Author Archives: TMM

About TMM

TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms. Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.

Another Comes Into the Fold…

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So I got an email from Sean just after I posted on A Girl finding her new found freedom.  He had a domain but hadn’t been able to figure out how to effectively migrate from blogger.

A Girl’s success gave him renewed vigor.  I exchanged a couple emails and bootstrapped the blog last night.  This morning he got the content moved over but we had some issues getting the feed and redirects done.

Yeah, some of that was my fault, I screwed up his URL and did .org instead of .com, and missed something in the Template.  Thankfully though he couldn’t get the template to go in correctly.  We went back and forth in emails and he gave me admin access to go take a look.  Well it took me a couple minutes of looking around but I got it straightened out.

Sean has now officially crossed the fold to the dark side.  I put a fresh batch of cookies on the counter.

So, I hinted at it a little bit in the post about A Girl, but I think I’ll let a little more out of the bag now that I mainly just need to finish up things like the Terms of Service documents and some how-to guides and other general information.

So, any gun bloggers out there, or people interested in gun blogging that don’t want to deal with Google blogger, I am finishing an alternative.  You will be able to import all your content from Blogger, and there will be a how-to guide to redirect your traffic.

I have no idea how many are interested in such a thing.  If it is popular enough I am probably eventually going to move into a full virtual host and will resell hosting and support.  Is there any interest in such a service throughout the community of bloggers wishing to ditch specific services or ease the time they spend on it?

Insert Something Witty

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I had something thought up for tonight.  Got home and dove into two other projects.  One will be unveiled probably tomorrow or Sunday.  Another early next week.  Also spent some time applying some polish.

I’m headed down to the local gun shop tomorrow.  It looks like there may be some industry reps there I can talk to.  There’s a few things lately I’m interested in, but not enough to empty my wallet yet.  So I will listen to my friends Linoge, JayG, and Robb and just ask.

I’ve also got to finish up my USPSA stages so they can go in for review.  One is done and wrapped up, once they’re all completed though I’ll do a post on them all.  I’ve also started and am working on the finer points of the frame that goes with this.  I keep meaning to work on it more, but I keep getting distracted.  Hopefully I’ll have some time in the next couple weeks to really spend on it.

SSCC #366 – Henrico County

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A bereft Henrico County family says its son died near Cool Lane, robbed of his life and $15.

“He’d taken the bus up to my place to borrow the money last night; he just wanted a video or something,” said Henry Hamiel.

I already hear you asking how this could be a state sponsored criminal, it starts off as an everyday crime.  The police weren’t involved and were merely investigating the death.

The unidentified officer and a detective had arrived at the home to notify family members that Ellerbe had been killed. His body was discovered shortly after 6 a.m. Wednesday, face down near an alley.

The pitbull ran from the backyard of the home toward at least one officer, who pulled his weapon and shot the dog in the home’s front yard, according to Ellerbe’s sister, Latoya.

“They had told me my brother was dead and I’d come out back to cry on the porch and Tiger must have heard them. He ran into the front yard and the officer shot him,” LaToya Ellerbe said.

Let me get this straight.  A young man was killed, over the money in his wallet. You travel to the home to inform the family, and then to add insult to injury, you shoot the young man’s dog.  You shoot his dog, YOU SHOOT HIS !@#$ING DOG.  (Stops and spends 5 minutes saying woosah, remember the pressure points).

What in the name of god were you thinking.  Maybe you should back off, yell up to the house, even try calling them on the phone.  This is the 21st century, you do have a phone don’t you?

No instead you walk up to the house, invading the dogs territory, you see it running at you, and assume it is going to attack you.  You then plug the dog with a couple new holes with a lead slinging instrument and then tell the family, “Your son’s dead. BAM BAM, oh was that his dog?  Yeah, you’re gonna need to bury him too.”

If I walk up to someone’s house and someone’s dog runs at me, I don’t just get to shoot it and claim self-defense, neither does the mailman.  So why do these people get a sudden free pass to shoot any dog they want.

State Sponsored Criminal #366: Officer John Doe*

Because the correct way to inform someone that their son is dead is by shooting the boy’s dog first.  Nothing say’s I’m sorry for your loss than killing the family pet.

h/t Patrick at Popehat

*If you find it contact me, I want his name for the count.

Repeat After Me…

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Anything I do or say on the internet, despite any internal belief said discussions or pictures are “private”, could be provided to law enforcement to aid in prosecution against me. Just because I don’t have Facebook, Google, or any other company in my friends list doesn’t mean they won’t monitor what I say.

You did repeat it right?  If not, go back and repeat it.

What am I talking about I hear you ask.  This is what I’m talking about.

Facebook and other social platforms are watching users’ chats for criminal activity and notifying police if any suspicious behavior is detected, according to a report.

