It was just a day in September.

I had worked all night, and come home to find that my wife had the day off, for some reason. She took our daughter to daycare down the block, and we chatted. We had been married for about three and a half years, and were comfortable and familiar, but still, this was a nice day when she was home. I stayed up and might have even had a late cup of coffee, well into the mid morning. It was nice.
We stepped out onto the front porch of the apartment, noticing the less-hot, but still sticky air. Our apartment manager Mac, from next door, told us that he reckoned that we had heard the news. Strangely, I hadn't. I normally would have killed an hour on the internet on my desktop computer (internet on cell phones was in its infancy, and anyway, we didn't have a cell phone), or listening to the radio, but this morning, because my wife was home, I had just enjoyed her company.

So I turned on the television, and we saw the news, and the re-recitation of it for about 3 iterations of the cycle. And the phone rang, and it was my best friend, who told me that we HAD to nuke the Muslims who did this.

I really don't remember what my wife did or said, the rest of the day.

I got to bed at around 1:30 or 2:00 that afternoon (5 hours late), slept poorly, and got up around 7:00pm to hear our President declare that they had identified the group that had attacked our country, and that we would go after them.  I then got ready and showed up early for work for another midnight shift.

17 years later, it suddenly occurs to me that one of the many, MANY casualties of that attack was my lovely day with my wife.

It's nothing, I know. But we didn't have a lot of weekday mornings together, then or now.

I feel ashamed for even thinking about it. People lost their lives, and their families. We lost a little part of our country.

Tell your loved ones how you feel about them. You don't have very many chances to do so. You might even lose the next chance that you think that you'll have.

239 years ago...

A group of men decided to sign a document declaring that they were citizens, and no longer subjects. This document started with a list of strident complaints against a man who was arguably the most powerful man in the world, and who believed he had a claim over their provenance. The subject and recipient of that document had standing troops in their homeland, and the resources to send many, many more.

Think about that, the next time you're reluctant to churn out a memo at work which points out an error made by your boss.

"If I knew then what I know now." 2014 in review.

"On the last day of Pompeii
Thought I heard some poor boy say:
'Oh wow man if I knew then what I know now
I would've done more been more than I been
Had fun more sinned more mortal sin
Oh wow
If I knew then what I know now
I would've sent back that steak that was so overdone
Grabbed that big break while there was time time time
Made my life into a fantasy
Hot stuff for me to remember remember
And now that I'm a goner
All that lava rushin' 'round the corner
Oh wow-- I ain't complainin'-- only thinkin out loud...'"

Trout Fishing In America sang it best, but I can't find y'all a link to their performance of Michael Smith's great song about living for the moment. ;

Comes now the end of 2014, and we have lists of what came and what went.

We lost more and more of our Greatest Generation, and we lost some more of our innocence.

This year, our nation went from 18 states with legal same-sex marriage, to 35 who legally accept it.

This year, we saw more distrust of police than I've ever seen in my life, even while there is more oversight than there has ever been. When I got into patrol, we were just beginning to put patrol cameras into patrol cars, and soon after, made it required. I just saw a proposal for bills for the 2015 Texas legislative session, including two requiring that departments equip officers with body cameras, and apply for grant funding if they couldn't afford it. I reckon that we'll see body cameras on every uniformed officer within 3 years. And here's a prediction: I predict that we will see weapon-mounted cameras become standard within 10 years for police. Maybe even sooner. I predict some kind of automatic proximity switch will turn on the camera when the duty pistol is drawn from the duty holster.  Something to invest in, because they're coming.

This year, I had reinforced again that facts really take a back seat to emotions when people have an agenda to push. The Ferguson riots started with a rally cry of "Hands up! Don't shoot!" In fact, it turns out this was based upon a false premise. I had people tell me that, regardless of the facts in that shooting, the disparity in races in nationwide shootings throughout history give one reason to believe in racism on the part of the officer shooter. Think about that for a moment: the individual incident no longer matters: it's the perception of a trend that matters. Meanwhile, we cannot use criminal history of an individual as evidence of his most recent crime.

This year, we saw quadcopter drones with high-definition digital cameras really take off, literally and figuratively. This will have repercussions that we haven't even realized, yet. Heck, I've been pricing them myself, even. I had an 8 year old go missing at a park near a large field with a creek in it the other day, and was thinking, as I toned out the Volunteer Fire Department, how nice it would be to conduct a quick fly-over with a drone to find the kid. (Fortunately, a cold rain began to fall, which told me (when he didn't show up) that he was likely not outdoors. We searched nearby houses, and found that he'd made a new friend that he'd neglected to tell his mom about.) They can be run off of tablets with WiFi boosters, and you can get into one for well under $500 if you don't need high end and already have a tablet.   I can see hunters scouting their area with these. Home defense? Get one with an IR camera. Police work, good and bad? Sure. Fire suppression. Crop evaluation. Roof inspections. I think of those guys who inspect radio towers. This would be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

This year, we saw NetFlix, originally just a streaming service for movies and syndicated television shows, be taken seriously as another network, turning out its own produced shows of high quality that had Emmy expectations. My wife bought a couple of dozen shares of NetFlix a few years ago, and sold it for a nice profit a couple of years ago. Man, we wish we had held on to that, now!

Shoulda held on to some of that.

This year, we saw the economy of China become the largest in the world, and some people tried to make hay over that. Really? They've been the largest country (by population) all of my life. It's hardly surprising that they would have a bigger economy. Now, let's see what they do with it. We still have the biggest market and most revenues. Frankly, I'd like to see China be more careful with its environmental issues; we're downstream of them. 

