08:26 – The bottle-top dispenser (auto-burette) arrived yesterday. I’m looking forward to trying it. It’s basically just a calibrated pump that sits on top of a one-liter reservoir bottle, kind of like the pumps they use in ice-cream stores to dispense syrups. It can be set to dispense 2.5 mL to 30 mL per pump, in 0.5 mL increments.
Using it should make filling chemical bottles for the kits much faster, particularly the 15 mL bottles. Oddly, it actually takes longer to fill 15 mL bottles manually than 30 mL bottles, because the 15 mL bottles have smaller mouths. Barbara and I will set up a mini-production line, with me filling bottles while she caps them.
08:57 – Congratulations to our friend, Brian Bilbrey, who decided to go back to school and get his degree. Way to go, Brian. (I often mistype Brian’s name “Brain”, which is actually appropriate.)
Degree: Bachelor of Science
Confer Date: 12/30/2012
Degree GPA: 4.000
Degree Honors: Summa Cum Laude
Plan: Computer Information Technology
Congrats, Brian, and in related good news for all of us:
http://teapartyeconomist.com/2013/01/04/idaho-adopts-khans-free-online-academy/
A British environmentalist makes a surprising statement:
I hope a few more people discover science, and let their decisions be influenced by science.
Things are not as bleak here in the Great White North as it may sometimes appear.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/04/matt-gurney-after-two-years-judge-acquits-man-who-defended-himself-with-a-gun/
True, he should never have been charged but the judge has a clue at least. The crown attorneys in Ontario need to take some legal training.
There’s something seriously wrong in Canada if four guys can attempt to burn down a house with the resident inside and be sentenced to only “between two and three years in prison”. I guess they might have gotten three to four years if they’d succeeded.
Here in the states, arson of an occupied dwelling is typically treated with the same severity as attempted first-degree murder. People have been convicted and sentenced to life for burning down a building that they believed was unoccupied but turned out to have a wino sleeping there.
“There’s something seriously wrong in Canada…”
Lots of things wrong like that, eh?
You can automatically take off 1/3 for good behavior, too. That’s pretty much a given in our society. We’re pretty soft on crime in Canada, actually, and harsh where we shouldn’t be. You can end up in jail longer for selling pot, than murder.
Most gun charges are plea bargained to time served, the local cops recently busted a guy carrying a loaded .45 and packing a KBar knife (length is illegal for open carry) in a local pub, all while on parole. Thirteen weapons charges in total, but I expect them to be plea-bargained away until he is only punished for the parole violation of being in a bar.
The Thomson in the article (I am reminded of Tintin) should never have been charged in the first place.
Really Davy, you want to start comparing each countries wrongs? At least we don’t have to continually go and break other people’s countries.
Eh?
Aren’t there quite a few Canadian soldiers in the sandbox? IIRC, it’s a Canadian sniper who holds the current record for longest kill, something like 2,500 meters with a .50 BMG rifle.
About a half hour away from where I live, someone allegedly blew up their house for the insurance money. Last I heard the prosecutor was still deciding whether or not to seek the death penalty. Not only did the blow up their house and several adjoining ones. They damaged a couple of dozen homes so severely they had to be torn down. To top off their legal troubles, the couple next door was home at the time. So their looking at multiple counts of arson, conspiracy to commit arson and two counts of murder.
I warnt even close to comparing the countries, Billy; just pointing out that O Kanada has some messed-up stuff going on, an incidence of which you just described. If you want me to bash this country for its overseas shit, then I suggest you look through dozens of my previous posts here doing just that. Hell, I agree with ya on that.
Yes, there were Canadian troops in Afghanistan, but never in Iraq. While Canada pull the bulk of the troops out in 2011, we still have ~1000 troops under NATO as trainers for the Afghan police force still there. We’ve always willingly joined in UK and US wars, being a rather ornery bunch. Other than Iraq, that is. We even had almost 30,000 Canuckleheads join the US for it’s romp in Vietnam, including one MOH recipient.
