Not every person who died in 2020 died of COVID. That was ridiculous, and the claims of COVID deaths made those claiming them look stupid. Similarly, not every sudden death happening now is because of the COVID vax.
Yet I have seen many on the right this morning claiming that the collapse of Damar Hamlin was due to the jab. No, it likely wasn’t. For those who aren’t aware, an NFL football player took a hit to the chest in a game last night before collapsing in cardiac arrest.
What likely happened was a phenomenon called commotio cordis. This condition is caused by an athlete taking a blow to the chest while the heart is in its relative refractory period. The heart enters an arrythmia called “ventricular fibrillation” and the person has no pulse. The condition is usually fatal without immediate CPR, followed by immediate access to defibrillation and Advanced Cardiac Life Support. (ACLS)
A similar thing happened in the NHL to Chris Pronger, who collapsed during a 1998 hockey game after taking a blow to the chest from a hockey puck. He went into cardiac arrest. You can see a video of it here (I would embed it, but YouTube doesn’t allow this video to be embedded). Events like this are more common than you would think.
I have been watching tons of conservatives on social media being just as dogmatic as the left was about COVID on this topic. Don’t make yourself look stupid by trying to pontificate on things that you have no knowledge of, simply so you can make a political point. It weakens your argument and makes you look like a tool.
So many people are trying to use this event to springboard their agendas. I saw an NFL player on TV saying that this is why they make millions, because they are putting their lives on the line to play football and this is why the salary cap for the NFL should be raised. He is saying that most players don’t get many years to play, and the risk is high. Keep in mind that the league minimum salary is $705,000 a year, the average player salary is $2.7 million a year, and the highest paid player makes $31 million a year. When you say things like that, you make yourself look stupid.
So many bloggers did a 2022 in review post that it was boring. That’s why I didn’t do one. Instead, I thought it would be more fun to do a 2023 prospectus post. List what I would like to accomplish this year.
My wife doesn’t like SCUBA diving, my son no longer dives with me, and I haven’t heard from my other dive buddy in years. As a result, I can count the number of times I have been diving in the past 5 years on one hand. I have about $10k in SCUBA gear that sits unused in storage. The vast majority of my fun money goes into shooting now, and that is a huge change from ten years ago. I think shooting is where most of my wish list is going to go.
I have enough guns that the wife complains and says I have so many that I don’t shoot most of them now. I will grant her that. I have a few favorites, and aside from project guns like the skirmish rifle, I only shoot my favorites. Still, it’s fun to buy something new or at least different. My in-laws think I am nuts for owning as many as I do. Compared to my gun shooting friends, I don’t think I have all that many guns. Owning a lot of guns is a relative term.
Starting in 2020, I began making my own guns from 80 percent lowers. That’s been taken from me as a hobby. If I am going to be a manufacturer, I might as well pay the SOT and start making machine guns. I would do that, but I don’t want my house getting inspected and raided by the assholes from ATF.
I own pump actions, semi-autos, break opens, lever actions, and revolvers. Shotguns, rifles, PDWs, rifle caliber handguns, and all sorts of other handguns. I don’t want any more long guns for the time being, simply because it’s more of a pain in the ass to shoot them than it is a handgun.
So a handgun it is. I currently have, or have had, handguns from Beretta, Glock, Smith and Wesson, Sig, Taurus, Ruger, and more. Been there, done that. There are two noticeable holes in my current collection: I would like to own a .44 caliber revolver. I have been thinking of buying a Smith and Wesson Model 629 in .44 Magnum. I already own a 629 686 in .357 Magnum, and it’s fun to shoot. Having one in .44 Magnum would also allow me to shoot .44 Special. So there is that.
The other thing I have been thinking about is a gun I already owned four examples of, and found them wanting. The 1911 didn’t work well for me when I had them before, but I confess that I am drawn to the 1911, purely because I find them to be aesthetically pleasing. They are just beautiful guns.
I want to give the 1911 platform another chance. Perhaps I just need a really good one. I am thinking that it would be cool to have a custom Ed Brown Kobra Carry. Sure, it’s a $3,700 handgun and I know that I was against buying them in the past, but I have every other handgun I want (except that .44). It’s a beautiful handgun, and Ed Brown has a stellar reputation. It’s just a hefty price tag.
