In regards to the proper care and feeding of chemical agents.

Don't store it in direct sunlight.  Check the canister for damage and leaks.  And take it out of service by the listed expiration date.  

That being said. let's mosy on to a similar topic.  

Oleoresin Capsicum.  O. C.  Pepper Spray.  Basically this is the "weaponized" version of a hot pepper.  The oils of the peppers converted by modern science into a pressurized agent used to disorient a subject.  It's almost as au-natural and hippie friendly as a hickory shampoo.  Ha ha, I kid, I kid.  

It is known as "less than lethal" due to the fact that it sits lower on the use of force chart.  However, "less than lethal" can be lethal at times without intent.  (See studies on positional asphyxiation in conjunction with use of chemical agents.)  Nothing is 100% safe.  (Remember that radio contestant who died from drinking water?)  

On that note, pepper spray is a bit of an area-of-affect tool.  Let's say that you are going hands on with an inmate.  Unless the situation goes pear shaped, you should not deploy pepper spray.  Not only are you hitting the inmate with the chemical, you are hitting the officers also.  Not every one is affected by O. C. the same way.  Take me for example.  I've had a lot of exposure to it and I can work through it.  Also, it makes me very angry.  And my anger is not directed at the inmate, but he officer who made a very poor decision.  

International Cat Speculators

International Cat Speculators.

Apparently it's a thing now.  

It's a joke on Instapundit, by the way.  My family has a good handful of cats plus a number of strays that hang around.  If there was a way to make money off of them then I'd be rich.  

Update:  Apparently someone has bought a web domain and set it up as International Cat Speculators.  Read the comments, they are so funny!

On that note, leave a comment on my blog.  Just say hi or something.

DC Celtic Events

Anyone remember Yahoo Groups?  I'm still a member of several Yahoo Groups.  Sometimes I get some really interesting info on them.  I actually prefer getting info over text based e-mail than using Facebook.  It's a simple format, where in Facebook they will sometimes hide posts and you won't know that anyone wrote anything.

Recently, the DC Cetlic Events group was updated.  I was happy to see this.  I was so used to the groups fading away and being forgotten.  Plus, the moderator included a nice note explaining why the news group had been "ignored" for so long.  That was a nice touch.

I need a vacation... from my vacation.

So...  Spent a little over a week on vacation.  And I'm still recovering from it.

It rained most of the week.  I think the rain actually made the fishing a little better because it kept all the speedboats and jet skis off the lake.

I'll post later.

I think.

Gay Marriage

So...  The Defense of Marriage Act has been found unconstitutional.

Of course, the news pretty much just said (to paraphrase) "gay marriage is legal." I was working that day and of course the inmates took it at face value.

The majority were really upset thus we had to watch out for possible acts of violence of inmates against inmates whom they saw as of an alternate sexual persuasion.  Yes, certain news stories will raise the risk that inmates may act in a certain way.  This "certain way" often involves violence, but not always.

So, the following sentance is about that "not always" part.

The day the news story broke, I was proposed to by a small number of inmates.

On the upside, apparently I appeal to 100% of the population.  I'm sexy and I know it!

TeleVenture watching!

I'm very disappointed in myself.

Apparently they started showing the fifth season of The Venture Brothers and I did not notice.

So, I've missed a significant number of the episodes!  Well, I've set it to the DVR.  Now I just have to find free time to watch the episodes when my wife is not using the DVR.

I can't really tell you the last thing that I recorded.  Growing up, we had a VCR.  That implement caused more fights, I swear.  We had one TV in the den, and one in my parents bedroom.  So us kids watched that den TV all the time.  We only had a handful of VCR tapes.  And they all got filled up.  When you have a tape that can only record about 4-6  hours of video at a time...  (This was before the big fancy 8 hour video tapes!)  Worse was when we would record over a program someone else was watching.

You can still use a VCR with a cable box.  You just have to have the cable box tuned.  I tried it a few times.  The DVR is the only way to record stuff now.  You have to pay the company to record it.  And apparently you can't record the Super Bowl, but I've never tried.  My wife is a TV junkie and she records and watches everything!  Our DVR stays full all the time, and my wife will watch all the programs as soon as she can.  It kind of kills me.  I hate the fact that most of the shows my wife watches, I can't stand.  Cooking competitions?  Mentally unbalanced dance moms?  Pretty much I hate most reality TV.  (The original Ninja Challenge on G4 was pretty cool.)  But she does like a lot of the crime shows and I can enjoy them, even if I find them pretty formulaic.

I need a hobby.

I need a hobby.

Well, I need a "cheap" hobby.  I used to have a lot of hobbies...  but they all cost money.

A lot of money.

I used to shoot competitively.  IDPA, IPSC, Cowboy Action, steel matches...  I can't afford the ammo if I could even find the ammo.  Plus I work every other weekend and the matches seem to fall on the weekends that I work.  I won't say that I'm a very good shoot.  As a matter of fact I'm pretty slow compared to the hard core match competitors.  But it's still a lot of fun.

I love computers.  Not just getting online with them.  I like to tinker with them and add components and try to upgrade.  I also enjoy running different programs and seeing what I can do.  But, components cost money.  Plus my hard drive is currently out of space so I need to increase the size of the hard drive...  But I don't have any money.

I used to enjoy driving.  I'd pick a destination, or even a road, and just go.  I've found old graveyards, Civil War monuments, turn of the century stores, and more.  I guess you can find all of this on the internet now, but it was fun to explore and find it on my own.

Currently, my life involves work, spending time with my daughter, taking care of the yard and house, and surfing the internet.  I've got Netflix, but I can't find much on it that keeps my attention.

Time to find a cheap hobby.

