EDC Knife?

Just one?!?

(No pics, just a few personal observations.)

Ordinarily, as I go about my day, I have, oh, maybe three or four knives on my person at all times. A Gerber lockback folder with a pretty substantial modified spearpoint blade that I can wear on my belt really unobtrusively (horizontally–a nice option on the included sheath), a couple of Kershaw “speedsafe” spring assisted lockbacks in my pockets (left/right) and maybe another Kershaw clipped to my back pocket. All blades on the Kershaw lockbacks are ~2.75”. Oh, and a “credit card” blade. Just because.

In the car, I usually have a 5”-bladed lockback “escape knife”–glass breaker, seatbelt cutter, etc., built in–in the door pocket, and my favorite skinning knife and another Kershaw folder in the center console. Multi-tool in the glove box.

Oh, and if I’m toting my “fanny pack” (worn in front), there’ll be a nicer (rosewood grips *shrugs* They don’t detract from functionality, so why not?) multitool in it.

I rarely (OK, never *heh*) tote my 12”-bladed German fireman’s dagger for EDC . . . but I suppose I could. *heh* It’s configured for additional use as a bayonet, so. . .

My bugout/eprep bag has a couple more, like the USMC model Ka-Bar Estimable Son-in-Law gave me–really good for a “walk in the deer woods” and a nice hand ax my Wonder Woman gave me (so I don’t have to use my grandfather’s camp ax or my dad’s Boy Scout ax). The hand ax isn’t a knife, of course, but it’s a bladed tool.

Anywho, I don’t mind weighing another couple of pounds, but I’ve discovered not many other folks regularly carry this many knives. Whatever.

Well, that does it for knives I regularly have close to hand. . . 😉

Feeding the Baby Trolls

Every now and then, a baby troll will drop in here at this place. Always, always, always, these baby trolls are illiterate, woefully uninformed/misinformed/disinformed (and proud of it!) morons who refuse to use facts and reason, and who litter their verbal vomit with misused words, incomprehensible punctuation and grammar that would gag a maggot (demonstrating again a lack of ability to engage in logical thought, for syntax is the linchpin of logic in language).

In the past, these trolls have been primarily either Loony Left Moonbats or Muslims, but the sheer volume of baby trolls on the interwebs now that any illiterate moron with a credit card can obtain some sort of Internet capable device beggars the imagination, and so even here, at this modest lil place where I can just let “the voices in my head” run around and play, using casual speech, combined with verifiable fact and sensible opinion, baby trolls do occasionally come calling.

And what do I do?

I feed them (and in doing so perform a public service, but more on that later). And how do I feed them? Well, if they are simply illiterate morons who are proud of their ignorance and proud of their woefully uninformed/misinformed/disinformed, I may just tweak them for a while, though I will almost ALWAYS enjoin them to do their homework, somewhere down the line, and I’ll usually even give them hints to aid them in their homework.

But, alas! That will not do for baby trolls. Most are offended when anyone notes the profound stupidity of their comments, and so immediately start the slide to the Godwin Fallacy. No, really! it’s inevitable. [Edit: it is especially hilarious when Leftists and Muslims do this. They never see the irony.]

So, as long as it amuses me, I will continue with these baby trolls, allowing their almost “spamtardish” comments and responding with vicious, cruel, heartless deconstruction of their stupid comments, and even lading invective and vulgarity in response to such things as veiled death threats and the like. (Come to my house and try that, putzes. No, really. We do have a Second Amendment for good reason, you know. Just ask the Supreme Court about Heller. *heh*)

As to “performing a public service,” well, first, it’s like my tactic for dealing with Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormon “Missionaries”. I usually try to consume as much of their time and resources (I ALWAYS ask for any “literature” they may have), in order to limit their time and resources available to spend elsewhere. I also spend time arguing with them, and supporting my arguments with facts from their own precepts that are easily refuted from sources they (falsely) claim to respect. [Edit: I also used to go visit them at their places of abode and spend time expounding views antithetical to their heresies. Tit for tat, as it were. *heh*]

The differences in tactics between dealing w/JWs and MMs as opposed to baby trolls? JWs and MMs are usually much, much more intelligent and literate than baby trolls on the interwebs, and have yet to resort to ad hominem attacks (such as the Godwin Fallacy) and threats, and those stupid behaviors are reason enough to lade invective on baby trolls. It amuses me, and it calms and soothes my mind to do so, and, from the evidence of their commentary, it reduces them to foaming at the mouth, for all the world appearing to be on the verge of stroking out. Thus, egging baby trolls on and encouraging them to vent their spleen in ever greater degree, gives me hope that they are thereby shortening their own lives.

