Buyers Market?

I don't really care what the Lame Street Media tries to tell you. When a 40 year old house, missing the kitchen faucets, built in oven, range, and some flooring gets over 5 offers on the first business day after listing...

That's a seller's market no matter how you look at it.

Speaking of Rain

I took this picture last weekend:


Click to zoom. You can see the surface meniscus as well as a small dead bug indicating the water level.

That's 4 3/16". Rain is good. This is AZ. Rain is always good. But half our annual rainfall in 3 days?

And it's started raining again. Another 3/4" this evening.

The FedEX guy is my friend

Brand new (used) pretty just showed up. Or as my Browncoat buddies would say "Ooohh, shiny"

It's a semi custom Larrivee 6-string. LS-03. It is one of the Forum-III guitars, that were custom ordered by the folsk at the Larrivee Forum.

Custom 12-fret design, herringbone soundhole rosette, bone sadle. Clean fretboard with no markers except three dots at the 12th fret. There were several options, this one is Italian Spruce over Mahogany, with maple binding and end cap. Previous owner upgraded the original Ping Tuners with some nice Gotoh 510s.

Signed by Jean Larrivee, #34 of 78. Given the wood choices available, there are only about 3-dozen guitars like this in the world.

Pictures later. For now here is a pic of the guitar being built at the Larivee factory in Vancouver. (3rd from left)




Ok one more of the soundhole:

Snark of the Day

Heard on the radio this morning:

"For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of the people of Massachusetts."

Snicker. All right. That one is just mean.

Signs of the Comming Apocalypse

We have a Republican Senator Elect from Massachusetts. I repeat, a Republican from Massachusetts.

Everyone keep an eye out for plagues of locusts, fire from the sky, the sun turning black as a coalsack, and a guy riding a pale horse.

In other news, I think we should all congratulate Theodore "Ted" Kennedy on his accomplishment. After all, he just made, 90 days clean and sober.

Hubrus -Redux

I spoke about Hubris the other day.

The Democrats have completely misjudged the last election. They think they won, rather than that the Republicans lost. This is a not-so subtle distinction.

This is what actually happened: The fiscal conservative wing of the Republican party stayed home in droves last election. Why? Mostly because they were sick and tired of big-spending Republicans. If the Republican base had turned out in the same numbers as it did for the previous election McCain would have won.

Yes there are huge differences between the two major parties, but a lot of people when confronted with a "Tax and Spend Conservative" vs. a "Tax and Spend Liberal" say, ah screw it, opened another beer to drown their sorrows, and stayed home.

Thus, the next election is the Republicans to loose, though one should never underestimate their ability to "seize defeat from the jaws of victory". If they listen to Newt, they will win big.

I say this because Newt is publicly saying things that I have been saying for years, namely, Don't run against the other guy . Run against his ideas.

80%+ of Americans think it is morally wrong to visit the undertaker and the tax man on the same day. (death tax)

80%+ of Americans think that if they have to balance their budget, then so does the government.

80%+ of Americans, regardless of their position on Abortion, think that the government should not be paying for them.

80%+ of Americans now think the "stimulus" was a waste of money.

Stop running against the other GUY run against his IDEAS . Make him defend positions that 80% of Americans age against.

Brown gets it. The latest polls show Brown winning in Massachusetts by 3 to 11 points!!!

Brown wining in Taxachusetts, seems unimaginable. Yet the polls show otherwise. If you watched the debate, he's Good. His "it's not the Kennedy's Seat, it's not the Democrat's seat, it's the people's . seat" won him a lot of favor and donations. And the arrogance of the Democratic party isn't helping their cause. They figured it was the safest seat in the whole country so they nominated a dim bulb they thought they could control.

Only problem, she's such an obvious dim bulb that every time she opens her mouth the Dems loose more votes.

Possibilities

A new load, and new possibilities.
Is it a good load? How will it perform? The future is uncertain, and only through diligent empiricism will we know.

158 grain hard cast from a local supplier (Laredo Bullets)
4.3 Grains of Hodgdon Universal.
Federal Small Pistol Primers
Miscellaneous unsorted .38 special brass.

I loaded 100 of these this evening, now to find time to try them. Aye, there's the rub.

Now, Federal primers have a bit of a reputation for sensitivity. There are some competitors out there (mostly revolver guys) who have their triggers and mainsprings set so lightly that only Federal primers will function reliably.

Compare the packaging of Federal primers to standard Winchester primers. I think Federal might believe their own hype:

Hubris

After getting a touch distracted by the differences between "ethical Libertarianism" and "pragmatic libertarianism" my friend Aretae ponders the nature of Left Wing Hubris:
http://aretae.blogspot.com/2010/01/flavors-of-libertarian.html
Which frankly is not that different from Right Wing Hubris.

Both are founded in the belief that "We can make things better. The problem is not the system, the problem is we are not in charge."

No. The problem is the system. Or to quote one of the greatest philosophers of our age:

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something.

Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let’s play that over again, too.

Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure “good” government; it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare--most people want to run things but want no part of the blame. -R.A.Heinlein

My good friend Ernie Hancock once explained how, if a Libertarian was ever elected President, he wouldn't need to be elected president. The inaugural address goes like this:

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?
Um, yeah, so like, you're all free now.
I'm going to go play golf.

It's called personal responsibility.

QOTD -Thomas Sowell Edition

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it. - Thomas Sowell

Make that quote of the year, (last year anyway).