Dodging the Covid Bullet, Timing is Everything, and That's NOT Fucking Gumbo

Rather than post three different entries, I'll encapsulate last week into one.  

First it was my first week with my new company and it was spent exploring a massive trade show in NOLA.  My company had a big booth, but my purpose was to wander around absorbing competitors, products, and all that happy marketing type shit.  My manager was with me for 95% of it, including dinner both nights we were there.  On a side note, I walked 5.3 miles one of the two days in non comfort rated but very nice Italian loafers and my feet / legs bitched the whole next day.  

Today was the first we'd spoken after the show and the first words out of his mouth were "how are you feeling?"  Turns out he'd gotten Covid at the show and was sick for a few days and was concerned I'd fallen victim to the virus as well.  He'd been vaxed and boosted, same as me, but for whatever reason, I escaped without becoming ill.

I was excited about being in NOLA again, because I could just eat my way through that city.  Emeril's flagship restaurant was right around the corner from our hotel, so that's where we headed for dinner the first night.  I'd eaten there before and it was excellent.  We were a bit concerned about getting in, but fate stepped in to assist.  We walked in to find two rotund gentlemen having a slightly heated conversation with the maître d, followed by them exiting the restaurant.  I stepped forward and said I'd like a table for two; no, we don't have a reservation.  The maître d responded "would you like theirs?  We wouldn't seat them because they're wearing shorts."  Sometimes, timing is everything.

We sat down and I was looking forward to having some gumbo.  Last I was there, Emeril's served a solid, traditional gumbo and I enjoyed it (because I fucking love gumbo).  My manager had never eaten gumbo, so I told him he had to try it, particularly here.  

If you've never had gumbo, it's built on a super dark roux and contains the holy trinity (onions, celery, and peppers), chicken, andouille sausage, and shrimp.  It should look something like this, which is damned close to what I'd been served last time at Emeril's:

What we were served was this:

That is NOT gumbo.  The sauce was tomato based and had nothing in it.  Instead, you can see the perfectly formed little island of rice in the center topped with a whopping two cold shrimp and some fucking green garnish.  I had a difficult time not asking the wait staff "what the fuck????" and probably would have if I'd been with a friend.  

If I were to guess, I'd say gumbo, which has very humble roots, didn't fit with their step up in fine dining that seems to have taken place since I was last there.  To which I say, take it off the menu instead of serving that abomination.  Praise where it deserves, the rest of the meal was excellent; my lamb was literally worth writing home about.  

To wrap up the update, it looks like I won't actually move until end of June; apparently movers are beyond slammed and that's the soonest they could work me in.  Could be worse; I could be staying in Kansas!

Republicans - Working Title

I'll start this entry with undisputed facts, then move on to my own opinions, which readers should probably treat as facts (joking).

The Republican party has always been the party of conservatism which, for the purpose of this entry, can be characterized as being pro capitalism, meaning the government should let business do what it wants to, allowing the open market to work on its own.  A conservative's greatest nemesis is big government and high taxes or tax and spend.  How well are today's prominent Republicans adhering to their own credo and practicing conservatism?  Let's review the recent actions of two prominent Republicans and see.  

I'll start with Ron DeSantis of Florida, who pushed through a bill to remove Disney's self-governing status.  For those who aren't aware, before Walt Disney broke ground on Disney World, he'd reached an agreement with the Florida government that would grant the property its own sort of independence.  This was important to Disney, because he didn't want to deal with a raft of approvals every time he wanted to expand and add attractions.  It worked out for the state of Florida, because Disney took on responsibility for all the things government does; water and sewer, road maintenance, law enforcement, the works.  Not to mention having Disney in Florida has boosted tourism (and tax dollars) dramatically.  In short, it's been a win win for both parties.  

The reason DeSantis wanted to revoke Disney's status is because they spoke out against his Don't Say Gay law.  No one in the Florida government has claimed otherwise.  As of next year, Disney will no longer have this self-governing status and be folded into the rest of the state.  Because of this, the tax burden of every Floridian will increase by over $2k.  

