Thank you ConstitutionCowboy, I wish I could speak that directly about this subject..
So that this stays on topic with firearms I'd like to note that my concerns stem from my career interests. What I want to do is heavily jeopardized by todays world, and where it is going.
I want a better pistol, and some better rifles. I like what I have now, but if I had my say in it, I'd do it a little bit differently. New technology allows me to renegotiate some old technological constraints to come up with some pretty useful designs. Naturally, I understand that high prices today are a bad thing. I have a pretty good idea about a way to make a really fine firearm for next to nothing. My main goal is to create the firearms for myself, because I want them, but also because it will provide the opportunity for anyone, regardless of who or what got them there, to have the best possible firearm, and it's also the cheapest. If everyone has the ability to own one without consequence, not even financial, then a lot will be bought buy people who otherwise wouldn't have.
and that will hopefully keep a roof over my head.
The problem I get nowadays is a thorough spread of incompetency here in Houston. Let alone the fact I can hardly communicate with anybody here, and not necessarily because I don't try, but because it's a fast city. The only people who aren't in a hurry are crackheads or people who will definitely make you late to wherever it is you're going.
Most of the answers you get from anyone if you try to ask a direct question will either get you a brushed off answer, a lie for convenience, a lie out of ignorance, or you might be presented with a redirected question seeking more information about what you're ACTUALLY trying to do, BUT.. that doesn't work. The voodoo I speak does not register with the woman behind the desk, the sales guy, the technician, the customer, the cashier, or the cashier and she does not know how to help me, who to ask for help, or if they even offer that service/product.
How this applies to school - You'd figure Houston would have a lot of opportunities. Well, it does if you're into what everyone else is doing. That is, lawncare, plant work (layoffs all the time), remodeling (speaking spanish a requirement for longevity), and minimum wage jobs. or .gov jobs.
HCC had a machining department, until a few days before I decided to go there when the head of the department quit without notice. They're not sure when it's gunna be back up, but I can go for career automotive technician making $11.50/hr. No thank you.. that sounds like a waste of my time. I'll leave out how uninformative the counselors were.
College of the mainland has a CAST program, or atleast that's what their website says. Nobody on the phone knows about it, the phone numbers they provide lead me to civilian phone numbers unassociated with anything I'm interested in.
The school systems are so pathetic here. It doesn't even seem like I should bother with it, but then again.. I need that seal of approval that guarantees that I can tolerate gross incompetency, and a seriously disorganized educational environment. I have higher standards than that. What I see is the result of a consumer driven lifestyle where what a person does to make money does not mean anything at all to that person, and the consumer doesn't really care either as long as the service tech says job's done, everything's good, and they've got the TV on. Seriously, if you look at the way the people around me live, the crappy jobs they put up with from the people who keep the community running, you'll notice that they really don't care. They don't know much about it, and they don't want to, they just want everything to be OK, but it's not. We, as a nation, need to seriously get our butts in gear. I'm tired of being praised for how great a job I did, and how horrible everyone else is at it. I'm not that good!
and these same people are the people who work in the schools, work in the stores, work in the plants, work in the shops, work in the police departments, etc etc.
WHAT is wrong? Why is it that, even though I have plenty of money, that I can go to any school I want to, and what I want to learn is how to make great things happen with a drill press, mill, late, cnc machines (I've got a feeling that, based on my prior programming skills, CNC will be pretty natural for me. I've already taught myself a good bit about cad software as well, so there's a lot of really awesome possibilities with all of this technology, and if I had a good place to learn about it, I might actually get my business rolling.
I need to dive into a few other realms as well, and these fields are quite prevalent and growing, highly sought after positions blah blah etc etc so I figure I could do that, but that stuff is pretty cheap, and not too complicated, what I really need is the expensive machining tools to build components of another machine, and the knowledge it takes to do that.
but no.. smart people either don't exist, or wish to remain anonymous. I can see both as being true. There's definitely not an abundance of smart people, so that some of these blessed souls would end up teaching me what I need to know, otherwise it'd be a little simpler.
Of course, in the long run all it boils down to is me needing money and the internet. All the information in the world is right here on the internet, complete with video tutorials and reviews, etc etc..
I need the tools, that's all I need. I guess I could always start completely from scratch. I could assume that society around me is incapable of supplying me with anything I deem useful, and that if I have children, and they are in any way influenced by me, they too will feel as perplexed as I did going through the school system.. "You can be anything you want to be! Do anything you want to do!" only to realize that you kinda have to be part of the club to get a job doing that kind of stuff. Have someone "in the loop" that'll get you a spot. It'd help a whole lot to have the tools, and chances are you do if you got into the club. That's fine, I understand that. Those that have do, it's simple. It's primitive, too.. It's not conducive to progress.
I want more people like me, but damned if I can find someone that isn't buried in a cellphone, video game, or grinding, or.. you know.. not really thinking at all, on pills or something.
but it doesn't have to be that way. If people actually realized that they themselves are the answer to all of their questions, and that everyone elses results are going to be pretty predictable, then maybe we could put together a real effort to restore this country. We could get rid of the telephone pole infrastructure, ditch the underground system that sticks the utility boxes in your backyard, and gets all kinds of land uprooted. We could have far faster connectivity, and we could contemplate ways to defraud the internet so that the prevalence of fraudulent software isn't so severe as to overflow into the retail stores. This will really help out, because for some odd reason a lot of people who are wise to the ways of people, and in some instances they themselves are masterful at their conniving ways, but when they get on a computer, all of a sudden everyone is their friend, everything is interesting and fun and new and it's like a new world where you don't disagree with everybody, but it's the same people you don't get along with, and they're doing the same things they do in the real world, except now you're buying it, because all you have to do to buy it is click this button, and the adware/spyware specialist has all the info he needs to collect a fat check. For added bonus, he might hit your contact lists too, and sell their email addys to marketing and statistical groups, who then send them a ton of spam.
I could do that.. but I don't want to. I remember when the internet was still semi-new and everyone didn't have it. Man it was awesome. The games were better, the threads were better, the stories were more genuine, and then the kids got ahold of the internet too, new restrictions came about, new scams based on those restrictions came about, etc etc.. now you have all kinds of special organizations dedicated to keeping the kiddies safe by telling everyone to stop doing things a certain way.
Half of me wants to say, well.. maybe kids shouldn't be on the net..
but the other half of me says.. wow.. it's all here, boy.. everything you need to know. Be careful.
Either way, I'll make my own guns, whether or not I make them for anybody else depends on everybody else. If everyone keeps letting our government "randomly flip switches" in hopes of eventually hitting the right one, then it might be illegal for me to continue. That'd be a shame.. I mean, the technology I want is useful for all kinds of stuff, including manufacturing firearms.
Where am I gunna go for that?
