Quiet on the Home Front

KeeWee and I had a nice quiet Christmas, hanging around the house and taking it easy, mostly. Yes, I did manage to get in a goodly number of hours programming. Unfortunately I still have a huge amount to go before the new program is finished. After getting it written I still will have to write the documentation for it, and that's a fair sized project in itself. Although this does keep me out of the bars, ( I don't go to bars anyway), it also keeps me from getting to the range. The brand new Glock 34 and the nearly new Taurus .357 8 shooter haven't been given any exercise at all.

In previous posts I've mentioned the Nichol's Brother Boat Builders shutting down. It now looks like they will be starting back up with new ownership, and 75 of the original workforce have been hired back. I sure hope they can put it all back together, fix whatever needs fixing, and get everyone back to work. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for them.

There's still no progress in getting full ferry service back between Whidbey Island and Port Townsend. It seems the State of Washington has had the money budgeted for replacing the now beached ferries several years ago, but never ordered the replacement ferries. I think, as I have said in the past, beaching those ferry boats because they were leaking is a political move, not a marine safety one. All boats leak to start with, and steel boats collect a fair amount of water from condensation, too. Since tying up the ferries, none of them have sunk. True, they might leak a little bit more if they are being used, but not a lot more, I'll bet. I wouldn't be surprised if 3M doesn't make a rubbery spray on coating that could be used to seal these hulls to where they wouldn't leak at all. Perhaps sandblast the hull, spray on the rubberized coating, then re-paint and back to work. Does anyone know if they make such a product?

I forgot to mention that Lou G, blogger of Mad Gun, had an ice and steps related accident a week or so ago, and managed to shatter his left forearm and take a pretty good blow to the head. When they were checking him over the also discovered he had a carotid artery almost completely blocked too. Last week they cleaned out the artery and did an erector set job on his arm. He's going to be OK, and should be able to shoot with both hands roughly mid Spring. Last week he was out shooting a pistol bench rest match one handed, so at least he's still getting to the range once in a while. You might stop by his blog and leave him a comment if you get a chance, but his blogging may be impaired a bit for a while until he gets rid of the cast and all of the hardware. If all goes well, you might just get a chance to meet him in person next October in Reno at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous. That's the plan, anyhow........

That's it for now, so I'm going to get back to writing some code!