Range week.

My week was pretty good. Of the last 5 days, I got to shoot on four of them. Of those 4 days, I was paid to shoot other people's ammunition on 3 of them, and on the one day that I was unpaid, I shot with my father.

The new Glock 19 is reliable, and easy to shoot, but I'm having accuracy issues with it. Even with the new sights, I'm not getting groups under 4" at 25 yards, from a rest. I honestly am not sure if the problem is me, or the gun. That said, shooting from the holster while qualifying with it yesterday, I was fast, and centered on the silhouette target. I went to a plate rack, and was shooting it fast. It will be great for off-duty carry, but I'm saddened that I'm not shooting better with it, even with fancy new sights. (Trijicon HD XRs).

We had a challenge match at qualifications, in which each officer fired at a bullseye target with their pistol (four shots at 15 yards), shotgun with slugs (2 shots at 20 yards) and patrol rifle (4 shots at 25 yards), all in 10 seconds. Highest score wins. I'm embarrassed to say that I came in second, and that I wasn't sucking up when the chief came in first. I will say that my scores were abysmal not least because the wind was steady at 29 mph, gusting much higher, during the shoot. But it was for most of the other guys' shooting, too. It's shameful not to be making all 9's or better, with a carbine, at a mere 25 yards.

I also taught an hour block on Use Of Force and Officer-Involved Shooting Post-Incident Procedure, as regarding our new policies.

The next day, I took out the officer who wasn't able to come (because he had to work that night) to group qualifications, and we went shooting.

Yesterday, my chief and I went to qualify, and I got my little BUG G42 qualified along with my G19, duty G31, duty shotgun, and duty carbine. After he finished, he noted that he had a few mags still loaded up for his SIG P220, and suggested that we hit the plate rack, at the side range. We went there, and happily knocked down plates at speed.

I noticed an older man a few lanes over, shooting at a paper target with a Beretta PX4 Storm full-sized .45. At 10 yards, he was barely hitting the 3'X5' silhouette  target paper. It was hard to watch. He had a very low grip on his pistol, with the better part of an inch of air between the web of his strong hand and the upper part of the tang of the pistol. His support hand was in a teacup grip. As a result, the muzzle flip was utterly uncontrolled, and he tried to fight the recoil by pushing back into it, "helping" the round by another one foot per second down range. It also caused his shots to go low, on average.

My chief and I picked up and went toward our cars, discussing work scheduling as we went. We stopped for a minute to converse in the parking lot before leaving, and as we parted, the older gentleman came walking up, new pistol case and new box of .45 in hand, with his ear muffs over his forearm. "How's that Beretta Storm working out for you?" I asked.

He sucked his teeth, and said, "Well, I've been around firearms all my life, but never much handguns. My wife and I got our license to carry, but I'm having some issues with this gun."

I asked him if he would mind if I offered him a couple of pointers. He said that he welcomed them. I started to show him (with a half-empty water bottle) how he could help his grip, and then said, "Hang on." I grabbed some of my personally-purchased extra ammo for my G19 and my duty G31, and took him back to the plate racks. It took him two magazines, and then, everything clicked. I loaded a magazine for the Glock 31, and had him shoot a hostage plate target with it. It had a 5" red plate on either side of a reduced-sized black silhouette steel target, which swung back and forth to either side of the head of the silhouette when hit. With my 9mm, I could just get the heavy steel to swing around, if I shot it at the outside edge of the plate. He was hitting it on the near edge with the .357 Sig rounds, and was flipping right smartly to the other side. Bang-clink flip. Bang-clink flip back. Bang-clink flip... and so on for 16 rounds, missing ONCE.  I began to think that I'd been set up with a ringer. All of the bullet splashes on the recently-painted plate were slightly low of center, in a 2 or 3 inch group.

This was costing me a little bit of money, and I was low on ammo. I said, "Sir, you keep doing that, safely, and I think that you need to start shooting local pistol matches. Consider it." He told me that he and his wife were mostly interested in being able to defend themselves, and I pointed out that the stress of being timed and shooting against others while being watched was pretty good practice. I looked at my watch; my chief had left an hour before. Time to go.  We shook hands and left. I think his name was Larry. I'm not going to lie; bringing a guy from "barely on paper" to reliably hitting a 5" plate at 10 yards in two magazines was pretty damned fulfilling. Worth every cent of the box of ammo he shot.

November, 2015, and EMT stuff

*****STARTED IN EARLY NOVEMBER****
--I'm prepping for my EMT practical exercises, all next week. I'm not ready.


--Without getting specific, I had to officially apply my authority as a supervisor at work for the first time. I didn't much care for it.


--The weather in North Texas has been spectacular. Temps down in the mid-to-high 50s at night, up to almost 80 during the day. My wife put a drip irrigation system in for her garden in early September, and in early October, I gave her a high-end hose splitter and two-channel electric water timer. Our garden looks amazing.

--We noticed that the area around our water meter was getting swampy. I called the Public Works guys, who dug down and found a leak... on the city side! Huzzah! The very nice Public Works guy suggested that I put in a personally-owned water cut-off valve, so I bought one and a hand-hole box. He just installed that where the meter was, and moved the meter over a foot, and installed it a little higher upstream. To do this, he had to dig up the valve at the main, which was just direct-buried and not accessible by manhole or hand-hole. He took the old manhole cover and bit of steel culvert, and put it over the valve at the main, and put a new box over the meter, and put my purchased box over the valve that he had put in. He and his partner then put in sand around it, and carted away the mud, because, they said, it was dry into impermeable cement. (We have a high clay content in our soil.) 

