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I can now confirm that a mixture of baking soda, water, and vinegar will remove skunk odor from a dog.

I went out with her around 8:30 last night and lost track of her for a bit in the high grass in the field behind my mother’s house.  When I heard the first bark I realized something was up because it was her playful bark, but there wasn’t a corresponding burst of movement, which told me that there was something other than a cat or rabbit.  Sure enough, as I got closer and pointed my flashlight I saw her jumping back and forth barking at the skunk.  Then I saw the skunk turn its tail toward her and I knew we were in for trouble.  I yelled at her to get back and to come to me, but when she’s excited I might as well not exist.  However, I will note that *after* she got sprayed that she had no trouble minding me. 

I was a little concerned, though, because this is the point when the skunk turned towards me.  A skunk that acts agressive is a warning sign that it might be rabid.  When I pointed my light directly at it, it turned and waddled away, which I suppose is lucky for all of us (although Boots has had her shots I certainly have no desire to have anything to do with a rabid skunk, and the skunk is lucky not to learn what .40S&W Hydrashocks would do to him).

We weren’t certain of the exact ratio to use in the mixture so what we ended up doing was mixing a bunch of baking soda with water in a bucket.  I then used a large cup to scoop out the mixture and added vinegar to the cup and poured it over the dog while it was still foaming.

The original recommendations I’ve seen are to use hydrogen peroxide rather than vinegar, but we didn’t have enough on hand.  The oxygen released by the peroxide reaction is supposed to neutralize the thiols from the skunk smell.  Vinegar releases carbon dioxide from the baking soda rather than oxygen, but it still seems to work.

I’m no fan of speed bumps, especially on public streets, but they’re not really too annoying since my Avalanche barely notices them.  Apparently, though, some people are more annoyed than others.

Honk if you hate speed bumps!

A campaign by that name was launched several years ago by a Florida radio station after drivers complained about bumps in residential areas.

When they drove over speed bumps, drivers would honk to vengefully release noise pollution into the neighborhood. Apparently, the practice caught on, and residents began to think twice about petitioning city hall for the traffic-calming devices.

Since then, intermittent honking campaigns have been reported in other states. Last week, a reader admitted that he recently honked while driving on speed bumps in Dallas’ Park Cities area. “It was a huge stress reliever!” he reported.

To be consistent (see previous post), I could point out that speedbumps target both the law-breaker and the law-abiding regardless of innocence. 

Still, I can’t help but think that the type of person who would honk because of the speed bumps is also the same type that made the residents want to install them in the first place. 

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

   — C.S. Lewis

Offensive beyond words

So I see this morning that the good folks at MADD have announced their latest Utopian idea to prevent drunk driving.

In a bold new effort designed to eradicate one of the nation’s deadliest crimes, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) today launched its national Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving, which aims to literally wipe out drunk driving in the United States.

…

*  Exploration of advanced vehicle technologies through the establishment of a Blue Ribbon panel of international safety experts to assess the feasibility of a range of technologies that would prevent drunk driving. These technologies must be moderately priced, absolutely reliable, set at the legal BAC limit and unobtrusive to the sober driver;

Proving once again that advocacy organizations sometimes go off the deep end in their obsession with a problem, the above means that they want every single vehicle to have an interlock device to prevent it from starting should the driver be “impaired.”

The first commenter thinks I misunderstood what the devices would be like, since I used the term “interlock.”  I fully understand that this is a passive technology.  That doesn’t change the fact that in engineering terms this device would still be an interlock, which is a device that serves some protective function by disabling the mechanism when certain conditions are observed.

I’m not sure I have words to express my disgust with the idea of being treated like a potential criminal every single time I start my truck!  It offends me on a level that’s difficult to express.

Now before I get a lot of hate mail from the MADD folks who will likely end up here eventually from the good offices of Google as part of their astro-turf campaign, I need to say that I absolutely despise drunk drivers.  But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to put up with being treated like a potential criminal at every turn and being forced to prove my innocence to go about my daily routine. 

I’m actually the last person who would need an interlock.  I’m usually the designated driver for my friends when we go somewhere.  But MADD would have me treated just the same way as someone who had killed someone by driving drunk and force me to prove my sobriety every time I get in the truck. 

Does anyone else see how offensive this is?  Am I the only one?  Have we become a nation of damn sheep who meekly roll over for whatever “safety” demand that comes forth from whatever advocacy group is the media darling today? 

Real Punishment

If we’re really serious about stopping drunks, we should be concentrating on removing the chronic drunks from the road and making examples of the first-time offenders.  Current law in Texas makes drunk driving a Class B misdemeanor with only a 72-hour minimum confinement.  A Class B misdemeanor carries a maximum jail term of 180 days and/or a fine not to exceed $2,000. 

