Category: Blogs

Mr. Completely has a pretty good slate up for this fall.  Between Alan Gura, Mark Knapp, NSSF, and the two guns, wait no, three guns.  Whether I make it out will depend entirely on the job situation, and even now it’s still a bit early to tell.  But it’s shaping up to be the best GBR out of the four, so I hope we’ll get a lot of folks out there to Reno.

After noticing that I attract a fair amount of traffic from Google that tends to stick around for a little while, I thought it would be smart to install a “Related posts” plugin, to help people who wander on to the site do a little more reading.  So yesterday we moved to WordPress 2.8, and I installed the plugin.  Their new version caches relations, which the old version did not do.  I had been thinking about installing this plugin for a while, but Bitter runs it on her food blog, and it’s very hard on MySQL without caching.  Now that they’ve fixed the problem, I decided to give it a try.

Caleb’s dad is participating in a Food Network contest with a smoked meatloaf that looks quite excellent.  He’s asking that you go vote for his dad’s recipe.  I haven’t tried the meatloaf, but I still call it double awesome.  Why?  Because other than sounding pretty good, it’s got Columbia Crest Merlot in it, and Columbia Crest’s owners are great supporters of hunting, the outdoors, and the Second Amendment.  So go vote for Caleb’s dad’s recipe and help out the cause.

Seems there’s been a bit of drama around the blogosphere lately, at Kevin’s last week, and this week at Caleb’s, which migrated back to the source, and then over to Tam’s. From Caleb’s post:

I am not trying to start blog drama here, but recommending that people trust their life to a 10 dollar piece of nylon stitched together in a sweatshop in Vietnam is irresponsible. You spent good money on that gun, take a little time and spend money on a good holster.

But any time you take a strongly held position on a topic that’s very dear to people, you are going to create drama, as those that strongly disagree take great offense to your challenge to their deeply held belief.  You might not be trying to summon the Drama Llama, but you know he’s thinking about stopping in for a visit soon.  The only way to avoid it, is to not take a stand on anything.  That’s a common response in corporate environments, and I’ve seen suppression of passion or disagreement in corporate cultures repeatedly drive the best ideas into the background, and bring the worst ideas forward.  An environment where everyone is afraid to hurt everyone else’s feelings is a breeding ground for disaster.  So why apologize for taking a stand on something because you know people will take offense?

I have certainly, in my blogging career, and meatspace career, picked fights that were stupid, on issues that didn’t really matter, with people who weren’t worth antagonizing.  It’ll happen from time to time, and sometimes it’s only in hindsight that you’ll realize when you’ve picked the wrong fight.  But the only way you will avoid drama is to stand for nothing.  While I’ve met more than my fair share of people in real life corporate culture who fit that bill to a T, those of us here in the blogosphere, especially the gun blogosphere, aren’t here to stand for nothing.  We’re here because we have something to say.  I don’t think any of us should feel like we should have to apologize for it.

Looks like a new blog ranking site, or at least new to me.  Not sure what criteria they use, but congratulations to SayUncle for making the top 200, at 193.  The only gun blog to rank in the top 200 with all the other cool kids.  I missed the list at 218.  Something seems off with that.  Reflecting on Groucho Marx, who wouldn’t join any club that would have him a member, I’m skeptical of a rank that puts me that high, over others who run more popular blogs.

Looks like the attorney who won the Heller case will be at Gun Blogger Rendezvous this year.  Kudos to Traction Control for getting him out to Reno.

We’re glad to see Dave Hardy is out of surgery, and seemingly in good spirits.  Hopefully he will be on to a speedy recovery.

Dave Hardy was diagnosed with bladder cancer, and is going in for a cystectomy.  These days, they can rebuild you a new, largely functioning bladder, after removing the diseased one.  My understanding is that the surgery tends to be pretty successfull, so we wish Dave the best of luck, and hope he’ll be with us for a long time to come.

Yesterday I put up a post that I believe is below the standards I usually try to seek for this blog, and that I now regret posting at all.  Understand that Bitter and I put a lot of work into the Blog Bash.  I get very little sleep while the event is going on.  That has effects on perceptions and judgment, and I believe I picked a battle that was entirely unnecessary to fight.  Prior to Phoenix, I was rethinking what, if anything, was going to happen in Charlotte.  This whole sad thing has made me more determined that there needs to be serious changes to the event, if it needs to happen at all.

This is the last I will mention this incident, and my readers can consider this an apology for subjecting them to a drama they had nothing to do with, and was entirely unnecessary for them to read at all.  I have removed the post, and will speak no more of it.