On a personal note: 

This year, I saw my elder daughter learn to drive. She's not bad. I saw my younger daughter turn 12, and overtake both her mother and her elder sister (16) in height. I saw my elder daughter take the stage in a musical, and knock it out of the park singing in front of a full auditorium, the same semester that she had started choir. Then she started dating. (He's a fine boy. No, seriously.)

This year, I took my elder daughter to get two ear operations, and took my wife to have a gall bladder removed and have heavy sinus surgery. All of this, BTW, was since October. Given that we've never had any kind of operations in my little nuclear family before (we're a healthy lot), it's been nerve-racking. 

This year, we re-roofed our house and put gutters on it, and set up a cash-back refinance that will end up going through next week, with which we're buying a nice used Tacoma pickup. 

I lost a few pounds, this year, and then this holidays gained 15 pounds right back. 

Work:

This year, I trained a guy the way I wanted him trained. I sat on a couple of review boards, and did some background checks. I put some bad guys (real ones) in jail, and saw more than one find prison time. I also helped a few decent people who had made some technical errors in judgement get right with the law. I also helped a few people that just needed help. But I also got some people mad at me, and I just hope that I was doing the right thing when I did. 

I have seen evidence that I have the respect of my boss, whom I respect. I've gotten phone calls this year from officers calling me for advice when I was off-duty, and I will tell you that there is no greater compliment. 

2015 comes now, and I don't know what it brings me. But I hope it brings us collectively more peace. 

Thanks.

Most of you didn't have to.


Thanks.

State Of The Union

I'm relatively sure that no one walks away with a new perspective after having watched the State Of The Union Address, so why bother watching it live? If you hate the President, you'll reiterate that. If you love him, you'll underscore that.


In the meantime, check out this interesting piece that charts that words used by past U.S. presidents in their State Of The Union addresses, entitled "Hindsight Is 20/20." The words that most used certainly indicate what was on the mind of the President at the time.

Random thoughts in mid-December.

--It's finally bright and sunny today. The last of the ice has crept back into the darkest northern shadows, 10 days after our big ice storm. Someone brought up on the radio that this is the coldest stretch of weather for this past 20-something days for this area since 1899. Water still drips from the melting ice in the trough on my roof. I know you northern types giggle at my amazement, but I many times was not dressed inappropriately when I went out to play with my Christmas toys in a T shirt and jeans. Heavy ice lingering from early December is unusual for us in North Texas.

--Speaking of heavy ice, I have again been reminded that I was born and reared in the wrong period. I wish I had been born in, and had the means to take part in, the Heroic Age Of Antarctic Exploration. Just to think that such an era was named (and is Wikipedia official!) is something. Like the Golden Age Of Flight (Which apparently is NOT Wikipedia official.) (What are your favorite "Golden Age Of _____" eras?)

--I started thinking about the HAOAE when I came across these amazing color photos taken by Frank Hurley whilst aboard (and cast away from) the Endurance when it became icebound in on the Weddell Sea of the Antarctic coast in January of 1915. The ship wash crushed in October and sank the next month, and the crew weren't rescued until August, yet none of the party under the leadership of Sir Ernest Shackleford perished. I believe that I shall be purchasing the story right now. Why hasn't a movie been made of this?

--I spent 5 hours this morning early working on paperwork at the office, off-duty, trying to meet my goal of catching up completely by Christmas. 90 minutes of that was on the phone with Tech Support over a computer issue, finally deciding that I needed a new optical drive. When's the last time you had one of those crap out on you? Strange.

--I was just now trying to figure out why I felt tired and kind of sick. Then it hit me: Coffee. I hadn't had any all day. To the French press! I ground some Community Coffee beans (hey, when the sealed pack of whole bean is marked down for $1.99 a 12 oz pack, you'll buy five pounds, too.), and filled that chambourd right up. I'm feeling much better now.

--While getting my dopamine back in shape with caffeine, I thought of when I recently invited my dad to join me for a cuppa at a coffee shop run by a privately-run religious-based self-enrolled halfway house. The coffee there is excellent, and I shot this picture of my pot of French Press with my camera phone while I waited for Dad to join me. When he arrived, Dad took a puff of his vapor cigarette, and was told by one of the staff there that there were no drugs or addicting substance allowed. I had just ordered my second pot of French press for us to enjoy. They didn't seem to see the irony in this.

--I'm ordering on Amazon as fast as I can. I know that I've put stuff off a bit too long, now.

--Man, the caffeine is really kicking in. I'm typing faster than I was at the beginning of this post by a factor 1 : 1.5.

--Apparently, I'm going to take part in a CO chili cook-off next year. I seriously need to step up my game over what I brought this year. Sure, 25+ lbs (or was it 30lbs?) of chili all sold, but it wasn't the right texture, and frankly, it was a tad bland this year. I was experimenting with pork and a new kind of red chili paste (way better than powder, BTW). Foolish. Go with what you know. Dad contributed the pork for that, BTW, with that big sow he shot this April with his .45-70.

--Funny thing: when Dad and I were picking up some items at WalMart during our duck hunt this November, a lady saw Dad wearing that same British smock jacket, and asked about where she could get something like it for her husband, whom she was shopping for a gift for. We were in Weatherford, TX, which isn't too far out in the wilds or anything, but Dad and I laughed and responded that the only other one like that for 50 miles or more (most likely) was being worn by our friend Stephen, who had just flown it in with him from London for the purpose of hunting, and he wasn't selling it, as he needed it the next morning.  (You can also see Dad wearing it here, just before I sniped a passing Gadwall that was about to leave us for good after having passed by three times without landing, despite what a certain Ambulance Driver may say about premature shooting.:) )

--I give my friend A.D. a lot of hell, both here and to his face. But he's one of my dearest and trusted friends.

