The Wandering Minstrel

We arrived in Wickenburg midweek to take care of some “new house” business. We stayed the weekend in order to attend the first Gun Show (for us) in our new town. The show runs both Saturday and Sunday at the Wickenburg Community Center (try scheduling and holding a gun show in the San Francisco Community Center - heh).

Cameras weren’t strictly prohibited, but, as one nice lady told me, were “preferred to not be used,” so I used a stock photo (clickable) of a generic gun show in this post. The show we attended today was about half the size of the one depicted in the photo.

There were a lot of nice things on display. There were antiques, tactical guns, ammo, the usual stuff. Unlike the big shows (Crossroads of the West, etc.), there were no large commercial vendors - just a lot of exhibitors showing their personal collections of firearms and accessories. There were a few folks showing jewelry and other items.

We did not purchase guns or ammo today, but I did buy a nice piece of southwestern art in the form of a necklace as a belated wedding anniversary gift for The Better Half. She is pleased with it.

The Better Half and I went to the property today to view a couple of paint samples on the exterior of the new house. To our utter jaw-dropping shock, the cabinets for both bathrooms and the kitchen had already been installed. I stood in the dining room and pointed the camera at the kitchen and took three photos which I stitched together for this quasi-panorama of the kitchen cabinets. Forgive the bending of perspective and the uncropped image, but I wanted to show all available information.

Clickable image.

This explains a lot about the President, the Veep, Squeaker of the House, and the hordes of political and media morons currently in charge . . .

From southwestblend.com:

Humor and legend surrounds the Hassayampa River. For most of the 100-mile course it takes through the Sonoran Desert, it runs underground. Roughly translated, hassayampa is an Apache word meaning “river that runs upside down”, describing the disappearing act the river plays. In fact, in Wickenburg there is a bridge that runs over the dry bed of the Hassayampa, complete with a “No Fishing from Bridge” sign–a tribute to Andrew Downing, author of Legend of the Hassayampa. Downing recorded the early residents of Wickenburg’s tendency to exaggerate the potential of wealth of the area–so much so that a teller of tall tales soon became known as a hassayamper. Legend has it that if you drink from the Hassayampa, you too will become a hassayamper, unable to tell the truth.

At some time in the past, the Prevaricator in Chief and his faithful minions must have visited and drunk from the Hassayampa Well. The Better Half says they must have had this stuff trucked in.

Clickable image above, “The Raging Hassayampa” courtesy The Better Half.

We’re back in Arizona this evening. We left California this morning and arrived late afternoon. We stopped at the new build to take care of some business with our contractor. As usual, when we’re away for a couple of weeks, we find that a lot of progress has been made on the new house.

Clickable image: exterior progress as of 10/20/2010

As of late Wednesday evening, the exterior stucco coat is complete and the interior paint primer will be dry tomorrow. On Friday, they will begin painting the exterior while the interior final coat is applied. Next week, the custom cabinets will be installed in the kitchen and both bathrooms.

We will be busying ourselves with shopping for electrical and plumbing fixtures for the rest of this trip. The granite counter tops should be installed in the next couple of weeks. We can’t wait to post photos of some of the completed rooms.

I blogged the other day about a “Punisher” logo etched magazine release. Another of the custom etched parts is the slide plate for a Glock. I would really like to customize my Glocks but I’m having reservations after reading a review on Brownell’s. The reviewer identified himself as law enforcement/military.

Here’s an excerpt from the review:

This is a cool touch to your Glock. BUT…use this only on your competition gun, or your target gun …Do not put this on a gun that you use for self defense. if you have to shoot somebody the police will take your gun as evidence and you will wish you didn’t have that Punisher logo on your gun when the gun is sitting in court with an evidence tag on it. Your defense attorney may charge you a lot more than the cost of the slide plate to explain to a judge or jury why you shot the guy in self defense and just tried to get him off of you and why you are not the “Punisher.”

Since I carry my Glocks for self-defense, I will heed that advice until I have a gun dedicated to target shooting only.

Our new house sits on a lot a little over a half acre (~24,000 ft²) and is mostly covered with local vegetation that could be shelter to rats or snakes or whatever vermin that lives there. I haven’t seen any vermin on our visits to the new place, just some cottontails, quail and other small fuzzy things. In case there are any snakes and such, I figure that a magazine with some of these would be the preferred load around the house.

I see these in both .45 and 9mm on the internet. Here’s the specs:

.45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol), CCI Shotshell, 117 Grains of #9 shot.
9mm Luger (9×19mm), CCI Shotshell, 64 Grains of #12 shot.

• Rigid plastic shot capsules that breaks on the rifling.
• Flexible base wad prevents gas blow-by.
• Reliable CCI primers.
• Residue removes with normal cleaning methods.

I’m pretty sure that this ammo would be illegal in Antigunifornia. I deduce this because of their absurd attitude that the Taurus Judge, which can shoot 410 gauge shotgun shells, is considered a “short barreled shotgun.” This ammo would convert your .45 or 9mm pistol to a “short barreled shotgun.” Ridiculous.

I have been to several websites that display the Barack Obama Countdown Widget (seen to the right). I noted a 30 day discrepancy between my days left countdown in the sidebar and the number of days shown on this one.

The first thing I did was to go to an on-line site that calculates the number of days (also years, months, hours, minutes, seconds, weeks). Sure enough, my counter was off by about a month.

I then opened up the source code for the widget in my sidebar and looked for the discrepancy. I found that (for some unknown reason) I inserted a thirty day offset into the dynamic text for the number of days. I removed the offset and made the fine corrections for the hour of the day, January 20, 2013, 12:00 PM EST, the date and hour the new president will be sworn in.

Hat tip to my former Colleague, Frank, who sent this in an email today.