Tag: expectations

November 3, 2026 – Spoken Like a True Idiot

November 3, 2026 /

From an article on MSN “The rifle found hidden inside a wall during a house renovation“

Old houses have a way of keeping score. Sometimes that means faded newspapers, handwritten notes, or, in far rarer cases, a rifle sealed inside a wall.

Why A Hidden Rifle Stops A Renovation Cold

A firearm discovery changes the mood of a renovation instantly. What starts as a dusty demolition job becomes a scene that demands caution, patience, and a clear head.

That reaction is not overblown. According to reporting from The Independent, one Dallas-area renovation uncovered a weapon hidden inside a wall, the kind of find that reminds homeowners how unpredictable older properties can be. News stories about hidden rooms, false walls, and concealed caches appear often enough to feel familiar, but an actual gun is different because it carries obvious safety risks.

Even an old rifle that looks forgotten can still be dangerous. Ammunition may be nearby, metal parts can remain functional, and no one opening a wall can know at a glance whether the gun is loaded, altered, or unstable after decades in a dark cavity.

Feel free to read the rest of this by clicking on the link at the top if you like.

This is truly what is wrong with America today. I can’t blame the guy who has probably never seen let alone handled a firearm for not knowing what to do. The mere fact is that the firearm was in the wall the whole time and simply exposing it has nothing to do with danger. And drywall is no threat to stopping metal shards.

I will admit this would be unusual and there are plenty of things that somehow made it behind walls. Watch This Old House and you will see this from time to time. My cousins found a 22LR revolver in their basement. Heck, I have put stuff in the walls to be found later. Where do you think the time capsule went?

If you read the article, just imagine substituting a few words. Instead of “a rifle in the walls” you wrote “a black person in the neighborhood”. I mean we don’t know the history or the intentions. How ridiculous. Just because you are ignorant does not mean you have to sound the alarm on your own far fetched intentions.

First of all, I subscribe to the Art of Manliness 100 skills. A man should be able to shoot a gun as well as sew a button. If you can’t, what kind of man are you? Well, you are the kind of man that calls the police because they found a gun. That very well might be the right thing to do in the circumstances. I would subscribe that it is more likely the gun was used in a crime or hidden by a prohibited person rather than blow up because it is behind a wall.

Just the other day we had electricians finishing up some work. I was telling them that we have been having breaker trips since they started doing the work. This was a circuit that they did work on. Finally they pulled off the cover and said that it was wired incorrectly causing the arc fault to trip the breaker. These are professionals that do this work everyday and they made a careless mistake. What of an amateur, or what if they are high on meth or somebody put the gun there and then the stack of drywall was laid up against the wall and it was forgotten, then hidden?

In the days before ‘metrosexual’ was a made up term, people did stuff. Yeah sure, sometimes they stuck their hand in a dark space and shocked themselves. However, the project was not stopped to call an electrician and get a quote to rewire the entire house. The mindset was to see what was going on and carefully work around potentially dangerous situations. Chances are high that if a firearm was rusted to the point of not being reliably safe (even if it was loaded) that would also not reliably function.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess what draws my ire the most is the inference that a firearm should be treated like a pressure sensitive trigger on a bomb. If you look at it the wrong way your chances of injury are high. If there was so much corrosion as to not be able to clear the weapon, I would also assume that the fasteners holding the wall together are in the same state. If you want to become a man, learn to approach your fears. You will be a better person for it.

July 16, 2024 – My Lastest Thriller…

July 16, 2024 /

I know that this is a big deal to me, maybe not to you. There is a lot to know and so this book is one of the first things the doctor gives to you. The good news is that I am not going to subject you dear readers to a lot of facts and figures about something you may never experience in your lifetime. There were however some either extremely interesting factoids or things that are universal that I want to talk about today.

I was in line at a local store the other day. The woman behind me said in a loud voice ‘how does someone take chemo and not lose their hair’? I didn’t recognize the voice and resisted the urge to whip around. The cashier said ‘you probably have to read the story to find out’. I slowly turned to try and see what was the specific subject. I couldn’t and I had something to say but I just didn’t want to get into it.

What I learned from reading the book was that losing hair from chemo is a form of alopecia. Doctors don’t actually know the reason or cause for most alopecia but it is thought to be an auto-immune problem. Trigger for those can be stress or environmentally induced. I am pretty sure that chemo covers both of those situations.

The second thing and probably the most surprising thing I learned about this process is that it is a reboot of the immune system. When I say reboot, I do mean reboot and all of the learned immune protection is wiped out. When I say that, this also includes vaccines. If you have kids in the millennium then you will be aware that children are getting twenty some vaccines these days. You need to do them all. I see a lot of sickness in the future.

I also read something that I have never heard before. As I said in the podcast that only people who had insurance cover the process would get it. The book talks about some strategies to raise money because apparently some health systems will work with the patient, not ours.

Get this, apparently there is a way to cash out term life insurance before you are actually dead. It seems that if death is inevitable you can work with at third party to pay the insured less than face value. They have to buy out the policy so this is one and done. I suspect that this is something more akin to a payday loan or an estate advance. But, it is an option if the straights get dire enough.

The book itself was interesting enough. I enjoyed reading the historical evolution of the process. It definitely seems much safer, successful and refined than it was seventy years ago. That is a good thing. I call it a thriller because after reading the book, it is much clearer what was going to happen but not necessarily before that.

End Your Programming Routine: I didn’t need to go through this process to learn that you have to be your own advocate in the system. This time just reminds me how that is true. You cannot be your own advocate if you do not understand how it is supposed to go. Next time, I want to skip the thriller and have a love story instead. But, I don’t always get to choose the books to read.

December 4, 2023 – Real Disappointment

December 4, 2023 /

Sports fans like to fanaticize that there are so many life lessons in participation. Sure, I agree on the surface level that those can be the case. But, sports fans also like to fanaticize that their support of a team does something as well. Don’t get caught up in that trap, this is almost where I went too. Belief is a powerful thing when it comes to fighting cancer or making your way in the world but it can sometimes lead to nowhere fast as well.