Moving west to Texas, Greg Abbott implemented a policy of inspecting the fuck out of trucks coming across the border from Mexico.  He did this as a response for the Biden administration allowing Title 42 to sunset.  Title 42 was drafted to keep the border mostly closed to immigrants as a response to Covid.  Abbott's policy ground cross border commerce to a halt, with trucks waiting up to 24 hours to reach Texas.  Abbott recently rescinded the order, but not before causing a $9 billion dollar hit to GDP and $240 million worth of food to spoil.

Again, the above is completely factual and I've linked source data to prove it so.  

My opinion is that Ron DeSantis is a complete piece of shit, who cares more about appealing to the racist, bigoted, homophobic, and xenophobic inbred idiots that Trump's base consists of.  Right wing idiots complain about cancel culture, yet this guy could be the poster child for it, retaliating against a company for speaking out against his horrible law.  I'll refrain from commenting on the law itself or the recent resurgence of homophobia and transphobia in the US, because that's an entry unto its own.  But I will say that if you've used the word "grooming" in that context, you're a moron and shouldn't breed.

Greg Abbott is no better than DeSantis, plus he's fucking stupid.  Effectively halting commerce across the US / Mexico border is flat out criminal.  Doing so because you're pissed about something else is inexcusable and despicable.  Biden's been seriously considering renewing Article 42 on its own merits, which he's not made a secret of, you fucking idiot.  

Both of these scumbags are pitiful excuses for human beings and deserve a watery grave, before they further damage the economy or the moral fabric of our country.   

What's the verdict?  Today's Republicans are no more conservative than Barrack Obama or Teddy Kennedy.  They've become like a bunch of petulant immoral sociopathic children, who don't give a shit whose livelihoods they destroy, so long as they get their way, then torture small animals.  They're more committed to retribution and blocking the current administration than to the principles they pretended to govern by.  Cheeto face likes to use the term RINO's (Republicans in name only) for those who don't agree with him, but DeSantis, Abbott, and their ilk are the true RINO's.  

So, for those who want to blame all of their woes on Biden, perhaps you should take a closer look at your leadership.  They're the ones who are driving prices up and making life more difficult for the average American.  

Dammit, They Must Be Multiplying

 

Ghost Guns

Joe "Your Rights Mean Nothing to Me" Biden was on TV today yammering about "Ghost Guns" again and how he's going to do get them off the streets.  I decided this was a good time to cover what these things actually are and why our president, who can't get three letters in the right order (ATF Joe, not AFT).  

These are firearms manufactured by individuals, but that doesn't have the same evil ring as "ghost gun".  What may surprise you is that building a firearm for your own personal use is perfectly legal.  Manufacturing a firearm for personal use, without a serial number or background check, is protected under 18 U.S.C. 922(o), (p) and (r); 26 U.S.C. 5822; 27 CFR 478.39, 479.62 and 479.105.  The only restrictions are that the device may not be classifiable under the NFA (i.e. machine guns, silencers, explosive devices) or sold to another party.  

Let me say that again - Manufacturing your own gun is currently protected under the law.  Ghost guns are legal.  Of course, the gun grabbers care not about the law.

Various methods exist for someone to legally produce their own firearm.  The most basic is to own a machine shop and build one from scratch.  Since no one learns how to be a machinist anymore, 3D printing can be used as well.  The third method is the one Joe is apoplectic about, which is to buy what's generally called an 80% kit.  

In reality, only the lower receiver of a gun meets the definition of a firearm, (contains firing mechanism, etc.) so these are 80% lowers.  Upper receivers aren't guns, by law, so they can be sold to anyone without a background check.   

An 80% lower lacks the ability to function as a firearm, so it isn't classified as one.  This means there is obviously additional work that's required for the item to become a firearm (and meet the legal definition of one), ranging anywhere from drilling a few holes in the right places to full on machining.  Most manufacturers of 80% lowers also offer tooling jigs to complete the job.  Worth noting is that these things have been around for a number of years and were blessed by the ATF before being offered for sale.  

