The FBI – Drowning In Counter-Terrorism Money, Power and Other Resources – Will Apply The Term “Terrorism” To Any Group It Dislikes And Wants To Control And Suppress - Washington's Blog

I am a terrorist, according to this government.

Welcome to our Brave New World...

I've had a nasty head cold blow up this weekend and threaten to become a chest cold. It's put a serious damper on the pace of progress. This evening I consumed nearly a whole bulb of garlic, crushed and put in a glass of water to swallow. It's brutal to the stomach, but I've proven it to be effective against chest colds and flu that gets in the lungs. Hey, I dropped a load of cash on tomorrow evening (Tucson Jazz Society's New Year's Eve Gala)! I have to make the best showing of it that I can.

The first cabinet got it's doors this weekend:


Magnetic catch at the top:


Completed cabinet and matching cat:

These are not furniture grade.  The fit and finish is definitely utility grade.  But they are rock solid and should last me the rest of my life if I keep them.

I cut all the parts for the second cabinet yesterday.  Today I got a (slow) start to assembling them.  Shelf supports screwed and glued to the side panels:


Bottom shelf and the first two intermediate shelves with the kick plate and reinforcing bars screwed and glued:


That's all I've got.  A disappointing showing for a full-length weekend, to be sure.

EXO-VATICANA - Part 1:

Christians will not immediately need to renounce their faith in God “simply on the basis of the reception of [this] new, unexpected information of a religious character from extraterrestrial civilizations.” However, once the “religious content” originating from outside the earth “has been verified” they will have to conduct “a re-reading [of the Gospel] inclusive of the new data…” – Vatican Astronomer, Eminent Theologian and Full Professor of Fundamental Theology at the Pontificia Universit�della Santa Croce in Rome [Connected With Opus Dei], Father Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti

Revelation 13

The Beast from the Sea

13 Then I[a] stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns,[b] and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name. 2 Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. 3 And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast. 4 So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?” 

5 And he was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and he was given authority to continue[c] for forty-two months. 6 Then he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, His tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven. 7 It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe,[d] tongue, and nation. 8 All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

9 If anyone has an ear, let him hear. 10 He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

The Beast from the Earth

11 Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. 12 And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. 

13 He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. 14 And he deceives those[e] who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. 

15 He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. 16 He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, 17 and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or[f] the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

18 Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.

What greater signs in the heavens that could deceive even the elect, except the open appearance of "alien intelligences"?

II Thessalonians 2 -- The Great Apostasy

2 Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, 2 not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ[a] had come. 3 Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin[b] is revealed, the son of perdition, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God[c] in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

 5 Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? 6 And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. 7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He[d] who now restrains will do so until He[e] is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. 

9 The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, 10 and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, 12 that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

And who is this "lawless one" that he could deceive with strong delusion (if possible) even the elect? What office, what position could this one possessed of Satan himself seize, such that the elect might follow his every word?

Matthew 24

23 “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. 24 For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you beforehand.

26 “Therefore if they say to you, ‘Look, He is in the desert!’ do not go out; or ‘Look, He is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it. 27 For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

See that you are not deceived.

-------------
Oh BTW, December 21, 2012 did not pass without incident.  More on that later, maybe.
cf. Revelation 9:1-3
Something...was opened by unholy power.

In addition to celebrating Christmas, this was an extended weekend that saw a couple of things accomplished.

I arrived Friday ahead of Daisycat and completed several housecleaning tasks that were still pending. 5:11 PM (local time) passed without any discernible event. The long count calendar apparently rolled over to the new age without disruption in the physical realm.

Saturday morning Daisycat and Momcat made German pirogen, which has been a Cat family tradition for years. These are noodle dough pockets that contain a mixture of chicken and pork sausage. They are boiled to cook thoroughly, then reheated in a fry pan or in the oven for consumption. Meanwhile I finished painting the cabinet that I had assembled last weekend. Much to my chagrin I discovered that the hinges I bought will not work with the way that I constructed the cabinets. So here is the first one in place and filled with stuff, sans doors. I will buy the correct hardware this week for installation next weekend.


Sunday and Monday was a big joint effort by Daisycat and I.







The above photos are most notable for what is *not* shown. In each case there was either a pile of brush or stumps, or a big pile of scrap wood. It all got hauled off, piled up, and burned.

