Category: writing

07:59 – Well, Obama couldn’t get congress to ban AR-pattern rifles, so now he’s trying to ban ammunition for them by executive order on the basis that 5.56/.223 ball ammunition can be fired from pistols and therefore qualifies as banned “armor piercing” pistol ammunition. The issue is that while nearly any rifle-caliber round can penetrate the soft body armor used by cops, very few pistol-caliber rounds can do so. Obama’s position is that since there are pistols that can fire 5.56/.223 rounds, that ammunition can be banned. And there are in fact pistols that can fire that round. In the late 60’s, I fired a Remington XP-100 bolt-action single-shot pistol that was later available in 5.56/.223, and in the early 70’s I shot .223 in a break-action single-shot Thompson-Center Contender. So what? Both of those pistols and others like them are clearly 100% sporting pistols. I’d be willing to bet that no cop has ever been shot with any of them. By Obama’s definition, almost every sporting rifle caliber can be banned because nearly all of them short of elephant-gun rounds are available in one or another pistol model. Anyway, the 2nd Amendment protects the right of the people to keep and bear armor-piercing pistol bullets, or indeed any other weapon.

Work on the prepping book continues. I’m still working in section I (the first month), on chapter I-9 on security and defense.

11:33 – Amazon really understands customer service. On December 18th, I ordered this humidifier, mainly because Consumer Reports recommended it highly. It had about a thousand customer reviews on Amazon, about half of which were five-star. What concerned me was that about a quarter of the reviews were one-star, and most of them mentioned that it had died after a few days’ to a few months use. Those one-star reviews worried me, but for $30 I decided to take a chance. That’s about what it costs to replace the filter set in our large roll-around humidifier, so I figured if this little one lasted an entire season it’d be worth it.

It worked great until Wednesday evening, when it died after only a couple months’ use. Yesterday, I went to the order page on Amazon for this item and clicked the icon to return it. Amazon asked if I wanted a refund or a replacement. I told them I wanted a refund, which they issued immediately to my credit card. The next page gave me return options, all of them free. I could print a label and drop the box off at a UPS store, print a different label and UPS would come and pick it up at my house, or return it myself and be issued an $8.24 credit for return shipping. I chose UPS picking it up from my house and clicked on the Print Label icon. As it turns out, I don’t even have to print a label. UPS will come to pick up the box in the next few days, and they’ll have the label with them. Other companies should take lessons from Amazon to learn how to do customer service right.