I’ll begin with continued hope and prayers that both our host and OFD make speedy and complete recoveries.
I hope that everyone got an extra hour’s rest this AM?
I have no real insights from my trip, but will note that the instructions to travelers have changed, at least at Tampa Int’l Airport outbound. Now passengers are required to remove “any electronics larger than cell phones” from their carryon bags for xray scanning. This was different from IAH on my outbound leg, where the same old rules applied so I don’t know when the change was made or how widespread it is.
Also of some interest, I got email from United that Premier status members won’t be getting Pre-check as a routine matter any more, because TSA reduced the number of Pre-check statuses they were distributing to partners. United suggested enrolling in Pre-check and paying the fee as an alternative. Lots of food for thought in that one email….
One prepper note, I finally used the Gerber multi-tool I’ve been carrying in my Dopp kit for years. I had an aluminum door sweep to install that was a tiny bit too long. My Gerber has a metal file on it that worked admirably well (albeit slowly) to saw thru and clean up the end of the sweep.
And of course I once again got good use out of my medical kit, as dad has very thin skin and a variety of minor skin injuries that needed tending.
If anyone is keeping track, (and in the modern ‘me too/ look at ME!!!’ culture), I have not passed my stone out of my body that I’m aware of. Since I’ve been told, with shudders, that I’ll be very aware of its passing, this is a tiny bit worrisome. I guess I’ll be talking to the Dr myself soon.
And that’s enough to start the day, I think.
nick
Thanks for the post Nick and the update on your kidney stone(s).
Winter has arrived in SE Washington State. As of now, 0900 PST, we have 0.14-inches of “Wintery Mix” on the ground and it is continuing, slowly.
About 2-hours NW of us on Interstate 90 at either side of Snoqualmie Pass there is compact snow and ice with chains required except for all-wheel-drive vehicles and oversize vehicles are prohibited. The “entrepreneurs” are out on both sidea of the pass “helping” people and truckers chain up.
Keeping RBT, Barbara, Dave Hardy, and all the rest of us frail ol’ folks in my prayers.
Nnnnnope. Got woken up by The Little Turd, aka my beloved darling daughter, around 0200 (pre-change 0200). I guess she got up to pee and came into the big bedroom after. And I don’t go back to sleep after being awoken. And I have important, intellectually challenging work that needs to be done today.
-gasp-! Your dad is a Studies major?
84F and 74%RH here in Houston. Gonna be sweaty while I take down the rest of the Halloween decor…
And in PR and the USVI, now over 1M people have registered for FEMA aid.
3 hospitals in PR have moved back from the ‘grid power’ to local generators. the numbers keep moving back and forth which suggests a lot worse situation than the PPT slides acknowledge. General power and cell service continues to improve. It’s been a while…. and from a prepping standpoint, this could be the timeline here if the disaster was widespread enough to limit the amount of external aid, in other words, people have enough trouble at home that they can’t send aid to other affected areas. Specifically wrt power, if enough of the big transformers are damaged, there is a long delay until more are available, no matter what people might wish or how hard anyone works.
n
Kidney stones aren’t much fun. I passed one (or more) 10 years ago. Not fun but not as bad as I expected. I keep them from reforming by taking 500 mg Progout every day.
The better type of ProgOut is beating Studies majors, “Undocument migrant” activists, and establishment politicians. I favor beating them with ball-peen hammers, but other options are available.
I likewise am remembering RBT, OFD and their spouses in my prayers.
So we have had 75 lbs of rice, three dozen cans from the LDS store and enough stuff from Costco to make spaghetti a dozen times. We also have one thing each of beef and chicken ramen noodles. Most of this stuff has been in the basement for stuff has been in the basement for two years. It has all beeen there for over a year. My wife is freaking out because she just noticed.
Reading there is a mass shooting at a church near San Antonio. Possibly 10+ dead.
And a TV news reporter reportedly said “Many shot. Unknown at this time whether a gun was used.” (Paraphrased; I didn’t hear it myself, so I’m going by what someone else said about the report.)
@dave, what about it bothers her? She thinks you’re one of those “crazy prepper survivalists”? — who DOESN’T want to survive? She thinks it’s expired? — plenty of references on the web about expiry date BS. She’s surprised you could hide something from her? — you promised to care for her when you married, thru better or worse, and this is how you get thru “worse”.
I got a bunch of ’em…..
n
Wow, that church is in the middle of nowhere.
n
(Tx law allows LTC holders to carry in church, and in many rural areas people wear their “sunday gun” openly. I guess not here.)
