aubreyturner.org

Thanks to Jeff over at Alphecca for the kind words.  His words (along with Eric S. Raymond’s essay on SF) got me to thinking about my politics and my occasional rants, especially when it comes to gun ownership.

I’ve had a statement of my politics incubating in the back of my head for a while now, and I think it’ll be ready soon.  My writing process resembles that of Stephen Den Beste.  Something will get in there and get processed in the background until it’s ready.  Once it’s done, it just flows out, with my conscious brain doing little more than managing the mechanics of spelling and grammar (and the physical medium; keyboard, pen, etc).

Of course the background subprocessor only works when given time.  My better writing is all done this way.  I use it a lot for work, and I plan for it when giving estimates for the design phase of a project.  If I force myself to write something the result will usually be suboptimal.  This also occurs when I get ticked off and go on a rant.  Reading over these things later can be kind of uncomfortable because the text doesn’t flow very well (and there may be some nasty typos, especially with the rants).  With design documents, I can usually correct it somewhere along the way (there will be a number of reviewers for the document who will point out problems).  But I’ve made the decision for this weblog that I will not make substantial revisions once I’ve hit the “Save” button in Movable Type (I may go back and fix spelling errors or add an update, although the update will be marked).

And now for something completely different….

My CD ripping party is still underway, but my CD-ROM drive has given up the ghost.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, since that drive has been powered on almost continuously since May, 1999 (I think it’s only been down for a couple of weeks during that time).  The only time I take this system down is to modify the hardware or if there’s a power failure (one of the joys of Linux).  So I popped down to Best Buy and picked up an ATAPI DVD-ROM drive.  I also picked up a copy of SuSE 8.1 Professional.  I’ve been meaning to upgrade, and now I won’t have to mess with 6 CD-ROMs.  As a purely geek-driven activity, I may have to see about getting DVD movie playback working under Linux, although I might have to break some laws to do it (but if you don’t tell, I won’t ).

Someone once described a boat as a hole in the water into which you pour money.  For me it’s computers and guns.  I guess one could make similar analogies for them, but I’ll spare you (I started to, but it seemed kind of lame).

My next site upgrade will be to fix the picture pop-ups in my guns section.  They’re kind of lame right now (they just reference the JPG file directly).  It should be a simple but interesting exercise to whip up some PHP that’ll wrap the picture with some appropriate HTML (and to size the window to fit the picture).  I suppose I could hard-code that stuff, but that wouldn’t give me a chance to play with PHP’s image library and learn something new (why hard-code something in half an hour when you could spend 3 or 4 hours writing a program to do the same thing ).

I finally broke down and made some changes around here.

One major change is that I redid the guns section using PHP so that if I want to change it in the future I only have to modify one template file.  Of course, I didn’t set out to write code, it just seemed to happen (I got sucked into the coder’s time warp).

I’m also contemplating a new masthead, but I’m going to have to improve my GIMP skills before I attempt anything more daring than a few simple effects (like what you see above).

Now, to finish up.  I still have to modify the archive and category templates.

This morning I took the Avalanche to the local Chevy dealer for an oil change.  They have a TV in the waiting room, which was set to the local ABC station, which was showing Good Morning America.

Every time I am exposed to that show my blood pressure levels start to creep up and I have to remember not to yell obscenities (especially when in a public place like this morning).  Why does GMA inspire such loathing from me?  Because I can never forgive socialist scumbags Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer for calling me and people like me (the NRA and gunowners) murderers and claiming that we were teaching children to kill.

In case you hadn’t noticed by now, this is an area where I will accept no compromise and give no quarter.  The right to keep and bear arms does not belong to the states (there is no such thing as a “right” of government under our system), it’s not about hunting, and it would exist regardless of the existence of the Second Amendment.  While I am a member of the NRA, I often find myself at odds with the national leadership because of their weak stance on the issues (and past compromises).  It’s too bad I haven’t found a no-compromise gun rights organization that isn’t saddled with right-wing conservative nonsense.  If GOA was a single-issue organization, I might support them more (although there are times when I join with them to oppose bad laws).

I know proponents of victim-disarmament often complain that something must be done and that we should compromise and we can’t simply oppose everything they’re trying to do for the children™—you have to be for something.  Indeed, that’s one of my complaints about the NRA.  Too much time spent reacting rather than pushing our agenda forward.  I stand for certain things, and those things all involve repealing the tremendous number (>20,000) of gun laws that we’ve been saddled with over the past 100 years or so.  The only laws we need with regards to guns are the ones about not harming or killing other people.  Everything else is covered by that already.

As for the issue of compromise, consider the first definition of the word:

A settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions.

I get upset everytime I hear one of these oily, disingenuous victim-disarmament proponents use this word.  The reason is that every time it comes up it really means that we have to give up more of our rights.  That’s why a compromise isn’t possible.  The other side hasn’t made any concessions (other than to maybe agree not to take as many of our rights this time; they’ll come back for the rest later).

