Thinking of purchasing your first firearm?

If you are new to firearms, you need to know the basic safety rules

1. Always treat every gun as loaded.
2. Never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to kill
3. Keep your finger off the trigger and outside of the trigger guard until you are ready to fire.
4. After picking up a firearm make sure it is unloaded.  Always open the chamber and make sure no cartridge is lurking therein.

Guns are made that shoot various different cartridges of vastly different powers, starting with .22 Long Rifle and working up to Dirty Harry’s 44 magnum and .223 and 30-30 and 30-06 and .308 Winchester and 12 gauge shotgun.  I can recommend firing the more potent cartridges before buying a gun chambered for them.  You may find that the report and recoil of the more potent cartridges is so bad that you cannot shoot them well.  In which case buy a gun chambered for a lesser cartridge that you can shoot well. 

    Guns need to fit you.  It’s like buying clothing.  Long guns want to have the correct length of stock, so that your trigger hand can reach the trigger comfortably.  Hand guns are pickier about feel.  I learned hand guns in the Air Force.  At the time, the Air Force issue handgun was a .38 caliber revolver of the sort the police used in those days.  That was one miserable gun to shoot.  The grip was too small, the grips were old and soaked in gun oil and slippery.  The piece would twist in my hand with each shot, making the second and third shots harder.  About that time I acquired an Army .45 automatic.  That was a joy to shoot; the grip filled my hand nicely, and was at the right angle to push straight back rather than twisting.  The piece was always just right in my hand for the next shot.  I strongly recommend getting to a range and shooting off a box of ammunition in the handgun you want to buy before laying out the money to buy it.  Long guns are not so critical; if the stock feels right in the store you will most likely be happy with it.   Little pocket pistols chambered for full house cartridges lack the weight to soak up the recoil and the short barrel creates an ear shattering report.   Full sized service pistols will serve you better with the full house cartridges.

   Once you have the gun, you need to shoot it if you expect to hit anything with it.  Once a month is good, a couple of times a year is the bare minimum.   Buy a pair of ear defenders and wear them.  Other wise the recoil and the report will shock you into a flinch that ruins your chances of hitting much of anything.  Use both hands to shoot a hand gun.  Before firing take a half breath and hold it.  Center the front sight on the target bullseye; line the front sight up in the rear sight. notch. Squeeze the trigger slowly and gently.  It should be a surprise when the gun fires. 

That digital TV cable is noisy

The sound is full of clicks and pops and just roaring sounds and musical score leaking in from other channels.  To say nothing of ringing telephones, furniture moving noises and emergency vehicle sirens.  From the sound of it they have a fire truck, an ambulance, or police cruiser zipping by every few minutes.  They need to move the studio to a quieter part of town and keep telephones out of the studio.  And get maintenance to track down and eliminate those annoying electronical noises in their sound channel. 

Closing Northern Vermont University (NVU) Lyndon Campus

Front page, above the fold, story in this weekend’s Caledonian Record. UVM Chancellor Jeb Spaulding called for closing the Lyndon campus (and some other places too) Needless to say the caused a hue and cry from alumni, students, and local business people. All duly reported on in the Record.
As a New Hampshire resident, the doings over the border in Vermont are only of academic interest. But they did publish some figures on NVU employment that makes me wonder. NVU Lyndon has nearly 1000 students. It also has 700 employees. That’s a pretty plump student faculty ratio. Only 43 employees are full time faculty. I have to wonder what the other 657 employees do, other than draw their pay. And, they pay their faculty peanuts. Assistant professors only make $50,518. A full professor makes $66,000. Electrical engineering pays a lot better than that.
Far as I am concerned, a student faculty ratio of 20 is about right. That would be 50 professors. Nobody else on the payroll. The students mow the grass, shovel the snow, sweep the halls, wash the dishes, and do all the janitorial chores. We did this at my old high school; it only took an hour a day of student time. No paper pushers or administrators at all. Faculty does necessary paperwork, mostly grading papers and writing report cards. Unnecessary paperwork (most of it) just goes into file 13.
Let’s see, 50 faculty at $66,000 each a year is $3.3 million. 1000 students paying $ 11,250 tuition is $11.25 million. You would think that they could make ends meet. Maybe even afford a couple of maintenance guys to fix stuff.

I filled the car up for $1.88 a gallon

Cheap, Cheap.  I was paying $2.80 not so long ago. 

"We are NOT running out of food." Say many Web posts.

Why do I have trouble believing that?  With most of the country out of work, we have to be loosing food production, food processing, and food distributing.  Most of us can see the empty shelves in the food stores.   I don't believe this is caused by panic buying.  This Corona virus thing has been going on for a month, plenty of time for the buying panic to die down and for the food supply chain to fill up the empty shelves.  The shelves are still empty which makes me think the food supply chain is breaking down. 
   The medics and the media are all in favor of keeping the country shut down forever, or at least until a vaccine becomes available, which the TV says will take a year, which is forever if you are an empty grocery shelf.  Hence the trickle of "We are NOT running out of food" Web posts. 

TurboTax recommends Adobe Acrobat

Me, I don't e-file my taxes.  E-file means the Infernal Revenue Service can feed your return straight into their computers for audit.  I know I won't be getting a refund, so I'm in no hurry to have the IRS computers scanning my returns.  I print out a paper copy and mail it in.  Turbo Tax kindly informs me that the IRS has been complaining about the scannability of forms printed by anything other than Adobe Reader.  Groovy.  Should IRS contact me and bitch that they cannot scan my paper 1040, my reply to them will be "Get a better scan program" and "I plan to hand scribe my return next year. Get used to it."

My lawn is melted out but the Cannon ski trails are still white

Spring is making an attempt up here.  It is in the forties temp wise.  My lawn is free of snow and the winter shocked grass is attempting to green up.  But the ski trails up on Cannon Mountain are still white.  This comes from all the snow making over the winter, combined with both skiers and snow grooming machines packing the trails down into ice.  They run the groomers ever night during ski season, I can see their lights running up and down the trails in the dark.