End to a great vacation.

"Are you sure that you don't want to come?" I asked my wife again, as she dropped me off at the Museum Of Flight in Seattle.

"Oh, no. The girls and I aren't that interested, and it's $18 a ticket, and we want to go to that Curiosity Shop before we go home," she assured me.

Good.

I know that's mean, but she's right; my daughters just never caught the bug for airplanes, and my wife never had it, either. It was afternoon on my last day of vacation, and I wanted one last cool thing to do before we left. I hopped out of the rental car and skipped up the walk past a B17 to the door of the museum, concerned about the fact that I only had two hours before it closed.

Two older gentlemen were standing on the front steps, wearing docent name tags and talking. They stopped talking and turned, along with everyone else, as a 747-8 started its take-off roll about 200 yards away. Honestly, I thought that it was only a hundred yards away, but Google Earth shows me different: Runway 31 Left is about 200 yards from the front steps of the museum. Supposedly, the new GEnx-2B67 engine is supposed to be quieter and more environmentally friendly, but one can't fault the pilot for unleashing every decibel available when pushing 900,000 lbs of one of the largest passenger jets in the world up to take-off speed.

 600 feet isn't very distant when four General Electric engines each put out 66,500 foot-pounds of thrust.

The two guys both clenched their jaws as they watched the airship gain speed down the runway.

"Come on, up! Up!" one of them said. The nose lifted, and a second later the great plane took off, a mile and a half away, with plenty of runway left.

"I always feel like they're never getting up in time, when I watch them," the elder gentleman said. I would have bet a fat paycheck that he'd pulled back on the yoke during a few take-offs, himself. Most museums, the patrons would get annoyed if you had put that kind of ruckus up right at the entryway. Not here. Every man, woman, and child in attendance was watching the takeoff. Because we all were here to look at airplanes.

I went inside, and gladly shoved my money at the cashier, and got the audio tour guide device, too. I looked at the map that they gave me of the place, and realized that there was NO WAY that I was going to see half of this place, at a dead run. Blocks and blocks of multiple levels of great displays of real airplanes. So I relaxed and decided to walk to see what I could.

I went into the TA Wilson Great Gallery, and found myself looking straight at a M-21 variant of the A-12, which was an early Blackbird. This one had a D-21 drone on its back. If you think modern drones are exotic, you should consider that we were launching these things at Mach 3 during the 1960s. Check out this video (narrated by Kelly Johnson) of a failed launch, taken from another Blackbird, an SR71:

I looked around, and found that they had an actual fuselage from a wrecked SR71, which cockpit you were permitted to sit in. Don't think for a second that ten-year-old Matt G was going to miss a chance to sit in the cockpit of an SR71. I hassled a dad who had just helped his son out of the cockpit to take my picture.

 

 

 

 

 

I think that the seat must have been lowered.  I'm sorry that I left my right leg cocked, but there was a line, and I knew that I must get out.

They had a simulator that would let you fly one of three different aircraft. .

 

 

I texted my Dad and Tam and Old NFO, asking which one they would go with.



Options are: P38F Lightning, F4U-1A Corsair, FM-2 Wildcat, F15 Eagle, EA-18 Growler, F22 Raptor.

I immediately knew which one I wanted to fly, and I got in the slow-moving line. Old NFO, predictably, immediately responded that he would fly the F4U Corsair. Well, duh; he's an old Navy pilot. Dad was still mulling it over, and Tam, rarely known for quick email responses (!) didn't get back to me. I didn't send one to my best friend Scott, because he knew exactly which one I would choose, we having had the discussion many times in junior high and high school. (Honestly, though, I don't know for sure which one he would have flown. I'm guessing that without his beloved P51, he would have flown the Corsair that his Grampa John used to fly.)

 

The line was moving slowly because one of the two simulators was down. The rules said that the machine needed a pilot and a co-pilot, because of the weight distribution issue. I was alone. The lady in front of me was waiting in line for her son. I subconsciously labeled him a brat, until she explained that he was a great kid, and she had volunteered to wait in line while he hit other exhibits, and that he was in his Vancouver civil air patrol group, and had piloted her around. The 15 year old kid showed up and thanked her for her help. I asked him suspiciously what plane he planned to fly. (Probably a jet.) He said that he wanted to fly the Wildcat. I explained that I was paying for him to be my copilot as soon as he was done with his own flight. He was tickled with it.

 

Basically, I suck at tracking around and getting my Zero. I focused on one Zeke, and just couldn't turn with him. I would overtake him (once I learned to deal with the backwards throttle. Pull back to go faster?!?), and struggle to keep my .50s on him, and then overshoot him. In the end, I should have focused on the Janes and Bettys that the Zeke was escorting.

 

I got out, and headed rapidly to the World War II aircraft wing.

 

Ah, there was my beloved P-38 Lightning. Twin tail, twin Allison engines, 4 .50s and a 20mm cannon all snugged up in a box of power in the nose in line with the gunsight. It was the second fastest prop plane in the war, after the Mustang. While it had its problems (at 20,000 and above, the engine under-performed and began to wear terribly, making it sadly not as useful as one would hope as a bomber escort), it was a great fighter and attack plane.

Oh, as for the Mustang? They had a very nice one:

Well, the PLANE was very nice, even if the picture wasn't. I had turned off my flash to save batteries, and was trotting through the darkened room, as this shows. I was shooting a bitty little Nikon Coolpix point-and-shoot, with its standard-issue tiny lens. Surely this was no way to treat the Cadillac Of The Skies. 