***************LATER. MUCH LATER. WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, ACTUALLY******


--I did my skills week for my EMT studies. It was a 70+ mile drive, through downtown Fort Worth each way. Going there, I just started at about 5:45am, and made it right through the city. Coming back, I had to sit in traffic. I'm a wimp about traffic, having to only rarely deal with it. My normal daily commute is just from my front door to my car, and then on in to the office less than half a mile away.

--I took the final on a Friday. I got a 90. I'm not proud of that 90, because it means that 10% of the cases that I come across may well fall in a gap of my knowledge. I have a long way to go.


--I did my rotational internships at a regional hospital pursuing Level II Trauma Center status, and at a couple of mid-city firehouses. The fire guys were great, and were easy to chat with and get along with. They were people of the sort that I knew; they laughed and cut up, but turned on the professionalism as soon as a call for service came up.

At the ER (ED, actually), it was different. The staff was quite stiff. Tensions were up a little bit. I found myself in the way, apologizing a lot. Nurses would be professional, but often put the "curt" in "courteous." I understood. I was just an intern, and was furniture. In three days, I was gone, and there was no reason to really develop a relationship with me. Thus, I was at best a liability who could maybe be of some help in moving a patient, or cleaning up an exam room. I cleaned a LOT of exam rooms. I was surprised. My first ER preceptor, a "Tech," was a paramedic with street experience, but he was also treated a lot like an errand boy who also took vitals. And I was his assistant and intern. My preceptor was very nice, actually, and quite encouraging. He told me that he thought that I was going to be great as an EMT. I got handed off to another Tech/Paramedic, and then a nurse that I chose for her friendliness and willingness to answer questions. At the end of three days, the Charge Nurse gave me one compliment: He directed me to show the next EMT intern who was relieving me his way around the ED, and explain what was expected of him.

I did my final rotation as a 24 hour shift at the firehouse on Thanksgiving. I brought a couple of large pies with me.


--I got to see some stuff. One guy with normal vital signs had taken a trauma to the throat during sports, and during auscultation of his neck, I detected crackling sounds like rice crispies. Subcutaneous emphysema!  

An ambulance crew brought in an 84 year old man who was receiving CPR (begun within one minute of his collapse). I got put on compressions. He had been intubated. His sternum was completely broken free from his ribs. We shocked him three times. The doctors pushed a lot of drugs. As I was doing compressions, I felt something, and looked at the monitor, even as the ER doc was looking at it. He told me to stop compressions. At about this time, a paramedic and a nurse who were bagging him noticed eye movement. The patient had a viable rhythm! We backed away, and the RT put the patient onto a machine to help the patient breathe, and the doc started a central line.


We had a lot of rain on Thanksgiving night. I rolled with the fire guys to a swift water rescue that was so professionally performed that it looked actually kind of boring.  My ambulance preceptor was kind of a meat-and-potatoes guy.


An elderly woman with recent UTI and chest infection, with abnormally low BP, who had fainted in her bed and couldn't be awakened until shortly before we arrived? Well, that's just syncope (fainting). She refused to go to the hospital with us, but would with family. Walking out, I asked my preceptor about the possibility of it being septic shock. "Hey, it could well be," my preceptor said.


We had another older woman with a history of stroke, speaking in two-word sentences, with edema in her legs and respirations at about 28, who assented to go to the hospital.  While I was filling out my Patient Care Report (for my school-- this wasn't the official one), I got to the Assessment portion again. I asked my preceptor about the possibility of it being Right Ventricular Failure. He nodded and said that could be, and asked if I was sure that I wasn't going to go get my paramedic. I told him that I had too much respect for what those guys did, to assume that I could do it.

--I suppose that it's possible that someone will whine that I'm violating HIPAA by describing these cases. Of course, they'd be hard-put to figure out where the patient was, when they were seen, what the outcome was, etc, etc. I've learned a thing or two, observing my friend Kelly Grayson.

--I've sold a safe queen gun, to buy an amplified electronic stethoscope. I only asked enough to get the 3M™ Littmann® Electronic Stethoscope Model 3100, but I think that I want the 3200, with Bluetooth and recording capability. I will probably come up with the rest and buy it this weekend. I just don't feel that I can hear well enough with standard stethoscopes, over my tinnitus.


--I have to send in my EMT book to the school, and get their permission to take the National Registry test. (I'm not ready.)

My daughter's senior year begins.... Now.

To lots of people, the summer doesn't end until September First, or the observance of Labor Day, or when regular school is back in session. But when your child is in band, it starts earlier.

My elder daughter is a senior in high school this year, and is a drum major in the band. Today is the first day of band camp. Even though she has some kind of stomach ailment, she is fighting through it, and put together materialsm and cupcakes (hopefully safe?), and her water bottle and color-coded cards to give notice from across fields, and sunblock and sunglasses and her ever-present whistle (nicer than mine)-- all to get to school a half-hour early for the day.

This kid has been sleeping in until noon or later the last couple of weeks, staying up reading and watching movies with her sister. And she's been dating a little bit. But, she's been practicing her horn obsessively for the last month. She took a week earlier in the month and went to an elite drum major camp.  She's been working on summer assignments for her honors English, Math, Biology, and Spanish AP courses. We've been getting her into dual credit classes and getting her car set up for the school year, which basically for her starts today.

