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Hear hear!

I remember vividly when I was 5 years old and my parents took me out and taught me to shoot a pistol. It scared the crap out of me! But, I learned to do it and for my whole life (and of my siblings) there have been loaded guns in nightstand drawers and other places. We all knew where they were. We also knew WHAT they were.

Ok, so what. Well, when I was about 8 years old, playing (unsupervised) at a friend's house, he snuck into his parent's room and brought out a handgun for us to play with. I could tell he didn't even know how to hold it. I forget the exact details of what happened next, but I convinced him to put it away and we left the house until a grown-up came home. I'm pretty sure I averted a probable catastrophe that day - all because my parents had taught me how to shoot.

Put away your gut reactions and look at the statistics. Boats are more likely to kill your kids than handguns are. Swimming pools are MUCH more likely to kill a neighborhood kid than a loaded, unlocked handgun in the same house. You wouldn't have a pool in the backyard and not teach your kids how to swim, would you?

I forget the quote- something about freedom and limiting the freedoms of all of us based on the failings of the least of us. It's a good quote if someone can find it.

And, just in case you're wondering, I do not own any handguns or other guns. My kids DO play with toy guns (as do I, with the kids).
Why don't I own a (real) gun? Because I don't like cleaning them mostly. I'd have one if I had a friend who enjoyed target shooting, but I don't (at least not in this state).

But I do LIKE it that some of my neighbors have handguns in their houses, for the same reason that lo-jack works to reduce all the car thefts in a city. If thieves don't know which house has it, they have to assume there's a risk that any house could have it, and that's a significant deterrent. Again with the statistics, look at the violent crime rates in states with tight gun controls, vs. those with liberal gun ownership. No significant difference.

Buy a toy gun for your kids at http://www.backyardartillery.com/
Or get a catapult at http://www.catapultkits.com/
And teach them the science of ballistic motion while you're at it.
We need more people with an understanding of basic physics.

Simple enough URL.
http://www.theaircar.com/howitworks.html

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How about an airZOOKA! http://www.backyardartillery.com/soft/

Perhaps. I'm in no position to challenge that claim. But how many months was that book in the NY Times best seller list? I agree that the contents were mostly fluff, but damn, authors (best selling authors) typically get 10% of the retail price in royalties. At $10/book, that's $1 to the author, times well over a million copies sold. And the hardback version was more than $10.

So, the quote holds true whether it really happened or not. His book may have been terrible literature, the grammar was atrocious, and he tended to be redundant, but the important thing to remember is that it SOLD well! Very well.

One other rule of business I've seen to be true is that "there's a huge difference between a compliment and a contract."

So, to summarize, when starting your business use freeware, cheap hardware, develop or retail important skills, concentrate on what your market is/wants/expects, satisfy that, and ignore the naysayers and critics.

Also remember this- There are a million reasons why your business will fail, and only one reason why it will succeed, YOU. You have to make it happen. Robert Kennedy said, "Things do not [just] happen, things [must be] made to happen." So, to be successful, follow the words of Jean-Luc Picard and "Make it so."

(And don't forget to have some fun! I'd suggest some AirZookas or Zero Blasters for impromptu office battles - http://www.backyardartillery.com/ )

Hah! What you don't know about marketing shows. I'm not trying to win any awards, and my customers aren't influenced by flash and dazzle. Yep, I've tried Amazon, and Ebay, and I even had a fancy web redesign done once on a bet. The designer lost- sales actually dropped, and I reverted back to the old one. I've also abandoned Amazon and Ebay- too expensive for too little returned. Cost efficiency is important too you know.

First rule of small business- know your market! Your market IS your business. Great service is what my customers value! Robert T. Kiyosaki said, in his mega best seller Rich Dad, Poor Dad, "I'm not a best writing author, I'm a best SELLING author!" In response to a pulitzer prize winner who was criticizing his work.

Case in point- I used to supply ThinkGeek with the Shot-Blade toy (I'm the exclusive dealer in the US) However, I sold FAR more of them on http://www.backyardartillery.com/ than ThinkGeek ever did, in the same time frame. It's a really cool toy too! review- http://www.dansdata.com/shotblade.htm

Design is mostly an ego trip for the designers. Results are what counts, and I doubt many of my customers are designers!

Now, go have some fun! - http://www.rlt.com/

I've been doing this for years now.

Avoid the hassle of flying by taking all your luggage and carry on stuff you would normally take on the flight, and box it up. Drop it off at the nearest Fedex or UPS to be shipped to your destination.

Get a cab to the airport and be sure to have nothing but folding money (use any coins you happen to collect in change for tips), your cell phone (in case of emergency), of course, your ID (you have papers, no?) and a plain paperback book. Take a credit card if you feel it's necessary. Wear comfortable, simple clothes (with a pocket for your stuff- no bags!) and shoes that you can slip on and off without using your hands.