 

As well as a lovely Spitfire:

And a nice Corsair:

 I was running, taking pictures as fast as I could, when the announcement came: it was time to leave. I've got more pictures that I'll post later.

 

I went outside to await my wife in the parking lot. It wasn't a boring wait; I had something to look at:

Like this WB-47E Stratojet.

Or this B-17F:



Stampede! Wiki Mini-Wander.

Check out this amazing list of human stampedes causing deaths in the 20th and 21st centuries. I remember when the 11 people crushed at the Who concert in Cincinnati was huge news, and WKRP In Cincinnatti did an episode about it. But that's nothing compared to other such events, which are surprisingly common.

This took me to the 2003 Great White* fire at The Station. I've watched the entirety of the video, and it's chilling. What's fascinating to me is the fallout of 100 people dead (mostly due to smoke inhalation because they couldn't escape in the stampede that packed the exits): The band, which employed the manager who placed the pyrotechnics, paid the families of the dead $1 million. The owners of the nightclub settled for  $813,000. JBL Speakers company paid $815,000. The foam companies paid $25 million. The state of Rhode Island and the City of Warwick, which apparently didn't properly enforce updated fire codes, paid $10 million. Okay. But the one that blows me away is that the television station that employed the cameraman that got the footage that told us what happened agreed to pay $30 million, because the cameraman supposedly got in the way of the exit and didn't help people get out.

I've watched the video, frustrated that people aren't helping to pull the crush of persons out of the exit. But this seems extreme.

The installers of the foam insulation haven't paid anything.


_______________________
*Edited

Wednesday evening this and that.

--Steampunk Lego sets? Why had this not happened before. Unless they are fools, this will be made of win.

--Nancy Grace has always irritated me, even before I happened to be stuck in a doctor's office or something, and saw her try to corner Elizabeth Smart in a bullying manner. (Note Smart's semi-eye roll at 1:21, to a rather stupid question put up by Grace.)
But she's especially irritating as a commentator, when she does a split-screen interview with a woman who is in the same parking lot as herself. On-scene stand-ups are over-used in the news. There is NO POINT in sending a reporter out to stand in front of City Hall at 07:00, to tell you about the agenda that they're going to talk about, later that day. So now CNN is using three tools that irritate me at the same time: unnecessary stand-up remote broadcasts, unnecessary split-screen interviews to attempt to show that they're ALL OVER on the coverage of this salacious story, and of course, Nancy Grace.

--On a side note, that Jodi Arias chick is so bat-feces crazy guilty (she took the stand, for 18 days!!!), she'll be extremely lucky if she doesn't get the needle.

--I like that now-defunct Nickel Creek band.

--From F. Scott Fitzgerald's entry in Wikipedia:

"Among the attendants at a visitation held at a funeral home was Dorothy Parker, who reportedly cried and murmured 'the poor son-of-a-bitch,' a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby."

I would have expected more out of Dorothy Parker. But I'm planning on collecting crude statements by Marko Kloos, Cranky Professor, PhlegmFatale, and Larry Correia, so that I'll look literary when I cuss. Larry says that he can write me up a good funeral scene. I look forward to reading that. I'm thinking along the lines of a Valhalla send-off, delivered in the style of John Cleese at Graham Chapman's funeral.

--Phillip, a fine historian of firearms was giving a presentation of a Teddy Roosevelt double rifle at the end of the NRA Convention in Houston this weekend. This is something that they will do for accredited news media, to educate about some of the noteworthy pieces in the amazing NRA firearms collection. I went to the one last year in St. Louis. This time, just like last time, a security flunky came up to these officers of the National Rifle Association (the group that just spent million$ to lease the space), and tried to give them and the media the bum's rush. Phil politely let her have it with, uh, both barrels. (Figuratively speaking, of course.)  He took a breath, and continued with the demonstration. Well done, sir. One of my colleague web correspondents caught the action on video, here. Hopefully next year in Indy, we'll have this issue worked out.

--I didn't get to go to the NRA Convention. I'm still kinda pouty about that. But Dad got to go, and I'm glad about that.

--Lots of graduation notices, this May. Pricey.

Django: Hot Tub Time Machine.

My wife and I went to see Django Unchained last night. We liked Christoph Waltz. It took me forever to realize that I was looking at Samuel L. Jackson. Don Johnson added comedy that was the best part of the movie. I think that Jamie Foxx did okay with what he was told to work with. Not great, but okay.

But we didn't like it. First, the movie was WAY too long. 2:45 long. Every scene involved long, lingering camera pans that were unnecessary. I'm a Tarantino fan, but someone needs to edit the crap out of his stuff. Also, there was a logical ending, and yet the movie went on for another 15 minutes that should have been added in the director's cut DVD. Next, I get that Tarantino was trying to do a movie in the old spaghetti western-style (as even the name would tend to indicate), with a strong Peckinpah influence, but it really was over the top. Every single .36 caliber ball out of a Remington 1858 New Army or a Colt 1851 Navy revolver would cause sheets of blood to fly out of the recipient, coating the walls with blood.

And about those guns. The first gun we see in the movie is a double-barreled shotgun which was in keeping with the time, but is at the end of that scene referred to as a "rifle." The movie is set in 1858, and apparently Remington must have shipped cases and cases of their new revolvers down to Texas, Tennessee, and Mississippi for general distribution to every dirt farmer that year. These were very expensive pistols, and poor folk generally didn't have them. This would be like finding every convenience store clerk, gas station attendant, and parking lot attendant having a brand new HK or Springfield model fresh from SHOT, now. While not impossible, it's highly unlikely.