Here. We. Go.

This and that: February 9, 2015.

--I worked an off-duty job last week, and am expecting a little bit of mad money from it. I'm going to buy me a Canon Rebel body, and then go lens shopping. It's embarrassing that I don't have any kind of DSLR, with my family.

--I took the helm for a week as the OIC of my P.D, while the chief was out of town. Nothing happened.

--I went to a Traffic Incident Management school for a couple of days, put on by the North Texas Council Of Governments. The instructors were great, and passionate about what they were teaching. They were fervent in teaching that, if you want to contribute to the safety of first responders and the public at large, you MUST clear the roadway quickly. Statistically, for every minute that a traffic incident continues, there is a 1 to 1.5% chance of a secondary event occurring. That's astounding. They had plenty of evidence to back it up, and were proponents of taking a quick picture of the crash, and using push-bumpers and-or chains to clear disabled vehicles out of lanes so that traffic could get moving again. The instructor said, "My dream is to see push bumpers put onto fire engines. I may retire the day that I see that happen."

Firefighters like to block off extra lanes for the safety of the first responders. The doctrine that these guys were trying to push was to get the firefighters on board with clearing the lanes, in the name of preserving the safety of the motorists upstream of them. I get that.

-- I've been working out again, trying to bring back the physical gains that I had made before the holidays. That left rotator cuff is telling me that I'm stuck at the amount of weight that I'll be benching for awhile, but I'm making nice gains on the eliptical machine, and on the abdominal curl machine. I'm trying to get my wind up, and strengthen my core. Everything else is gravy. Well, losing some more weight would be nice.

--Spending time on the eliptical machine got a LOT better, once I realized that I could use the little Galaxy tablet that my mother gave me for Christmas to watch Archer episodes on, with my Bluetooth headphones on. I, uh, had to turn it off in a hurry the other day when my Bluetooth wireless connection failed and the speaker began blaring the unfortunately blue dialogue at Missus Grundy, trudging away on the machine next to me.

-I taught my 12 year-old daughter the painless-until-resistance-is-encountered come-along hold we call "the Gooseneck." It's mostly used for escorting drunks away from a location. I should make sure that my 16 year-old is good with it, too. Lots and lots of times, just getting a belligerent drunk out of a confrontation will deescalate a tense situation into nothing.

-The Open Carry Movement guys in Texas have a very, VERY vocal minority who are frankly assholes. These asses will ruin it not only for the open carry proponents, but also for regular 2nd Amendment people. The most common method of the OCM activists is to carry (legally) long guns in public places in a prominent manner. It's one thing to carry a gun, and it's another thing to carry a gun at someone, as lots of these guys are doing. The nice thing about the Concealed Handgun License in Texas has been that the guy who wasn't being an idjit, and was following the law in keeping their gun concealed, was going to prevent a lot of foolishness in other ways. More on this, later; it deserves its own post.

--I called my best friend (a small business owner) and asked his advice on starting a small business. Two hours' later, we were kind of at an impasse.

--I refinanced the house, with cash back.  Just because you have cash sitting in the bank doesn't mean that you're wealthy. Not. At. All.

--When we refinanced, they made me sign my "signature" about 75 times throughout the hundreds of papers worth of documents. I say "signature" because the rep from the title company insisted that I had to write in script my first, middle, and last name each time. Who does that?!? I then had to sign a sworn affidavit that this was my "normal and true signature," and give and exemplar above the signing. I wrote for the exemplar my NORMAL signature. The lady with the title company pursed her lips and said that might not work, "because they're all supposed to be the same." I made clear that if I were swearing to the validity of the statement, I would see that it was true, and the only way to do that was to actually sign my actual normal signature on the exemplar line. I pointed out that her own signature below her notary stamp only included her first initial and last name. She countered that it was okay, because she had a letter from her attorney saying that this WAS her normal and true signature. I laughed and said that her attorney held no power to grant such status. But I signed the rest of the documents the way she wanted me to, to keep the title company (and my now-irritated wife, also present) happy.

--They had fresh Otis Spunkmeyer cookies on a plate in the middle of the table in the signing room of the title company. I thought that was odd. The lady from the title company urged us to take them, but we declined, as my wife and I are both on a low-carb diet. We finally took them home to our children.

--I've got to make a site plan for the new fence and deck that I'm putting up. Not one in five homeowners in my city gets a permit to do such work, but I'm getting one, because our municipal ordinance calls for one.

--I want a new backup holster for a J-frame, to put on my body armor. This is easier done when I wear the body armor under my uniform shirt than when I wear it in the external carrier. But I'd like to do it either way. Suggestions? I'm reevaluating.

--I'm also getting the itch for a new subcompact auto. I've been considering a Kahr PM9, or a Glock 42. I will say, though, for being a quality little carry gun, that PM9's magazine protruding from the butt by an 8th of an inch irritates me. Not flush, yet not obviously intentionally protruding. Ugh.

--Brian Williams' claims should not blow over. He has one job: tell the news. When he was on the trip in which he claimed to have his chopper hit by an RPG, he was covering a story. When he tells of what happened on that trip incorrectly, he is changing the story. This is a journalistic ethics issue.

