THE STRANGE JOURNEY OF MY FED-EX PACKAGE...

Out of curiosity, I started following a fellow on YouTube who is an avid metal detector and relic hunting enthusiast.  After a few weeks of watching his videos, and seeing the the amount and types of things he has uncovered, I was hooked  So, after some research, I have decided to buy my own a metal detector and get into the hobby myself.  Spring is upon us here in the beautiful Commonwealth of PA, and I am experiencing a bit of cabin fever after our long (and colder than usual) winter.  I enjoy being outdoors, I definitely need the exercise, and these hunts offer a great opportunity for my daughter and I to spend some quality time together.

So, last Friday March 27, I finally narrowed it down to two detectors, but eventually decided on the (rookie) detector of my liking; the Garrett ACE 250.  It has a solid reputation, parts are easy to find, it comes with a Two-Year factory warranty, and best of all, it's MADE IN THE USA!  I read countless reviews, watched dozens of demos and live digs on YouTube, and studied its pros and cons.  Armed with pretty much all the knowledge I needed to dip my tow in the cold waters of entry level detectors, I went internet shopping.  

There are several websites dedicated to the sales of this type of equipment, and they offer really good prices.  Since I am an Amazon Prime user, I took a look at what they had to offer.  I found the ACE 250 at a fantastic price, and of course FREE Two-Day shipping with Amazon Prime (which I have to tell you, is WELL worth the money.  So, I look over the item to ensure it's the exact model I want, double-check the feature sets, read the reviews past buyers have left behind, looked up the seller's info, and when I was satisfied I was doing the right thing, I clicked "Add to Cart".  A few more clicks to confirm my info, and my purchase was complete, and my new Garrett ACE 250 was on it's way.

On it's way.  Well yes, I assume it is, because the E-Mail notification and tracking info from FedEx said it will be here tomorrow (Monday, March 30) because I paid an additional $7 to have it here Monday, rather than Tuesday.  I am like that.

So a after a few hours, I check the Tracking# that was provided and discovered that my package was only an hour and-a-half away from me.  "Great", I thought, I will have this thing bright and early Monday morning.  W00t!  Then I notice something else, my package is at FedEx's Middletown (Harrisburg) distribution facility already!  Since the Middletown facility is only an hour from my house, I figure that it's going to be loaded on a truck there, then sent to my local facility, put in a van, and it would be en route to me.  Awesome.  Except this is where it gets weird.  The next tracked movement of my package has it departing the Middletown, PA facility, and en route to...

...Newark, NJ.

Well, that's odd that my package was a mere 50 miles from me, and it's now nearly three times that distance away in NJ!  What?  Yeah, well it get's even more weird.  After arriving at Newark, my package gets on an airplane, and is now listed as enroute to...

...Memphis, TN.

What?  That's right!  On Sunday morning, around 8 AM my package arrived in Memphis.  I not sure why my metal detector went on the Smoky Mountain tour, but it did.  For about eight hours.  But then, as of 4:24 PM Sunday, my metal detector departed Memphis, TN, enroute to...

...Middletown, PA

Right back where it started from, which is where it is right now as of 10:28 PM.  What?!?!  This is odd, and most certainly had to be some sort of "sorting" error, and when realized it was sent back via the most expeditious manner possible.

Anyway, I am still set for a guaranteed delivery on Monday (tomorrow) by 8:00 PM.  I'll keep watching the tracking data I get to make sure it's not on its way to my house via Tuscaloosa.  At this point, it wouldn't surprise me!  

So, any FedEx folks reading this, want to fill me in as to why something like this would happen?  Your anonymity is guaranteed, and no, I am not angry with FedEx, just extremely curious as to why my package was sent on the route that it was.

OK folks, that's all for now.  I'll let you know when I get it and try it out.  -- TB

SPECIAL ADVISEMENT DUE TO FREQUENT HUMAN-BEAR ENCOUNTERS…

Not everything here is serious. Here is a little humor courtesy of The Bluesman.  Enjoy!

WARNING!:  Due to the frequency of human-bear encounters, the Montana Dept. of Fish and Wildlife is advising hikers, hunters, and fisherman and any persons that use the out-of-doors in a recreational or work related function to take extra precautions while in the field.

We advise the outdoorsman to wear little noisy bells on clothing so as to give advance warning to any bears that might be close by so you don't take them by surprise.

We also advise anyone using the out-of-doors to carry "Pepper Spray" with them in case of an encounter with a bear.

Outdoorsman should also watch for fresh bear activity, and be able to tell the difference between North American Black Bear feces, and Grizzly Bear feces.  A Black Bear feces is smaller and may contain berries and squirrel fur.  A Grizzly Bear feces contains small bells and may smell like pepper.

