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.

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

A few days ago, my wife, daughter, and I went pedal boating through the canal system built in Forest Park, which leads to the Grand Basin. The Grand Basin is at the base of Art Hill, with the St. Louis Art Museum and the statue of King Louis IX at the top. Here are a few photos my wife took from the perspective of a pedal boat operated by a lardass who thought he was in better shape than an hour of continuous pedaling in water would prove.

This is one of the fountains in the Grand Basin.

This is a shot of Art Hill and the St. Louis Art Museum.

This is a photo from a little bit ago from the top of Art Hill to provide perspective on the Grand Basin.

And here is a shot I took of the statue of King Louis IX.

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.

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.]

I have a Stihl chainsaw. I would not have had this difficulty. Must be a Poulan or some such Mickey-Mouse POS. Now weedeaters? I sympathize. Although Stihl does sell them as well. They might be better, but from my experience, weedeaters are notorious bitches to start.

Next step:

“Don’t you even think of going anywhere! You sit your ass down while I plug in this hair dryer! Now come closer! CLOSER I SAID!!

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.

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  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.

Better Than Toilet Water?

My father-in-law bought a backyard pool 2 summers ago that the Pupster Boys really enjoyed on our visits. He is moving into an apartment in a couple of weeks, and asked if we wanted the pool. I resisted the idea from the start, but finally gave in to the pestering and set it up last weekend, using The Pupster Method™.

The Pupster Method™ in its most granular form entails following the directions and instructions that seem reasonable, cheap and easy, while creating your own path around the stuff that seems like a lot of work or expense. For example:

My father in law spent hundreds of dollars and labor hours creating a sand and paver base in his backyard when he set up the pool. He did not have any level ground, so he made it level with a dump truck load of sand, shovels, a wheelbarrow, and a lot of hard work.

The Pupster Method™ says: Unacceptable based on effort required and cost associated. Using the method’s breakthrough Rationalization Ruler® , I determined that a near level enough section of backyard would be an ideal location for the pool, and a new base of inexpensive landscape fabric would be sufficient for my needs.

Here we see The Pupster Method™ saving time, money, and wasting little to no effort to achieve the desired results. Trailblazing around inconvenient past best practices is encouraged and rewarded. I bought the landscape fabric, staked out the 17′ by 17′ area for the pool, cut the fabric to size and nailed it down with those little plastic spikes all on one Saturday.

I set the pool, inflated the top ring, filled it with water, set up the pump, filter, and pool ladder on Sunday. Sure, it was a little taunt on the low side and wrinkly on the high side, but all in all, level is overrated. Example 2:

My father in law told me that the water would be fine left untreated for about a week, at which point I should take a sample to the local pool shop, have it tested, and buy the necessary chemicals. Mrs. Pupster would be stopping by his house in a few days to get a pool skimmer he found, and he would glad to accompany her and introduce her to the pool guys.

These instructions pass the Pupster Smell Test © , combining procrastination, frugality, and the possibility of delegation of duties. Win/Win/Win. Unfortunately, this is the one occasion where the dreaded Bite Your Own Ass© consequences come in.

The Pupster Boys spent Thursday morning frolicking in the pool with Mrs. Pupster, no doubt singing praises to the awesomeness that is the best dad/husband combo in the known world. Friday night showers revealed the horror that comes with Pseudomonas Aeruginosa.

In swimming pools, a very likely cause of skin rash is Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA). Pseudomonas feeds on oil & grease present in the spa water (mainly from body oils & skin treatments brought into the spa from bathers NOT properly showering prior to entering the spa or hot tub) and can multiply rapidly under ideal conditions (such as lack of proper sanitizing procedures). In swimming pools, PA can be found on various areas such as pool coping, waterfall edges, ladder steps, etc. PA infects the hair follicles on the body. If infected, you will notice the following characteristics of Pseudomonas Aeruginosa:

• Itchy rash 8 to 48 hours after contamination.
  
• Rash can occur on arms, legs or trunk of body.

Rash disappears 7 to 10 days without treatment.

Yup. Just lovely.  A pants-load of red itchy bumps, mostly where the water was held against the skin by the bathing suits. Chastened and a little itchy, I’ve abandoned the previous Pupstering and decided to follow the pool guys advice to the letter; so far it’s just add this and this and wait and see. No one has been brave enough to give the pool another chance, so I’m not sure if it’s safe to go back into the water.  Maybe next summer.

Holland, MI this time of year is a very nice place to visit. While my family and I were there, the temperature ranged from the high 70s to the low 80s, with minimal humidity and a pleasant breeze. And the water, while a bit chilly, was clear and clean. Too bad the winters can be brutal in that area. But I won’t be there in the winter, so who cares?

Oh, and if your daughter REALLY NEEDS her pink My Little Pony purse, and you go to the car to bring it back to the hotel room, try not to encounter drunken rednecks. Just sayin’.

Anyway, here is Lake Michigan, as seen from Tunnel Park, so named because a tunnel dug through the sand dunes is one of the ways to get to the beach.

Then, we went to a local Dutch Village and Windmill Island. Apparently, they make their own cheese there.

Here is the Windmill Island:

Mad Goat Walking Skillz:

Dutch Costumes:

And finally (for now), proof that Holland State Park became teh sexxier  for at least a few hours last week [WARNING: LOTS OF ORANGE CROCS GOODNESS TO FOLLOW]

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