Digital Cowboy

I haven’t been posting much here lately because I’ve been rather busy with a couple of development projects. One of those projects is getting this blog up to par. I finally got all my server toys (MySQL, PHP, PERL, Apache) updated on my development machine. I also installed the latest version of Word Press there and imported the database from this blog so I now have a fully functional playground to test plug ins and other modifications without any impact on the “live” blog. Consequently, I’ve been spending most of my time tinkering with “LocalCowboy,” as I named it to differentiate when I have them both open.

It’s already paying dividends. You might notice some changes here already if you look really close and there are far more dramatic changes in the works. At the top of the list is significantly improved comment spam filtering so that I can get rid of the blacklist of words and turn comments and pings back on for older posts.

I’ll be back to ranting and preaching soon. In the mean time, if you have any feature suggestions, send ‘em along. You can post them in the comments or email them to me at digitalcowboy@mac.com.

My popup comments are finally fixed. Not only is the text legible and no longer centered, the blasted thing doesn’t load the main post page into the window after you submit a comment. Now it reloads the popup comments, as it should.

I had to actually write some code to get that page load problem fixed. Apparently the folks that developed that popup comments option never used it or even tested it. Why every one else that uses that option isn’t complaining on the Word Press support boards, I’ll never know. Anyway, the fix is fairly simple (if you don’t count the hours I spent wading through PHP in multiple files to find the problem). So if you happen to be using Word Press and popup comments, I’ll be glad to pass on the code to fix it.

I’m still not completely happy with the layout in the popup, but at least it’s usable now. I also haven’t figured out how to get the Live Comment Preview working with the popup yet. However, if you click the post title and do old style comments, the Live Comment Preview there is now fully functional. It will show you bold, italics, working links – the whole shebang – in real time as you type a comment. I’m going to figure out how to get the Live Preview working in the popup and then there will be no more excuses for blown links or end tags.

Gary P. Nunn sings a song called “What I Like About Texas” that starts out “You ask me what I like about Texas…” and then the rest of the song lists many of the bountiful blessings Texas has to offer. (That second link is unfortunately just a small sample of the song.)

In the first verse he says, “It’s the spirit of the people that share this land.”

That song immediately began running through my head as I read this.

Makes me durn proud to be a Texan. I especially like the quote from the Sheriff that closes the article.

I finally found a decent news story online covering the incident out behind my house Tuesday night. This one seems to be fairly accurate and is certainly far more complete.

I had planned to write my complete account of what happened, but now that I’ve found that article, there’s not much need. That coverage combined with my previous account, is pretty well complete. So I will mainly just provide my commentary.

First, I was pretty close in my guess that the bullets flying past me were coming from a .223. He was actually firing an SKS at the officers. I could tell from the sound of the gunfire that it was a military style rifle. They have a very distinctive crack when fired. It was all the more obvious in contrast to the much louder and deeper sound of the fire coming from the law enforcement officers’ high caliber pistols. They were downright thunderous in comparison and yet sounded more distant than the SKS fire, even though they were slightly closer to me.

The story linked above is the first I’ve found that accurately reported both the timeline and the fact that there were multiple exchanges of gunfire. In all, the standoff lasted about 6 hours (not the “nearly two and a half hours” reported by the idiots at the Dallas Morning News/WFAA/Denton Chronicle). There were shots fired at least 4 separate times that I counted before I got bored with it and went to watch the Rangers game and finish my dinner. That was around midnight or a little before. I counted about 25-30 shots fired in the time that I was keeping track. As you would expect, most of the shots fired seemed to be by the cops. As ajw308 just pointed out on the other thread about this, what cops lack in accuracy, they make up for in volume. Seriously, though, it stands to reason that he would pop off one shot and multiple cops would return fire.

This feller was a special kind of stupid and… |inline

My neighbor and I were just caught in the crossfire of a “suspect’s” shootout with the police. Twice in a 90 minute period.

I love a good adventure.

Technically, it couldn’t be defined as crossfire. We weren’t ever between him and the cops, we were on the other side of the cops and he’s a really bad aim, apparently. (On the other hand, the cops had him surrounded so perhaps I shouldn’t assume the stray bullets were the criminal’s.) But I’ve now experienced gunfire wizzing by head twice in one night. Once on my back deck and once in my neighbor’s driveway.

It’s still going on less than a half mile behind my house. The idiot has barricaded himself in a building a little ways behind my house and the cops have him surrounded. Once we knew that, we went back out in the driveway to watch and that’s when the second incident occurred with us.

Big fun!

I’ll post more details tonight. I’m not done watching through this window next to me yet, the Rangers/Red Sox game is still on and this moron interrupted my dinner with his shenanigans.

(I just heard at least 2 more shots while I was typing this. That makes about 15-17 shots so far over about a two and a half hour period.)

If you’re in the North Texas area, Fox 4 has a news crew on the scene and they’ve been reporting it as breaking news, though with little information. It’s the one in Denton county.

UPDATE: Maybe even after two bullets past my head, I’m being a little too cavalier about this. I can see the scene over my left shoulder from where I’m typing. There’s a new chopper circling low and someone just shone a spotlight in this window where I’m sitting. I thought it was my neighbor, so leaned over to the window and said, “What’s up, man.” (I have the window open so I can listen to the police radios in the distance and listen for gunfire. I have to keep count, right?) Whoever it was stepped closer (he was already only about 15 feet away), shone the light right in my eyes, then turned it off and walked away without saying anything.

I would be more alarmed if I hadn’t seen a bulletproof vest that said “SHERIFF” has he dropped his spotlight and turned it off.

Also, I have heard about 6 more gunshots while I’ve been typing this update. Fortunately, they sound like pistol fire rather than the stuff I heard when the bullets were wizzing. That sounded more like a .223 or something.

It’s like living in the ghetto, except surrounded by dark fields!