Король и Шут - Кукла Колдуна + текст песни

I found this neat little tune on YouTube.  Honestly, I could use a translation.  But, I enjoyed it.  And of course all the Google products are all neatly wrapped together, allowing me to post the cryllic alphabet up top.

Yeah, I think it's neat.  I doubt anyone else would.

f

Rare footage of the LASD

This is posted as rare (colorized) footage of the LASD doing "trick shooting" at their range.  They are doing such things as shooting objects out of hands and cigars out of mouths.  Yeah, you don't see that happening today but back then...  Still, it's pretty cool footage!

"Good People"

Hat tip to The Smallest Minority for this one.

Acts of kindness.  People can be good.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield does "Space Oddity."

Commander Hadfield apparently recorded and mixed this cover of "Space Oddity" originally sung by David Bowie.

OK, it's a lot of fun!  Plus he's got a great voice.

I've seen a few band remake Major Tom/Space Oddity.  But this is the best cover I've heard so far.

Update on my search for Djembe!

A little bit ago I posted that I was looking for information on a group by the name of Djembe.  Recently I got a response from a comment that I had left on YouTube.

They gave me the following link:  Djembe - Russian Gothic.  This gave me a list of the songs, a little bit of the bands info, and the album artwork.  It helped me out a lot!

Apparently I had all of Djembe's music stored somewhere.  Originially I had it on some Zip disks...  which had gone bad.  (I actually have an external Zip disk reader!)  I had given my wife a bunch of R/W CDs for her to use... and she found that I had already used one.  When she gave it to me, I found that I had a lot of music on it.  Long story short, I was able to identify some of the music as Djembe, but I was able to ID the rest of the music after I compared it to the list on the Web Page.

Thus, the Djembe album was called "Medieval Hits."  It was listed as "unpublished" in 2000.  The album contained four tracks.
1. In Taberna
2. Saltarello
3. Tourdion
4. Maria Virgine
5. Palestinalit

The following is copied directly from the above link:


Line-up:
Artistic Director
Igor Tiouvaev - darabucca (african drum), fluters, hemshorn, vocal

Georgy Efimov - violin, flute, vocal
Nikolay Soloviev - djembe (african drum), china cymbals, bells, vocal
Svetlana Galkina - synthesizer, percussions, vocal
Irina Efimova - tambourine, ancient cymbals, vocal
Sergey Firsov - djembe (african drum), vocal
Sergey Barsukov - saaz, hud (eastern stringed instruments played by plucking)

It makes me feel good that I've been able to get this information.

I have come to a conclusion...

I have come to a conclusion...

Eventually, everything in America shall become illegal.  With the exception of illegal immigration, of course.  

Yard Work

Spring came late here.  Earlier this season we had snow, which turned into 90 degree weather in a space of 12 days.   Now we are back to cool and wet weather.

I'm currently "on vacation."  Well, I have time off and I get to stay at home for a week.  Not going anywhere special.  So I've been trying to clean the house and work on the yard.  I'm happy that the prediction of 5 days of rain proved to be false.

Today was mostly yard work.  I ran some of the engines on my tools to make sure everything was in working order.  (I'd only used the lawn mower so far.)  Ran the generator for a few hours and placed some fuel stabilizer in the tank.  (We had it out a few months ago because we thought we were going to loose power, but didn't.  And I really don't think that I winterized it after that use.)

The inch worms are out in force.  I had so many of them on me.  I actually threw all of my work clothes into the wash after I finished.  And inch worms leave your clothes smelling funny.  Along with every thing else that I washed with those clothes.

Found a new blog, "Lurking Rythmically."

I added a new blog to my list of blogs that I read.

It's called "Lurking Rythmically."  I can only say that I found it because I was following links in other blogs and thus I had a bunch of tabs opened when I realized what I had.  Yeah, I'm an ADD internet surfer like that.

So, I'll add it to my list of blogs.  I can't tell you whom I need to thank.

It covers a wide range of topics, from gun rights to My Little Pony to games.  That covers the majority of my interests right there!

I'll link this awesome post of theirs that I enjoyed reading.  My "So-Called" Rights.

Enjoy reading!

Issues with Blogger

I don't post much by way of this blog.  However, I do respond to a handful of other blogs using this ID.  Today, I can't seem to post any replys.  I keep getting errors of some sort.  

Oh well.  

What is Buck Wild?

For all intents and purposes, I have an electronic newsfeed.  I get most of my news online.  It is supposed to give priority to local news over national/international.  And I have it set for "news" and "science" over sports, entertainment, et al.

So why is the news about a "Buck Wild" star dying keep headlining my news feed?  I've never even heard of the show.  Plus, are reality stars really all that newsworthy?  Half the stuff they do, they do it for the show.

Yes, I agree that the deaths of three people are a tragedy.  But why focus on that and ignore other events.  Don't take it the wrong way, but the last I read the cause of death was not known.  Unfortunately I feel that when the results are realeased that the cause can be boiled down to stupidity.

To the family and friends who lost their loved ones in this incident, my sympathies go out to you.

House Set of Subterranean Animism - Chireiden Set

This is a neat string of electronic music.  Pretty much it seems that someone just put the whole album on YouTube.  But the music flows pretty seamlessly from one to another.  

Just a nice listen.   

Happy April Fools Day!

It's April 1st!  It's a day traditionally associated with pranks and jokes.

I should totally post something really funny here.

But I got 'nuthin.

"We wear short shorts!"

Inmates have nothing but time.  As trainers, we constantly push that inmates have 24 hours a day to plan escapes.

They also have plenty of time to plan pranks.

As pranks go, replacing an inmates lotion with a depilatory (IE: Nair) is pretty funny.  They step out of the shower, lotion up, and let the burning sensation begin!

The perpetrators got out one line of "Who wears short shorts" before the beatdown began.