Church Shooting

Miggy nailed it, again. This was a church shooting, not a school shooting.

If I recall correctly, many or most Catholic churches are anti-gun and mark their churches as “gun-free zones.”

This may or may not have the force of law.

But if you have a school attached to the church, then you are suddenly covered under the gun-free schools regulations.

Favorite Anti-Gunner Stupid of the Day

The mayor of the city where the shooting took place got on national TV to explain that guns are bad.

In one paragraph he told us, “Don’t paint all trans as evil because of this incident; the problem is all gun owners who refuse…”

It really was one single breath.

Network Stuff

I know you guys are tired of this. Yesterday I got my virtual network put back together. I finally found the magic document that told me what to do where.

The really cool thing is that once I had that magic, it was trivial to copy it to the different nodes to bring them into the “cloud.”

Ironic

This is a component of OpenStack. It is the tool I was expecting to use to get my network functional again. I haven’t figured it out yet.

The issue is that Ironic is too much. It requires a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC). A BMC is an embedded computer and OS in a server. You connect the BMC to a network, generally referred to as the management network, to gain access to the server hardware.

From the BMC, you can change BIOS settings, initiate power down and reset functions, and access the hardware for configuration purposes. Some even include KVM capabilities.

This is such a useful feature that most “real” servers come with them. Ironic has a couple of dozen drivers designed to work with them.

What it doesn’t have is any way to work with a computer without a BMC. There is an SNMP driver, but it is just for UPSs. I might play with it to get new boxes provisioned.

Maybe somebody has a fake IPMI implementation that runs under the actual OS.

Ceph is up?

I have 3 nodes that are not back up, plus the one node that was taken out of service. I’ll work on those two nodes today, but I also have to do honey-do jobs.

Question of the Week

This latest church shooting feels different. I can find the shooter’s name, but his name isn’t being dropped every other breath by news people.

Normally we are so cowed that we just “offer thoughts and prayers.” but this time we are still praying for those that were killed and injured as well as for those emotionally hurt by the shooter. Parents and such. The difference is that when there is that push for gun bans, there has been pushback at higher levels.

It also feels like we are getting more support from the top of the political party.

Does this terroristic act feel the same as the last shootings?

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/08/29/minneapolis-shooters-mother-is-not-cooperating-with-police-n2662502

https://sarahwestall.substack.com/p/minneapolis-shooter-manifesto-and

https://www.westernjournal.com/catholic-school-shooters-uncle-ex-lawmaker-fought-bans-transgender-procedures-kids/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigators-say-no-red-flags-raised-minneapolis-church-shooter-rcna227856

https://scallywagandvagabond.com/2025/08/annunciation-church-shooter-lived-with-parents-james-and-mary-grance-westman-who-signed-off-on-gender-change/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iqdI0XQRj0

< democrat spin >
It’a all Trump’s fault – If he had just been civil, and not outlawed transgender, transgender migration of minor children, and  . . . well everything – none of this would have happened.
< /democrat spin >

Democrat Minneapolis Police Chief Repeats Lie That They Have “No Motive” Despite WRITING HIS MOTIVE ON GUNS and Leaving MANIFESTO
https://gellerreport.com/2025/08/transterrorist-no-motive.html/?lctg=92233992

Minnesota Trans Shooter’s ‘Affirming’ Mother Goes Dark, Refuses to Cooperate With Authorities
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2025/08/29/new-minnesota-trans-shooters-mother-clams-up-refuses-to-cooperate-with-authorities-n2193360

Catholic School Shooter’s Uncle Is Ex-Lawmaker Who Fought Bans on Transgender Procedures for Kids
https://www.westernjournal.com/catholic-school-shooters-uncle-ex-lawmaker-fought-bans-transgender-procedures-kids/

As Minneapolis Shooter’s Mother Refuses to Cooperate With Police, We’ve Learned This New Detail