Mucho appreciation for Daisycat's substantial help! These piles of eyesore have been bothering me for (in some cases) years. Now the Redneck Farm looks just a little less "white trash".

Daisycat left for the Big City after Christmas Dinner this midday.  I stayed on to batten down the hatches, tend the coals of the brush fire a bit, and take care of a handful of minor items.  This coming week will be very short at work--just two days--then I will be back here again Friday.  New Year's Eve we have finally bit the bullet and bought tickets for the Tucson Jazz Society's big gala.  Rick Braun, Richard Elliot and Peter White (big, big names in the Smooth Jazz world!) headline the evening, plus local talent, dinner, drinks, dancing, and a midnight toast.  We also sprung for a hotel room at the event to avoid the need to keep one of us sober enough to drive home.  Plus, other...activities.

This evening will also serve as our celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary, which falls on January 2.  Only by the Grace of God, let me tell you.  He is faithful to complete that which he has started, Amen!

We've returned from a candlelight Christmas Eve service, the Bailey's Irish Cream has been sipped, and we're listening to Mannheim Steamroller Christmas on Pandora.   Earlier, presents between Daisycat and I were opened and shared, and tomorrow morning we open more at Momcat's place.

Thinking on what is good and holy in this darkened world, and wishing the light of His Advent to you and yours this season.

Merry Christmas from the Cats!

We're going to Burning Man!

Idle daydreams become reality if you let them...

Well. This should be **interesting**, to say the least.

Oh, and regarding that little incident in Connecticut late last week?
This is all I have to say about it.

Truncated weekend again due to Friday's in town activities. Still I got a bit more done on the cabinets, despite Saturday being taken up entirely with miscellaneous stuff that I have a hard time tracking after the fact.

Some of these photos are from last weekend.

Where I left off last, I had ripped the panels down to roughly 16" wide by 8' strips.  Next I cut them to the correct length for the cabinet sides.  I chose a total height of 83-1/2", as this is the floor to ceiling distance at the outside walls of my mobile home.  I don't intend to put them there initially, but I may move them in the future and want them to fit anywhere I move them to.

As I did when ripping them, I measured carefully and clamped a guide board to run the saw along to ensure a straight cut.


While the cuts are straight this way, the circular saw blade does not cut as smoothly as my table saw does.  I next cut the sides to 15-1/4" wide on the table saw, to allow room for the doors (3/4" thick) to make the whole unit 16" wide when done.


The table saw makes very smooth, clean cuts. This will be the front edge of the sides.


The top of the unit was trimmed up to be a full 16" deep by 32" wide, as the doors will close underneath the top.  This is the bottom shelf (15-1/4" wide, same as the sides, together with a 3-1/2" kick board glued, clamped and screwed onto it.


The shelves were trimmed to be 15" wide by 30-1/2" long, which makes them 1/4" narrower than the sides and twice the thickness of the sides shorter than the top (to fit inside the unit).  The 1/4" width offset will be at the front of the shelves, so that the door will close 1/4" in front of the shelves.  Call me cautious, but I didn't want the shelves to interfere in any way with the doors. The extra 3/4" of plywood trimmed from the front of each shelf is turned over and glued and screwed to the bottom edge of the shelf to reinforce it against warping under load.


Here is the top, sides and bottom shelf assembled, together with the top shelf.


Another 3/4" square strip is glued and screwed to the sides at each shelf to help support the load on the shelf. I'm using polyurethane moisture cured glue for this project, as I do with nearly any wood construction these days. It's great stuff! One of the recognizable name brands of this is called "Gorilla Glue".


Completed shelf installation, viewed from what will be the back of the unit.


Shelves installed and 1/4" plywood back panel installed. I will fill in rough spots, screws and holes with painter's caulk before painting, then will install the doors and hardware.

The large space on the bottom of this unit is designed to hold four stacked five-gallon buckets.  Another shelf could easily be installed there, and on the other two units I intend to add another.

I thought about making more detailed sketches of part sizes and a part cutting guide, to make this sort of an Instructable. I may yet do this before I'm done with all three cabinets, but no promises.

I can't recall if I mentioned, but this is only intended to be utility grade.  Doing this up to furniture standards would require better quality wood and much more anal-retentive attention to precise cutting and finishing.  The final finish will be the gloss black paint I showed on one piece a couple weekends ago, and it will look just dandy. 

