Fucema

Apparently this is a case where the local police are not paragons of firearms safety.

In a letter to Roanoke City Manager Darlene Burcham, Chambliss wrote that “the continued disregard for safety and resulting burden of liability resting upon the County, do not allow this program to continue.”

He was referring to the voluntary training session, in which officers took turns standing next to a target while another officer, a football field away, took aim and fired. No one was injured.

The instructor, Paul Castle, has defended the practice, saying that the situations a sniper encounters can’t be simulated with a paper target.

Is it really worth the risk of losing a life during a training exercise? To me this is a clear case where the probability of an accident occurring may arguably be low but the resulting cost of losing a life is too high a price to pay. Why risk it?

I am told now and again that the police are experts when it comes to firearms and gun handling. Pfft.

Stumbled across this article (thanks Bill!) that attempts to make light-hearted fun of gun enthusiasts in Virginia while also in the process of discrediting anti-crime groups.

Let’s be honest, all these gun laws are pretty much bullshit. I shouldn’t be able to carry around a handgun any more than I should be able to carry around a bottle of cyanide. Guns are for killing, everyone knows that. Protection, my ass.

It takes place at the Blueridge Arsenal, a local gun shop and gun range in Chantilly, VA. Note that the photographer did an amazing job as anyone who has ever been inside the BRA building could tell you.

Although I enjoyed the pictures and some of the funny-making, the original author and his friends should take note that guns really are a serious business. There are safety rules in place and guidance on types of clothing to wear. This is all in the interest of your safety and the safety of others around you when handling firearms.

In the end, I couldn’t help but imagine this article was going to end in a disaster. Gather high heels, a loaded gun, a liberal scattering of empty casings on the floor. Toss in a muzzle flash or two, and a finger on the trigger. Lastly mix it all together with a small misstep while cavorting together for a group picture and voila! A negligent discharge and a wounded person or two.

P.S. I love the zombie targets also.

Examiner.com has an article about the anniversary of Georgia House Bill 89 that allowed concealed carry in restaraunts that serve alcohol (one of the many places to be allowed).

A year ago there was much hand wringing and gnashing of teeth by the pro-crime crowd in Georgia regarding House Bill 89 which allowed firearms on MARTA and in restaraunts. The typical cries of drunken shootouts during family dinners was replayed and hashed out in the minds of anti-gunners in the news media.

Now fast forward one year later and the reality is that the fear mongering and protesting over HB 89 was overplayed by the pro-crime group. None of their fears came true.

If they are still waiting for bloodshed and chaos on the bus system due to HB 89, they are in for a long wait.

The sad truth is that these opinions and fears made by ill-informed anti-gunners are often repeated throughout past history. And probably will be used again in another state.

Florida adopted a right-to-carry law in 1987. At the time the law was passed, critics predicted increases in violence. The founder of the National Organization of Women, Betty Friedan stated: ”lethal violence, even in self defense, only engenders more violence.”

When the law went into effect, the Dade County Police began a program to record all arrest and non arrest incidents involving concealed carry licensees. Between September of 1987 and August of 1992, Dade County recorded 4 crimes committed by licensees with firearms. None of these crimes resulted in an injury. The record keeping program was abandoned in 1992 because there were not enough incidents to justify tracking them.

(Source: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp)

Showtime has a new series titled Lock ‘N Load and it promises to entertain the masses using the backdrop of a family run gun shop. I wonder if it will effect any positive change for pro-gun groups. It’s rare for any TV shows to examine right-to-bear-arms issue; I can recall an episode of 30 Days that dealt with anti-crime vs pro-crime subject matter. Come to think of it, I doubt it will seriously address any RKBA issues – this is the popular media after all. Don’t be surprised if they use this to mock and parody people who are not afraid to legally and responsibly own and use firearms.

Showtime presents a new original reality series about guns, and the people who buy them. Lock ‘N Load, coming soon!

Interesting article detailing the thought process behind one person’s conversion to a pro-gun and anti-crime stance. It also has some interesting views on living in Berkeley, California. Too bad this article won’t get more exposure with the pro-crime/anti-gun crowd; I doubt many mainstream media outlets would be interested in hosting this article.

A neighbor, who had lived all over the world, once said to me, ”Berkeley is the most dangerous place I’ve ever lived.”  Her husband was robbed at gunpoint as were almost all her friends.  She couldn’t wait to get out of here.

I brought back one particularly interesting Cuban (fake?). I suspected it was a fake once I looked closer at the band and had a few draws on it—turns out it might be a non-existent Limited Edition. It’s marked as 2007, but as far as as I can tell, Habanos SA never released any 2007 LE cigars. Their first Pyramide style LE was rolled out in 2008. Interesting fake cigar.

I had one possibly good/great cigar (Hoyo De Monterrey, tubo, a No.2?) but it was so plugged I couldn’t get a draw on it. Tried up til the middle but I gave up by then. The flavor was pretty darn good, so was the construction. Ah well.

There was a very nice Petit Edmundo from Montecristo. It had great construction, with a super looking wrapper. The smoke was a little light but good tasting nonetheless. The draw was excellent—and I never had to relight it. But It comes in metal tubes and I didn’t really feel like unpacking 25 metal tubes and bringing them into the states… I’m lazy. Must also mean that the cigar was not that memorable compared to ones I’ve smoked in the past. To be honest, I rather pay the same amount of money and buy a VSG or a Fuente.

