Chris Johnson

Thank goodness that Obama was only able to put two justices on the Supreme Court. Kagan and Sotomayor were both nominated by Obama.

Both were highly questionable nominations. I am grateful that Garland didn’t make it onto the court; that would have been insanely bad for this country. He did enough damage as AG.

Sotomayor was a joke. Underqualified, not a serious candidate, but the GOP allowed her to get on the court.

She was the least qualified Justice of my lifetime.

Kagan was qualified, sort of. The problem with her was that she was involved with Obamacare, which was on its way to the Supreme Court.

She lied when she said she had nothing to do with Obamacare. She then refused to recuse herself when the case did make it to the Supreme Court.

She is dangerous. She is dangerous because she isn’t stupid; she isn’t dumb. What she is is a Justice who is agenda driven.

She might become as good as Justice Ginsburg. Ginsburg wrote opinions and dissents that always came out in the direction of her agenda. She got there with well-written opinions that were grounded in good case law and good precedent.

She was a good Justice, just not capable of following the Constitution when the outcome didn’t fit her agenda.

Kagan is striving to be the new Ginsburg. If she doesn’t leave the court, she might just make it to that high standard.

Sotomayor is a middle-of-the-road justice. When she is gone, she will be remembered as the first liberal Justice to agree that AR-15s and their ilk are in common use.

The Biden Administration nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson. She has turned out to be a good politician.

The definition of a good politician is one that stays bought.

She was bought and paid for by the Democrat machine. The only requirement they had for her was that she would dependably vote for the Democrat agenda.

She has done this.

In an 8-1 opinion, the Supreme Court granted a stay in favor of the Trump administration. Eight to one.

Sotomayor decided to write a concurrence. Jackson wrote a dissent.

Now, I’m not about to read the drivel that Jackson wrote. The first 10 pages of her dissent do not cite to anything except a recent Supreme Court opinion. And her cite is garbage. It does not apply.

What it is is emotional blackmail wrapped around “we got away with it for the last hundred years; that means we should be able to get away with it for the next five hundred years.”

In a democracy, the people will at some point start to vote themselves bread and circuses. This is why our founding fathers created a democratic republic. The goal was that the people were one step removed from the people creating law. They also set the federal government to be at war with itself.

We want a dysfunctional government. We want the three branches to be at odds with each other. Stopping most of the things the government wants to do.

Over the last hundred years, Congress has been voting itself more power. They did this by removing power from the executive, Article II, to oversee the Article II parts of government. They placed limits on the executive.

We are in the “Find Out” stage. And the current Supreme Court is doing a grand job of following the Constitution.

I look forward to reading the next opinion by the Supreme Court. I want to know who is the next to take KBJ to task.

Today, I sit in a home that keeps the rain off my head, the cold away in winter, and provides me with shelter from the elements.

It is my castle. I, and my bank, own it.

I have a vehicle that will carry me and mine. It is a workhorse that does what I need.

I have a machine , a woodshop and am in the process of creating a space to do hand woodworking.

I have earned these things by marrying correctly and working hard. Note, I married badly, twice, and it cost me wealth.

I have taken part in the unalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

My country was the first to recognize that these rights are unalienable. That they come from our creator, not from man, not from king, not from government. They are mine by right of being born.

I’m proud of my country. I’m proud that we recognize these rights.

When Jimmy Carter was my president, I was proud to be an American. When Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush were my presidents, I was proud to be an American.

When Obama and Biden were my presidents, I was still proud to be an American. I am still proud to be an American with Trump in office.

My country is worth being proud of. The only other country that has done as much for this world is the British Empire.

Unfortunately, the British Empire no longer exists.

When Carter bent over to the Communist “students” that had invaded our country in Iran, he said, “Please use some lube,” and not much else.

I was embarrassed by his response. I was disgusted by his actions. I was angry that he chose to let Iran do that to my countrymen. I was still proud to be an American.

When the party controlling my country are shitbags, worthy of nothing but derision and ridicule, they still represent my country. We, The People, are still good people. We still step up when there is need.

In most major disasters, American citizens give more than most countries. Then our country gives even more.

We are, by far, the most generous people in the world. It is one of the reasons that we are such suckers for emotional blackmail. We care.

If you want to say, “Not my president,” then give up your citizenship and emigrate to a different country. Accept their leadership, their politics, and their largesse. Until then, he is your president.

