Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

…is the sudden worry from the ACLU etc about the raids on project veritas.

 the precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom. Unless the government had good reason to believe that Project Veritas employees were directly involved in the criminal theft of the diary, it should not have subjected them to invasive searches and seizures.

As we’ve discover the left doesn’t care about things like the law and the power of its enforcement unless there is a prospect of said powers being used against them.

The idea that a GOP congress and perhaps a GOP president out for revenge might use these same tactics against the left that they’ve embraced for their enemies scares them.

It should

It’s four days to Pintastic NE and I find myself more excited at the prospect than previous years. The lack of Pintastic last year and the delay to the week before Thanksgiving instead of the week before the 4th of July has made the anticipation much higher.

It’s going to be a lot of fun.

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The biggest worry is November snow because of what is involved in the Transport of these large heavy machines. Fortunately the 10 day forecast for the Sturbridge MA area shows four dry days and that Thursday the day of setting up will reach as high as 60 with the daily forecast running from the high 30’s to mid forty’s but most importantly no snow.

My scarfs will not just be for decoration this year.

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I was explaining Pintastic NE to my parish priest who is my age who like me grew up in an age of coin operated arcade games. The change over to “Pay one price Barcades” and home ownership has changed the concept of the game in the sense that you design a game differently. When your goal is to get people to feed coins you need to make the ball drain, but not so fast as to scare people away. When your goal is a home sale or a barcade, where the profit is made from the base sale or the drinks, your goal is to keep the ball in play long enough for multiple goals but not so long as to make it too easy.

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One of the other things about the classic machines at places like Pintastic is people forget that many if not most of these machines are 25 to forty years old and a good chunk are 50 plus. The amount of care and effort to keep up these old machines and to either preserve or upgrade the technology to the point where they still function as they did is significant and I think people outside of the hobby really don’t understand how much effort that takes. There is a real skill involved here that is to be appreciated.

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Finally one can’t express enough gratitude to Gabe D’Annunzio whose efforts make this event possible and not only the efforts of organization but the physical effort of moving dozens of his own game for people to play. Here is our closing interview from pintastic 2019 before the coming of the pandemic

Gabe could have just decided to pack it in, he didn’t so all of those who have fun next weekend, make a point to thank him. The changes for 2020 like the new location didn’t happen due to COVID it remains to be seen if they come the following year

fyi you can still buy passes here.

It amazes me that we have not had a directed verdict in the Rittenhouse case.

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There was apparently a walkout at a Massachusetts school over what has been described as racist comments by a student that were in a video as students demanded an explanation.

Now I haven’t seen the video so I don’t know what these comments were, but let me provide an explanation for these students that will apply no matter what was said:

1. Teenagers’ do stupid things
2. In America people have the right to say stupid things

I’ve been called a cracker for making these points, but in fairness to the idiots who did so young people don’t know they are ignorant because they don’t have the experience to realize it. It isn’t till you are older that you realize how little you knew when you were young.

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That story reminded me of the favorite teacher of my youth. Mrs. Thresa Mahoney died recently at the age of 97. Born the same year as my mother she was my 4th and 7th grade teacher at St. Anthony di Padua Catholic school, she taught English and always challenged us to think and more importantly taught us to think critically.

That was back in 1972 and 1975 Twenty five years later when My sons were at St. Anthony she was in the library and still teaching a Latin course that my oldest took before retiring in her early eighties She ended up outliving the school that she loved.

Oh if those idiots only had teachers like her, but alas she was not only a faithful Catholic but still knew how many actual genders there were so they would have chased her away .

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Was it not just 5 years ago that if an FBI agent had knocked on my door that I would have let him or her in and presumed that they were functioning in the best interest of the country?

That the FBI has been willing to throw this away amazes me to no end, but even worse that there are apparently not enough people within the organization who are willing to fight this internally.

But then again as I’ve gotten older I’ve learned that for people it takes more courage to risk one’s life than to risk one’s pension and position particularly if your position involves risking one’s life anyways.

This is the natural and logical cost of a stolen election that people didn’t see when they decided to let it go.

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Finally we seem to be getting closer and closer to the point where to quote King George III on Americans “Blows must decide if they are to be subject to this country or independent.”

The left continues to act as if the people of the right are going to continue to meekly take blows, but I would remind them of this opening scene in the movie Casino Royale.

Once we get to that opening scene then it’s going to get very bad and I really don’t think people understand what that is going to mean for the life we’ve enjoyed in America to this point.

Unless we are very careful as a nation we are going to get an education in just how good we had it before surrendering our institutions to the left.

It’s my fervent hope and prayer that we don’t’ cross that line because I suspect once it’s crossed it won’t be uncrossed