Get Out Of My Way, Kid!

I don't usually care much for sports, especially baseball, which I find slow and boring. Anyhow, this story was on one of the TV news shows this morning (there's a good picture of incident at that link). There was also an article about it in this morning's Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.

Nicholas O'Brien's first Texas Rangers game became an encounter to remember when another fan shoved the 4-year-old out of the way and into the spotlight.

Edie and Jeff O'Brien had just wanted to take their son for a nice afternoon at the ballpark. Then, Rangers center fielder Gary Matthews came to bat in the third inning with the Rangers trailing 12-0.

Matthews sent a high foul ball toward Section 22, between home plate and the St. Louis Cardinals' third-base dugout.

"It was coming straight at us," Edie O'Brien said. "I felt this person jumping, and I felt my husband trying to grab Nick. The guy was on my legs and feet, and I was trying to push the guy off.

"The next thing we knew, the guy had the ball."

The man, described as being in his 30s, was sitting a row behind the O'Briens. When he dove for the ball, he knocked Nicholas into the seats and ended up sprawled at the O'Briens' feet. The man came up with the foul ball and -- despite jeers and boos from the crowd, who wanted him to give the ball to Nicholas -- put it in his pocket.

This cretin eventually left (along with the woman who was with him) after being heckled by the crowd for the next inning. The crowd had taken to shouting "Give him the ball" at the unidentified jerk, although he just sat there smirking.

Fortunately, the boy was unhurt and one of the St. Louis players gave the boy a bat and ball. He was also given a bat from one of the Rangers and ended up with three more balls before the game was over. But it makes you wonder what other activities the unidentified jerk might enjoy. Knocking down little old ladies? Stealing candy from babies? Kicking puppies? They all sound like they'd be just to his liking...

Security Through Gross Out

This may be an innovative way to hide valuables in plain sight, but it really leaves you thinking about the kind of mind that would come up with something like that.

Change Your Springs!

I bought my Kimber Ultra CDP II just about two years ago as a primary carry piece. At the time I just didn't like any of the options in my "arsenal" for carry. The Glock 19 was a little too big and heavy. The Sig P232, while the right size, is a .380ACP which didn't inspire confidence, even with Hydrashoks. The Kel-Tec P11 was both small and light, but I always had a bit of nagging doubt about trusting a $230 gun.

Anyhow, the Kimber seemed to be the answer to all of my needs. It was small, light, concealable, and packed a respectable punch. I promptly put 500 rounds through it to verify its reliablity. I learned that it only likes certain brands of ammo, but when fed with that ammo using good magazines that it was very reliable. In order to maintain proficiency with it my usual range routine was to start off the session with one box of .45 through the Kimber, followed by firing whatever other guns I had brought, and finishing up with another box of .45 in the Kimber. I try to get to the range every week, although there have been a number of times where I went two or three weeks between sessions. Because of this it's hard for me to exactly estimate how many rounds I fired through the Kimber. If I had gone every week for two years, it would be over 10,000 rounds. My best estimate, though, given the missed weeks, would be somewhere over 8,000 rounds.

When I bought the Kimber I was sure to read the manual and learn all of its controls and how to disassemble it. There was also this interesting chart on Page 7 concerning spring replacement. I remarked that it seemed to be a pretty short replacement cycle for the springs, but then promptly forgot about it. The replacement cycle is every 1800 rounds for the recoil spring, every 5000 rounds for the firing pin spring, and every 5000 rounds for the mainspring. Given this, it's kind of surprising that the recoil spring hadn't broken a long time ago. It finally failed the Friday before my trip to Colorado, causing me to rely on the KelTec for the trip, as it was the most concealable (at least with the holsters I currently own; the Glock and Sig tend to print more as they ride kind of high--I need to find a nice low-rider IWB rig for the Sig).

This is just a friendly reminder for all you gun owners to read your manuals and replace your springs if you have been neglecting it like I did. In the meantime, this has pointed out to me the need to have a high-quality .45 backup (or perhaps a .357 snubby). Something small, light, trustworthy, and highly concealable. I'm going to go to the Dallas Market Hall gun show this weekend and take a look at some of the small .45s and lightweight .357s. I've had my eye on the Para Carry as well as the Springfield Ultra Compact as good small .45s. Para also has a new double-stack .45 called the Warthog which might be promising. The downside is that they're all in the $900 range (although I'd hope to get a better deal at a gun show). On the revolver side, perhaps something like this Taurus might do the trick. What will ultimately decide it will be how it feels in the hand and how concealable it seems.

