Category: Personal

I will be blogging, in all likelihood, over the holidays, while I’m in Roanoke with Bitter, Bitchy Mom, and family, but I can’t promise it’ll be on any kind of schedule. Bitter and I are also planning a trip to Knoxville the Saturday after Christmas to spend some time with the Uncles, and hopefully a few other K-ville bloggers.

My schedule this week is going to be tight too. Work is going to be rough, because I have a lot to do before the holidays, and today I came in to find out one of our machines that monitors lab equipment in real time had a massive trojan infestation. Because it monitors in real time, the manufacturers suggest not using virus software. Vendors that recommend this with Windows ought to be dragged out and shot, as a public service. If you’re going to make a real time application, please, please, don’t use Windows. Now I will have to take drastic measures to enforce technological measures so this won’t happen again. I really should have done that in the first place, but with only a dozen or so users, I figured “Be careful and don’t do anything stupid with this machine” would suffice. Fortunately, it’s not part of my domain, so the damage is contained, but it’s still a pain to get the damned thing back up and running.

Some people seem to have way too much time on their hands for Christmas decorations.  There tastefully decorating your house for the holidays, and then there’s going way way overboard.  Basic rule of thumb: if PECO is having to pull a few extra control rods out of the reactor in order to keep your house lit for the holidays, you’re probably going overboard.

Another thing that really creeps me out are those giant inflatable Christmas characters.  In my neighborhood we have a Homer Simpson, several giant sized Frosty the Snowmen, a Santa Spongebob, and if that wasn’t going far enough, there’s the new ones that blow snow all around inside them.  Every time I see one of those it makes me upset that live grenades are illegal.  Not to be outdone by the life size snow globes, the inflatable decoration industry has been making their inflatables even larger.  If Frosty gets any bigger, I’m going to start panicking that the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man has finally come to destroy my neighborhood.

When it comes to Christmas deocration, I’m definitely of the KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid).  Less time decorating means more time at the range, so you can stay sharp for the day inflatable Christmas decorations come alive and try to kill us all.

Today was actually a really nice day, but the nasty stuff is coming overnight.  Today was spent at the Valley Forge Gun Show, where I met up briefly with Dan Pehrson, President of the PA Firearms Owners’ Association.   I couldn’t stay long, because the longer I stay, the more tempted I am to buy something.  What I did get, though, was some ammo for my Nagant revolver, and a holographic site for my Ruger Mk.III.

But now the weather is closing in.  I have some beer and a bottle of 1792 Ridgemont Reserve.  What more do you need?

Bitter and I were guests of the Pequot Indian tribe this evening at Foxwoods Casino Resort in Connecticut.   We were “special guests” of Wynonna Judd at her Christmas Concert that Bitter’s brother is the lighting director of.  It was a good show.  Wynonna is an amazing singer.

I’m also happy to report I put 10 dollars in a 5 cent slot and won 50 dollars.   At that point, I decided to quit while I’m ahead, and left the casino.  We took their land, and now I’m only happy to take a little of their money.

We went to the Antietam National Battlefield Memorial Illumination.   One candle for every fallen soldier during the battle.  It’s amazing.  Five miles of fields full of candles placed a yard or two apart.  It’s quite stunning.

Bitter has the pictures.  The first one was hers, the last one mine.  You’d be surprised the number of people who were taking flash photos, which will never turn out.   I used Bitter’s camera because you can adjust the exposure time and the aperture manually.   I’d love to be able to go wander around with a tripod, because there were a lot of other good photo opportunities that just weren’t going to be had from a car.  I think our pictures were pretty good for just propping the camera up against the car, and using a four second exposure.

It’s going around on various blogs, it’s a holiday, so why not:

Bitter and I went to my father’s for Thanksgiving in Delaware. My sister didn’t come.  I typically see my sister maybe once a year, so she hasn’t yet met Bitter. We were talking about the fact that Karen never goes to any family functions, and wondering when she might actually get a chance to meet her.

I stopped off to get gas in my home town, which is on the way back from my Dad’s, just south of the Philadelphia Airport (mostly because I know where the gas stations are), and on the way back out to the highway noticed some fire department activity, and said to Bitter “Well, my sister could be in that”. As I was driving slowly past the scene, a firefighter motioned for me to stop so they could get across the street, and sure enough, it was my sister. She didn’t notice it was me, since it was dark out.

It’s a good thing I stopped. I mean, they’ll string you up if you hit a firefighter. But what they are a family? “Well, officer… this is really a family matter. See, she never comes to visit, so running her over was really the only way to introduce her to my girlfriend.”

SayUncle is in favor of presidential strangling of turkeys with bare hands and taking a bite from it’s head. I couldn’t agree more, and I would add “Mmm…. tastes like…. Ahmadinejad.” would be good for a follow up.

While we’re on the subject of turkey, and because this is a gun blog, here’s an interesting article about Turkey’s troubles with their G3 service rifle. They are pondering replacements, like the Kalashnikov. Most of our other NATO allies use 5.56x45MM NATO. I can see why the Turks may not want to adopt this varmint killing round, when the 7.63x51mm NATO round they use now can kill much larger prey. But I would suggest they adopt the 6.8 SPC, then sell me a lot of surplus ammo for cheap.

I suppose I should say what I’m thankful for like Ahab did, but I think he pretty much already covered the basics. The only addition I would make is that I’m thankful Pennsylvania gun owners got their game on and send Fast Eddie slinking back to the governor’s mansion without his prize. He will be back, and so will we.

I’m back from Virginia.  Blogging will resume tomorrow, as I am home early enough to probably get a few things ready to go.  The big story this week is Rendell’s little hissy fit in front of the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee, known as “The Gun Control Bill Grave Yard” in some circles of the Philadelphia media.  I’m optimistic that we have a good chance of stopping these bills here, but I will be contacting members dutifully when I return from work tomorrow.

Bitter and I took a trip to Mount Vernon on Sunday.  I have to say, it’s quite a nice place to visit.   It’s good exercise for a walking tour, and of great historical interest.  For only a few dollars extra, you can get a yearly pass, which after we got done our tour, decided to upgrade our ticket so we could come back.  We plan on going back when the third floor is open in December, and then maybe once in the spring.  We also realized we need to add Fort Washington to our list of things to do in the DC area.

It was a good weekend, overall.  Traffic getting from Philly to DC and back was pretty light for the weekend, so I didn’t have a protracted amount of time spent on the road.  It definitely helps now that the summer driving season is over.