So there: my modest public service vis-à-vis Internet trolls. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. That it’s also amusing, relaxing and just downright fun is just a bonus.

People Who Cannot Even Speak or Write Their Native Tongue Are Stupid

eye-c-stoopid-ppl

I see stupid people. I see stupid “edumacators” who avoid teaching grammar and stupid students who avoid learning English.

Example: “If [I, they, he, etc.] would have” is a construction that, I suppose, is intended to indicate a class of conditional that should be simply, “If I had.” I am *gagamaggot* sick of seeing the evidence of laziness and stupidity “If [I, they, he, etc.] would have” demonstrates. Now, both of y’all who might comment on this are excused, since I have no doubt such abuse of the English language is off the table for you, but for those folks who may read this and grunt, in their most articulate manner, “Huh?!?” I have only this: *arrgggghhh!*

And that is the kindest, gentlest, most generous response possible. In fact, it is far, far kinder, gentler and more generous than such folks deserve, but that’s just me: kind, gentle and generous to a fault. 😉


N.B. Execrable grammar, word misuse, impenetrable amphiboly, etc., are all completely, totally and absolutely inexcusable* in text written by someone who wants to be PAID for writing. It doesn’t matter what excuse some lame-brained writer, editor or critic (IMO, critics who are writers are few and far between, so I consider the class to be separate, for all “intensive porpoises” *heh*) excretes, such abuse of English is offensive to anyone who thinks these things through, ESPECIALLY when the abuser wants to be paid for the abuse.

*An exception that proves the rule: dialog in a piece of fiction intended to build a character that is an illiterate boob is the one place such things can be marginally legitimate. Anywhere else these abuses occur just demonstrate that the author is an illiterate boob.

Is It Just Me?

MmmIdunno.

So, the execrable non-service personnel at the non-sufficiently-to-be-condemned Westinghouse Digital LLC, finally got a TV back to us after holding the defective one we sent back hostage for over a month of business days, claiming our replacement was “on back order.”

A credible (and genuine) threat of legal action, along with a commentary on the company’s recent class action lawsuit losses and bad BBB rating (neither of which were in evidence when we bought the product–those happened later) resulted in–surprise! surprise!–a new TV sent out that very day, and. . .

. . .it’s almost a replacement for the one they held hostage for a month of business days. Almost. Was a pain to set up (tuner refused to activate until after several hard resets) and the audio does NOT work as well as the unit this TV replaces. Cannot turn off the unit’s speakers w/o also muting the digital audio–what’s up with that? The previous unit’s TOSLINK digital audio link worked well with the unit’s speakers off. No joy with this unit. And so. . . with digital (or even analog!) audio connected to an external unit, if the TV speakers are on, the lag emulates a bad reverb. So, the TV speakers off: analog works but digital doesn’t (and analog has fewer “tweaks” available, of course).

Oh, and calling back about this, the jackass “support” person who claimed to have a “computer science degree” (which means NOTHING in relation to this issue) insisted that the coaxial digital connection was the same as the TOSSLINK (optical) digital connection on the former TV.

Asshat. Ignorant asshat. Means nothing (and is wrong anyway).
Screwed.

So, just a heads up: if you buy ANYTHING from Westinghouse Digital

1. Make absolutely certain it has ALL the features you want (the defective unit did. . . for 9 months)
2. Purchase a third party service plan and
3. If that 3rd party service plan only goes into effect after the Westinghouse Digital warranty lapses, use the product to assure it works, then BOX IT UP AND WAIT FOR THE EXTENDED COVERAGE TO GO INTO EFFECT. If you’ve purchased a three or four year service plan, you should have two or three years of protection by a reputable firm (SquareTrade is a viable option. We’ve used SquareTrade coverage and been satisfied with the service. We have another company’s extended service plan for the TV, and it covers the replacement. . . and I know people in their corporate offices. *heh*)

You do NOT want to rely on Westinghouse Digital to make you whole should one of its products be defective. Based on my experiences, the company will likely make every effort to screw you over. Just sayin’.

“It’s going to be fun!”

Bill Whittle on “President Social Proof’s” new clothes and the fun we can have running the naked socialistas into the river. . .

I’m going to operate this year focusing on saying to every Loony Left Moonbat I can, in effect or in fact *heh*, “Although I disagree with you, I will defend your right to say what you believe. . . and my right to mock you for being an idiot. But when you try to COMPEL me to agree with you, you’re in for a fight, mmmK?”