It's still unclear what actions and/or what legal rights will be taken away for Joe to address this scourge of society.  I'm not sure he has the authority to override legislation passed by Congress; checks and balances and all that stuff.  He may have new newly nominated AFT bulldog implement the same nonsense that's in use for those of us who legally build silencers, which is everything that's intended to be a silencer, no matter its current form, is already a silencer.  Bought a tube that you intend to make into a silencer?  Well, it already is one, solely based on your intent; felony conviction.  That hunk of aluminum you were planning to machine into a firearm?  Well, based on your intent, it's already a firearm.  What, you say you're legally allowed to do that?  Hah!  That was last week; here's your felony conviction.  

Also, don't expect the ATF to be consistent over time or even transparent with their definitions.  Again, going back to the silencer situation, the thugs apparently had established criteria in 2017 for what they considered to be a silencer and what they didn't.  That document has only recently been seen by the public, meaning you had no idea if you were committing a felony in the AFT's eyes.  Even better, they recently began using different criteria, which aren't documented for the public, just like last time.  

0% Lower Receiver

If you're all for making 80% lowers illegal, then please define what isn't a firearm that could be sold legally.  I'll wait.  I'll admit to being freaked out when I learned of their existence, but where does one draw the line?

Why is there such fear over guns built by individuals?  I'll get to the fear in a moment, so let's start with the allegedly rational part.  The primary justification seems to be that these homemade guns are showing up more frequently at crime scenes.  You won't hear any claims of the total number of crime scenes increasing, because they haven't.  Gun violence has been trending downward for over a decade.  Yes, there was a blip last year, but it was still less than a decade ago!  Sure, 80% lowers make it easier for criminals to get their hands on guns, but they've historically had an ample supply from other means, such as theft, straw purchases, etc.  Getting rid of 80% lowers will not decrease gun violence.  Period.

None of this matters one bit to the gun grabbers.  They hate guns and will do whatever it takes to prevent you from having one, including stoking the public's fear with ignorance and lies.  I watched a government official on the news today, state these really fucking scary ghost guns can go right through TSA checkpoints.  That's pretty fucking impressive!!!  Metal objects that somehow defy physics in a way that prevents them from setting off magnetometers or body scans.  Fuck, I get flagged for my wristwatch, which is mice nuts compared to a gun.  

In conclusion, Joe and gun grabbers live in a fantasy world, where they don't give a flying fuck about your rights or legal protection.  They'll fuck around on this and ten minutes later, some enterprising individual will uncover a loophole.  It's all for nothing anyway, because as usual, they're demonizing the wrong things.

PS - one would have to be a complete moron to think I'm okay with the amount of violence in this country.  Also, Joe really should keep in mind he won the election because he wasn't Cheeto Face, so he should stop fucking things up.  His track record when it comes to getting rid of guns he hates hasn't exactly been stellar.  After all, he's responsible for the popularity of the AR-15

Early North Carolina Dating Observations

 Regular readers shouldn't be surprised I'm already scoping out the dating pool in my soon to be new location.  I'm human and therefore have needs for human interaction with and without exchange of bodily fluids.  Those needs have mostly been suppressed for the past four years, but knowing I'll be in civilization soon has them beginning to simmer again.   

Ordinarily, I'd wait for a meaningful data set of experiences before claiming to have any sort of insight, but in just the past 18 hours I've encountered four profiles that included the exact same sentiment; looking for the D to my s.  I've only seen that sort of thing spelled out perhaps four times in the past four years of living here and maybe twice in the decade I lived in VA.  Further investigation will be required before I can legitimately call it a trend, so we'll see.  I think I'm going to really like Raleigh.

This Is A Gun, It Goes Bang, You Loser

TL;DR - my pistol shooting skills went to hell and I went back to basics to unfuck myself.  It worked.

As a recap, I'd taken a decade off from competition, but returned when I moved to Kansas, because there's fucking nothing else to do here.  My match performance wasn't embarrassing, but my gun broke, sidelining me for the rest of the season.  

