Category: Uncategorized

Apparently 5.11 has decided to bring back their tactical kilts and make a new video for April fools this year.  As of today, they’re taking orders for them.  Same as last year, they’re asking $70 for them with $10 going going to charity.  The charities this year being FBINAA and We Salute You Veterans.  My guess is that they’ve decided that they wouldn’t be able to out do coming out with the kilt 2 years ago, and, hell, people have actually been buying these things.

I compared the ones that I got from the original run to my Utilikilts here.  Considering the massive price difference, I’d say the 5.11 kilts are a pretty damn good deal.  Most of the other utility kilts that I’ve seen that are near the price point the 5.11 is at are not nearly as good.

So… Apparently while I was busy rooting for the new knife law, one of our state senators decided to introduce a bill that would allow open carry in my state without having a permit, and that bill has passed the State Senate.  Of course, apparently the house has stuck it in the finance committee to die, but one can dream.

Unfortunately, this has caused all the idiots to come out of the wood work to scream that open carry will get you killed/mugged/shot first/whatever.  First off, I think I’ve made a rather good argument for open carry in the past.  Also, I don’t know the exact figures, but a lot of folks open carry every day.  Given the attitude of the average mainstream media newscaster, if they got shot with their own gun, I would bet that they would be reporting these incidents all over the place.  A quick google search brings up one acccount… and that’s it.  Oddly enough, the next hit on the search was a concealed carry guy being mugged and having his gun taken away from him.  Granted, the US is actually a fairly safe place to live, but the lack of reported incidents makes me think that this just doesn’t happen.

Of course, the biggest issue I take with the concealed carry only crowd is that it really sounds to me that they would be just as happy if open carry was straight up illegal.  At the very least, it’s something they think no one should do… ever.  This attitude equates to, in my mind, “yes, it’s ok/legal/your right to do this thing, as long as no one catches you.”  Nope.  Sorry.  If it’s not ok if I get caught doing something, that means that something is not ok.  In my mind, the folks that say that you can carry as long as no one catches you (that’s pretty much what concealed carry only means, right?) are almost as bad as the people that say you shouldn’t be able to carry in the first place.

*Just to be clear, if you choose to only conceal carry for whatever reason, that’s your choice.  Just don’t make that choice for the rest of us.

Most of the camping hammock equipment I own is made by ENO.  One thing I like about them is the warning label they put on their products.  The full warning reads as follows:

“Using any hammock carries an inherent risk.  ACCIDENTS HAPPEN, USE WITH CAUTION.” (emphasis theirs)

Yup… I think that covers it.

In one of the irc channels I hang out in, one of my local friends asked me for some clarification on the knife bill that’s currently sitting on Gov. Haslam’s desk waiting for his signature.  Specifically, he was asking about the legality of carrying the sword cane he owns.  He knew that soon to be law would clear it as far as length of blade goes, but was thinking that there might have been an issue due to it being a hidden or disguised blade.

I assured him that, as far as I’ve been able to find, there’s nothing on the books in TN stating that a knife has to look like a knife.  I then went on to tell him that, oddly enough, if a cop decided that he was carrying it “with the intent to go armed,” he might be more in trouble for carrying the cane than the blade hidden inside.  See, TN requires you to be certified with the state if you want to carry a cane/baton/stick/etc with the intent to go armed.

The fun part of that is that it’s actually non-trivial for the average Joe to get such a certification.  The way things are written, pretty much the only people that can get certified to teach the baton certification classes are security guard schools.  Often times, these schools will require you to go through all their training courses to get the baton certification, and those that don’t run classes sporadically.  So, in practice, it’s easier to get a permit to carry a gun (I have a hard time not tripping over ads for those classes) than it is to carry a stick.

So… at current time, I can legally carry a knife under 4″ (soon to just be “carry a knife”) without permit, I have a permit to carry a gun, but I can’t legally carry a freaking stick for self protection (since I have no permit for that).  How does that make sense?

Oh, there is a slight loop hole that I told the guy.  Since it’s a cane, he can claim that he needs it as a medical device.  Which, considering he’s already had a couple knee surgeries, isn’t too hard a sell.

If you’ve ever been interested in picking up a camping hammock, Sport.Woot is selling some for cheap today.  I bought some of the ones with the built in mosquito netting for my nephews who are in the Boy Scouts (and one for me for… uh… “testing”).  The one with the netting works for me at 6’3″, but is a little too short for me to properly lay diagonally in one.  The double sized one should work great for you if you’re tall like me, but doesn’t have the bug net.