On Top Of The World

Since we were close enough, we made a day trip to Manitou Springs, where we looked in a bunch of junk shops. Later we rode the Cog Railway to the top of Pike's Peak. There were lots of dire warnings about the thin air at that altitude (14,110 ft) on the rail tickets, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. They don't give you much time at the top before the train leaves (they have to carefully coordinate the trains, since there is only one line with a few sidings; they point out that the difference between being a passenger and a hiker is one minute). Because of this I rushed around a bit to try to get some pictures at the top, which left me a bit winded from going too fast.

A view from the top:

My niece and me, along with the junk we picked up at the store at the top of the mountain:

National Reciprocity/Polite Society

The idea of national reciprocity has been on my mind of late for several reasons. When I got back from my trip there was a fundraising letter from NRA-ILA concerning a national reciprocity bill. Also, in the big kerfuffle over gay marriage there was a lot of discussion of federalism and the "full faith and credit" clause, which led some people to bring up concealed carry.

It is my understanding that the "full faith and credit" clause does not actually require any state to recognize a marriage license issued by another state if that marriage is contrary to the laws of the first state. We see the same sort of thing today with concealed carry laws. This is one of the joys as well as one of the curses of our system. Each state can do things as it sees fit. Unfortunately, this leads to a patchwork of conflicting laws which can snare a traveller who is not careful.

As an example, consider my trip to Colorado last week. Texas does not yet have reciprocity with Colorado, and it's impossible for New Mexico to have reciprocity with any other state until they fix their concealed carry laws. However, it turns out that Colorado does have reciprocity with New Hampshire. And New Hampshire will issue a permit to out-of-state residents if they already have a permit in their home state (it's a pretty simple process). That took care of the Colorado carry issue, although it didn't fix the problem with New Mexico. Fortunately, New Mexico has a car-carry provision (as does Colorado) and we didn't spend much time in New Mexico.

I don't see how any national law could constitutionally impose reciprocity across the country. It appears to me that it would take a constitutional amendment. That having been said, I don't really want the feds messing around with state laws, even if some of the states choose to be buttheads about it (e.x. The People's Republics of California and Illinois). Something I think that Congress could do, though, would be to repeal all federal laws that interfere with state carry laws on federal property. Right now, it is against federal law to carry in the Post Office or in National Parks. It is also my understanding that on a military base it is up to the base commander to decide whether carry is to be allowed.

Given all of this, I'd propose a federal law that simply recognized the provisions in each state for carrying firearms. The federal law would recognize state firearms laws in all federal facilities, except for military bases and federal courts. On a military base, it would remove from the base commander's discretion the ability to ban carry by civilians in any area that is commonly open to the public, leaving it to his discretion to make decisions for areas commonly off limits to the general public. For federal courts, it would only apply to the courtroom and directly-related areas. Other federal agencies (like FBI/IRS/DEA/BATFE) could not get around the law by locating themselves in a federal court building. They would have to recognize the carry laws in whatever state they happen to be operating in.

This would make life easier for people who carry, who then don't have to worry that their legally concealed weapon becomes a 10-year federal felony if they forget about it when going to the Post Office. It would restore the right to defend oneself at places like Yellowstone and The Grand Canyon. Finally, it means one doesn't have to jump through hoops to get a simple form at the IRS office.

Travelling Thoughts

Last Sunday morning we left for Colorado and returned late Saturday evening.

A few observations and thoughts from the trip:

• My dog took the trip surprisingly well, given her history of getting sick. I think part of it was that she's gotten more used to riding in the truck, though I cheated a bit by using some calming supplements. I also got an extra fan to put in the back seat just for her since she tends to get hot easily.
• Given the number of Texas license plates I saw in Colorado, maybe we should consider merging the two states into one. We'd need to borrow a bit of New Mexico as a corridor, though...
• Is there a contract you have to sign when you buy an RV or travel trailer that says you have to drive at least 5MPH under the speed limit and can't move out of the way? Is there a bonus payment clause in the contract if you speed up to avoid being passed in the rare passing zones that present themselves? There's a section of Highway 64 in New Mexico where there are no opportunities to pass for miles at a time and there's always some obstructionist in the way. It must be a cause of continuing problems because the state has put up signs urging patience (one of them also says "Courtesy Pays").
• I particularly liked the fact that the speed limit on I-25 in Colorado is 75 in the southern part of the state. Since traffic tends to move a bit above the posted speed, it really speeds up that part of the trip (and helps make up for the time wasted sitting behind hostile RV drivers in New Mexico).
• You don't really appreciate how big the state of Texas is until you've spent most of the day just trying to reach the border. Of our 700 mile trip, two-thirds of it was spent getting to the New Mexico border. If I lived in East Texas this would have been a two day trip.

