The Wandering Minstrel

Now that I’m about to retire, I can let some secrets out of the bag. No, not classified or proprietary information, but some of the little things I had to do along the way to override the corporate bullshit. I can reveal them at this time, because I will (hopefully) no longer be needing them.

Take, for example, the corporate directive to the internet Nazis to block all chat room sites like Instant Messenger. Inside the Berlin Wall proxy server, one could not access UDP protocol traffic. No more chat rooms for the incompetent morons at their workstations. Screw that! I undertook a home computer project to write an HTML-based chatroom that could operate in a pop-up window from a browser. After a few evenings of futzing with it, I got it going.

Why do I need a chat room? To keep in touch with the Better Half, of course, for important shit, like this transcript from this afternoon . . .

14:48:04 Better Half: did Hussein sell out Israel today?
14:48:31 Minstrel: i think he did
14:48:38 Better Half: Bolton sez it was very close
14:48:59 Minstrel: fear the 'stache
14:49:48 Better Half: this dumb f**k is gonna get us all killed and hated if its the last thing he does
14:50:12 Minstrel: he wants to destroy America
14:50:25 Minstrel: he's a freakin' extremist leftist
14:52:05 Better Half: thats narsissistic freakin extremist to you
14:52:29 Minstrel: radical
15:15:34 Better Half: just got hotter in here
15:16:15 Minstrel: the three pm effect
15:16:34 Minstrel: wind died down just enough to let the heat build up
15:19:02 Better Half: Sam Adams 10.99
15:19:13 Minstrel: good we could stock up
15:26:18 Minstrel: ran out of Kleenex but don't want to bring a whole box
15:26:27 Minstrel: brought up some from the truck
15:27:00 Better Half: ill bring another for the truck
15:27:10 Minstrel: OK thanks
15:30:08 Better Half: oops don't have any need to get
15:30:41 Minstrel: OK shop on Friday
15:31:00 Better Half: it's on the list
15:31:25 Minstrel: OK
15:31:40 Better Half: bwahahahahah the global warming climate session is making a huge footprint
15:31:56 Better Half: they're buying carbon offsets
15:32:05 Minstrel: yep carbon galore
15:42:23 Better Half: Krauthammer said Hussein's speech bordered on embarrassment and danger
15:42:59 Minstrel: yep it was very disturbing and post American
15:43:08 Minstrel: giving away our sovereignty
15:43:35 Minstrel: he absolutely WANTS to destroy America
15:43:57 Better Half: AARRGGHH!!
15:44:17 Minstrel: but really that wasn't him speaking
15:44:25 Minstrel: it was his teleprompter
15:44:48 Minstrel: he is just a puppet with george soros' hand up his ass
15:44:56 Better Half: cant trust that teleprompter


There were a lot of really cool things at GBR-IV, especially at the firing range on Friday, when everyone there brought their favorite stuff to shoot. Engineering Johnson (Zeke) and his grandmother, Bea (age 79) set up shop at this station. You can see some of their really nice stuff in this clickable image.

Bea told the Better Half that she used to shoot a .22 pistol, but liked the bigger holes that the revolver seen in the image makes. She was really into it. Later, during one of the sessions at the hospitality room back at the Silver Legacy, celebrity gun attorney, Alan Gura (referring to Zeke and Bea) quipped, “I wasn’t informed we were supposed to bring our grandmothers,” which brought uproarious laughter from the crowd.

The Better Half and I really enjoyed attending the Rendezvous and can’t wait for the next one. For a recap, check out this slide show on our other site.

I’ve been doing a lot of financial planning over the last several years, for obvious reasons (retirement). It pays to “do the math,” to invoke a trite expression.

There are a number of on-line sorts of tools provided by your favorite financial institutions, but sometimes it is necessary to do some more personal budgeting and planning. That’s when the old fashioned calculator comes in handy.

It seems funny to call a calculator “old fashioned,” but, it’s true. After the first “Bomar Brain” calculators appeared in the early 1970s the technology skyrocketed. Everything “hot” quickly became “not.” The best part of it was the prices kept dropping even as the technology improved.

I got hooked on Hewlett-Packard “Reverse Polish Notation” calculators. I don’t have a dedicated calculator anymore, but I have a dead-ringer for an HP for my PDA called Math-U, from Creative Creek. On the desktop or laptop, I use “Excalibur,” a functional equivalent, although not a look-alike to the HP series.

OK - so what am I budgeting with all these fancy tools? Our guns and ammo habit, of course. Like how many rounds per month we can afford to keep in practice or how much can we set aside for the shiny new pistol, AR or who knows what else? I’ll keep cranking the numbers and get the job done.