It is my country, right or wrong.

When it is wrong, I will step up to be heard. I will use the ballot box, I will use the jury box, and I hope and pray that I never have to use the cartridge box.

Right or wrong, Conservative or leftest, it is my country, I love her, I will defend her, I am proud of her.

It was a bit hectic yesterday. I spent time teaching English as a second language (ESL) remotely. I did a bit of shopping and made my second set of half-lap joints that were clean, straight from the saw.

At to that taking Ally to a presentation, and I ran out of go juice and time.

Which got me this tune, first broadcast in 1957, which seems like it was taken straight from woke culture.

And I found an early video of Gavin Newsom.

Tomorrow’s article will be titled “I’m Proud To Be An American.”

There have been so many nasty postings over this weekend that I need to vent.

Meanwhile, standup straight and be proud of our country.

For lack of a nail and all of those things. Never a truer statement was made.

I have three workbenches in the shop. One is filled with machining detritus. It always needs to be cleaned up. The second currently is full with a mini-mill and storage containers that are waiting to be placed on the wall. The third is the grinding station with two bench grinders. One wheel is accessible because have the bench is blocked by wood that is waiting for a home.

Moreover, none of these workbenches are set up to be used for wood working. There is a copper jawed vise on the machining workbench. That workbench is a 24-inch by 96 sheet of 3/8 inch plywood atop a pair of 2x4s resting on a pair of folding saw horses.

If I bang on it, everything on the table jumps.

The mini workbench is stable enough, but it is set up for electronics work, doesn’t yet have good lighting, It is only 60-inches long, no vise and no room for working on longer boards.

The third is in a corner with no real access.

Thus, the new workbench.

Joinery

I’m sure this could be knocked together in a couple of days, but that’s not me.

For the first trestle, I did knock it together. Construction adhesive and good old fashion screws. It was strong enough, but not pretty, and I can see my errors today.

The end apron, a piece of 2×10 by 24 inches cupped. I didn’t understand what this really meant when I put that apron on.

The difference between knowledge and skill.

It took me almost two weeks to get the braces cut. Some of that was plain stupid choices in my past. I didn’t have a saw that would for cutting the tenons.

Mostly, it was lack of skill and rain.

I’ve gathered more knowledge and a bit more skill.

To get good joints, you need to have flat, smooth, square connections. I didn’t have that.

Smoothing

I’ve located some 5 wood planes so far. I knew of 2 of them, I suspected 1 more. I found 3 more after that. I also picked up 3 planes for a few dollars each, used.

That’s a total of 8 planes. Two block planes, Four #4 style planes. One #5 plane. One jointer, I think it is a #8 or #9.

One of the #4s is a piece of junk. It is stamped steel for the frog. Even after spending a couple of hours working on it, it doesn’t cut worth a damn. The second #4 isn’t ready yet. It has so much paint and gunk on the sole, that I haven’t gotten it ready yet. The third is a new Stanley #4. I’ve not checked it out yet.

That leaves one, #4. It is an older Stanley with a slightly cupped sole, but I have it mostly tuned, and it is doing its job of smoothing.

I realized that the #5, jack plane, hadn’t been checked since I purchased it 30 years ago. It needed sharpening, but is now doing a fine job.

Those two and a block plane I was playing with are all work ready.

This gets me smooth boards.

Flat

A smooth board is one that doesn’t have any roughness, but it might not be straight nor flat.

To make it flat, you need to test for flatness with a straight edge. Using an expensive Starrett combination square for woodworking messes with my head. I have multiple combination squares, but this one is my nicest.

You can have a board that is very smooth, but which undulates the length of the board. A longer plane, like a jack plane, will help with that, but ultimately, you need to locate those undulations with your straight edge.

After making sure your board is smooth, you set to work with your straight edge to find and mark all the high spots.

Knocking down the high spots will make the board flat. Using a longer plane will help isolate where you are cutting to just high spots.

The problem is that the longer the plane, the more work it is to use. They get heavy and that means more work. They also don’t cut as fast because they can only shave the high spots in that longer distance.

I am to the point where I can do this. I have the skill to make a board smooth and to remove the high spots.

This leaves the board with one more potential issue, twist.

Twist

Just because your board is smooth and flat in a local area does not mean it is flat over a longer distance.

This requires a different tool to measure.

