Leave the Guns Alone and Lock Up All the Democrats

 Life  No Responses »
Mar 102013
 

Here is some interesting food for thought from Councilman Paul R. Beane of Lubbock, Texas. This was on KFYO radio on 1/24/2013:

Good afternoon, I'm Paul R. Beane and I'm your right wing gun nut.

You know me and fellow gun owners are responsible for all the carnage in our
streets and our schools. Never mind that Ted Kennedy's car has killed more
people than my entire collection of firearms. Most of which I have owned since
childhood when I saved my pennies and nickels in order to purchase them and
each and everyone is in perfect working order. It is the responsible gun owners
of today that is being blamed for all the shootings. Obama calls us the right
wing gun nuts, clinging to our guns and to our religion.

But lets take a little closer look. The Fort Hood shooter, a Muslim, and a
registered Democrat. The Virginia Tech shooter, he wrote hate mail to George
Bush and his staff and was a registered Democrat.  Aurora Colorado shooter, he
was a staff worker on the Obama campaign and took part in Occupy Wall Street.
He was a progressive liberal and guess what? A registered Democrat. The
Newtown, Conn shooter hated Christians and was a registered Democrat. The
Columbine high school shooters were too young to vote, but both of their
families were progressive liberals and registered Democrats.

And one more thing, not a single one of these killers were members of the
National Rifle Association. So I have got it figured out how to make this
country much safer; leave the guns alone and lock up all the Democrats.  

I'm Paul R. Beane and that's the way I see it

Dad’s Red Wing Recurve Bow

 Life  No Responses »
Feb 102013
 

2013-02-10 (Sunday)

Tomrrow would have been my father’s 84′th birthday if he were still alive. Every year when his birthday comes around, I try and do something to honor his memory. I have had his old Red Wing recurve bow in my closet for years. This was the bow that he shot when I was little and he and I were both members of the Nueces Archery Club.

Here are the specs:

  • Manufactured in mid-to-late 60′s.
  • Serial Number: RW-3343
  • Pull: 58 lbs.
  • Draw: 58 inches.

I decided that, this year, I would get it all fixed up, buy arrows and gear, and start doing some regular target shooting with this old bow. I took the bow over to the Academy store in Humble.

I arrived at Academy at about 2:00 PM today.I was greeted at the front of the store by a very nice guy — Robert I believe. I told him what I wanted to do. He and several other employees were pleased and excited and asked if they could see the bow. They then told me to head on back to the gun counter and ask for Joe, who is their resident bow expert.

When I got back there I found out that Joe Townsen had just stepped out for lunch and would be back in about an hour and that I definitely wanted to talk with him.

I ran a couple of errands and got back to Academy at about a quarter past 3:00 PM. I found Joe and told him what I wanted to do. Joe was extremely helpful. He looked over the bow to make sure it was safe. There was a slight twist on the upper recurve section, but it wasn’t bad and Joe said if I were to leave it strung for a day that would sort itself out.

He measured my pull and told me I should use feathered arrows that were 31 inches long. He helped me pick out a package of 6 ST Excel 340 carbon arrows. These have a shaft weight of 9.5 grains and a spine span deflection of 0.340 inches. He said to leave them with him and he would remove the plastic feathers and replace them with real feathers, which is what is appropriate to use with a classic recurve bow.

He told me I needed a new string and that I should replace the bear hair. NOTE: This is the leather side piece and fuzzy bottom pick that the arrow come in contact with on the frame of the bow. The Academy store didn’t carry those items so he told me where I could find them. He also helped me pick out an arm guard, archery glove, 100 grain target tips, and a suitable target.

I left the store feeling extremely please with the excellent service and with Joe’s knowledge and helpfulness.

From Academy I drove over to The Bow Zone on Treaschwig Road. Joe said I should talk to Rich and that he should have strings and perhaps also the bear hair. Turns out they are closed on Sundays, so I headed over to Gander Mountain. I talked to Ricky back in the archery department.

Ricky had bear hair in stock, but they were out of the appropriate string for my bow. He know Joe from Academy and said he would order one for me today and would call me when it came in. I asked him if he would recommend that I use a stringer with this bow as opposed to the old tried-and-true method of using your leg as a fulcrum to bend the bow back for stringing. I had read somewhere that was better for the bow and I figured that might be a good thing to use with a bow that old. He didn’t have any in stock but told me to check one of these two web sites:

This Thunderhorn Stringer looks like a good product.

Side note: Gander Mountain was completely sold out of handgun ammunition!

2012-04-08 (Sunday)

 Life  No Responses »
Apr 082012
 

oh iMovie

OK, so I have this lovely new 3′rd-generation iPad. I used it to shoot video of my youngest daughter’s wedding ceremony. Today i purchased and downloaded iMovie for the iPad and attempted to do some basic editing before uploading it to youtube.

