Just Deserts?

Cannon Co., Tenn. (1898)

10/1/1898: Execution of judgment on a killer’s property in settlement of a civil suit for a homicide the previous year caused killer and friends and friends to ambush those executing the judgment, killing four and fatally wounding a fifth man.

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: revenge

Weapon: shotguns[1]

Murfreesboro, Tenn. (1898)

10/2/1898: Leader of previous mass murder was lynched with two associates..

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: lynch

Weapon: unknown[2]

---

[1] “Result of a Southern Feud,” Omaha Daily Bee,Oct. 3, 1898, 1.

[2] “ATriple Lynching,” El Paso Daily Herald,Oct. 3, 1898, 1.

Unsurprising, But Still Scary

Over at Volokh Conspiracy:

In the 2018 GSS, respondents were asked for whom they voted in 2016 (PRES16) or for whom they would have voted if they had voted (IF16WHO): Clinton, Trump, someone else, or no one.

On the verbal ability test (WORDSUM), not surprisingly the median number of vocabulary questions correct was the same for both Clinton and Trump supporters: 6 out of 10 words correct.  The mean verbal ability score for Trump supporters was 6.15 words correct, while the mean verbal ability score for Clinton supporters was 5.69 correct, a difference of nearly a half a question on a 10-question test.  This moderate difference is statistically significant at p<.0005.

Further, Trump supporters score significantly higher on verbal ability (6.15 correct) than the rest of the public combined (5.70 correct), whereas Clinton supporters score significantly lower on verbal ability (5.69 correct) than the rest of the public combined (5.98 correct)....

Testing the hypothesis that Trump supporters have greater science knowledge than those who supported Clinton in 2016, on six questions Trump supporters offer the correct answer significantly more often than Clinton supporters: those about lasers, radioactivity, viruses, the father's contribution to the biological sex of the child (BOYORGRL), whether "according to astronomers" the universe began with a huge explosion (BIGBANG1), and that the earth goes around the sun and that it takes a year to do so (combined EARTHSUN and SOLARREV).

On one science knowledge question—whether the center of the earth is hot (HOTCORE)—the superior performance of Trump supporters over Clinton supporters is borderline significant (1-sided Fisher's Exact Test p=.05-.10).

On two questions, the structure of atoms (ELECTRON) and continental drift (CONDRIFT), Trump supporters score slightly, but insignificantly, better than Clinton supporters. On none of these nine science questions do Trump supporters score worse than Clinton supporters.

When one compares Clinton supporters to the rest of the public combined, Clinton supporters perform significantly worse than the rest of the public on the same six science questions on which Trump supporters perform better than Clinton supporters.

Indeed, less than half of 2016 Clinton supporters (49.6%) are able to answer correctly both of two related questions: whether the earth goes around the sun or the sun goes around the earth (EARTHSUN) and whether that takes a day, a month, or a year (SOLARREV).  Remember these two questions are multiple choice! You would have a 50-50 chance of guessing correctly on the first part: whether the earth goes around the sun or vice versa. Sadly, the general public didn't do hugely better than Clinton supporters, with only 57.1% (compared to 49.6%) knowing that the earth goes around the sun and that it takes a year to do so.

That Clinton voters are still geocentrists does not surprise me.  That almost half our population this ignorant scares me.  What are public schools doing?

This 2018 National Science Foundation survey found that only 73% believe the Earth goes around the Sun. If the remaining 27% were all Democrats (not likely) it would explain the GSS number.

How to Identify a Harvard Law Professor

1/30/20 Daily Mail:

Elizabeth Warren has demanded criminal punishment for social media users who spread false information about how to vote in elections. 

The Democratic presidential candidate has pledged to push for 'tough civil and criminal penalties' in a bid to tackle Russian-linked deception efforts.

She also took aim at Facebook and Twitter for their 'meager' efforts to tackle the spread of fake news, urging them to block accounts who post false information. 

Online tricksters were found to have spread a series of falsehoods during the 2016 and 2018 elections, including incorrect election dates and claims that voters could cast their ballot by text. 

I shudder to think how the First Amendment gets taught by her.