As Bill F. wrote yesterday:
… Get well soon. This is my main visit on the interwebs. Even more so after Chaos Manor is past tense.
Kudos to Nick Flandrey for stepping in to fill the gap.
I can’t fill the gap, but I can open the door and put out the mat…
n
(as could a few others, incl. OFD who is also currently indisposed.)
Sorry folks, but life as we used to know it is forever gone.
A community that small, this has to be personal.
n
IMHO, if this was “personal” the shooter’s name would have been released by now.
They’re pretty far down any reasonable target list for this to be a stranger. Keep in mind the small town aspect. The people directly involved in the response are probably as devastated as the church members, and naming the shooter, esp. if a local, is not one of their priorities. Dealing with family, friends, and neighbors is top of their list.
If this was Houston, I’d be as cynical as the next guy, waiting for the sudden jihadi syndrome announcement.
n
I have no real insights from my trip, but will note that the instructions to travelers have changed, at least at Tampa Int’l Airport outbound. Now passengers are required to remove “any electronics larger than cell phones” from their carryon bags for xray scanning.
Maybe they’re doing the time-motion studies at TPA before rolling a policy out nationwide. If you flew Southwest, that airside is fairly new, designed from the ground up to facilitate the TSA kabuki.
27 dead, 30 injured in Sutherland Springs church shooting,…
If the shooter’s name is mohamed gonzales there will be a real dilemma for the political regimes on both sides of the fence.
And on the world stage, it’s getting pretty sporty in the middle east:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-04/shocking-purge-saudi-king-arrests-billionaire-prince-bin-talal-others-anti-money-lau
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-05/osama-bin-laden%E2%80%99s-brother-arrested-saudi-crackdown
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-04/saudis-intercept-ballistic-missile-over-capital-riyadh
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-05/saudi-helicopter-carrying-8-high-ranking-officials-crown-prince-mansour-crashed-all-
Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of snakes, but fer pete’s sake, it’s sure gonna destabilize the region….
n
“Maybe they’re doing the time-motion studies at TPA”
If they are, the result is “no motion.” LOTS of squinting at monitors, LOTS of consulting over every single bag scan, VERY LITTLE forward motion of the line.
Really, we stood for 5 minutes while no one got to advance thru the scanner for each bag, several bags in a row. Despite the signs, people were still asking questions at the xray machine like “even my kindle?” “even my ipad?” when told verbally.
n
Americans continue to fly commercial.
As the late, great Jerry Pournelle would say, “But we were born free.”
Re: dad has very thin skin
I noticed about 5 years ago, age 60, that my hands started bruising very easily and would scrape off skin and bleed from minor abrasions. No idea why. Only my hands, nowhere else on my body. Hope your father is coping.
He mainly copes by carrying bandaids. He was sitting at the computer and brushed the back of his hand on the corner of the desk. That was enough to open a cut that bled pretty good. He’s also got poor circulation in his legs, (and they’ve harvested a number of veins for heart repairs, which can’t be helping) and a number of open wounds where he’s bumped things. They heal, but slowly and they are a constant annoyance.
Getting old isn’t for the weak or faint of heart.
n
(got to use my sponge, gauze wrap (kerlix), and conformal wrap from my blow out kit on the legs)
I have the same problem with easy bruising and bleeding. Had I known of this several decades ago, I would have gotten a collection of tattoos. But that was before they became so popular, so I didn’t. Unfortunately, it is just too late for me now, I will have to be cremated with unadorned skin.
Nevada used to have a speed limit (in the open areas) of ‘reasonable and proper’. No more; now the max is 80mph.
But this guy did over 280mph on a closed section of highway in Nevada. Videos in the link show the view from the passenger seat. https://jalopnik.com/this-is-what-koenigseggs-record-278-mph-nevada-speed-ru-1820157256
Interesting to watch.
Not at all, CowboySlim! You can specify in your will that you are to be covered in temporary tattoos and dressed in a wife-beater before the funeral service. Might I suggest a fractal pattern which will cause mourners to stare at you much longer than they would otherwise have felt comfortable with.
Failing that, you could always get a stunt double. Get a dead millennial with wall-to-wall tattoos and 14 facial piercings. All of your mourners can complain that the mortician did a terrible job of preparing you. “That doesn’t look anything like him!”
In fact, there’s no good reason not to do that today, while you’re still alive to enjoy the fun.