As usual (!!) I grossly underestimated the time this little side trip of a project would take me.  *sigh*

Oh and regarding skunks, last night was a twofer.  I set three traps and two of them had skunks in the morning.  This makes three this fall.  Something tells me there may be more.  There were a *lot* of tracks last weekend when I failed to catch any of them.  The li'l buggers seem to have recovered from my eradication efforts a couple years ago.  Such is life in the valley.

Or, almost anyway. Great day at least. The Cats proved that they are not hopelessly non-photogenic. After sleeping in and a lazy start to the day, we had portraits done at a place called Picture People in the Park Place Mall here in Tucson. A very competent photographer managed to capture a handful of shots that were really good, out of a dozen and a half shots taken.

We ordered a print package with the Groupon coupon I had bought at a steep discount weeks ago, plus a CD of all the prints with repro rights. Then at Walgreens, Daisycat got the Christmas card she wanted printed on the spot. A visit to an art shop called Aaron Brothers followed, where we found several frames to mount some of the photos to be sent to mothers for Christmas gifts. Finally, I edited and cropped the images and uploaded them to Shutterfly.com for more prints, while Daisycat wrote Christmas cards.

It's nice to have a day like this after a string of stressful ones.

Yes, I'm still here. Just a bit busy and distracted.

Momcat was in the emergency room Sunday, my cat is in the hospital today, I'm going six directions at work, fighting off the flu, and the holiday season feels a bit more stressed this year than usual.

And December 21 is approaching, giant question mark in hand.

I'll come up with something to post eventually.

Space Agency: Phobos Is Artificial

Source

I awghter git me one O' them tinfoil hat devices. Amazing signals these guys pick up wearin' 'em.

Let's see if this works...

This links to one of my favorite off-the-beaten-path Pandora.com stations:
Cafe Accordion

This should start a music session in your browser at Pandora.com with this station playing.  Let me know if it it works.

Severely truncated weekend this time. I stayed in town Friday for a vet appointment in the late morning, then Daisycat and I went to a Christmas event at a local park. I thought it was nice--lights on all the trees, a western swing band in one location and a gypsy flamenco band in another, plus art, crafts, hot cider, coffee and Christmas cookies. Apparently it was better last year and Daisycat was disappointed.

Saturday morning at the farm was another butchering day--four more hens prepared for the stew pot. We have seven more birds to butcher, but the remainder are slated for early January some time.

Saturday late morning and afternoon, I bluestaked the existing utilities on site in preparation for the local phone company to install a DSL line. Yes! The Desert Cat Farm is coming into civilization finally. I've been frustrated enough by the satellite service we've been limping along with. Now that the local phone company offers DSL, well, it's a no-brainer to switch.

"Here's where to dig in order to hit some dangerous utilities..."


I also brushed out and raked clear the alignment that I want them to take. The route takes them *around* all of the existing utilities, hoping this prevents any problems.


A cow-worker gave me several bags of pine needles and oak leaves. He's very liberal, and has apparently become convinced that I might, maybe, possibly, be an OK conservative, since I like to recycle coffee grounds for my garden. He didn't want to landfill the rakings, so offered them to me. Sure, you betcha! I can use them in my tinfoil-hat libertarian survival garden. LOL!

Here they are piled until I can fit them into the compost bins.


The corn cobs were dry enough, so I got a start on shelling the corn into a bucket.


I had to give up after a while, because my hands were getting chafed and beaten up by the cobs.  When this shallow gash appeared on my thumb, I called it quits.  I need to build a wooden box to mount my antique corn sheller, in order to finish the job properly.


Sunday morning I did some maintenance on Mitzi, returning her to automatic choke operation, as the problem I had been experiencing turned out to not be so much related to the gas delivery system as to the ignition timing.  It is just easier to let the automatic choke do its thing, versus operating a finicky manual choke.

Sunday afternoon I was back at painting and cutting the plywood panels for my cabinet project.  I have all the panels primed and rough-cut.  Perhaps next weekend I will start fine cutting to size and assembling the first one.


Elsewhere, the vetch is looking mighty juicy in places.  This extended mild weather is letting it put some serious growth on that normally waits until May to happen.  Frost may trim back some of this growth, but these vetches are winter hardy to 10 degrees fahrenheit.

This patch will become my corn patch next spring.