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We have a mock-up of the shift box.
LED to show that it's on.
Momentary switch to turn it on.
Momentary on-off-on switch to change gears. Up for upshift, down for downshift.
We have a preliminary wiring diagram.
I have parts on the way to measure to make a box that has a useful cupholder in it that will also be able to hold the switches.
Marv and I are researching what it takes to add tap-up/down shifting to The Beast.
We could buy one of three nearly plug-and-play boxes, but they're all the same format and I don't care for how they did it.
In a word, cheaply.
Maybe $15 of components for $125 to $150.
I have the factory service manual and can see how the wiring for the shifter SHOULD run.
These shift box vendors have proven the BCM already has the programming to respond to the inputs once you run a wire between X1-17 and X1-20 on the BCM.
X1-20 shows a voltage drop from X1-17's 12v and that tells the BCM to ask the TCM to shift up or down.
What we've been trying to find is if X1-17 was hot all the time or just when the ignition is on. We want the shift box we're making to open the switch when the ignition is off. The factory shifter can't be in manual when you start the car because the switch can't be closed when the car is in Park or Neutral. The aftermarket boxes are a simple switch you can forget in the 'on' position. While nobody is reporting any problems, I don't like sending a "I'm in gear AND in park" signal to the, expensive to replace, BCM.
X1-17 also provides 12v to the cruise control switch which sends a voltage drop back to X1-3.
That sentence above took way longer to find than it should have because the table of contents and index don't include the words, "cruise control."
Happily, GM is a creature of habit and my other service manuals show that cruise control troubleshooting is at the beginning of section 9. The Caprice, Impala SS, Custom Cruiser and Corvette manuals all have "cruise control" in their indices.
Grrrrrrrr.
Got me a new travel tumbler!
16oz, but it's held a 20oz coffee already. Kept it warm until it was gone.
If the 32oz had come with a red cap, I might have upsized.
The lid does something I've never had in a travel tumbler. It seals.
Good job Mission First! Amusing and functional!
Australia, famously, put heavy restrictions on who could own and carry a gun and what types of guns could be carried and owned.
Good thing, otherwise someone might have been killed in a massacre in a mall.
Oh... wait...
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's the crazy (or evil) more than the guns what causes shit like this, especially since it was crazy (or evil) with a knife.
It's a pretty beefy limb to say that, if this had happened in Tampa, the stabber would have been ventilated much faster and long before a cop arrived. With many fewer injuries and deaths.
Have you missed out on the four previous rounds of M1911 sales from CMP?
Are you pleased with the gun you'd gotten in one of the first three rounds and want another?
It appears that good news is on the horizon!
M1911 Pistol Options: A couple of months ago, we received the fiscal year 2024 tranche of surplus M1911s from the Department of the Army – 10,000 of them, which is fantastic. In terms of orders and availability, we are still in the process of filling M1911 orders for Round 4. We expect to announce Round Five this fall, once Round 4 starts winding down. And, I’ll give you a status update on that in October in my next update. While we are still assessing the pistols we just received, it looks like the quality is pretty good.
I've got my single example, but I know of a couple of people who didn't already and might just be swayed to get one this time.
May I continue to gush at the effects of modern gun cleaning chemicals and tools?
It's in distinct contrast to the stuff I had to deal back in the Army.
We got paper towels, Break-Free CLP, a well worn toothbrush and a bore brush.
Something I noticed was we needed to clean the guns several times and it was primarily because Break-Free CLP was really good at loosening things up once it had sat, but sucked for immediate effect.
I think we should have soaked them down with the stuff and come back in a few days.
But that's unthinkable to the Army, so we had to clean off all we could, then do it again when they were no longer clean thanks to the CLP dissolving stuff from unseen areas.
The amusing thing is I'm not really using much different equipment, just different chemicals.
My toothbrush gets replaced regularly.
I'm still loving Boresnakes.
Shooter's Choice (or Hoppe's) has an immediate effect on the crud and I sacrifice t-shirts to the cleaning. Most of the time I use cloth patches to apply the solvent.