--I contacted Tamara for help yesterday, to see if she had another outlook at a problem that I have: I've got a stolen gun report in which the victim DID write down the serial numbers and caliber and make of the guns, but not the model. Sadly, several common gun manufacturers (not Ruger, thank goodness) re-use serial numbers. So when I get "S&W .38, S/N XXXXXX," I can't put it into TCIC/NCIC, absent the model. I had several like this, which I can't put into the system. If the guy had a Model 36 stolen, which shares a serial number with a Model 10 and a Model 42, I cannot in good conscience enter the serial numbers as stolen, and risk the innocent possessors of the other uninvolved firearms being held as a suspect for Theft Of A Firearm (a felony, no less.). Tam tried to help me, but we just couldn't do anything. It's a shame-- the owner didn't remember much about the guns, and a thief may well get away.

--My favorite practice for logging guns is this: Take your driver license out, put it next to the gun, and photograph it in strong light next to the overall gun. Then put it next to the serial number, and take a closeup picture. Email the photos back to yourself along with a description of the gun, the caliber, the value, and SN and model, along with where you got it. Save the email in the cloud, to be found later.

--My Dad is en route to my house right now, so that I can take him to lunch. Then he'll proctor me to make me do a couple more modules of my EMT training.

--I reward myself after a module by watching an episode of Archer. I reward myself while working out by watching the show, too.

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.

Monday Morning Coming Down.

--I got home last night to find that my younger daughter had picked enough pecans off the trampoline (fallen from the neighbor's pecan tree) to shell over a cup and a half of pure pecan halves for me. Then she toasted them for me and had them waiting in a bag. That girl. She will go FAR.

--My Public Administration class is not going well. It's like they expect you to do all the readings, or something.

--I'm waiting to see the enhanced footage of Felix Baumgartner going supersonic. I'm still skeptical. There should be something interesting to see/hear, there. Consider this footage of aircraft going supersonic (the Atlas rocket launch at the end is the most impressive.).

--We got a couple of big tubs of mascarpone cheese from the grocery salvage store a month ago, and made some stuff with it. This stuff is incredible. I'll never use ricotta for lasagna again, if I can get this stuff. Spreads like soft cream cheese, but has more texture. Very rich flavored. It goes great with fruit, too. The reason I feel like I'm being held out on is because you people are holding out on me.

--I am rocking the copstache in ways I never have before. I grew it out somewhat at Blogorado, and just never really shaved my upper lip. I've trimmed it twice already. I'm strongly considering shaving my head, too. Just because. My wife isn't really happy about this, but she doesn't permit me to give any input on her hair styles. And this isn't permanent. I don't think that the moustache will cause me to go insane. This will, though.

--My daughter wants to get into skeet. I can train her on safe shotgun loading and use, but I'm a terrible wingshot, so I'm going to pay professional trainers to teach her, with a family 20 gauge Remington 1100.

--Given that I've yet to hear any justification for the DPS helicopter shooting of two unarmed Guatemalan aliens in the bed of a fleeing pickup down on the border, it doesn't look real good for the shooter. While I'm proud of our Texas Rangers as an investigative unit, I don't actually think that it's entirely appropriate for them to investigate this one. Time to invite some outside help, guys. If the shoot was good (which would involve new evidence that I've not yet heard, but is certainly possible), then you want it untainted by suspicion. If the shoot was bad, then it doesn't matter; just take out the problem and deal with it accordingly.

--I don't know what your weather looks like, but I doubt it's as good as mine:

-- Heard from prisoner whom I had just arrested, talking on the cell phone to his girlfriend: "Yeah, be sure and get my truck and trailer out from impound right away, or the wrecker company will charge extra days. And hon? Put on some makeup and dress real pretty, and try to get 'em to drop the price some on getting our stuff out. Have mom drive you there, and tell her to put her leg on."

--The lemons on my Meyers lemon tree are finally ripening:

--It's getting hard lately to find the great Buffalo Bore Heavy .38 loads. Anyone got a line on them? Especially non-+P?

She's good. You should go read.

Normally, when I send folks to a URL, I mean for you to read their online stuff.*
For the past couple of days, I've been formulating in my head a book report on Kathy Jackson's book The Cornered Cat: A Woman's Guide To Concealed Carry, which I've been reading.

Kathy Jackson and I both posted a lot on TheFiringLine.com, and were co-moderators at TheHighRoad.org. She is a superb writer. She's also been training men and women to shoot in the Northwest for years. She has a lot of experience, and has thought about the issue in some new ways that I hadn't seen before.

While I was talking to Kathy at the NRA Convention in St Louis this April, Rob Pincus told me that Kathy's book is something anyone interested in concealed carry should read. I noted that, because Rob is not a girly man, and he was endorsing a pink book with a kitty cat on it.

After returning from St. Louis, the book lived in my suitcase for a few months, and when I was getting ready to head to Blogorado last week, the book came out. I've been reading it, and am half done. It's great. Seriously. Kathy points out some superb points about mindset, early on, which I will use for myself, and will pass on to others. I believe that it is Chapter Three which is called "Dying Of Embarrassment", and points out how people often permit their lives to be endangered out of fear that they will break a social more.

The book is written to be appealing to women. But that doesn't mean that it's not valuable to men. This is not a Secret antiperspirant advertisement-- it's a strong endorsement by a man who carries guns and advocates responsible self-defense. Guys, if you have to tell yourself it's for the woman in your life, then buy it, read it, and give it to her. But don't miss the chance to read it before you pass it on.

People that know me know that I don't give false compliments, ever. I wouldn't have written this if I didn't mean it.