Oh well, I didn’t set out to get into a rant about the evils of “gun-control,” so I’ll stop here before I get too worked up.

There are only 13 days left until National Ammo Day. 

Unfortunately, the situation with .45ACP for my Kimber Ultra CDP II has reached dire levels.  Firing at least 100 rounds per week has taken quite a toll on my stocks.  I still have quite a bit of Wolf ammo, but the Kimber doesn’t like it.  So I was forced to order a case of Sellier & Bellot from Cheaper Than Dirt.

The Wolf, in addition to being inexpensive ($7.49/box of 50) is decent ammo and works well in my other handguns (both 45 and 9mm).  However Sellier & Bellot is some of the best ammo I’ve found for the price.  In .45 ACP (230 gr FMJ) it can be had for $8.97 per box of 50.  It uses brass cases and it seems to leave the gun cleaner than the Wolf.  That certainly beats the $12.97 per box I paid for UMC at the range today (and I am of the opinion that the S&B is better than the UMC).

Anyway, I will still be buying ammo on the 19th to show my solidarity.  I’ll just buy some in one of the other calibers that I use.  It looks like I’m running low on .380ACP, so that might be a good candidate.

The other gun that I took to the range today was my EAA Witness 9mm.  I mention this because someone posted a comment in an entry from my archive where I described my initial impressions of this gun.  Josh asks:

I also have the compact version of the witness 9mm.  I have been very happy with it but was wondering if anyone had tried the conversion kits for this gun in either .22, 40 or 45.

I haven’t personally tried one of these and I haven’t seen any at the gun shows (although I have to admit I haven’t looked closely).  Even though I find the Witness in 9mm to have fairly light recoil, the idea of being able to practice with .22 ammo appeals to me because of both reduced cost and reduced recoil (a box of Wolf 9mm 115 gr FMJ goes for $5.79, which could buy quite a bit of .22LR).  I’ll keep my eye open at the next gun show to see if one of these conversion kits shows up, although I suspect that I’ll probably have to order it if I want one (there aren’t many Witnesses at the gun shows).

Update:  It appears that Kim du Toit has been playing with a .45 as well today.  He had some problems with S&B in his gun and is planning to try PMC.  The PMC is excellent stuff, but a bit more expensive ($10.14/box of 50 in 230gr FMJ).

Stephen Green’s thoughts on the matter of libertarians mirror my own:

Some worried that Libertarians might again prove the spoilers in a race or three, throwing tight races to the Democrats. But let me tell you something about (small-l) libertarians.

We come in two flavors. First, are the nutcases who want nothing less than to re-wire human nature as thoroughly as Stalin’s plan for a New Soviet Man. More practical are those like myself, who see no (or little) contradiction between a strong state to wage war abroad, and healthy civil liberties at home.

The former were far more likely to keep voting (big-L) Libertarian in today’s election. The latter were much more likely to hold their noses (literally, in the case of Arthur Silber) and vote Republican. All this explains, at least to a small degree, Sununu’s win in New Hampshire.

So don’t think your vote doesn’t matter.

My only quibble would be that while I support a strong military, I’d like to see us less involved in a lot of locations around the world.  Don’t misunderstand this position.  If we are attacked or in danger, then I’m all in favor of bringing overwhelming force in to solve the problem.  I just don’t think we need to have troops stationed in 140 countries during peace time (forgive me if I got the number wrong, I’m working from memory on this one).

For me, it’s been a long and winding journey from left-wing liberal Democrat to Republican to libertarian.  There are many things I don’t like about the Republican party, but in yesterday’s elections I tended to vote for a Republican if the race was close or in doubt.  If I thought that the race was likely to go to the Republican, then I voted for the Libertarian candidate to keep the Republicans honest and to remind them that my support is not unconditional.

Given the positions of the core of the Democratic party, I will not vote for one of them anytime in the forseeable future.  A lot of Republicans know this, which is why I vote as I do.

It looks like this boondoggle has passed

Just what we need, a new group of anti-car idiots telling us to stop driving. I voted against it on general principles because our taxes will be raised to pay for it (although we’ll get another shot at killing it when the tax funding question comes up).

I’ve been going through my CD collection today in an effort to clean up my MP3 files.  I have a lot of MP3s that I made several years ago that don’t have ID3 tags, which makes finding the song I want more difficult in XMMS or with the Audiotron (mine is actually a surplus Gateway badged model—but the firmware is upgradable so I have all the features of the latest Turtle Beach model and it saved me $100 over retail on eBay).  I also plan to store away the CDs once I’m done so I can ditch the big rack and get back some space.

As part of going through the collection I was thinking about the origins of a number of CDs that I own.  From time to time I find myself hooked on a bit of music from a commercial.  Fortunately, the world is at my fingertips and information is only a few clicks away.  Here are a couple of CDs I bought after seeing the commercial:

• Mitsubishi Eclipse with young woman “dancing” – Dirty Vegas – Days Go By
• Lincoln Navigator (all in the latest series) – Mr. Scruff – get a move on

As with most CDs these days, there are a few high points and then some filler tracks.  I would say that there is about a 50/50 split between filler and good stuff on each. 

