The Beretta 92fs is a dream. The 96, not so much. Much preferred is the Glock 22c. That little c actually makes a difference to me. A big difference. YMMV, and those suckers stopped making them, IIRC.

Hi gang,

        Thanks for the reports of stale gasoline - I'm convinced. Tonight I'll head out & recycle my old gas. The problem isn't getting things together; it's keeping it all up to date & ready. Your comments hit me in the right place: be prepared.

        I'm associated with a ham radio emergency group; the rule is that the station's equipment must be immediately ready for action. In an emergency, you don't have the luxury of stringing a cable, or figuring out which power supply can work with which rig. If the transceivers aren't wired up, tested, and set to go, they might as well be underwater. Same's true for on-the-air skills. You gotta check into the 2-meter net at least every month, or you'll get rusty and screw up when things get hot.

      And so it is with earthquake readiness. It's not enough to put away a survival stash and let it molder. Gotta keep things fresh - gotta keep my skills sharp.

Best wishes,
-Cliff
        ps to ksmithderm ... sure, I've got Klein bottle hats (and Mobius scarves). They're on m'website.

Background: I live on North Oakland, next to Berkeley, in the Rockridge section. Urban, detached 2 bedroom house about 100 years old.

We bolted down our house, fully reinforced the stemwalls, and installed shearwalls. For our little 2-bedroom bungalow in Oakland, this set us back around $20,000. Earthquake insurance seemed outrageous (around $2,500/year, with very limited benefits). Along with the earthquake retrofit, we set aside a few cases of food & twenty 5-gallon jugs of water. A 2Kw Honda generator. Radio, flashlights, FRS walkie-talkies, etc. Small amount of medical stuff.

Yes, I have onsite and offsite backups (that's easy); the real problem would be connectivity after a quake. There's probably a hundred telephone poles between my house and the central office.

Some challenges: Keeping food & water fresh is a problem - cans get rusty as water condenses on cold surfaces. Some camping food goes bad. MRI rations taste, well, horrible. We should replace water & food annually, and generally forget to. (We discovered diapers in our earthquake stash, left over from when our college kids were infants)

    Storing gasoline for the generator is a problem. I'm told that gasoline gets stale after a few months (is this true, or an urban legend?). It's a pain to lug a 3 gallon gas can around, and it's not something I want under my house. (I store it in a shed, where it's out of sight & out of mind - so I rarely refresh it. Is there a small, 5 or 10 gallon under-ground gasoline storage tank?). I should start and exercise the generator every month; it's more like every two years or so. Our experience in the 1989 quake was that gas stations can't pump after an earthquake (no power).

  Our neighborhood's quake group (the Oakland - Rockridge Shakers) meets every summer, and the earthquake drills have been quite useful - we've had several fun practice sessions, where we hunt for human dummies hidden around the neighborhood, search for downed wires, and practice using walkie-talkies. Afterwards, it's a block party, and we compare notes while sharing lunch.

    My home business, Acme Klein Bottles, lost two glass Klein bottles in last night's quake. Both fell off a shelf and shattered on the floor. Good lesson: keep my glassware stored down low, with holders to prevent boxes from shifting. Since most of my glass Klein bottles are stored under our house; a major local temblor that destroyed the house would also wipe out the business.

That's RACISS!

The worst of the violence seemed to also coincide with the presence of out of towners showed up to join the legit Ferguson protests to their own pet causes.

Unfortunately, we'll never know. Oh, sure, we'll get an answer of sorts that will alienate a good chunk of the population of the US, but it will be about as reassuring as the Warren Commission report.

All that hockey hullabaloo and that bitch Anne Murray too!

Not possible. Only people who use devices in exactly the same manner as that proscribed by a /. nerd can be beneficial. (No wireless, less space than a Nomad...)

The rate increases when looking only at the subset of the population who post as AC.

It is, if you are measuring the radius.

And there was much rejoicing.

I found it interesting that his break occurred just an episode or two prior to some big moment he had been anticipating since the inception of the comic. If he comes back, I hope he does it before I forget about it.

I would think it would require some extra force added to the rebound. And a lucky hit.

My theory that explains the injury and the eyewitness statements? Most eyewitnesses stink. Particularly after the media circus started.

None of those complaints addressed the original claims: commercial free stations that started playing commercials.

And while the trucking company ads can get annoying, I'd be willing to bet a huge proportion of truckers have Sirus and/or XM in the cab (having been one myself).

Stop screwing up the nerdrage with pointless facts.