At the time people were proud that Jean Chretien stood up to the US military and said “NON!”, but I couldn’t help noticing his daughter married one of the board members of TotalFinaElf (now Total S.A.), which has deep interests in Iraqi oil.
Davy, I’m in full grump mode today, and lashed out. Forums should have cooling off periods, just like gun sales! 😉
And I thought the Canadian sniper record was broken recently, and by an Aussie?
Oh yeah, Sgt. Lemon deserved that MOH, bigtime. Damn. I’ve read a few of these things and despite, unfortunately, being able to understand how they do it, I am still amazed and stunned by their heroics. Bugger’s only a couple of years older than me.
The sniper records have recently been bouncing back and forth between the U.S., the U.K., and various former British Commonwealth countries; the distances are incredible. I was a machine-gunner, but had qualified Expert every year with rifle and pistol as well. Hey, spray and pray, ya know? My M60 never malfunctioned because I babied that bad boy, but it would get very hot and the barrel would have to be swapped out, and they only gave us one spare, so we tried to steal extras when we could. If the second barrel got hot, too, then rounds would sometimes “cook off” in the belt as it was being fed into the chamber, a very unpleasant situation.
“I’m in full grump mode today, and lashed out…”
Not to worry, been there and done that. On one now defunct libtard board I got two out of a possible maximum of three strikes and you’re out deal. But that was years ago and I am so mellow and cool and unflappable now, almost Zen-like in my ability to remain calm and collected no matter what…and I have beaucoups prime Florider real estate to show you, too…
Bill wrote:
“Davy, I’m in full grump mode today, and lashed out. Forums should have cooling off periods, just like gun sales! ;)”
There’s no scarcity value in that. 🙂
There are a lot of things wrong in this country. Just like all the other countries. As Bill pointed out we were in Afghanistan and I believe that the RCMP is still in Jordan training the Afghan police. At this point is seems to be futile.
I do think that our gun legislation needs to be overhauled. The story in the National Post illustrates how ambiguous the current legislation is. There is no way that the crown should have been able to even lay a charge let alone bring it to trial. I would not like to see the restrictions on handguns changed but I would like to see a clear and unambiguous declaration of the right to self-defence at home by any practical means, including firearms. As the law stands now, you can club an intruder (to death, it happened in Toronto), wound him with a knife (again, it happened in Toronto) with no consequence but you’re in for a shit storm if you use a firearm, legal or not.
Somebody pointed out in this recent case that it was the Niagara Regional Police (NRP = Not Really Police) that were involved. This was the same outfit that searched Paul Bernardo’s house and failed to find the video tapes he had hidden there. As a result, the crown did the deal with Karla Homolka to have her testify against Bernado. If they had found the tapes, she would be doing life as a dangerous offender instead of living somewhere in the French Caribbean. Clowns.
An interesting figure I saw, last year Chicago had something over 500 homicides, Toronto had 54. The cities have just about the same population (Chicago is about 100,000 more). I don’t think that inner city violence is the only reason for the large difference. There are other factors involved here.
Do the homicide breakdown by specific city neighborhoods if one wants to tiptoe around it a bit. Also, there are just far more firearms here, and far more people ready to use them. And cities like Chicago and Detroit are getting worse, not better.
We have no idea down here, or at least I don’t, of who Karla Homolka is or Paul Bernado. So I did the google thing and found out she was once possibly kinda hot but also clearly a complete fucking psycho bitch, holy shit! And living large in the Carib, sweet….
In Texas she’d mos def get the needle.
I believe the murder count for all of Canada is only 580 or so. Rarely ever gets over 600 per year. OFD’s neighborhood breakdown is rather telling on this side of the border. Winnipeg, Regina and Prince George are often leaders in Canada for murder rate, yet none of them are what anyone in the US would consider as large. Winnipeg has only 700,000, Regina 200,000 and Prince George, current holder of Macleans magazine’s Canada’s Most Dangerous City for 2012, has only 75,000. Yet I would argue that inner city violence happens in those cities’ poorest neighborhoods, just like it so many do near Jane and Finch in Toronto. Anywhere there are people separated both by race and prosperity. In the three cities I mentioned above, the First Nations people are a major factor, both in causing the crime, and being a victim of it.
