Innocent Bystanders

Ames, IA, and Iowa State University, the alma mater of a certain fella we know, has determined that the weight of kegs hitting the sidewalk is a major problem. In fact, the sidewalks near an area where many bars are located and the required beer distributors unload their liquid goods are becoming cracked and damaged.

So, how did Ames overcome this dilemma, without disrupting vital beer supplies?

Why, they made rubber sidewalks!

The city of Ames is installing a rubber sidewalk at a spot near the Iowa State University campus where beer distributors unload hundreds of kegs from trucks for area bars.

The heavy kegs have been cracking the concrete pavement. So officials have decided to install sidewalk pavers made by a California company using recycled tires.

The city’s streets supervisor tested the project by taking a sledge hammer to it. The new sidewalk didn’t even dent.

Apparently, the sidewalks also saved a bunch of tires from being burned. But who cares about that? Beer supplies will continue unabated.

In a thread below, Dave and I were talking about heavy metal fixtures on the target cables of gun ranges.

That reminded me of an obscure, but excellent, song from way back called “Heavy Metal.”  It’s a song that offers the raw beat of heavy metal, but also features singers that can harmonize and serious work by the lead guitar.  Not just showy arpeggios, but real Clapton-worthy artistry.

I found it on YouTube, because it was featured in a truly bizarre South Park episode called “Major Boobage.”

Heavy metal.  South Park.  Major boobage.

I’m the kind of guy who needs to share.  I’m all about the love.

NSFW.

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Last night, my father, oldest younger sister, and I went to a local range for our local mandatory anti-zombie training. I practiced with my Mosin Nagant and my .22 Ruger.

I only fired 20 Rifle shots, and 40 Ruger shots because loading that rifle was something I had to get used to and after the two 10-round magazines that came with my Ruger were expended, I still have to learn how to load a .22 magazine quickly.

As you can see, I still need a lot of practice. But this is fun, and I want more.

Oh, and those zombies don’t stand a chance.

Pistol Shooting.

Rifle Shooting

The Pupster Boys and Mrs. Pupster have been having loads of fun making videos, mostly clips from characters they create in The Sims, mixed with music in Windows Movie Maker. Since they like to post them on their personal blogs or share them with friends, I’ve been letting them use my YouTube account.

Today I received a sphincter-tightening email from YouTube titled “A YouTube partner made a copyright claim on one of your videos”

Dear impupsterdammit,

UMG has claimed some or all audio content in your video Wake Up Call The Sims 2 Music Video. This claim was made as part of the YouTube Content Identification program.

Your video is still live because UMG has authorized the use of this content on YouTube. As long as UMG has a claim on your video, they will receive public statistics about your video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video’s page.

After I unclenched and began to follow some of the links in the email, I found the situation to be acceptable, and if I may say so myself, handled elegantly. Copyright holders, in this case UMG, provide to YouTube ID files for the material they wish to protect, and YouTube uses a Video Identification Tool to wash all new uploads against the ID files. When they get a match, the copyright holder can choose three courses of action:

There are three usage policies — Block, Track or Monetize. If a rights owner specifies a Block policy, the video will not be viewable on YouTube. If the rights owner specifies a Track policy, the video will continue to be made available on YouTube and the rights owner will receive information about the video, such as how many views it receives. For a Monetize policy, the video will continue to be available on YouTube and ads will appear in conjunction with the video. The policies can be region-specific, so a content owner can allow a particular piece of material in one country and block the material in another.

In the case of Mrs. Pupster’s Wake Up Call The Sims video, USG has allowed the video to remain on YouTube with the addition of Google Ads (which I assume with fill their corporate coffers with untold riches), and will receive tracking and usage information.

It seems like a pretty good application of common sense, and I hope to see more of the same in the future, rather than the heavy handed tactics some other copyright holders pursue.

I came across this excellent timeline of interwebthingy memes and wanted to share it with the moronic masses. Sample:

The first email to be sent over the ARPANET was a test message sent by computer engineer Ray Tomlinson, to himself, in 1971. The sender and recipient computers were sitting next to one another in the same room in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

It made me a laugh. It made me cry. It became a part of me. Enjoy.