There's probably better stuff out there, but I'm happy with what I have.
The pistol I'm least likely to shoot is the one that's in my pocket all the time.
Ironic, isn't it.
The range rules prevent me from pulling it out of my pocket to shoot it, so it tends to stay there, lest I be unarmed to and from the range.
Today I planned better and packed different heat.
Two 13-round and one 10-round magazine at seven yards.
I am reminded that the Shield Plus is louder than the 9-Compact.
It's a little harder to control and shoot fast, but I think that's a decent minute of bad-guy group.
Even better, it fired just fine caked in pocket lint.
Queue AC/DC
I had a black Fencer and Mk IV in my big box. The Mk I and Mk II came with an earlybird special of a Mk III and Mk V.
With an M1A1 for scale.
I'd intended to do them all in glow-in-the-dark, but SJGames didn't offer I, II and VI in anything but black.
I have a black III and V.
I have a glow in the dark Fencer, but a black Dopplesnolder.
I watched all five of the body cam videos of the officers involved in the shooting of Mr Reed.
Just two reloaded. One was done shooting when they noticed they were slide locked and put in a fresh magazine.
One officer never fired a shot because he'd dropped his pistol when he reacted to being shot.
Four officers shooting. One firing more than one magazine's worth.
Assuming the full load of 16 at the start and another 15 in the reload who kept firing.
79 shots, max.
If 96 rounds were fired, 17 belong to Mr Reed.
Two officers spend much of the fight running around not doing much constructive. One of these is the reload after noticing slide lock after the fight.
The officer who reloaded and kept firing seems most focused on being in the fight.
The fourth firing officer spends a portion of the fight noticing he's down range from his partners, so loses some shooting time deconflicting.
It's likely less than 79 shots fired. Especially since many cops I've talked to don't top up after chambering a round. 15 in the magazine, drop the slide, 1 in the pipe, 14 in the hole.
We're probably talking 50 shots. I suppose I could go back and count.
Update:
Hey, there's reports in that big dump CPD put out. Not the 15+1 Glock 22's that Not-The-Bee says.
Officer 1: Glock 17, 12 shots fired. 17+1 capacity.
Officer 2: Glock 19, 16 shots fired. 15+1 capacity. This is the slide lock reloader, the video shows the 15 shot magazine clearly during the reload.
Officer 3: Glock 45, 34 shots fired. 17+1 capacity.
Officer 4: Glock 17, 17 shots fired. 17+1 capacity.
Officer 5 (the injured one): No shots fired.
79 rounds! Yet every single media report is saying 96 rounds.
Something alluded to in the Not-The-Bee article is, "why were plain clothes officers doing a traffic stop?"
It seems very odd for plain clothes to be working traffic.
I'm speculating that they were looking for the deceased and the seatbelt violation was the excuse to pull him over and check for what they wanted to look for.
Not that they could see that he wasn't wearing his belt through that tint.
But, let us speculate further about the deceased.
Illegal tint.
I am going to guess that he doesn't have a FOID.
He had prior arrests for weapons charges, he was out on bond for one of them.
Link to all the body cam footage. Content warning for the squeamish. Real guns being fired at real people who will be leaking on camera.
Police fire 96 shots in 41 seconds.
Five cops, each firing one pistol each. 15+1 capacity.
So, five seconds to empty. 3 to reload. Five more to empty...
41/8 = 5.125 magazines.
Let's call it five each. 15*5 is 75 shots per officer. Five officers is 375 shots.
So they fired just more than 25% the full rate of fire.
That means that they were pausing to assess or move to and from cover.
It wasn't a panicky mag dump.
Real panic would have been every one of them firing 15 and cowering someplace.
One cop didn't even get off a shot before he was wounded.
So 15*5*4 for 300 shots at max rate. So about 1/3 the potential ammo dump.
But 96/4 is 24 shots per cop. Or almost 2 magazines each.
Meh.
It's not a horrible movie, the premise seemed like it could have been fun.
But I did not care about the main character, Aren.
It's a writing fail.