It was not a School Shooting
https://miguelgg.substack.com/p/it-was-not-a-school-shooting

https://www.kunstler.com/p/the-war-on-reality-is-over

“Avoid crowds – Get Out of the Cities. – NOW.  A year too soon is better than a day too late” – John Wilder @  https://wilderwealthywise.com/
“God created all men, but Samuel Colt made them equal.” – Unknown
“A Smith & Wesson does more for empowering women than Feminism ever could” – Greg Gutfeld 29 Jul 2017
Don’t Do: stupid sh*t, with stupid people, in stupid places, at stupid times. – paraphrasing John Farnam, firearms instructor
“An armed society is a polite society” – Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” ― Robert A. Heinlein
“People sleep peaceably in their bed at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” – Eric Arthur Blair (AKA – George Orwell)
“If your plan is to come to my house when things get bad, you need a better plan”- like being invited, having a useful skill, bringing food, or ammunition – jlr76380
“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero” – https://www.zerohedge.com/

One of the ways I go about criticizing a suggested government program or change in law is to simply ask questions of the proponent. Things like, “explain to me in very simple terms why you think this program will work?” And “what evidence is there that this proposed government program or change in law will make things better?” Through a series of questions, I can usually expose the flawed assumptions behind the proposals, peeling back the onion and get to the core rationale of most of these ideas, where an exasperated policymaker throws up their hands and says, “well, Paul, we have to do something.” And there it is. — Paul T. Martin

It’s an interesting point of view. I’m watching a local community melt down because the school system screwed up in a big way and is $5mil in the hole. They all want someone to DO SOMETHING!!! Except that there’s very little to do, and it must be done in a very orderly fashion. In other words, they ARE doing something. They’re just not doing it at the speed the people in the community want.

There was a shooting. Now everyone wants guns banned (again) to “stop school shootings.” Except it wasn’t a school shooting, it was a church shooting, and the people calling for disarmament are people who don’t have any skin in the game (ie they have no guns)… and the shooter was part of THEIR community, not ours. But it doesn’t matter, someone has to DO SOMETHING!!!

This happens all around us. People assume that because we have information (true and otherwise) at the tip of our fingers, that a) it’s true, and b) we can act at the same speed as we can research. Both those points are incorrect. Between general lack of knowledge and the influx of deepfakes and AI writing, telling truth from fiction is difficult right now. And we cannot possibly act at the speed at which we’re reading. Not only is it physically impossible, it’s also stupid, because we have to take time to figure out what the right thing is to do.

I often find myself asking, what would they have done in the 15th century? the 18th century? the 40s? the 80s? I ask myself this because there’s this assumption that we now know better than we did in the past (not entirely inaccurate, I might add), but we can only put that into practice if we look at today’s problems as a reflection of the past. For instance, there may be many ways to handle the local school problem(s), and they are REAL problems, but rushing around like chickens with our heads cut off does nothing. The folks that are pausing to regroup, to find out where the mistakes were made, are harkening back to the 40s IMO. What happened? How did it get so bad? What are the three most likely successful paths forward? Of those three, which would the public prefer us to take, and why? THAT is how one moves forward with stuff like this, because “the public” doesn’t have a clue as to how this stuff works. Right now they’re crowing happily over their only competent board member choosing to resign, because “it’ll save them money!” That means the bulk of them don’t know that board members don’t get paid. That’s … a good example of why the current mess happened.

“Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.” This quotation is often attributed to the philosopher George Santayana, but it’s actually a misquotation. The actual quote is, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The misquote assumes people learned the history in the first place. In today’s world, I suspect it’s assumed people didn’t learn history, or at least not truthful, accurate history.

What can people do when things like this happen? When a community melts down over something (real or imagined) there really isn’t much to do. You can throw your two cents in, but unless you’ve got special traction, it’ll likely fall on deaf ears. What you can do is hunker down, check your perimeter, and keep your head on a swivel. If you’ve got kids in the mix, move ’em somewhere else. Yes, that might mean schooling them at home (though at least in NH, that doesn’t mean you’re on your own, because VLACS is pretty bad ass, and I’m sure that other states have similar programs). It might mean tough times. Guess what? That’s life.

