, 6-1/2 feet wide and 2 feet high, all the detritus got moved to the floor. Admittedly most of it should have been moved to a dumpster, but one was not immediately available and setup time was a-wastin'. The piece from the basement is ½ of a stackable assembly which served the same function as the now removed piece from upstairs, so it too was covered with “stuff” which now resides on the floor down there. Most of the downstairs stuff is of the same status as the upstairs stuff so the required dumpster is getting larger and more trips up and down the stairs are called for.

The new TV being installed, and the cables plugged in, it seemed that it wasn't giving us all the channels we had before. Much fussbudgeting and a visit from a technician later, it seems that although the TV was “smart” and “HD”, HD input was not asked for in the contract, so is not available. Cables from the box to the set must be the old RCA type and not the HDMI that came with the box upgrade. You would think that a “smart” TV would notice little stuff like this and put up a warning on the screen: “Yo! Dummies! Upgrade your contract or use the other cable set!” It also seems that due to better speakers, when the sound is good enough to be heard in the living room, it can also be heard anywhere in the house. I suggested some big styrofoam Corinthian columns, one on each side of the TV to deflect the sound away from the hallway, but this got vetoed. Even when I suggested a Temple frontage across the top with friezes and statuary of gods on top, say, Cthulhu and Aphrodite. Some people have no appreciation for the classics. All that's left now is the cleanup so I'm looking for a front loader that will fit through the doors.

TEOTWAWKI - Weather

Fall and spring are when mother nature takes the switch between summer and winter and bangs it up and down a few times just to keep us on our toes. Wednesdays high is predicted at 79, Thursdays high is to be 32.

The WU report gets worse and worse every time I check it. 3 days ago it called for a trace of snow overnight. 2 days ago it called for snow overnight, yesterday it said 2-4 inches, this morning it's calling for 3-6. None of the trees have lost significant leaves so I'm going to be frantically trimming my plums today and tomorrow and shutting off the sprinklers. 32 degrees is pretty mild so 3-6 inches would be heavy, wet, stuff, the sort that generates heart attacks in people trying to shovel it.


I'm thinking widespread power outages as limbs come down, food shortages in the markets as people rush to stock up the day before (Wednesday) and uncountable traffic accidents on Thursday as people discover that prepping for global warming by leaving their summer tires on until December isn't working out well.

Not to be spreading panic or anything you understand.

The Economy - Didja Notice?

On election day, the Dow stood at 26,180 and change. Today, as of 10:03 EST, it's at 23,900, a loss of 2880 points.

The Dems don't get to start warming their chairs in the House for another month yet, and the Dow is down 11%. You'd think the Dems had taken the whole banana and Hillary was about to name BHO as her chief economic adviser. Still, the DJIA is a forward-looking indicator so maybe the market mavens see something coming that we don't, and the MSM won't.

Remember, if the market crashes, the only thing to change is the makeup of the House so that would be the place to lay the blame.

Since taxation and spending bills originate in the House, and the House seems to be preparing for 2 years of all out effort to overturn the results of the '16 election and nothing else, maybe there is some cause to worry.

Good News Week

"... someone's dropped a bomb somewhere.." No wait, it's not that, it's this:

Seems both coffee and alcohol are good for you, at least this week. Click the link, and take the part about moderation with a grain or two of salt.

Wildlife Update

With the weather cooling off it seems the local wildlife is moving in to the neighborhood.

Yep 'ol Wile E. has been spotted multiple times, and has eaten one cat and severely injured another and a small dog, all within a block of my house. My neighbor across the street tells me he has seen him emerging from between my house and my neighbors place presumably after checking out the chickens the fellow over the back fence keeps. All this during daylight hours so he's not impressed with anything or anyone yet.

These things are quite smart and quickly learn when trash day is in a neighborhood and will watch you from concealment across the street to get your garage door code for use later to get in and eat your Schnauzer while you're at work. If they haven't, it's only because they have trouble pushing the keypad buttons accurately with their noses.

