Category: Opinion

November 26, 2021 – Mindless Help

November 26, 2021 /

Maybe I am just in a snarky mood lately. In August, we received a letter from the Oregon Department of Human Services. My son’s were getting $700 a piece in the form of food stamps from the state for lack of access to food during the pandemic.  The truth is, I threw away the initial letters not believing that we were getting food stamps.  Sure enough one card showed up in the mail about a week later.  What I can only attribute to sloppy execution,  only one card showed up with the full $1400 on it.

Mind you, this is the same collection of helpful individuals that gave out free breakfasts and lunches five days a week to anyone 0-18 starting when school shut down. Lunches were bused to distribution points for those not within walking distance of the schools. Now, school lunches are now free and breakfast has always been free to my knowledge.

A little OpSec here, but last year we were audited by the state of Oregon for 2019 and they determined that we owed an additional $6000. Mind you, we paid $12,000 to the US government in addition to what was previously withheld. I am painting the picture that bills are high because my income is high.

I fail to see the connection between five days of free breakfast/lunch and a good income to qualifying for food stamps. I am not saying that no one had a hard time but the truth is I don’t know anyone that did. Someone I knew as a bartender lost her job but was making more on unemployment than working. She drew that benefit down to the last day before working again.

I do see kids using the card. I see them at Dollar Tree and Seven Eleven buying candy and junk food. I guess they didn’t have access to crap when everything was shut down and now we need to make up for it? Even the school lunches were half junk. Yes there were some fruits and vegetables along with chips and chocolate milk and rice crispy treats. The portions were such that it was almost lunch and dinner sized combined. I know because I saw the bag of carrots everyday unopened in the fridge with two too many chicken strips.

Never having food stamps before, I really don’t know the rules. It seems like they are pretty loose at ‘no prepared foods’. For instance, I learned that you can buy a fountain drink but you cannot add a straw.  Once that happens, it is considered ‘prepared’.  That really means almost anything edible at any store, no restaurants or alcohol. Everything else seems to be fair game.

End Your Programming Routine: I am extremely conflicted. This was my money taken from me to be used without discretion and thought. On the other hand, I do not need or want food stamps. I don’t mean to insinuate that people aren’t struggling. They likely exist in the shadows and the margins where I am not at. What I do know is that this country is awash with fraud and pork that are not necessary in the least.  The decision is we will spend our money, but I wish it didn’t happen in the first place.

November 24, 2021 – Interesting Demographic Information

November 24, 2021 /

Last week, I wrote about ninth amendment permits us the right to create a toxic environment through local legislation. I just happened to run across this article titled ‘Where People In Portland Oregon Are Moving To the Most’. It is really misleading because it talks about the top 50 cities about where people are coming from or going.

I made that statement last Monday using hearsay and not documented facts. I guess that is why I am not exactly a journalist. However, when I analyze the data I think that it supports my case exactly. So if this was a court of law, I would parse this list into bits and justify my claims last week.

According to the data, the majority of the changes were incoming. The were large slices were from San Diego, LA and the Bay area. Like I said last week, “a better California”. There were also big numbers from Chicago, Boston, New York/Jersey, Atlanta, Dallas, St Louis, Washington DC and other large metro areas. Again, who wouldn’t want to leave most of those places?

Many of the moves within the state are pretty understandable. When I graduated college, I too moved to the Portland metro area for opportunity. My professors only knew of one business that hired chemists in the area. At that time, I wasn’t ready to give up on Oregon with all of our family here, so Portland was the obvious choice.

It is the leaving that I found more interesting. There were three exceptions to places that were less conservative: Corvallis and Eugene which are both college towns that have 20,000 students and all of their support for that effort and Seattle. I don’t have a good grasp of that one.

I feel like Seattle and Portland have always been close. They share the same geographic positioning and climate. They are separated by about 3 hours of freeway and are similar in demographic makeup. My sister lives in that area, so I have been there some. From my long held opinion I have felt like Seattle was a more serious, mature and conservative Portland. That is how I am going to categorize that move. It does seem like the gap is narrowing between the two, so I would consider someone moving there a new start.