First if you’re surprised by this, do not take this the wrong way, you’re a gullible idiot.  I have a nasty habit of being blunt and straight forward, and I do not understand how people could think something said on Facebook could be considered “private”.

Here’s the thing, social media predominately relies on servers and infrastructure provided by someone else.  Anything you send to that server can be seen by them unless it is encrypted by you before transmission.  If you encrypt your data though, only those with the key will be able to read it.

That said, even your friends list should be considered suspect.  The digital world is not like the real world.  It anonymity, which is a strength I love, can also be used against you.  Neither of the two articles linked here should be considered surprising to anyone who is really aware of how the internet works.

I’ve had some friends tell me that Email is less secure than Facebook or other messaging services.  Yes I had to pick my jaw up off the floor after that one.  The wonderful thing about Email is you can easily add encryption and signatures.  You can’t do much about any middle host that stores the email while in transit.  They could decide to store a copy indefinitely.  What’s to stop Facebook from doing the same?  Your message can be stored by any router in between, and their systems can record and permanently store the entire conversation.

Here is my final lesson on the internet for today.  The internet is a giant mesh where anyone in the middle of the mesh can see what you wrote.  Doubly so when you’re primary point of contact is a service in the middle of that mesh.  To think that they wont look at what you’re saying is not just naïve, but stupid.  Especially since they can just use software to monitor for conversations that need to be red flagged.

Nothing, I mean NOTHING, you put on the net should ever be considered private.  Even if you create a private part of photo-gallery.  If someone compromises access, those private pictures are now in the wild, and odds are some will profit off of them.

*Red Team Hat On*: Me thinks I’m going to need to have a bunch of conversations with my friends involving explosives and other “suspect” behavior.  I loves me some false positives, quickest way to destroy any system.

Welcome to the Darkside…

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So last week A Girl made a comment about something going wrong with blogger.  I made a comment which resulted in an email.

The email basically said, I would love help.  Not that she really wanted to completely blow this popsicle stand, but well there have been some issues with Google as of late.  I promptly said, I’ll just get it all set up and surprise her.  Well about an hour of my time and I had it relatively ready.  Then all we needed to do was port everything over from Blogger and redirect the traffic headed to blogger.

This morning she finished the last step which was a redirect.  She has herself a new shiny blog that even still has the new blog smell.  That’s not to say that any of the content is gone it’s all there.

She thought she may have messed something up when blogger all the sudden started sending everyone to blogspot, but nope, it’s working just as intended.  She now has freedom and power at her disposal.

So go give her a nice house-warming.  We’re still unpacking, but she’s enjoying the new place.

Welcome to the Dark Side A Girl, we have cookies, they’re on the counter!

*If you would like to ditch blogger, I am more than happy to help.  At this point though I do not want to be buying everyone and their mother a domain name.  If you have a domain and want to move, contact me, we can hash something out.  I’m not going to do everyone’s for free, hours of time do add up.  That said, this weekend I’m going to kick off a site for gun bloggers that will behave much like blogger.  You get a sub-domain and I will help your migration if necessary.  That keeps my costs to purely time, and a minimal amount at that.

If you want full hosting though, please do contact me, we can probably work something out.

 

SSCC #365 – Martinez

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“He let himself in and actually came through the house and into my bedroom. And yelled at me to wake me up, to let me know that I needed to come back outside and sign the violation notice.”

He was fired, but not for trespassing or breaking and entering.

Vowell was originally put on administrative leave, but was fired Monday after a review by county officials.

“It was a violation of policy as it relates to entering a house without permission and making a false statement to a supervisor,” County Development Services Division Director Richard Harmon told a local newspaper.

I suspect that he was mainly fired for lying to his supervisor, not because he entered a house without permission.  The home owner currently isn’t sure if she is going to press charges.  She should for no other reason that to actually hold him accountable.

Accountability is what is missing from society today and by god it needs to be brought back.

State Sponsored Criminal #365: Jimmy Vowell

Because when uncle Sam is cutting your checks, you can just walk into a woman’s house and up to her bedroom.  Ain’t nothing wrong with that, who know you might get a free show!

h/t Jay G and Uncle.

Accountabilibuddyable–Indiana

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Via Tam comes this story which I am doing instead of a SSCC today.

Authorities said Hubbard was found to be in possession of methamphetamine and marijuana.

He was arrested on charges of dealing while in possession of a handgun, possession of marijuana, possession of methamphetamine and dealing in marijuana.

So why was this an Accountabilibuddyable instead of an State Sponsored Criminal?  Tam said it best so I’ll quote her:

I guess their union isn’t as good as the FOP Local here in Indy, because his employers dropped him like a live grenade as soon as he was charged. Quis custodiet, indeed.

Yeah, I wish more departments would fire their officers immediately when busted for bad behavior.  Now let’s hope the legal system will continue the accountability string.

Officer Robert Hubbard – He’s so bad we had to hold him accountabilibuddyable!