The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Dharma the puppy has been visiting. Since Thursday. She’s a sweety, but she’s also a jumping, pushy, “gotta love me” kinda baby and sometimes you’d like to take her out somewhere and quietly drown her. Even LB finds her a bit tiresome after a while but I notice that Ghost, who professes to hate all things young, is currently outside playing with her engaging with her in a not-altogether-intolerant manner. But from time to time everybody needs to disconnect and have a doggie nap in peace. Belly-rub optional but not discouraged.

H/T to Wirecutter.

It’s complicated.

I dunno if the Keene Robin Hoods are really picking on the heroic meter maids of Keene, New Hampshire.

one of them says he has suffered heart palpitations and is thinking about quitting his job.

That sounds really bad, and the staff and management of TUAK wish to offer their deep concern for the welfare of the dear meter maid parking inspector and wish him all the best in his new opportunity as a door greeter at Wal-Mart. Also, that would be really, really bad.

But I suspect the Free Keene kids are really just going around and sticking coins in meters and cards under windshield wipers, which doesn’t sound like the most heinous act of terrorism the nation has ever endured. If they’re really picking on the meter maids they should stop, because that would be stupid and counterproductive.

But not half so counterproductive as when the city sued them for it and got them in all the papers. Because now they’ve even got the smelly old desert hermit segment of the population blogging about them, which is pretty much the very model of media saturation. Way to let the whole silly thing blow over, city of Keene!

…it still needs a going over.

We’re having guests for the weekend, and since they’re Ian’s progenitors we’ve been going around and trying to put a good face on things without getting fanatical or duplicitous about it. I look around the Lair this morning and find it in its usual state, which is to say in need of a good dusting at minimum. Normally I try to keep the dustbunnies of loose dog hair down to softball-size, and otherwise I don’t let them worry me. The Lair has never been what you’d call reproachfully clean and it never will be. But today a slightly higher level of cleanliness seems appropriate.

So I’m rumbling around inside with a dustcloth and a sponge before Friday shit-shoveling and wondering “Do these curtains go with my AK, or do I maybe need something in chintz?

Photographic Judge says the curtains are fine, but the mag pouches need dusting. I wouldn’t want to give anybody the wrong impression. Or the right one.

Back to work.

Ian came up yesterday. Today we finished our various chores for the day early and decided it was time to take our lives in our hands and give his Jeep a thorough shake-down. I was too busy hanging on to take many pictures…

Stopping every now and then to check on that new “that’s not supposed to happen” noise, and once to top off a spewing radiator, we reached the top of the highest mesa…

…where there’s no trouble at all deciding where you want to go next – as long as it’s down. We took a side trip on the way back to visit something I’d seen from a distance but never took the time to check out. Here and there in the nothin’ you’ll come upon somebody’s attempt at a cabin that went wrong. We found one that had gone really entertainingly wrong, and I was so spellbound by it that I never thought to take pictures. Someday I’ll go back and do it right. “Why,” I wondered aloud, “would you go to so much trouble to do something so badly?”

Over two hours in an open vehicle leaves you tired and sunburned and extremely filthy. So I am now going to heat some water, take a bath, and fall asleep over my book.

…or when they do, they act as if it’s a good thing.

E-Verify = E-Total State

Section 3101 of S.744, “Unlawful Employment of Unauthorized Aliens, contains a mandatory “Identity Authentication Mechanism” that mandates a biometric ID database for almost every adult in America. The so-called “Photo Tool” database would be administered jointly by the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It would include not only personal information but also photographs from state-issued ID such as a driver’s license. Every adult who drives or travels, who opens a bank account or intersects with a government agency requires a state-issued photo ID. This means almost every adult in America will be on record with the most powerful domestic surveillance and police force in the world.

The ostensible purpose of the database is to prevent the illegal employment of undocumented immigrants. Employers would be legally obligated to “E-Verify” every person they hired; that is, they would be required to “match the photo on a covered identity document provided to the employer [by the job applicant] to a photo maintained by a US Citizenship and Immigration Services database.”

I’ve said it before. A license to work is a license to be. I can’t think of anything the government can do to us that’s more chilling. And the people who will cheer its inception the loudest are the ones also likely to prattle on about “freedom,” as if they even knew what it is.

Eric Holder Just Doesn’t Know.