Oddly enough, I keep getting drawn back to my swing out sister CDs (of which I have 7).  Maybe it was the cold, rainy weather this weekend.  In between swing out sister sessions I’ve been listening to Basia and Nickel Creek.  Alternately, it could be some kind of weird 80’s thing (but then that doesn’t explain Nickel Creek)

By now it may be apparent that I have eclectic tastes in music.  This is probably the result of my early attempts to escape the herd.  I finally grew out of that.  Fortunately it expanded my musical interests.  As an example, the stack sitting next to the computer awaiting ripping contains Adiemus, Gipsy Kings (Somos Gitanos), Bach’s Adagios, Bjork (Vespertine), No Doubt, Gorillaz, Jewel, Eminem, Thalia, Shakira, and Alison Krauss, just to name a few (I estimate that I only have about 250 CDs to go before I’m done).  I suspect that I’ll be ripping CDs for a few weeks at the rate I’m going right now.

Update: It turns out that title track from Adiemus Songs of Sanctuary was used in a Delta Airlines commercial a while back (a long while back).

Amish Tech Support fisks  the internet fridge being released soon by LG Electronics.

However, this gave me pause:

Swedish appliance maker Eletrolux (ELUXb.ST) delayed plans to launch an Internet refrigerator after conducting a trial using 50 households in Denmark.

I’m not shocked at all that somebody else wants to dive into this kiddie pool of a customer base. The shock of everybody wanting a piece of this crumb is about the same as when I found out that there were several manufacturers of scrotum-piercing tools.

(Emphasis mine)

Um, and just where did he find that tidbit about the (wince) scrotum-piercing tools?

Link via Instapundit

Something interesting came up in Kim du Toit’s reader mail section today:

Re:  The Pink Pistols

Kim,
Am curious about any past, present, or current commentaries available regarding these “Gun Totin’ Ferrets” ??? (GTFs).
“Thirty-one states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons.  In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them.  They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry.  And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible.”

Bob B.

[I’m not sure what answer you want from me on this.  I’ve never commented on the Pink Pistols before, because they’re just another group which supports the Second Amendment, and therefore I’m supportive of them.
Your use of the word “ferrets” gives me a clue, however, so you may not like what I’m going to say next.  Of all people in the United States, homosexuals should be armed, because not only do they run the standard risks of being assaulted and robbed like the rest of us, they run the additional risk of being beaten up by some mindless asshole (or group thereof) because he’s afraid that he’ll get “contaminated by a queer”.  Queer-bashing has been a feature of life in almost every town and city in the United States, forever—and I, for one, would be the first to applaud if some homophobic fuckhead got wasted by a faggot under these circumstances.  Regardless of your opinions on homosexuality, this bullshit has no place in our society, and if it takes a few Darwin episodes to prove it, so much the better.]

Indeed.  I support the rights of all people to defend themselves (which reminds me to add the Pink Pistols to my links section).  No one has the right to use force against another based on that person’s sexual orientation, and it’s people like Bob B. who are the Pink Pistols reason for being.  Further, the self-defense issue is a good way to win GLBT people over on gun rights (and away from the left-wing positions that many in the GLBT community think that they are required to have).  Personally, I would like to see a day when this isn’t an issue (the same goes for race).

This reminds me that I’ve added a few blogs to my links as well:

• Mrs. du Toit—essays and a wealth of info on various topics
• Alphecca—self-described gay gun nut in Vermont
• IMAO—good rants
• GOCinAtlanta—emphasis on grouchy (in a good way)

This is but one reason why I will not vote for Tony Sanchez for Texas governor.  Not that I like Rick Perry (I think he’s pretty sleazy as well).

I noticed that Tony Sanchez is trying to show himself as a believer in gun ownership but he couches it in terms of supporting the rights of “sportsmen.”

Sportsmen’s Rights
“Hunting and fishing is a way of life. It’s how to teach our children values. In Texas we have to protect our way of life. For me, a big part of that is protecting the rights of sportsmen. We don’t need more gun laws. Instead of going after law-abiding citizens, let’s vigorously enforce the laws on the books and go after the criminals. (More… )

Any time a politician uses sportsmen to show his support for gun ownership, it leaves me wrinkling my nose at the foul odor of “must support X to get elected regardless of what I feel” politics.  The right to keep and bear arms ain’t about duck hunting.  Anyway, he’s a Democrat.  I don’t trust them on this issue no matter how much they proclaim to support gun owners.  Their party leadership is so far to the left on guns that you can’t find them without a high-power spotting scope.

This Texas governor’s race is turning into a pretty nasty business.  The attack ads have been flying fast and furious the past week.  However, the only effect they’ve had has been to turn me off on both of the major party candidates.