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I wonder if his parents were more complicit than originally thought. They didn't raise an alarm when he came home alone in Gabby's van, nor for several days after 'went missing' last week. But they did tell the police he was probably in the Carlton Reserve, and they did report that they found his car there. Police abandoned the search of the Carlton Reserve very quickly. I don't think it was because they got tired of searching the swamp, I think it is because they don't believe he is there.

Lotta treasures in there, but it would be a nightmare to sell all the bits and pieces individually online. You might want to consider a going-out-of-business or estate sale model, advertise heavily to the local shooting community, and open up the shop for a few hours to sell off as much as possible.

Very good news indeed! Now if Gov Newsom gets recalled next week, it will have been a pretty good month.

I wonder if they are? In the insanely hot market in which we're looking (the lake district of northern Idaho), the properties are being snatched up for cash offers, inspection waived. Offers contingent on a mortgage, even preapproved, aren't getting much attention. So we are really hoping things cool off by next year... (Edit: I see your buyer did have a mortgage to cover part of the sale price, and also waived the inspection...so I also wonder what the lenders are thinking.)

I'll just add that your friend has very good taste in handguns. I'm partial to the Colt snake guns, and I didn't even know the Anaconda was available chambered in .45 lc...but sure enough, I see they added that in 1993.

In general, I'm not sure. But I'll bet they can think of something here. Harassment, animal cruelty, and I thought they were in Everglades National Park (where they would certainly be protected), but maybe it was the everglades, not in the park. I occasionally enjoy deep fried alligator nuggets, they just went about it all wrong.

Yep. They are likely to face some significant penalties for harassing or killing a protected species within a national park. There is some speculation that the FAA might get involved as well.

I've done it now--signed up for my first big BBQ competition. I'm registered for the Kansas City Barbeque Society's "Red, White, and Que" contest in Jackson, NJ next month. October is the last month of the points chase for Team of the Year standings, and for qualification for the KCBS World Series Invitational, so there are some heavy hitters showing up, even though NJ is a little off the competitive BBQ circuit. As of today, there are 27 Masters teams entered (brisket, pork butt, pork ribs, and chicken), several of which have previously won at the national level. I'm just entered in the 'Backyard BBQ' division (ribs and chicken), 15 teams entered thus far, but a couple of those teams are in the top 20 in the nation. I fully expect to get my butt handed to me (BBQ humor), but it will at least be educational, and I'll get to sample some outstanding BBQ. Red, White, and Que BBQ contest

Congratulations! I assume it has sold by now. We're still hoping to put ours up by April of next year, but the amount of work that has to be done first is daunting--there is a lot of stuff to get rid of! And we've no idea how to manage buying a house most of the way across the country in a market so hot most houses are selling same-day, for cash.

Here's something you don't see every day... Alligator snatches drone from the air, ruptures the battery pack A good reminder of how nasty lithium battery packs can be...and adding water does NOT help.

I measured just a hair over 5" of rain here in Morris County. Fortunately almost no wind, so for the first time in awhile we didn't lose any trees. I found a couple of new ceiling leaks caused, apparently, by the gutters overflowing, but we're on a hill so at least the basement stayed dry.

One would think this headline came from The Onion or The Babylon Bee, but no, it was dreamed up by SF's Human Rights Commission and Office of Economic and Workforce Development. San Francisco will pay criminals not to shoot people (or get shot themselves). Starting next month, San Francisco criminals deemed high risk will be paid $300 to $500 EACH MONTH in which they neither shoot anyone, nor get shot. San Francisco modeled their program after one in Sacramento. Promoters of that program boast that ‘only’ 44% of participants were subsequently arrested on new charges, though another 33% dropped out of the program. And presumably, some not-insignificant percentage of the participants shot someone without getting caught. But other than that, it was an unqualified success, at least in the mind of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Why they consider this program Workforce Development isn't clear.

I enjoyed the original Bond novels, but if you changed the title, author, and a few character names, a reader would have trouble matching many of them to the movies that followed. Moonraker the book was about one missile that could hit London, and the missile silo was already in England, so not much of a stretch. Moonraker the movie had dozens of space shuttles, an enormous stealth space station, and a plot to eliminate all human life remaining on earth.

Also, you don't need to register anything you bring into NJ. There is a form for voluntary registration, but it's just that; voluntary. Edit: at least I think that is still the case, I know our governor gopher was hoping to change that.

The original (Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989) went WAY better than the remake (US withdrawal in 2021)! But getting back to movies, Casino Royale was very good, but the original was kind of a spoof, so I hesitate to call Daniel Craig's version a remake. Much like The Three Amigos wasn't quite a remake of The Magnificent Seven. More of a comedic re-imagination of the original.

This is a fun little discussion going on over on one of the pilot boards, so I thought I'd bring it here. I'll start off with the one movie that is generating the most disagreement there: True Grit. The original and the remake are running neck and neck in that debate. I'll concede both are very good. But c'mon...the original stars The Duke. It's better than the remake.

I'd been to that one (I mostly used Langs, then later Treasure Cove, and now Elite Divers, depending on where I was living at the time. It was the old Princeton SCUBA shop that he purchased, and subsequently shut down.