The winding sticks.

Winding sticks are two sticks that can stand on edge, have tops that have the same angle relative to their bottoms.

Think of them as thick rulers that can be easily balanced on edge.

The sticks are placed near the ends of the board, across the board.

You then lower your eye, watching for the far stick to disappear behind the near stick.

If the sticks are parallels, then the far stick should disappear at once. If there is any twist, one end will disappear before the other.

That indicates that the other side is high, relative to the near stick.

This tells you where to remove wood to remove the twist.

As long as the sticks have the same angle, relative to their bases, then this works great.

So I need winding sticks to finish prepping my apron boards.

Making Winding Sticks

Simple, plane one face of a 4×1 by 16 inches smooth. Make it flat, ignore minor twist. I.e., get it as flat as you can without winding sticks.

Now hold the board on its edge and plane the other edge smooth and square to the major face. Then flip it over and do the same for the other edge.

You require a square to make sure that the edge is perpendicular to the face.

This requires holding the board on edge. Except I don’t have a vise to clamp the board on edge.

We’ll assume I can solve that with a wedge board, later.

Once you have both edges square to the face, use your marking gauge (you do have a marking gauge? If not, stop now and make one.) to find the narrowest part of the board. Use that to strike a line (another skill) from one end to the other.

Now plane the board to that line. When you are done, if you have done everything well, you will have two smooth edges, square to the face, and parallel to each other.

At this point, use your marking gauge to find the center of the board. You can do this by eye, actually. Still another skill.

Stroke a line down the center, carry it to the back of the board, maintaining your registration on the same reference edge.

Now rip the board into two equal, or nearly equal, halves. Still another skill I have to learn.

That’s where my bandsaw comes into play. That is what I will use instead of a hand saw. I don’t have the vise to rip safely and easily.

Find the narrowest part of both boards with your marking gauge. Strike that line. Plane down to the line.

When done, you will have two boards that should be the same. You can joint them to make sure, this is the best thing to do.

If you joint them, make sure you mark the matching ends so that you can easily find them again.

You now have your winding sticks. To make it a bit better, darken the top edge of one of the sticks, to create contrast when you are using them.

Notch Board

Another tool. Find a 1×6 about 12 inches long. Find the center and mark a point 4 inches from one end at that center.

Drop lines from a point 1 inch in from the edges to the center marked point.

Now drill a 1/4 inch hole at the center point.

Rip cut from the end to the hole. This will create a V notch, 3.5 inches wide at the mouth and just a 1/4 wide at the throat.

You can now attach this V notch board to the surface of your workbench near the left end, or in my case, one of my apron boards, with the notch facing the center of the board.

You can now place almost any board, on edge, and jam it into that notch. The notch will hold the board upright, on edge.

Now just plane to the lines.

Conclusion

I’m having a blast turning knowledge into skills. This is my daily exercise. I figure that by the end of today, I should have the second trestle completed.

While the adhesive is drying, I will plane the two apron boards smooth and flat, ready to be attached to the legs, which I have already planed smooth and flat.

Maybe I’ll have something good to report by Friday.

How do we know that either Hell is one single temperature or there are no engineers in Hell? If there was a temperature differential and an engineer, they would have made a heat pump and be enjoying mild temperatures.

When you have a device that can both heat and cool the inside of a building, we call it a “heat pump”. An Air Conditioner is a heat pump that is optimized to pump heat out of a building.

A heat pump is a practical application of the Ideal Gas Law. The gist of the Ideal Gas Law, in this context, is that as the pressure decreases, heat also decreases.

You can feel this when using a spray can. If you allow the gas to escape, the pressure inside decreases and the can gets colder.

So a heat pump works by having a compress turn a gas into a liquid. This causes the temperature of the liquid to go up, lots. That hot liquid is then moved through a radiator. A fan blows air through that radiator, transferring heat from the liquid to the air.

This causes the air to be warmer leaving the heat pump than when it entered.

That compressed liquid is now cooler. It is then moved to an orifice where it is allowed to expand rapidly. Following the Ideal Gas Law, this causes the temperature to drop.

This cold gas is then pushed through a different radiator. This radiator takes heat from the air being blown across it and transfers that heat to the gas.

The gas then ends up back at the compressor, ready to start its trip again.