I tried a Cohiba Lancero (or pig-tail). These Cohibas they sell in Bahamas are pretty rough and shoddy in appearance. Almost every Cohiba has a rough and veiny wrapper. The smoke was not that glorious either. This particular pig-tail however was one of the better Cohibas I smoked while in the islands. It really improved at the mid point. The beginning was a bit rough but nowhere near as bad as the other Cohibas. Other Cohibas I smoked: the Sublime, the Esplenido, 2004 Limited Edition, 2008 Limited Edition.

None of the cigars I smoked during that week evoked any Cuban-ness or Cuban vibe. There is a certain smell/flavor that I associate heavily with Cuban cigars and I didn’t get them during this time. It might partially have been due to some windy days during my trip. It was pretty difficult to light up a cigar with just box matches outside, thanks to remnants of Paloma.

Oh, found some really good looking Series D, Partagas No 4 cigars… they had some great dusting on them. But they tasted crappy. In retrospect I did smoke alot of these cigars outdoors, usually while sitting in the hot tub. In my opinion the smoke you exhale and the smoke from the burning end of your cigar add to the experience. I think the windy days may have removed that aspect for me, unfortunately.

The Dominicans and Nicaraguans I brought to the Bahamas with me were great smokes however. The Romeo Y Julietta No.2 in tubes were a solid smoke – I recommended them to VA and Min and they both liked them. I was actually hoping to find a stronger smoke though.

I couldn’t find a Trinidad habanos for the life of me… Bahamas sucks for Cuban cigars. Cohiba is pushed really hard there, along with some Partagas, Romeo Y Julietta and Hoyo De Monterrey.

This is my third trip to the Bahamas (Freeport) and I am fairly certain now that the Cubans are sending the lower-quality cigars to the islands. I can’t imagine that England is getting the same mediocre quality Cubans. If you take a trip to the Bahamas, make sure to bring a few of your own favorite cigars from home. Your visions of great Cuban cigar smoke while at the Bahamas will just be blown away and leave only a hole in your wallet.

Highlights of this trip in random order:

• My quad 6s over villain’s Aces full at Hard Rock
• AR-15 on full auto (damn that clip went by fast)
• MP-5 on full auto (need more bullets)
• Benelli shotgun on full auto (joking, but I shot and pumped as fast as I could)
• Gambling with the guys at Hard Rock (check out the high limit tables)
• The last RehabRX pool party of the season at Hard Rock (got in free with a trick
• 1/2NLHE with Paris & Benji, Nikki & David at you guessed it… Hard Rock
• Up ~300 after shooting in craps (I rarely shoot)

I know the ladies had alot of fun too, doing their ‘thang’ also. Thanks to everyone who made it out to Vegas for us, it was a fun time.

Felicia Day awesome-ness. Have you ever been in a MMO (UO, EQ, AC, DAoC, WoW, etc) guild? These episodes are so funny because they are so true. Or if you are true curious what your S.O. used to do in World of Warcraft!

http://feliciaday.com/videos/

I think at one point in time I was routinely drinking close to 1000mgs of caffeine. I remember drinking multiple grande lattes a day (2 shots in a grande vs 3 shots in a venti).

Starbucks Venti Twenty ounces = 415 milligrams caffeine

Based on some of the information in these articles, I believe a majority of my sleep problems are related to my caffeine intake. I am going to try cutting out caffeine intake from Starbucks drinks for a month.

• http://nymag.com/restaurants/features/breakfast/47395/
• http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0501/feature1/index.html
  
• http://www.newsweek.com/id/32848
• http://www.starbucks.com/retail/nutrition_beverages.asp

Polyphasic Sleep

I ran across a blog chronicling one person’s 5+ month experiment with polyphasic sleep. I had originally been Googling for information about sleep disorders since I’ve been unable to get a good night’s rest for a longtime (years?) now.

Polyphasic sleep involves taking multiple short sleep periods throughout the day instead of getting all your sleep in one long chunk. A popular form of polyphasic sleep, the Uberman sleep schedule, suggests that you sleep 20-30 minutes six times per day, with equally spaced naps every 4 hours around the clock. This means you’re only sleeping 2-3 hours per day.

One of the upsides is the extra awake time you gain for activities. The major downside is that you will be on a fixed sleep schedule that likely conflicts with the rest of your friends and family. It’s a very interesting set of blog entries to read, and provides a lot of food for thought. I think I’ll stick to improving my monophasic sleep for now.

This is probably old news, but I still get excited thinking about all the interesting solutions that are possible now using Mule and Gigaspaces for SOA problems requiring low latency and highly scalable architectures.

Gigaspaces released 6.5 with API integration with Mule 2.0 … this is just plain awesome. You can use Gigaspaces as the transport (e.g. in place of JMS) and quickly get a SBA up and running utilizing the same concepts I used at RHG when we were servicing B2B problems. You also get the advantage of the clustering ability and fault tolerance that comes with Gigaspaces – which is just pure sex – not to mention all the other great features that come with this advanced Javaspaces implementation (i.e. management tools, monitoring tools, data partitioning, performance features like batching).

Gigaspaces would have made a fantastic backend transport and shared data grid in place of ActiveMQ JMS, but at the time it wasn’t as fully integrated with Mule. We would have been able to solve alot of the high availability and clustering concerns regarding single points of failure with the messaging database and JMS brokers. I never felt comfortable with ActiveMQ’s clustering and fail-over features. Configuration seemed a bit fussy and it doesn’t seem to be as easy to scale out as a Gigaspace cluster.

References
• GigaSpaces-Mule Enterprise Service Bus for Stateful Service-Oriented Architectures
• Middle Tier Resilience – Fault-Tolerant SOA using JavaSpaces