I put up a standard silhouette target today after practicing on a bullseye target earlier. We only brought two silhouette targets, so we both shot a lot of rounds at this one. Aiming for the X in the middle, we tended to hit above (a lot) and to the left of the aim point. There were plenty of maverick hits, but the big hole above the aim point clearly seems to show that we should aim a little south of the X. We’re going to try that next outing.

I was using ‘Fat Man‘ and the better half brought ‘Miss Piggy.’

As close to the real thing as we ever have had at home. Shredded slow-cooked pork shoulder with vinegar barbecue sauce on a bun, some of the Better Half’s coleslaw and a dill pickle spear.

This was so good, I forgot I had a Sam Adams Lager going on the side.

Via Ben Zycher on NRO:

Obama and the Sunday Talkies

I see that President Obama is going to be featured on four or five (!) of the Sunday talk shows this weekend. It is simply unbelievable to me that none of the political experts in the White House has told or convinced the president that more yakking on his part on health care or anything else would be counterproductive, and that this is the time for him to sit back and be presidential, while the crass politicians in Congress fight things out.

But . . . no. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, ACORN’s gotta engage in fraud, and Obama’s gotta talk. It’s really that simple; and it is amazing, given how little this guy actually knows about economics, about foreign affairs, about, well, just about anything. This reminds me of a footnote, minor but revealing, from the 2004 Democratic National Convention, at which Obama was the keynote speaker. His rhetoric, as usual, was as empty as a dry well, even as it drew the crowd to its feet time and again. Obama was reported, after the speech and the thunderous reception that it received, to have said to someone, “You know, I can play in this league.”

And so there we have it: Obama really believes at his core that empty rhetoric is the same as substance and judgement. I have to believe that it was then that he began to view himself as presidential timber. A small bit of vanity for a man; a giant looming danger for America and the cause of liberty.

Cowbell graphic - hat tip to Jonah Goldberg on NRO.

Update on Mr. Popularity:

For over a year, I have been working on a satellite program at one of the local aerospace mills. This morning, I took note of my routine as I went through the steps to get to my desk and computer workstation. I only have a few more days in this particular routine, so I thought it would be nice to record it here for posterity.

I don’t like alarm clocks, so I let my body wake me in the morning. Awake, now, I do the four S routine - sh*t, shower, shave & shampoo - before dressing and going downstairs. Once in the kitchen, I start the coffeemaker and take the dog out to the run so she can do her four S thing - sniff, squat, sh*t and scratch.

Then I pack up the lunch that the Better Half (still sleeping) left for me in the fridge, pour the coffee into my take-along cup and head back upstairs to kiss the Better Half goodbye. When I get back downstairs, I do the part that saddens me every time I do it - I open the safe and put my firearm away for the day - just so the citizens of California will be safe from the likes of me - a senior with a DoD security clearance and a clean record, who might go berserk at any moment just because I’m packing a firearm.

I have a fairly short commute to the mill, on the order of ten miles, or so. I drive on surface streets to get there and it takes me about twenty minutes to get into the parking garage under the building. I grab my badge and backpack and head for the elevator kiosk. I hold my magic badge up to the magic badge reader and voila! The door unlocks and I go in. Today’s elevator lotto resulted in the slow-as-hellivator opening up. Other choices would have been the funny-smellivator (large person with too much cologne recently rode in it), the padded-cellivator (cargo pads on the walls) and the dwellivator (the door stays open way too long).

When to door opens on the fourth floor, I key in the cipher that unlocks the door to the office area. Then, I proceed to the office suite area where my workstation lives. I key in the cipher to let me into the suite. Then, I get out an old-fashioned key and unlock the door to my office. I put down the backpack on my utility table and get out the food that needs to be refrigerated. I go across the hall to another office area where the fridge lives and key in the cipher to open that door. I put the food in the fridge and head back to my office.

From that point, it’s (usually) all downhill, working on documentation or code until such time as I have had all the fun I can stand. Then it’s home again, get out the firearm and relax for the evening.

Ahhhh . . . only seven more days of the commuting, badging, ciphering and working routine. After that, the real work starts as the Better Half and I prepare our California residence for sale while finding our new home in a place where citizens can exercise their Second Amendment rights. Wish us luck!

In the closing days before retirement, The Better Half and I met with an attorney through the legal plan at work. One of the things we had been postponing (procrastination?) was to do estate planning. We sat for an interview with a legal assistant for an interview to get the particulars on beneficiaries, assets and the like.

After the initial interview, the attorney came in for a chat. He flashed his NRA membership card, which isn’t too surprising since he noticed some of our assets were firearms and that one beneficiary we named in the interview was the NRA-ILA. We discussed some legal issues that needed to be decided upon and then the conversation turned to what sort of guns we were talking about and what we shot and where.

We got around to discussing ammo shortages and which insane cities had the worst ordinances. It made our appointment last a half hour longer than we planned, but it was nice to chat about firearms and shooting, and to know that our lawyer is on-board with guns and the Second Amendment.