The National Rifle Association held its rally in Tucson, Arizona today, and some idiots were of course there to protest. From the CNN article:

"We're here to tell Charlton Heston to go the hell home," said Sean Hammond, 31, of Tucson. "We just had the worst shooting in the history of Tucson just two days ago."

"I honestly think that if a madman had driven a car into a crowd and if there was a car convention scheduled, they wouldn't cancel the convention," LaPierre said.

It sounds to me like the PPD has a cover-up on their hands.

I don't know where the Sun Advocate gets its information for the articles it publishes, but it's certainly not correct in this case, or at least not recent. They report that road construction will continue between Sheep Creek and Tucker, but here's what UDOT says:

"Crews will return next spring to reconstruct the other section of the road. Motorists should expect no delays during the winter months. Expected completion: June. 2003."

UDOT really sucks for not completing the project this year. If I remember correctly, it was supposed to be finished by now, but it's not surprising that it remains unfinished. They were supposed to add two new lanes, making it four lanes through the entire section, but instead they completed two lanes, diverted traffic to the new pavement, and just closed off the old pavement. They still have to grade and re-pave the old stuff, which they don't plan on doing until next year, so basically all the work they've done so far hasn't done any good in the short term. They damn-well better raise the speed limit back up to 60, especially if they plan on pulling out all their equipment until next spring.

BTW, I ran into just a few light snow flurries on the commute to and from work today--barely enough to wet my windshield. I was disappointed--some real snow would really have cheered me up. If I still have a job when December rolls around, I think I'm going to buy some new tires for my Subaru and do some serious snow-surfing. =)

Historically, October 30th has been a very bad day for me, at least for the past two years. First, it was the sewer backup, then it was the driveline failure on my truck, both of which cost me several thousand dollars. I'm normally not superstitious, but I'm not looking forward to tomorrow. I keep trying to think of what could possibly go wrong, and unfortunately, I can think of several very terrible things. The problem with that is that all the things I can think of are predictable, while the things that have happened in the past were completely unforseeable. I'm just hoping that tomorrow passes by uneventfully.

It appears as though the shooter at the University of Arizona may have held a concealed weapon permit. Here's a quote from the Fox News article:

"She said she had several classes with Flores and he told classmates about a year ago that he had gotten a concealed weapon permit."

I don't think they quite realize that there's no sure-fire solution to the problem of weapons on campus. If you have an outright ban on guns, somebody with murder on their mind isn't going to check their weapon at the door. But somebody with the means to stop a shooting (a non-lunatic with a legally-concealed weapon) before anybody else gets hurt would be barred from doing so.

A concealed weapon permit doesn't guarantee sanity or morality, and a ban on guns doesn't guarantee safety, but if a line has to be drawn, I'd side with allowing legally-concealed weapons for the sole reason that I trust my own safety to self-defense rather than a rule banning guns.

Call me crazy, but I think it might snow on Tuesday. I've been thinking about going in to work on Tuesday, but now I'm not so sure I want to. Not that I'm worried about myself driving in bad weather--I'm worried about all the other morons out there. Still, it would certainly boost my spirits, driving the canyon during the first snow of the season. I've got a lot of good memories driving in horrendous weather between Price and Provo.

This weekend has been so boring. I haven't done much of anything, so time has seemed to pass by quickly. Next weekend should be better, since I've got plans to repaint my upstairs bathroom, and do a few other improvements to the house. I would have done it all this weekend, but I have to wait until payday so I can buy all the stuff I need. It's probably not a wise idea, considering that my job appears to be a little unstable right now, but if I don't keep busy, I'll go crazy like I have this weekend.

Update: The weather forecasts have been updated, it looks like we won't get any snow (at least not directly in Price). More than likely, it'll be coming down starting at Soldier Summit and going all the way past Tucker, like it usually does. I'll take my camera to work with me tomorrow and try to get some nice pictures.