The white dude he's supposed to be magicking up, Jason, is unlikeable; that part succeeded. He didn't deserve the assistance the ASMN was giving him with his job and certainly didn't deserve to win the heart of the girl.
But the main character didn't really do the needful about earning her love either.
She likes him because the script says she should.
Justice Smith is playing the same basic character he portrayed in D&D Honor Among Thieves.
I dunno if he lacks range or the director said do like you did before.
The big speech that's supposed to evoke white guilt fails to land. What it really gets me thinking is Aren has been attributing how he's felt about himself to outside forces when it was from within all along. The way he explains it to Jason underscores it and Jason's reaction to it pounds it home.
In the end, it's not bad, but it's also not good.
I'd skip it; but I already watched it.
They don't throw grenades or do land nav anymore?
Even my tanker ass threw two live grenades in the grenade course.
It's an interesting read and I've long held that spending money on ammo in training was superior to gadgets.
The 3-round burst on the M16A2 and M4 was a work-around to teaching the troops how to properly use the happy setting on the rifle.
I said, at the time, and I was a wee young waif then, "full auto is something you don't need in your service rifle very often, but when you need it, you NEED it."
The 3-round burst is an example of where you might NEED full auto, and ain't got it.
I notice it was dropped and all the M4's were converted to M4A1's with the SOCOM heavy barrel. Really shoulda called that an M4A2.
OJ Simpson has succumbed to age.
I'd forgotten him until Marv mentioned his death.
I watched the moderate speed pursuit live.
I paid attention to the trial.
I listened to conspiracy theories.
I was pissed at our "justice" system essentially trying him twice and was baffled at a civil trial could commence on the question of wrongful death when the criminal trial said, "he didn't kill anyone."
I found out that our system would still hang you with the lower standard of evidence required in a civil suit, where "eh, maybe?" is enough to get a conviction.
Streets fail to run in blood AGAIN after gun laws loosened.
I doubt that this will cause anyone in Tallahassee to change their minds and legalize campus and open carry.
I want campus way more than open because of where The Lovely Harvey works.
Open carry would be nice because then I could stop worrying about accidental exposure in the summer when I have to down-grade my carry gun to survive the heat and humidity.
Open carry would give me what I think of as "mostly" or "partially" conceal carry.
The problem with this method is the chance of the shirt riding up and over the gun.
The police in several jurisdictions have decided that the brief and accidental exposure law doesn't mean what it says and any exposure is illegal open carry.
They tend to be the same places where open carry fishing makes the news.
We have three cats.
Bear, Beeper and Shadow.
Shadow is the newest and we found her just after she'd been kicked out of the nest.
She is terrified of Beeper, who will pounce on her when she runs.
We'd let it sort itself out, but Shadow panic pees when Beeper catches her.
For the past two months we've been doing "prisoner exchanges" and letting Shadow out of my room and locking Beeper in.
For about a week we've been leaving all the doors open and holding Shadow while we watch a movie or Hockey on the back porch in the evenings.
Beeper is becoming less interested in Shadow and Shadow is getting less terrified.
We're making steady, if slow, progress.
At first, when Beeper would "attack" (we think she's just asserting too hard) Shadow would disappear for hours and would have to be coaxed out of hiding.
Now she's good mere moments after we separate them.
Progress!
What's interesting about Shadow is Beeper is the only thing she's afraid of. She uses Bear like a jungle gym, he's grudgingly tolerant of this.
Bear is also a, belated, protector. After Beeper goes after Shadow and she screams bloody murder; Bear will go after Beeper.
Bear is a BIG cat. 17 pounds of not much fat. He's 15 when he's totally slim. Beeper just barely breaks 10 pounds.
When Bear is done, he's DONE. He'd knock his brother, the dear departed Dingus, to submission and Dingus was 20 pounds without fat. Dingus was HUGE.
I've been through cat introductions before and this has been the hardest one I've dealt with, but we're getting there.
Many of the fundamentals of shooting guns apply to photography.
Like holding steady for 2 seconds while the camera takes an unexpectedly good pic with the sun filter on.