And therein is the difference between “them” and “us.” They will cry and scream and have temper tantrums, lay blame, point fingers… and do nothing. We will go in with possible solutions, and if the public solution doesn’t work, we’ll move on to the private one where we take care of our own. It doesn’t matter if it’s tough. It doesn’t matter if it strains us. We’ll do what’s right by ourselves and our kids, BECAUSE it’s right. And that’s enough to motivate us.

Another deranged asshole killed children at a school. 2 dead, 17 wounded. Nationwide headlines. The blood vultures leap to blame me for a shooting that took place more than a 1000 miles awy.

Meanwhile, CBS News is running a headline on August 28, 2025: “6 dead, 27 hurt in Chicago weekend shootings, police say.”
6 dead, 27 hurt in Chicago weekend shootings, police say

I would rather not deal with it today.

OpenStack

Over the last month, I’ve been dealing with somebody who has not kept up with the technology he is using. It shows. I like to learn new things.

For the last two years I’ve been working with two major technologies. Ceph and Open Virtual Networks. Ceph I feel I have a working handle on. Right now my Ceph cluster is down because of network issues, which I did to myself. OVN is another issue entirely.

A group of people smarter than I looked at networking and decided that instead of doing table lookups and then making decisions based on tables, they would create a language for manipulating the flow of packets, called “OpenFlow.”

This language could be implemented on hardware, creating very fast network devices. Since OpenFlow is a language, you can write routing functions as well as switching functions into the flows. You can also use it to create virtual devices.

The two types of virtual devices are “bridges” and “ports.” Ports are attached to bridges. OpenFlow processes a packet received on a port, called ingress, to move the packet to the egress port. There is lots going on in the process, but that is the gist.

The process isn’t impossible to do manually, but it isn’t simple, and it isn’t easy to visualize.

OVN adds virtual devices to the mix, allowing for simpler definitions and more familiar operations.

With OVN you create switches, routers, and ports. A port is created on a switch or router, then attached to something else. That something else can be virtual machines, physical machines, or the other side of a switch-router pair.

This is handled in the Northbound (NB) database. You modify the NB DB, which is then translated into a more robust flow language, which is stored in the Southbound (SB) database. This is done with the “ovn-north” process. This process keeps the two databases in sync with each other. Modifications to the NB DB are propagated into the SB DB and vice versa.

All of this does nothing for your actual networking. It is trivial to build all of this and have it “work.”

The thing that has to happen is that the SB database has to connect to the OpenvSwitch (OVS) database. This is accomplished via ovn-controller.

When you introduce changes to the OVS database, they are propagated into the SB database. In the same way, changes to the SB database cause changes to the OVS database.

When the OVS database is modified, new OpenFlow programs are created, changing the processing of packets.

To centralize the process, you can add the address of a remote OVN database server to the OVS database. The OVN processes read this and self-configure. From the configuration, they can talk to the remote database to create the proper OVS changes.

I had this working until one of the OVN control nodes took a dump. It took a dump for reasons, most of which revolved around my stupidity.

Because the cluster is designed to be self-healing and resilient, I had not noticed when two of the three OVN database servers stopped doing their thing. When I took that last node down, my configuration was stopped.

I could bring it back to life, but I’m not sure whether it is worth the time.

Now here’s the thing: everything I just explained comes from two or three very out-of-date web pages that haven’t been updated in many years. They were written to others with some understanding of the OVS/OVN systems. And they make assumptions and simplifications.

The rest of the information comes from digging things out of OpenStack’s networking component, Neutron.

I have a choice: I can continue down the path I am currently using, or I can learn OpenStack.

I choose to learn OpenStack.

First, it is powerful. With great power comes an even greater chance to mess things up. There are configuration files that are hundreds of lines long.