___________________________
*But on that note: good news! Kathy Jackson has a blog, and is blogging on it lately.

"The Obligatory Cow Reference."

I had forgotten how well Stingray had written up a certain humorous-and-yet-tense moment, a couple of years ago, at Blogorado.

I just read it again, and laughed for a minute straight.

Random stuff.

--Last night, we drove my mother and my newly-minted 14 year-old to dinner last night for their respective birthdays. We went to a French bakery and cafe that, while a chain, still puts out some really great food. Mom got a Sacher torte, and moaned: "This is as good as the one that I had in Brussels." Mom had gone on a tour of Europe after graduating from SMU in the mid-'60s.

My brother's eyes shone. "My mother has been waiting over 40 years for just the right opportunity to say that!" he proclaimed. I laughed so hard the excellent coffee that I was drinking almost came out my nostrils.

--While checking out some city property on duty last weekend, I got stung in the right earlobe by a wasp. After finishing what I was doing, I found some Windex to spray on my ear, the ammonia in which actually did quell the pain somewhat. For the next several hours, my ear lobe was bright red and swollen, but it went down within the day. But for the next several days, there was a seriously sore nagging kind of itch behind my jawbone in the neck, ranging up to the ear. The venom must have managed to get to the mandibular nerve, and sat there.

Back in police academy, they taught us how to use the mandibular nerve as an effective pressure point for pain compliance techniques.  One technique was to place the thumb into the notch behind the jaw to activate the mandibular nerve, and the stiff blade of the hand rolled firmly into and across the philtrum to activate the infra-orbital nerve. This is called the "C-Clamp," and is pretty effective at getting an uncooperative person (especially if they are sitting, as in an automobile) to move where you want them to go, without causing injury. We practiced it on each other repeatedly in class, and the soreness behind my jaw felt a lot like it did after those pressure point classes, but with an extra kick. Today it finally feels better.

--The Subaru Outback that we bought had a lot of road noise in the rear. The salesman that demo'd the car to me assured me that it was a tire that needed replacing, with a broken belt in it. I didn't think so, and took it by my mechanic. He rode in the back seat, and pronounced the problem to be the right rear wheel bearing. He then got out his laptop, and I bought a new bearing for $79 and had it sent to him. I took the car to him yesterday. He chatted with me as he swapped out the bearing over a leisurely hour in his driveway. We hopped in the car to road test it, and it was silent. Success. I picked up some cash from the bank to pay the guy. This was undoubtedly why no one else had bid even $7k on a car that was about $30k six years ago. Success! The wife is happy (it's her car), which means that I'm happy.

-- The Outback has heated front seats, with a rheostat for each seat. This will be really useful for that weekend when the temperature drops below 30 degrees.

--I've signed up for a Public Administration graduate class this semester. Three hours. $1370. Good gawd.

--My old roommate Bill needs a gun to shoot his CHL class with. I'm borrowing Dad's Glock Kit, which is a .30 cal ammo can stuffed with a Glock 19, a loaded magazine, two spare magazines in a carrier, a Fobus paddle holster, a box of 9mm, and usually an oily rag to keep everything from rattling around. Dad keeps it as a quick and easy loaner kit, and frankly, I think that it's a great idea. It also would make a great car gun set, in its almost indestructible O-ring-sealed steel box. I need to set up something modular like that, myself.

--My 14-year-old daughter doesn't much want her picture taken. She's okay with her Dad, but she's aloof. Hugs are rare. The 10-year-old still loves to come hug Daddy. But I know that the time is coming when she'll be too cool for that, too. I expect these things. But it still makes my heart ache a bit when they come to pass.

--This weekend, I have to do some work on a state grant, and get a hunter's license, and get my text book, and install a new porch door for my mom, and get Bill his loaner gun, and speak to my university adviser, and... I better get moving.

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.

Random Friday Thoughts.

--I would LOVE to have a news cameraman come along to video People Behaving Badly while I conduct traffic stops, like a highway patrolman in San Francisco had, recently.

--The other night, I had a dream in which I dreamt that I shot heroin. I've never used illegal drugs in my life, and I have a particular disgust for IV drugs. In the dream, the needle was even borrowed from SumDood. The whole time, I was panicking, until I woke up, upset, panting. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was a dream. I couldn't go back to sleep for a long time.  I know that lots of y'all cross all kinds of boundaries in your dreams, and it's okay, because it's just a dream. But I don't. I may have to visit the ramifications of this Never Crossing The Line Even In A Dream" thing in another post, sometime. Days later, the shudder is real.

--It was well below freezing when I got off duty last night at 3:00. This morning, the house was cold. Really cold. I really need to hook up the vents to the furnace so that I can run the new furnace that I installed back when I put in the new air conditioner.

--Last night was the only night expected to freeze this coming week. We covered the tomatoes and zucchini with tarps and blankets, and turned on a light under them, and other stuff just got comforters and buckets put over them. About 90-95% of our stuff survived a pretty good frost.

--Okay, let's see who had the better breakfast: I had a pot of fresh coffee and half a pint of Braum's Chocolate Almond ice cream. Never mind what you had; I win.