If OFD would like to research some other chilling Canada crime stories, he could look up Highway of Tears, Robert Pickton, and Clifford Olson. Chillingly, I’ve worked with relatives of victims of the last two killers. We certainly DO have our problems here in the Great White North.
It’s snowing very, very lightly and only 20°F right now, so beaucoups Florider land sounds pretty good. Which side of the tide line is it on, the wet or the dry? Will you accept slightly melted Canadian plastic money at par?
I’ll look up them names tomorrow, in my copious free time in between doing household scut work, my all-time fave activity on my weekends.
Slightly melted Canadian dough is probably better value than the fiat crap we’re running off the presses down here. But I’d prefer solid metal, as in gold and genuine silver coinage.
Also chillingly, Mrs. OFD has worked with actual victims of perpetrators and yours truly has arrested various perpetrators and dealt with their victims, yours truly having done all that stuff long ago and fah away.
St. Albans City/Town here has the occasional armed robbery, domestic battery, rare homicide, and the occasional meth lab. St. Albans Bay, the village where Mr. and Mrs. OFD reside, has nothing. Nada. Zip. Biggest felony is the adolescent male cat here tearing up the Xmas decor and his mom puking on our bed. Oh the excitement!
There’s an obvious solution to the cat problem… 🙂
Yeah. NOT CATS ON THE FURNITURE OR BEDS. It’s the floor or outside.
NOT = NO
When does editing come back?
A woman I know is a real ailurophile. Her cats scratch her, the furniture, anything they can get their paws on. If she dies at home I don’t doubt that they’ll eat her when their next meal doesn’t arrive on time.
Why people tolerate cats is beyond me.
Why people tolerate cats is beyond me.
Perhaps it’s a bit of the same reason that Caesar had a slave to remind him of his mortality? With dogs, it is quite clear that you are the center of the entire Universe. They worship you. Cats put you in your place. Sort of a spiritual masochism.
I confess, I am a cat person…
You clearly have no experience with Border Collies. They do what they want to, when they want to. They regard commands as suggestions, and they consider their own judgment superior to any human’s. Border Collies train their humans at least as much as their humans train them, and usually more so.
A couple weeks ago while Barbara was out to dinner with friends, I was watching Heartland episodes on DVD. Colin was pestering me mercilessly to play with him. I was ignoring him. He walked over to the DVD player and snouted the power button to turn off the DVD player. I assumed that was a coincidence, so I used the remote to turn on the DVD player and continue watching the program. Colin walked over to the DVD player and snouted the power button again to turn off the DVD player. I am not making this up.
“snout” can be used as a noun or an adjective but never as a verb, sir. Shame on you. A writer.
Where do you think new words and usages come from? Professional writers are legally entitled to coin new words and usages, and I am a professional writer.
Sometimes it’s just best to give in. Play with Colin for a while then he’ll let you get back to perving at the Cannukistan chiks.
Point taken, but I doubt using snout as a verb will ever become common coin in the realm of English, although one never knows.
I also doubt “temporarily giving in” to Colin will be of any use. I’d move the bugger to another room and close the door if I wished to remain undisturbed while ogling various starlets on the tee-vee.
I was just kidding about the Cannukistan chicks. It’s hard to ogle a chick wrapped in 10 layers of fur.
We don’t just LOOK at them, Greg…
Guys, guys, guys. As I keep telling you, I merely admire Amber and Emily from afar. It’s enough for me to know that they’re in the world.
“It’s hard to ogle a chick wrapped in 10 layers of fur.”
From your lips to their ears, sir. Same deal here in northern Vermont; virtual burkas six months of the year.
OFD has a new fave, although still liking very much the Rock River Arms Delta Carbine; Colt has a very nice rifle here, for another $500-600; I may have to start knocking off banks and armored cars:
http://www.coltsmfg.com/Catalog/ColtRifles/ColtLE90116S.aspx