The Living Return

Just returned from a week-long trip to Colorado. More to come...

A Near Miss For Darwin

This incident makes you wonder if there are people who are just too stupid to live.

Student may face charges for making toxic drink

A West Texas student who mixed a chemical cocktail that landed a teen-ager in the hospital will face a felony charge if the student who drank it chooses to press charges, authorities said Tuesday.

Ector County Schools Police Chief Henry Jackson said the Odessa High School student, who drank the chemical on a dare, is considering pressing an aggravated assault charge. That charge is a second-degree felony.

"The person who mixed it knew it was bad," Jackson said in a story in Tuesday's online edition of the Odessa American.

The student, a 17-year-old recent transfer to Odessa High from Andrews, spent several days in the hospital after being found in a school hallway bleeding from the nose and mouth.

His identity has not been made public.

It seems odd to me that the idiot who made the drink could be charged if someone is stupid enough to drink it. How stupid do you have to be to drink something if you don't know what's in it?

The Gorebot

I think someone has finally captured the essense of Al Gore:

... a purulent hemorrhoid about to burst into a million bitter droplets of anger and fiery indignation.

Bring On The Fiber Already!

Late last week I noticed that Verizon employees were in the neighborhood working at the new fiber optic boxes that have been put in near the street. This was the first time I noticed actual Verizon employees, though. All of the other work has been done by contractors. So I took this as a sign that they were nearing completion of the new fiber network.

The Verizon press release has a few more details about the FTTP rollout, including this tidbit about proposed service speeds.

Bob Ingalls, president of Verizon's Retail Marketing Group, said some of the new broadband access products will feature download speeds of 5 megabits per second, 15 megabits per second and 30 megabits per second. Verizon expects to begin marketing these products in Keller and elsewhere later this year. The new network will also support video applications and other new services.

"These services will be provided at a substantial value over anything that's in the market today - highly competitive pricing because we know that's what customers will expect," Ingalls said.

30 Mbps is certainly better than anything I can get today, but I'll be a bit disappointed if this is all they're going to offer. The equipment is capable of doing 100 Mbps (at least according to its specs). I'm also anxiously awaiting the publication of their offerings and the terms of service for those offerings. I want a symmetrical high-speed internet service that doesn't have a significant penalty in cost for being symmetrical. Since I work from home these days, I find myself being hampered by the silly upload cap imposed by the cable modem provider. If you want symmetrical speeds with cable you have to pay for a business plan, which the last time I checked was around $100/month (unfortunately, they've removed their pricing information and replaced it with a contact form on the Charter website, so I can't tell what their service costs now).

Verizon has a general information page for their new FTTP 'DSL' service here, including the ability to sign up to be notified when FTTP is available in your area.

The Abortion Debacle

I don't normally talk about abortion. It's one of those nasty topics that can only get you enemies. Otherwise rational people go stark raving spitting mad when it's brought up. That having been said, though, since today's Bleat takes up the topic I thought, "What the heck?"

I once heard a libertarian (I think it was Dr. Mary Ruwart) propose a technological solution to abortion with the idea of transplanting the fetus to a willing recipient. On first impression, that seems like an interesting idea, and one that could potentially end the whole debate over abortion. The presenter of the idea thought that anti-abortion advocates would be better off putting their resources into researching and perfecting such a procedure. And when considered strictly from a "market forces" approach, that may be true. As we've seen, a simple ban on abortion will not end the practice. Given that there will always be women who want to end a pregnancy, anti-abortionists can either provide an alternative or be ignored while abortions continue to be practiced (legally or not).

Since my falling out with the Libertarian party line after 9/11, though, I've started to question these things a bit more. Also, since my cynicism knows few bounds, I suspect that such a simple solution would not actually solve the problem, or it least it would open up new problems. But for the sake of argument, let's accept the idea of a safe and effective medical procedure that would allow for the transplantation of a fetus from one woman to another. As it turns out, such a procedure would open up a whole other set of questions.

Would such a procedure be accepted by the various religious authorities that currently condemn abortion? Given the intransigence over birth-control in the Catholic Church, I could also see some sort of Papal edict banning the practice over some obscure bit of dogma. Not being a religious person (I'm agnostic), I'm not really well versed on what issues might be raised. I just sense that there could be some sort of resistance from this quarter. Perhaps we'd see some 'goalpost moving' where the concept of life extends to the original mother or something.