My wife asked me to wake up early tomorrow morning to watch Michael so she can go do something. That normally wouldn't be a problem, except that she's going to do a favor for her mom. Her mom agreed to do a favor for somebody else, and she's asked my wife to do a favor for her to help her with the favor she's doing for somebody else, so now my wife is asking me to do a favor for her so she can do a favor for her mom. It all sounds so ridiculous, and it is completely so. My wife just can't understand why I resent her mom so much, when my life constantly gets rearranged around her mom. And if it's not her mom, it's her sister, or her dad.

My wife almost never spends time with her family just to visit--instead, she either goes to her mom's house to do a favor for her mom, or to ask a favor of her mom. Each person in her family is so busy doing favors for other family members, that each person has to ask favors of other family members in order to do everything they need to do, and it's a vicious cycle.

My family certainly isn't a burden on me, let alone on my wife, yet my in-laws (with one notable exception) are a substantial burden not only on my wife, but on me as well. My phone rings constantly due to them calling. Since last Monday, there have been 59 phone calls to my house from 4 of my wife's family members. In that same time period, there have been 8 calls from 4 of my family members. It's really weighing down on me, and one day I'm just going to snap.

It's not surprising that Jackass: The Movie isn't showing in Price this weekend. In fact, I'll wager that it never does. Of the five movies showing in town, only one was released this weekend--all the rest are at least a month old. It looks like I'll be making a trip to the Wynnsong in Provo next week.

When the management of the theaters around here refuses to show the movies that people want to see, it's not surprising that they don't get enough business to allow them to afford to hire a professional web designer. I've complained about this before, but it bears repeating--their website is just awful.

It looks like Price may be getting an indoor shooting range in the somewhat near future. An article in the Scum Advocate mentions it, but it doesn't look like the plans are concrete yet:

"The facility is visualized having 12 firing lanes with 25 yard ranges. The building will have a classroom for hunter safety training and will also be set up so it can be used for tactical police training."

I found an interesting tidbit about Utah's concealed weapon laws today--it's perfectly legal to carry a concealed weapon without a permit, as long as you're hunting wildlife, and the barrel of the firearm must be at least four inches long. And it applies to protected and unprotected wildlife, so hunting little defenseless bunny rabbits counts.

(4) Nothing in Subsection (1) shall prohibit a person engaged in the lawful taking of protected or unprotected wildlife as defined in Title 23, Wildlife Resources Code, from carrying a concealed weapon or a concealed firearm with a barrel length of four inches or greater

I had to drive Traci up to a doctor's appointment yesterday in Springville. Luckily for me, the doctor's office just happened to be open late on Tuesdays, and her appointment was for 6:00 pm, so I didn't have to miss any work.

On our way back, the weather was pretty nasty. Right after we passed Tucker and started heading up the hill towards Soldier Summit (where there was quite a bit of snow, I might add), I encountered one of the dumbest drivers I've ever had the displeasure of driving near. It was an old lady, driving a dark blue Lincoln Town Car, license plate J·AND·JW. In front of this woman was a white Grand Am GT that was only doing about 55 MPH, and I had just gotten in the left lane to pass them both. It was raining hard, and the visibility sucked in front of me because of all the spray the other cars were kicking up. Right when I got about two car-lengths away from the old lady in the Lincoln, she hit her left turn signal for such a short time that it only blinked one time, then she started moving over into the left lane in front of me. I don't know what her problem was, but she never fully got into the left lane--she just straddled the white-striped line, so I couldn't pass on either side. After about a full minute of me flashing my hi-beams at the bitch, she finally got all the way over to the left and passed the Grand Am, but I had already lost all the momentum that my Subaru had, and I wasn't able to catch up and pass her for another two miles or so. Not a mile later, she sped up and passed me again, right before the passing lane ended, so I wasn't able to pass her again until the passing lane near the Scofield turnoff. She sped up by 10 MPH while I passed her, so I had to do almost 70 MPH in that shitty weather to get around her. After I passed, she stayed behind me until I was able to pass a few more cars that she apparently didn't dare to pass. It was really unnerving having such a stupid driver anywhere near me, knowing that she might do something stupid at any moment.