Heat pumps can be efficient if there is enough temperature differential on the waste side. In other words, they don’t work well in the north country where you are attempting to pull heat from sub freezing air. The cooling side still works in hot places because it is easier to add heat to already hot air than to pull heat from cold air.

The real problem is that compressor. That compressor does real work. Real work always has waste heat. So that compressor is turning expensive electricity into heat and then trying to get rid of the heat.

For a heat pump to work, you need an appropriate gas, a compressor, two heat exchangers, and at least two fans.

The Swamp Cooler

These things are old technology. They have been around for thousands of years. The basic method they use is to move air across water. The air moving across the water causes the water to evaporate. As the water evaporates, it sucks heat out of the air.

We will start with some numbers.

To raise one gram of water (also known as a ml) requires one calorie.

There are 252 calories in a BTU.

To raise one ml of water from 24°C to 100° requires 76 Calories.

To cause water to change state from a liquid to a gas requires 540 Calories.

That means that causing one ml of water to evaporate will take two BTUs of heat.

A swamp cooler does just this. It transfers heat into water vapor. You place the swamp cooler where there is a cross breeze. A fan blows air across a water impregnated membrane of some sort, think a porous towel or a piece of cheese cloth.

As the air moves across the water, the water evaporates, pulling heat from the air.

The cooler air now flows into the room with a little more moisture in it.

Depending on the amount of moisture in the air, a swamp cooler can drop the temperature, in the local area, by up to 30°F.

That’s not bad.

Above is a homemade version of a swamp cooler. It works by blowing air on water that then evaporates and cooler air comes out the side vents.

I purchased a Chinese made version. It is about 2.5 ft tall, about a foot square. It holds 4 liters of water, a little more than a gallon.

It has a fiber honeycomb to hold the water. There is a small fish tank type pump in the reservoir to pump water up to a holding tank. From there, water flows at a fixed rate into the honeycomb.

There is one major fan to move air across the honeycomb. There is a second, small motor to move vanes to redirect the air.

That’s it.

This thing pulls less power than one of our normal window fans. That’s because we aren’t running the fan at full speed. Instead, we are running the fan at medium while the pump and oscillator run.

And bluntly, the only reason I know the oscillator has its own motor is because there are electronic controls to turn it off and on.

One nice thing is the remote. There have been a couple of times when the room has gotten too cold for sleeping comfortably. The remote has an easy to find “off” button. Which is what I use.

Total cost for this? $99 from Amazon.

If you are running fans for cooling, it is worth while looking into a modern swamp cooler.

You know you done f’ed up when Kagan is siding with the conservative side of the court.

The gist of the issues is that the Supreme Court issued a stay regarding an inferior district court’s injunction stopping the Trump Administration from deporting criminal, illegal aliens. The 8 deportees in question have all been adjudicated guilty of violent crimes. Rape, rape of a child, murder, attempted murder and other crimes.

All of them have had not only full due process for a criminal alien, but also for somebody accused of a serious crime. They were found guilty.

After the court found them guilty, a final order for removal was issued.

These people were so despicable that their origin countries refused to take them back. This left the Administration with limited options. When a criminal alien is deported, the choices are to the last country they were in or their country of origin. If their country of origin and the last country refuses them entry, then it is the duty of the Administration to figure out what to do with them.

Since we can’t just execute them. Even though a wood chopper is the tool of choice for kiddy diddlers, that isn’t allowed under our morals.

The administration could just let them live in the comfort of a US jail/prison. Or they can deport them to a third-party country.

Nobody wanted these people. That is how bad they are. The Trump Administration negotiated with several countries before a couple agreed to take these monsters. We don’t know what it costs to be rid of them.

This inferior court judge decided that he was the person to set foreign policy and to decide how immigration policy should be.

Of course, he is in the First Circuit out of Boston. One of those 5 districts that issued 35 universal injunctions.

And this injunction was another universal injunction. Since this was before Trump v. CASA, universal injunctions had not been ruled unconstitutional.

Now, the left likes to play games with words. Trump is playing that even better. The injunction issued by the District Court’s injunction said that the DoJ could not deport these criminals. So the administration let the DoD deport them.

So the Administration followed the letter of the “law” but ignored the spirit. This Biden appointee, with less than 200 days on the federal bench, had a hissy fit.

He issued an order for remedial action against the Trump Administration. His order created new immigration policy. It set up new, never before used rules and methods. In short, he decided he was able to dictate to the Article II executive how immigration policy should be done.