Ater about 10 application crashes, in between which I have tried rebooting the iPad, I contacted Apple support. Spoke to a very nice lady named Linda who did her best to help me out. They apparently have no no knowledge of any problems with iMovie on the iPad crashing.

Bummer.

Trying to import it into iMovie on my MacBook Pro now to see if I have any better luck.

2011-07-31 (Sunday)

 Life  No Responses »
Jul 312011
 

SSD Experiments

A friend of mine at work recently purchased on of the new MacBook Air laptops. I was amazed at how fast the darn thing booted up and how applications opened almost instantly. I decided to order and SSD and install it as the main drive in my mid-2010 MacBook Pro.

I chose this drive from OWC. It arrived yesterday and I installed it last night.

Unfortunately, the Mac does not “recognize” the drive at all. Nothing shows up in Disk Utility so I am unable to format the drive and install anything onto it. I tried it in both the main drive bay and also in the optical drive bay. No difference.

Have emailed OWC tech support for further instructions.

14:00 – Update on this. I was pleasantly surprised to get a very quick response from OWC tech support (on Sunday even). A very nice fellow, Andy Loy, recommended that I try booting from the recovery partition on my old drive or, failing that, an OS X 10.6 installer and see if the SSD drive would be recognized. As it turns out that worked fine and I am now running of said SSD drive. Very fast!

Twitter Hacked

I got an email from the good folks at Twitter the other day saying that my account may have been compromised and that I should change my password. No worries – I did that.

I hadn’t checked my Twitter feed lately and when I did this morning I found some goofy post about not wanting to go to work tomorrow with a link to some SPAM site taking about making money working from home.

Fortunately Twitter allows you to delete tweets.

So consider this a Public Service Announcement – look at your Twitter feed every now and then and make sure everything this is something that you recognize.

Ernie’s Pralines

 Life  No Responses »
Jun 262011
 

OK, here is the top-secret praline recipe that my father handed down to me (no, really!)…

Ingredients

  • 1 cup regular sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar (light or dark)
  • 5 Tbs. water
  • 1 cup chopped pecans
  • 1 Tbs. butter

Setup

These are just my personal tips for making sure the whole process goes smoothly.

  • Arrange for some open counter-space where you are going to spoon out your pralines. Lay down a sheet of newspaper and then cover that with some wax-paper. The reason you do that is so that when you spoon the (very) hot praline mix onto the wax paper, it doesn’t leave waxy residue on your counter top! :-)
  • You want a bowl of cool water near where you are cooking so you can test the mix to know when it is ready.

Procedure

Use a tablespoon-sized spoon to do the stirring because it is also the size tool you want to use to spoon out the mixture when it is done.

Combine the sugars and water in a pot and put on the stove at medium heat. Stir until it starts to boil then mix in the chopped pecans. Continue to stir the mix as it heats back up. It will start boiling again. You may want to back off the heat just a bit at that point so that things don’t happen to rapidly.

You want to be watching this mixture as it cooks and you keep stirring it. It will start to look less liquid on top and more “fluffy”. You want to start testing the mix to know when it reaches “soft ball stage.”

For the longest time I didn’t really understand what that meant. Soft-ball stage is when you take a small sample of the mix with your spoon. Hold the spoon over your bowl of cool water that you have close by and let a drop fall into the water. Soft-ball stage is when the drop of mixture stays whole and remains circular (almost spherical) when it settles in the bottom of the bowl.

AS SOON AS YOUR MIX REACHES SOFT-BALL STAGE….

Stir in the butter. As soon as the butter melts (and you may have to work quickly now, but carefully) you want to start spooning the mixture onto the wax paper that you have laid out.

Remember this stuff is really hot. Avoid the temptation to taste your handiwork until the pralines have cooled enough so that they don’t break up when you peel them off the wax paper. By the way, the best way to peel them off the wax paper is to lift up the paper and peel it away from the bottom of the praline as you support it with your other hand.

Fat Head

 Life  No Responses »
Jun 122011
 

We just finished watching the movie Fat Head. It was produced by Tom Naughton. From the Fat Head blog:

Comedian (and former health writer) Tom Naughton replies to the
blame-McDonald’s crowd by losing weight on a fat-laden fast-food diet while
demonstrating that nearly everything we’ve been told about obesity and healthy
eating is wrong. Along with some delicious parody of Super Size Me, Naughton
serves up plenty of no-bologna facts that will stun most viewers, such as: The
obesity “epidemic” has been wildly exaggerated by the CDC. People the
government classifies as “overweight” have longer lifespans than people
classified as “normal weight.” Having low cholesterol is unhealthy. Lowfat
diets can lead to depression and type II diabetes. Saturated fat doesn’t cause
heart disease — but sugars, starches and processed vegetable oils do.

Gotta tell you – this movie makes a lot of sense. And it sure points out what a fraud that Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame is. I now consider Spurlock right up there with that evil fat bastard Michael Moore when it comes to purposely deceiving their audience.

Kudos to Mr. Naughton!

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