Reddnet Scribbles

My XD .40 cal Sub-Compact just wasn't working out... so I've adoped the Walther PPS 9mm as my new choice firearm for conceal & carry.

Update: 6 months after buying the XD, I have replaced it with a Walther PPS 9mm. Find out why in my folllow-up post . I was raised around guns. As a kid I lived on a small hobby farm in a rural part of South Carolina, and guns were just part of the scenery. As young as 6 or 7, I was using small rifles and shotguns. Not that I was much of a hunter or anything. Mostly the guns were for defense. We raised cattle, and packs of wild dogs were still common in the area, so we carried weapons of some kind almost all the time in the woods or pasture. Usually we carried knifes, BB guns, pellet guns, or sometimes...

Caress has started blogging her experience with AVM over at " I'm not your prozac ". She wrote a lot of those posts while she was going through her procedures, but since I hadn't gotten off my lazy ass and put up her blog site (and she was a tad too busy to do it herself) she's didn't get them online until more recently. Most of her posts are back-dated to when she actually wrote them. I've avoided blogging about the experience mostly because I was waiting on her to blog about it first, and also because AVM is too damned scary for me to blog well....

A long time ago (sometime in 1997) I came across a clockwork wall sculpture in an expensive art and collectibles shop. I'm not easily impressed with any piece of art and generally lack an eye for visual arts in particular. But I stood in this store watching this wooden clockwork type sculpture/device make the most amazing motion patterns for what must have been 2 or 3 hours. It was one of the most amazing and beautiful things I've ever seen. I've thought about that piece many many times in the many years since I visited that shop. I would gladly have bought it, but with a price in the $1500 range...

Inside the Soul of the Web A person watches 24 hours of Google queries scroll across a screen in real time. I haven't read something that left me this disturbed in a long long time. I'd never thought about it before, but running a search engine is an awesome responsibility. Users look to Google the same way some people look to a god. But unlike a god, Google actually might have an answer. But it isn't really a god. Google is run by people. And people, unlike a god, can make mistakes. What happens when a person prays to Google, but the answer is a mistake? I guess even a god can't help everyone...

One of my long time aliases is the name "Yvel". I came across this today, and thought the use of yvel was particularly interesting in this context. The Lord's Prayer in English: From a 15th century MS, Douce 246, Bodleian library Fader oure that art in heuene, halewed be thy name: thy kyngedom come to thee: thy wille be do in erthe as in heuen: oure eche dayes brede 3eue us to daye: and for3eue us oure dettes as we for3eue to oure dettoures: and lede us no3te into temptacion: bot delyver us from yvel. Amen. They feared me back in the 15th! Not sure what the "3"s are all about...