The problem is that I don’t want to put down that kind of scratch until I can get a reliable 1911 for less and make sure that I am not wasting my money. So perhaps I can start with another Kimber. If so, I would try a Kimber Ultra CDP. They “only” cost around $1200 and would let me try out another 1911 without laying down two weeks’ pay to get it.
COMSEC is a type of INFOSEC. Your information needs to be secure from disclosure, and I have been doing quite a bit of research on that over the past few days.
A few days ago, I posted about INFOSEC and using a password wallet. Some interesting ideas were shared, good questions asked, and so I thought I would share some thoughts on the concept of passwords and password managers.
The basic theory behind passwords is simple: a password is two people attempting to ensure that one of them is the person that is authorized to access the files or other electronic resources that the second person is the custodian of. The process is called authentication, and the use of a user name/password combination is the first, simplest, and most common method of user authentication. It’s also one of the most insecure, for reasons we will explore.
The things that make username/password authentication insecure are rooted in a couple of things, one of them being the users themselves. All of them. A user can be phished, hacked, or otherwise compromised. There are ways to mitigate most of the risks. What are the risks?
The simple brute force attack is the most basic of all brute force attacks. The bad actor tries to guess the user’s password without the employment of software tools. The attacker relies on trying out commonly used, weak passwords such as 123456, qwerty, password, and password123. Unfortunately, the simple brute force attack can be pretty effective, because many people continue to use weak and otherwise poor passwords to secure their online accounts.
Computer programs used for brute force attacks can check anywhere from 10,000 to 1 billion passwords per second. If your password is random, it will take an average of 8,000 years to guess a 12 character password with even the fastest computers. One type of computerized brute force attack relies on words found in the dictionary. This sort of brute force attack is called a dictionary attack and uses a vast number of common words and their variations. To do that, hackers use software that can make thousands of guesses every second using dictionary databases.
Then there is a hybrid attack. A hybrid attack combines a dictionary attack with a simple brute force attack for a better chance of success. Often a hybrid attack is utilized once the attacker already knows the username of its victim. You see this one when a data breach has released user names and email addresses of a company.
Choose a complex password. It should be made of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Doing that means you start with a base of 52 letters, 10 numbers, and up to 33 symbols, for a total base of 95.
Choose a password of at least 12 characters. Doing it this way means you are raising the base (95) to the power of the number of characters. So a 12 character password means that there are 540,360,090,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations of passwords- that’s 540 sextillion possible combinations (5.4×10^23).
You should avoid the use of common words and common passwords. This will mitigate the risk of dictionary, hybrid, and simple brute force attacks.
The suggestion was made of using a 6 word password generated using diceware. The thing that I laughed at from the diceware website was “Do not use a computer program or electronic dice generator. There is no easy way to be sure they are random enough.” That one statement was enough to tell me that the website’s author doesn’t know what they are talking about. They are worried that a random number generator isn’t random enough, while at the same time ignoring the fact that their word list is public and uses words from the dictionary. This means it will not be as secure as using random characters, no matter how random your word selection is, the use of dictionary words compromises the randomness of the password. If they know you made your password from this word list, you are screwed. If they don’t, then the randomness with which you picked the words from the list doesn’t matter.
The last type of attack is called a rainbow table attack. Websites or apps don’t store passwords in plaintext. What they do is encrypt user passwords with hashes. Once the password is used for logging in, it is immediately converted to a hash. The next time the user logs in using their passwords, the server checks whether the password matches the previously created hash. If the two hashes match, the user is then authenticated. The tables used to store password hashes are known as rainbow tables.
In most instances, the hacker launching a rainbow table attack would need to have the rainbow table at their disposal. Often these can be bought on the dark web or stolen in a data breach. During the attack, bad actors use the table to decrypt the password hashes and so gain access to a plaintext password. The big risk here is not only the access to that account, but the other accounts of those who reuse passwords from one site to another are now at risk.
The security of the password is restricted to the security of the custodian of the information that the password is securing. If you have an account with Home Depot, then they get hacked because they have shitty security, the bad guys now have your credentials. Having a secure password means nothing if the company you are doing business with doesn’t take security seriously.
Choosing a good password is just the first step in securing your online data. Now you have to store that password in a format that makes it easy to retrieve your password, while simultaneously making it secure from disclosure to unauthorized parties. That will be a future post.