Be sure to feel sorry for all the other poor slobs who have to have their bags inspected as you breeze through security. Then feel sorry for them again as they wait for baggage claim.

Downsides to this method? It costs a bit more, but well worth it. It makes flying virtually stress-free.
You'll lose potentially productive hours in flight where you could have been working on something. So take a nap and stay up later. If you can't sleep and get bored, use that silly little lump of grey matter in your head. Get creative and make up some mind games you can play with yourself. How many friends can you remember in your life? When are their birthdays? What's the square root of my birthday? Is the price of gold related in any way to the fed interest rate? How would I go about figuring that out? Can I make-up and memorize a poem with more than 20 lines? seriously, we're supposed to be the creative ones. If we can't even entertain ourselves, we might as well be robots.

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Buy a gun for your kids today! http://www.backyardartillery.com/

First off, I used a very highly recommended doc. He even had photos in his office of all the Hollywood celebrities he'd done it on. Not that hollywood celebrities add any credibility to any expertise other than acting, and even that's debatable. Except that they do tend to have very big, strong social networks, and cost is typically no object, so I felt like this was at least a good goc with fabulous word of mouth recommendations, and he wasn't cheap. He also had a "zero failure rate" in at least ten years of practice.

So I did it, and had 20-20 vision. I don't qualify as a faiure, but I certainly didn't know how many ways your vision can be not-right either. Sure, I can read the 20-20 line on the chart at 20 feet. So I'm a success, right? Well, the letters aren't acutually supposed to have drop-shadows. But I do see them and I can read them with no difficulty.

My cornea had developed a "wrinkle" in it. That's what the doc called it. So small and slight that it can't be seen without special instruments. But the doc could see it. And I can see the refractive abberation it causes on my retina. I see double vision on anything with high contrast. It's especially bad in the blue-green part of the spectrum. When driving, I see double green lights but only one red light.

Don't misunderstand, it's not a two-eye focusing on the same thing problem. Even with one eye shut, I see double, like a drop shadow. It's a slightly left-right misalignment with my left eye and a 45 degree diagonal misalignment with my right eye. Looking at the full moon at night is depressing. It's a big fat misshapen blur. This kind of thing can NOT be corrected with glasses either.

To be fair, I have incredible vision at certain distances. I can still see very well up close, no reading glasses needed at all even though I'm 45 years old (I had the surgery 3.5 years ago to cure myopia, so I've never needed reading glasses anyway) I can also see details on distant mountains and in clouds and passing jet planes I could never have seen with my glasses on. What the sunsets do to clouds truly blows me away now. I've never seen such beauty before in my life! But that's not very useful generally. Driving- especially at night is maddening because of all the double images from traffic lights and other lighted signs. I hate neon signs now like you wouldn't believe. And then there's the moon, and I see at least twice as many stars as you probably do. I see twin-stars that should be solitary.

But, I still have 20-20 vision, because I can make out the damn letters on that friggin chart. So I'm not a failure. I'm a screaming success, from the doc's point of view anyway.

The solution? I've been told the only thing to do is have the operation again. For free this time, of course. I don't think so. I wish I could have my old eyes back. I fear they'll only get worse if I do it again.

I wonder how the military is dealing with the possibility of pilots who can pass the 20-20 test on the chart but aren't reporting the double vision thing. Then again, maybe they've perfected the "details on mountaintops" thing and are exploiting it somehow. That could be useful for military pilots!

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Buy my toys and have fun while you still can! - http://www.backyardartillery.com/

Read Freakonomics. Swimming pools are FAR more dangerous than loaded handguns (on a per capita basis no less) Your kid is more at risk visiting a friend with a swimming pool than visiting a friend who has loaded guns in a sidetable drawer. Not only that, but riding in a car is far and away the most dangerous thing your kid is likely to ever do (unless he decides to go crab fishing in Alaska, climb Mt. Everest or become a human cannonball, etc., but those are relatively small odds.)

I read a story a while back (can't seem to find it right now) about the residents of Love Canal, New York failing to get government aid to relocate away from the toxic ground they were living on. (the ground was toxic in part due to governemnt tolerance of industrial polluting, so the govt. was on the hook for it) The citizens got action by taking a govt. representative hostage, at gunpoint, and allowing him to drink only the polluted tap water until they got help. They got it, but they probably wouldn't have if not for the housewife who got her gun out and took action.

No shots were fired, and no one was killed, but the right to bear arms was essential for the public to protect itself from the tyranny of big government.

If someone can find that article, please post a link.

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What's in your backyard? BackyardArtillery.com

Then at Costco, I saw a DVD player for $59. It was even a Sony brand. I bought it and it works just as well as the old one did, but it's about 1/3 the size.