It now seems prudent to accompany my dog when I let her out back to do her business, and D'wife is suggesting a noisemaker to help impress the coyote. Fine. I have both small and medium caliber noisemakers. It's illegal to discharge a firearm inside the city limits, but there are exceptions to this and Wile E. is one of them. Just have to be careful of the background. Now that I think about it, this may well be the situation for which a weapon-mounted flashlight is called for.

Springtime In The Rockies

That would be the day in mid May when you have to hurry to get the lawn mowed before the arrival of the snowstorm. Never put the snow blower away before June 1.

3-5 inches! Plus a tiny blip below freezing. It's a wonder anything grows at all around here. Looks like a good year for tree services removing broken limbs though. Most likely none of this will stick to the pavement and it'll all be gone in 24 hours.

On the medical front I got out of the cast today. My wrist is very stiff, atrophied, and about as sore as when I broke it. I get a removable brace for 3 weeks then some physical therapy. The doc says no pistol shooting for the 3 weeks so I guess I'll be learning the finer points of PCC a while longer.

Springtime

Not much actually going on so here's some non-serious stuff.

A couple weeks back I remarked on a foot bridge being installed apparently leading into some fellow's back yard. Now it seems the curb and gutter was in the wrong place, and his back yard is being shortened.

Until we see water in the canal again, the footpath through the gulch and along the edge of the new chasm is how you cross the canal. More cement is anticipated on the far side at some point, maybe even a sidewalk.

Highline canal is lined with cottonwood trees, most of which are nearing the end of their usual life span of 110 years. Some have been decorated:

Loose pieces of bark aren't hard to find. Sometimes you get lucky and find unexpected stuff growing along the canal. Allium is not native AFAIK, but it's moving in.

Not much to see yet, but that dead puff ball on the upper left is from last year. When they bloom, that is a big blue ball, quite striking. Assuming that the canal maintenance folks don't just mow it down with the weeds.

In other news, I saw the hand doctors today who removed the cast on my wrist, took X-rays, assured me that everything was healing nicely, and then replaced the cast and told me to come back in 3 weeks. Geez, it might have been quicker to use stem cells to simply grow a new one. Under advances in Medical Technology, the old cast was black, but the new one is lime green. Hulk Smash! Still a damn nuisance.

A local Meetup group, Pedals and Pints, has a bike ride planned for the coming weekend. Great ride, 2 of them starting at Great Divide Barrel Bar and visiting 4 other craft breweries and a coffee house over the course of about 27 total miles. Allowing 30 minutes and a 4 oz sampler at each stop, this should be a fun and easy ride. Except for the weather. It's springtime in the Rockies and in the last 4 days, Weather Underground has gone from 4-8" to 1-3" and back to 5-8" of snow. If the weather and the rest of my schedule cooperates the P&P thing is a great way to waste a Saturday. I checked. There are about 65 craft breweries within bicycle range of my house. 'Tis a privilege to live in Colorado, as the local fishwrap used to proclaim.

The Divide Grows Deeper

Might be a problem, then again, might not. An employer who is not named, has added a 30 question quiz to the hurdles to employment at his business. His position:

I don’t want most people to work for my company.  No, seriously.  Most people suck.

I've noticed that myself. Not being in a position to hire anyone it hasn't made much difference except for my choices in the folks I hang out with, and I'm pretty easy going about that. You can see a sample of the questions he asks here. I have no idea what he does, but from the tone of the questions, I believe I'd make the cut.

Compare and contrast with New Belgium Brewery who preferentially hires leftys on the theory that there will be less conflict within the workforce when everyone thinks more or less the same way. I wonder how the Hillerazis and the Bernistas are getting along.

Then there's these guys. Alpha brewery in St Louis who produced this for a while:

 

I hear they've changed the name after finding that another microbrewery had beaten them to it, but they are keeping the label. They seem to favor sour beers.