Vacation Hiatus

I am out of town for a couple weeks. Posting will be light if existent.

4th thoughts... Finally.

I knew I'd get around to this eventually. I had a bit of an outbreak of life I had to attend to.

This past 4th of July I had a few thoughts rattling around in my head. In no particular order,

1 Independence day is a Right-Wing holiday now? If the left doesn't want it, fine, but it makes me think we ought to just do away with them. The only problem is that I don't want to secede, I want all of them to.

2 The manner in which we celebrate the 4th seems to fit a victory. Explosions, barbecues, and booze are what you do after the war is over. The 4th is certainly worthy of celebration, but I always see it as something more of a somber holiday, more in line with memorial day. This country hasn't come free. To me, the celebration should include a dose of seriousness commensurate with what the holiday really means

3 Go read the Declaration of Independence. I'll wait.

4 Done? How many of the grievances strike a chord with modern US Government? My first read through, this jumped out at me "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance." Sound familiar?

5 For all its failings, this country is still good. I have faith, while not in the US Government, but in the American People. The obvious and loud assail that faith with remarkable tenacity, but at its core i think this country can still be great.

6 That greatness will not come from the Federal Government

It is all too easy today to lose faith in this country. I keep doing it accidentally. I keep getting it back somehow.

Busy weeks

I've been meaning to post more about 4th of July stuff, which will come in due course, but real life caught up with me for a while. Today was my Eagle Scout Court of Honor, and there were enough last minute tasks to put a damper on posting. Thoughts on the 4th, AAR for the range time, and thoughts on Scouting will all appear soon.

The 4th

Happy Birthday, USA. 235 years and still ticking. Few thoughts to go up later. For now, I feel like doing something American.

Celebrating the 4th

Tomorrow, (or today rather, is that really the time?) the choice of activities seems to be two freedom loving, capitalistic activities befitting the holiday weekend. On the one hand, we can go to a U-Pick blueberry farm in Michigan and lay in enough blueberries to feed Colp, IL* for a month. Supporting private growers and spending a day outdoors picking tasty things seems appropriate. The chance to see an old friend helps that plan too.

The other is finally getting to a rifle range to complete my laundry list of wants with my rifles. I need to shoot my Mosin, sight in my Savage, and maybe get some pistol time in too. This appeals well to me, but has the downsides of regrettably being an activity for dad and I without the rest of the fam. Oddly enough, this also means leaving the state, as the only range in a reasonable radius that would allow what we need is in Wisconsin.**

At this point, we will most likely be blueberry picking, but should that fall through, the range calls. I'll put up an AAR in either event.

*Colp is probably the smallest town I have ever been in, at least that I was aware of being in, with a population of 512. Quite literally while passing through once I sneezed and missed it.

** Of course, to me, having two options both of which mean leaving the state is entirely satisfactory.

Code Monkey!

I went into this blog's HTML today to add a Google+ button to posts. (Look down and left... it's the +1 button.) Being a good coder, (heh, I made a funny) I copied the original HTML to a separate document first in case I managed to screw it up too badly.

What this then showed me was exactly how much I appreciate Blogger. I can type WYSIWYG and drag and drop, and everything works fine. To do everything I can do with the Blogger interface with pure HTML, I would need hundreds of lines of code I do not know to get my random mumblings out into the world.

Quite simply, the interface makes this worth my while. Coding is frustrating to me. If I had to hand code all of this, I wouldn't bother. I get the feeling a great many other bloggers wouldn't be doing this either if it weren't for things like Blogger, WordPress, Dreamweaver, etc. that make it possible to do these things simply.

It's good to live in the future.

PS If you are of the social media type, Google+ actually seems pretty good. If you can snag an invite, it has my tentative recommendation. I haven't messed with it long enough to really decide if I like it, but first impressions are good.

Pics as promised.

I think I can actually figure out how to upload pictures now. Ok, let's give this a shot.

This is the tank in a full view. I try to go for a natural look where possible, and would have all natural plants if I could afford it. As is, there are several live plants in.

This is Clyde, the male. He stands still for pictures well

This is Bonnie, the female. She stands still well, but only at the back of the tank where I cannot well photograph her. She is significantly prettier than this picture suggests.

On a related note, photographing fish is remarkably difficult. The environment is frequently dim, but the fish frequently move very quickly. As such, it is very difficult to get a non-blurred photo of a fish. For context, this is what my camera can do under the same circumstances with a stable target:

This is Roomba, my albino mystery snail. Being a snail means he isn't constantly twitching about, so a good, stable picture is possible. Fish are just uncooperative.

Everyone still seems to be in decent shape for the move/move-in. Hopefully things will stay good.