john's job jar

got so many little things accomplished at the courthouse today. Even cornered the local Fish & Wildlife guy and got me a set of crow tags. I was told to "use 'em up and ask for more when they are filled".... Not bad for a guy thinking he was going to get 2 weeks behind due to jury duty.

Jury Duty

Y'know I have had jury duty less than three years ago? And they are now grabbing me for two weeks starting tomorrow? (Monday) Today that is, less than six hours from now. Personally I had a date with some tin cans, my 10/22, and eight 25 round butler creek magazines. Or maybe the state would let me bag 200 crows this year. I am a little concerned about the abundance or crows, easily five times as much. I have nothing against them, but, I don't like the idea of being overrun in my neighborhood by them either.

Gun of my dreams!

I scored a Kel-Tec SUB 2000, 9mm Folding carbine. Like most of my pets, it eats prodigiously and has a large bark. Nasty bite too! Already the garbage / recycling guys are hating me. Almost every can in next week's recycling has been shot to shreds. There went all the cheap 100 round boxes of winchester ammo I scored before prices went soaring. I have enough wheel weight metal, to cast new bullets, and I'll be reloading this brass 'til the troops come home. the ad said not to use aluminum cased ammo so I saved that for my 994 Hi-Point.

Damned if one of the cases didn't jam in there. I got it free with the range rod. I'm going to see if I can't buy the winchester, or another brand in 10,000 round lots. Til then, I'll chase some cans around the range with 22lr. those, I just police up, and melt into ingots. Some time soon, I gotta mine the lead out of the berm in front of the backstop. We stacked sod in front of the steel so it wouldn't ricochet.

The Pussy Hunt!

At least that's what we called it before someone w/o a sense of humor objected. Now it's officially, "The Kitty Round-up". Myself and three different motorcycle groups, round up as many feral cats as we can, let the vets examine them, spay or neuter them, give them necessary shots, and release them back into their feral habitat. I got the idea yay number of years back from Rossi, and unashamedly stole it. Now we scan through about 20 areas where there is a large population of stray cats once every four months. Last year, I scored the donation of pet id chips, so tracking the kitties is easier, now we just hold a scanner on every cat brought in, and we can focus upon the cats which aren't chipped. lots faster than checking pictures and descriptions. One time one of the ladies suggested a spray of day glo green to mark the kitties done recently....

Crazy, of course! But then chasing down the most un-domesticated felines with only cheap harbor freight welding gloves to keep them from biting down to the bone... THAT'S really crazy...

spring cleaning!

I just finished a session of spring cleaning known as "Mucking out the dog run". This involves removing all the dead leaves, poo, and anything else out there. (I broke the dogs of leaving toys outside. If it's out there during spring cleaning, It goes bye bye.) Then everything gets scrubbed with several kinds of disinfectant. Chester has had several outbreaks of 'hot spot'. (Mild Staph) and I'm going to find those micro buggers, and murder them, and their entire race. and outside the run I have to plant large, fragrant, aromatic, and smelly bushes. Every 2-3 years.... To cover the stink a trio of Rotty's, one Cocker-Dingette, and guest stars, can make. Actually the current bushes are good for another year or more, I just have to work out with my neighbor, a yard of space between her dog run and mine, so I can maintain the shrubs, without one set of doggies or another eating them, or pooping them to death... plus the citronella bushes kill fleas as a beneficial side effect.

changing locks

First I got to remove the locks from the door... Pick open the ones that don't come with a key...
(I like that part, improves my skill set, and I can charge extra.) then I reference the pin depth chart for that model.
Small square on the lid of the big pinning box.
Then rack my memory for the offset. Meaning do I go one or two sizes smaller.
See, when that pin chart was made was 20-40 years ago, and the tolerances have slightly tightened up. Only 5 or ten thousandths... The pins differ in size by either 5 or 3 thousandths. and in diameter by 20 thousandths. In my 25 years of locksmithing I haven't had to splurge on the .003 pin kit or either of the .095 diameter pin kits. I have had to replace the .115 diameter .005 increment pin kit twice. In addition to ordering replacement pins. I used to eyeball the sizes, now I work with an enormous lensed lamp, and tweezers that could be used under a microscope. I just the other day pinned a hundred unit apartment complex. 2 locks per door, and some of the units had a front and back door. Add in the utility closets, the laundry room etc. And you have Big John being one hurting unit at the end of the day....
Usually one does this in stages, as tenants come and go. Sometimes, they don't even change the locks as the tenants come and go, if they get the right number of keys back. But THIS TIME the manager left under a cloud and no one could find his keys. Crack-head probably left them in a drug house somewhere.
So Big John has to come out and do a 12 hour work day to fix everybody's locks. Lest the evil crack-head former manager drive up with a u-haul, and steal everyone's goodies...

