Sebastian – Page 1420 – Shall Not Be Questioned

New Firewall

I put a new firewall/wireless router on my home network.Â Â The default Verizon ActionTEC has flaky wireless, so I switched to a Netgear box.Â The firewall features on the Netgear box aren’t quite as good, but it’ll do for now.Â At some point, I might play with OpenWrt on a Linksys WRT.Â Â Linksys WRTs by default kind of suck, because they like to time out TCP connections while you’re using them, and there’s no way to disable this “feature”, but if I can run a Linux based firewall/wireless router on one, I’d have total control, and it would do anything I wanted it to.

Visitors to the blog might have noticed a slight interruption in service for the ten seconds it took to switch over to the new system.Â It’s easy when it’s just a simple home network.

A Pack, Not a Herd

It’s good to see that people in Alexandria can get things done, even when the police take almost 15 minutes to show up:

Hart caught him in a bear hug three blocks away about the time that O’Brien, who had run back to her house for handcuffs and was still barefoot, drove up in Boyd’s truck. They handcuffed Dean just as Alexandria patrol cars pulled up. Dispatchers registered Thorp’s 911 call at 5:22 a.m. Police were on scene at 5:35 a.m., Alexandria police officials said.

Babin’s children slept through the ordeal.

In the ensuing months, Dean has tried to call Babin collect from jail four times. Hart said there is a palpable sense of relief in the neighborhood now that he is no longer hanging around. And O’Brien’s son has a much clearer sense of what she means when she says, “Mommy catches bad guys.”

O’Brien, Hart and Boyd were honored for their actions recently by the Alexandria police. But they played down their roles. O’Brien said she is trained to deal with crime. And helping each other out is simply what neighbors do, they said.

O’Brien is a fed, but it’s a good deal when the neighborhood has a guy in custody before the police even get there.Â A good lesson in this is not to leave your cell phone uncharged or out of reach.

How to Spot a Hidden Handgun

Conservative Scalawag links to a guide written for the NYPD on [how to spot a concealed pistol]*.Â Â Take a look.Â I have to admit, about keeping the hand close to the shirt, and not swinging the other arm, I do that.Â I have to keep the shirt from blowing open.Â Â I do that even when I’m not carrying, just out of habit.Â The rest of the things they mention can be solved by using a quality holster.Â Â Studies have shown that bad guys almost universally don’t carry in holsters; just stuffing it in their waistband.Â Â I don’t get this.Â Why don’t criminals use a holster?

* Dead link removed

Is Bob Casey Alive?

I have to admit, since he’s gotten elected, by being the un-Santorum, I have been wondering exactly what he’s been doing.Â Â Because if he’s doing something, I’m not exactly sure what it is.Â Â It seems I’m not alone, and now the press is starting to ask these questions.Â I anxiously await to hear whether they can determine whether he’s alive.

The Preener

John Edwards hair preening I think has to hurt him with male voters.Â Especially if he ended up running against Fred Thompson. Â Do you think Fred Thompson preens his hair?Â I think the statement would go something like this:

“As you can see, I don’t really have that much hair left to preen.Â Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have sex with my hot wife.”

If people voted based purely on logic, that wouldn’t matter, but they don’t, and so it does.

Not Getting an iPhone

I won’t say I’ll never get an iPhone, but when it comes to Apple, I’m not an early adopter.Â Why?Â Because they stick it to you on price if you adopt early.Â Even if you’re a late adopter, they’ll charge you a pretty sizeable chunk of change.Â Plus, I kind of like my phone to be, well, a phone.Â I use my phone to make calls.Â I’m not sure I really want my phone to have a camera, play video, or play MP3s.Â Â When I want to play MP3s, I’ll use the iPod.Â If I want to take a picture, I’ll whip out my Nikon digital camera.

Now, I know there are more than a few haters out there, but I think I at least have some company in the world of Apple.Â I’m a computer professional by day, so I’ve used a lot of different types of laptops, and I can say that they pretty much all have their problems, Macs included.Â Â I still wouldn’t really use anything else, because I can’t stand using Windows for 10 minutes before I want to use whatever machine its running on as target practice.

Linux, which I used for years as a desktop, makes a great server, and reasonably good workstation, but it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of user interface design, and tends to borrow the best and worst features of all the other systems out there.Â Â I stopped using Linux on the desktop because every time I bought a new peripheral, I’d have to have to spend 20 minutes to figure out how to make it work with Linux.Â Â Linux will actually work with most things these days, an they are getting pretty good at the plug and play thing for common devices, but when things don’t work, you better know what you’re doing. Â On the Mac, things just work, and since I get paid to make things work by day, I don’t exactly feel like doing it when I come home at night.