2020 was a pandemic bust, but I began practicing in the Spring of 21 with the intent of returning to competition.  However, I sucked worse than I've ever sucked at shooting.  When I'd draw my gun, it wasn't a given that I'd hit the target and when I did, the hole was at the bottom left, almost out of the scoring area.  Worse yet, I discovered I couldn't shoot any pistol well.  No, the worst part was I couldn't figure out why I was sucking so badly.  So, I did what anyone with grit and determination would; I quit and went rifle shooting.

This past winter, I decided to pull my shit together and unfuck my pistol shooting.  You're reading this now because of the approach I took, which was to treat myself as a beginning competitive shooter and go back to basics.  What I found was that my grip on the gun was way too weak, making it an unstable shooting platform.  I attribute this to spending much of the past two years learning to shoot a rifle accurately.  When shooting a handgun at a high rate of speed, you employ a veritable death grip whereas with a rifle that's resting on something stable (bipod, sandbags, etc.) your grip must be incredibly light as to not disturb the gun when you pull the trigger.  

The other issue I discovered was that I was shooting faster than I could see.  In other words, I was pulling the trigger before my sight was where it needed to be in an attempt to shoot quickly.  This isn't uncommon with competitive shooters.   It's been particularly difficult for me to break myself of the habit, but muscle memory works against me here.  Back when I was shooting hardcore, I knew exactly how long it took between shots for the gun to settle back down for another shot.  And I could see much faster because I practiced so much.*  So, it's tough to not simply pull the trigger at the same cadence as I would have a decade ago.

There were a few other things I identified, but I'm confident no one wants to read about that level of minutia.

Going back to basics worked for me.  My draw time (from the buzzer to first shot) is back down to 1.3 seconds and my mag changes are consistently 1.5 seconds, both within .3 seconds of my best performance.  Even better, my practices have improved dramatically.  I sucked so badly last year that I'd stand and hammer the basics (draw, target to target transitions), looking like Stevie Wonder on the range.  My last practice moved past the basics a bit and today, I was finally confident enough to shoot on the move (and hit the target).  

I've included a video of my performance in the last major match I shot (2008), where I placed in solid Master territory.  It's here for those who still have no clue what sort of competition I shoot as well as to prove that I was pretty solid at one point.  Keep an eye out for the mag change at 25 seconds.

* The ability to "see fast" is something that most world class athletes share.  A Formula 1 driver, moving at 200 mph has to be able to process all of that information coming at him to not crash, never mind win.  I read an interview with one of the great MLB hitters (whose name I've since forgotten) and he said that the entire time a fast ball was coming toward the plate, he could see every stitch and how it was moving.  In both cases, most of us see nothing but a blur.

Vlad the Moron, The Thief, The Nut Job, The Loser

This will be my last boring Russia Putin entry until the war takes a dramatic turn.

I can't help but return to how Putin's stupidity has guaranteed his own failure in achieving his goal of returning Russia to the glory of the old Soviet empire.  First, it was never glorious.  It was isolated, gloomy, and not a pleasant place in which to live.  

I'll start by revisiting the origins of the Soviet empire and how it was built.  With the exception of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which the USSR invaded at the outset of World War II, the USSR received its so called empire from Europe's division by the Allies after the war.  Granted, the USSR was an integral part of the Allied victory in Europe (and Japan to a lesser degree, depending on who you believe), but there was no grand conquering or popular outcry.  It's a lot easier to repress than to conquer, and repress they did.