This is why show prep is so important, Eric. Just what Obama needed, only halfway through his very, very bad week, is for you to go full Sergeant Schultz while testifying for the cameras.

But I am confused by one thing. How on earth can he recuse himself from a case his own department is supposedly pursuing? How does that work? I was a department head once. Not in government, so no doubt the rules are different. But if I saw a project I was responsible for about to melt down, I couldn’t just say “Whoa, guess I’d better recuse myself from that steaming pile.” That wouldn’t go over very well at the next management meeting.

How come the Attorney General can do it?

Oh, they were dubious. They’re dubious about every innovation, especially if I’m involved. Which is ironic, given that I’m the only benevolent influence in their lives and also that I plan to betray their (nonexistent) trust at some point and stew the very marrow from their bones. If I were to extend my sense of morality toward livestock, I’d have quite a conundrum on my hands. But I don’t.

Anyway, they figured out the nesting box right away. So I figured they’d have no problem deciding they’re also supposed to sleep in there. I lured them inside with lettuce, and they were slow about going along with the joke at first but didn’t really argue. I closed the big door but left the little one open just to see what they’d do. They’ve got a lovely juniper branch inside for access to the little door, but I ran out of steam yesterday before completing the ramp to the outside. That didn’t stop them; when I went out to release them at six this morning, they were already out in their yard.

And they seem as happy as they ever do…

Avaunt, begone, big scary thing that brings food! Leave the food.

ETA: Neighbor J was also dubious on one point. Looking at all the greyish lumps in the straw he was asked to trudge through: “Is that chicken poop?”

“Yes it is. You’re basically walking in a compost heap.”

“Ah. And that’s a good thing because…”

This surprised me. Ian’s got opinions on the gun issue, obviously, but he’s just not a political creature. I swear almost daily to stop being one, but can’t keep my mouth shut. Ian rarely offers an opinion; he just goes out and shoots cool guns. It’s one of the things I like about him: I make a big deal out of “Doing Freedom.” He just shuts up and does it.

Did I mention Ian has recently started writing for The Firearm Blog? Because he has. The motto is “Firearms Not Politics,” and that pretty much sums Ian up. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t willing to…well, let’s let him tell it.

My Most Enjoyable Gun Show in Ages

Neighbor J came over this morning to help me move the new coop into place. Quite a lot of sweating and grunting, backing and filling, “Nope, sorry, we have to undo this because I needed to do that first,” but we got’er done.

The ladies were underfoot and upset during the whole process, until they decided they’d had quite enough of this barbarous commotion and simply escaped to the junipers. Then when we were done we got uphill of them, chased a bit, and they decided they preferred their nice safe fenced yard.

Now I need to arrange the interior, mount the doors, and build them a ramp. Then re-string the overhead cover. Then…basically I’m going to be screwing with this for the whole rest of the day.

The fill level of the water tank on top of the ridge, the one Ian and I depend upon for all things wet, has proven quite variable in the week or so in which I’ve been monitoring system operation. I wasn’t aware of this before, and no doubt it’s been like this for months or even years. For one guy living alone, no garden or large livestock, it doesn’t make any difference which would be why I never noticed. If water consumption increased greatly, which it well might as Ian expands his fruit tree plantation, it could possibly become a problem in the future. But I’ll point it out to you, for the benefit of anybody who thinks he/she might want to build an off-grid water system someday.

Any cistern contains an electrical switch that tells the pump circuitry when the cistern is full. These come in two varieties. The switch can be at the hinge of a rigid metal rod with a float at the other end, just like a toilet tank float. This is a solid, reliable design, not at all like the one we’ve got.

The other design, the one we’ve got, places the switch inside the floating ball, which is placed at the end of a flexible waterproof cable. This design is a pain in the ass. The switch’s favorite trick used to be to get wedged in one of the stiffening creases in the plastic tank, so that it didn’t turn the pump off even when it was far under water and the tank was cheerily overflowing all over the landscape – which it washed downhill as it slowly undermined the tank. I fixed that last year, by the simple expedient of tying a string between the float and the top of the tank so the float couldn’t reach the walls of the tank.

But what I’m finding now is that as the level in the tank slowly drops, the little metal ball inside the float isn’t reliably rolling forward and completing the circuit. It eventually does, turning on the pump and filling the tank, but it can take days. During those days a perplexed old guy trudges up the hill every morning, measures the dropping water level with increasing concern, and frets over the performance of a water pump that in itself seems to be working just fine.