 There was a Colt Dragoon (Model 1848) visible, but it didn't play a big roll. We saw a pretty cool Remington Cattleman's Carbine (model of 1858), which would have been pretty damned rare to see.  The main character rides hard with it in his hand, but I don't recall him ever shooting it, even when he ambushes some baddies.

The rest of the guns were almost universally anachronistic. The derringer shown again and again was a modern replica of a Remington 1866 .41 rimfire tip-up derringer. I've fired a couple of dozen rounds out of one (using up a sizable portion of the world's supply of .41 rimfire at the time, too, I guess), and the round is anemic. If you shoot it at a hardwood tree, there's a decent chance that it will bounce back at you. It of course caused gouts of blood in this movie. Why not? It was being portrayed 8 years early. Anything could happen.

There was a Sharps rifle that played a significant role. They never showed him loading metallic cartridges into it, but it wasn't the slanting breech model of 1852. I don't know the 1848 model. I think that this was an 1859 rifle, and much of the movie took place in 1859.  The rich bounty hunter might have had newest kit. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.

There's an iron-framed Henry that's a year or two too early.

We didn't mind the cussing. People cussed, then as now. Anyone who is offended by the use of the "N word" while complicit with the depiction of slavery by those uttering it is a confusing individual. There is reference to a gladiator-style culture of buying and selling slaves for the sole purpose of pitting them against each other for fighting, which is referred to as "Mandingo* fighting" in the movie.  My wife was surprised to hear me say after the movie that I'd never heard of such thing being popular. Oh, I've little doubt that it happened (Humans have always had a capacity for cruelty. And dogfighting has always been popular. So I'm sure that at times slave owners pit their laborers against each other.), but I've just never read of or prior to now heard of a real culture of slave fighting in the American South. Apparently, Tarantino just lifted the idea from a blacksploitation movie of the 1970's called Mandingo. He knows it's fiction.

The fact that this flick is a black man's fantasy about killing white slave owners doesn't bother me, any more than do the myriad of movies about getting revenge on the commies/men who murdered my family/enemy nation that attacked our country/etc, etc.

In an interesting reversal of movie styles, at no point is there any female nudity (beyond showing bare backs), yet there is a scene involving Jamie Foxx's taint, and his phallus. But that's not why the movie sucked.
_________________________________________________
*A few years ago, I helped out on a case involving a hebephile who had met his male victim online, using the name "Mandingo." I had at the time thought it strange to use such a nickname, but had not researched it. Apparently, there is a porn star (whom I won't link here, but can be found on a specialty database site for adult film stars) who goes by that name, and is also black. I don't think that the suspect was considering himself a fighter, but rather was identifying with the black porn star. He pled out.

"It's okay, he's with us."

A lot of people don't know that, until 1995, Texas had a rather stiff law against carrying pistols. Oh, long guns were okay, but to carry a handgun within one's scope of reach, one had better have been engaged in or en route to or returning from a lawful sporting activity, or had to be a cop or military, or, strangely, had to be "traveling."

Traveling was not defined in the Texas Penal Code. One judge would choose to interpret it as crossing county lines. Another would say that it was crossing three county lines. Still another would say that it was crossing three counties, with intent to stay the night. All the while, the charge of Unlawful Carrying Of A Weapon (or "UCW") bore a Class B, and later a Class A (up to one year in jail!) penalty.

There was no such thing as a license to carry a pistol in public, concealed or otherwise. That didn't come until 1995.*

But throughout the nation, Texas had a reputation for being a bastion of the gun-toters. And our gun culture was in fact quite strong.

How does one resolve this? No one could legally carry?!?

Well....

Remember that "Traveling" exemption? It's here, at 46.15(b)(2). It wasn't until September 1, 2007 (12 years after concealed carry was adopted in Texas) that we finally changed the law to permit one to carry a concealed weapon while operating a vehicle, regardless of the distance one went. A couple of years before, the Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot had surprised many by issuing an opinion that Travelling should be regarded as any legal transportation by a motor vehicle by a person not a member of a street gang, who is carrying concealed and not committing a crime greater than a Class C misdemeanor. The new law basically adopted that opinion, built right into Sec. 46.02. (Making the Nonapplicability statute kind of redundant, actually.)

There's nothing like a little ambiguity in the law, to see that it's applied differently to different people. I assure you that, in the Good Bad Old Days,  Tex and Good Ol' Joe weren't troubled with arrests for totin' their pistols. Nor was Grammaw, for carrying that old derringer in her purse. Also, pastor Brown? His proclivity for keeping a Woodsman in the glove box was just overlooked. They weren't Unlawfully Carrying Weapons! They, dear reader, were Traveling.

Because they were white.

Or belonged to the officer's church.

Or family.

Or a coach of the boys' baseball team.

But mostly, white.

Selective enforcement is a dirty way to apply a law, and friends, I'm afraid Texas had it pretty well institutionalized. I'm not proud of that era in Texas history, which went way back to the 19th century:

(Click to embiggen, and see what we passed in 1889. )

See, the law was applied to "those people," while the swarthier races, or even just those whom the officer didn't care for would be charged.

So think about how it would have gone down if Ice T, a black gun rights advocate, or Wayne LaPierre, a white gun rights advocate, had appeared on television, committing a felony possession of a high-capacity magazine.

But David Gregory is white, and is a gun control advocate, so let's let him go.

He didn't mean nothin'.