How about we start getting serious with these jokers?  Maybe a mandatory 6 month sentence for first-time offenders (no parole, no early release, etc), followed by interlocks (I don’t mind interlocks for someone who’s already shown they can’t be trusted).  A second offense gets you two years and permanent loss of license.  Of course, these drunks don’t seem to mind driving without a license, so maybe a third offense is worth 10 years or something. 

My hope is that the threat of real jail time instead of deferred adjudication or other coddling would help a lot.  It certainly addresses the problem WITHOUT treating the innocent as criminals until proven otherwise.

The technology problem

Ok… so let’s say this technology does get pushed on us whether we want it or not.  Just how reliable does it have to be?  MADD claims they want it to be “absolutely reliable, […] and unobtrusive to the sober driver”.  That would appear to me to require 100% reliability.  What do you want to bet that if someone comes up with a 99.5% reliable device that MADD decides that it’s just reliable enough?  What?  You won’t take that bet?  Smart move since we know how these advocacy groups work.

A 99.5% reliability rate means a 00.5% failure rate.  Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?  Well, let’s do some hypothetical calculations.  I’m going to base it on my own driving habits, but you can substitute your own numbers if you like. 

First, let’s consider how many times I start my truck per year:
– I generally take one trip per day, every day of the year, which means two starts per day:  365*2 = 730
– I also generally take a second trip at least once per week (grocery runs, etc): 52*2 = 104

So, that comes out to 834 starts per year.  At a 0.5% failure rate, this means that I will be stranded by my truck approximately 4.17 times per year.

Doesn’t sound so good now, does it?  Can I call Glynn Birch (national president of MADD) to come get me each of those 4 times my truck arbitrarily decides not to start each year? 

Note:  For those that would accuse me of attacking a straw man, I will certainly admit that the 99.5% reliability rating is somewhat arbitrary, but I think the argument is still sound.  I work in a technology-based business and I understand the ways in which systems can be flawed.  Making a system that is foolproof and that can stand up to use by hundreds of millions of people without any failures is a very tall order.

Now consider that spread across 133.6 million automobiles (2000 number, see link) and the potential for false positives becomes staggering.  For the sake of argument, lets boost the reliability to 99.99% and assume that those vehicles are solely used for trips to and from work on week days.  Let’s further assume that these drivers get two weeks vacation.

This means that each vehicle is driven on one trip per day, five days per week, for 50 weeks per year.  There will be two starts per trip (one at the beginning of the day and one when leaving work).  So, that’s 5 * 50 * 2 = 500 starts per year per vehicle.  With 133.6 million vehicles, that comes to 66800000000 starts per year (yes, that’s 66.8 billion).  At a failure rate of 0.01%, that comes to 6680000 denied starts per year.  So people will be arbitrarily stranded by their vehicles 6.68 million times per year.

Still think it’s a minor inconvenience and worth the hassle?  After all, it’s always worth it even if it saves just one life?  Right?

Can we all call you for a ride when the system arbitrarily denies us the use of our own property and leaves us stranded?

The friendly camel’s nose

So what’s the big deal, some will say?  Don’t you want to stop drunk driving?  It’s for your own good.  Relax and go with the flow…

The question becomes, “Where does it stop?”  Of course the current advocates of this sort of thing will tell you that you’re being silly and paranoid.  But whenever you propose something like this, it’s best to stop and think for a minute about whether you want to live in a world where this type kind of power is given to your worst enemy.

So let’s say we get nationalized health care.  Will your car measure you against your ideal weight and decide you should walk today?  Is you job nearby and would the busy-body urban planners decide you should walk there? 

Let’s imagine that to combat drive-bys that your car won’t start if it detects gunpowder or a firearm?  How does a law-abiding citizen go to and from the range?  What if you got powder residue on your shoes yesterday during a legal trip to the range?  (Meanwhile the gang-bangers are driving their illegally modified cars to and from their drive-bys…)  Do you have to call the cops to get an override code so you can go to work?  (Prepare to assume the position, as you get treated to a felony stop because you called and mentioned guns and cars.)  What about legal concealed carry?  (Of course if we get this nannified, I guess concealed carry would be right out.)

It doesn’t hurt to consider these things now.  The original proponents of Social Security said that the SSN would never be used for an identifier and that such objections were ill-founded.  I’ve lost track of the number of places that now demand it or they won’t do business with you.