Anyhow, after all that, as I was driving down Price Canyon, I noticed that they had re-striped the lanes. UDOT is always saying how they're making safety improvements to US-6, and besides widening the road, I don't think any of their safety measures actually make the road safer. They've actually painted double-yellow lines where there used to be passing lanes, which I think makes the road much more dangerous. There used to be six passing lanes for eastbound traffic in that area, and now there are just two. After following a slow motorhome through where the first few passing lanes used to be, I finally was able to pass on the last remaining passing lane before Helper, which is pretty inadequate for passing anyway. There were two other passing lanes that no longer exist that would have been much safer for me to pass in.

When we got back into Price, we went directly to Wal-Mart to fill a prescription for Traci. Their pharmacy closes at 8:00 pm, and even though we got there at 7:55 pm, they'd already closed their drop-off windows. The pharmacist was still there, and Traci asked if we could still drop a prescription, and he said, "No, we closed at 8:00." So we said, "Ok, we'll just go to Albertson's," and did just that, where they filled the prescription in just two minutes. It's just sad that Wal-Mart is willing to lose business in order to close five minutes early.

I was looking through the classifieds in the Sun Advocate again today, and came across this Help Wanted ad:

**DRIVERS** MAY Trucking So. "Is your road to success.*Vans - 11 western. *Reefers - 48 states. Dedicated team runs. Owner operators wanted. 1-800-251-8846. www.maytrucking.com (ucan). (10222f)

Ha, what a pair of prudes! Two people, presumably a married couple, wrote into the Tribune, complaining about lingerie advertisements and being "constantly bombarded with naked male dancers and locker room antics". Ok, I can at least understand their line of reasoning, even though I'm not offended by such things. Though, I have yet to see a "naked male dancer" on television.

Here's what gets me, though: "The newest toilet tissue ads and feminine diuretic problem preventives are more than just offensive, they are so objectionable as to cause contempt." These people are offended by toilet paper ads! My hell...as if the entire world isn't already aware that toilet paper not only exists, but that you use it to wipe your ass with. Unless they're showing close-ups of some serious ass-wiping, I don't see how this can be construed as offensive. STFU already.

Read up on the reliability (or lack thereof) of ballistic fingerprinting, by Steven Milloy of JunkScience.com.

I kinda feel for the "Dell Dude." They're shifting things around in my department at work, and there's a possibility that I may not even have a job next month. I don't really know what's going on, except that my department is being assimilated into another department.

I don't know what I would do if I lost my job. Since I live in Carbon County, but I'm employed by a company in Utah County, and since I work from home, there's absolutely zero chance that I could get a job that pays as well in this area without my MSHA underground papers, a CDL, or a doctorate in shit-kicking. I'd be relegated to collecting unemployment and trying to get a job at Wal-Mart or McDonalds. And I'd have to let the bank foreclose on my house, since I couldn't possibly sell it before I miss several payments. I'd be living in my camper, probably down by the river.

In completely, utterly unrelated news, I fired 30 rounds through my P-11, and everything is ship-shape. Still no failure-to-feed or jamming, so I guess I got lucky in that sense. I cleaned it after firing it, and it went back together just fine this time. I can see where the guide rod slipped, and the bluing is worn off on that part of the frame. I can tell that they didn't replace the recoil springs, because they show wear from being jammed between the barrel and the frame. I forgot to ship the gun with the assembly pin in place, because it wouldn't fit with the barrel wedged in the full-rear position, so they simply gave me a new one. All-in-all, I'm quite impressed with Kel-Tec's service department, and I don't regret buying this gun one bit. I had my doubts during the nine days that I waited to hear from them, but after receiving the gun today, I'm quite happy.

I got my P-11 back from Kel-Tec today. I was told by the owner of Pinnacle Sports that Kel-Tec would have to ship the gun back to them, since they couldn't legally ship to a non-FFL holder, but apparently that isn't true. Not surprising, because why would it be illegal for a manufacturer to ship a firearm to the legal owner of that firearm?