Bargain at Wal-Mart

Because I stole one of my three monitors from the PC where I do my mass murder research (one for the spreadsheet of horror; one for the newspaper page; one for the Word file that contains the summary of each crime) to operate the mill, I needed another monitor.  I had planned to buy a used one on Craig's List for $25, but my wife wanted me to buy a new one.  Wal-Mart had a 22" 1920x1080 in their store for $75.  While headed to the men's room with that monitor in my cart, I found the 24" version marked down to $50.66.  It was a display model.  The maker is ONN and it is even nicer to look at than the other two.

Our New House

It has several advantages over our current house.  It is really quiet.  Our current home is about 1 1/2 miles from ID-55, and when trucks or motorcycles downshift, you hear it.  The new house is dead quiet.

The big day (moving big pieces of furniture) is Feb. 15.  Helpers will get a chance to see how your favorite blogger lives and pizza.  (Another advantage; we can order pizza delivered.  Now we get guffaws in response.)

Stop Teasing Us

1/28/20 New York Post:

Nearly four years after President Trump defeated her in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton said she has an “urge” to run again because she thinks she can win this time.

The former secretary of state was asked during an interview with Variety if she ever thought “I could beat Donald Trump if I were running.”

“Yeah. I certainly feel the urge because I feel the 2016 election was a really odd time and an odd outcome,” she told the magazine in an interview published online Monday.

It was odd.  Many Trump supporters were lukewarm about him.  I voted for him mostly as a NO on Clinton.  This time he has widespread and strong support.

Busy Preparing to Move

Yesterday we bought a new refrigerator, washer, and dryer.  Our current house has GE Profile series for all of these.  The washer had one problem during warranty; the dryer never has; the refrigerator never has.  But when we went to look at new appliances, the GE Profile appliances were startlingly expensive.  Of course we did not buy them individually for this house; they were rolled into the construction costs.

This time we bought Whirlpool washer and dryer.  Whirlpool has a superior repair record to GE.  The refrigerator was a bit more of a struggle.  We wanted a fridge that was counter depth or close.  (The black monolith in our current kitchen is huge.)   We also wanted the black stainless finish to match the other kitchen appliances.   

The only frustration with our current fridge is that the icemaker sometimes gets jammed and requires some jostling or emptying of the compartment where the augur crushes ice or just breaks up big clogs.  The Samsung we bought lacks the indoor ice and water dispenser; it just dumps ice cubes in a box in the freezer.  I can open a door for $1500 less.

Another surprise: Home Depot's extended warranty provides that if you make claims against it, you get 30% back at the end of warranty.

ISP has been a disappointment.  I ha hoped that being in the flats would get us access to cheap and fast Internet.  No.  CableOne (now Sparklight) could offer us no service at all.  CenturyLink had 1,5 Mbps service available.  Yes that's all.  Our current radio provider, Xoomlink, has a tower two miles away, so we will stay with our current 20 Mbps service, until they build a new tower in the next few monthsc and start offering 40 Mbps service.

If Every Giun in America Magically Disappeared...

And it would take magic.  And criminals did not substitute other weapons, and no murders were prevented by defensive use of guns, we would still have 9x the murder rate of Japan, higher rates than England & Wales, and only slightly lower than Canada:

This Upcoming KBSU-Sponsored Town Hall About Guns in America

I am told that it is being mentioned by KBSU, but not the speakers.  If you know anyone who is pro-gun and not nine sheets to the wind in conspiracy theories or general nuttiness, it would be nice if the audience wasn't 99% gun control advocates glaring at me and calling me a murderer.  The CNN Town Hall after Parkland was either something of a setup, or our side did not know to show up.

Feb. 4, 6-8pm, Cinder Winery, 107 E 44th St, Garden City, ID 83714.

Joe Biden Suddenl Supports the Militia

Or he's just an idiot.  Take your pick.  Splendid Isolation points to this quote:

Biden continued, “So, the idea we’re gonna cut the defense budget significantly, we can cut it some, but we don’t need standing armies, we need to be smarter than we’re dealing now into how we handle this.”