Very sorry to hear that RBT is also messed up now; we’re pretty close in age and height but I’ve got him beat in the weight department by about 50 pounds or so. I wonder if someone is messing with us and if I find out who, I will beat them to death with a ball-peen hammer for hours and laugh while they scream.
I hope he is outta the woods, so to speak, well before I am, anyway.
Slow, uncomfortable and often painful recovery stretching six to twelve weeks of “acute rehab.” Wife and her cousin (a VA case manager), a couple of this hospital’s case managers, and my doc and his office are pulling all strings to get me into a local rehab joint but the VA bureaucracy are being dicks about paying for it, even though they’ve done so for everything else to this point. They also had my disability rating wrong.
But we’ll know more tomorrow, we hope.
I have zero complaints about my treatment here and my wife has shown up every day with moral support and clean skivvies, even though she’s gimping around herself.
I’ll check in again when I can; and many thanks for all the good wishes and prayers. Including from roving pastors here at the hospital.
Pax vobiscum…fratres…et semper paratus….tempus fugit irreparabile….
Glad to hear from you Dave! Keep up the rehab and maybe they’ll let you out of there….
n
Church Shooting Update
They have identified the shooter in the small TX town shooting although not a motive:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5052163/Up-27-shot-Texas-church-gunman-opens-fire.html
26yo white male, married, ex-airforce w/ a dishonorable discharge, Bible studies teacher (may be a link there) from a town not too far away.
The body count is high, and if this was a typical sunday attendance pretty much everyone in the building got shot, although they are reporting some people fled to safety.
They are also reporting that it was a local resident that disarmed the shooter and sent him running.
County commissioner summed it up pretty well.
“‘My heart is broken,’ Gamez said. ‘We never think where it can happen, and it does happen. It doesn’t matter where you’re at. In a small community, real quiet and everything, and look at this, what can happen.’ ”
n
The bright spot today is hearing from Dave Hardy.
Hang in there Dave. Maybe “wifey” can sneak you in some Moxi and pretzels (IIRC).
Nevada used to have a speed limit (in the open areas) of ‘reasonable and proper’. No more; now the max is 80mph.
But this guy did over 280mph on a closed section of highway in Nevada. Videos in the link show the view from the passenger seat.
No one has attempted a new Cannonball Run record since 2013. Maybe that will change soon.
The bright spot today is hearing from Dave Hardy.
Yup. Good news on this dark day. This day when evil walked into God’s church and killed people worshiping God.
One wonders if Satan is now giving the shooter some special attention.
Try to keep us updated on your condition, Mr. OFD. I hope we hear from Barbara on Bob’s condition tomorrow.
The libturd bloodsucking hacks, especially HollyPedoWeird, are already calling for gun confiscation. Many “blaming” the NRA. The NRA must be doing something right. We need a “shoot a liberal day” soon.
“Rand Paul is ‘tackled from behind and ATTACKED by his Democrat-voting doctor neighbor while mowing the lawn at his home in exclusive Kentucky gated community'”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5050327/Police-Sen-Paul-suffers-minor-injury-assault-home.html
and
https://www.yahoo.com/news/paul-grateful-overwhelming-support-assault-181355554–election.html
Rand Paul has five broken ribs. $7,500 bail for the assaulter ???
And the day gets crazier.
Hap tip to:
http://drudgereport.com/
Extra hour of sleep? One of the joys of DST is that it happens different times in different places. Last week, in our case. The calls to eliminate it are slowly, slowly getting louder. I really don’t understand who *likes* it, i.e., who is actually fighting to keep this idiocy?
Nobody wants a symmetrical day, with the same amount of daylight before and after noon. Most people want light in the evenings, so they prefer summer time. Meaning: eliminate DST, and move one time-zone to the east. Problem solved.
—
For you folk with kidney stone problems: Don’t be offended by the comparison, but our dog had them too, and the vet has a very simple solution: acidic pee. Eating stuff with lots of vitamin C is his solution. For dogs, that’s sometimes challenging. For people, it ought to be easier, just taking daily supplements. YMMV, offer may not apply to your species, IANAD, but – it works for the woofer.
—
I find the MSM coverage of the Texas shooting fascinating, more for what they don’t say than for what they do. “Shooter found dead”. No, he wasn’t “found” dead – an upstanding citizen shot him. But we wouldn’t want to show that defensive use of guns is a thing, would we?
Also, they carefully don’t note that the guy was a felon. It was already illegal for him to own guns, so making gun laws more restrictive would be irrelevant.
