Sebastian – Page 560 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Centrifugal Force

At least one other person shares my only major complain about Atlas Shrugged, the Movie:

I was uncomfortable with a train going 250 MPH on those curves with the passengers standing up. Sorry, but I don’t think they ran the numbers through the physics equations before they filmed those scenes. And the curves had better have some appropriate slope to them to keep the train from rolling over or pushing the tracks off the railway bed.

I think I annoy Bitter by being annoyed by such things, but high speed rail lines have to be pretty straight for a reason.

Wasting Taxpayer Money

I’m outraged that this gun buyback program is getting state funding:

The program was partly funded through the state’s Weed and Seed anti-crime initiative with matching funds paid by the city and assistance from the Hopewell Giant Eagle, Pallante said.

Here’s the state FAQ on the program. I think we need to get legislators to alter the Weed & Seed program to prevent money being used to buy back and destroy guns.

Electrical Problems Fixed (For Now)

Busy weekend of home improvement. Actually, perhaps home improvement isn’t the right word. More like keeping the home from going to hell, which I spend enough time doing that I never seem to get around to any actual “improvement.” This house is now about 25 years old, was never properly constructed according to code (built by the first owner, who was an incompetent builder, according to neighbors.) This is the kind of incompetence I’m talking about:

Note the location of the electrical panel. I even uploaded it to Fail Blog (Please vote for my FAIL. The guy who built the house is dead, but it’ll at least make me feel like I exacted some karmic measure of revenge.) The basement is finished, so options for where appliances go is pretty much limited to this corner.

Since I can’t really reach the panel without contorting my body in ways it was never meant to, relocation is going to cost more in time, money, and aggravation than I’m willing to spend right now. I decided to see if I could work with what I have. First order of business is to map out where all the circuits go. No one ever did that. Any time I’ve done electrical work on this house it’s involved flipping breakers until the circuit I was working on went dead. So now I know where everything goes and have a chart of the breaker layout and what’s on those circuits.

The bus bar stab the two fried breakers were on I’m considering effectively dead, because I’m fairly certain the stab is heat damaged. But he bus bar itself looked OK. Took a trip to Lowes and got two new circuit breakers, and an infrared thermometer. I had a spare stab at the bottom of the bar, so I used that and moved one of the lighter circuits to it. The heavy loaded circuit with the dishwasher I moved to the top, and put a new breaker there too. That left the sump, which was connected to the other breaker. Sumps need a dedicated circuit, so I took two circuits that were pretty light weight and tied them together. That got me the sump back on its own circuit. Running the dishwasher, and a few other heavy appliances shows the box running at 75 degrees F, and the busbar at the same temp. No localized heating where the fried breakers were. Not much higher than ambient temperature. Only hotter spot is the GFI breaker at 81 degrees, which I would expect.

Took less time to do than I had on the UPS that powers the blog an Internet in the even of power failure. Long term I will replace the panel, but probably not until I’m close to selling. The solution I’ve thought up is to put in a tankless water heater, which would recover a lot of working room, and allow the panel to be shifted over a bit to get the 30 inches NEC requires.

Very Sad News

I am told that former Congressman Harold Volkmer (D-MO) died last night. He was primarily responsible for pushing the Firearms Owner’s Protection Act (FOPA) through the House back in the mid-1980s. I once had the pleasure of once sharing a table with Congressman Volkmer at an NRA lunch event. He was truly one of the giants of the movement to preserve the Second Amendment.

UPDATE: Dave Hardy has more information.

UPDATE: Obituary appears here:

Harold was busy literally in his last days reviewing a legal case for the NRAâ€™s Civil Rights Defense Fund. Known to all simply as Harold, he was touched tremendously by the hundreds of greetings that came to him recently on his 80th birthday.

We have truly lost one of the great ones of this movement.

Performance Art That Will Get You Killed

SayUncle has an interesting story from New York:

Once the door shuts, he starts screaming to the top of his lungs to the people in the car about about something, some sort of pre-robbery speech. Then says itâ€™s a robbery and pulls out his hand and itâ€™s in a brown paper bag. I was a bit surprised that I stayed calm but I did. I discretely pulled my Cold Steel AK47 out of my pocket and stood between the guy and my wife evaluating what I was going to do and when. It was a pretty intense few seconds. Then the robber decides to inform us that heâ€™s not a robber and itâ€™s actually some sort of scare-tactic fundraising pitch for a homeless shelter.

Whoever thought this was a good idea ought to be slapped around. If Bloomberg’s subjects are this foolish, no wonder he doesn’t want people going about armed. In a lot of cities, this guy would be shot, and to be honest, he would have deserved it. Legally, it would have been self-defense. This is foolish beyond belief, even in New York, where there are still people walking around with deadly weapons.

Some Debate with Colin Goddard

Thirdpower has the details of a Twitter debate that’s been going on this Friday between Colin Goddard and a few gun rights people. Debating on Twitter is kind of like dueling haiku, so it’s impossible to discuss complex topics. The topic at hand is background checks. Goddard’s position can be accurately paraphrased as “The innocent have nothing to fear.” But that misses what drives our opposition by a mile.

I think the background check requirement is about as useful for lowering violent crime as pissing out your car window. But if done with respect for the core right at hand, I’m not sure it’s a serious enough impediment to its exercise to rise to the level of unconstitutionality. That said, the proposals by the Brady Campaign are almost certainly not open for debate, largely because they target gun shows with onerous requirements, and impose a significant tax on the transfer of firearms by forcing transfers through FFLs. So we fight it.