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*And the predictions were dire. "Blood in the streets!" "Armed showdowns over traffic disputes!" were forecast. Even as a cop, I've never (not once!) seen such, in over a dozen years in law enforcement.

Thursday random thoughts.

--When Marty McFly went thirty years into the future, he went to 21 October 2015. That's a little over two and a half years from now.

--I've got a friend turning in his gear to muster out of the US Army in Korea. I actually still can see a point in being there, unlike Afghanistan. But even then, the reason to be in Korea isn't good enough. Let's bring them home. This is less about me being a peacenik and more about me wondering how we're going to pay for this, and wondering what it is that we think we're buying with all those taxpayer's dollars?

--South Korea is mighty industrialized, now, and China has little or no truck with North Korea, now.

--I've been watching old episodes of Barney Miller, lately. As a kid, I remember that show coming on, and wondering why anyone would want to watch it. What kind of a cop show was it, where mostly people just stood around and talked, and a laugh track ran? Why didn't anyone ever fire a gun, or chase somebody?? 

Now, I'm fascinated again at the anthropology of police work. The detectives' squad room, for instance: no computers. Hell, even the typewriters are manual. The cops wear Detective Specials and 2" Model 10's, and maybe the odd Agent or something. Apparently the detectives routinely get called out to hot calls in-progress. Nobody has a portable radio. Very, very rarely is a female cop seen, and it's a big deal. Come to think of it, it's a big deal that one is black, and one is Polish, and one is Chinese, and one is Puerto Rican, too. Then there's the character Deitrich, who's just weird. I like his character the best. Sadly, Steve Landesberg and Jack Soo and Ron Carey and James Gregory are all dead. Ironically, the actor who portrayed the sick and burnt-out Phil Fish (Abe Vigoda) is still quite active as an actor at 91.

It took me a while to realize that Detective Harris is Shepard Book from Firefly.

--Watching the 30 minute cop comedy that spanned from 1974 to 1982, you become very aware of that tendency of television shows from that time period to attempt to grapple with social issues. I've seen ones on Vietnam, and the aftermath of violence, and on racial relations, and civil rights ("In a very special Barney Miller: Deitrich gets arrested, standing up for what he believes in.").  I just watched one about Agent Orange that had an investigation less plausible than that purportedly presented in J.F.K.

--The captain has a couch in his office. I've had a boss with a couch in his office. I want, someday, to have a couch in my office.

--The dicks wore their guns right in the show, though, for the most part-- behind the strong side hip. Modern cop shows are terrible about putting that pistol at 2:00 or even 1:45, just so that you can see it even when a cover garment on. The show's main character carries it too far, with Hal Linden deciding that the good captain would have his snubbie at about 4:30 or even 5:00 o'clock.

--That reminds me: I need a new couch at home. We've shredded the leather. I've stitched it back. My daughter's stitched it. It's time. We got our $1300 out of it. (What? That was 10 years ago. We'd gotten an insurance check, and needed a couch.)

--Remember when you would occasionally see benches in men's rooms? My wife tells me that there's a couch in the lady's room at her office. I seem to recall, as a little kid getting dragged into ladies' rooms, that couches were rife in womens' restrooms.

--I had someone question some point of my manhood recently. I pulled out my pink cell phone, pointed to it and my ring, and said, "I've got almost 15 years of marriage to the woman that I've had two kids with. I quit caring about having to prove my masculinity to anyone a long time ago."

--Apparently, the SCOTUS just heard arguments about whether states can do mandatory blood draws without a warrant. I've been kind of uneasy about our new "If it's a felony, you have to give blood" law, from the outset. I'm absolutely fine taking an involuntary blood draw after having a sworn warrant. I've got a sneaking suspicion that we're going to see a lot of specimens thrown out for violation of 4th Amendment. I can deal with losing the admittedly useful investigative tool.  I'd rather live in a free[r] country, even though I promise you that some intoxicated drivers will walk because of this, and will cause some deaths.

--I've had some felony DWI arrestees voluntarily provide me with a blood sample, so that their license wouldn't be immediately suspended for refusing, stating that they knew that I could take their blood against their will, anyway. Tough break for them if the mandatory blood draw gets thrown out.

--I bought a new dishwasher for Mom for Christmas. I got delivered today. The delivery guy knocked off some insulation, said, "Uh oh," and left it. I tried to stick it back on. Maybe I've got it right? I found that Whirlpool dishwashers need a special adaptor that you have to buy separately, to hook 'em to your water supply. They salesman that us the washer forgot to mention that. The salesman at the store when I went in to get the adaptor was shocked, and said that it should have been mentioned. The manager gave me a $25 gift card, so I'm basically happy. 

--But now I have to finish installing a dishwasher. Which I hate doing. Uninstalling the old one was two tons of fun, too. It's been sitting full of stagnant dirty water for about half a year. Ew. It made a mess.

--I went to a Council of Governments class on grant-writing yesterday. That was kind of a beating. I'm hoping that I win us a grant, and that it becomes worth it. As the coordinator for our city, it's going to be like herding cats.

--This looks like an interesting integrated rifle system. The misuse of the term "bullet" is frustrating, though.

--My elder daughter refused to let me pull her out of AP honors geometry to put her in the regular class. She's been struggling, and feeling some stress. (First B in years.)  I'm really proud of her for not taking the easy way out, when I was giving her that option.

Among that which we applaud.

My old partner and I used to laugh a lot, listening to some Professor Elemental.

I had thought that we'd seen the last of that chap, though, until Jennifer tonight pointed out that the witty gentleman parody retro chap-hopper had just now produced this:

The end is the very best part. Seriously.

Haw.

Again.

Tragedy struck.