The balance of the other moves out are to places that I would consider ‘free-er’. They all would have lower tax rates for sure and definitely a more conservative mindset. Both high on the list Salem and Longview are commutable to Portland. Places such as Kennewick, Bend, Spokane, Salt Lake City and Boise fall into the American Redoubt portion of the country.

Others made the list as ‘I can see that’ such as Houston, Tucson, Phoenix and Las Vegas. Although I don’t know a lot about the politics, at least from a tax standpoint are more conservative.

From 2010-2019, Oregon was the number one destination for people moving into the state for several of those years. By far and away, those people moved into the Portland area. That also skews the analysis a bit. For sure a lot of people moved in, but when you look at the statistics, a lot moved out too as a result of ideological displacement. I have said it multiple times, that this is not the state that I grew up in. The left/right equilibrium no longer exists and this state has become politically unbearable for the moderates.

End Your Programming Routine: I didn’t cover everything here. There are some outliers still like more people moved to Philadelphia from Portland. I found the article in the link very interesting.  From a trend standpoint, I think it is pretty clear that that the data supports my accusation last week. 

November 15, 2021 – What Does Free America Look Like?

November 15, 2021 /

After spending a week in the Midwest, I can say that there is a stark contrast between the nanny states and free America. My tour was fairly limited to Minnesota and Iowa, but it was at least a sampling of somewhere else.

The biggest difference I would attribute to attitude.

  • Fear of Covid-19
  • Fear of the unvaccinated
  • Fear of government
  • Fear of what others thought
  • Fear of the unknown

I spent a night in Minneapolis waiting for my flight back home. Everyone that I spoke with said that I should walk the ‘Mall of America’ because I was only one mile away from my hotel. So, I did. And the first thing I observed was that 75% of the people were in the mall without a mask on.

I spent the majority of the week in Iowa and I would say that the status quo dissatisfaction quotient is higher there than in Minnesota. The official state policy is that masks are not required for the vaccinated. I would estimate that it was more of a 90% unmasked interaction.

My personal view is that I support right to choose. I also support the businesses right to go above and beyond and require masks. Masked were required by my employer, so I wore one even in the car for five hours with my co-worker. While in Iowa the policy changed and so did I (as well as all of the other employees).

You may live in free America… I don’t. I know that the official policy mandated by the state is mask required. I was at Costco last night and we were the other direction; 95% of the people were wearing masks. As to the others? I am not sure if they were disregarding the rules or they were taking them off after entry.

This should be the great benefit of a republic. We should have the freedom to live in idiotic states and be happy. If we are not happy, then we have the freedom to go somewhere else. Oregon has been my home most of my life but I have lived elsewhere and I am getting to the point that I would rather be somewhere else.

If we really believed in the Constitution, then the ninth and tenth amendments would be strong rather than non-existent. Specifically stating (9th) that powers not specifically mentioned in the constitution belong to the people and that (10th) the federal government only has powers mentioned in the Constitution. The ninth amendment gives the power to the state of Oregon to create mask mandates. The tenth amendment forbids 1) the existence of the FAA and 2) the FAA to require all airlines enforce mask use.

We the people have the right to create a near totalitarian hell if we so choose. We have the right to permit homeless camps to block access to municipal pumps so our houses and neighborhoods flood. We have the right to mandate business with the state require unproven vaccines that also don’t hep vulnerable people and who knows what future consequences will be. We have the right to create recycling programs that we pay for and cannot use. Because our first amendment and the freedom to assemble, we have the right to have months of daily riots and destruction without consequences. I will talk about the difference between enumerated rights some other day, but that is the premise.

End Your Programming Routine: Friday we are leaving for more of free America. We will be spending the holiday week in Texas. I am sure that there will be more on this topic later in the month. There is no surprise to me that population demographics are rapidly shifting. Oregon has grown dynamically in the last ten years because it is a cheaper California. Idaho, Montana and Utah have grown tremendously over the last couple years because they are are better and cheaper than Oregon.

November 5, 2021 – What Do You Say When No One is Listening?

November 5, 2021 /

I woke up this morning and the first thing that I read was a story by a local city counselor that resigned. You can read the story if you like and I am not going to try and paraphrase it. But to boil it down, he resigned over philosophical differences and personal priorities.