The administration appealed to the First Circuit, which ruled against them. A foregone conclusion.

This was then appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court issued a stay on June 23rd.

This stay allowed the government to deport non-citizens to third countries.

The same day the stay was issued, the inferior district court issued an order stating that the remedies that had been ordered were still enforce because the government had not challenged the remedies.

This led the government to go back to the Supreme Court looking for a “Clarification”. This is almost unheard of.

This is one of the parties telling The Court that their inferior court was disobeying a direct order.

The Court granted that clarification. Even Kagan thought it should be clarified and agreed it was correctly clarified.

If the injunction is stayed, then any penalties that were issued by the inferior court are also stayed.

This is actually another powerful opinion from the Supreme Court.

In J.G.G. v. Trump, the district court was found to lack jurisdiction over the case. The case was transferred to the appropriate court, through the district court of New Jersey. The New Jersey district court got the case and immediately transferred it to Texas. Honest judges are doing such a good job that we don’t even hear about the case anymore.

The judge in the D.C. district court found “probable cause” to find the Trump Administration in contempt of an injunction he did not have the jurisdiction nor authority to issue.

This current opinion, DHS v. D.V.D. will help in the J.G.G. v. Trump case.

My father was a woodworker. He made beautiful furniture. I have a couple of pieces he made.

His primary tool was the radial arm saw. He also had a hand drill. Everything else he did by hand. I wish I had learned more from him.

I think it was one of his quiet hobbies. Later, he became obsessed with model railroads, doing incredible things with them. He is actually published for his work on model railroading.

His skills didn’t seem to pass to me. It is/was so bad that I didn’t do woodworking until I had power tools and a place for them.

One of the basic tasks of wood working is sawing. This is rather simple. Move the saw back and forth in a straight line.

Yeah, not so much.

You have to cut a straight line, without a curve in it. That straight line must be in the correct place. It must not be tilted.

I think 3 degrees of freedom in that sawing.

So how the heck do you saw something correctly? And what the heck do you do when you have to “rip” a piece of wood that is 6 foot long? Or even harder, resaw something that is 6 foot long?

You start with the correct tools. With saws, there are a lot of them. But the real starting point is the marking gauge.

Instead of just marking the line you are cutting, you mark the sides as well. This will give you a visual of where you are supposed to be cutting.

Next, put your pencil aside. Use a marking knife instead. First, it gives a cleaner mark. Second, it is easier to transfer a knife line around a corner.

If you are working on light wood, you can then use that pencil to make that knife mark easier to see.

Finally, for precision work, make a knife wall. This is an artificial kerf. It makes a physical stop for the edge of your saw blade. Now, when you start sawing, your saw is already in a kerf. If you carry the knife wall down the sides, it will help to keep your saw properly aligned.

So that marking knife, a good combination square or try square, a metal ruler, and a good bench chisel are required.

The next thing to look at is the types of saws that are available, and what they are used for.

There are more than you can shake two sticks at. And each saw does a different task.

I’m going to focus on straight cuts and ignore Japanese pull saws.

Saws can be cross-cut, rip cut, or a combination cut. A combination cut saw does a poor job of both ripping and cross-cutting. But it can be handy when you don’t know which you will need.

Cross-cut blades are designed to cut across the wood fibers. Rip saws are for cutting with the fibers.

Normally, we want cross-cuts to be smooth. Smooth means more teeth per inch. More teeth per inch means smaller gullets. Smaller gullets mean slower cutting.

If we have two saws with the same level of sharpness, assume “very” sharp. The one with fewer teeth per inch will cut faster. The reason is the gullets.

The gullet is the space between the teeth. When you are pushing a saw forward, each tooth is cutting a small shaving from the wood.

That shaving has no place to go. It has to travel with the saw blade as it moves forward. The only place it can travel is in the gullet.

As the blade exits the wood, the wood that is traveling in the gullet drops free.

When enough wood dust/chips have built up in the gullet, the tooth can no longer cut and collect more wood shavings.

With fewer teeth, there is less room for wood shavings. The gullets fill up faster and the saw stops cutting.

There is so much more to this. I thought I had a better understanding.

In trying to explain it in this article, I figured out that I didn’t know enough.

The differences are amazing.