And there's video showing him make a fool of himself.   Splendid Isolation points out that he will not be able to enforce gun bans without a standing army.  Perhaps Biden does not understand the words he uses.  And this is the supposed responsible adult of the Democrats?

Let Us Now Praise GREAT Customer Service

I ordered this USB WiFi because they promised Linux support.  I was skeptical; there are as many releases as subbranches of Linus as there are lies about Trump.  The installation manual gave support for Mint 18.03 and Ubuntu 16.04.  Great.  What do I do with my antique release of debian?  I chatted with someone at TP-Link who managed to cobble up a driver that worked with my antique.  It is providing service at 6 Mbps far away in the garage!

And $9.99!

Driving Away Mice

We had a home inspection as a pro-active measure and our inspector reports a rodent infestation under the house.  Fumigation would leave lots of dead, decaying bodies.  There are ultrasonic devices that drive them away.  Any experience with these?

Accuracy of Zillow and Trulia Estimates

I know that they are not perfect, but how imperfect are they?  We are buying a house in Middleton, and it appraised for $469,000.  Trulia estimated $614,018 which is clearly too high.   Zillow estimated $456,992, a little low.  Zillow is estimating $532,890 for our current home; Trulia says $533,832.  This is encouraging.  We still need to sell this house.  Need a mountaintop Shangri-La?

Not Every Change is Truly Innovation

I am not talking politics here!  I recently downloaded Mint Cinnamon Linux 19.3 and Ubuntu 9 and installed them in my VM.  The Cinnamon GUI was profoundly disappointing.  If you have to search to find out how to change screen resolution, you have failed.  Even with instructions Ubuntu 9 is impossible to figure out.

Roddenberry's Vision Wins

A twitter repost of President Trump unveiling the logo of the U.S. Space Force has an uncanny resemblance to Star Fleet Command's logo.

Something Changed While I Was Napping

1/23/20 Yahoo News:

(Bloomberg) -- Billionaire George Soros said that nothing is keeping Facebook Inc. from spreading disinformation and the company may be in cahoots with President Donald Trump to get him re-elected.

What is now the value of c, g, and 1 for that matter.  Did the universe change in some other incomprehensible manner?

Mirror of Palms Needs a Home or the Thrift Store Gets It

IOmega 100 MB Removable disks

Remember those?  Just found a stash of them with 1980s backups.

"Presentism"

Concerning this class assignment in Boise, Idaho schools.

This is yet another example of "presentism": the belief that it makes good history to judge people of the past by current moral norms.  This implies that the norms of today are absolutes and persons of the 16th century should have known and followed our standards.  This implies an absolute standard of morality that no leftist would otherwise consider acceptable.  By the standards of 1950, we live in a depraved society.

The death count of Native Americans was huge, but largely the result of diseases brought inadvertently and unknowingly by the Europeans.  Deaths in war and slavery were a tiny fraction.  While tragic, these were not a moral failing, but ignorance of microbiology.

What is often forgotten is that European conquest of the Americas and Africa was often aided and abetted by native populations.  Cortez succeeded because Aztec human sacrifice of prisoners of war gave victim tribes a reason to help Cortez. Pizzaro arrived in the middle of an Incan civil war.  The Narragansett tribe manipulated the Europeans into largely wiping out the Pequots to obtain the Pequot lands.  Europeans arrived at Easter Island at the end of a cannibalistic civil war.

This is bad history and reminds me of the National Socialist dehumanization of the Jews as vermin.  Good for present politics but fiercely hate-filled and deceptive.  The same approach could be used to condemn African sale of slaves to Europeans for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, or LGBTs for the spread of AIDS in North America.  If you want to know why the Supreme Court is hearing a case concerning Montana's private school tuition, look no further.

When the CNC Laptop Display Failed

I hooked it up to an external monitor and used the only magic that I remembered Fn +F4.  One of you reminded me of that.  As I was getting ready to sell it on eBay for parts, I realized that the external connector was unlikely to share much with the display panel, so I tried again.  This time it worked!  I wonder if I had a loose connector to the display.