As I read the quotes by the different parties, the situation sounded hostile. But, I had to side with Counselor Day. He was the one that took a stand for right and also potentially suffered the consequences. It is easy to see on social media people acting in an echo chamber of similar beliefs or under the mask of anonymity using a screen name. What takes courage is to act on belief.

I have in my office a book by Paul Harvey called “Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor” which I have had in my possession since I was a in middle school. It was written in 1956, my book was printed for the bicentennial in 1976 and is about the risk this countries’ founders took by backing what they thought was right. It reiterates that the risk of publicly supporting independence was a potential death sentence. But even more so, most of the people that the book chronicles lost everything for what they believed.

I want to say that this book was probably ‘rah-rah’ patriotism. But, to me it is much deeper than that. If you have ever read the the story “Who Moved My Cheese?’ by Spencer Johnson. It is a cute, short story with a deep moral message about embracing change. Paul Harvey’s story is about people willing to stand on what they believe regardless of the consequences.

Let us not be fools and promote social suicide or even worse physical harm. You might believe that drowning cats is the best thing for the world because the kill wild birds and poop in your flower beds even though the neighbor owns the cat. Every action has consequences. What I am promoting today is having the courage to speak your beliefs and act accordingly. That also means tolerating other’s who let the ‘freak flag fly’. The anarchist non-aggression principal should apply here. Anything that does not harm others should be permissible.

With that disclaimer in place, we can get back on track. We all act differently when alone or within a close circle because the same behavior is inappropriate in all circles. It is knowing and understanding those boundaries along with the charge of presenting genuine self in situations that matter. I can’t say the number of business meetings I have left with the quote “Anyone have any further questions or comments?” to have silence. That is followed immediately by gossip and opinion.

It is unfortunate that my experience has led me to be jaded and mistrustful. Many (many, many, many) times I have found leadership to be unqualified or just plain poor. There is a delicate balance between trying to be firm and helpful and being obstinate. I know that my personality starts to shut down when conflict starts to occur frequently and I begin to write people off as potential to work productively.

I probably have covered this in the past, but I was very open about my unhappiness in my previous job with my employer. It was that openness that led me directly to quitting. When discussing the options with my boss, it was clear that what I wanted and what was were never going to merge for both of us. It was scary and it was conflicting but it was pure freedom. Here is the thing about freedom, we always hear about it like it is all sunshine and roses. Freedom has personal responsibility and accountability associated with it. We have to accept implied risk in order to reap the ultimate reward.

One last story here. Yesterday I saw a tall, chubby individual wearing a knee length dress and bright yellow t-shirt walking in a downpour across the grass toward the crosswalk. At first, I thought that this was a frumpy, young girl that lacked fashion forward clothing. Since I was at the intersection, I was watching what direction this person was walking so that I could do the right thing as the driver. Upon looking more closely, I could see extremely hairy legs and a mullet cut and I recognized that this was a male wearing a dress. There were uniform dolls and rainbow patches on the backpack solidifying my suspicion that this wasn’t a wardrobe mistake, this was a statement.

At first I was sad. I don’t know why God created individuals that struggle with their identity or their sexual affinity. I also think about future hardship with life living in a ‘normal’ world. But, then I had a slight change of heart. How much courage must it take to openly be yourself? Do I have the ability to be my true self? Would I stand for who I am because I feel differently than the status quo? I like to say yes, but here I am, another keyboard warrior typing into the abyss.

End Your Programming Routine: As I sit here typing, this one has taken a long time. I think about all the threads of life sort of coming at me in the last couple of days. The news and observations with the theme of being genuine might be a hint that I need to pay more attention. There are some situations that I am not exactly happy about but I haven’t done anything to change or address them yet. My tendency is to hope to weather the storm and that things will get better. That largely is often not the case. So, I have to decide if it is worth the risk or pain to be genuine.

November 1, 2021 – What Is Going On?

November 1, 2021 /

This is again another test post. I am going between it seems like it is working on one machine occasionally but I have also gotten it to fail on IOS and a Linux installation as well. So, this is a quick test because my laptop is working again.

My support case left me with the problem being mine. I suppose the only change that I made between last week and today was that I rebooted my router over the weekend. I doubt that is the case, however it seems to be working today on my laptop but not on my desktop.