It hit us all where we lived.

And we were stunned.

And our thoughts were constantly on the blow we'd been struck.

The dead children.

And our President wept as he spoke. "Something has to change," he said.

And we were moved.

And we passed swift legislation.

Because we had to Do Something.

And we said "Never Again."

And the USA PATRIOT ACT is still with us.

First Day Of December.

--My wife just purchased my younger daughter her first pair of brand-new cowboy boots for Christmas. (She'd had others, but not brand-new to her).  After tax, they went $192. They're turquoise and brown. When my wife told me this over the phone, I said, "Good Gawd! Jeez!"

She responded, "Oh, they're not that garish. There were lots of men's boots that were more wild-looking."

"It's not the color! It's the price!! $192 for a 10-year-old's boots?!? What do we do when she grows out of them?" I exclaimed.

"Oh, I'll inherit them," she said. "I wear her size."

"Good Gawd! Jeez!" I said again, for a different reason.

--Very humid. Cloudy. High in the high 70's today. Wind is fresh, out of the southeast.

--I've been working a lot of off-duty, on top of my fire shifts and my work and grad school. I'm tired.

--The main cafe in town has a Mexican cook and some decent Mexican food, but no breakfast burrito on the menu. I've been ordering a breakfast burrito made special for about a year, there. Now I find that our new rookie with the PD thinks that he started the trend there. He's a good guy, but he clearly needs his comeuppance. I've been this week campaigning to get them to name it the "Matt G Burrito." It's just a bit of schtick, but it would be funny if they did make it. (I have them make it with grilled jalapenos, cheddar cheese, onions, sausage, and chorizo. )

--I didn't make my Christmas tamales for Thanksgiving this year like I meant to. I still plan to make them. I typically just debone a rotisserie chicken and spice it in a hot pan for filling. I've got some pork, too. I've also got some beef. And a little venison. And some mushrooms, for veggie tamales....

--My moustache has grown to previously-unseen proportions. It's getting unruly.

--The 'stache may be gone in a bit, too. I'm considering hacking it off. It sure 'nuff hacks off my wife.Which is funny, because the beard that she wants me to wear again sure wasn't worn Amish-style.

--Our arraigning magistrate told me that, after figuring in his regular work and his salary for coming in every day for setting bonds, he only makes about $9/hr on his salary on months when they have No Refusal Blood Draw Weekends.

--They're doing those more and more, including Thanksgiving weekend, now. I'm okay with them-- the officer gets a warrant, under probable cause, to take the defendant's blood. Anymore, it's getting rare to take a breath sample for DWI's.

--I went to a trial the other day in which the defense attorney went after the character of the arresting officer, in a case where his client had clearly committed the action. The officer's character was not the issue. While I appreciate that the attorney had a tough case to defend and and was charged with putting up a spirited defense, I think that it's reprehensible to make a personal attack on the character of the officer and his reputation, especially when the officer was actually trying to help his client when the defendant attacked the officer. It's been a long time since I had a defense attorney do that to me, but it makes me seethe. It's not actually that common of a practice, when an attorney wants to continue to practice in the same county. Believe it or not, I actually have quite a bit of respect for most attorneys that I know. Not this one.

--There are black spidery things that appear on the Martian dunes every summer, and go away every winter. We don't know for sure what they are. That's awesome.  A known unknown.

--I've never understood why people have made fun of Rumsfeld for his Unknown Unknown statement. In addition to being a succinct statement of logic, it was a lovely answer to a question that he didn't want to (or could not) answer.

--I made one of my famous bourbon sours the other day using the juice from a Meyers lemon that I had picked one minute before from the potted tree in my sun room. Oh, crap. It really does make a difference. I was afraid of that. I've only got two more lemons left on that little tree.

--Do Meyers lemon trees self-pollinate? It had small fruit on it when we bought it.

--The more and more that I run across dogs in our town, the more convinced that I am that at least 1/3 of all dog owners should NOT own dogs. Maybe half, even. If your only interaction with that pack animal is to feed and water it for a couple of minutes a day and your dog spends the rest of the day entirely alone, I'm talking to you.

--Although both my parents have dogs that are sometimes a beating for me to be around, I in no way  could include my folks in that exclusionary group. Their dogs are living the high life.

--If reincarnation were for real, a person could do worse than to come back as a retiree's dog.

--People are shocked to learn that Rosa Parks wasn't a passive, hapless victim.What does it matter? She was being wronged. Her intentional act of passive resistance was a singular act that motivated a change.

--I don't understand motorcycle rides in which a dozen or more riders all cruise a single itinerary together on weekends. Some do this every temperate weekend. I thought that the draw to motorcycling was freedom? Having caravan'd a few times with friends, I have found that while they can be fun when you have time to stop at other people's whim (It's like being on a train with one of those emergency brake cables accessible to every kid who wants to stop to look at a woodchuck.), but they do restrict your freedom.

Aw, come ON, guys!

So on October 14th, to honor Chuck Yeager on the moment of the 65th anniversary of his record-setting supersonic flight, the Air Force gave the retired general a joy ride in an F-15.

"I really appreciated the Air Force giving me a brand new F-15 to fly," Yeager told CNN.

Seriously? I think a cub CNN reporter got duped and missed the irony of that statement. The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle went operational in 1976. Thus that "brand new F-15" may actually have been first flying at a time closer to Glamorous Glennis' historic flight than this commerative one.*

Stop down for a second and think about that. In 29 years we went from dropping an experimental rocket plane from a B29 to break the sonic barrier on its 50th try, to a third generation supersonic jet fighter being operational. Since then, we've made some advances in fighter technology, but nothing like that technical leap.