Most of the anti-abortionists at some level want to see all abortion banned and made illegal. Given that the law is not likely to make abortion illegal any time soon, would they be satisfied with this procedure as an alterative?

But what about the pro-choicers? Would they see this as an attack on their right to choose? They're pretty defensive about anything that gets in the way of choice. They might interpret such a procedure as the camel's nose of abortion prohibition under the tent (yes, this is counter to my assertion above that the legality of abortion is not likely to change, but I'm talking about the pro-choicers interpretation of events and their reactions to them).

What would such a procedure cost? I could see a situation where the transplant becomes more like adoption with the 'donor' vetting the prospective recipient and choosing based on homelife, income, etc. The costs would then be borne by the recipient family. But if the costs were too high, would there be enough propective recipients to take all of the unwanted fetuses? Even if the costs are low, are there enough women who want children and can carry them to term but otherwise can't conceive to take all of these fetuses? According to the CDC, there were 857,475 abortions in the US in 2000. At that rate, there'd have to be a veritable army of women volunteering each year to receive fetus transplants.

On the flip side of the 'adoption' scenario, would there be blind transplants where the 'donor' just wants to get rid of the fetus and doesn't care who it goes to? The adoption scenario presupposes that the woman cares enough about the fetus to go through the process. If there is too much process or ceremony associated with giving up a fetus for transplant, it could continue to encourage some women to get an abortion.

What happens to the legal rights of the original mother after the transplant? Does she implicitly give up all future rights and responsibilities or can she expect to have a knock on her door in 18 years?

What about the father's rights and responsibilities? If the father isn't involved in the transplant can he suddenly show up and demand custody from the recipient? Can he be sued for child support in the future? Will the state come after him for support if the new mother ever applies for some kind of assistance?

I'm sure there a lot more issues that would arise. These are just what I came up with after spending a few minutes thinking about it. It still sounds like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in this situation.

Freedom For Me, But Not For Thee

This post from Instapundit about freedom of the press got me to thinking. It's gotten to the point where I don't watch any of the major national networks for news (ABC, NBC, CBS), nor do I watch CNN. The bias permeates every word and phrase of their reports to such an extent that I find myself screaming at them within seconds. I only watch local news and read the papers (although the AP and other national reports are quickly identifiable as such by their bias, even if they didn't have the byline to identify their source).

Anyhow, Instapundit's correspondent was curious if freedom of the press would survive a hostile public as more and more people conclude that the press is anti-American. Given our rather mix-and-match approach to the constitution these days, that's not so far fetched a question as it might appear. My first thought would be to give the journalists a dose of Second Amendment treatment and see how they fare. No, I don't mean shoot the bastards (although that thought is strangely tempting). Instead, I mean to expose them to the same treatment that the Second gets in this country. Namely, create a patchwork of conflicting and unconstitutional laws that vary from state to state. Create unconstitutional national laws that can put them in jail for 10 years for a first-time paperwork violation, and consequently bar them from reporting for life. Require background checks to buy reporting equipment. Constantly harp on them about whether they really 'need' that printing press or those video cameras. Create special taxes on video supplies. Get local city councils to zone existing news buildings out of existence, forcing them to move to the country. There are probably a lot more I could come up with, but you get the picture.

And when they complain that this is unconstitutional, respond with a disingenous answer about how the term 'press' really doesn't apply to them.

If I seem a bit peeved by the press these days, it's only because these very same smug bastards who report on everything the U.S. does with a sneer would be calling for the heads of gun owners if we were even half as reckless with our guns as they've been with their reporting. If I didn't have the Internet as a source to know that there are good things happening on the ground in Iraq and all I based my impression of the situation on were the 'mainstream' press, I'd be pretty pessimistic about the situation. Joe Sixpack, coming home from work and flipping over to Peter Jennings in the evening, probably thinks Iraq is turning into another Vietnam. Or at least that's what I gathered from the last time I tried to watch that sorry bastard Jennings and his socialist cohorts on ABC last Friday.

Seeing The Truth

I heard on the news this morning that two teachers at Northwest ISD who were suspended for showing the video of Nick Berg's beheading will be allowed back in the fall. I must confess that I don't completely understand the uproar over showing this video in school (at least in this instance). It was shown to Junior and Senior level students and they were all given the option not to watch it.

I think it's important for everyone who can stomach it to watch that video to understand just what kind of enemy Western civilization is facing. These are brutal thugs who would subjugate all of us to religious slavery if they could only get away with it. Anyone who thinks that negotation or appeasement is possible need only watch this video to understand the folly of that position. You can't negotiate or compromise with someone whose only goal is your destruction.