Since I am writing this on a wireless internet connection, I tried rebooting all of the wired switches in between for my wired computer, no dice. Combined with flushing the DNS was the last suggestion from support that I did over the weekend. I suppose the good news is that it enabled my laptop to begin to work again.

I am stuck here. Support says that it is my problem. The only discernible difference I can see is that my desktop is running Windows 10 21H1 and my laptop is running 20H2. But the other kicker is that the problem is not device and OS agnostic anymore. IOS 14.8 displays the same problem.

End Your Programming Routine: Troubleshooting is sometimes a very difficult process. For now, it seems like my laptop is working, so I guess I will ride that while I keep looking for the solution to the problem.

October 22, 2021 – Is This a Rant or is This Satire?

October 22, 2021 /

I am toying around with the idea of the Friday subject being humorous. Unfortunately, I felt last week wasn’t that funny and I cant decide if I want to go angry or satire here today. So, I am going to write and then we will see what happens.

In 1971, Oregon passed a statute where retailers would collect a $0.05 deposit per container sold. Consumers would return the empty containers back to the store for a refund on the deposit. It was colloquially called the Bottle Bill. At the time, it was unique and became part of the state’s identity. This was the state with no sales tax, you can’t pump your own gas, all beaches are public and containers were worth $0.05 a piece. You can read the article if you like for all of the history on the bill, but it was amended in 2011 such that if the total rate of redemption fell below 80% for two consecutive years, then the deposit would be raised by $0.05. In 2017, the deposit was raised to $0.10.

Having grown up in Oregon and being born after the bill was passed, this all seemed pretty normal. I lived a few years in South Carolina which didn’t have a bottle bill and my opinion started to change. Before I go too much farther, I am not anti recycling, It makes complete sense to reuse resources when so much sunk cost is already invested. I do what I can to make sure the materials are sorted properly and clean at my own home. But, if you have never dealt with the system, then what I am saying probably doesn’t make a lot of sense.

First, I will start with some constraints. When redeeming containers, there is a limit to how many can be redeemed at a retailer. That limit is 144 per day and traditionally, retailers would only accept containers that originated from the retailer. That meant that store brand A could not be redeemed at store B. So, containers had to be sorted by potential acceptance or redeemed at multiple stops. There is however no limit on how much deposit a consumer can pay in one transaction.

Most people, myself included put empties into a bag until you got tired of looking at it or you thought it was worth redeeming. So, that was a big hassle. Oregon created ‘redemption centers’ where people could return all containers. There, the limit was raised to 300 containers a day and in theory was brand agnostic. However, I have seen on numerous occasions that off brand or seasonal containers could not be read by the machine and would have to incur another step of hand counting.

With that, they also created a bulk return where people could simply drop of bags to be counted at convenience of the facility and put into an account. What most people don’t realize with this part of the system is that there is a limit of 15 bags per quarter and that bags may contain no more than 120 containers.

I happen to know that depending on the container, more than 120 can fit into a bag. What happens to the overage? It goes into a ‘store account’ or some sort of war chest for the redemption center. I found this out from someone that worked there. Me, as the one who paid the deposit, held onto the containers, made the logistical arrangements to return them and waited in line to leave them only get credit for less than I left. By the way, all containers must be in readable condition, meaning the label must be intact and visible.

Now, fast forward to March 2020. Part of the Oregon government response to Covid was to temporarily suspend bottle redemption (not the collection of the deposit). The only way to now return them was to use the bulk return option. This was in effect for most of 2020, things have slowly opened up this year. However, there is no doubt the retailers have gained the upper hand on redemptions as they have started limiting hours and further pushing the return limits lower.

The state thought that this program worked so well that they instituted another type program for paint. This time, there is a $1/gallon fee charged so that if you end up with leftover paint, the remainder can be returned back to certain paint stores for ‘recycling’. Now, they don’t really recycle. They mix compatible colors and types and resell the paint at a discount.

The problem with this program is that the transportation crunch has led the recyclers to stack up to the point that there is no room left to accept any more paint. Now, I cant even get rid of the paint. I have become particularly sore as I have been cleaning up the in-laws property as there was way too many extra gallons around.

