Not a Day Too Early for Snow Tires

For my wife's Jeep

Another Mass Murder

20+ dead in a church in San Antonio.   Shooter dead.   No other details yet.   Another tragedy.

11/5/17 ABC News:

Martin said that the suspect was found dead in his truck after running off the road near the county line after fleeing and being fired upon by a local resident at the church. Investigators remain unsure of whether or not he was killed by a self-inflicted gunshot or by a shot fired by the local resident.

International Business Times reports about the shooter:

Kelley was reportedly a former United States Air Force service member, who received a dishonorable discharge and was court-martialed in 2014, CBS News reported. Investigators said they were looking into Kelley’s alleged social media posts, including one that may have shown an AR-15 semiautomatic weapon.

So not a lawful gun owner.

Vegas Shooter Again

11/3/17 Miami Herald:

The man who killed 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas last month had been depressed after losing a significant amount of money in the past two years and that may have been a "determining factor" in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, the city's sheriff said.

Gunman Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old high-stakes gambler and real estate investor, had lost a "significant amount of wealth" since September 2015, which led to "bouts of depression," Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said in an interview this week with Las Vegas news station KLAS-TV.

 Now, this is plausible.  He was angry at the casino.  He wants revenge.  Antidepressants sometimes energized depressed people to a state where their anger can be expressed in very dangerous, aggressive ways.  Diazepem's side effects do not list such, but again, this could be a six sigmas from the norm consequence; humans are amazingly variable.

A tragedy, but someone this rich and organized cannot be stopped.  Two tanker trucks of the binary poison gas available at WalMart could have done worse damage.  An bomb on the side of a gasoline truck driven into the crowd would have caused enormous loss of life from collisions, then the bomb would have sent out a sheet of flaming gasoline.

Snow

It was snowing as I returned home from the sleep study this morning.  Not very much, but enough to have a small amount on the Jeep's windshield.  It's time to order some Michelin X-Ice tires for the Jeep, and get mine swapped on.  My all-season tires on the Jag are probably at legal minimum depth.  I am beginning to lose traction a bit in deep puddles, so they probably won't need saving when I put my ice tires on.

Last Night's Sleep Study

They had me undergo another of these.  The bad part is all the wires and sensors everywhere.  The BiPAP device I use won't change; just a change to the firmware to make it adapt to  my breathing patterns.   The results last night were amazing.  This was the best  night's sleep I have had in many years.  I woke up after eight hours fresh and alert.

Our Cat

We stayed him on antibiotics last night,  hoping this solves the problem.  The next step the vet suggested would be Prozac. I really do not want to give him up.

Boise Area: Need a Mouser?

The puppy and the cat (Tater) are not hitting it off.  The puppy wants to play with the strange looking dog; Tater is not happy, and has started expressing himself by territorial spraying.  Between the two of them, they are going to ruin at least the smell of the house. if not the furniture  I love Tater; he likes to sit on my lap and purr, while I scratch him behind the ears, but the puppy is non-negotiable, and that means the cat has to go.  He is 15 years old, litter box trained (if you don't have a puppy--he has coexisted with adult dogs in the past), he probably has not many years left, and in good health (a couple rotten teeth recently removed) but he has been a pretty effective mouser and he can be quite adorable.