Gingrich has never given any evidence of a sense of humor, or I’d assume this is a parody.

Hm. Maybe he’s suggesting that what the republic requires at this critical moment in technological history is a giant government program to determine an acceptable name for the smartphone? Maybe he’s suggesting…Aw, hell. I don’t know what he’s suggesting. Except that he needs his meds adjusted and his diaper changed.

Don’t fret, Newt. I do believe society will figure out what to do with information technology without the help of you and your syphilitic kin.

And please stop making old people look bad. You could do this very simply by shutting the hell up and going away.

Because that’s my very favorite fairy tale.

Cops: Man violates new gun laws with 2 extra bullets in magazine

The troopers determined the gun, a .40-caliber pistol, was legally registered and possessed. However, when the troopers inspected the pistol, its magazine contained the nine bullets – New York’s Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Actonly allows seven bullets per magazine.

H/T to Unc.

You want to see the one firearm I’ve dragged around with me the longest? Getting it out of its drawer to show you is no big burden…

NAA mini-revolver in .22LR. The first one I bought was a .22 Magnum with a slightly longer barrel, but there was a minor QC problem with it – Before I’d fired the tenth round, the barrel loosened and flew right off the gun. To say I’d had a very great deal of confidence in the gun in the first place would be untrue, and this did nothing to bolster it. The owner of the gun shop where I bought it was apologetic as hell when I brought it back in two tiny pieces, reached into his display and handed me the gun above with no paperwork involved. That was in…oh, goodness. Lemme think…1979 or ’80, I’d guess. Long time ago, anyway.

I don’t think I’ve ever successfully hit a target with it at more than contact range. The loading procedure is glacially slow. It’s the only gun I’ve ever owned that stayed loaded and unfired so long the bullets turned green. One day both grip scales broke in half and fell off and it just didn’t matter. I left it that way, thinking maybe someday I’d want to wear it around my neck just because I could do that now if I wanted to. Never did.

This was a time of little fly-by-night companies that made pieces of oddball junk like the COP .357 4-barrel derringer, which I also had a chance to test-fire from that same shop. (Four barrels, four different points of aim. Plus, no way in hell I’d be seen with it. No sale.) There were other examples that don’t come to mind. Way back at the time, I figured North American Arms to be one of those companies.

Not so much. I am reminded by MArooned that NAA is not only still around, their selection of tiny stainless revolvers has gotten even sillier over the years…

– and spawned some unabashedly silly accessories.
You gotta love that. Some things abide, despite their complete lack of utility.

Okay, so there’s this old photograph been making the rounds, purportedly of a very young Nancy Pelosi in a pointy-boob swimsuit being feted as Miss Lube Rack of 1959. Uncle Joel slavered like Little Bear with his own rawhide bone: A gift from the blogging gods! The snark would write itself!

Alas, Uncle Joel had had his coffee. He heeded the still, small voice in the back of his brain that whispered Kill them! Kill them all! No, not that voice. This was the sensible one that shows up about once a month and says, “Too good to be true, bub. Might want to fact-check that. Won’t take a minute.”

First, the sweet young thang in the photo doesn’t look a bit like Nancy Pelosi. Granted Pelosi’s alleged to have had a lot of work done in the intervening, er, century. But still. I wouldn’t guess that for Nancy Pelosi. Second, Pelosi comes from Old Politics and it’s very difficult to imagine her doing such a thing, even if she were so inclined, in 1959 without ending up in a nunnery. In Mozambique.

Turns out still small voice was right. Delicious rumor not true. But even so, the Snopes link brought a little bit of Monday goodness:
Sheesh. Is that a politics nerd mafia, or what? And she already had those disturbing eyes, way back then…

LB and I are batching it this evening. Ghost took off to visit his weekend friends.

The boys spent most of the day outdoors, so when I picked them up I didn’t worry too much about LB’s excretory needs. But sometimes he gets…urges…

I have seen ample evidence that a hundred-pound dog and explosive diarrhea are not a good combination in a 200 square foot microcabin. Especially when the floor is still just OSB. LB is an enthusiastic predator, and I never know what he’s been putting in his stomach. But he’s also a really, really good boy and he will writhe in agony for hours before nature takes its course if that’s what it takes to get Daddy’s attention. His problem is that he can’t seem to be vocal about it. If I’m glued to my ‘pooter screen, as I have been this evening, he could be doing routines from Cirque de Soleil behind my back and I wouldn’t notice.