Don't get me wrong, I love the work, and the emergency money was right tasty. But the management company is one of those who require a contract before they go to the toilet. And all their contract wanted me to do was pledge to be their free slave on those locks the rest of my life. I tore up the contract and told them that I'd do the work and get paid. My invoice guarantees my work for 60 days. If they can find someone who'll sign their stupid contract, fine. But I'd be willing to bet if he/she were dumb enough to sign that toilet paper, they're too dumb to do the work they signed up for...

In the end they did things my way....
Next time, I'll do the job over two days though.....

the bible told me so.

a few years ago I read something in a book (bible is latin for book) that didn't jibe with my understanding of that subject. I went and grabbed my tools, and experimented until I proved the book wrong. Actually a lot of my friends has read the same line in that book and took it as gospel. The Gospel According to John D MacDonald. It was a procedural issue with how handcuffs can be shimmed. He said that there were special knurled places that prevent shimming. I never found any.

I have escaped from every set of handcuffs ever put on me. The cops now know better than to cuff me in an unsocial situation. I tend to embarrass them in booking by tossing the cuffs to them, as I get out of the car.

I have parlayed this into a good lecture class.

"The second best way to get out of handcuffs is to use a key.
The third way is a shim made from mommy's large bobby pin.
the first? oh that's not to get them put on you to begin with...."

At the end of the class, I give the students a cuff key, a large bobby pin, and tell them to either buy a pair of cuffs, or have a local cop cuff them, and run off with the cuffs. Sorry if I've caused either Matt G or Lawdog to lose a pair of cuffs......

The high cost of Civilization.

I paid three bills on-line today Gas-Electric, Phone, and Cable TV/Internet. It ate up $550 like that. Leisurely civilized living sure costs a lot. I'm seriously thinking of transferring our 43 year old land-line number to a cell phone, and living without cable for a while. I guess I could also cut down on gas and electric expenses. I'm using a wireless laptop that accesses my neighbor's internet. I could do that for a month or three. Then consolidate the phone/cable/internet on cable. There's wild wimmin I could be wasting that money on.

say hello to my little friend

A couple of Mondays ago, I was drifting thru Goodwill with my Dad. Senior Discount Day, YAY! Tools speak to me, An Axe with a weathered handle was like a puppy at the Humane Society. I just Had to take that puppy home. A Random Act of Kindness. I ended up having to split some firewood for a friend who lost their electricity. My new friend and I, after a bonding experience of sharpening, made firewood and stove wood in nothing flat. Now after a bonding experience with an inanimate object, I feel I have to attach a name to the object. A friend left me his stainless .45, and after not having seen him for six months or more, I figured the gun was mine for the money he owed me. I won some awards with it, and had "Grapefruit .45" engraved on the slide to honor it for working, when a certain "as seen on tv" diet aid hadn't.

Of course then the bastard showed up and repaid me -with interest- and demanded his gun back.

When Business is slow at my friend's tattoo shop, I'll take my new friend down there. I'll have him engrave "Random Axe of Kindness" on either side of the blade.....

In other news, my Tracfone has successfully been renewed for another 3 months, hey I love the number.

No I didn't give it a name.

Beyond Disgust

Heath Ledger was found dead this morning. My only feelings in the matter are a great sadness that a young man who had the best of everything, died, either by his own hand, or by random event. What really angered me was the comments below the news article. According to the constitution we have a first amendment right of freedom of expression. This allows one to compare the serving president to a chimp, without being sent to a detention camp. This allows one to comment that the vice-president is not someone you'd want to go duck hunting with. This allows an artist to create a statue of Mary, Mother of Jesus, and cover it with elephant dung.

The people on AOL news commenting on mr. Ledger's untimely death are definitely of the elephant shit variety. I'd like to think that the people who hounded the girl on myspace to her death were the exception to human behavior. It seems they are the rule. Cowardly turds who hide behind the internet's anonymity to be hateful and hurtful.

If you want to impress people with how studly you are....
Fix a broken plaster wall, instead of breaking one.
Heal instead of hurt.

Any stupid shit can break things....
fix what's broken, then you'll impress me.....

Cheating on my true love already???

Yep, I'm such a dog. Those who read my previous post know that I reunited with my one true first love, a Smith and Wesson 469 9mm pistol, after more than 25 years. I'm already cheating on her. I don't regard the little fling with dad's new .38 to be cheating. I'm such a Bill Clinton. I'm running around on her behind her back with a Browning Detective Model. It's not her fault, it's mine. I just fell in love with the way my hands caressingly, but firmly, grip her frame. Actually, I suppose neither one would mind a threesome....