There are four components that I think I understand. The identity manager, Keystone. This is where you create and store user credentials and roles. The next is the storage component, Glance. This is where your disk images and volumes are accessed. Then there is the compute component, named Nova, which handles building and configuring virtual machines. Finally there is the networking component, called neutron.

For the simple things, I actually feel like I have it mostly working.

But the big thing is to get OVN working across my Ceph nodes. That hasn’t happened.

So for today, I’ll dig and dig some more, until I’m good at this.

Then I’ll add another technology to my skill set.

Got busy and forgot to write last night. Take some memes as an apology and checkout Giga Based Dad’s thread for more.

Yes, I took them all from him.

Found on the book of faces:

Read More

The reports are that this is a 14 year old girl in Scotland. As you can clearly see, she is brandishing a knife and a hatchet. Both of which she is prohibited from having.

This is just another example of how the youth of the UK are becoming more and more violent. We need to make an example of them.

Maybe there is more to this story?

Such as the girl in the picture was defending her 12 year old friend who had just been assaulted by a foreign invader. That she was afraid of being assaulted herself. That there were more foreign invaders moving toward her.

If you have watched the video, you can hear that evil invader taunting her to show the knife. He knows that if he reports her for having the knife, she will be arrested.

Nothing will happen to him.

This video clip might be the start of something good for the UK.

… but not as you usually hear it.

Sorry this is kind of short, but I’m pinch hitting for Chris tonight. He’s having network issues and so asked me to share a Tuesday tunes with you guys. This is a group/person that I have been listening to for a while and she does what’s called Bard core music. She takes modern tunes and turns them into medieval ones. I adore them and think they’re hysterical and usually really good. And this is the one that I was listening to when he asked me to post for him and so I am sharing with you. I hope you enjoy!

I realize not everyone likes tofu, but let’s face facts: it’s cheap, it’s relatively healthy, and you can cook it in a zillion different ways. I’m in the process of learning how to use it for more meals, and so I’m going to share some of those recipes (the good ones) with you. This one in particular was so yummy that even my tofu-hater was willing to have it again!

Ingredients:

• block firm tofu, drained
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 1 tbsp dark brown sugar*
• 2 tbsp unseasoned rice vinegar
• 1 tsp toasted sesame oil
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp fish sauce (optional)
• 2 tbsp cooking oil
• 1 tbsp ginger, minced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• lime juice, for seasoning
• wraps or pitas, for stuffing

Start by wrapping up your tofu in a lint free towel or cheesecloth, and putting it onto a cutting board. Place a cast iron skillet or a baking sheet weighed down with something heavy on top on top of the tofu, and let it drain for at least 15 minutes, or as long as 45 minutes. Don’t skip this, as it helps with the texture of the tofu.

Crumble the pressed tofu into a bowl using your fingers. You want small pieces, with none larger than a pea.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, sugar (*you can use Splenda brown sugar blend or any other sweetener you prefer if you don’t like the regular stuff), vinegar, sesame oil, red pepper, and fish sauce (or if you don’t like fish sauce, you may sub in Worcestershire sauce or mushroom ketchup for umami). The sugar may not fully dissolve, and that’s okay. It will once you begin heating it later in the recipe. Do your best!

In a large cast iron skillet or other nonstick pan, heat the cooking oil over a medium high heat. Add in the tofu, shake it to make an even single layer, and let it cook without stirring until it crisps up and is deep golden brown on the bottom. This can take 5 to 7 minutes. It’s okay to peek to see how it’s doing, but don’t stir it up until it forms that crispy bottom. Once it’s crisp, stir it up (breaking it up if necessary), and try to flip over the pieces to crisp the other side. You want the entire batch of tofu to be crispy, which requires you to let it sit and cook in the oil. It shouldn’t take too long, though.

Once the tofu is crispy, add in the ginger and garlic and stir gently until fragrant. This should take a minute or less. Add in the soy mixture, and continue to cook until the liquid essentially evaporates. This may take up to 10 minutes, but more likely will only take 5 minutes or so.