Forget brand. Here's why- I'm in the retail business. I used to market underwear that I got from overruns made for the big brands. It was the same stuff, but I put my label on it instead and sold it at a lower price. Anyone who works in, or is heavily involved in manufacturing knows that everything works that way. It's a matter of economics. The factories don't just sit around waiting for orders to come in, they keep making stuff and sell it to big brands first, and what's left over goes to the smaller brands and niche markets.

Regarding price: I stopped selling underwear and went to a better selling product line- toys. I (used to) sell good quality toys that cost more but will last a lifetime, and I also sell cheapo toys that will probably break in a week but cost less than a hearty meal at McDonalds. The sad fact is, people buy the cheap stuff in droves, and the good stuff gathers dust on the shelves, regardless of the positive reviews. I believe that the Internet drives this by making too easy to get an instant price comparison, and quality is judged by the photo alone.

The same thing is true in brick-and-mortar world too. Why do you think Wal-Mart is so successful?

The bottom line- Marketing textbooks will tell you that there's a market for every price point for an item, even the exact same item. They'll also tell you that you can make a living selling high quality designer shoes for $400 each, but you can get stinking rich selling stamped-plastic shoes for a dollar. Your best bet is to buy middle-of-the-road. You're more likely to be getting the same components as the expensive stuff without paying for the snob appeal marketing.

Gatling gun

...the rate you could spam at with one of these? http://www.backyardartillery.com/machinegun/

"Can this technology used for making weapons?"

For some strange reason, there's something | There
called a "lameness filter" that repeatedly | are
rejected all attempts to post this message | lots
the way I wanted it to appear and saying I | of
had too few characters per line and that I | technologies
needed to reduce the count of "junk" chars | that
per line in my post. Perhaps it's just me, | can
but I think that making me do something so | be
TOTALLY HOKEY as THIS, JUST so the post'll | used
appear the way I intended for it to appear | to
somehow seems MUCH more hokey, in the long | make
run... But maybe I'm just being too ornery | weapons...

You just have to learn to think like this guy
and turn yourself into a human one of these.

With this watch, when you want to know what time it is, you pull a knob, which activates a hydraulic piston mechanism, which raises a little cover, thus revealing the watch face.

I've _got_ to make several of these: www.backyardartillery.com

the new 40Gig iPod is nice and pricey, and totally cool.

Perhaps the new 1GHz 12" Apple PowerBook?

Certainly a Sony Aibo is expensive and unnecessary, but can be useful in harassing the interns.

Or a UX50 CLIE(TM) Handheld PEG-UX50 PDA. Very cool, and uber-sexy.

If you want impractical, get a Rubberband Machine gun (http://www.backyardartillery.com/machinegun/) Oh yeah. Great for hostile takeovers!
Also check out their remote control tanks that shoot BBs: http://www.backyardartillery.com/tanks/. Sweet. (don't forget the plastic Army men to go along with the tanks!)

Dan's Data (http://www.dansdata.com/) reviews a lot of fun toys like the above. LED flashlights, tanks, and what-not. Maybe a super-modded computer case? Maybe a Powerball (http://www.dansdata.com/gyrotwister.htm#pball would do.

You can always check out the Sharper Image catalog, too. Lots of expensive junk in there.

the new 40Gig iPod is nice and pricey, and totally cool.

Perhaps the new 1GHz 12" Apple PowerBook?

Certainly a Sony Aibo is expensive and unnecessary, but can be useful in harassing the interns.

Or a UX50 CLIE(TM) Handheld PEG-UX50 PDA. Very cool, and uber-sexy.

If you want impractical, get a Rubberband Machine gun (http://www.backyardartillery.com/machinegun/) Oh yeah. Great for hostile takeovers!
Also check out their remote control tanks that shoot BBs: http://www.backyardartillery.com/tanks/. Sweet. (don't forget the plastic Army men to go along with the tanks!)

Dan's Data (http://www.dansdata.com/) reviews a lot of fun toys like the above. LED flashlights, tanks, and what-not. Maybe a super-modded computer case? Maybe a Powerball (http://www.dansdata.com/gyrotwister.htm#pball would do.

You can always check out the Sharper Image catalog, too. Lots of expensive junk in there.

I think I will mount one of these in my office.. you know.. just in case I want to beat the crap out of someone. Now that is a rubber band gun. ;)

like this?

Ughh, this article would be nice if:

1. Worked in an office
2. Had a job
3. Had money to buy toys
4. Had time to play with them.

Other than that . . . GREAT article.

In spite of all of this I still want that rubber band gattling gun that was featured on /. a while ago.

It's a cool address, so it might be interesting. You can get @backyardartillery.com address free.

Here [backyardartillery.com]

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