I've been an avid wreck diver for many years, and this past weekend, I had the opportunity to dive on the oldest intact naval warship in North America. The radeau "Land Tortoise" was built in 1758 by the British during the French and Indian wars...so it predates our Navy, and it predates the US. The radeau was a larger version of the bateaux, which were simple flat bottom boats build by the hundreds as the war raged along Lake Champlain and Lake George. Bateaux mostly carried troops, could be used as small gun platforms, and were light enough to be transported overland. The radeau was a different beast, 50 feet long, 18 feet wide, propelled by 26 oars, with ports for 7 cannon. The model in the photo shows what it looked like; the angular, sloping sides were intended to deflect cannon fire. It was common to sink the bateaux when winter approached, to prevent them from falling into enemy hands, or being crushed when the lakes froze. They'd fill them with rocks and sink them close to shore, then they would be re-floated in the spring. The remains of a few bateaux that weren't recovered can still be found in the shallows of lake George. The sinking of the Land Tortoise on Oct 22, 1758--just two days after it was commissioned--didn't work out as well. That huge flat bottom caused the sinking boat to hydroplane, and it came to rest nearly a mile offshore, in 109 feet of water. It was finally located in 1990--the guy who found it briefly ran a SCUBA shop in Mercer county, where I had met him--but he soon decided his real interest was in hunting shipwrecks. There is a short video linked on this page that shows what it looks like now: 265-year-old sunken warship Diving the site is by permit only, and generally groups have to be accompanied by a guide, though that was waived for our group. Visibility, unfortunately, was poor due to an algae bloom in the lake, so it was quite dark on the bottom and visibility with even the largest lights was perhaps 10 feet. Since the radeau is a national historic landmark, divers aren't allowed to get close--there is literally a chain suspended on posts around the entire perimeter of the wreck, about 5' out from the hull, and divers have to stay outside that perimeter. It is also pretty cold on the bottom...43-44F yesterday, and those mid-August temperatures are the warmest it ever gets at that depth. That's good for the wreck, though...the cold and low oxygen levels have done an incredible job of preserving the wreck. It is almost perfectly intact, there is virtually no growth on it. it looks like it could have been sunk earlier this year. It was a real treat to get to see it.

Component availability depends on what exactly you are looking for, but in general bullet availability is pretty good, powder availability is fair, and primer availability remains a challenge. You can find primers, but quantities are limited, and prices are still fairly high. Any Dillon press is a fine choice. Consider not just the speed of the press, but also the cost and the conversion time if you want to switch between calibers. If you load a bunch of calibers, caliber conversion kits get expensive for the high-end presses, and it takes a lot of time to do the conversion. I went with the 550, because I can change calibers in 15 minutes for not-too-much money, and the 400 rounds/hour I average with it is plenty for my needs. If you shoot high volume of one or two calibers, one of their higher-end presses makes more sense.

I ran the smoker last weekend, and again yesterday. Yesterday I tried out a competition chicken recipe. This was a bit of work, as it involved brining, marinating, applying the rub, the actual smoking (4 hours on apple and pecan), misting periodically with apple juice, and glazing with a homemade raspberry vinaigrette/honey sauce. Mighty tasty when done, though! Last weekend I made bacon-weave smoked meatloaf, a family favorite. It's pretty easy and quick to make.

You need to go on the EZPass website, and list the cars/license plates you want to associate with the EZPass unit. There is no charge for that, to the best of my knowledge. Once the cars are listed, you can transfer the EZPass unit between them as needed. The hardest part will be remembering to have it in the right car at the right time.

That would be a fair, equitable, and quite logical solution. So of course NJ won't allow it. Unfortunately, you'll need a new permit.

He has apparently selected his running mate: Diane Allen. Ciattarelli picks Allen as Lt Governor candidate From that link: "She’s also one of New Jersey’s most eclectic politicians. A former Miss Burlington County, she was also a daredevil hang-glider – Allen won a national hang-gliding championship in 1973 — judo expert, national swimming champion, pilot, and sharpshooter."

The shooting events have concluded at this year's (errr, last year's) Olympic Games. In Men's 50 meter free rifle (3 position), the medalists were: Gold: C. H. Zhang, China, 466.0 (World Record) Silver: S. Kamenskiy, Russia, 464.2 Bronze: M. Sebic, Serbia, 448.2. No US shooter advanced to the final round. Looking at the qualifying scores, they've certainly gone up since I was shooting free rifle. There was a time when the US was consistently pretty good in this event, so it was sad to have no one in the top 8. Finally, in Men's Rapid Fire Pistol Gold: J. Quiquampoix, France, 34 Silver: L. Pupo, Cuba, 29 Bronze, Y.H. Li, China 26. Again, no US shooter advanced to the final, though this event is quite different than any US event, there aren't a lot of ranges here set up for it. It's a 25 meter event, fired with iron-sighted .22 pistols, in 5 shot strings with time limits of 8 seconds to start, then 6 seconds, then finally 4 seconds. The shots are fired at a bank of five individual turning targets, 1 shot per target. Video below. Olympic Finals-Men's Rapid Fire Pistol Final medal count, by country, for the shooting events (Russia represented as ROC): Country 1 China 4 1 6 11 2 United States 3 2 1 6 3 ROC 2 4 2 8 4 Czech Republic 1 1 0 2 5 Switzerland 1 0 1 2

I've made some very good cider. Been meaning to try making mead. I've not tried to make wine, but I always heard that it is much easier to make really good beer than it is to make really good wine.