Anyhow, Kel-Tec un-jammed the slide and replaced the recoil spring guide. They sent it back in this nifty hard plastic case, too. After work today, I'm going to take it out and fire a few rounds through it, and when I clean it this time, I'm going to be damned careful putting it back together.

The Leonids are coming up in another month. They should peak between 3:00 am and 4:00 am on November 19th around here, but I don't plan on going out to see them. Going out last year to see them was great, but I don't think it's worth going again unless I can take pictures. And that'll have to wait until I can get a decent digital camera capable of long exposure times.

Admittedly, QuickTime isn't half as shitty as RealPlayer, but it still sucks big time.

I was gone for eight hours yesterday while I explored Nine Mile Canyon. I didn't find a single benchmark, because the existing road doesn't follow the same alignment as the road did in the 1930s, so it was impossible to follow the mileage directions. I just gave up after the fifth or sixth one. The petroglyphs, on the other hand, were easy to find. They were almost all right along the road, within easy sight. It's pitiful that we didn't see a single one last weekend--we must have passed more than half a dozen panels. I think if we'd have known exactly what we were looking for, it would have been much easier. Plus, last weekend I drove down the road in 3rd and 4th gear, while yesterday it was 1st and 2nd gear. Even though it took me eight hours, it could easily have taken me longer. Most of the places, I just hopped out of the car, snapped a few pictures, then headed back up the canyon. There were three side canyons that I didn't drive up, one of which is supposed to have better petroglyphs than any other place I saw, and I'm sure I'll end up going back someday.

Mike suggested that I add a way to make comments on poll, which I didn't think would be very easy, but I figured out a quick and dirty way to do it. I simply reactivated a previously closed post in Greymatter, changed the title and body of the post, and added a link underneath the poll. Unfortunately, it won't display the number of comments in the link on the main page, but that's no biggie. I'm still not sure if I'll delete all previous comments when I start a new poll question, or if I'll just keep them indefinitely--it's probably not likely that it'll get a lot of comments anyway.

I'm heading up Nine Mile Canyon again tomorrow, and I'm a little nervous about going up there alone for some reason--probably just because I'll be so far away from civilization. I'm probably going to do a lot of hiking, and tons of driving. The road is 50 miles long, all dirt, and I have about 35 or 40 stops to make along the way. It's going to be a long day. It's still elk season, so hopefully if I run into any car trouble or something like that, I'll be able to get some help.

I've got datasheets for 15 benchmarks printed out, though I doubt I'll find even half of them. I've also got mile-by-mile directions to all the petroglyphs and old indian dwellings. I expect to take so many pictures that I'm sure my camera battery will die while I'm out there.

If I was an Iraqi, I'd be pissing my pants right about now. I don't know how I feel about actually going to war with Iraq (again), though. I'm the type of person to wait until somebody messes with me before I mess them up, which is the stance I think the U.S. should take, but obviously there's much more on the line than "national security." That's almost certainly a guise to gain public support, though I'd bet that a majority of this country is war-happy enough to do away with the pretense.

I think Michael might be nearly ready to start potty-training. Just a few minutes ago, he pulled his diaper off and peed all over the floor in the hall. I don't really know what age you're supposed to start trying at, but he's almost 20 months old now, so it I suppose it can't be too early.

I find it humorous (well, more like ridiculous) that since polygamy has been tolerated in Utah for so long, the people who have been getting away with it are now complaining that it's being cracked down upon.

"This is very similar to the prosecutions of that time," said Colorado City Mayor Daniel Barlow. "I thought we had moved past the 1880s -- but apparently we haven't."

"We are used to being persecuted for our religion," Barlow said. "We feel like we will withstand this if we obey our God."

I was reading the classifieds in the local newspaper, and saw this: "MYSTERY SHOPPER needed in Price area. Apply online www.secretshopnet.com." I was intrigued, so I went to the site to see what it was about. Apparently, a company can hire this company (Service Intelligence), who will then hire one or more individuals to "shop" at the other company, and give feedback of their experiences. Then Service Intelligence gives the company the feedback so they can improve their service.