Gotta push the narrative at any cost.
Anyhow, still waiting to hear anything indicating the motive. There’s got to be one, and this guy apparently didn’t intend to die with his victims, so…hmmm…
—
Best wishes to our two folk in the hospital…
Well I was hoping for a post from Barbara, or possibly RBT himself this am, but if we don’t get one, I’ll open Monday with a post in about half an hour…..
n
“I find the MSM coverage of the Texas shooting fascinating,”
Yep, you can see their true colors if you care to look.
“Ex-Bible school teacher” instead of “convicted felon” or “dishonorably discharged airman” or “psychotic killer.”
and it turns out that there is a personal link…
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/11/update-killer-devin-kelley-targeted-former-laws-baptist-church/
n
He taught the Atheist Bible.
He seems to have become an atheist at some stage…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5053013/Devin-Kelley-outcast-preached-atheism.html
I hear that stones are more prevelant in the SE US because of all the apple juice they drink there.
I’d rather have daylight saving in winter.
Interesting that the accounts of the plumber who shot Kelly and the man who drove him in a 95mph chase both say that Kelly abducted a hostage who was released after the crash. None of the news reports mention this.
There is also talk of him committing suicide, but no mention of another gun. No one official is saying definitively that he was shot by the passerby either.
Oh, and once again I have to say PIERS MORGAN can STFU. When the UK gets its musselman problem under control, and eliminates both acid attacks and ‘glassing’, I’ll consider his opinion on self defense, 2A, American cultural failings, and violence. Until then, if he can’t keep his fat gob shut, he’s welcome to fill it with my anatomy.
n
Oh, and once again I have to say PIERS MORGAN can STFU. When the UK gets its musselman problem under control, and eliminates both acid attacks and ‘glassing’, I’ll consider his opinion on self defense, 2A, American cultural failings, and violence.
I am afraid to ask but what is “glassing” ?
Every time I learn something new about the liberals, I lose a little more of my humanity. Liberals are dangerous ! Maybe we should make them wear a blue arm patch.
Glassing is when you smash a glass or glass bottle, producing some nice sharp edges, and cut up someone (preferably their face.)
“Until then, if he can’t keep his fat gob shut, he’s welcome to fill it with my anatomy.”
I would have expected something like that from SteveF, not you Nick… 🙂
“Glassing is a physical attack using a glass or bottle as a weapon. Glassings can occur at bars or pubs where alcohol is served and such items are readily available. The most common method of glassing involves the attacker smashing an intact glass in the face of the victim. However the glass may be smashed before the attack, and then gripped by the remaining base of the glass or neck of the bottle with the broken shards protruding outwards. ”
“In the United Kingdom, there are more than 87,000 glassing attacks per year, resulting in over 5,000 injuries.”
And the typical response is — get rid of the glass….
“Tempered glass has been increasingly used in Australia to prevent glassing, with New South Wales introducing many restrictions on high-risk venues in 2008, including the removal of glass after midnight. This has resulted in a significant reduction in the number of glassings.
In response to glassing violence, the government of Western Australia in 2011 made recommendations to the state hospitality industry on the use of tempered glass in hotels.”
“not you Nick…”
Well, I’m about done with liberal anti-gun stupidity. THE STRAIGHT FACTS in this case, that he’s running his mouth about, are that it only ended when an armed civilian intervened. It’s also a fact that the murderer was a ‘prohibited person’ under EXISTING laws, and still killed those people.
My first reaction to the original news was, “NO ONE in the whole church was carrying?”
And I’m feeling a bit rude today.
And Piers Morgan has proved himself again and again, in the words of his countrymen, to be a right c#nt.
n
I’m foul-mouthed and insulting because I have no patience with stupidity.
And it seems that Nick is getting there, too. Welcome!
My first reaction to the original news was, “NO ONE in the whole church was carrying?”
My reaction too. But, the shooter may have taken out the carrying people first by accident.
My church has three uniformed and armed deputies during Sunday morning services. And a number of my friends carry (one of my friends showed me her gun in her purse the other day in the auditorium). But, we have 2,000 people there on any given Sunday morning so it is quite the zoo.
Well, I’m about done with liberal anti-gun stupidity.
Me too.
I’m done with liberals, PERIOD.
There is no hope for the redemption of these stupid racist homophobic atheist idiots who worship false prophets.
And that is me putting it mildly…
DC, don’t mince your punches and pull your words. Tell us what you *really* think…