I am thrilled because the laptop works for updating software through WiFi, unlike the version of linuxCNC on the desktop.  And the new ac1200 router is visible from the shop.  It is not blinding speed (7.2Mbps) but better than trying to move stuff on flash drives.

The desktop is a nice pretty quick antique with a 250GB hard drive. Someone on Craig's List will want it.

Why Linux Will Never Replace Windows

The lack of profit motive means that nothing is kept operational.  I installed linuxCNC variant of Debian a couple years back on the now dead laptop and a few months ago in my VM under Windows.  I reinstalled the same ISO on this very fast Dell desktop connected to an Ethernet cable while waiting for a USB wifi that works with Linux.  The same version as under my VM, but apt-get update fails because the debian-security Release repository is expired.  Synaptic Package Manager can no longer see emacs, ddd, FileZilla and other useful utilities, even though it is still working on my VM.  Nor does anyone on the various Linus and linuxCNC forums seem to have a clue.

Just to be sure, I ftped the /etc/apt/sources.list file from the VM to my website, loaded it in my browser and copied it into the misbehaving Linux.  Nothing changed.

The Buyer of My Current House Will Not Need an HVAC Inspection

The heat exchanger on the furnace failed and we had a new furnace installed this morning.  I am hoping this will be a selling point, along with the 3 year old roof and similar age siding.

MyNew CNC PC

A used Dell Optiplex with a builtin parallel port.  Still trying to get a working wifi for it.  USB wifis are available, but no one seems to know which will install easily in debian Linux.

Save the Date

Feb. 4, 6-8pm, Cinder Winery, 107 E 44th St, Garden City, ID 83714.

KBSU is having a town hall discussion of gun control with me and Rep. Melissa Wintrow, a member of Moms Demand Action.  (We demand action, too, but not the same action.)

It should be obvious: open carry or camo are bad optics.  Hope you are there o cheer me on and ask probing but polite questions.

The Shop That Was Supposed to Put my NC6000 HD in a Used Desktop

Did not notice that it was a IDE drive so they could not do it.  So I will but a used desktop (they are available very cheekily on craigslist), put in a PCI parallel port, install the CNC linux on the hard drive and then use a USB to SATA adapter to transfer my files over.

GRRRR.

More Antiques From my Closet

Zilog Z80-CPU ZZ80A-CPU Technical Reference.  You never know when you might build a product around the Z80.

That Desktop I Am Buying to Replace the Compaq for the Mill

It has a 256GB SSD with Windows 10.  They are installing the hard disk from the Compaq as the boot drive.  Once I am satisfied that this boots well and runs the mill, I will swap the drives, repartition the Windows drive to dual boot Windows 10/linux, copy all my development from the linux drive to the linux partition, and make that my boot drive.  I may never use Windows on that PC, but why throw away a perfectly good Windows license?  Linux booting from an SSD on a relatively new and fast PC should be a joy!

Finally Complete

As regular readers are doubtless aware, I rebuilt a 3" f/4.5 reflector that I made in the 1990s.  This was to some extent a test of my machining skills.  Of course, I considered machining an equatorial mount but the work was a bit intimidating, so I bought a Orion EQ1 mount.  I found one new in box (amazingly) at Telescope Warehouse very reasonably priced.  I had some rings for mounting Baby, but I needed an adapter to makt them to the mount,  so I carefully measured to what I had to attach it and started machining.  First a recess on both sides to fit into the available space, then counterbored 1/4" holes from the bottom to hold the rings.

 

Then two threaded 1/4"-20 holes for the bolts from the bottom to lock into.

 

I would not use acetal for any great weight, but this is very secure.

The rings are closer together than is esthetic pleasing.  I was too focused on the holes at the end.  I may redo this with wider ring spacing, now that I have all the code working.  The last operation I did manually (because of my recent laptop failure) enlarging the ring slot width about .02" to get the rings in without a fight.  I will say that running the mill manually is more pleasant than I expected.

Some Ideas Are So Stupid That They Seem Intentionally Self-Parody

1/16/20 Daily Mail:

Harvard has released a radical proposal to fix America's broken democracy.

