MacGyver

Your first knife is a special thing. I've got the Swiss Army knife my grandfather gave me for my 8th birthday to this day. I don't know that I really have a firm opinion one way or another as to what you should do, but I know that I cherished my first knife. I used it all the way through scouting. I carried it all the way through school, and had it in my pocket the day I got my Eagle Scout. The one thing I would consider in your case is that kids (and adults too) get cut a lot worse by cheap knives that dull quickly than they do with good quality sharp ones. You have to work a lot harder with a dull knife, and then due to poor handling, when it contacts flesh, it does a lot more damage. I know they're carving soap now, but they'll soon progress beyond that. I decided a long time ago that if I planned to use something more than once that I would get the best I could afford. I've never been disappointed by that. Not that this maxim really applies to your situation, but you can get a lot better knife for not much more money.

I think the studios are going to screw Netflix, and then end up screwing themselves by proxy. Starz reportedly walked away from talks last week after demanding 10 times their previous $30 million to conti ue their deal. The studios can't stand them; I think they're going to be late to the game, just like they were with digital music. While I applaud Netflix for having the guts to just focus on streaming, I increasingly think that the dominant position will eventually go to someone else. Netflix really botched the transition. That's cost them half their market cap, a lot of their brand integrity and their reputation. Add the fact that every major studio would love for them to fail, and I think that may wind up costing them the game.

Pretty much as soon as we notice. It's the Calvinist side of TGO. "Once banned, always banned."

I'm sorry to hear this.

Man, I'd love to do that sometime. I'm likely going to go scout Sevenmile, but it may be the first part of November before I can get away to do it. Alabama's regs seem to be written to get rid of hogs. As I read them, the WMAs I've looked at are open for hogs during any other active season using weapons allowable by that season.

Thanks for the advice, Dave! I'm likely going to spend a couple of Friday's in the near future scouting that area. Something about Sevenmile appeals to me. Looking at the maps, it looks like a place that could yield some big hogs.

You think I'll sink it?

Has anyone hunted Sevenmile Island WMA outside of Florence Alabama? I'm reconsidering my options in light of the TWRA's position on hog hunting, and am considering heading down that way. It looks like the only access is by boat. But, it also looks like they're a lot more welcoming to hog hunters down there.

Ran Big South Fork from Leatherwood Ford to Blue Heron Mine this weekend. 27 miles. Great time for all. We had four people in canoes, three in kayaks, and me on my stand up paddleboard. Water was about 250cfs, which made for some interesting rapids along the way for the beginners that were with us. Just big enough to be challenging and fun without being too overwhelming. A couple of notes on the trip: Give yourself three days. While we put in late on Friday and took out around lunch on Sunday, the vast majority of our paddling was on Saturday ~ 20 miles. Spreading it out a little bit will give you a lot more time to just screw around. Bring fishing tackle! This section of river is way underpressured. I think I saw one fisherman, and he was 250 meters from the take out. Two of us limited on smallmouth bass with no effort, and I saw a couple of huge walleyes. Something hit a Rapala topwater lure I was using so hard that it broke the lightweight pole I was using. The two portages are longer than advertised. The portage for Angel Falls is at least 1/4 mile. Devil's Jump's portage is not well marked at all, and is long and steep. You really need to watch for the overlook and then start really scouting for the portage. For a bigger group, you need to start looking mid-afternoon for places to camp. There simply aren't that many places on the river that will support a group. I was in a jungle hamock, and several of our guys bivouacked, so we were fine, but if you're looking to put up more than a couple of tents, you're going to need to really look unless you want to be sleeping on an incline. Check this section of river out. It was a lot of fun. I wish that we had gotten some footage of me running Devil's Jump on the paddleboard. We had a great time.

I've had a great experience with CT's customer service as well. I've got several sets of their grips. I had an issue on an S&W revolver where the grip seemed to be starting to delaminatie a bit. I called to inquire about my options, and they offered the best possible option immediately. They shipped me a new set of grips in a box with an RMA. All they asked was when I got the new grips to put the old ones in the box and send it back to them for QA testing. I'm a big fan of theirs.

