No chance to learn.

Cases like this always bum me out a little bit.  I mean...don't get me wrong...I DO NOT fault the homeowner in the least.  Someone came barreling down his drive way, broke through his gate, and then smashed into some parked cars before trying to force his way into the house. 

The homeowner had his wife lock herself in the bathroom and call 911, while he armed himself and went to investigate.  A scuffle ensued, and the homeowner ended up putting 2 rounds into the rapidly cooling bad guy.

South Prairie man fatally shoots intruder

It doesn't look like there was really a reason for this to have to happen.  A few stories I've read indicate that they think drugs were involved...i.e. the perpetrator was high, and didn't really know what he was doing, and got dumb, and got himself killed. 

It's kind of a bummer...I don't think acting dumb while you are high should be a death sentence, but...man responding with deadly force to something that sets itself up as a snatch and grab doesn't feel like it's out of the box either.  

Too bad this dummy is never going to get a chance to learn from his mistake.   

That didn't last long.

Before we even bought our house, we knew we were going to need to get some shelving in the garage.  I would have LOVED to have a carpenter come in an build some custom stuff, but that wasn't in the budget.  What was in the budget was some fairly manly looking plastic shelving from Home Depot.  It was rated at 200 pounds a shelf, 800+ pounds total. 

Last week, I was out grabbing some peanut butter, and I noticed that we were getting some fairly noticeable sagging on a few of the shelves. 

Well...we still don't have the budget for custom shelving, but I did what I should have done in the first place, and decided to go with metal shelving...I just have to accept that I can't replace all 6 shelves at once.  The ones I picked up are rated at 4000 pounds total...and I think hope that they will be good for a number of years.

Next weekend, I'll hopefully get another two, and have them all swapped out before the new shelving starts counting as Christmas gifts.

Nothing new under the sun.

As my daughters have gotten older, they have started to have those things all women have...you know...opinions.

One of the negative sides of that(and there are positives) is that I find myself listening to music I otherwise wouldn't in the car...teeny-bopper type stuff, which is an issue, because some of it has serious 'ear worm' potential.

We all know the only way to get rid of an ear worm is to pass it on...but, I have to admit, when I listen to this song by Paramore...I think it would TOTALLY fit in on 'Tragic Kingdom'...No Doubt's breakthrough album, which would make my Top 10 list of CD's from the 90's...so...put up against that comparison, I guess it's not a horrible song...

Humans > Animals.

One of my acquaintances on facebook posted a link to a huffingtonpost article that I should have known better than to click on...but I did anyway.

Day of Shame: Michigan Wolf Slaughter Commences

After clicking on an article I shouldn't have clicked on...I then read it, AND was dumb enough to rebut the article...which is stupid, because I usually try to steer clear of emotional issues, and the fact is that hunters going out after animals as photogenic as wolves is a PURELY emotional issue...there is no real logic at all in the discussion.

Obviously, as a hunter of deer and potentially elk, cougar and bears(if one crosses my path) I am a little biased. I see no evil, or shame in hunting something that the state has accepted my money and given me a tag to hunt. Personally, I have no interest in going out specifically for bear, cougar, OR wolf...they don't taste as good as deer or elk, and getting the skin turned into a rug is NOT cheap. I've got better things to do with my time.

However...the author of this article trips my trigger in his 3rd and 4th paragraphs, when he ratios the number of humans to the number of wolves, and states that people are the ones out of control. I'm sorry...I strongly disagree with any position implying that any number of animals are more important than ANY number of people.

Especially because the author leaves out the fact that that the wolf population in Michigan has increased from 20 animals to 658 animals in only 21 years! Since 1992! The increase rate has actually decreased in the last 5 years due to increased rates of winter kill because there isn't enough food to around for them.

Or the fact that a wolf kills approximately 20 deer a year...so, where are the tears for those 13,000 deer that hunters aren't going to get an opportunity to hunt? All the families that could go hungry because they can't go deer hunting?

Okay...I made that last paragraph up...last year hunters harvested 420,000 deer in Michigan last year...meaning wolves accounted for 3% of the deer people did...looks like I'm ready to write for the Huffingtonpost.

I just think that in the end, wolves ARE animals(even if they are cute ones), and that state Fish and Game Departments should be able to manage them just like any other animals, without people implying we need less people instead of less wolves

Swing and a miss

Had a nice date last night with the Mrs.  Dinner was tasty, and the service was good, and it got us back out the door in plenty of time to get to our movie, which is where things kind of went south.  Both my wife and I were...unimpressed with 'Ender's Game.' 