Making enemies

Up until now I’ve regarded MADD as a bit obsessive, but ultimately not worthy of much further thought.  At first I was even with them, since I hate drunk drivers.  But this has gone too far.  If they pursue making this technology mandatory I will make it my mission to vote against any politician that sides with them.  I will boycott any business that supports them.  Whatever it takes to try to stem the tide of statist, intrusive technology into every facet of our lives.

A slow wave of stupidity

I have a very bad feeling about this.

   —Luke Skywalker

Unfortunately, MADD’s announcement that this is a 10-year project is actually a good bit of strategy on their part.  It allows the idea to slowly infiltrate the population.  Combined with a regular drumbeat from the media who will just run MADD press releases as news, people’s defenses will slowly be eroded.  Ultimately, those of us who find it offensive to be treated as criminals until proven innocent may be ground under the swell of popular opinion.  I really do fear that we’ve become a nation of sheep who will accept any level of intrusion for that illusive little bit of extra safety.  It’s hard to maintain opposition over a long term against those who paint you as hating “the children” and being in favor of getting people killed because you won’t support their pet program.  Against all that, liberty is a hard sell.

At times like this I really fear for our Republic.  Forget the Islamofascists.  We’re going to nanny ourselves to death.  We’ll go out not with a bang, but with a soft baby-like whimper.

Coda: Private vs Public actors (added after original post)

One thing that I probably failed to elicuidate in the above is that my concern reflects any legal requirement to include these “passive” devices in vehicles.  If it were strictly a private initiative, such that one could purchase the device as an option and receive an insurance discount, I would be less bothered (although I would still be concerned that it’s the camel’s nose under the tent in furtherance of legal requirements).  Given MADD’s history, I am not sanguine that it would content itself with a market-driven solution, however.

Update:  Some additional reaction to this technology proposal…
Questions to ask MADD before every car has a Breathalyzer
Drunk Until Proven Sober

Frakin’ MADD.

More to come…

I’d almost forgotten that today is National Ammo Day.  For those not part of the “gun culture,” it’s a day (extended now to a week) where gun owners purchase at least 100 rounds of ammo each.

I’ve certainly been known to puchase a round or three, even outside of ammo day/week.  But this time finds me fairly well stocked, which brings up the dillemma of what to buy.

I’ve converted part of an undisclosed closet into my ammo area.  The primary storage cabinet is an old gun locker, which is filled to capacity at the moment (at least where there are shelves; I keep intending to add shelves to the larger compartment but keep procrastinating).

I’ve got plenty of .22:

I’ve also got plenty of 9mm, .38Spl, .45ACP, .357Mag, and .380Auto:

Not to mention 12ga, and (on the right) 7.62×39 as well as some evil high-cap mags for my evil AK-47:

This year I guess I’ll get some more JHP rounds for the various calibers that might be of use.  It’s always good to buy a little extra for occasional practice (although it’s mighty expensive).

My dog woke me up fairly early for a Sunday morning.  For what, I don’t know, as she didn’t want out.  Since I couldn’t get back to sleep I got up and started moving around (while my dog took up residence in my spot on the bed and went back to sleep; maybe that’s what she really wanted.. ).

I turned on the TV on Fox 4 and caught the last few minutes of a local show called Insights.  This morning’s topic was the new anti-illegal city ordinances that were just passed in Farmer’s Branch.  The panel included the city councilman who proposed the ordinances, the mayor, the police chief, an anti-illegal activist, Domingo Garcia (LULAC), and some other pro-illegal activist.

The first thing I need to say is that calling people who support enforcing the law racist and saying that they’re engaging in “ethnic cleansing” (Garcia) doesn’t do much to advance the so-called debate.  What I found laughable is that after the ethnic cleansing remark Garcia said he wanted to work with the council and city to resolve the issue. 

At this point, though, being called a racist is getting kind of old-hat.  It doesn’t have the same effect when it’s abused and misused to attempt to smear anyone who wants to enforce the laws.  Kind of like the boy who cried wolf, the race card effect is (thankfully) dying out from overuse.  Or at least with me.  I know I’m not a racist, so I know that anyone who calls me one is full of crap and doesn’t deserve any further attention.

Anyhow, I have sympathy for people who want to come here to work and I’d even support some sort of guest-worker program.  But amnesty for law-breakers is unacceptable to me and there needs to be at least a passing acknowledgement of this fact from the opposition, rather than jumping up and down and screaming “Racist!”  If you support an open-border program, at least have the decency to say so, instead of hiding behind the convenient euphemism of calling them “undocumented” immigrants.  It makes it sound like they just forgot to fill out some paperwork.