Sounds to me like a suggestion box would be a cheaper and easier way to go, but it's still not necessarily a bad idea...just a strange one. I'm surprised that I've never heard of such a thing before, as a Google search returns tons of relevant hits.

Here's a beautiful followup article to the "God intervened in the Olympics" article last week. Short, sweet, and perfectly logical.

Further evidence that the LDS church has way too heavy a hand in the lives of the public.

Censorship is alive and well in Utah. KSL, Utah's NBC affiliate, isn't going to carry The Tonight Show tonight, calling one of the segments "inappropriate and something I'm not comfortable with having on KSL-TV."

This will be the third time in less than a week that KSL has decided not to air something, though this is the first time (this week) they've simply censored a show. Friday, they aired a BYU football game in place of Law and Order: SVU, and Sunday they showed LDS general conference instead of the NASCAR race. KUWB carried the race, thankfully, but I still missed SVU. They're also trying to work Leno into their lineup tonight, which I probably wouldn't normally watch, but I'm certainly going to catch it tonight and see just how "racy" it gets, and how paranoid KSL is.

My wife went to Arby's the other evening to get us something to eat, and while she was waiting at the drive-through, she started writing out a check to pay for the meal. We've made a habit of taking our checkbook out to eat around here, because most of the places don't accept Visa. Anyway, when she got up to the window, they told her that they no longer take checks, because they recently started accepting Visa. It's pretty funny that they go from not accepting check- and credit cards, to not accepting checks. The only way they could get more backwards is to not accept cash, which wouldn't surprise me, already having been denied using the other two forms of payment.

I wonder if publicly and repeatedly calling this Maryland sniper a coward is really the way to go. I mean, sure, it's pretty shitty that somebody is going around shooting people, but I'd think name-calling would be more likely to provoke somebody rather than stop them. Unless there's some legitimate psychological reason that I'm not aware of--in that case, by all means, please continue.

Jeez--it cost me over $30 to ship my handgun back to Kel-Tec. UPS requires that all handguns be shipped next day air, but at least that means I'll get it back that much sooner. Kel-Tec received it this morning, but I haven't heard from them yet, so hopefully that means it'll automatically be covered under warranty. I say "automatically" because, for some reason, I expect them to not cover it under the warranty, even though I've heard a lot of good things about them doing warranty work. It's just that I can't explain why it broke, so I don't expect them to be able to either. Hopefully I'll get the gun back by this weekend, 'cause I've been wanting to put a few more rounds through it lately.

Mike & Allison and Traci & I drove up Nine Mile Canyon on Saturday, looking for all the petroglyphs there. Unfortunately, we left in a hurry so we could get back to Price in time for dinner at Ty's, and we didn't do any research beforehand--we just hoped to see the petroglyphs from the road. Well, we drove up the canyon for an hour and a half, and didn't see a damned thing. We eventually came to the turnoff to Gate Canyon, drove up for just half a mile or so, and stopped to eat. We stopped at a cool little recess cave (formed by a long-gone waterfall) for 30 minutes or so, ate and drank, and hiked around a little. While sitting there, a Utah Highway Patrol truck passed by, which was quite strange being at least 30 miles from the nearest civilization on a dirt road. Good thing I had my radar detector with me. =) We also saw a truck pulling a flatbed trailer with a stock-car on it, which was also really odd.

I'm pretty bummed that we went so far and didn't see what we were looking for, so I think I'm going to go back next weekend, this time with directions to the petroglyphs and other areas of interest. I didn't take many pictures this weekend, though I did take a few of interest, but I'll just wait until after next weekend's adventure to post them, along with shitloads of others that I'll likely take then.

The Tribune pointed out that a state website contains a link to a PDF emergency preparedness manual written by the LDS church. The manual is even hosted on the state's web server. I wonder how long it'll take them to remove it...

In this commentary article, a guy says we should "proud of ... the way our 29 county clerks efficiently and expertly handle our primary and general elections." I think he really meant 28 county clerks.