Southwest airlines cancelled flights over the Christmas holiday. The passengers in Nashville who were stranded at the gate by these cancelled flights were standing at the counter, wanting solutions. What they got was a cop threatening to arrest them. What happened was this:
The flight was cancelled. The ticket agent didn’t want to deal with irate customers, and instructed police to have the people removed. The theory that the cop is using is: The flight was cancelled, therefore your ticket has also been cancelled. Since you can’t be in the sterile area without a ticket, you are now trespassing.
WOW: Nashville airport cop threatens to arrest stranded passengers who are standing in line at a Southwest counter to rebook their cancelled flights (1/2) pic.twitter.com/UARLErYdSZ
— Brad Batt for TN State Sanity ✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾 (@bradbatt) December 28, 2022
The only problem is that this is a bullshit argument. The ticket represents a contract between the passenger and the airline. There was an offer, an acceptance of that offer, and valuable consideration changed hands. The fact that one party (the airline) failed to perform under the terms of that contract doesn’t mean that the contract no longer exists, nor does it mean that the person who is the victim of this nonperformance is a criminal. What is happening here is the cop is inserting himself into a civil matter to the benefit of the party that has breached the contract.
That ticket is still a valid contract. The fact that the airline has chosen not to perform (no matter if that is a good reason or not) doesn’t cause the ticket to cease to be a contract. A person who is merely standing in line and inquiring as to what the other party is going to do to remedy the situation is not a crime, nor is it evidence of a crime.
Why do airlines get special police protection? Can I call the cops if McDonald’s fails to include the fries in my combo meal? Can McDonald’s call the cops if I pay for food that they can’t deliver, but I am still standing there with a valid receipt, waiting for my food or at least a refund?
For years, airlines have overbooked, oversold, and failed to honor the terms of their contracts. It is long past time that people demand a change to these practices. What other industry would get away with selling more of a product than they are capable of delivering? Can a car dealer sell more cars than they have or can reasonably provide?
This cop is an asshole, but then again most of them are. The Nashville airport has issued an apology, but that doesn’t change the fact that police officers have no business inserting themselves into a contract dispute. Honestly, it is stuff like this that makes me think perhaps we WOULD be better off if the police were defunded.
If you own a rental property in Florida, today is the day that a new law goes into effect. Owners of rental property consisting of 5 or more units (including hotels) will have to conduct background checks of all employees, and will have to keep a log of everyone who is given a key to rental units and requires that the key be returned once the work in that unit is complete.
This law is a response to a 19 year old woman that was murdered by the maintenance man of her apartment complex. Even if this law had been in place then, it would have prevented nothing. The maintenance man had no criminal history.
Also, nothing in the law prevents a person with murderous intent from making a copy of the key and then using that copy six months later.
Of course, he didn’t cut ALL of the gun violence out, because then even fewer people would have watched his movie. After all, he made millions from ‘gun violence’ when he directed, produced, co-wrote, or otherwise was involved in movies like Dark Angel, True Lies, Titanic (which had gunplay), the Aliens series of movies, The Abyss, Point Break, Alita: Battle Angel, and the 33 movies, TV shows, video games, and other stories of The Terminator series.
No, he left plenty of gun play in Avatar 2, even though he claims to hate guns so much that he moved from North America to New Zealand because “they just banned all assault rifles two weeks after that horrific mosque shooting a couple of years ago” but doesn’t hate the fact that he is making millions of dollars off of movies with gunplay in them.
Look, I would still respect Mr. Cameron even as I disagreed with him over this issue, if he took a principled stance and refused to use any firearms at all. That isn’t what he does. He uses enough scenes involving firearms to make money, then claims to be “sick to his stomach” about “gun violence” even as he becomes wealthy by using them.
Back in the day, I used to frequent the three bars in this story. Not any more. Orlando night life has gone to shit. Actually, all of Orlando has gone to shit ever since it became a Democrat run shithole wanting to be a workers’ paradise. I wouldn’t go near that area any more.
Gone are the days when Kevin Beary was the sheriff. He was the sheriff from 1993 to 2009, had a tough on crime persona, and was a real ally of the 2A. He was once interviewed because a CCW holder got in a gunfight with some fleeing criminals who tried to carjack him when the vehicle they were fleeing from police in was disabled. The CCW holder killed one and wounded another. They were eventually caught by Orange County SWAT. The reporter asked if the CCW holder would be facing charges. Beary responded by saying that he would probably offer the guy a job because he had saved the taxpayers of Florida so much money. The press hated his ass and supported the Demings couple.