Man, those pies have got me hungry!

The Izula is a great, tough little blade. You'll enjoy it. Be sure to post some pics when you get it.

Most squirrels that I've seen hit with 22WMR are mostly unsalvageable. As such, I've never been able to use 22WMR on squirrels with a good conscience. I love .22 shorts for squirrel. They really seem to bring the appropriate level of whump. Note, .17HMR is in a whole different category. Those explosive little bullets cause even more damage than 22WMR.

Yeah, not fully thinking about it, I was understanding total length still longer than 16".

If it's permanently attached, you only need one. If it's removable, you need two stamps.This assumes a total length longer than 16" ( e.g. 7.5" barrel + 9" permanently attached suppressor). You're paying a stamp for the suppressor period. If your total length of your barrel or barrel plus permanently attached suppressor is less than 16", you're going to need a stamp for your lower, too.

I've been thinking about this today, and this won't sound quite like I want it to, because it makes it seem like I have some bigger role, and I don't. But, despite how unsettling it is even now 10 years later, I feel like I owe it to the victims not to forget. I should be dead. I should have been in my office on the 78th floor - just a couple of floors below where the first plane went in. My office was on the side of impact. I should have been one of the people that was simply never found. But, for whatever reason, I'm still here and they're not. Some people, when they hear my story say that God must have spared me. But even though I have a strong faith, I can't really assign it to providence, because I don't think my life is worth any more than those other 2977 innocent people's. I may not understand God's ways, but I don't think he works like that. Despite how troubling it can be, the heart of the matter is that I really don't want to forget any of it. Even if it wakes me up in the night, I want it to stay in the front of my mind, because I feel like if we forget them - if we "move on", then they died for nothing. We've still got work to do.

I can close my eyes and picture the pure devastation. It took your breath away every day to see it. I don't have to close my eyes to remember the smell and the taste it left in your mouth. I can tell you the story of that morning, but it's only because I've told it so many times. I have to work really hard to put all of the details of that morning into a linear set of events, and I'm trained to do that. I'd argue that all of the other memories are more important. It's the only way that any of us cope with it all.

I was working with the Port Authority at the time, doing some information security planning. After the attack, because of my employer at the time, my role simply transitioned to some other projects.

I was there for nine months, and the city was a wreck in the early days. No one knew what was going on. I needed a place to stay, and knew that at some point I was going to have a bunch of guys working for me, so I negotiated a big block of rooms at the St. Regis Essex House on Central Park South. I've stayed in a lot of hotels in my day, and this would certainly qualify as one of the nicest. The rooms that we paid $79/night for probably go for $1500/night today. My team finally showed up, and it happened to be made up of a bunch of Marines who were really great. Very task motivated with no whining. The Essex House had a service where they would shine your shoes if you left them outside your door at night. Mind you, they were used to wingtips, not jump boots. We worked for at least 16 hours a day, and came back every night filthy dirty. Nonetheless, the Marines enjoyed the accomodations, and each night, we left our boots outside of our doors. And, each morning, we'd open our doors to find them spotless. After about two weeks of this, I got up early one morning to go grab a cup of coffee and a paper before heading to the site. It was probably about 0400, and I ran into the Bell Captain delivering our boots. I pulled him aside and thanked him, but then told him that when they got tired of shining our boots to let me know. I knew they were nasty, and though it was a novelty to my Marines, we were used to shining our own boots. I simply told him to give me the word, and that we wouldn't bother them with it anymore. He immediately cut me off and told me that the shined about 150 pairs of shoes a night. They drew straws to see who got to shine our boots. I really miss the unity that was present in those days. But, it makes me remember the good in our country. When I get really pesimistic about our country or our future, I think back to my time in New York. It was an honor and a blessing to be there during that time.

