Talk:2008-06-14 37 -122

Apparently, Darcy is bigoted against Arkansas.

Apparently, Mr. 65.35.57.0 is afraid to sign his name to his inflammatory comments. --Tapin 18:20, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Darcy has no problem with Arkansas. The property owner, whom we politely offered to apologize to in person, is apparently currently in Arkansas. (It was his neighbor who was so angry with us.) --Darcy 20:19, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

(From someone who has Lisp Cycles pinned to his wall and was born and raised in and has retired to SW Missouri, pretty close to the Arkansas border): I don't understand what the fuss is here.

Was a weapon brandished at any of you? Where is the "anger", it's not at all clear.

Or did you just see some long guns in a gun rack in a pickup truck? If so, I assure you this is a very common sight all over the USA including here, and if you're going to be dropping in on random locations be prepared to see them. They don't mean much, they're a tool, much like a policeman's service weapon.

And all the points (for the moment removed due to a bad editing job) about groups of strangers attracting attention are spot on. Valuable stuff is easily stolen in rural low population density areas, so people keep their eyes open. And I've heard some insane stories of what people will do to get their hands on anhydrous ammonia for meth production, nasty stuff that needs better sealing than consumer grade tape provides (!!!). Hga 19:06, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

So.. is this what happened?

For those of us who are trying to piece together what happened -- is this a reasonable summary? For anyone who was involved, please feel free to edit this in-place to make it more accurate.

• Discussion prior to the attempt: It was easily accessible from the road, although potentially private property. Street View showed it as being outside of a chain link fence on one side, and nowhere near the house on the other side. It also happened to be near (on the border of?) the Little Hills Picnic Ranch park, providing an alternate mechanism for approaching, if not accessing, the point.
• zigdon went to the road near the point at 4pm, hung around a bit, and then took off. Speculation: At this point, the neighbor noticed the unusual traffic and started fretting about the car that hung out near his absent friend's house.
• Shortly thereafter, a number of other cars showed up. Neighbor now starts to worry in earnest.
  • Did the post-zigdon group park? Leave their cars? Approach the point from the road?
  • Did the neighbor communicate in any way with the hashers at this point?
  • How long were the hashers there?
• At some point, the neighbor begins photographing license plates
• At some point, the neighbor calls a few friends over. One friend has a pickup with a gun rack.
• The hashers notice the gun rack, and decide to leave. At least one hasher heads north to the entrance of Little Hills and talks with a ranger there. Ranger suggests neighbor might be a bit edgy.

So, among other things I'm not clear on -- did anyone head to the point through Little Hills? Did anyone actually talk to the neighbor, or was communication limited to shouting across some distance? Did anyone actually reach the actual point?

Of course, none of this is all that important, or really matters, except for later events:

• The page is edited to warn latecomers that they're not welcome
• Slashdot gets ahold of it, and frontpages it with an emphasis on "shotgun"
• The obligatory second-amendment flamefest follows, with a heaping helping of "silly geohashers" thrown in for good measure

Corrections? --Tapin 20:56, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Why are you guys bothered that this was picked up by slahdot? (Unsigned comment from 70.187.186.227)

• I assume the "you guys" would be me, in this case; I'm certainly not bothered so much as amused. I wasn't particularly interested in the details ("We went, a shotgun showed up, we left" was detailed enough for me) until all sorts of assumptions -- including ones I know to be false -- were made in the comments to the Slashdot article. Which is why I posted the previous comment, to have more details with which to respond. --Tapin 22:12, 15 June 2008 (UTC)