More Fun With Expression Engine

One of the interesting features of Expression Engine that I've been playing around with is the ability to define custom field groups and then create weblogs that use those groups. This means that you can define any set of fields you want and then define a set of pages that display those fields.

For a while I've been toying around with changing the way my guns page is organized behind the scenes. Right now it's a bunch of kludged up PHP scripts, with the guns defined in a global hash array. It's a bit of a pain to manage and requires a number of manual updates when I add or change something. Here's an example of what the hash array entry looks like for one gun:

With Expression Engine I was able to define a set of custom fields and a set of templates to display the index page as well as an individual gun entry. Using that, entering a new gun (or changing an existing one) is as simple as editing a weblog entry. Here's an example of the entry screen:Here's a shot of the index page:And here's an individual gun entry:What's interesting is that I spent at most a couple of hours arriving at this point.

Although I'm convinced of the power of the tool, I still have some reservations before putting down $99 to purchase it. Due to security concerns my hosting company prefers that PHP apps run as CGI processes. They do allow PHP as an Apache module, but they have a number of restrictions on what PHP can do in that environment, since Apache is running as a system process, rather than under a specific user id. This means that it is possible for User A's PHP code to access data in User B's directory in some cases (in fact, the installation instructions for Expression Engine require you to open up several of your files/directories to all users on the system; i.e. chmod to 666 or 777). My main concern with Expression Engine is the developers' attitudes to CGI and their dismissiveness of the security concerns. That may be the deal killer for me. CGI is not the hideous monster they make it out to be, nor is forking/exec'ing an external process the end of the world, at least for low-to-moderate volume sites. If they want to continue to increase their user base, they'd be well advised to take the security concerns seriously and make their app work well with CGI (in their favor I should note that they do provide instructions on common problems encountered with getting it to work under the CGI execution model).

Still, the feature set the tool provides makes it tempting, especially with the competitive upgrade offer. I've still got a week and four days to decide, so I will continue to play with it before making a decision.

You Can Call Me 'Jaws'

At least you will be able to next week.

Tomorrow I will go in to the dentist's office to have all of the measurements, X-rays, etc. done for braces (one of them is called a 'cephalometric film', which just sounds evil, although I know it isn't), which will be fitted next Wednesday. This is the beginning of a two-year course of treatment. I was a bit disappointed that I didn't qualify for the Invisalign braces because too much correction is needed on the top teeth. It's going to be kind of odd to go through the whole process at my age, although I know that a lot of people are getting it done. My aunt, who is in her late 50's, did it recently, although she had the advantage of using Invisalign.

Of course, none of this comes cheap. The whole bill for the full course came to just over $4800, of which insurance should pay $1000. They gave me a discount for paying the rest up front, which meant I had to pony up a little over $3600 today.

Expression Engine

I've been playing with the 14-day free trial version of Expression Engine. I wasn't able to install it on my hosting account because the trial version uses Zend Optimizer to encrypt/obfuscate their PHP source. Unfortunately, Zend Optimizer required root access for installation. The fully licensed version will not have this problem, though.

In the meantime I installed the trial on my Linux system at home and created two weblogs. I then imported all the entries from this site as well as The Bitch Girls into those weblogs and set about trying to figure out their template system. While you can create multiple weblogs in Expression Engine, you have to do a lot of template customization to make those weblogs truly separate. I think I've finally gotten it all figured out, at least in terms of how to code the templates.

There appears to be some kind of problem with the archive page, though. It just displays the year and month and then nothing. I will check the support forums to see if this is a known problem or if there is a fix.

I'm not sure if I'll be implementing Expression Engine anytime soon, but I wanted to give it a try to see if it would be useful. So far, though, it's far superior in terms of posting performance in that no rebuilds have to be done for new posts or when changing templates/layout. Also, comments seem to work faster than with MT. However, this all comes at the price of being a little harder on the server since all pages are dynamic and require DB access to display them. In a typical installation, using PHP as an Apache module, this would be mitigated somewhat by caching. However, my webhost's default configuration is to run PHP as a CGI process. This provides better security in that they use a SUEXEC wrapper to allow the CGI process to run under my user ID rather than the ID of the server. This allows for better file access control (i.e. you don't have to set files and directories with 666 or 777 permissions) at the expense of the loss of caching. I may try setting up my home system to run PHP as a CGI process to see how that affects performance. I'd hate to finish the evaluation and buy the product only to find that it performs poorly in the actual production environment.