The USSR was classic communism in that the state owned everything and decided who got what;  houses, vacation dachas, factories, companies, your refrigerator, etc.  What was made, how many, and its selling price of everything was determined by Central Planning.  The open market meant nothing to supply and demand.  There weren't multiple companies competing for orders, because it was all the State.  So the quality of everything sucked.  There was no incentive for a plant manager to build an excellent product, because the penalty for sucking didn't exist.  Likewise, there was no incentive for anyone to "work their ass off to build a business" because it wasn't theirs in the first place.  Everything was built based upon quotas, which are never a good thing.  There's an example from my undergrad days that's stuck with me all these years, which illustrates why quotas are bad.  If you're in charge of making men's suits, you'll be allocated a certain amount of fabric, given a number of suits you're required to make, and the date you'll be required to complete production.  Of course, you'll do what guarantees success, not the right thing.  You'll make everyone one of those suits a small because larger ones take more time and material to make.  And those suits will be of horrible quality, because that's not part of your directive and you have no competition to beat you.  As a result, your fellow countrymen suffer because they can't buy a usable suit, but the whole country suffers because no one on the free market wants your crap.  Most importantly, as a citizen of USSR, there was always a lack of basic necessities.  This is why communism always fails, always.  

Communism did have the benefit of keeping corruption to a minimum.  Revenue, profits, and taxes were closely monitored, because the government was everyone's accountant.  Sure, there were opportunities to fudge the books, but to what end?  It's not as though there were many options to spend your ill gotten gains if you were corrupt.  Everything was state owned, so you couldn't buy vacation home in USSR and you couldn't leave the country to buy one in the South of France.  And everyone was a government informant; turning someone in may mean more potatoes for the family.  Also, let's not forget the penalty for defrauding the government, which was a visit from KGB, some fun and games in the basement of Lubyanka, followed by an all expenses paid trip to Siberia. Quite the deterrent.

What all of this meant for the government was there was some, not a lot, but some money in the central coffers and it largely went where Central Planning said, even if that wasn't always the right place.  Jet fighters received proper maintenance, tanks were built, soldiers were trained, and so on.  Not so much went toward basic necessities for the populace, but hey, life's tough in the USSR.

Today, Russia relies on tax dollars to fund defense and other government activities.  All well and good until you realize that the entire oligarchy and their companies are Olympic level tax evaders, so there's not much in the coffers.

And it doesn't stop there.  Another reason the Russian army is sucking ass right now is because a big chunk of the money that was available was syphoned off on the way back down.  Funds allocated for equipment upgrades, training, and maintenance have been pocketed by generals and others.  It's not as though they needed to be prepared for a war or anything.  Oops.

On the commercial side, profits also get funneled back to Vlad, with several stops along the way for others to dip in.  As I've said, innovation can't occur when industry's profits are diverted into someone's pockets instead of having those fund available for things like R&D, process improvements, and system optimization.  What most don't realize is that Russia will never be a world leader in anything or lead innovation in any area.  The Russian people have been repressed for centuries and the general populace doesn't see the value of hard work and excellence, because it's been a waste of time (and has become again).  They just don't give a shit and their work shows it.  Apparently, half of the palace in St. Petersburg was falling down before the czar stayed there the first time.  If this offends, go read up on Russian history and prove me wrong.  

The numbers don't lie.  I'll use GDP per capita, because it accounts for difference in population size.  In 2020, Russia's GDP per capita was $10k versus the $63.5k for the US.  In other words, our GDP per capita was over six times that of Russia.  Over the past decade, Russia's has decreased by 50%, whereas the US has increased 25% in the same period.*

Wrapping things up in a tidy package, what this all means is that Vlad's own greed will prevent him from achieving his goals.  The kleptocracy he cultivated has left him with a fighting force that couldn't beat the Salvation Army.  I've read that he wants to isolate Russia further, but I don't buy it.  His ego won't allow that.  He wants to be on the world stage and to be seen as the conquering leader of a powerful empire, a statesman commanding respect and fear from other world leaders.  But even he knows this will never happen, because he's isolated himself from even his closest advisors.  The dude's become paranoid.  He's terrified of being overthrown, lest he be imprisoned, killed, or given an extended vacation in Lubyanka to participate in all the fun activities there.  Until then, he'll continue to be a despot and common thief with a few personality disorders.  

* Russia's economy spiked dramatically after the fall of the Soviet Union.  This was driven by the free market suddenly producing all of the basic necessities that Central Planning had gotten wrong.  Think toothbrushes, not state of the art electronics.  Once those goods were in the pipeline and the populace got what they needed, the economy plummeted again.