Georgia Carries Carry, despite the NRA

The Georgia legislature just passed (modulo some outstanding paperwork cleanup) a bill to expand concealed carry in Georgia.  The bill eliminates "guaranteed defenseless zones" within 1000 feet of schools and colleges, and allows permit holders to carry concealed in bars where the owner allows it, in non-secure areas of airports, and in parking lots of colleges, courthouses and jails, but was amended at the last minute to remove a provision that would have gone one step further to actually legitimize carry on college campuses.

The NRA spent all evening trying to defeat the bill.  This might seem bizarre to anyone who isn't familiar with the NRA's er, the LaPierre/Metaksa clique's record of hypocrisy on gun laws, but far too many current and former NRA members won't be surprised.

The NRA was actively sabotaging SB 308 all night tonight.  I witnessed this firsthand.  They tried to amend it with something that they believed would draw a Governor's veto.  When that failed, they began telling lies about the bill to politicians and the press.  I could not believe what I was seeing.  I was spending hours running around correcting NRA lies about the bill.

Then Senator Steve Thompson took the well and said what everybody knew, that the Senators had "cover" to vote against the bill, in spite of GCO's letter letting them know we are tracking their vote, because "The NRA opposes this bill."

One of our more technical types should get that video on You Tube, so people can see what the NRA was doing tonight in Georgia.

Opposing repeal of a 140 year old Jim Crow law infringing on the right to bear arms.

The NRA tried to present their opposition as a push for language amending the bill to expressly permit carry in airports.  But that language is already contained in an earlier bill, SB 291, that has already passed the Georgia legislature and awaits only the Governor's signature.  Now that SB 308 has passed (and with a veto-proof majority), NRA-ILA is denying ever having opposed it.  Unfortunately for the NRA, their opposition is on public record and documented on video.

Foot shooting in MySQL for fun and profit, and how to fix the damage

My main server has two ZFS disk pools, one consisting of a pair of mirrored 80GB boot disks, the other an array containing (currently) eleven 300GB disks.  (There were twelve, but one failed.  This is why hot spares are your friend.)  Today, I decided to move my MySQL databases from the main array onto the mirrored boot pair to get better database performance.  So I shut down the required daemons and started tarring up the databases ready to move them.

...Then, part-way through, I changed my mind about how I wanted to do it, killed the job, and killed it the wrong way, inadvertently blowing away half the /var/mysql directory.  Including the grant tables.

"Oops."

Now, fortunately, being a prudent and careful sort except for the times when I shoot myself in the foot, I have backups.  In particular, I have a full backup of all the databases, including the grant tables, current as of 0330 this morning, except for the Bacula catalog, which is current as of 0950.  But I can't use Bacula to restore them, because the Bacula catalog is blown away.

( Here's how to fix a blunder like this one. )

"'Serious mistake' if car bombing suspect was Mirandized"

So says John McCain of the attempted Times Square carbomber.  Because then we'd have to prosecute him through the criminal justice system and he'll have, like, rights and stuff, instead of treating him as an "enemy combatant".  Because we've just gotten SO MUCH vitally important intelligence out of all the "detainees" we've been storing indefinitely at Guantanamo.