I was expecting just the bright reflections off Moxie, not a sepia tone image.
Willard and I have a little skit that amuses us to no end.
We have Antonin of the Czechoslovakian Army Armaments board and Yuri from the Soviet Union Warsaw Pact Standardization Liaison Mission.
A: (Holding a Cz.52 pistol) Is Tokarev.
Y: Is not!
A: See, uses same ammo. Is Tokarev.
Y: It is not! The magazine is different and it doesn't even look the same!
A: I don't understand. Is same.
Y: They don't even work the same way!
A: But same ammo. You said same ammo important, that is why we change SKS (referring to vz.52 and vz.52/57).
Y: THAT WASN'T AN SKS!
A: Well, at least this is good AK! (Holding vz.58)
Y: That overgrown Walther P.38 is not an AK!
A: Sure it is, 30 round magazine, uses ammo you say to use, pistol grip. Is same.
Y: That's not the right magazine...
A: We had to change when you said to stop using our better round...
Y: (taking big swig of vodka) You didn't even use our bayonet. And the muzzle threads are backwards so you can't even use our blank adapter. Not one gun you've shown me is the same as what everyone else is using.
A: (Holding vz.59 MG) Then you don't want to see our PKM?
Y: (SCREAMS) Even the fucking Poles got this right! The Gods forsaken Germans fell right into line, but you!
A: I don't understand why you are so upset, we do what you say, we just fix.
So when I call the Cz.52 pistol a Tokarev, I am riffing off this bit of humor.
The M1956A2 is now modeling a Primary Arms SLx 5x36 Prism Scope and a Magpul MBUS Gen3 rear sight.
The scope usually rides on Olive, but I wanted to see how it'd look on the AR-10.
The MBUS I got for the occasion, since I'm always short one when I want one.
It's a lot slimmer than the original MBUS and the aperture flip is very cool. It's also a full three ounces lighter than the aluminum A2 stub!
Small aperture:
Big aperture:
Pretty cunning and easier to flip than the older model.
I know the Kewl Kids eschew the presence of back up irons, given the massive improvement in reliability and durability of optics; I'm just paranoid enough to want them.
The Sun God handily defeated the Moon God in Florida.
That's peak eclipse here.
We had high level haze, robbing the shot of things like sunspots.
We got people in Dearborn, Michigan chanting, "Death to America."
They're all of a particular religion and are likely recent immigrants.
OK, Department of Homeland Security, founded while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoldering...
Do something to make us more secure.
Expel this dangerous element back to the homelands they love; because they are vocally declaring they don't like it here.
A different theory on the Battle of Tolense.
I'd never heard of this archaeological site a month ago, now I've read two references since.
I posted about finding flint amongst the bronze.
There was once a time when it was considered wrong to mutilate children.
Castrado was banned.
Interesting is the health problems noted from castrating young boys and the parallels with puberty blockers today.
This is distinct from an adult making decisions for themselves.
They're adults, they're allowed to.
A gigantic problem is how permanent the blockers are and how temporary gender confusion often is in children.
While they may earnestly believe they're trapped in the wrong body, oftentimes this goes away with the simple application of a little compassion and allowing things to run their course without intervention.
The White House tried to slow the Israeli war effort — partly out of concern for Palestinian civilians, but also out of concern that if Israel won too quickly, the U.S. would not have leverage to force Israel to accept a Palestinian state.
I don't think the Biden admin and the pro-Hamas people are teaching the lesson they think they are.
The lesson is to win it quicker next time.
Oh, and there's going to be a next time as sure as a dog returns to its vomit.
To be quicker will require abandoning the niceties of worrying about civilian casualties and collateral damage. Things Israel was only doing to mollify our delicate sensibilities about war.
Noting that it did them no good in the end, they will dispense with such pleasantries in the future.
Betcha.
My players weren't really interested in playing a Scarlet Pimpernel campaign, so I missed my chance to slip in a reference to see if any of them got it.
One of the nobles I was going to have them rescue would have been Raphaël Danceny.
IYKYK.