--I took a day-long class on mobile-field reporting, on how to use our new proprietary computer system. They flew in this guy to give teach us in a class of 6. The quality of the instruction was actually really quite good, and breaks were at a minimum and lunch was short. The guy gave us full measure. I was pretty impressed. I talked to the trainer, who said that he had all kinds of technical certs that he thought that he would be using, but in fact, he uses few of them, now. He got tapped out to train one day, and it turned out that he has the gift. Knowing how doesn't necessarily mean that you can impart it efficiently to others.

--I'm about to go purchase a bunch of fencing materials to repair my mom's fence. I had put in cattle panels in the back yard during the ridiculous heat, but now's the time to do it right, and put in posts and such. I have sworn never to sink wooden fence posts again, when I can put in steel posts into concrete. I'm about to test-dig to see if the little bit of rain that we've gotten has softened things up enough to let me hand-dig the 4 post holes. Otherwise? I'm renting the gasoline-powered auger. Call me a sissy if you want. I've done my time over a post hole digger in rocky hardpan. I'm not in prison.

--I discovered this week that, with a skillet, a big wok, a pound and a half of good grass-fed beef cubed, some bok choy, lemon grass, coconut milk, home-grown basil, hot red peppers and peanut butter? --I'm an evil genius of a fusion Thai cuisine. There were other ingredients, but that was the basic foundation.

--When you're at training, and realize that the speed loader in your pocket is a 6-shot one for a K-frame, and the revolver on your hip is a 5-shot J-frame, it nags at you, and makes it harder to concentrate.

--A couple of weeks ago, I was planning on trekking over with my best friend Scott to see the Alliance Field Air Show on Sunday. The night before, it rained heavily. They cancelled the Sunday air show, because they didn't have a contengency plan for when the grass parking area got too soggy to park in.* Part of my irritation with this came from the fact that an old school chum that I've not seen in 21 years is the lead pilot of the Air Force Thunderbirds, who were to fly that day. Kind of interesting when you find out that the guy you used to make fart noises with in the lunch room is now arguably the best precision F16 pilot on the planet. Would have liked to have seen him fly, and said howdy.


___________________________
*Interestingly, Alliance Airport is just a couple of miles south of Texas Motor Speedway, which had no events going on that day. Would have been an easy thing to have parking be diverted to TMS, and just shuttle people over to Alliance, for a small fee.

Damn.

I first became aware of William Zeus Bligh-Glover, MD back in late 2007. He posted on my blog and on others, and started up his own, under the moniker "William The Coroner." Thy guy was laser-sharp, and a fierce proponent of civil liberty. Science was science, without regard to politics. Pathologists are the ultimate Crime Scene Investigators, and of course I found myself drawn to read this guy. He tried to give me a bubba'd-up SMLE once. Anytime that we had discussions, I found that his take on civil liberty was even more stringent than my own. How could I not like him?

I always meant to call him. I had a case study that I wanted his professional opinion on, and meant to mail him some stuff and chat with him about it over the phone. Why didn't I?!? I guess that I thought that his time was too valuable for my prattling.

Yesterday I started to hear in the blog community that William Zeus Bligh-Glover, MD, a.k.a. William The Coroner had passed away. I went to Breda, and she gave me the bare details that she had: he had been sick for a while, and was found on Saturday to have passed. I was stunned. He had just blogged on Friday afternoon!! The man was only 43! Friend Rabbit and I raised a glass last night to his memory last night. Euripides had a point about debts.

When I got the confirmation today that it was true, I read his brief obituary, and learned that his family requests that any memorial gifts given in his name go to Heifer International.  Hey, if Bill was like me, he'd rather you spend the money on something worthwhile rather than flowers. So I looked up what this worthy organization is about. They have a project where they get dairy cows and chickens and goats and the like to starving people to manage and help themselves. Their motto is "We give a hand up, not a handout." I like that.

I'm going there to donate right now.  I don't have much. But hell, I'd have at least bought the man dinner. That's worth $25, right? Can I get you all to kick in just $5 each? Make sure that it's known that you're doing it in the memory of William Zeus Bligh-Glover, MD.

We lost a good one, this week. Make it count.

"'We're all worm bait waiting to happen. It's what you do while you wait that matters.'” --Kinky Friedman, quoted on William The Coroner's Forensic Files.

__________
EDIT: Okay, there doesn't seem to be a dedication place, though you could register your donation as coming form William Bligh-Glover, and then fill in the credit card stuff from yourself. Or just make mention on your blog or to a friend that you did this thing in his memory. BTW, though they would like you to buy a share of a heffer or a flock of ducks or trio of rabbits or a llama or whatnot, they'll also do whatever number of dollars you want to donate, to wherever the need is greatest. I trust that Bill's family chose this charity for a good reason.

Pardon me while I get a little defensive for our state.

You know who we see moving here in Texas? Californians. They marvel at the low (read: realistic) cost of housing. They like the lack of state income taxes. They buy a house here, enroll their kid into our schools, and then get busy complaining.

Not enough services. Our schools are rated too low. Texas is made up of a bunch of hicks. (That last one's pretty general, and, to a great extent, true. But we hear the complaint a lot.)

Funny thing, though. You Californians and other immigrants to our state seem to be complaining about our state at the end of a conversation that started with "Where's the nearest U-Haul dealership? I need to turn in my moving van."

I can't blame you for fleeing Cali. If it weren't for Miami, you guys would have "top five crappiest towns in the U.S." locked up.