Here is one way:

Here is how others may spend their time off:

Or, here is another idea:

I guess I have led a sheltered life, not knowing until today that shooting bowling pins was a big deal.

Anyway, here is a random video I found of this particular activity:
[UPDATE: RG NOTICED THE FIRST VIDEO I FOUND WAS "NO LONGER AVAILABLE". SO, HERE'S ANOTHER RANDOM VIDEO OF A GUY SHOOTING BOWLING PINS.]

Meet Bia and Branca Feres, twin sisters from Brazil. What makes them even better is that they are synchronized swimmers. I could care less if they are on the Olympic team from Brazil or not. But this just proves that all sports should be taken seriously. Here is a photo of them:

And here is a video of the sisters in action. You know, for educational purposes.

Oh, and I bought a .22 Ruger Pistol today, and Lauraw may have a kindred spirit in her hatred of crocs, but who cares about that?

A couple of new crime fighters at Chez Skinbad. Right after we got home from our fun-filled week of mooching at visiting Camp Geezer, Evil Con Carne’s 15th birthday hit. We had been dogless since the first of April and ECC kept telling us the only thing he wanted for his birthday was a dog. Our yard had never looked better, by the way, but I guess I should forget about that.

We had a decompress from the long drive day in Salt Lake at my parents and visited SL County’s animal shelter and the Humane Society’s as well. It was tough. As an aside, I would guess 80% of the dogs were pit/pit mix or labs. We had a couple brought out to meet, but it wasn’t clicking.

(more…)

Where have I been all weekend?  I didn’t even know there was a tropical storm headed this way.

UPDATE: New track puts it right over us; it’ll be a weakened storm but should dump a lot of rain on us, which we really need as long as the flooding isn’t too bad.  40 to 50mph winds, might even still have a visible eye formation when it passes.

ALSO: Holy moly, the knee knows something is up.  I have just been issued a “joint-alert” regarding a change in barometric pressure.

 click on image to see larger more readable picture of catastrophic mayhem and disaster

Tropical storm Edouard, which sounds stupid so I’m calling it “Eddie”.  It’ll pick up some steam, but doesn’t look like an asskicker.  That line would take it about 60 miles south of us, so we’ll get some rain out of it.

My hometown is kinda halfway between the “M” in 2PM ET and the “5″ in (35 mph) On that line, just to the right of the last storm symbol on the track .

Good for me, but I think Michael is gonna get killed.  Good luck Michael!  Keep your head on a swivel.

  Eddie, I know you said that you were going to put up a post requesting advice on selecting your first .22 rifle in the comments on the “Self-Abusing the Legal System” post, but I figured that your fatherly duties got the best of you yesterday & you couldn’t get around to it.  So, being the helpful person that I am, I decided to preempt your post and get the ball rolling myself.

  As EB announced in a previous post, he’s now the owner of a scary Russian Assault Rifle.  Well, it IS a Russian Military weapon, and in 1891 when this particular rifle debuted in the Tsar’s army, it was a high-tech weapon of mass destruction (compared to lances and crossbows, anyway).  Now that he’s got one rifle in his collection, he’s feeling The Pull of The Gunstore.  His Mosin/Nagant 91/30 rifle is whispering to him late at night, telling him that it needs a soulmate to share the corner of the closet with.  Another rifle it can talk to when EB & Mrs. EB are at work and the EB offspring are at school and daycare.  Another rifle it can share all it’s hopes and dreams with, and regale with stories of all the times it drove the Nazis from Stalingrad & chased them all the way back across Poland to Berlin.  His Mosin/Nagant wants a younger .22 rifle to mentor and teach The Way of The Gun, and Eddie’s helpless to resist it’s request.

  Essentially, Eddie’s got the Gun Bug, and he’s gotta get his fix or else.

  I’ll leave it up to Eddiebear to write up the post where he asks for information on specific guns, but I just wanted to help build the framework for the discussion with this introductory post.  I don’t think we can start out giving him specific model recommendations before we know what he’s going to do with the gun and what sort of firearm he’s looking for.  So I’ve come up with a few criteria to help narrow down the search:

1.  New rifle vs. Old rifle.  New guns are more certain to function properly (and usually have a warranty to cover any functioning problems).  Old guns have features that would take newer guns out of your price range (walnut stocks & metal sights/triggerguard/buttplate vs. plastic & composite materials).  The biggest problem with older guns is that you’ve got to look them over carefully when buying them to avoid any obvious problems.

