Saw It Coming
Johnson Controls cuts 250 jobs
I don’t work for Johnson Controls and I don’t talk to anybody that works at Johnson Controls, but I knew this was going to happen about 3 weeks ago.
West Michigan is a pretty small community.
Bleh
I’ve had a fever for 48 hours now.
Woke up Monday morning shivering. At first I figured it was just cold in the house. When I got in the shower I realized I had the water significantly hotter than I usually do. So, I took my temperature.
102.7°
I went to work, assuming I’d be alright, and went home about an hour later. The girlfriend shoved some ibuprofen down my throat shortly after arrival.
By 5:00pm my oral temperature was 99.6° which is my normal operating temperature. Cool. All clear.
At 9:30pm that night I conked out on the couch, went to bed at 10:00pm. Probably just tired, right?
Nope.
Sometime shortly after midight I woke back up, shivering. Temperature was 103.5° orally. More ibuprofen down the hatch.
Last night, after not taking any medication for about 6.5-7 hours my temp shot up to 104.5° orally. More ibuprofen.
So, yeah. I wouldn’t expect much out of me this week.
Went Shooting
I know, shocking, isn’t it?
I got invited over to an acquaintance’s house on Wednesday for some social activities. He terms it “Brew Day.” He’s a home-brewer with a really slick outdoor setup and a few guys show up and cook up about 10 gallons of beer with him.
And fart around with random guns between steps.
While I know a few thing about making beer (done it a couple of times) there’s really not much I can offer on the brewing front — but I sure as shit can show up with a few fun guns and plenty of ammo to keep us busy.
So, there we were for hours sitting in his driveway, shooting at bowling pins and apples, with a brewing system chugging along working on what should be a really bitter dry-hopped IPA in a few weeks.
Pretty good time was had by all. I might see if I can take the day off work for the next event.
Normal Picture
After forcing you to see this picture I figured I’d toss up something that’s not skewed.
I Was Wrong
About 9 months ago I started looking into buying a house and some land. The Metallic Surfer (former guest blogger here) told me via email, and through Abject Disappointment, that it was a really bad time to do that He said to wait it out for a while, like maybe 6 months and see how things were then.
Thankfully I’ve procrastinated on following through with my initial plan. The housing prices are coming down, sellers are having a hard time getting rid of their houses, and prices are constantly dropping
I wish I could say that I was smart enough to listen to him, but I wasn’t. I just got lucky.
But, boy, damned if he wasn’t right.
Spot on about ammo prices going up too!
Sept 19th
Everytime I looked at the date today it kept bugging me. I knew there was something that happend on this date that I should remember.
Figured it out tonight. It’s the birthday of my late great grandfather, Andrew Buist.
It’s also the birthday of my still living uncle Daniel too.
Japan’s Type 94 Pistol
About a year and a half ago Abject Disappointment was browsing through a picture filled book I had just bought on small arms of the 20th century at the local pub. Flipping through it he stumbled upon something that made him exclaim out loud, “What the fuck?!”
Me: “It’s from Japan.”
AD: “Figures.”
Odds are if you see a picture of a horribly awkward looking firearm from the 20th century it’s going to be Japanese. There’s just something about the Japanese firearms designers. I can’t explain it.
Tonight I stumbled upon a great example of the asshattery of Japanese gun designs: The Type 94 Pistol
The slide covers the entire top of the frame and barrel. The pistol is cocked by pulling back on the milled ears at the rear (which until I actually got one of these I always thought that was the hammer). Doing this forced the designer to put the sear bar (which releases the trigger) in an exposed position. That long bar on the side that terminates just above the trigger is the sear. Light pressure on that bar - fires the pistol. You could fire it putting it in your holster. You could fire it by flopping down on your holster. So - you didn’t carry it with anything up the spout… meaning you gave the other guy the second or so it took to cycle the slide. A second or so in combat can literally be a lifetime.
Follow the link if you’re interested. A quick and dirty history lesson and pictures can be found there.