Pennsylvania currently bans private transfers of handguns. You have two choices here for transferring a handgun to someone who isn’t your spouse, son, grandson, father, or grandfather. You can pay an FFL to do it, which around here costs a minimum of 32 dollars at some of the smaller, out of the way shops, or drive forty minutes to theÂ county seat, and have the Sheriff’s Office do it. No doubt many gun control advocates don’t really appreciate bringing cost into the equation, but when it comes to exercising rights, costs imposed by government are a serious issue that can’t be lightly dismissed. Especially when the effectiveness of the measures is dubious at best.Â Despite the fact that Pennsylvania prohibits private transfers of handguns, straw purchasing has become a big enough problem, we’re told we need to acquiesce to a whole host of other controls. The Brady Campaign supports rationing gun purchases in order to deal with this problem in my state, just to name one proposal on the table.

Negotiations on this issue are a non-starter unless something I otherwise could not get is also on the table. Most of that is going to be unacceptable to Colin’s employer, if not Colin himself. Politics is a process of compromise, but compromise is what happens when either both sides are unable to move forward without concessions to the other, or when one side begins to fear his opponent might be able to move an issue forward despite opposition.Â The gun control movement has never been interested in that kind of compromise. If the Brady Campaign really wanted universal background checks, they could probably get them. Ask how many gun owners here would trade a universal background check you could do with a driver’s license and a cell phone for, say, a repeal of the Hughes Amendment. I think you’d find takers. Ask how many would trade the same for easing restrictions on short barreled rifles/shotguns, and suppressors? National concealed carry? I’d bet you’d get takers just giving up the 4473.

Could Brady make that deal? Are background checks that important? If they answer that question honestly, you’ll see why this goes nowhere. Background checks are a political hobby horse Colin’s side is riding as a gateway to other issues which are more important to them. This was never about the background checks, and I think Colin knows that as well as I do.

Comm2A and SAF File Suit in Massachusetts

They are challenging the ban on firearms possession by lawfully admitted aliens, and the ban on firearms and ammunition purchase by lawful resident aliens. There is very strong case law that will support getting the ban overturned for lawful resident aliens. If I understand the first aspect of the lawsuit correctly, this challenges the ban mere possession, meaning challenging the fact that it’s a crime to take you friend visiting from overseas to a shooting range. Given the Supreme Court has said plainly this is a fundamental right, that probably plays strongly that a blanket ban on possession is unconstitutional, though it may be constitutional to restrict lawful admitted aliens from purchasing a gun under the Heller dicta that permits some degree of qualification on commercial sales of firearms.

Lucky The Blog is Still Running

Bitter and I have been noticing an odd odor in the house every time we run the dish washer. It was kind of a putrid, cat urine kind of smell. I had figured maybe a mouse had decided to make a home in the insulation and had died. I intended to yank the thing at some point. Wednesday night that odor was considerably stronger, enough for me to identify it as an electrical smell. Checked around the house and couldn’t find anything that was the culprit. I figured the dishwasher might be on its last leg, so told Bitter to stop using it. Came home last night and she said some lights weren’t working. Crap. Go check the breakers and they are all in the on position. So I start tripping them, until I hit one that just rocks back and fourth like there’s nothing in there:

Two, completely dead. Judging from how discolored and soft the blade on the bus bar is, my guess is that over the years, it’s become something less than pure aluminum, causing it to heat excessively. Some of the plastic cladding holding the bus bar in place melted down. The two breakers below it function, but their cases took some damage too. The whole panel needs replacement. That normally would be no problem, except when the doofuses who owned the house previously replaced the boiler, they completely blocked access. I can reach it enough to work on it, but it’ll be difficult and tiring. Bitter can’t reach the thing to even trip breakers back.

The other problem is PECO won’t pull the meter and reconnect without confirmation that I’ve met code, which means permits. This probably means a licensed electrician. Because of the boiler, one with exceptionally long arms. Or I have to pull the boiler out and reconfigure it so there’s room to work. I accept permitting for major work or renovation, but by this standard I’d need a permit to swap out a faulty main breaker. That’s not safety, that’s extortion. And how am I supposed to function while I wait, without any power, for the township’s code enforcement to show up to inspect the work?

Help a Fellow Out

Robb over at Sharp as a Marble is hitting the unemployment lines. If you’re in the Tampa area, and want to hire a .Net developer, I’m sure he’d be happy to send a resume. Speaking of resumes, there’s a chance I might be joining Robb in a week or so. I should get mine ready too. To some degree I’m relatively calm, because right now I’ve done all I can do to save the company. The decision as to whether to continue operating, and if so in what form, is out of my hands, and in a strange way that takes the pressure off. The past year has been a marathon to produce something of value we can partner with someone who can bring cash to the table. I am happy that we have achieved that goal. The question is whether we have something interesting enough, and with enough potential upside, to keep our tired investors at the table. We shall soon see.

Based on what I’ve seen, the market for tech people isn’t really that bad, and while my ten years of experience is primary in high-performance computing (HPC), cheminformatics and bioinformatics systems, there isn’t a whole lot that involves a computer that I haven’t done. If I have to go to the dark side and do software, I can do that. I could probably even go back to pure hardware engineering if I could convince someone I could un-rust those skills in a short amount of time. Database admin? I probably could swing it. General IT? Can do it in my sleep. Network engineer? Been a while for some aspects, but it’s not rocket science. The big thing on my mind right now is what to do next. But I’m hoping next will be continuing to do what I’m doing now, where I’m doing it now. I have my fingers crossed.

Tastykake Finds a Buyer

Possibly as revenge for burning Atlanta, the rebs now own Tastykake. Great work Philadelphia! It won’t be too long before the North will have no hope of winning if the South does indeed rise again, because everything will be made there, and nothing here. I will definitely join the side with Tastykakes. Add this to my affection for Chick-fil-a, and they’d really have me over a barrel if they tore up all the railroads heading north.