Spoon the tofu into the wraps or pitas, and add any garnishes you like (such as cilantro leaves, shredded lettuce, tomato, hot sauce, etc.). Top with a light squeeze of lime, then serve.

Notes:

The spicy hot mixes so well with the sweet in this! Too often, tofu is served squishy, and this avoids that problem. If you find that you can’t get a good crisp on the tofu crumbles, you can try dusting it all with a teaspoon or so of cornstarch and then just hand mixing it lightly before frying it. The cornstarch helps it crisp, but also adds to the calories, so avoid it if you can.

This case is being set up for a bases loaded home run.

Consider the Second Amendment legal landscape of 4 years ago. Heller had set the standard. Is the plain text of the Second Amendment implicated? If so, what is this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation?

This was a joyful time. I remember that D.C. became a constitutional carry location for about 5 minutes before they changed the rules.

The problem we had was that there was a footnote in the Heller opinion that the anti-gunners used to pry open the path to gun control.

California was one of the first states to drive through that gap. Chicago, Maryland, New Jersey, and others quickly followed.

These Heller response laws were challenged. The cases made their way up to the circuit courts, where we learned the wonderful world of interest balancing.

Under interest balancing, the courts would first ask the purpose of the law or regulation. If the proposed purpose was deemed to be “important” enough, then a lower standard of scrutiny would be applied. If the proposed purpose wasn’t important enough, then higher levels of scrutiny would be applied.

What this meant was that the courts looked like they were treating the plaintiffs with respect while putting four or five thumbs on the scales of justice.

The 9th, 7th, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th circuit courts all took up the cry of “interest balancing.” The other circuits weren’t ruling on Second Amendment cases, so it didn’t really matter.

All the circuits that took up Second Amendment challenges all decided in the same way. Against The People.

Bruen put an end to levels of scrutiny. The inferior courts are still playing games. The current game playing focuses on “Is it an arm?” and “Can you prove it is in common use for self-defense?” Their goal is to keep Bruen from being applied.

But we have a problem. All the circuit courts that are ruling on Second Amendment cases are ruling the same way. Against The People. They are still the same rogue, inferior courts, thumbing their noses at the Supreme Court.

But something has changed out there in New Jersey and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Trump and other originalist jurists have become a majority in the Third Circuit.

If we can get just one more confirmation, and there is a nominee going through the process right now, it will be an even larger majority.

The People got a shitty draw of judges for the merits panel. Not that surprising. We expected another loss. Judges Shwartz, Freeman, and Smith heard oral arguments on July 1st 4-2450-24-2506_Association of NJ Rifle Pistol Clubs v. Attorney General N. Jetal.

Here is where it gets interesting: on the same day that the case was argued, the court ordered the parties to produce a transcript. Which was entered into the record on July 15th.

Why did they need a written record? Likely because they expected other courts or panels were going to want to read it.

Under the Third Circuit’s internal operating procedures, a merits panel must circulate their opinion(s) before they are published. This gives the rest of the judges on the court an opportunity to comment and provide suggestions.

But something else can happen: if a majority of the active judges are in disagreement with the proposed opinion, they can grant an en banc hearing sua sponte. (Without a request from either party). And this is what happened on August 21st.

We are pretty sure that the opinion by this three-judge merits panel was going to go against us. If the majority of the active judges agreed with that opinion, there is no reason to call for an en banc hearing.

En banc hearings in the Third Circuit are a pain. It is all the judges dealing with the one case. It isn’t common.

In Snope we saw the Fourth Circuit do the same thing; gut in that case, we were expecting a positive opinion.

Oral arguments will be held on October 15th at 0930.

The only wrinkle is that Judge Smith is no longer an active judge, but he has elected to participate as a member of the en banc panel. Smith is currently a senior judge, meaning he only hears cases of interest to him.

If the Third Circuit finds for The People and the Constitution, this will create a major circuit split. This makes the case ripe for the Supreme Court. Matching it with Kavanaugh’s dissent in refusing cert on Snope.