2.  Single shot vs. repeater.  If you want to put a lot of lead downrange in a short time, you probably won’t want to buy a Remington 510 single shot or a Stevens Favorite.  Conversely, if you’d like to be able to hit beer bottle caps consistently at 50 yards you’re probably not going to be happy with a H&K GSG-5 or a Remington 597.   You need to decide what sort of shooting you’re going to be doing & purchase the appropriate gun.  Do you get more enjoyment from taking an empty Campbell’s Soup can and walking it downrange with a stream of bullets, or would you love to brag about being able to light wooden matches at 50 feet with your methodical single shot?  There’s no right or wrong answer here, just what’s best for you.

3.  How likely are you to get ANOTHER .22 rifle in the near future?  There’s a reason I titled this post “First Annual..”, eddie.  Guns are like potato chips, Playboy magazines & collectible porcelain Elvis figurines:  It’s hard to stop at one.  If you know that this will be your only .22 rifle in the near future, you need to get a gun that can perform many jobs well, instead of a gun that can perform one job perfectly; however, if you realize that you’ll be back at the gunstore looking to feed the gunmonkey on your back within a year or two, you can get a gun that’s tailored to do one thing well and then get another gun to perform a different duty later.   The only drawback to this strategy is spousal resistance.  May I suggest one potential solution?  Get the wife & kids involved in shooting with you, and they’ll all want rifles of their own.  Then, you can use subtle persuasion to convince them to get ones that you’d like to shoot also.  It’s a win-win situation.

  The great thing about purchasing multiple .22 rifles is that it won’t drain your pocketbook unless you insist on buying rare or high-falutin’ rifles.  Your average good-quality .22 rifle can be purchased for anywhere from $200 to $500, which works out to somewhere between $4 and $10 a week if you buy one gun a year.  That’s MUCH cheaper than smoking or frequenting tittie bars, right?  And it’ll be much more fun……well, more fun than the smoking part, anyway.  And it’s good, clean fun that your whole family can share with you, unlike trips to the tittie bar.  Take your kids shooting with you, and you’re being a good father.  Take your kids to the tittie bar with you, and you’ll have lauraw writing one of those “Hey, check out THIS loser” posts at the AoSHQ featuring you.

  Now I’ll step aside and let the rest of the IB family add their thoughts.

Yesterday was quite the day. After coming home from 90 Degree/90% Humidity T-Ball for my daughter in the morning, it was off to Grant’s Farm for a birthday party for a friend’s daughter. Thankfully, the party was in a pavilion, so we were out of the sun for the most part. But it was still hotter than shit. And to make things better, the party pavilion was next to the area where people can feed the camels. Nothing makes cake and ice cream taste better than the whiff of two camels nearby.

But Grant’s Farm, being (for now) part of the Anheuser-Busch family, does have one thing going for it: the hospitality tent gives out free beer! Even if it is A-B products, free is free. Anyway, the highlight of the party for me was the beer. And this camel thought so as well:

Did I mention it was really hot yesterday?

Well, after the party, I stopped at the gun store nearby to pick up some cleaning equipment for the rifle I currently own, and scouted own my next purchase. I want to buy something fairly easy to maintain, smaller than the Soviet rifle I own, and not very expensive, both in the firearm and the ammunition. I have narrowed it down to a Ruger .22 pistol, or a .38 Revolver.

I concede that I will probably never need to mow down grizzly bears, zombies, rampaging yeti, or the bad guys from the Star Wars movies. As a result, a hand cannon or another big rifle seem too much for me. Besides, I can’t justify right now dropping a ton of money on a piece I would (hopefully) never have to use in the heat of action, and take to a range once in a while. So, that is why I am leaning toward a .22. Between my rifle and a .22, I believe I would have enough to defend myself and something as valuable as my Val-U-Rite Vodka.