Thank You.

Troops Obeying Orders & Citizens Obeying Gun Laws

Think about it...

Michelle Obama was a man named Michael LaVaughn Robinson?

This is one of the latest conspiracy theories circulating on the internet, and it’s absolutely ridiculous.  In case you haven’t heard (or seen) this crap, allegedly Michelle Obama was born Michael LaVaughn Robinson.  Apparently this “info” was supplied by an anonymous White House Obama staff member and the according to various sources on the interwebs, he/she (no pun intended) states;

Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States, was born Michael LaVaughn Robinson in Chicago, Illinois on January 17th, 1964.  He was the second son born to Fraser Robinson III, a well known cocaine dealer and union thug for Crime Lord/Mayor Richard J. Daley, and Marian Shields Robinson, a transient street prostitute who was diagnosed with the HIV virus in 1998."

Most obviously, the poorly done Photoshopped image of what is supposed to be Michelle Obama (#44 with red arrow) before the “sex change”, posing with four others in football uniforms.  It should be noted that all of the subjects in the photo have their faces superimposed over the original players.  The photo in question (below) was either taken from, or made with yearbookyourself.com

I am not sure why this photo accompanies the article as it does more to shoot down this conspiracy theory than it does to back it up.

Now I understand there are several satirical websites poking fun at this, but there are countless people on YouTube and the internet at-large that actually believe this to be true!  Seriously, people? I guess the tongue-in-cheek comment that Joan Rivers made before her death was taken seriously and literally by the tin-foil hat crowd.  The internet picked it up and ran with it (pun INTENDED).  See the video here… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et38_Ufv-Jw  Furthermore there are now reports circulating that President Obama had Joan Rivers killed in retaliation for “outing” their secret.  Pardon the internet slang, but ROTFLMAO!

Now seriously people, let’s think about this for a moment and try to use your head for something other than a hat-rack.  Look at Malia (The Obama’s eldest daughter), her resemblance to the First Lady is uncanny!  I guess Mr. Robinson had the entire female reproductive system implanted in his body during his sex change, right?  There is no doubt whatsoever that she is her mother’s daughter.  See the photos below…

Malia & Michelle Obama.

http://cdn.necolebitchie.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Inauguration-2013-Michelle-Malia-Obama.png

Malia Obama

https://nyppagesix.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/186020303.jpg

Malia, Natasha, and Michelle Obama

http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/249099/slide_249099_1484483_free.jpg

33 STRANGE FACTS ABOUT AMERICA THAT MOST AMERICANS WOULD BE SHOCKED TO LEARN

I found this elsewhere on the internet and found it to be interesting.  Perhaps you will too.  Enjoy! - TB.

SOURCE: MICHAEL SNYDER, THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

Did you know that about one-fourth of the entire global prison population is in the United States?  Did you know that Apple has more money than the U.S. Treasury?  Did you know that if you have no debt and also have 10 dollars in your wallet that you are wealthier than 25 percent of all Americans?  Did you know that by the time an American child reaches the age of 18, that child will have seen approximately 40,000 murders on television?  There are some things that are great about the United States, and there are definitely some things that are not so great.  Once upon a time we were the most loved and most respected nation on the entire planet, but those days are long gone.

We have wrecked our economy, we have lost our values and we have fumbled away our future.  But if you look close enough, you can still see many of the things that once made this country a shining beacon to the rest of the world.  This article includes some weird facts, some fun facts, but also some very troubling facts.  It has been said that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, and hopefully as people enjoy reading the fun facts in this article they will also take note of the more serious facts.  If we are ever going to change course as a nation, we need to come to grips with just how far we have fallen.

The following are 33 strange facts about America that most Americans would be shocked to learn…

#1 The amount of cement that China used from 2011 to 2013 was greater than the total amount of cement that the United States used during the entire 20th century.

#2 In more than half of all U.S. states, the highest paid public employee in the state is a football coach.

#3 It costs the U.S. government 1.8 cents to mint a penny and 9.4 cents to mint a nickel.

#4 Almost half of all Americans (47 percent) do not put a single penny out of their paychecks into savings.

#5 In 2014, police in the United States killed 1,100 people.  During that same year, police in Canada killed 14 people, police in China killed 12 people and police in Germany didn’t kill anyone at all.

#6 The state of Alaska is 429 times larger than the state of Rhode Island is.  But Rhode Island has a significantly larger population than Alaska does.

#7 Alaska has a longer coastline than all of the other 49 U.S. states put together.

