Brigade Days at Fort Langley
News, Photography, Guns ·Monday August 4, 2008 @ 00:16 EDT (link)
The old sheriff was attending an awards dinner when a lady commented on his wearing his sidearm. "Sheriff, I see you have your pistol. Are you expecting trouble?""No Ma'am. If I were expecting trouble, I would have brought my rifle."
20080801: Code complete for co-authoring separate locks part; as I said to MS, now I can go from getting compiler errors to runtime errors, and so I did, starting with needing to handle the case of pushing locks with no existing server lock data. Went shooting at SVRC after work; made excellent progress. Still concentrating on the Glock. Last time I switched to shooting full (17 round) magazines rather than just 10 rounds; it seems to be easier to develop a rhythm. Shot some good groups; still fairly close range; I'll work up to distance later.
Little birdies got stuck in our heat pipe today (above the microwave; doesn't seem to do very much, but goes up to the roof); I put on gloves and lifted them out (first the baby, then the mother); the baby was too terrified to fly so we put it out on the deck; the mother flew into a wall, fell down with its feet up, then fluttered itself upright and headed out the door; it later came back for the baby.
Google maps has recently gone downhill: several features are gone (ability to drag waypoints around on the directions pane) and information is missing (they only have total time and distance; time and distance between waypoints is gone, which is a real pain). Other people have noticed too. It seems they later fixed the time/distance issue, but you still can't collapse sets of directions nor drag waypoints.
20080802: We planned out our day, and this is how it went: left at 0930, arrived at the WAC gun show in Puyallup at 1030; didn't buy anything, but handled a few SIGs that I liked. Left there 1200 and got to Port Orchard at 1320 (were aiming for 1300, but called ahead and said we'd be late) to buy a Nikon SB-800 flash and SC-29 sync cord from a guy (via Craigslist). Update: no box (fair enough; he thought he was keeping the items; not everyone keeps boxes like I do), and no soft case or stand, which the manual says were included. He seemed like a good guy, so although the possibility of it being stolen had run through our heads, given various factors that doesn't seem likely.
Honey has decided she wants to become a veterinarian, so she's going to do biology; she was going for a business degree, but fortunately most of what she's done so far (first/second year) will transfer. We stopped by the local vet. on the way home today and asked a few questions; she was very helpful.
A note on composition: these entries are frequently composed in OneNote™, even though of course markup doesn't work there. Sometimes if I get behind (hint: I'm adding this entry to the site in September), they pile up, but eventually I work the queue, pick a group of items, and put them online, fine-tuning formatting when I do.
20080803: Open house, 1300-1600. We left for the day at 0800, to attend Brigade Days at Fort Langley, BC; arrived around 1130, no trouble at customs either way (I was slightly worried because my Canadian passport had expired, and although I'd applied for a U.S. passport, the application required them to take my original certificate of naturalization (which is illegal to copy, as stated plainly on the face of the document, although the lady at the passport office at King County District Court made me two copies when I asked), so my expired Canadian passport was all I had; fortunately the Canadian guy took it with no comment on leaving, and the U.S. guy asked if I had an extension and waved me through when I told him my U.S. passport was pending, without even asking to see any sort of receipt, which I had).
The fort was great; we saw the Simon Fraser arrival by canoe, greeted by a black powder salute; got lots of pictures, stopped for ice-cream around 1500 on the way out in the town of Fort Langley (picture a smaller Niagara-on-the-Lake); went to Wal-Mart and bought 3 DVDs with the two Canada-WalMart-only gift cards we had from Rebecca and Theo from Christmas ($15 x 2 cards, plus $5 in change I had and a few bucks on the credit card). Visited Grandma Martin in Abbotsford on the way back; got there about exactly at 1700 as we'd said (we expected to be &plusminus; 1 hour), and took her to Swiss Chalet; left around 2015, got home 2300.
Stupid signs: I've already ranted about the egotistical Don't Drink and Drive: In Memory of … signs; another one for the list is "Safe traffic area" signs and their ilk, like the ones posted along I believe it was the Trans-Canada highway in BC. Just because you post it don't make it so, and it's yet another distraction for drivers. Every sign that a driver has to read (or just mentally categorize) takes away their attention from the road, so useless self-congratulatory signs are dangerous as well as annoying.
20080801: Code complete for co-authoring separate locks part; as I said to MS, now I can go from getting compiler errors to runtime errors, and so I did, starting with needing to handle the case of pushing locks with no existing server lock data. Went shooting at SVRC after work; made excellent progress. Still concentrating on the Glock. Last time I switched to shooting full (17 round) magazines rather than just 10 rounds; it seems to be easier to develop a rhythm. Shot some good groups; still fairly close range; I'll work up to distance later.
20080802: We planned out our day, and this is how it went: left at 0930, arrived at the WAC gun show in Puyallup at 1030; didn't buy anything, but handled a few SIGs that I liked. Left there 1200 and got to Port Orchard at 1320 (were aiming for 1300, but called ahead and said we'd be late) to buy a Nikon SB-800 flash and SC-29 sync cord from a guy (via Craigslist). Update: no box (fair enough; he thought he was keeping the items; not everyone keeps boxes like I do), and no soft case or stand, which the manual says were included. He seemed like a good guy, so although the possibility of it being stolen had run through our heads, given various factors that doesn't seem likely.
20080803: Open house, 1300-1600. We left for the day at 0800, to attend Brigade Days at Fort Langley, BC; arrived around 1130, no trouble at customs either way (I was slightly worried because my Canadian passport had expired, and although I'd applied for a U.S. passport, the application required them to take my original certificate of naturalization (which is illegal to copy, as stated plainly on the face of the document, although the lady at the passport office at King County District Court made me two copies when I asked), so my expired Canadian passport was all I had; fortunately the Canadian guy took it with no comment on leaving, and the U.S. guy asked if I had an extension and waved me through when I told him my U.S. passport was pending, without even asking to see any sort of receipt, which I had).
The fort was great; we saw the Simon Fraser arrival by canoe, greeted by a black powder salute; got lots of pictures, stopped for ice-cream around 1500 on the way out in the town of Fort Langley (picture a smaller Niagara-on-the-Lake); went to Wal-Mart and bought 3 DVDs with the two Canada-WalMart-only gift cards we had from Rebecca and Theo from Christmas ($15 x 2 cards, plus $5 in change I had and a few bucks on the credit card). Visited Grandma Martin in Abbotsford on the way back; got there about exactly at 1700 as we'd said (we expected to be &plusminus; 1 hour), and took her to Swiss Chalet; left around 2015, got home 2300.