No, the most he can do is pant, which more often than not means “I think it’s time for my evening belly-rub.” But he can pant in a most determined fashion, and he did finally win my attention. And when he did he positively pointed at the door. I cabled him up and undogged the hatch, whereupon he exited rapidly and did a very great deal of business.

Well, I felt like a bad dad, so naturally I had to overcompensate. He came back in and I praised him like he’d just won the national science fair competition.

Somebody sent me a big bag of rawhide bones, which I’ve been doling out like the foulest miser. I can’t give them whole ones because Ghost always takes his out and loses it while LB crouches and savors. When there’s only one left between two dogs, there’s friction. So I’ve been sawing them in half and only giving them out on bar mitzvahs and John Browning’s birthday. But tonight I reached into the bag and presented LB with his very own, whole thing.

He sat. He quivered. He refused to move, for fear the mirage would fade. He didn’t reach for it until I very specifically held it to his muzzle, and then he snatched it and ran back to his bed. And then he just sat there with it in his mouth, staring at me with those little golden eyes in that vast head, as if deciding that before he destroyed it, he just wanted to take a moment and enjoy having it.

And then he turned to the wall and crouched, and I’m writing this to the tune of the last of it splintering in his jaws.

Quite funny to see liberals and conservatives switch sides on the 3D-printed gun and WikiLeaks.

It doesn’t look like much at the moment. Truth is it won’t look like much when it’s complete. But…

It’ll work, and it’s a major improvement over what the ladies are living in now.

As the frame took shape, before I’d ever nailed on a single piece of siding, it became clear that moving this thing to its final location would require a full crew and a crane if I assembled it and then tried to move it. So I cut all the siding, assembled the doors, floor and roof, and then we brought it to the Lair in pieces. It’s got just enough siding on to make it rigid.

Tomorrow morning I’ll put it together, and then the neighbors and I will struggle and grunt and scare the hell out of the chickens as it takes its place in their yard.

On the water front (heh), Perplexed Joel is perplexed. We didn’t get any more sun this morning than on any other morning for the past four days or so, but today the well pump decided to do its duty with a vengeance. Every day I’ve checked it, the water level in the cistern has dropped. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but it looked like we had a problem. I checked pump operation this morning and it was definitely pumping. Came back this afternoon and it wasn’t, and I didn’t know why but the “remote switch” light on the panel was flashing which is supposed to mean that the cistern is full. That hardly seemed possible given the system performance over the past few days. So I propped the ladder, spun the top off the cistern, peered inside…and the tank is completely full. Consistent behavior, this is not. But I guess I can go back to trying to locate the leak(s).

Early start to the morning, as all of a sudden there’s a lot going on.

Got calls from neighbors J and D. J wanting to know if I can feed the horses while he and H are gone overnight, D wanting me to come finish the new chicken coop.

H left highly detailed instructions on horse feeding; I’ve been involved in major moves across the continent with less specific objectives. Hit it yesterday evening (the boys liked that) and this morning I just moved Friday shit-shoveling up a couple hours. The horses were unusually happy to see me. So that’s done, unless something delays the return of J&H.

On the way I dipped and marked the pipe I’ve been measuring the tank levels with. With all valves closed I still got nearly an inch drop overnight, which is perplexing as hell since there’s nowhere for the water to have gone. There’s no sign of water leaking from the tank or manifold, so one or more of the valves isn’t closing all the way. I also got another substantial drop in tank level yesterday, which makes me wonder if the pump is even working. No reason to think it wasn’t before, but I confess I haven’t checked. I’ll do that after the chicken coop. The tank filled slowly before, but it filled. Now suddenly I’m losing content instead of gaining it. Not good.

The frame, floor and rear wall of the chicken coop are already complete, and clearly if I finish the structure at D’s it’ll be too heavy for two old guys to move. So the revised plan is to cut all the remaining components but not assemble the coop till we have it in the yard. In the absence of problems – and when do problems ever happen? – I might get that project done by this afternoon. But now I have to go do that.

Have a nice day, don’t get caught violating ITAR.