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.

Red Teaming It Up

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You know, this crap is just so easy sometimes.  Especially when they give ideas like this.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find a jewel thief at large in each of five cities in the U.S. and Europe, with only a photo of the criminal to guide you. The State Department is testing the power of crowdsourcing and social media with its “Tag Challenge” on March 31, and the successful team of trackers will score a $5,000 bounty. Contestants will have 12 hours to find the volunteer crooks and upload a photo of the thief to the Challenge website. Finding five men among millions won’t be easy, so participants will need to constantly stay in contact and share tips instantly in order to claim the prize. It’s yet to be seen if the State Department will adopt crowdsourcing themselves, but this experiment could prove that Twitter is a heck of a lot more than a time-waster.

Given our uncles propensity to use black ninja suited jack booted thugs does anyone see the problem with this?  Anyone?

The problem is when you hear about a crime X across twitter.  You just report that guy in accounting you hate.  You just report your ex-husband that you caught cheating on you.  You just report that guy down the street who won’t give you back your tools.  With how readily they jump on the “kick in the door” mentality and the fact they could get judges to go along with it, you could get the door or the person you hate kicked in, with the full backing of the state.

Taking it one step further, if you are the criminal be sought, you can just flood the stream with false positives.

You see the problem here?  Utterly useless.

via Uncle.

It can always be worse…

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So, did the USPSA match today.  First stage I did decently well, clipped a no-shoot, saw it an made it up by drilling another Alpha shot.  Nothing worse that a no-shoot is a no-shoot and a miss.

Well I found that though on the next stage some things can be worse.  I walked right past the small low cut port and had 2 failures to engage with 4 misses.  Yeah, “Screwed” and “The Pooch” come to mind.  Moving forward though I did decent on the qualifier I think.  When I ran that second stage in reverse though I made sure to hit those targets.  How easy is it though to miss them I hear you ask.  Almost everyone walked past and had to go back and I wasn’t the only one to have an FTE on them.  But this time I f’d up my reloads.  I’ve been good about dropping mags while on the move and reloading.  Parallel processing baby, when moving I’m not engaging and I can be reloading so I don’t stop my engagement and loose momentum or waste time.  That second run in reverse

The wife took some pictures at the match and I’ll try and get those posted up later.

After Joe, the wife and I all headed out to the Boomershoot site.  The good news is, it all went bang.  Which means we may have a faster means of production and we can try the plastic for a second attempt.

Here’s a lesson on immediate action drills and reloads:

SSCC #272–San Antonio

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There’s a lot of questions and issues with this.  The biggest is the immediate escalation of force without empathy or consideration.

A police officer allegedly punched a rape victim in the face as she cowered naked in a closet at her boyfriend’s home.

When she showed up at her boyfriends house he falsely accused her of breaking in for whatever reason.  When the police show up the fact she wasn’t willing to parade around naked for a bunch of men with guns after being raped is used as an excuse to beat her further.

The boyfriend was a total dick and the police were trying to remove a trespasser, however force I do not think was necessary in this case.  The officer was wanting an excuse to beat a woman and he found one.  Don’t think so?

At the hospital the officer was boasting about hitting Gibson, a nurse wrote in a report seen by KSAT 12 News.

State Sponsored Criminal Count #272: John Doe

Because being a cop means you just need an excuse to use force, doubly so if you like beating up on women.

**Also note that when someone asks to give you a ride when not looking for one, you need to switch to orange immediately.

via Ry.

SSCC #271–Iowa

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A former Fort Dodge police officer accused of sexually assaulting a woman he met at a bar has pleaded guilty to extortion in a plea deal.

So as usual, commits crime, resigns from force, plea deal for a unrelated charge.  They dropped the sexual assault charge so he can go back to work as an LEO in a town near you.

State Sponsored Criminal Count 271: Galen Hindt

Because when your only mistake is getting caught, well the state can help you with that problem.

Act of Valor

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So I wasn’t planning on going to see Act of Valor except a friend dropped by and asked if I was interest in going.  The answer to that was a simple Duh.

Put the site upgrades on hold.  My phone was replaced and activated this morning so other than the pile of stuff I have planned to get done I was wide open.

The movie was everything I expected it to be.  Many others have gone to see it and have reviewed it.  I can say it was very good, the gun handling was superb, and overall it was an enjoyable flick.  I think Tam’s review nailed it on the head.

Now I need to finish the site updates, go out and clean my gun and sort out some brass for tomorrow.

Why Giving Them What they Want is a Bad Idea

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They come back for more later.

After the robbery, Jardini called the woman on his cell phone twice, asking her if she had a boyfriend and if she wanted to go out with him.

Police got a search warrant for Jardini’s phone records and were on the verge of tracking him down, but then Jardini reportedly assaulted the same girl and her mother outside Zack’s Market on Brownville Road.

Depending on what you have in your wallet or purse you’re in serious trouble once you hand it over to a robber.  At minimum they now have your home address so they can come hit you again.  They know that you’re complacent and will just give them what they want right?  Women, if you have your keys in your purse they now can enter your house that night, are you going to get your locks changed before going home that night?  The amount of evil that can be done by just merely capturing that information is unbelievable.

I could continue playing the red team, but you would all call my a mean evil sadistic son of a bitch.  Just because I think of it, doesn’t mean I’d do it.  It just means that when that guy asks me for my wallet he’s not going to get it, he’s getting hot lead.  If he asks for my phone, he’s not getting it, he’s getting hot lead.  Information can be used not just against you, but those you love.  Remember it as if your lives depend on it, because it just might.

SSCC #270–Pinellas

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A Pinellas sheriff’s detective says that in an effort to seek out homegrown marijuana, he donned a Progress Energy uniform as a “ruse” and then entered a homeowner’s property without a search warrant.

Yeah, there is a reason when I someone from the utility company is at my house I consider it suspect.  If they want in my house, I’m calling the company and there is going to be a long talk as to why he’s at my house.  When said company says he’s not with them, I will assume criminal and things are going to be come quite dangerous for the idiot.  He has closed distance and is lying about who he is and is trying to gain entrance to your house.

So you would think that since the Sherriff supposedly frowns upon it there would be some sort of punishment, however this is the departments response:

Although Gualtieri criticized the tactic, he was less quick to criticize his detective. “He’s a young detective who I think thought he was just being creative,” Gualtieri said. “I put more responsibility with the supervision.” He said he wanted to think about whether to discipline anyone.

Yeah, and the guy from the utility isn’t a sworn law enforcement officer either. If you present yourself as X, you’re assumed to be X, and you are tricking people.  They will kick in your door in the middle of the night and shoot your dog.  They will fool you into allowing them access without a warrant.  Would you give an officer any access to your property without a warrant knowing them to be such?

Yeah, this was sneaky, back handed, and totally wrong.  We see how the cops love it, they may bitch publicly about it but honestly they don’t care.

State Sponsored Criminal Count 270: Detective Paul Giovannoni

Because it’s so much easier to just skip the warrant and pretend to be someone else and fool someone into giving you access.

For the EE’s Out There

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So another coworker just bumped me an email for this
.

So far that seems to be a nice simple circuit simulator that works well for simple project.  I found a different simulator before that actually has even more features but requires Java.  That simulator does transmission line characteristics and other interesting features not represented in this new simulator.

Overall if you need to mock up some circuits quickly, the above will do the job.  I might be using it on a home project here soon for a power supply to help float a battery for a new toy.  More on that after I get said toy!