I will warn that these are like most camping hammocks and do not come with straps or ropes to actually tie them to a tree, and if you’re wanting them for actually camping, you’ll probably also want a rain fly, which is also not included.  I’ll try to be a good blogger and to a post on my set up later.

Please take shit with you when you leave to go back to one of your 6 houses that aren’t in Nashville.

Seriously, it’s freaking late March and it’s snowing like it’s January.

Apparently a store in merry old England had their system require an age check that thwarted a young ruffian from purchasing some tea spoons, which I’m sure would have then used them to cause mayhem.

I will have to say that the store management did apologize, and agreed that it was a bit ridiculous.  Although… why the hell were teaspoons tagged as requiring age checks to begin with?

I don’t know which is worse, the fact that the teaspoons were tagged in the first place, the fact that the clerk didn’t quickly say “this is ridiculous” and let the kid buy the damn spoons, or the fact that the mother of said terror maker stated “Knives, forks I can understand but teaspoons?”  It’s a well known issue that minors in the UK can’t be trusted with knives, but apparently forks are also highly suspect.

This is the workshop that came with the house we bought last year.

Is there any reason why I shouldn’t put plywood over the insulation on the ceiling and replace the hanging 8ft fluorescent fixtures with ceiling mounted 4ft ones?

I picked up a Dewalt DW715 12-Inch Compound Miter saw during a Black Friday sale. I’ve been doing some furniture building and figured it would come in handy.

See that little bag on the back? That’s ostensibly for dust collection. I may have been expecting too much out of it, but after my first dozen or so cuts on a set of 2x4s I went to empty the bag and there wasn’t anything in it. There was plenty of dust in the air and around the saw, though. So I decided to just hook up my shop vac to the dust port. Should be easy, right?

I did a little bit of Googling and found a woodworkers’ forum where someone said the dust collection port was 1.5″, so a 1.5″ vacuum hose should work. Well my shop vac has a 2.5″ hose so I just bought this without really paying attention to the description. Key bit: Use 1 1/2-inch hose with 2 1/2-inch accessories.

So I go to the home improvement store and pick up a Shop-vac 2-1/2″ to 1-1/4″ Conversion Unit. You might notice that it’s a 1.25″ adapter, not a 1.5″ adapter. Apparently, those are not made, but I figure it may fit the inside diameter of the Dewalt port. While I’m there, I also pick up a Shop-vac Universal Tool Adapter, because, hey, “Universal.”

So here’s the 1.25″ adapter:

Yeah….that’s not gonna work.

And here’s the “Universal” adapter:

Same problem, but different.

So now I’m getting a little bit frustrated. The next time I go to the store (we were doing a bathroom remodel so I was at Lowe’s or Home Depot like every 6 hours for a month), I pick up a 1.5-Inch Contractor Hose I’ll spare you the suspense and tell you now–that didn’t work either. The inside diameter of the hose was not large enough to fit over the dust port, and the outside diameter of the hose was too large to reliably use a coupler.

At this point I’m just trying shit. Clearly it’s not a 1.5″ port. Or 1.5″ hoses aren’t 1.5″ ID or OD.

I go order a 1.25-Inch hose. The wand on the end is comically large, but it fits. Sort of:

The dust port is actually in the arm of the saw, so it rotates. When the saw is all the way up, the wand can fall back. When you go to use the saw again, this can happen:

So now I do what I should have done in the beginning:

And the inside diameter:

I take my calipers to the store, go to the plumbing aisle, discover that 1.5″ PVC Pipe fittings have an inside diameter of about 1.66″ to accommodate wall thickness. I buy a 1.25″ Schedule 40 male adapter, a 1.5″ x 1.25″ male adapter, and a 1.25″ slip coupler. I figure I can use one of my hoses with the male adapters, and just use some 1.25″ PVC pipe if I really need to.

Well. It turns out…

If you take the wand off the 1.25-Inch hose, the end of the hose fits perfectly in the 1.25″ slip coupler.*

The corrugated end even fits over the ridge in the middle to keep it in place!

And voila!

And the good news, of course, is that I’ll never need another adapter again. I already have them all.

*The original version of this post incorrectly stated that a 1.5″ coupler was used. This is what I get for hitting publish before checking my receipts.