End Your Programming Routine: As I stated in the beginning, I am not anti-recycling. What I am against is forcing consumers to pay for programs that don’t deliver. In 1971, curbside recycling was 20 years in the future. The bill was envisioned as a litter prevention program not a virtue provider. I don’t even blame the retailers for there reluctance, this is a mandate that has little value at this point. What I am saying is that it is time to end the feel good programs because in the end, the only people that feel good about it are the ones that are making the money.

Ok, we are at the end… I guess it was a rant. Still looking to end the week on a high note in the future. Have a good weekend.

October 19, 2021 – Technology’s Tower of Babylon

October 19, 2021 /

Growing up in Corvallis, Oregon feels like a unique and special place for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) or at least it used to be. In 1946, four alumni from Oregon State University (also in Corvallis) formed an engineering juggernaut called CH2M. Eventually, this organization became one of the premier and largest engineering and consulting companies in the world (at least when I worked there).

Because of that, OSU became one of the top engineering schools in the country. This also attracted some other business, specifically Hewlett-Packard. They built a huge campus in Corvallis and for a period of time, this was the ink-jet capitol of the world. Probably some lessor known things about HP were that they established business making measurement equipment for Disney. They had an entire division of scientific and test equipment that was spun off as Agilent in 1999. They were also the inventor’s of the handheld calculator.

My dad started working at CH2M in 1966. Drafting was done by paper and ruler, but that doesn’t mean that the company wasn’t early adopters. A new headquarters was built in Corvallis in 1982 which included a basement with a mainframe computer. There was lots of crossover between what was happening at HP and CH2M including engineers using calculators and computers.

My dad said that his first calculator cost $500 which is over $1600 in today’s dollars. I think that was in the mid to late 1970’s. By the time the middle 1980’s came around, basic calculators were in the $5 range. Scientific calculators were still around $20 mark. HP probably should have seen the writing on the wall but their product was far superior in computing power and durability to the competition.

I bought my calculator, the HP48SX in 1991. It was a technological marvel at the time. It wasn’t the first graphing calculator but it was much better than the previous generation the HP28. Here are some of the functions.

  • Plug in adapter for power in addition to battery
  • Printer for output
  • IR communication between other HP48 calculators
  • Two expansion slots for programming

As a matter of fact, I even had games downloaded to the calculator. I had Joust, Tetris, Kong and Hangman. We are talking about an era that the Nintendo Gameboy had only been on the market several years. All this came at a cost, I paid $250 for the calculator. I bought a math module for another $100 that could do calculus.

What else happened in 1991? Texas Instruments introduced a competitor called the TI-81 for $80. I don’t think it was as nice or as durable as the HP but the cost opened the market for the masses. HP followed up with the HP48GX in 1993 and doubled down with more features (and cost). But, the damage was done. College classes started requiring graphing calculators and the TIs were sold in droves.

In the late 1990’s, when you started to compare the computing speed of the HP’s to the the TI’s, you started to see a real chasm. The TIs were getting faster, cheaper and better while the HP stayed the same. I wasn’t even aware that HP was still making calculators until I looked a couple of weeks ago. It seems like they have a color, touchscreen version now that is around $150. Last I looked in the mid 2000s, I didn’t see any calculators for HP.

End Your Programming Routine: I have a lot of hours on my calculator. It was a good investment for me; I used it through most of high school, all of college and into my career as a chemist. In retrospect, if I had known how the market was going to work, the math module was probably not a good investment and I could have easily gotten off with the cheaper, non-expandable version and saved $100. Doing calculus was really clunky and this could only do simpler calculations. Even with a computer, my calculations were taking over an hour. HP may feel the same way too. If they had known how the market was going to work maybe they wouldn’t have tried to build the best calculator but retain being the choice for the technology.

October 18, 2021 – What is Western Oregon Deer Hunting Really Like

October 18, 2021 /

My outdoor experiences are quite contrasting in the last two weeks. My trip to central Oregon was blue bird skies and relaxation in the boat. Yesterday, my son and I were slashing brush in the rain forest.