#8 The city of Juneau, Alaska is about 3,000 square miles in size.  It is actually larger than the entire state of Delaware.

#9 When LBJ’s “War on Poverty” began, less than 10 percent of all U.S. children were growing up in single parent households.  Today, that number has skyrocketed to 33 percent.

#10 In 1950, less than 5 percent of all babies in America were born to unmarried parents.  Today, that number is over 40 percent.

#11 The poverty rate for households that are led by a married couple is 6.8 percent.  For households that are led by a female single parent, the poverty rate is 37.1 percent.

#12 In 2013, women earned 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees that were awarded that year in the United States.

#13 According to the CDC, 34.6 percent of all men in the U.S. are obese at this point.

#14 The average supermarket in the United States wastes about 3,000 pounds of food each year.

#15 Right now, more than 200 million people around the planet are officially considered to be unemployed.  Meanwhile, approximately 20 percent of the garbage that goes into our landfills is food.

#16 There is a city in Bangladesh called Dhaka where workers are paid just one dollar for every 1,000 bricks that they carry.  Meanwhile, the “inactivity rate” for men in their prime working years in the United States is hovering near record high levels.

#17 According to one recent survey, 81 percent of Russians now have a negative view of the United States.  That is much higher than at the end of the Cold War era.

#18 Montana has three times as many cows as it does people.

#19 The grizzly bear is the official state animal of California.  But no grizzly bears have been seen there since 1922.

#20 One recent survey discovered that “a steady job” is the number one thing that American women are looking for in a husband, and another survey discovered that 75 percent of women would have a serious problem dating an unemployed man.

#21 According to a study conducted by economist Carl Benedikt Frey and engineer Michael Osborne, 47 percent of the jobs in the United States could soon be lost to computers, robots and other forms of technology.

#22 The only place in the United States where coffee is grown commercially is in Hawaii.

#23 The original name of the city of Atlanta was “Terminus“.

#24 The state with the most millionaires per capita is Maryland.

#25 There are more than 4 million adult websites on the Internet, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.

#26 86 percent of men include “having children” in their definition of success.  For women, that number is only 73 percent.

#27 One survey of 50-year-old men in the U.S. found that only 12 percent of them said that they were “very happy”.

#28 The United States has 845 motor vehicles for every 1,000 people.  Japan only has 593 for every 1,000 people, and Germany only has 540 for every 1,000 people.

#29 The average American spends more than 10 hours a day using an electronic device.

#30 48 percent of all Americans do not have any emergency supplies in their homes whatsoever.

#31 There are three towns in the United States that have the name “Santa Claus“.

#32 There is actually a town in Michigan called “Hell“.

#33 There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body.  If they were stretched out in a single line, they could go around the planet more than twice. (The circumference of the Earth is approx. 25,000 miles – TB)

Laws requiring you report your guns stolen within seventy-two hours are useless.

This is a silly, unenforceable law.

As a gun owner, I would certainly report one of my guns lost or stolen as soon as I noticed it was gone. I certainly could not live with knowing one of my guns was used in a crime, or worse, a homicide.

But, if I was buying a gun as a straw purchase, or selling one of my existing guns to someone who was prohibited from owning one, I could also notify law enforcement to cover my butt. But how would law enforcement know I did or did not within that 72 hour window? They wouldn't! The transaction was of a clandestine nature in the first place. It's not like there would be a paper trail to back-up what I reported to the cops! I could have waited a week, a month, or more to report the gun "missing", ensuring the gun was as far away from me as possible. 

The law-abiding are already complying and doing the right thing. The criminal element is just going to play along, and nobody will be the wiser.

So, what can this law accomplish? How could it be enforced?

The cost of the Death Penalty vs. Life Without Parole.

I used to support the death penalty 100%, no question asked.  That was, until I learned how untrustworthy the government and the courts are.  Our government, lies, cheats, steals, spits on the Constitution, and does all kinds of underhanded crap daily.  Do you think our courts and police are any different?  There have been a LOT of people put to death that were innocent and a helluva lot more (hundreds) who were luckily exonerated while on Death Row. 

Now, I still DO support the DP, but only in the most heinous of crimes, especially involving children and where there is undoubted and corroborated evidence that comes from multiple sources like; DNA, eyewitnesses, a corpse, murder weapon, etc.  In my opinion, if you're going to send a man to his death you better be 100% certain, and way beyond a "reasonable doubt".  If not, I say sentence him to life without parole.