I've had this layout laying around for almost a week now, and I figured I'd finally use it. I got sick of having a narrower center table, 'cause you had to scroll way down to read the entire top post. Using Trebuchet MS didn't help either, because not only is it generally wider than Tahoma, the default line height is also taller.

We (me & Traci, Ty & Mandi, and Mike & Ali) were all sitting around last night around 10:00 playing poker, which nobody seemed to be enjoying all that much, so we decided to go to Wal-Mart and buy Cranium. I'd been wanting to get that game for a long time, but I could never justify spending $36 on a board game. We decided to split the cost three ways, and I was just planning on paying for it entirely and settling up later, since nobody was carrying cash on them (just Visa check cards). But my wife asked the cashier if we could pay with three different cards, and I was surprised when she said that we could. So Ty, Mike, and I all swiped our cards and entered our PINs, each paying about $12.

The game was a blast to play, especially when you've had a few glasses of cheap wine. =) There are four different categories that have you sculpt with clay or sketch/draw (sometimes with your eyes closed), play charades or impersonate a famous person or hum/whistle a song, answer trivia questions, and play word games. Most of the trivia questions and word games were really hard, but the other categories made it really fun. I'm sure we'll play it again on New Year's Eve, but it was fun enough that we might have to get together before then just to play again. Now we've got to figure out a custody/visitation schedule. =)

The site is completely moved to the new server, and everything appears to be working. All I had to do was upload all the files, CHMOD all the cgi scripts, and change the cgi locations in all the scripts. If you notice anything out of the ordinary, please let me know.

Well, I already broke my P-11 handgun. I didn't actually do anything to make it happen, it just happened. I was showing it to Mike and I had taken it apart, and when I was putting the slide back on, the recoil spring guide slipped off the catch on the frame and wedged between the barrel and the frame. Now the slide is stuck as far back as it goes and won't slide forward at all. It's got a lifetime warranty from Kel-Tec, so I'll just send it back to them and let them deal with it. I'm also going to request a metal guide rod for a replacement to the polymer one, though I don't know if that will necessarily prevent this from happening again. Since I can't take the gun apart to see why the guide rod slipped, I don't know yet if it did any other damage. I'm sure they'll inspect it and probably test-fire it before they send it back, but now I'll be wary of it happening again.

I probably won't be posting until next week, since Solo is doing a hardware upgrade to the server this weekend and it'll probably be down for awhile. Besides, Mike and Allison are coming down for the weekend (par-tay), so I doubt I'll spend much time on the computer anyway.

I was going to do some benchmark hunting, but I don't think Allison and Traci would be up for that--especially since the place I want to go involves a very long cross-country hike to Indian Head. There's a road that gets about ½ mile away from Indian Head, but it starts on private property (with a locked gate), so I can't take that route. Instead, I'd have to drive up to Reservation Ridge, then hike southwest for several miles to the peak and benchmark. Strangely enough, there's another peak called Indian Head that's about seven or eight miles east of the other one, but it's accessible from Reservation Ridge by car. There's even a benchmark on that peak too, and several others along the road there, so someday it'll make a good outing.

Wow...an article in the Salt Lake Tribune displays the words "asshole" and "shit," yet censors "bitch" and "fuck." Strange.

God had a hand in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Same goes for my last bowel movement.

Lately, I've noticed the free space on my hard drive shrinking rapidly, but I couldn't figure out where it was all going. I've been downloading a lot of stuff, but I've been moving it to my wife's computer until I can burn it to CDs, so that couldn't be the problem. It had gotten so bad last week that Photoshop ran out of space for its scratch disk, and wouldn't allow me to proceed editing the image I was working on (though it doesn't help that it was already using up over a gig of scratch disk space). I finally figured out what was using up all that space--there were just a few files in my /windows/temp directory that were taking up over 3 gigs. I'm not sure what application left them there (probably Windows itself), but I'm glad I found those files. Now I have almost a quarter of my hard drive free, as opposed to less than a gig earlier.