I may not buy an iPhone, but I do think Apple makes genuinely good products overall.Â It’s not just marketing hype.Â Having to deal with Windows on a daily basis professionally, I wouldn’t even think of using it for my personal life.Â I was long of the opinoin that NeXTStep was one of the best operating systems ever engineered, but had the misfortune of running on underpowered and overpriced hardware.Â Apple hardware is still overpriced, but it’s worth it to me not to have to deal with the aggravation of Windows.Â I can understand why someone may not feel it’s worth the price tag; even I wince at the price of Apple’s hardware, but you can have my MacBook when you pry it from my cold dead hands ;)

Fireworks Cancelled! Blah!

Apparently the contractor who was scheduled to do the Alexandria fireworks canceled at the last minute, so they had to cancel the show.Â At least that was the rumor on King Street.Â The show was definitely canceled though, so I got to watch no fireworks this Fourth of July.Â Fortunately, I got to go to my favorite Thai restaurant in the area, Mai Thai.Â I’m a fan of their Thai Drunken Noodle with mixed seafood.Â I’ve been meaning to try their curry dishes, but so far I’m a fan of their noodle dishes.Â Back home I have a few good Thai places I like to go to, but if you’re ever in the DC area, Mai Thai is pretty good.

Typical Philadelphia

Dave Hardy tells us about a new program in Philadelphia.Â Â Waive your fourth amendment rights to let police search for guns, and don’t get charged.

What’s wrong with this program?Â Well, it’s not a crime to possess a firearm in Pennsylvania unless you’ve been convicted of a list of enumerated state and federal offenses, or you’re a juvenile. Â If gun crime, which everyone admits is generally committed by multiple offenders, is a real problem in the City of Philadelphia, wouldn’t it make more sense to forget about the gun, and get the person who shouldn’t have one off the streets instead? Â In the city’s flawed thinking, it is the gun that must be hauled off, and the criminal, well, they can stay on the streets so they can buy another gun, and keep committing crimes.

But we need one-gun-a-month because our gun laws aren’t working.Â The city politicians are aptly demonstrating exactly why they aren’t working: they aren’t being enforced.

The NRA Range Does Indeed Rock

Got back from the NRA range.Â It is quite impressive.Â Â I like being able to shoot at 50 yards indoor.Â I love the electronic controls that let you put the target out with accuracy down to the foot as well.Â They allow you to shoot from holster, and the tables move out the way to accommodate sitting or prone positions.

I wasn’t shooting too well, but I found out at least that my SKS works.Â That is, after I figured out why the action wouldn’t cycle to load the next round.Â The knob on the front of the gas block has to go sideways.Â I’m guessing for grenade launching, you don’t want the gases escaping, so the knob can turn off the gas system.Â Â The SKS shoots great though once I got into it.

I did a little practice for the e-postal match.Â Only did a paltry 28 out of 91 with the Glock, and 46 out of 91 with the Mk.III.Â Still need work.Â The good news is I don’t suck as much as one handed shooting as I remember, at least with the Glock.

The only downside to the NRA range is that it’s crowded.Â I don’t shoot as well when I’m surrounded by distractions.Â The guy next to me had his M1 Garand malfunction and started doing double and triple shots.Â I’m getting too spoiled shooting on my private club range, where I usually have it to myself.Â But the NRA has much much better facilities than anywhere else I’ve been.Â I will definitely have to come back.

Virginia Restaurant Law

One thing I hate about carrying in Virginia is the stupid restaurant ban.Â You can’t carry into any place that’s licensed to serve alcohol while concealing your weapon, even if you don’t intend to order a drink.Â If you want, you can go all VCDL and unconceal it, but I’m pretty sure that would get me kicked out of a lot of the restaurants in Alexandria.

Contrast to Pennsylvania where you can carry into restaurants and bars.Â You can even belly up to the bar and order a beer while carrying.Â Not that I recommend carrying while intoxicated, but the law makes the presumption that people are going to be reasonable; I like that.

So how about it Virginia? Â Can we get rid of this crap? Â Probably not, because the meme will be “The NRA and VCDL want drunks to carry.” which is crap, but that’ll be the meme. Â There’s also the fools at the other NRA, the National Restaurant Association, who will come out against it.Â So perhaps we can at least restructure the law here. Â How about off limits violations are a summary offense rather than the current penalty, which I believe is carrying without a license? Â Or go the Missouri route, and make violation no penalty at all, but getting caught more than once puts your license at risk. Â To me, these all seem to be reasonable alternatives if you can’t outright eliminate the restaurant ban.

Virginia’s carry laws are pretty good except for the restaurant thing. Â Certainly better than a lot of other southern states, who have overly restrictive off-limits places.Â Tennessee, for instance, bans carry in all parks and National and State Forests, which seems highly silly.Â Or Georgia, which has a general public gathering exception.Â Or the various southern states which prohibit carry into polling places.Â Come on guys, you can’t let a bunch of damned Yankees beat you on this one ;)