Researchers suggest Congress needs to pass legislation reducing the size of Washington, D.C. to just a few core federal buildings and declaring its 127 neighborhoods as states.

These new states would add enough votes for Congress to rewrite the Constitution in a way that 'every vote counts equally' by ratifying four amendments.

The plan entails equal representation in both the Senate and the House, replacing the Electoral College with a popular vote and modifying 'the Constitution's amendment process that would ensure future amendments are ratified by states representing most Americans.'

:Broken democracy": one where the empress lost.

Any Eclipse-CDT Users?

I am trying to make a program that includes stdio.h, which fails when including stddef.h.  This is some sort of INCLUDE path problem, I think.

It appears that there is no gcc binaries for Windows; you have to compile your own, and they have not made it easy.  MinGW seems to be the only alternative.

good news for those planning to leave millions to your kids

You are, right?  The Minimum Required Distribution age has been moved from 70 1/2 to 72.  What is the MRD?  To make sure that careful and thoughtful people do not leave too much to their kids, the government requires you to take a certain amount out of your non-Roth IRA at a particular age.  The formula for how much you are required to take out is complex and depends on your life expectancy and how much you have, but the clear intent is to make sure that only those so obscenely rich as to set up trusts (average Democratic contributors) will pass any significant assets to their heirs.

I am sure their expansion is the same as the argument for slavery: who will be the hewers of wood and the drawers of water?  (Yes, it is Biblical.)  we cannot have too many independently wealthy people.

The CNC Laptop Display Has Gone Nearly Black

Not quite but unreadable.  Hooking up an external monitor and using Fn F4 did not switch to external monitor.  I may need to buy a used desktop with a real Centronics parallel port.  They must be out there somewhere.  I can just transfer my disk over.

Curiously, when removed from the dock, the screen lacks blue and green, but it is readable.  On the other docking station (why throw away a spare?), it works fine.

It was not the dock; the motherboard section that drives backlighting failed and is therefore beyond repair. Fortunately the shop had a used desktop that they are going to install the laptop's drive and a PCI parallel port in.  Running Linux on a newer PC should be blindingly fast.

What Determines the Default Browser When You Click a URL?

This should be easy to find.  It isn't.  Here.

Big Decision Mistake

1/11/20 Daily Mail:

Richard Hoskins flew to Bangkok in 2016 for operations to transition to female
October 2009 son, 19, climbed electricity pylon and reached for 33k volt cable
David died in Dec after Richard left decision with mother to turn life support off
His second marriage ended following son's death and he turned to feminine side
Reasons for wanting new identity were complex and unrelated to male or female
'Coming back to my true self as Richard was one of the greatest things I ever did

Cleaning Out My Books

If you want these, pay Priority Mail and they are yours.

Micrsoft C 5.0 Optimizing Compiler three volumes (no diskettes)
Microsoft Macro Assembler manual
IBM Technical Reference Personal Computer XT v2.02

I also have several years of gun porn (Shotgun News from the 200-2010s) if you want it.

A dozen or 3.5" floppy diskettes, mostly drivers for obsolete devices and the cute little cases we used to use to store these marvelous 1.44MB devices.

And on eBay:
A Mirror of Palms (1898) 

Offer Accepted

And we are buying it for less than it originally sold in 2016.  This is a very high-end house in a similar neighborhood.  My big concern was if the rooms were big enough.  Our current house reflects my design requirements and has larger rooms, but these are going to work.

One of the garage bays is abnormally long so the table with mill, lathe, and drill press will fit against one wall, and another wall will have the pegboard and tools.  The desk, printer stand, and one bookcase will fit against one office wall.  The treadmill goes in the middle of the room, and because I keep from boring myself by watching YouTuve, I will watch it on my PC.  I am gratified to see 100Mbps service for $49.95.  Right now I pay $69.95 for 20 Mbps.  I might even splurge on Gigabit service, but the ac wireless maybe the limitation.

I Remember It. I Just Can't Find It.

Difficult customer told to leave bar.  Returns a bit later carrying a rifle.  Employee either shoots him or holds him for police.  I am sure that I saw it in the last year.  Do you remember it?