But if I'm Chuck Yeager, I'm saying, "It's 900 miles to Roswell. How about we check out a F35B, pop the sound barrier and super-cruise over to Roswell, and then hover while we watch Baumgartner do his falling trick?"

THAT's how you treat a living legend of aviation, folks. Oh, and give him an Aim 9 to make a final kill on a rogue balloon after Felix's jump, too.

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*Which is really impressive, when you consider that the Eagle is still considered a viable fighter. Imagine using Sopwitch Camels or Fokker Dr. I's as fighters in Korea. Or Mustangs and Lightnings in Grenada. Or F86 Sabres during, uh, something else in the early 1980s... (Look, Grenada was already a reach.)

Friday random thoughts.

--My elder daughter's band class played their Spring Concert last night. They played the Chicken Dance (A.K.A. "The Duck Polka"). The band instructor, a fun-loving guy, turned around after one verse, called for the house lights to come up, and chastised the parents for not having danced. My wife and I hopped up and implored the others to join us in the dancing.  Very few did. I got some sour looks by fuddy-duddies. Scroom. Heh.

--My best friend's wife wants to get her CHL, and asked about how best to do it. She runs a fireworks stand and wants to be armed, with all the cash that they take in. There's also a certain, ah, clientele that tends to come in, which has made certain persons call it the 'Cracker Stand. Texas law doesn't require her to have a CHL to keep a gun at the cracker stand, but I'm glad to see her wanting to get one, so we'll try to help her expedite. There's not much time before the stand opens. I'll be starting with her from scratch. I think I'll attempt to employ a certain experienced firearms trainer to help me. My best friend, who also will probably attend the class, will NOT be present for her training sessions. We have found over the years that there is a tendency for Texas men to unintentionally assert a certain dominance over their female significant others during training. This interferes with good learning. It has little to do, in my experience, with the quality of the relationship that the couple has off of the range, and needn't be an issue with just shooting. (I realize that I'm speaking in vast generalities, here, which means that there's always an exception.)


---I can think of no song more appropriately titled than "Mush Mouth," here.

I finally understood one sentence: "And it goes a little sumpin' like this."
--Fun is the Radio Time Machine. (Works better in Chrome, for me.) Fun listening to the music from the year I graduated high school, the year I was born, the year my mother and father were born.

--My partner, who had been out on medical leave, came back to work this week. He picked me up for lunch today, and it made me happy.

--Things we should probably be telling our graduates:  Your life is going to get worse. Don't try so hard to be great. Don't make the world worse. You are not that special. Now you know that you don't know much, and have to learn your way into your success. 90% of your interactions with humans will be either negative or neutral-- when you have a positive one, don' let it go.

--Tomorrow marks the sesquicentennial for the Battle Of Puebla. On it, I work Friday night, then work a bike race on Saturday day, then go in to work a 12 hour shift Saturday night. Oof.

--I've GOT to get some reviews from the NRA Convention put up.

I've got a little something for you. It's right here in my pocket...

When we say that the art of writing letters is in decline, we need reference points. I would submit that this one, a letter from a freedman to his former master who offered him a job, sufficiently makes most modern-day attempts seem feeble by comparison.

Imagine if Google Earth had to drop its pictures off at the Sooper-Sekrit PhotoMat first.

Back in the 1970's, the Cold War was being fought by some bad asses with old slide-rules and new TI calculators. They wore ties and short-sleeved shirts and kept long hours and never talked about their work.

Now we know about Hexagon, the ambitious and remarkably successful project wherein 60 mile spools of camera film was loaded aboard 30,000 lb satellites, which used the most sophisticated cameras of the time to take high-speed, ultra-high resolution photographs of the ground, and to then drop buckets full of the film to be caught midair while parachuting down, to be developed and searched for clues of our cold enemy's doings.

Finally, the old farts who never talked about their jobs can discuss the most fascinating endeavor of their careers.

It makes you think about how many people performed amazing thankless service for years for our country.

Take what you will from it, I guess.

The history of our national day of giving thanks is disputed.

It has become fashionable lately for people with (Midnight Oil's "Beds Are Burning" playing on infinite repeat) to tell us that Thanksgiving is a terrible celebration of the massacre of the trans-historic indigenous peoples of North America. There's quite the movement afoot to banish the holiday, or to reinvent it as a day of sorrow and atonement.

Hey, if that's all you've got in your box, then I guess it's going to rattle around a bit.

If you're an atheist, then the question arises: to whom are you giving thanks? Certainly not to God. Okay then: how about just appreciating how you got the things for which you may count among your blessings? Somebody likely helped you get there. Thank them. If you did it all by yourself, thank the person in your mirror. Saying "thank you" is polite.

I've always liked the way that William Bradford looked at Thanksgiving: as a celebration of capitalism as a way to get through the harsh winters. It seems that before, the Plymouth Bay Colony had tried collectivism of corn, and that hadn't worked out; the hardest workers got no more than the shirkers, and they had almost starved the year before. So when they tried the concept of working for one's self, and trading for whatever was needed, the colony flourished.

It is interesting to note that some of the colonists worked for the local Indians, planting and such, to get their seed corn. I've heard one reference to them working "as slaves" for the indigenous people, but slaves don't generally get to walk away with any profit for their labors. This was an exchange of labor for commodity. That yellow seed corn was truly their specie.

Here at Better And Better, we try to see the optimistic side of things*. So on this day of Thanks Giving, I'm asking you all to simply see what is good in your life, and spend at least part of the day loving that.

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*We've also been known to fail at this, on occasion.