A few months ago, somebody was shooting in the back forty. This caused somebody to report gun shots in the area. Must be some out of stater who has no ability to keep their nose in their own business.

Because it was a “shots heard”, the local cops, who I consider to be good guys, dispatched two officers in two squad cars.

They pull into the driveway. I go to the porch and say, “Hello! Can I help you?”

Per normal procedure, the cop doesn’t answer my question but asks his own.

“Were you shooting?”

“I don’t answer questions.”

If the police come to you, they are investigating a crime or potential crime. They are not there to “help” you, they are there to gather evidence to issue a citation, warning, or arrest somebody.

Anything you say can be used as evidence. It is a consensual encounter, which you can terminate at any time.

The next thing that will happen is the officer will repeat the original question. Most people can’t deal with the pressure of being asked the same question again and again.

My answer was again, “I don’t answer questions.”

The officer, per procedures, will then explain why they are there. They will then suggest that they are just “investigating” to find out what happened. They will then ask again. “Were you shooting?” “I don’t answer questions.”

All of this is per standard investigatory procedures.

At this point, the officer is likely to tell you what the crime was, “Did you know that you can’t shoot within 300 feet of an occupied dwelling?”

Notice the change in language, they are not asking if you did anything, they are asking for your knowledge of the law. Since they are not asking about you, it is more likely you will start talking to them. It doesn’t matter to them if you know or don’t know.

What they are doing is establishing “Mens Rea” or criminal intent. If the law you are breaking has a condition of Mens Rea, it can change what the charge is.

Alex Baldwin had no criminal intent to murder his camera girl. He had every reason to have constructive knowledge that pointing a real gun at a person, cocking the hammer, and pulling the trigger could cause death or significant injury. This is enough to establish Mens Rea for manslaughter charges. (IANAL)

At this point, the cop in question basically gave up and left. No fuss, no muss, no upset on my part.

Fast-forward to yesterday.

Somebody was out in the back forty shooting. I think I heard 16 rounds go off. So what? This is a freedom state.

I didn’t think much of it and went on with my life. This meant cleanup and then working on fixing the busted garage door and other metal working stuff, before being able to get back to wood working.

Two cop cars roll up, and an older cop gets out of his squad. I can see them through the open door of the shop.

He walks up and gets close to the shop but stops maybe twenty feet from the door.

This is intentional. He wants me to step out of the shop, which is part of my house. He cannot enter the shop without permission or a warrant. “Were you shooting?”

Wow, that sounds amazingly familiar. Almost as if it is SOP.

“I don’t answer questions.”

The cop then tries silence. Most people don’t deal well with silence. They want to fill it. So I just stood there smiling as he let the situation drag on.

He then asks again. SOP. I use my SOP, “I don’t answer questions.”

His SOP is in full display. Everything he says is according to the script. And he is getting upset that I won’t answer him.

“If I find out that you were shooting, I’m going to enjoy coming back here.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, cowards threaten, I’m promising.”

You might think that the fat old man, with a pistol on his hip, (Oh shit, I just realized that even though I didn’t have my jacket on, I had still covered my pistol with my shirt. I thought I was open carrying at that moment) had gotten under his skin.

This is when the bad cop starts to show up in full force. “Why are you refusing to answer? Why are you not cooperating?”

“Because I have a right to not answer questions.”

Another part of the discussion is where they justify asking questions because I could have “potentially done something wrong.”

Notice that they don’t say “broke the law” or “did something illegal”. That is the correct translation of “done something wrong.”

I asked him, “Have you potentially done something wrong? How about him?”

Then the long silence, he could see that this was not going according to script, and the script was running out.

At some point, he switched from asking about potential crimes to “safety.”

“If you wanted to know about safety, you should have asked.”

“I did!” “Actually, you didn’t.” “Why are you being so difficult?”

“When I shoot, I always do it safely. I am always aware of what is beyond my target. I always have a good berm or backstop. I am well aware of the laws controlling when and where I can shoot, and I never violate them.”

The chief walked away. Refused to shake hands. His backup was a bit more polite. When I asked him if he would shake my hand, his response was, “Not now.”

I don’t blame him. If he had been willing to shake hands while his chief had not, it would have looked like he was backing me, and not his boss.

Keep your head on a swivel. Stay out of stupid places. Don’t be out at stupid times. Avoid stupid people. Stay strapped.