But what got my anger meter pegged at 11 this morning was the other pro-illegal activist on the show (unfortunately I didn’t catch her name).  She said something to the effect that, “being undocumented doesn’t mean they’re criminals.”  WHISKEY.  TANGO.  FOXTROT.  Over?

Let’s examine that statement for a second…  Hmm…  doesn’t federal law have something to say on this topic?  Let’s see… how about Title 8, Section 1325 of the U.S. Code.

Section 1325.  Improper entry by alien

    (a) Improper time or place; avoidance of examination or inspection;
      misrepresentation and concealment of facts
      Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States
    at any time or place other than as designated by immigration
    officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration
    officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United
    States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the
    willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first
    commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or
    imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent
    commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or
    imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.   Emphasis added
    (b) Improper time or place; civil penalties
      Any alien who is apprehended while entering (or attempting to
    enter) the United States at a time or place other than as
    designated by immigration officers shall be subject to a civil
    penalty of -
        (1) at least $50 and not more than $250 for each such entry (or
      attempted entry); or
        (2) twice the amount specified in paragraph (1) in the case of
      an alien who has been previously subject to a civil penalty under
      this subsection.

    Civil penalties under this subsection are in addition to, and not
    in lieu of, any criminal or other civil penalties that may be
    imposed.
    (c) Marriage fraud
      Any individual who knowingly enters into a marriage for the
    purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws shall be
    imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or fined not more than
    $250,000, or both.
    (d) Immigration-related entrepreneurship fraud
      Any individual who knowingly establishes a commercial enterprise
    for the purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws
    shall be imprisoned for not more than 5 years, fined in accordance
    with title 18, or both.

Further, if someone who is here illegally has obtained a driver’s license or a social security number, doesn’t that also constitute fraud?  Let’s stop pretending that this whole situation is just some little paperwork omission.  The flaunting of federal and state laws has an overall corrosive effect on society and the laws in general and it’s irrelevant that we’ve ignored it for so long.  Just because nothing has been done in the past is no reason not to do something now.

If you support legalizing the ones who are already here, fine.  I can at least understand that as a position.  But let’s lose the racist bullshit.  It wins you no friends and just makes me more stubborn and intransigent about my position.

I just took delivery of a new laptop for work.  It’s a Lenovo Thinkpad T60p.

What’s very odd is that whenever I boot it, just before it connects to my wireless network, it does something that kills the router.  Everything else still works inside my home network.  I can ping everything *except* the router and while the router’s switch appears to continue to function, the WAN light stops flashing and stays steady. 

I have to go in the other room and unplug the router for a second before it’ll start working again.

It’s like the laptop is sending some kind of packet ‘o doom to the router or something.  Perhaps a malformed DHCP request? 

The AP is actually a Belkin Pre-N router running in AP mode and the router (a DLink DI-604+) handles the DHCP request. 

This should be interesting to debug, other than I don’t have the time or patience to be mucking with it right now.

I guess I just won’t be rebooting the laptop anytime soon… 

Does anyone happen to know what drugs the people who are making Target’s TV ads are using?

They must be having some serious hallucinations, what with the dancing calculators (and other office supplies), fairies, etc.

In Xavier’s latest pawn shop circuit post he mentions encountering some cheap guns.

At Kenny’s shop I found a couple of junk guns, both priced under $100. Kenny didn’t have anything else. He said the Jennings and Lorcins tend to sell pretty quickly. I asked him how much he loans on them. He replied 10-20 dollars. Just enough to buy a rock. Interesting. I have occasionally pondered buying one of these cheap guns just to learn about them. Then again, I might just buy a spritz bottle of Tabasco sauce and squirt my eyeballs.

I’m guessing that he doesn’t like them, given that last bit about the Tabasco. 

Anyhow, it reminded me of something.  A friend of mine bought a little Jennings J22* back when we were in college because there had been some breakins near her house and she didn’t have a lot of money (heck, none of us did back then).

Fast forward 15 years to 2005 when she asked me about shooting lessons and learning how to use the Jennings.  At the time she was living in Lewisville and the neighborhood was going downhill (someone had broken into her house one weekend while she was away). 

We went to the range at Bass Pro and practiced the basics with my S&W 22S, then pulled out the Jennings.  She did fairly well with it, but I had a hard time of it, just barely keeping on the paper.  First, it’s so small that I couldn’t get my little finger on it, which annoys me no end.  But, and this is odd, this stupid little Jennings scared me.  I flinched every time I fired it.  I’ve shot thousands of rounds of .45 from a little 3” Kimber (the Ultra CDP II), I’ve shot .44 magnums, and even .38Spl +P out of a 2” snubnose.  I’ve never had that kind of flinch with any other gun.