One of my fondest memories of the nine months that I spent at the site following September 11 was in the early days of the rescue, before it turned into a recovery operation. Rescue dogs were brought in, and if you've never been around a working dog, they are a sight to behold. They do a great job, and while it is a job to them, you can tell that they have fun with it. They're doing what they were born to do. The dogs were having a really tough time, though. They were trained to find live people, and we simply weren't finding them. Other than a very few found in the early days, there really weren't many survivors. This took a massive toll on the dogs, and you could see it in them. I was leaving the site one afternoon, and happened to be walking out with a couple of other people, a dog and his handler. As we neared the edge of the red zone, there was a firefighter sitting on a piece of sectional steel with his head in his hands, completely and totally spent. He was emotionally exhausted, had lost good friends in the building, and it was all weighing on him right there. As we approached, this golden retreiver looked at him, and bounded ahead a little bit. He ran over the man, and gently nuzzled him, only to have the guy push him away. We were even with him by this point, and I remember that dog just stepping back and looking at the man in that confused way that only a retreiver can. Not to be rejected that easily, the dog looked at the man, and then looked at us as we continued to walk towards the perimeter. The dog ran towards us, and his handler, without even turning around or even looking at the dog just dropped the duffel bag he was carrying that had all of the dog's protective gear in it. The dog jammed his head down into the bag and came up with a tennis ball. He then looked at his trainer and ran back over to the man sitting on the steel. He dropped the ball at the guys feet, sat down and just looked straight at the guy. Of course no one could resist this dogs persistence, and the guy threw the ball for the dog, and we all experienced a little bit of healing right there.

As the buildings collapsed, you really had no choice but to move away. There was a sea of people moving away from the building, and it was really impossible to go against it. Plus, the debris from the explosion, fire and collapse literally turned the night to day and seemed to remove your very ability to breathe from the air. You simply had to get away from the site. I went back down early that afternoon however, and because of my position at the time and a logistics background, I worked the site until the National Guard could get their controllers onsite. Early morning on September 12, maybe around 0330 or so, I was leaving the site with several firefighters and rescue personnel. We were covered head-to-toe in soot and ash, and were completely exhausted - physically, mentally and spiritually. No one said a word in 15 blocks. There was simply nothing to say. I know we have several here who can likely chime in, but firefighters and rescue personnel are generally a pretty reserved bunch when it comes to accepting thanks. You can say thank you if you like, but we don't expect it. There's a sense of it's our job, and we're just doing it. We were completely black, and because of the smoke and the fact that the streets were blocked off, it seemed even darker. But, I'll never forget crossing Canal Street. As we approached Washington Square Park you could see lights. As we got closer, you could see they were candles. People were lining the street with candles, flags, food and water. It was one of the strongest senses of unity I've ever felt. I'll remember until the day I die, looking to the side, down the line of black faces next to me, and simply seeing the clear streaks from the tears streaming down each of our faces. It brings tears to my eyes now to simply think about it.

So I thought I would share a couple of thoughts on September 11, as someone who was in the 1WTC that terrible morning. The anniversary has actually been a lot tougher on me than I expected. Every anniversary this far has been a lot easier. I have a couple of good friends who call me every year and let me know that they're glad I'm still around. This year though, has been tough. I think it is mostly because I'm still really unsettled 10 years later. We've got a lot of good men and women still standing in the gap, and sometimes it doesn't feel like we're any closer to any resolution. It really feels like the act of taking those 2977 people's lives has still gone at least mostly unanswered. I'm not a vengeful person, but I'd like to see this evil banished from the earth. I'm not going to write my story of that morning right now. It's long, and somewhat hard to get through today. If you see me in person, ask and I'll be happy to share it with you. One thing that has remained with me over these 10 years though, are some of the positive things that I saw at Ground Zero. While I see the devastation at the site, the people jumping out of the windows, and the buildings collapsing when I go to sleep at night, the things that have really endured with me are the human stories, and how that event affected us all. I'll share three:

I was in 1WTC that morning. I was blessed to spend the next 9 months there as a part of the rescue and recovery. I'll post some thoughts tomorrow when I get a chance.

Raoul's right. We're really conducting this war with the average citizen having little or no skin in the game. What does our average citizen care? It doesn't affect them in the slightest. No one is asked to sacrifice. No one is asked to give. It's really saddening.

He did. I redacted it. The story is just a relevant without it. While the post may have been based in fact, the ones following it almost certainly wouldn't have been. The forum as a whole really doesn't need that kind of press.