Dusty Devil Dale

Well Snakebite, as you know, If someone is the inquisitive type like me, they can pretty easily wear a TG out with questions that they should already know the answer to. I try to find answers first by reading, before asking. But there are times when reading the present day handbooks and manuals just confuses things more if you're a critical reader. That's when you need an experienced TG to simplify and make sense of things.

Supply-demand is only a part of the hit on fuel consumers. Gouging is happening at all levels. Stations are raising prices each day for fuel they filled their storage tanks with @ much lower prices a month ago-- crying all the way to the bank.

Much of it tastes pretty good if it's fresh and well prepared. "Filling" it definitely is not, unless you want to spend a lot or eat a lot of rice. I tried squid ONLY once -- after chewing it for 25 minutes and not making any progress, I simply had to find a place to politely spit it out. Overall sushi is flavorful and fun at times, but given a choice I'll opt for good Mexican food with good friends, every time.

Thank you.

That seems like the obvious best answer. But I wanted to see 1) if there is a better option and 2) if there is any penalty for wrongfully unloading at the LT.

This weekend, due to Match Director distractions, I accidentally (dumbly) loaded my shorter pistol rounds into my 73 rifle. What is the correct unloading protocol? Technically one may not leave the loading table with a loaded gun except when called to the stage, so just carrying it to the ULT appears not to be an option (without T.O. direction. ) But working the action to remove the rounds won't work with short rounds without jambing, AND it places rounds sequentially in the chamber under a cocked hammer. So, does unloading require each round to be extracted through the receiver using a tool, or the magazine cap to be removed? and where must it take place?

You might try drawing eyes on the old CDs with colored felt pens. It works much better.

Even a small fan helps a lot. It circulates the air and nakrd white noise. Both help support sleep.

My wife's nephew, Charlie, living in Washington State, developed a major brain aneurysm. At the same time her father was in the final, fatal stages of esophageal cancer, down here in Fresno, California. Her Dad passed away at home one Friday afternoon, with my wife and me in close attendance. Her nephew was simultaneously undergoing brain surgery, up in Portland. When he awoke from the anesthesia, the first words out of his mouth to my wife's sister (his Mom) were, "Gee I'm real sorry to hear about Grandpa passing". No one in Washington had yet been made aware of the events down here in Fresno.

It can be done, but like all material removal operations, doing it evenly and not overdoing it is the hard part. Rio Grande sells a number of abrasive buffing compounds and waxes that will do the job. If the matte etching (more likely bead blasting) is deep, some pre-sanding with 220 - 600 grit may be needed. Do be careful not to round over edges, unless you want to reshape the gun.

Here's some more to the story about the clairvoyant woman at my work. (I was reluctant to tell this part, because it is hard to believe and after many years is still real unclear to me.) As background, we worked at the Ca Department of Fish and Game, where I was, at the time, the Fisheries Supervisor. The woman (call her JoAnne) was a member of my field sampling team, collecting adult America Shad for reproductive stage analysis at a nearby reservoir, Millerton Lake. This was the World's only known landlocked reproductive American Shad population. Pacific Gas and Electric Company was relicensing their Kerckhoff Hydroelectric Project at the lake inlet. We were a part of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's environmental analysis, trying to determine if the relicenced and much enlarged hydro operation would affect the fish adversely. We randomly collected individuals from the population weekly, to evaluate reproductive maturity. Every week we had been setting out overnight two very large (150m long by 15m high) drifting monofilament Gill nets near the lake inlet. Typically we would collect from a few to 50 or more Shad, depending on the lunar phase. We set the nets out right at dark, then slept while they fished until daylight. Typically, we tied one end of the net at the shore, then one person drove the big pontoon boat in reverse, while the others payed out the big, bulky nets over the bow. The nets made a vertical wall across about a quarter of the reservoir inlet. JoAnne had been a part of the samplibg team for about two years when she got word of her teaching job appointment and left the program. At the same time, my other field assistant also moved to another job, suddenly leaving me with research responsibilities and no trained crew. I decided to go up alone and set the nets. Joanne told me not to do it, but at the time I had that invincible attitude that most young men have. At the second sampling station, I had the boat idling in slow reverse and was slowly feeding out the net through a wide opening in the bow railing. The 80 lb mono of the net snagged on the rail, so I moved up to free it, walking on the bulky net. In an instant, I was down on the deck, then in the water, with the net caught on my shoe and the boat backing away, pulling the net tight. The lake closed its public gates at dark each day, and it was unlawful for any non-official boat to be on the water. So being rescued was not going to happen. I bobbed around, trying to free my foot from the shoe, when suddenly the boat engine died. It was a new engine that had never unexpectedly died previously. Without the engine pulling against me, I was able to pull on the net and draw the boat toward me. Exhausted, I climbed over the bow and lay there resting. I finished dutifully setting out the net, finishing under the near-full moon about 10:00 PM. I then drove over to the sand bar where we normally camped, built a small driftwood fire, dried out my clothes and shoes, ate my sub sandwich dinner and climbed onto the beached pontoon boat to sleep-- away from the abundant rattlesnakes. Hours later I was awakened by the boat rocking wildly, side to side, with the aluminum pontoons booming against the the sand. That normally occurred in a boat wake, which meant that a fisherman had illegally stayed overnight. We would have to scramble to keep them from running across and fouling in the shallowly submerged nets. I jumped up and instinctively rushed to the boat controls. But there was no other boat ! The lake was glass smooth in the moonlight, except for the circle of big waves emanating from my pounding boat. I note that the boat was just shy of 8' wide, so it normally required good sized waves to rock it side-to- side. The rocking lasted another minute or two, then the motion stopped and the ring of waves attenuated. "Earthquake? I wondered. I climbed back into my warm sleeping bag and faded. The next morning, I hauled in the nets, processed the samples and headed back to the office. Just before noon, my desk phone rang. JoAnne's voice said, "Dale, that was scary-- are you OK?" I instaly felt goose bumps traversing my body and I welled up with tears. How did she know? Had she intervened? Did she rock the boat to communicate? I just don't know those answers. But I cannot simply dismiss the idea that there is another dimension in which each of us participates differentially. (This is a totally true story).

Parts of my life I guess I'd like to re-think. Others I would really like to re-live; especially with what I know now!

In years past log drivers were paid by scaled load volume ( board feet) at the mill. Today most are paid by the hour. It explains why travel is slower today.

Beam me up Scotty. There's no sign of intelligent life down here.

I don't know about ghosts or bigfoots (bigfeet?), but I once worked with a pretty young woman who did some very supernatural seeming things. She shared office space with me and one other man. Right out of silence and with no prior conversation she routinely would blurt out the answer to questions ---- before anyone asked them. The other fellow and I would just stare at each other in disbelief. She did this often and just laughed at our reactions. She moved on to a teaching job and I did not see her for 28 years. One day, I received a 3-word email from an unrecognized cryptic address that said, "See you tomorrow". I immediately deleted it, thinking it was some kind of malware or phishing. The next evening, after sitting in meetings all day in Sacramento, 150 miles from home, I ran into the woman in a book store. She said she had sent me the email. I asked where she found my address and she just laughed.