You just don’t see that many truly bizarre weapons systems in modern warfare. Incendiary bombs strapped to bats are the exception, not the rule.

Trivia: Everybody except Trevor was there. John said that he was disappointed that there were dating sites for Christians, Jews, and people with herpes, but no dating sites for agnostics. “There is a market segment whose needs are not being met. We should put together a business plan and become dot-com entrepreneurs! Or we could drink beer and burn 100-dollar bills—it’d end up about the same way,” I said. “Sounds good. Can we get vulture capital?” Nathan replied. “Maybe if we get the vulture capitalists drunk on beer.” We then speculated on what the best domain name would be for a dating site for people with herpes.

I’ve always wondered what went on inside trolls’ heads. A journalist investigated a couple of reasonably well-known trolls over a year ago. OK, this is a journalist, not someone who knows anything about the Net and the subcultures you find there, but the content of the article made me want to smack the interviewees upside the head for being a couple of @#$^knobs.  Behavior modification through negative reinforcement doesn’t work well in most cases, and the only thing these trolls offer to the people they’re berating is negative reinforcement. If there were enough money and time, I’d like to have both of the interviewees in that article evaluated by psychiatrists, and then committed to institutions if they were found to be sociopaths.  However, this is not going to happen, so these . . . wastes of skin will continue to defecate on people for their own personal amusement.

Makes me weep for the future of humanity, it does.

Rarely is the question asked: Is our owls learning?

Quiet day Monday. Most everyone went out for lunch, which I wasn’t expecting. I’d packed a lunch, of course. Oh well. Then there was a semi-strange problem with an internal website that was doing the wrong thing. That was reasonably easy to fix once I’d figured out what was really going on.

It was Opening Day at the ballpark. Four jets from the nearby Air Force base did a flyby before the game started. The noise surprised all of us. We didn’t really get to watch the game, but we saw the last 2 outs as the D-Backs defeated the Rockies. Yay! The D-Backs are playing the Braves in late May, and I think I can get discounted tickets for that game, so I might have to do that.

For some reason, traffic was horrible Monday afternoon.  It took almost an hour for the bus to get from downtown to my bus stop, when it’s usually more like 30 minutes.  If this is how baseball games affect downtown traffic, I’m glad most of the games are at night.

Sunday, the big thing was going out to the Casa Grande gun range with Zach, Steve, Bob, and Roger. We had a large number of rifles and pistols. Zach had most of his Mosin-Nagant rifles, which satisfied everyone’s need for high power. I had my 10/22 and .357 Mag. Roger had an SKS (which wasn’t working for some obscure reason), a compact .357, and a tiny .38 derringer. I tried the .38 derringer. Its trigger pull was insane, and it kicked like a mule because it was so small and light. I was much happier with my .357 or Zach’s .22 Mag revolver. I think I’ve gotten used to my .357; the weight of the medium frame offsets the kick nicely.

Zach, after putting a few magazines through my 10/22, said, “I have decided I need to own one of these things.” Well, they’re fairly cheap, they’re fun, and ammunition for them is cheap. I can’t blame him, really, because I decided to buy one after putting a few magazines through Teh Nacho’s 10/22.  (“It’s the ciiiircle of *BLAM*!”)

Then we had lunch, and Zach told us all about the crazy things that Yoopers who are working as boiler inspectors in East Texas get up to. Apparently, Yoopers are highly valued in certain industrial jobs, because they are often smaller than average and can get into more places, and they can also drink immense quantities of cheap beer. We also griped about how management can be utterly stupid.

Went home, then did the less-than-fun but necessary part of shooting guns: Cleaning guns.

Most animals have a hard time dealing with furniture. This elk probably had to have the chair removed by the DNR or Forest Service.

Next week, the plan is to spend at least part of the weekend camping. Zach gets Good Friday off, so they’re leaving Friday morning. The rest of us will have to leave Saturday morning or something. I have everything except a stove (tent, sleeping bag, pad, cooler, food, utensils, water bottle, pack) so that should work out OK.

It was Adam’s last day at work today. We all went out for lunch, then went back, then at about 3pm, almost all of us left early and spent some time at a downtown Irish pub drinking Guinness and talking about whatever. It felt a bit odd, since I’ve known Adam for less than a year, and here I am saying goodbye along with people who’ve known him for much longer than that. Ah well. Sometimes I think that since 1995, my life has been marked by saying goodbye to many people, places, and things.

Somehow, I don’t think this still from a video game reflects reality.

The world needs more giant squirrels.

Work excitement: Some stupid stuff started happening a couple of hours before I was supposed to leave, which caused 2 problems. One problem was reasonably easy to fix. The second proved more difficult. Eventually, I was able to find what had gone wrong, and that fixed the second problem. However, the thing that had gone wrong should not have ever caused the first problem. These machines run on 1s and 0s; they shouldn’t have squirrely ambiguous things that can’t happen go wrong with them. (Usually, this means I have not achieved full understanding of the problem. . . .)

Nothing like this happened at the baseball game yesterday. It was a wild game. The Cubs started things off with a grand slam by Geovane Soto in the 3rd. That guy hit another home run later on. The A’s scored one run at a time and were one run down when I left at the end of the 8th inning. Neither team seemed to be taking the game that seriously; players were being substituted left and right throughout. I guess the game doesn’t really matter, so they wanted everyone to get some playing time.

A rant about AIG (contains swearing). I think that article has more “I’m calling the people at AIG a bunch of bastards because that plays well with our readers” than dispassionate journalistic analysis. It was still kind of fun to read.

Our usual Wednesday Rock Band was more subdued than usual.

Cereal port? Yeah, we’ve got that.

Trivia: We all heard about Kelli’s plan to play a practical joke on her manager, which, if executed correctly, should make her manager’s head explode. Spencer and Patti want to get two black corgis and name them “Wesley” and “Snipes”. Or possibly “Strumpet” and “Crumpet”. Also heard about Sarah’s trials and tribulations with her kindergarten class, made plans for going shooting on Sunday, and lent Nathan Iron Council. That book isn’t as good as The Scar or Perdido Street Station, but it has its moments. I was surprised to hear that Nathan hadn’t read any of Iain M. Banks’s work, since Nathan reads almost as much as I do and has similar tastes in literature.

The big excitement for Wednesday is that a bunch of us are going to a spring training game in the afternoon. This is a work-sanctioned event and sort of a tradition. Unfortunately, the Braves aren’t playing, it’s Oakland and the Cubs. Oh well, seeing a baseball game for very little money is always a good thing.