Posted to the Wrong Blog

Rolling Stone  points out the insanity of the media and much of the Democratic Party about the Russians own Trump trash:

The aforementioned Mensch, a noted loon who thinks Putin murdered Andrew Breitbart but has somehow been put front and center by The Times and HBO's Real Time, has denounced an extraordinary list of Kremlin plants.

She's tabbed everyone from Jeff Sessions ("a Russian partisan") to Rudy Giuliani and former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom ("agents of influence") to Glenn Greenwald ("Russian shill") to ProPublica and Democracy Now! (also "Russian shills"), to the 15-year-old girl with whom Anthony Weiner sexted (really, she says, a Russian hacker group called "Crackas With Attitudes") to an unnamed number of FBI agents in the New York field office ("moles"). And that's just for starters.

Others are doing the same. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters, upon seeing the strange behavior of Republican Intel Committee chair Devin Nunes, asked "what kind of dossier" the Kremlin has on Nunes.

Dem-friendly pollster Matt McDermott wondered why reporters Michael Tracey and Zaid Jilani aren't on board with the conspiracy stories (they might be "unwitting" agents!) and noted, without irony, that Russian bots mysteriously appear every time he tweets negatively about them. ...

Some 13.2 million people voted for Sanders during the primary season last year. What percentage does any rational person really believe voted that way because of "fake news"?

I would guess the number is infinitesimal at best. The Sanders campaign was driven by a lot of factors, but mainly by long-developing discontent within the Democratic Party and enthusiasm for Sanders himself.

To describe Sanders followers as unwitting dupes who departed the true DNC faith because of evil Russian propaganda is both insulting and ridiculous. It's also a testimony to the remarkable capacity for self-deception within the leadership of the Democratic Party. ...

But when it comes to Trump-Putin collusion, we're still waiting for the confirmation. As Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters put it, the proof is increasingly understood to be the thing we find later, as in, "If we do the investigations, we will find the connections." 

Go read it in full.  When a progressive publication like  Rolling Stone calls this madness, and points out that the establishment just doesn't want to face up to why they lost, it's a bad sign:

The aforementioned Mensch, a noted loon who thinks Putin murdered Andrew Breitbart but has somehow been put front and center by The Times and HBO's Real Time, has denounced an extraordinary list of Kremlin plants.

She's tabbed everyone from Jeff Sessions ("a Russian partisan") to Rudy Giuliani and former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom ("agents of influence") to Glenn Greenwald ("Russian shill") to ProPublica and Democracy Now! (also "Russian shills"), to the 15-year-old girl with whom Anthony Weiner sexted (really, she says, a Russian hacker group called "Crackas With Attitudes") to an unnamed number of FBI agents in the New York field office ("moles"). And that's just for starters.

Others are doing the same. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters, upon seeing the strange behavior of Republican Intel Committee chair Devin Nunes, asked "what kind of dossier" the Kremlin has on Nunes.

Dem-friendly pollster Matt McDermott wondered why reporters Michael Tracey and Zaid Jilani aren't on board with the conspiracy stories (they might be "unwitting" agents!) and noted, without irony, that Russian bots mysteriously appear every time he tweets negatively about them. ...

Some 13.2 million people voted for Sanders during the primary season last year. What percentage does any rational person really believe voted that way because of "fake news"?

I would guess the number is infinitesimal at best. The Sanders campaign was driven by a lot of factors, but mainly by long-developing discontent within the Democratic Party and enthusiasm for Sanders himself.

To describe Sanders followers as unwitting dupes who departed the true DNC faith because of evil Russian propaganda is both insulting and ridiculous. It's also a testimony to the remarkable capacity for self-deception within the leadership of the Democratic Party. ...

But when it comes to Trump-Putin collusion, we're still waiting for the confirmation. As Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters put it, the proof is increasingly understood to be the thing we find later, as in, "If we do the investigations, we will find the connections." 

Go read it in full.  When a progressive publication like  Rolling Stone calls this madness, and points out that the establishment just doesn't want to face up to why they lost, it's a bad sign.