As for schools, I have often wondered how anyone could miss that 1254 miles of our 2000 mile border with Mexico is the Rio Grande River. In my personal experience, the Rio Grande averages about a foot or two deep, most places. So we get a few international immigrants, too. It is estimated that we have 70,000 undocumented aliens in the Texas school system. In the college system, most of the 12,000 aliens in Texas receiving in-state tuition are illegal.

We educate about 700,000 ESL kids a year, at an average cost of around $7500 per kid per year. Count the zeros. That's a good five billion bucks. Which we come a lot closer to paying than the folks in California do.


Hey, your revenue is welcome. And if you'll give it a shot, you might just find that you like our redneck ways. But if you're running down your new home as soon as you get here, that's just foolish.

You incoming folks have already run up the number of digits on our license plates to seven, just like you had it back home. Maybe that'll feel more homey to you.

A retraction.

A month or so ago, I wrote about Dr. Bill Holda's misstatements about the Killeen massacre. The statements were harsh contrasts to historical reality, and were being used to explain his position against concealed carry on the campus of the college over which he presides.

I declared him a liar.

It would seem that I was wrong: he was simply not educated on the matter, and is doing what he can to educate himself.

Popgun has contacted Dr. Holda, and invited the college president and his wife out for an educational day of shooting.

Go read. Seriously. It's a remarkable story.

Dr. Holda is thinking outside of the box that he had been led into.

For that, I applaud him.

I formally retract my declaration. A large note will be placed on my original post.
----
H/T to Tam, and a bigger tip of the hat to PopGun. GREAT job, friend!

Well, duh.

U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill said what we all knew: Cheerleading is not a sport.

As the father of two daughters who was told that the huge bond floated to build a new football stadium would "benefit the girls as much as the boys" in our school district, I've just got to say, someone had to finally admit this.

A loud ringing in the ears.

It can happen to any of us, at any time, if you let your concentration slip.

If you drive a car long enough, chances are that you're going to be involved, somehow, in an incident where there is bent metal and scratched paint.

If you carry a gun long enough, it's very possible that you will have a lapse resulting in a circumstance that will arise, in which you hear a loud Bang, when you didn't mean to.

Without going into unnecessary detail, it's happened to me. No, not recently, but it has happened. My ears rang, and I suddenly felt a very cold sweat, as I rethought my actions and figured out what I had done to make this happen.

While I'm ashamed that I have had this happen committed this act of negligence, I can tell you that The Four Rules work. Although I had violated one (All Guns Are Always Loaded), I had not violated the other three. I had intended to point the gun in that direction, and had intended to pull the trigger. I had considered the target an object that it would not be a TRAGEDY to put a hole through.

____

I was amongst a little gathering of friends recently, and was enjoying the company. We got to talking guns, and I asked my friend about his* handgun, and the trigger. He unholstered, unloaded it, and handed it to me. I looked it over, quick-checked the chamber, and aimed at a spot on the floor as I began to squeeze the trigger...

And I stopped.

What had I really seen when I "quick-checked" the chamber? Well, it was empty, of course. Hell, I had just seen my friend unload it. But hadn't I just seen a glint of bright metal where I should have seen black void?

I checked again, and was rewarded with the ejection of a quality hollowpoint round, which I had been about to discharge into the floor, amongst a group of friends. I gave it to my friend.

Now, I believe that I had it pointed in a safe direction. I believe that I wouldn't have hurt anyone, excepting their hearing. But I know that I would have had to have left that gathering, tail tucked, and might not have been able to look some of those people in the eye again, for a long time.

I thought a lot about this incident. I think of myself as a safety person. Well, so does a cabinetry-maker friend of mine who is missing some distal digits. He's obsessive about his methods of keeping the rest of them, and gives direct instruction in his shop. Well, I'm a firearms instructor, and this blog is my "shop," so I suppose I'd best give direct instruction. I have found that personal experience stories are instructive, which is why I told you about this one, today.

What do we learn?

1. Practice all of the Four Rules. If one slips, the others should keep a tragedy from occurring.

2. When you are handed a firearm, or pick one up, check its status, and see what you are looking at. Don't just go through the motions. Better yet, be redundant in your check: RACK the slide back, or push the ejector rod through the cylinder three times. You might not get an ejection, but you're not going to miss seeing it three times in a row.

3. Avoid fiddle-farting with guns among others, except with a designated backstop that you all face, and only handle them at the firing line.

This last one sounds harsh, I know.

There are harsher things to hear, though.


___________________________________
* The name will be anonymous, and don't assume anything by the masculine pronoun; I flipped a coin before deciding which gender to portray my friend as.

The real obscenity.

You know it's bad when the middle-schoolers are more concerned about decorum than the teachers.

Some Winnipeg students were "rattled" when, during a pep rally, two teachers performed a lap dance and simulated oral sex in front of them.

My issue, after saying "Wow. Just... wow," was to consider that those kids' parents paid school taxes for that.

Now, some of you will say "Oh, that's just Canada, Matt." But think about your own junior high and high school. Didn't you have pep rallies that focused on your assorted sports teams? I recall a popular vote by applause for cheerleader try-outs.

There's a reason that our kids can't spell "cat" even if you spot 'em a C and a T.

If I were a parent of a Winnipeg middle school student, I'd be asking for my school's standing in academia, and then asking that my taxes that year receive a pro-rated refund.

In the closet.