The left hated Beary for approving NFA purchases for Orange county residents. They eventually were able to run him off. So now we have a downtown Orlando that is overrun with crime.
The preacher man says it’s the end of time And the Mississippi River, she’s a-goin’ dry The interest is up and the stock market’s down And you only get mugged if you go downtown
I live back in the woods you see My woman and the kids and the dogs and me I got a shotgun, a rifle and a four-wheel drive And a country boy can survive Country folks can survive
If a deer attacks you on your own front porch, and it’s outside of hunting season, I would assume that it’s still lawful to shoot his ass. I’m sure a couple of handgun bullets to the cranium would take him down, no problem. (mute the audio. The woman screaming is annoying.)
My question here is: Would you then be permitted to add his meat to the freezer? Some venison steaks would be delicious!
The hospital where I work has all sorts of issues. There is a nursing shortage, there are problems with long waits, patients holding in the ED waiting for space on the floor that isn’t available due to a shortage of nurses. Turnover has been enough of an issue that they can’t keep staff.
There have been multiple administrators that have come and gone, and each of them has addressed it in a different way. One way was hiring contract nurses at $200 or more an hour. That was too expensive. Another administrator tried paying large bonuses to get nurses to work more days per week. Still another tried bringing in foreign workers.
One thing that all of them have had in common was the dumbest, least effective action. They changed the colors of the scrubs everyone wears. When I was hired, you could wear any color except black, denim, camouflage, or pediatric prints. Six months later, the colors changed. Since then, we have cycled through at least four different colors. In less than two years, I have bought at least five different collections of scrubs.
Effective tonight at midnight, we all have to wear a new scrub color. These scrubs have to be embroidered with the logo of the hospital and your job title “Nurse,” or “Doctor,” or what have you. We have to buy them from one approved vendor. That vendor is owned by the wife of one of the administrators. I am not sure how that is legal, but there it is.
So I had to buy two sets of scrubs in the new color, complete with the logo of the hospital affixed to it. I’ve learned not to buy more than that, because we will just have to buy a new color within a few months anyway.
The managers are mostly assholes and treat staff rather poorly, although I can say that I like the ones in charge of the ED. They are mostly cool, and I don’t blame them for my recent suspension. That came from risk management, and wasn’t their decision. Still, this place has begun getting on my nerves.
I am giving serious thought to switching hospitals. I’ve been here for two years now, and one of the nice things about this profession is the ease of finding a job. I know one nurse who shows up to interviews in casual clothes and says something to the effect of “Here is my license. We both know that you need nurses badly enough that you are going to offer me this job. So let’s cut to the chase- what are you willing to offer me? Don’t waste my time with useless back and forth, give me your best offer,” and they present her with her options.
Maybe it’s time for a change of scenery. There are a couple of options:
I can go back to being full time. There are a couple of places that are offering $10k bonuses and more per hour than I currently make for full time, which is three shifts a week. The downside is I am on a fixed schedule, and I hate begging someone for time off.
There is also an offer of $7500 bonuses at a couple of places. The downside is that I have to work two shifts a week, and still have to beg for time off.
I can also take what’s called a seasonal position, which pays $65 to $85 an hour, depending on what unit you wind up in. The downside is that you get you no bonuses, no benefits, no shift differential, and have to work every holiday. You sign a contract that has to be renewed every six months, so you can take a few weeks off (without pay) between contracts.
Or I can look and see what PRN contracts there are and at what pay level. These allow the most freedom- you generally have to work 4 days per month, but can work as much and whenever you like. The only benefits you get are shift differential, shift bonuses (which most hospitals have done away with), and the freedom to work whenever, as little, or as much as you want.
The last option is travel. A recruiter just contacted me about working in Boston. Ten weeks, $3400 a week for three days per week. They pay the cost of your hotel. That works out to about $90 an hour. It costs $200 round trip to fly between Boston and Orlando, so I would be making $3200 a week for ten weeks but would have to pay Massachusetts taxes, plus would have to actually go to Massachusetts. I don’t think that’s in the cards for me.
I think I am looking at leaving this place in June or so, when my wife’s school year ends. I don’t need benefits, because I get health insurance from my wife’s job. Maybe I will take a month or so off, then look at my options.