If you are not familiar with west coast geography, specifically Oregon then let me try to briefly describe. Moving from west to east, there are two sets of mountain ranges. The first one is called the coastal range, the highest peak is about 4000′ in elevation. Then, there is a valley nearly sea level in elevation followed by the Cascade range where the highest peak is 12,000′

The prevailing wind blows it is generally in the same direction, west to east. It causes a high amount of rain/snow on the western side of each range as the clouds drop moisture moving over the ranges. Consequently, the eastern side is much drier than the western side. Annual rainfall looks like this 80/40/10″ corresponding to the coast, valley and then east of the Cascades.

The way that Oregon breaks out deer/elk/etc. tags are roughly everything on the west side of the Cascades are over the counter. That means that anyone that is licensed can purchase a tag up until the first day of the season. Everything that is east of that is awarded by lottery draw. With my dad, brother and uncle we apply for the lottery each year and this year we did not win so I bought over the counter tags.

In the picture above, my son and I are walking down an abandoned road in a national forest. This road was once used for logging purposes, probably seventy years ago. Part of the changes in access over the last twenty years have had major consequences for hunters like myself.

When I started hunting in the 1980s the geographical landscape was pretty much the same. There are large swags of national forest or BLM land and large tracks of private timber company property. In the late 1980s, Oregon had the highest revenue from public timber of all of the states which had been the case since the early 1970s. Because all of that success, basically all of old growth timber was cut and the replant was not ready to harvest.

This caused political change. The forest service shifted from revenue to conservation which harkens back to the ‘spotted owl debate‘. The large timber companies went on business as usual because they already owned huge tracts of land and were diversified in other areas of the country and even Canada. It was the mom and pop mills that folded as a result of no supply.

Now that public land was largely left to grow wild, private timber land saw the brunt of the hunters. Why? because you cannot see anything in this jungle. If you choose to go in, the brush is over your head and good luck dragging a rifle and a backpack. Also, with less people working in the forest there was less ownership of the overall resource and then came trouble. As a result, private land owners put up gates.

Industry consolidation and streamlining means that there are far fewer vertically integrated companies owning land. For instance, Weyerhaeuser bought all of Willamette industries who acquired all the land that they owned as well. Weyerhaeuser’s policy as of about 10 years ago is to sell leases for access. Boil that down to essentially one person has exclusive access for recreational purposes. The leases are also highly restrictive to even bringing guests.

The situation for a lot of the other timber companies is that there is no lease program, just a gate. The general policy for access is walk-in. Nothing wrong with that, I do but it concentrates other hunters to essentially the main roads. Contrasting that hunting on the east side of the state and you can at least walk off the road and through the forest.

As my son and I spent time in the woods, I couldn’t help but feeling that the environment was sterile. Yes, we saw sign that animals have been in the area but I also saw a lot of boot prints. Who knows how many hunters in the last few months have walked down this same road. We saw no rabbits, squirrels, chipmunk, birds, turkeys, fox or anything for that matter. There have been times in the woods where I sit down and see or hear other animals moving about, not yesterday.

This is why western Oregon hunting is tough. The weather is miserable, the terrain is extremely difficult, the access is competitive and the probability is slim to none. We do all of this to get 40-60 pounds of meat and maybe some antlers to put on the wall? It has to be a labor of love more than anything productive.

End Your Programming Routine: You don’t get anything when you don’t try. And, you also rarely are successful when you don’t spend much time learning the patterns and habits of the area year round. I have seen deer in the area and I have seen recent encouraging sign when I have hunted this area in the past. This is why I choose to go back. My thoughts on it for this year are better luck somewhere else, I just don’t know where at this point.

October 13, 2021 – Why I Hate eBay and Online Shopping

October 13, 2021 /

We are starting to come around to the point where I have said everything that I want to say. This is a bit facetious, I have mentioned this in passing in a previous post that I dislike ordering online. Today I am going to make my case.

About four years ago, I purchased a rifled barrel for my Remington shotgun. My thoughts were there are some areas around here that are restricted to shotgun hunting only. They are close and maybe I could sit for a half an hour on my way to work or on my way home. This is not to say that I couldn’t use my shotgun as is, but then my range would be limited to about 50 yards. With this new barrel, it makes 150 yards possible.

I did hunt with it a bit. But, then my son got into trap shooting. So, then I was switching barrels and setups several times a week so I thought that it would be good to add another rifled barrel to the inventory. I do have two other shotguns. One is also a Remington in 20 gauge. The problem is since they have gone bankrupt and have been dispersed, used barrels have tripled in price. My other option is a Mossberg shotgun in 12 gauge.