Everyone complains about the cost of keeping someone imprisoned for life.  Do you realize that it has cost the taxpayers of this Commonwealth over $350 Million dollars in regards to the 185 currently on Death Row?  That's around $1.9 Million each.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/5988

The average cost per year to keep someone in prison in PA is $42,400.  If you put someone away for 50 years (pretty much their entire natural life), it costs, $2.1 Million dollars.

http://www.vera.org/files/price-of-prisons-pennsylvania-fact-sheet.pdf

So, in reality, it really it only costs around $200,000 more over a period of FIFTY years. 

"But, Bluesman, a person doesn't stay on Death Row for 50 years in PA".

Well...  The past person executed in PA was Gary Heidnik in 1999 — and only because he bowed to it by waiving his appeals.  Who knows how long he would have been on Death Row had he kept appealing.  Prior to that, the last executions in PA were in 1995 when Tom Ridge signed three Death Warrants.  That was 20 years ago…

The last one before that?  Elmo Smith In 1962, 53 years ago.

SOURCE:  http://articles.mcall.com/2011-07-23/news/mc-pennsylvania-death-row-costs-20110723_1_death-row-death-penalty-death-penalty-opponents

So, my point is, it cost really doesn't cost that much more (around $4000 per year) to keep someone incarcerated for their entire natural life, than it does to execute them) If that person were found to be innocent sometime during that period, isn't that worth $4K a year?  Given the amount of people on Death Row who have been exonerated in PA, (11 in the last 21 years), which is more people than have actually been executed in PA since 1959, I say, "you're damn right it is".

SOURCE:  http://www.innocenceproject.org/news/state.php?state=pa

SOURCE:  http://deathpenaltyusa.org/usa1/state/pennsylvania4.htm

Why the citizenry should be armed.

Some folks ask, “Why should the citizenry be armed?” “Why should Joe Public be able to carry a gun?”  Well, besides the guarantee of our Second Amendment (shall not be infringed), I am going to explain to you why John Q. Everyman should be able to arm himself.

So long as the police need pepper spray, a baton, body armor, a handgun with 40+ rounds of ammo, a Taser gun, a shotgun loaded with 00 buckshot, and an AR-15 rifle with one or more 30-round magazines in the trunk as well to carry out their job, then it is just as logical that we too need the same means of protection. Why?  Read on…

My life and yours, is worth every bit as much as a law enforcement officer's is, and WE should enjoy the same rights to protect ourselves as they do. In fact, if the D.C. v. Warren decision means anything at all, then you and I actually deserve to be just as well armed as the police.  You see, The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that the police have no duty to protect one individual from another from harm ¹.  Another case of interest is the Castle Rock v. Gonzales decision where the SCOTUS also ruled that the police are NOT required to protect us from injury or death from a criminal ².  Most people are not aware of this.

The police carry all of that gear to protect themselves, NOT you or I.  Ask any cop, and they will tell you that their primary goal is to go home at the end of their shift in the same condition as they started.  All of that defensive and offensive equipment is for THEIR benefit, NOT ours.  Remember, my life and your life is every bit as valuable as a police officer's.  Since we the public, encounter criminals (when the crime is committed) before the police do, (prior to their arrest), and since the public at large encounters MORE of them and MORE often (police clear less than 48% of violent crimes ³ ), then logically we can deduce only one thing; that the criminal element is much more likely to come into criminal contact with us, than they are with the police.  With that known, we can only come to the conclusion.  We the People have every right not only to be armed, but we have a the right to be BETTER armed than the police!  Some may say that the police need all of these means of protection because they are (depending on their assignment) actively seeking out criminals in order to apprehend them.  To which I answer, criminals are actively seeking out the public in order to victimize us.

I carry a weapon because it IS my inherent right and responsibility to protect myself and my family.  Besides, I cannot depend on the police, and I am too young to die and too old to take an ass whoopin'!  J

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales

³http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/clearances

Welcome to The Bluesman's Rants!

Welcome to my blog.  I am NOT politically correct, nor do I subscribe to any political party; I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, in fact, I feel both parties are basically the same crap, in a different pile.  You may disagree with me, and that's perfectly cool.  Just don't resort to childish acts of name-calling or ad hominem attacks; they are useless in intelligent discourse. 

Before I go, not all of my blog entries are meant to be political in nature.  I have a wide and varied set of interests, so you may see comments on anything from metal detecting, to air crash investigations to amateur radio.  If you're interested in keeping up with me, bookmark this blog and check back often.

You will also find here;

Latest breaking news (not tabloid crap), funny stories, jokes, anecdotes, political opinion & commentary, political activism, exposing hypocrisies, product reviews, DIY ideas, tech stuff, firearms and shooting, amateur radio, fishing, life hacks (new ones that actually work).

Thanks and stay safe,

The Bluesman