Pepper

It's a common thing now for "woke" businesses to employ people who demand to be not just employees, but owners as well. When employing mega-woke far left whackos, it's now commonplace for them to demand ownership stake in the business and "equity". It invariably shutters the business because they just can't grasp economics.

This. I love old radios, and have more than a few. I used to believe that real radios glow in the dark because of the vacuum tube heaters. But trying to keep them running happily is a real chore, especially with the lack of availability of vacuum tubes. I keep my old stuff around, but I what actually gets used are my more modern radios, except for a bit of nostalgia now and then.

I think that individual companies may require it, but the government can't force private companies to require it.

I've shot quite a bit of WW2 era ammo with no ill-effects. I've got a couple of boxes of that vintage .45 ammo stashed away somewhere, I also have some .45 ball ammo on half-moon clips, came that way in a decaying box I couldn't read anymore. All of it that looked decent (had some corroded junk I refused to fire and eventually disposed of) has fired fine so far, and the cases looked all right afterwards. I know I have 20+ year old 5.56 stashed away for a rainy day.

Right now I'm thinking Montana or Wyoming. I know the winters will suck, but the political climate is what I'm after. I'll put up with some snow and ice to get away from communism.

I want to get out of the PNW, but the weather isn't usually the reason. Trying to find a good livable climate is difficult. This is about as good as it gets, fairly mild winters, and usually fairly mild summers. I have a feeling that our intended landing zone is going to be a bit more extreme.

Two days of back to back 110+ heat is getting annoying. It wouldn't be so bad if it cooled off at night, right now we're at the lowest temp of the day, and it's 84. We don't have central air, as evenings are usually cool enough to cool off the house if it doesn't get much above 90 during the day. Had to borrow a portable unit, it's keeping the living room/kitchen/dining rooms at 80 during the day, and mid-70s at night. Tomorrow will be just as hot, with cooling tomorrow night down into the 60s, making it possible to sleep in the bedrooms again.

A couple of months ago, I ordered a pair of off-road lights off Amazon. The original arrival date came and went, and I never saw them. I gave it a few extra days, then contacted them to gripe. They sent me another pair of lights, and told me to let them know if the original set ever arrived. A few weeks later, the original pair arrived out of the blue. I requested a shipping label, and they told me not to worry about it, to keep the extra lights. That was pretty surprising, because they are $150 lights, but they probably got paid out by the shipper's insurance and didn't care about them any longer.

Maybe eliminating civilian police is the move they've been planning. Make it impossible to recruit or retain, and then governors can activate national guard troops, and the leftist governors believe they'll just do as they're told.

I got hooked on another social media app, TikTok, because of the new independent artists that suddenly have a platform. Listening to aspiring songwriters and singers trying to get noticed, I've found some amazing voices before they're over-produced and completely commercialized. It's a great place for people with eclectic musical tastes.

They are. Even the cops who regard firearms as a tool they don't wish to acknowledge unless it's time to train, or time to save their lives. Hating to shoot or not, standards are stringent enough these days, that today's "poor shooters" who can barely qualify, would have been stellar performers many years ago. No longer is it "good enough" to qualify once a year at most modern departments. Most have monthly, or at least quarterly TRAINING, which is much different than qualifying. Scenario based training, video shoot/don't shoot scenarios, skill building, all with an emphasis on accuracy are the norm, rather than the exception. I'd stand next to the worst shots in my old department in a gunfight, knowing they'd do their part.

Shop prices for brakes are beyond silly. New rotors, pads, and calipers for the rear of your truck would be less than $200, for premium parts. Swapping them takes an hour, and 10 minutes of that time is waiting for the wife to come out and help bleed them.

I think my first receiver that I owned myself was a Hammarlund HQ110, general coverage receiver. I remember I would put on the headphones late at night, turn off all the lights except a small desk lamp pointing down at the desktop, and spend hours scrolling through every station I could hear, carefully logging each one. I loved that massive old radio. There was always something almost alive about it as it warmed up, and the soft glow from the tubes and the bulbs illuminating the dials. I started playing with radios about 1983 with that one, and it took me until about 1998 or so until I had my own solid state HF transceiver. And I still like to waste a night in the radio room with the lights out except for a small desk lamp, and tune in the world... too bad none of my radios glow anymore....

I took an early retirement. The job was killing me mentally and physically, and it had turned into something I didn't recognize any longer. Traffic tickets with fines larger than that for possession of hard drugs. Legal marijuana. Refusal or inability of the prosecutors or jails to lodge even felony property crimes. Failure of prosecutors to actually prosecute real cases. It's an ongoing issue. I'm not finding fault with those still on the job, I was in their shoes. I realized that I was giving ground daily. I was hanging onto the notion that I desperately needed that career to survive. There is life outside of LE, and while I'm not making as much money as I did in LE, I have more peace of mind.

I just told my wife to get everything appraised professionally, and not to go by what I told her I paid for everything.