But then being in fear of having the gun blow up in your hand will do that to you.

I just hope my friend never has to use that Jennings.  As someone said in one discussion group or another, “it beats a rolled up newspaper.”  Still, though, one of these days I hope I might persuade her to get something more reliable.

You don’t have to spend a fortune to get a good, reliable handgun.  If I were in the situation of needing a handgun, but not wanting to spend a lot, I’d probably go to a gun show to look for a used Ruger GP-100, or perhaps a new Taurus.  A few years back I bought a GP-100 for $250 (including a nice leather holster and three speedloaders) from a dealer who had taken it in trade for another gun.  I admit it was a lucky find, but they’re out there if you’re looking.  At another show a friend of mine acquired a Dan Wesson .357 revolver for $325 from a private seller (bonus: no 4473 required).

Granted, none of these are as cheap as the Jennings, but the old adage that you get what you pay for remains true.

Update:  I just remembered the Makarov.  Lots of people swear by them and surplus units can be had for about $150 at gun shows.  I’ve got one sitting in my safe that I acquired about a year ago.  Unfortunately, after cleaning (cosmoline sucks) and oiling, I put it back in the safe and left it there.  Something always seemed to come up when leaving for the range and other guns got to go while the poor Makarov sat forlorn.  I’m going to make it a priority to take it with me next time.

——
* While searching for a picture of the Jennings, I came across a post from Mr. Completely in which he, in a mad fit of optimism, had fired a postal match with one.  Much hilarity ensued.

A while back I installed OpenSuSE 10.1 on a PC to use for a backup system.  I was impressed with how polished the installer and the desktop were in this version, especially compared to the previous versions I’d worked with (9.2 and earlier). 

It got me to wondering if Linux might be ready for certain desktop uses.  The real test of a system is whether I’d give it to my mother.  Her needs are pretty simple.  She reads email, plays her favorite Mahjongg game, downloads and prints pictures, and occasionally (if she’s feeling adventurous) shops on Amazon.com. 

So, taking those one at a time:

• Email—I’ve already got her using Thunderbird on XP, so moving to Thunderbird on Linux would be pretty transparent.
• Mahjongg—This one is more problematic.  This particular one is her favorite, and it’s based on DirectX.  However, I see that it’s supported via Wine (a Windows emulation layer for Linux).  This one would have to be investigated to verify the function.
• Handling photos—she downloads pictures from her camera or gets them via email and then prints them on an HP inkjet printer.  This is one where I’d have to investigate further, but I’ve seen that KDE has gotten some good automatic USB mounting features (it will autodetect the USB camera and automount a filesystem, then pop up a window with the pictures, just like Windows does).  Printing should work, too.  I’ve used HP inkjets with Linux in the past.  And the printer interface on the desktop has been much improved.
• For Amazon, and other online tasks, I’ve already got her using Firefox, so that should also be pretty transparent to her.

Of course, Firefox doesn’t (out of the box) support all the same plugin and formats as IE, but it can get pretty close.  I’ve even noticed that there’s an ActiveX plugin for Firefox.  Whether this is a good thing I’ve yet to decide, though (ActiveX can be a serious security hole, especially for novice users who don’t understand the implications of a dialog requesting permission to install various plugin).

She’s located in the country, so she uses dialup, but that’s no problem for Linux, either.

I guess I’d have to put together the system myself and tweak everything to make it as Windows-like as possible before letting her loose on it.  I’d also have to document everything so she knows how to do each task.

Ultimately, what I’m looking for is a system that I don’t have to worry as much about being compromised when one of her friends sends her a virus-infested email and where she doesn’t have to run as an admin just to play a game (although I think Kyodai may have fixed that recently).  A well-configured Linux system is generally more secure than a comparable Windows system, if for no other reason than it’s less of a target.

Given what I know today, I would not suggest Linux to even the average Windows user if I was expecting the user to administer the system themselves.  However, with the right configuration ahead of time, it might be useful for the novice or nontechnical user who only performs a limited number of tasks.

I’ve also toyed with something like the Mac Mini, but their stupid ad campaign is so annoying that I’m not sure I want to give them any of my money right now.

All of this comes to mind because I’m contemplating getting her a new system for Christmas (her current one is three years old, which is ancient in PC terms).  There are some pretty good deals out there on PC’s that could handle her needs, but I’m wary of dealing with Windows anymore.  Being her (remote) tech support means that the system has to stay up for long periods of time without fiddling (including getting behind on fixes, since I don’t quite trust autoupdates, and she won’t install them herself; however I do have it set to download them in the background when she’s online and then catch up with them when I go back home).

Hmm… decisions, decisions.