Random

Posted on September 19th, 2007 in Personal Life, Pets by Justin

Just some updates on what’s going on over here at Buist’s Bunker.

My commute has been drastically shortened. It has dropped from 30 minutes each way down to the distance from my bedroom to the desk in my kitchen. Yes, I now work from home. I’ve generally been wary of doing this, but that was largely because previously I lived in a tiny apartment and there was no way for me to keep separate my living area from my work area. Now that I have a house, it’s easier, and truth be told, it makes things a bit more efficient. For instance, today I had to take the kittens into the vet. Instead of cutting out of work early, driving 30 minutes home, and 8 minutes to the vet, I just scooped the critters up and took them to the vet at 4pm.

And on that note: The kittens aren’t doing too well. They’re OK, but they have had the flu for a while and one of them was snotting up pretty bad. So, antibiotics for them. On Tuesday night we found a tapeworm segment on one, and Wednesday morning I found another segment on the other kitten. They were medicated for this today. They got their second round of vaccinations today too

And on that note: I’m an idiot. I took the kittens into the vet in a little carrier and plopped them within 4 feet of another cat. Five minutes later a technician asked me if my kittens were sneezing and I replied, “Yep, they both are.” and then I realized my mistake: Yeah, don’t put the sick kittens next to the healthy cat.

Since I’m already talking about the pets, here’s one more: You know those 2 foot long rawhide bones that you see in pet stores? Yeah, I always thought those were kinda “hick-ish” and something you’d only buy a dog if you wanted to show off how big they are. Well, I gave into that. We had been buying Chuck, our lab, 6″-7″ rawhide bones for a while in packs of 10, costing about $12. He can plow through one in under an hour now. So, we finally got him a big-ass 2′ long rawhide and that’s working much better. I don’t need to fetch him a new one every single night to keep him occupied. So, we got a giant one, for about $12, and that’s working splendid. Boy was he ever proud of that thing when I first gave it to him. He picked it up in his jaws and pranced around the house with a “Look what I got!!” expression. Unfortunately he tends to bang into the walls with it when he’s wandering about. He’s not the smartest dog in the world, but we love him.

This is my life.

I really need to hit the shooting range this weekend.

Michigan: Clusterfuck 9000

Posted on September 19th, 2007 in Politics by Justin

If I didn’t value having my family so close to me I’d seriously be looking into getting out of this state.

We’re currently #6 in the nation for home foreclosures trailing behind Nevada, California, Florida, Georgia and Ohio. That’s just great. I figure that means one of two things: We’ve got a lot of idiots in this state buying homes they cannot afford, or our economy is in the dumper. Meanwhile our unemployment rate has jumped up to 7.4%, so I’m going to go with the “economy in the dumper” theory. On top of that we can’t seem to get a budget passed in the 11th hour. This may or may not result in shutting down our state government. It seems that the legislature just wants to extend the current one until they can sort things out, but governor Granholm is threatening to veto any extension unless it comes with a built in tax hike.

This is bull shit. We’re losing population along with suffering economic troubles. The two have to be related, nobody moves into an economic clusterfuck but they sure as Hell move out of one. We need to attract successful people in Michigan, and raising the income tax is not going to do that. “Come to Michigan: We tax your wages to solve our problems.” is definitely not a good recruiting slogan, but that’s what Granholm wants.

The 0.7% desired increase in the income tax is not a big deal to me. I won’t be happy about it, but it wont’ be a big deal if it happens. However, the ramifications on the economy are. You increase that and you take away from my employer. You end up increasing the chances of them moving to Indiana, or some other state. In the global economy we repeatedly see companies moving operations to countries where it’s cheaper to operate. Why can’t local politicians see that this can happen on a smaller scale right here in the US?

Michigan is in the shitter. We’re the Mexician version of a state right now: our population is fleeing for better wages and better opportunities. We’ve lost our blue-collar automotive based industry. We’re fucked.

An income tax increase is the last thing we need.

Japanese Type 38 For Sale

Posted on September 19th, 2007 in Guns by Justin