Both my wife and I really enjoyed the book...heck, my wife has gone on to read all 7 or 8 books in the Enderverse(she says her two favorite ones are the ones that focus on Bean), and so, we had high hopes. 

I'm willing to concede it's a tough task converting Ender's Game to a movie.  There is a reason it's taken almost 30 years to get it on screen...and it's a valiant attempt...it's just...not satisfying.  It's not the actors fault, I'm not even sure it's the directors fault.  It's entirely possible it's nobodies fault...that it was simply an impossible task.  Some books can be compressed to a 2 hour movie and still be satisfying, and some can't. 

There were just a lot of things that had to be cut out that made the book 'complete and satisfying' that were missing in the movie.  You didn't really get any of the pressure that was on Ender as a '3rd'.  They hinted at how they wanted to keep Ender isolated and from making friends, but there wasn't enough time to really drive it home.  There wasn't enough time to show him learning and teaching the Battle Room. 

Finally, they had to rush his transition from the Battle School to Command School...and in doing so, they tipped their hand too much.  When I read the book...I didn't see the ending coming.  Totally blind-sided me.  I think if I had watched the movie without reading the book...I would have picked it up.  They placed too much stress on the importance of his next step in training. 

So...yeah.  Just...I think seeing Thor 2 would have been a better date...

Well, that's different.

A few months ago, based on a recommendation from my dad of all people, I got my hands on Live Free or Die, by John Ringo.  I greatly enjoyed it, and after some patience, I was able to find Citadel, the 2nd book in the Troy Rising series...and I enjoyed it also.

With the 3rd Book in the Troy Rising series proving tough to find locally, but enjoying the writing of Mr. Ringo, I picked up the first two books of his 'Paladin of Shadows' series...'Ghost' and 'Kildar'. Today, I finished reading the first of these...and, umm...yeah, it's a little different than the 'Troy Rising' books.

First, the obvious differences: Where as 'Troy Rising' is hard, hard Science Fiction, 'Ghost' is much more of a 'techno-thriller', with somewhat of a Mack Bolan meets James Bond meets 50 Shades of Grey feeling to it.

It's an enjoyable book...but my experience with the 'Troy Rising' series left me totally unprepared for the 50 Shades of Grey aspects of 'Ghost'.

To start with...Mike Harmon is a former SEAL who has a novel protagonists habit of finding himself in situations where his own particular skill set allows him to save the day again and again, while repeatedly ending up on deaths door.  Along with his skill set, he has a barely contained rage that he directs not only against the bad guys who deserve it, but often upon the women he rescues, or drags along just so he can have a damsel in distress to de-stress himself upon.

In some ways, I would almost describe this book as the ultimate male escapists fantasy.  The good guy gets to jet set(and power boat)his way around the world, with a license to kill that should get him a 00 number, claiming young attractive women every step of the way, in some very...unique ways.   And yeah...that's the part that caught me by surprise.  I'm not a prude by any means, but the nookie in this book is right up there with anything I've ever read in a Stephen King book...

So...interesting book, and worth the read if you are aware what you are getting into. 

It's not just a Chicago thing!

Election officials here in Washington are dealing with a little bit of consternation this week, as they are busy certifying lasts weeks election results, which have led to 3 dead people being elected to several offices in the state.

Well, I guess in the short term, dead people being elected is less upsetting than dead people doing the voting.  I mean...at some point you need to print the ballots, and it's always possible that someone will pass away between when the ballots are printed and mailed out(now, I have no idea if this happened in this case...these folks could have died 6 months ago)...but something like this is always a possibility as we head to more and more areas doing strictly mail-in ballots.

I'm not even that worked up over the fact that each 'write in' vote is not individually tracked.  They are counted...they just aren't tracked to an individual name unless the total number of write-in's ends up having the majority, at which point they are recounted to see if an individual write-in candidate won the election. 

The part that frustrates me(and I've seen it on my ballots here), is people running unopposed...for ANYTHING.  Even in a case like the one shown in the story, for something like 'Water District Commissioner'. 

I wonder if you can go down to the local County Election Office two days before the candidate registration period ends and find out the total number of candidates for different offices, so you can at least try to ensure two names end up on the ballot for each position.

Not that I know if I would want to be a Water Commissioner.