Opera Does Not Reliably Work For Logging In

Anything secure: my brokerage account, my credit union, my IRA just refuses to login.  Back to Firefox.

Why Pass Laws If You Don't Enforce Them?

1/7/20 N.J. 101.5 reports on the history of the guy in the White Settlement mass murder attempt:

Despite Kinnunen's history of mental illness — including a 2012 judge's order declaring him unfit to stand trial — it does not appear his plea deals were enough to trigger legal provisions limiting gun ownership, which would apply in cases involving domestic violence and felonies.....

In Oklahoma in 2011, Kinnunen was charged with felony assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after attacking the owner of a doughnut shop. He was also charged with arson in a separate offense in which he was accused of starting a fire at a cotton field with flaming tampons. Police also said that he forced his underage to throw around a flaming football.

An Oklahoma judge in 2012 ruled him mentally incompetent to stand trial and committed him to a psychiatric facility. A year later, he pleaded guilty after the charges were downgraded to misdemeanors.

Read More: NJ gave Texas church gunman plea deal that wiped out gun felony | https://nj1015.com/nj-gave-texas-church-gunman-plea-deal-that-wiped-out-gun-felony/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

Involuntary commitment is a firearms disqualifier.  So is being deemed mentally incompetent by a court. There is no value to NICS if the courts won't file the information.

House Hunting

We have been out house hunting, even though we will likely not list our current house until spring, when the hills are green.

We went through a house in northwest Boise that was 5 bed, 3 bath for about $351K.  Why so cheap?  A bunch of amateur DIY work that looked awful.  A $100K would make it a very pretty modernized 1970s home.

Today we saw a house in northwest Nampa on almost an acre.  Never went inside; the gate was open and the house unoccupied.  It had a koi pond that made me want to call animal protection. The water was murky, with koi in the bottom and a largely ineffective oxygenation pump.  All the extension cords connections were wrapped in plastic bags!

Around the back of this massive wall of concreted stones was the real pump house; clearly inoperative.  The listing described the pump as amazing.  Yes, it was, in the other denotation of the word.  At least three pumps and multiple lines to aerate a body of water about five feet deep and perhaps ten feet in diameter.  A DIY (disaster is yours) project.  The cost of removing this, filling the hole, and planting grass was likely enough to make the bargain price not so bargainy.  The rear fence was also a disaster; old and falling down.  Rotting Hardiboard and leaking gutter as well.

We looked at some new and almost new subdivision homes in Star that were hovering around $500K and were nice, although on small lots.  One actually had a seasonal creek behind it, impairing view-blocking development.  And it also had a koi pond but one that was properly maintained.

I am going to take out a mortgage to bridge over until our current house sells; then pay off the mortgage.  My loan application will likely cause shock for the loan officer.

Found perfect house in Eagle; while touring it, owner accepted an offer. from someone else while we were touring it.

UPDATE: We saw an even worse DIY yesterday.  Spectacular view, but they had built an add-on which used bricks (at least on one side) for a foundation.  To get around the drainspout issue, the drainspouts were inside the room, leading out under the floor.  The furnace was outside in a shoddy shack open to the elements.  They were asking $460K and were disappointed at the very low offers they had received.  "The value is in the land."

We made an offer last night on a house in Middleton which sits on a ridge with 1.27 acres.  The view is WOW! compared to our current WOW!!! view (three exclamation marks).  Shop and telescope storage will be tight.  Once we sell our current house in the spring, we will pay off the mortgage on the new house and see if there is a way to build a shop/telescope garage that does not block the view.  Middleton is a ways out, but large parcels with any view at all are scarce closer in.

Offer; counteroffer; countercounteroffer; complete.  We walked the boundary line today with the owner, an 80-year-old retired Boeing engineer.  It was much larger than I expected for 1.25 acres, with a considerable drop in elevation.  Any new development will be out of sight.

Now, in spring, we just need to sell our current house to pay off the mortgage and build the observatory.  I am hoping four bedrroms, three baths, four enclosed parking places and this view will do the job.