These extra barrels seem to be mostly available (new) before hunting season and then they kind of disappear for the rest of the year. Fortunately, Mossberg barrels have not skyrocketed in price because they are still being made but all the new inventory is already sold out.

I looked on Gunbroker and I looked on eBay. Because I have thoroughly researched what I wanted, I knew that the model numbers were 90121 and 90049. One is parkerized while the other is blued and since my shotgun is actually stainless, having either barrel is fine with me. They actually made a stainless version at one time and I should have bought it when I saw it but they are really rare.

I couldn’t find what I wanted using the part number in either site. I do know that the model number is often not posted. It is not stamped on the barrel anywhere so I searched ‘Mossberg 500 rifled barrel 12 gauge’ and several choices came up. I did read the description and and bought the barrel. About ten minutes after I made the purchase, it occurred to me that this was probably not what I wanted. For whatever reason, Mossberg makes a barrel with rifle sights but it is not rifled and that is what I bought.

The lore on barrels and chokes are such that it is best to use a cylinder bore choke when shooting rifled slugs. The reason being is that all the other chokes provide some level of constriction which impact the slugs travel to some degree. This barrel has a fixed cylinder choke specifically for firing rifled slugs. To that end, my 18″ barrel also has a cylinder choke. My field barrel has removable chokes and I have a cylinder choke for that barrel as well.

What about the sights? I already have a red dot on the shotgun and I wanted this style of barrel for this reason. The other style of barrel has a cantilever mount for scope. I have this on my Remington and I think that is a great design, but it would interfere with my already installed red-dot and they are about 50% more expensive.

It was too late, there was nothing that I could do. I bought something that I have no real use for. Additionally, I don’t see a way to sell it, I don’t think that it is really has a market because I don’t know why anyone would really want this barrel. I might be able to trade it at the local gun store?

End Your Programming Routine: The Latin phrase Caveat Emptor comes to mind. Translated, it means buyer beware. I don’t necessarily think the seller did anything wrong, the description did not state that the barrel was rifled. I am slightly PO’d that the eBay search brought up related items and not what I was looking for and that I didn’t try to verify this is what I was looking for. It actually didn’t even occur to me until after the transaction. If I was physically looking at it, I would have known right away. It doesn’t mean that I am not going to buy again on eBay, but I can chalk this up as another online disappointment.

September 24, 2021 – Friday Night Lights

September 24, 2021 /

Hopefully, we will end on a high note this week. I have talked a little bit about the potential drawbacks of living in a small town. However, one of the great things about living in a small town is the cohesiveness around something (sometimes). One of those seem to be football on Friday nights. Sure, not everyone is there but those that are are into it.

It was 2012 when we had some discussions with my wife’s sister about my nephew coming to live with us. I won’t get into all the dynamics of the decision, but in essence he moved in around the time school started. At that point, he was in eighth grade and played football. At that time playing in middle school games were on Wednesday. As he progressed in High School, Freshman games were on Thursday and then JV games were on opposite fields of the Varsity game but on Fridays. We became accustomed to scheduling our Friday Nights around the football schedule.

Since my nephew graduated over four years ago, we haven’t attended games so rigidly as previously. But it doesn’t mean that we haven’t gone to a game or two a year. Last year, was atypical because the games were in the spring and attendance was limited to parents of the players and a handful of students. This year, things are back to a degree of normalcy and my kids are playing in the Pep Band. So, I watched the game last Friday once again.

To try and express what I am feeling better I will try to describe the environment. In the middle picture it is halftime. Local children are playing catch on the field. The last picture is post the game and parents, players, fans and others are socializing on the field. To me that says that we belong here.

One year, we were watching the homecoming game and to our surprise, there were fireworks after the game. Apparently, fireworks were ordered for another event in town and it got rained out so they decided to launch the fireworks at the football game instead. I haven’t seen this in a couple of years, but for a short time there was a pre-game tailgater.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not saying that a stadium that holds maybe 1000 people represents the entire community. There are a number of people that choose to run their business or don’t have any current connections to the school, maybe their children attended. But for those that chose to attend, it does represent what is good about living in a small town.