Still Gnawing At The Restraints...

 I am still here.  

Not a whole heck of a lot going on in the world of ... well, Ground Hog World, honestly.  Just like everyone else, the world is still there, I get occasional rare glimpses of it out the window, and it is getting ... well, brighter - but we're still stuck in the midst of yet more winter.

I do love living in Minnesota, even though we seem to have some real problems.  I will freely confess that due to my white privilege and some rather obvious choices I've made over the years, I don't have to worry, too much, about encountering trouble.  Though we all know I'm pretty sketchy.

So the latest bit of stupid and sad news is that we had an outside-school-shooting the other day, a couple of kids got into an argument, and unlike when I was a kid and that sort of shit was handled at the end of the day outside the back door of the school where one kid punched another and the other landed on his back stupidly, these days, it seems that these disagreements are now being ended by firearms.  I will not lay the blame of this at the feet of the video game industry or entertainment in general, because we're all responsible for our own decisions and actions, I'm not going to blame someone else for what I do - but these kids clearly do not understand that when they pull the trigger on a firearm, the odds of the person opposite being able to walk away, or recover, are pretty damned slim.

In this particular case a fifteen year old boy, new to the school (it was his second day there) is dead, two others, eighteen and nineteen, have been arrested and charged with murder, attempted murder, and a few other things.  

Then there's the yet again Minneapolis Police Department that is hell-bent on destroying itself in total.  When the police from St. Paul, across the river from Minneapolis, asked them to serve a search warrant and search a premises for evidence, the Minneapolis police department, for whatever reason, decided they had to not knock and announce themselves, but instead thrust themselves right into the middle of the whole no-knock warrant debate, and do so in such a way that I for one do utterly support the end of law enforcement being able to barge through doors without first knocking and announcing themselves.  

Yes, I fully realize that it exposes these public servants to the danger of being cut down by unknown gunfire from within the space they're trying to enter.  And while I recognize this, I do not know how we can calculate what is an acceptable number of people who need to die because the police have decided, for no valid reasons, that they need to blast doors down because they want to.

In this case, the warrant request from St. Paul did not require the Minneapolis police to use the no-knock entry.  It was not addressed.  Yet, for some reason, the Minneapolis police chose to request the use of the no-knock warrant and a high-risk entry team to blow into this apartment.  Too look for evidence.  Nowhere does it say that St. Paul police expected to find a killer or active drug deal or anything else.  It was to gather evidence, for what we do not know.  All we know is that a young man who was in the apartment was holding his legally licensed firearm when the police entered, and within 9 seconds from making entry into the space, the young man was killed.  Why?  Because he was in his friend's apartment, taking a nap, and awakened suddenly by people breaking in.  

I'm very aware that I've had the privilege of living in communities where I am not seen as a threat, and I live a particular life style which is really unlikely to expose me to situations where police need to enter my home because they suspect I have evidence.  I'm an Eagle Scout.  My sum total of law-breaking activities consist of moving vehicle violations such as going too fast, or driving with expired tabs on my vehicles.  Yeah.  I rather deliberately steer clear of theft and other crimes because I'm old, fat, unlikely to fly under the radar, and unlikely to be determined to be a threat to others, for whatever reason.  So I'm lucky.  

But I'm also unlikely to support a police culture which insists on treating every person they encounter as a criminal.  I understand that the world is a dangerous place, but I have made a few choices in my life which have been to avoid certain places and situations where I might find myself on the opposite side of the law.  So it goes, so it is, and so it will be.  I'm a dull boring old fart.  But I also don't think that napping should cause someone to die, and I do not think that it's fair for law enforcement people to be able to kill people because they do not know what the situation is.  

Other than that, the world is ... continuing.  I'm getting ready for spring by planning a few woodworking projects.  The first rather immediate one is with regards to our current storage locker situation.  We have a 10 x 15 storage locker because we have stuff we need to go through because it's still ours, and we haven't been able to yet.  But the storage locker we signed up for 3 years ago has risen from $80 to $180 a month due to ... well, let's be flat-out honest - greed.  The facility is not seeing a great deal of repair or upgrade, just greed.  And so project number one is a set of shelves.  Four or Five shelves, roughly six feet long, two feet deep, and seven or so feet tall.  Each shelf will have 26 inches between it and the bottom of the next, and yes, Dad, thanks to your continued reminders that I over-built everything, these shelves will be simple 1/4" plywood with 2x3 supports on 2x4 legs.  Why?  Well, based on current lumber costs, I can build a shelf of that size for, in a fairly large project, about $106 each.  That is, I'll be building 5 of them, for a lumber total - as of today's prices - at $530 for all 5.  My wife is the one who wants it organized, and our current storage locker is, well, not.  She found a new place that will do a locker of 10 x 15 feet for about $75 less than the current place.  So rather than lose all of that stuff, or pay what they want, we'll re-locate.  And the cost savings on the locker rental alone will pay for the shelves.  

Of course, we have stuff that won't fit on the shelves, but at least most of it will be organized.  We can hope, anyway.  It will take a few trips back and forth in my son's pickup, but he's the pickup owner.  We'll probably end up paying for some gas.

I would compare my project to ready-built shelving that Menards may have, but their web site is total crap, won't even load the garage shelving section.  My best guess is a web coordinator who saw the site was working last Thursday.  And who the heck checks a web site on Friday.  I'm sure it's my connection that's the problem.  I mean, it only tested out at the same time I was waiting for the Menards site to load at 72.5Mb download, and a mere 35.7Mb upload.  Yeah, hush, I have a gigabit connection because I use it for work.  And I'm looking into what alternatives might exist.  I mean, I am within a half mile of the local phone switch (I can see it down the hill from my front yard), and it seems there may be options for going with some sort of home-based 5G system... Maybe.  We'll see.  Options are always good.  I like options.

So yes, I am still here.  Avoiding the Olympics coverage as best I can, because it all reminds me of 2008, when I spent 10 days in the Hospital finding out I was a diabetic.  It's not what you know, it's the shit you don't know that can kill you, I guess.  Or will likely find out, eventually, I suppose.