Been A While
Crap. It’s been almost a week since any updates.
Couple things going in my life right now. One is a new job. Sort of. I’m actually just changing positions within the company and moving to a different department. So, I’ll soon be working on a different portion of the same project. There’s multiple reasons behind this and I’m pretty stoked about it.
Trying to catch up on my sleep this week, too. Friday after work I hopped into the Jeep and drove to Minneapolis to visit the lady friend. She’d been out there for two weeks already on business and isn’t coming home until the end of this week. As a bonus Abject Disappointment was out that way too so we all met up and had a beer. Left Grand Rapids, MI at 6:00pm Friday and arrived there at 6:00am. I took a loopy route and got stuck in some Chicago traffic. Left there at 2:30pm on Sunday evening and at 5:00pm I realized I had been heading west on I-94 instead of east. I finally figured it out 90 miles from the border with North Dakota. So, I didn’t get home until 5am Monday morning.
That sucked. The trip was still worth it, but the return home was not pleasant. Fourteen and a half hours on the road with about 9 hours sleep combined over the previous two nights.
I’m trying to get back on a regular schedule now.
So, that said, back to your irregularly scheduled blog.
Michigan and the HPV Vaccine
Looks like Michigan might soon require 6th grade girls to get HPV vaccinations.
First, let me present the first entire paragraph to the article:
Sixth-grade girls in Michigan could be the first required to be vaccinated against cervical cancer under a proposed new law.
Now, since we already require other vaccinations this seems to be reasonable, right?
Well, we don’t actually require them. Parents are always allowed to sign a waiver that will allow their children into public schools without getting the diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis B, polio, etc. vaccines. I cannot imagine the legislature actually making this “required” without also providing the waiver option. It would be a major divergence from the status-quo not only because the other requirements have a waiver option but because this infection is sexually transmitted while the others are not.
However, we’ve already nailed my beef with such legislation. It isn’t how it’s written, it is how it is presented to the public.
When you pull up the current official document of “Required Childhood Immunizations for Michigan School Settings there is no mention of a waiver at all. The media outlets reporting on it all term it “required” when it likely wouldn’t be.
That’s my beef. I don’t want to see people herded down the path of immunization, even for the older vaccines, just accepting that they “must” be done because a government employee said so.
People tend to take the path of least resistance. So, they’ll do the vaccinations without really thinking about it much. Of course, if you also present the waiver option immediately to parents that have not done any immunization procedures out of ignorance you open up a new path of least resistance that may not be the best thing for society as a whole and the actual child. This point was brought to my attention by a very intelligent woman, whom I love dearly, that doesn’t really agree with my take on the issue.
To that point, I’m not sure how to strike a proper balance. How you present the option of the waiver, which should be well understood by the local educators, without also protecting children from ignorant parents? This I do not know, and I will likely ponder it for some time.
Should the HPV vaccine be promoted? Absolutely. Over 50% of the population now carries HPV and around 3,700 women die of cancer annually because of cervical cancer caused by it.
Should it be mandated by the government for school girls? Absolutely not — no medical procedure should ever be mandated by the government. While such programs are often very good, and done with the best of intentions we have seen them go awry in this country before. Incidentally Michigan was the first state to propose a eugenics program in the United States. Right here in this country we sterilized women up until 1976* without their knowledge in an attempt to better our society.
I see grave danger in accepting government mandated health care procedures. I do not worry that this very proposed program will do so, but I do worry that the populace will continue to accept said programs out of hand. If we, as a people, continue to accept them without great scrutiny I have no reason to believe that our “benevolent leaders” will return to their previous thinking and start right back up with the previous atrocities.
*: I’ll see if I can dig this up. The Wikipedia article says 1960’s but I recollect an article some years back that brought the issue to light again stating that it was up until 1976 in either North Carolina or South Carolina. It was where I learned the term “eugenics” so you’ll just have to trust that I have a decent memory. That, or you can disregard my date and just admit that we did some pretty f-’ed up things in this country anyway.