In my closet, hanging way over to the side, near the wall, is an old letter jacket. I received this wool, polyester, and vinyl monstrosity of clashing colors in the summer after my graduation from high school. In the spring semester of my senior year, I had lettered, and been fitted for a jacket. I was called in on a sweltering late June day to come pick up my prize. There, emblazoned across the left chest of the snap-up jacket, was a large sewn-on letter representing my high school, with the word "ACADEMICS" embroidered down one leg of the letter.

I wore it a few times that winter at U.T., then decided that it was silly to wear a high school jacket in college, and gave it to my younger brother, who started at the same high school a couple of years later. I don't know if he ever really wore it much. I found it in my mom's house when I helped her move a few years back, where my brother had left it. I took it back. It really needs dry-cleaning. It doesn't fit me anymore. Huh. Guess it shrunk. I don't know why I keep it.

It's geeky enough to have an Academic letter, so it's no worse, I guess, to admit that I picked up that letter for Extemporaneous Speech. I was an officer of our Speech and Debate team my senior year, and my partner in Cross Examination debate had left. While my buddies got to compete in the district U.I.L. tournament on policy debate, I was left alone. I was damned if I was going to start trying Lincoln-Douglas values debate at that late date. But, as an officer of the team, I needed to attend the 5A speech tournament. I threw together a file box full of periodicals, and entered the tournament in Extemporaneous Speech. I mean, how hard could it be, right? You give some speech about current events for 7 minutes.

Turns out, that the style is harder than it seems. There were two types of Extemporaneous Speech: Persuasive, and Informative. Well, Informative sounded closer to the gritty policy debate that I was used to doing (We used to make fun of L.-D. debaters, jeering "Who cares if Suzie Shortcake thinks vanilla is nicer than chocolate?!?"), so I went with that. You're supposed to prepare by cutting out articles from periodicals, and filing them neatly, and bringing your files with you to the tournament. You get called up, pull three written topics out of the hat, pick one, and then take 15 minutes to prepare a speech from information that you glean and cite from your files. You may put notes onto one single 4"X6" note card. This was nowhere near enough for a speech (and who had time to write one?), but would allow you to put your talking points, so that you could pace yourself, and end just before the buzzer.

I had hit the lottery on my very first try. I don't remember what the other two choices were, but the third choice was, "Give a description of what's happening with regard to the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan." Hell, that's all I had read about for years. I knew about the buildup and initial onslaught of the Soviet military, the response by the Mujahideen, the U.S. support of the Islamic freedom-fighters, the international Islamic build-up of Afghan resistance, and the ongoing withdrawal of Soviet occupation. I also happend to have in my files a very recent article that I hadn't even read yet, which had the new lines of local power drawn out. Most of my card space went to phonetic spellings of the Afghan names that I rattled off in my speech.

I started with 20 seconds of passionate description of a fictional battle between a hero and a hydra, and went on to compare the multiplying heads of the decapitated hydra to the multiplying problems of Afghanistan. I killed. The judges stood up and applauded. The tournament organizers out in the hallway came into the classroom that I had just given my speech in, to see what in the world was going on-- none of the other speech givers were receiving standing ovations from their judges.

As it turned out, there was one other guy who was better than me. I only got a silver. Eh.

So I went on to Regionals, and learned there that I had gotten lucky before, hitting it on the fat part of the bat. These new judges smiled politely. I did not advance to State. But I still got my jacket.

I later found that the ability to put together a decent speech with just a little prep time was a pretty valuable skill. I learned that the use of talking points kept me on my time schedule, and kept me from straying from my goal.

Years later, as a young cop learning how to do DWI/DUI investigations, I learned that there were some key pieces of information that HAD to make it into my Probable Cause Affidavit. What clues I had observed for the standardized field sobriety tests had to be listed. What time I stopped the driver was a good thing to know. What time I concluded that the driver was intoxicated was necessary for my paperwork. I needed to know what time we arrived at the jail. Important statements made by the suspect needed mention. I found that I would have this information "at hand," if I just jotted them down on the not-inconsiderable palm of my left hand. Occasionally, I would even have to photocopy my hand at the jail, if I found the ink was fading. With all the paperwork from book-in and from a DWI license revocation, I wasn't going to lose these notes.

And just a little meant a lot: "123; 131; 6/6; 3/8 bal, li, htt; 2/4 ft dn 2, 6, 7 & hop; 4-5 br, 95@ 151, SO221." meant:

"Stopped at 1:23 AM. Began SFST's at 1:31 AM. Subject displayed six out of six clues for Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus. Subject showed three out of eight possible clues for Walk And Turn, to wit: Lost balance during instruction phase, stepped off of the line, failed to touch heel to toe. Subject displayed two out of four possible clues for One Leg Stand, to wit: Put foot down at the count of 'two,' at 'six,' and at 'seven,' and the subject hopped while doing the test. The subject said he had four to five beers. The subject was arrested at 1:51 AM, and arrived at the Sheriff's Office Jail at 2:21AM."

So I'm not surprised that a politician giving a speech to hundreds of people personally and before assorted members of the print and broadcast media might put a few talking points on her hand. I am surprised that it's raising such a stink, from people who have never had to do such a thing before, and don't seem to know what they're talking about.

Haiku #14: Finals week distraction.

Days of frustration.
Come night time, a dram of corn.
End of semester.

Kids ask the darndest things.

It's a tired cliche, but it's a fact that children are quite capable of posing some pretty profound questions, that most of us don't have the chops to answer.

Since most of my readership is brighter than the average person on the street, I now direct you to a list of some of those questions, so that you might answer them.