Life Hacking

With some modification, noted in [], I’d like to start with a comment from a How to be a Hacker site:

The hacker mind-set is not confined to [a] software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in.

I’m among those who embrace the universality of hackerdom. 😉 “What would happen if I kludged together X and Y to do Z?” is the kind of question any hacker might ask, in any medium. Basically, it’s just tinkering with stuff to make whatever it is more useful, better in its primary application or applicable to something unintended by its original creator. (And, of course, ALL these things can be done well or poorly, for good or ill.)

So, I “hack” every recipe I come across. I “hack” my car (something that was called “shade tree mechanicking” in days of yore *heh*) and I extend that tinkering to darned near everything I interact with.

Case in point, a simple “hack” performed on a very, very nice knife given to me by my Lovely Daughter and her Redoubtable Husband. A very nice Ka-Bar knife, frankly even better than the WWII version I had on hand from a great uncle who used it for many years skinning deer. This is a seriously nice knife, but. . . it had two very, very small–minuscule even–things I thought could be improved by a very, very simple hack. Lovely blade; the guard was just right; the full tang hand with stacked leather plugs was perfect; but the pommel had two extremely small flaws to my eye: a small gap where the tang and pommel joined and another very small depression where a pin passed through the pommel and tang to secure them together.

Simple, less than 5 minute hack: mixed some JB Weld and filled the very small gap and depression, smoothed the JB Weld level with the surrounding surface and I’m now a happy camper. The JB Weld is even almost exactly the same color as the pommel.

Bonus knife hack:

When you need to tune up the edge on a knife but for some inexplicable reason do not have an appropriate stone, steel or ceramic sharpener available, turn that ceramic coffee mug in your hand over (WHAT?!? You say you don’t have a ceramic coffee mug at hand? Get outa here! I have no further use for you! *heh*). There on the bottom of your ceramic coffee mug you will likely see an unglazed ring of ceramic. Yep. It’s just like a ceramic sharpening rod. Make sure it’s smooth so that you won’t create a problem on your blade and then just use that ring as though it were a ceramic sharpening rod.

There you have it: an easily tuned up edge from a coffee mug. You’re welcome.

Now, go forth and apply simple creativity to whatever little things are bugging you. Hack your life.

BrokeBlog Mountain

[If this sounds just a bit queer, well it is.]

So, had a call from Bluehost saying I needed to move to a more expensive hosting service, which they very naturally had on offer, because my lil “let the voices in my head duke it out here” blog was exceeding a reasonable bandwidth usage.

WTF?

OK, now why would that be, since I have seriously scaled back on traffic by deliberately working for several years to drive idiots away (leaving the 0.01% of blog visitors as acceptable traffic *heh*)? The guy–not tech support but sales–surmised a broken plugin or some such, once I clued him in on the site’s usage.

MmmK. . . No new plugins recently, but I let him deactivate ’em all for testing.

Right. Everything except the built-in left sidebar and the blog title–*poof!*–disappeared.

Oh, joy. *sigh*

Re-enabled plugins one-by-one, checking bandwidth usage as I refreshed the site. One plugin re-enabled yielded the restoration of the right sidebar (as expected) and also–surprise, surprise!–ONE post, the most recent.

But no more.

Have now re-enabled plugins to match pre-disabled state. Still no spikes in bandwidth usage. Still only most recent post visible (we’ll see what posting this one does, eh?). I’ve tried to access the database optimization and repair tools available via cPanel at Bluehost, but no joy. Won’t let me log in with known good credentials and when the credentials are reset, still no login. :-/

I’ll cogitate on this a bit. I have my two most recent database backups (in three locations) I can use–once I can log into the database management tools–so all my head voices’ crap is still around. . . somewhere

Hate It When This Happens. . .

. . . as it seems to be doing more and more often of late.

*sigh*

I just determined that my right mouse clicking problems on this computer aren’t entirely the fault of the mouse. *sigh* I live by the right mouse click! *heh* Dam*ed twitchy-finger. . . *grumble-grumble-gripe-complain*

Olde Pharte Body Fail.

An Etymological Wonder

Back in the day when Britain still had an empire (and a queen with bigger balls than all but perhaps two or three living Republican politicians), some Brit, unhappy with “eggplant,” mugged a poor Frenchie for “aubergine”.

True story. No, really. Would a face like this lie to a face like that about a thing like that?