I've seen it with my own eyes. There are people in LE that are sick about what they're being asked to do. But they'll do it, because of the fear. Fear of losing a pension. Fear of losing a decent paying job. Fear of the shame of being fired or having to resign. Fear of a million things. So they go along to get along. They swallow their own personal moral code, and do as they're told. Sure, they rebel against one thing or another, they smile and nod and then ignore the order later. But when the boss is standing behind them, they do it. They do it, they swallow their morals, their personal beliefs, and they do it. I've heard two chiefs say, "Ticket revenues are down. Not saying to write more tickets, because quotas are illegal. But our equipment and training budget comes from the funds that we get from tickets, so if you want new equipment..." People need to wake up. This evil has entered all levels of government. It's in the middle managers, and the leaders of every agency. It's in state, local, and federal government. It's a beast that devours anything it can get, and then demands more. It's in every department, every bureau, every facet of government everywhere. It feeds on itself, it generates it's own need to exist, more and more every year. That's the end goal, getting bigger and bigger, getting more and more money. The bigger they are, the more influence they wield. The more money they can demand, the more they can grow. The more they grow, the more influence to demand more money and create new laws. It never, ever ends.

I'm redoing my office/gun room/radio room and found 3 radios I'd forgotten about, sitting on top of 1k of .17HMR, under my desk in the corner. I guess it pays to renovate or reorganize every once in a while.

None of those look like a fun ride. That third guy though, he's lucky to be alive.

Cops are leaving already understaffed Portland Police Bureau in droves. It's happening all over the country. https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2021/04/overworked-overwhelmed-and-burned-out-why-portland-cops-say-theyre-leaving-in-droves.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=theoregonian_sf&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR3p7WH7LbMGDj5VqEmB09bY1YmoUYBlfkLXMHHZQPnlYPm08cFQa0NbS58 To borrow a phrase from a dear friend of mine, beware the society that makes war upon it's police, for they will befriend the criminals (sorry if I butchered that too badly Retcop). This is the 900lb gorilla in the room that no one wants to talk about with any seriousness. LE is already a hard enough job, that isn't the highest paid, agencies have been fighting to get decent recruits for a dozen years now. Cities in California are paying in excess of six figures to recruits, with some veterans in special assignments working some OT making $200k+. Imagine how places paying $15-18 an hour are struggling? No one wants the job, least of whom are those currently doing it. Everyone that's not a complete social justice warrior is trying to make it to the end of their career with their health, sanity, pension, and marriage intact, is now fighting to keep their money from lawsuits, their careers from politically driven supervisors and administration, and their very freedom from politically motivated prosecutions for doing things they've been trained to do by their state, their agency, and their approved training. This stuff is at the core of where we need to fight. We need to fight these prosecutors. We need to focus on local leadership, conservative, constitutional sheriffs, and fight against the far left-wing leadership at the state level that is in control of training and certification for your state's law enforcement. This is the last, final holdout. Filling the ranks of LE with those who'll do exactly as they're told, regardless of constitutional constraints is the end goal, IMHO. It's happening everywhere, and it's something we won't see staring us in the face until it's too late.

We've always been rather frugal with the purchase of vehicles, but the Gladiator broke that trend. It was way more expensive than it should have been, but the wife deserved something nice, and it made her happy, and I could afford it... so I made the jump. I don't think I could justify doing it again anytime soon. Used prices have gotten stupid right now, maybe in reaction to stimulus money, maybe it's tax time, maybe it's a combination of all of the above.

It truly gets ugly when I don't get my coffee. I didn't realize how bad it truly was until I ran out of coffee at home, and didn't have time to stop on my way to work. An hour in, my boss disappeared and returned with a really large black coffee. I told him I appreciated it, he told me that my co-workers would appreciate it more, and to drink up.

It does. But often new drivers don't downshift properly before getting started, or they think they're going to damage something, or they think they can't handle a corner and poop themselves, like in TT's story. There's a good one on Mt. Hood along Highway 26, and it's been used a few times. I used to help out one of the tow companies that worked the mountain, and drug a couple of trucks out of the pea gravel. Nothing comes out intact, it tears the hell out of the trucks that hit it at speed. Losing a front axle is pretty common. I've also winched out 4x4's that thought they were going to screw around on the ramp, after they got a really hefty ticket. That was 25 years ago, and then it was $2500 IIRC. I haven't operated a tow truck in many years, but every once in a while I still see tracks narrower than a semi going about 1/4 to 1/2 way up, and big holes where someone went up alongside trying to pull/dig them out.

Congratulations. We've only ever bought one new vehicle, otherwise I'm too cheap to pay the pile of depreciation. Once it's paid off, I'm not seeing any need to purchase another new one especially given how prices have jumped lately. All of the rest of my vehicles will be paid off, and due to the "debt snowball" I'm working, the Jeep will be paid off a couple years early.

That looks really cool, I love older tools like that. I really need to watch the estate sales, see if I can pick one up. I've made do with a really beat up Chinese POS that I got for free somewhere along the way, but it's rickety, and giving up the ghost no matter how much I try to patch it back together.

What do you call someone who doesn't believe in Santa Claus? Eggnogstic.