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My dad and I dropped a 350 into a '47 pick-up and it didn't seem as complicated as this to get the electrical system updated to 12v in 1984.
Are parts to do the conversion in one step no longer common?
Both knees and my left hip don't appreciate the activity of messing with the wheels and cleaning the car.
Luckily, there's self-medication!
Beer!
Doesn't dent the neuropathy in my shins, but it does help with arthritis.
It's as close to exercise as I can manage and a lot of it is completely off my legs anyways.
I have a little roller stool instead of "rice paddy prone" for lifting the wheels back on and the behind-the-bumper work was sitting on the cold, hard concrete floor of the garage.
Cleaning the car needed more standing up, but I could brace off the walls and such.
The Beast is not getting smaller as she ages. I started washing at about 4:30 pm and am just getting done waxing at 8:00pm. The pic is from before I started waxing.
I took a few breaks, had dinner and helped the neighbors hang a blind in there too.
I don't wax her every wash. McGuire's TechWax2 is pretty resilient stuff, I get 6 months easy before it stops beading.
Adam's Wheel and Polish's Wheel and Tire Cleaner is the shit! Spray it on the rims and brake caliper, let it sit for a minute and hit it with some high pressure water and VIOLA! them rims and calipers be CLEAN! Best wheel cleaner I've ever used. Thanks to Marv for finding and trying it out.
Now I am ready to leave in the wee hours for the Daytona Totally-Not-Spring-Fling-Because-That's-Trademarked-By-Somebody-Else Turkey Rod Run Spring Car Show!
We still call it the Spring Fling and have to remember Turkey Rod Run to find the show information...
I have not gone to this show in 10 years. Last time I took The Precious. The Biscayne SS went several times too.
I hearby challenge President Donald J Trump to a duel!
Between whatever 150/40/5 point GURPS 4e character he dares bring to the table and a character of my own creation of the same points!
Winner gets to brag about it. If I win I'm framing his character sheet and hanging it on my wall!
I will supply dice, snacks and beer.
Our seconds can decide the TL and weapons allowed to the characters. They will also decide if dropping all 150 points into a single skill is allowed.
I'd argue against it, a well rounded and complete character will make for a more interesting game.
I'd say it was a duel to the death, but I doubt there's any physical risk past a paper cut and an imaginary character really isn't alive so it can't die. Also, The US Secret Service gets REALLY touchy about even joking about killing the president.
I'm not even threatening him.
Though it might be hilarious to see what the Secret Service does about having the president visit the home of a gun owner to play a couple hours of GURPS. Prolly insist we meet someplace a bit easier to secure.
That's a Mk 20 Mod 0 40mm automatic grenade launcher. It fires normal 40x46mm grenades.
It's not often pictured, they didn't make very many.
It's hard to tell, but that's actually a color picture.
L->R Mk20 Mod0, 2x M16A1, M79, 4x S&W Model 15-2, 3x M16A1, M60C and the muzzle of an M60 blurry in the foreground.
To ghost load your Remington 870:
Load the magazine with as many rounds as you want with the action open.
Drop a round in the chamber.
Place a round on the elevator.
Push down on the round as you partially close the action to get it started.
Pust the elevator back up as you close the action the rest of the way so the nose of the round partially enters the magazine.
Viola!
I don't know if this works with other pump shotguns.
Prior to taking the front wheels off to gain access to the fog light housings, it was smooth sailing up to about 60, then the steering wheel would shake until about 70 when it would clear up again.
One, or both of those tires are slightly out of round.
A trip to meet a friend for dinner had a more pronounced vibration at 55 that kept getting worse past that point.
Rotating the front-right wheel two lugs forward seems to have corrected the issue and I'm back to smooth up to 60.
Even better is the wheel shake is less at 60 and hardly apparent at 65+.
Victory!
The ultimate solution will be to get new tires that haven't been screwed up by worn suspension components. But we're not to affording that yet.
I previously lost confidence in my torque wrench because the rear axles came loose on The Precious.
I have been suspect of its replacement because of a recurring vibration at about 60 that can get worse if the wheels are out of phase.
Tonight I took out the old one, dialed it to 140 and checked it against the lugs which had been torqued with the newer wrench. It clicked without moving them.
Then I moved one wheel two lugs over and torqued it down with the old wrench.
Then I checked the torque with the new wrench.
They agree!
The problem with the axle nuts on the C6 wasn't torque, but it's really not a good design. I ended up using a jam nut arrangement to keep them secure.
The vibration is from damaged tires from the ruined front suspension and taking way too long diagnosing it. Holden really did a number with the geometry and it defies my double-A-arm education.
If we can believe the statements of the Secretary of Education, the dismantling of her department is not supposed to get in the way of student loans.
That's a sigh of relief for small colleges all across the nation.
A big fear of these places is that the only source of higher education would be the state run land-grant universities and the states choosing a path that eliminated competition.
Eyes crossed most selfishly because Harvey works at such a small college.
Remember back when they declared Biden not competent enough to stand trial over those documents?
Think they will use that to show he wasn't competent enough to sign pardons?
Interesting times.
All the news talk about shutting down the Department of Education is talking about concerns K-12.
Nary a peep about what higher ed programs are affected or what's to become of them and how this will affect colleges, big and small.
Our secretary of education keeps repeating that she wants services to continue to the people who need them, but the details are scanty.
Installed a better quality fog-light housing into The Beast!
TYC vs West Taiwanese No-Name:
The TYC has a better pattern than the West Taiwanese version (though they're prolly both made there) and they're aimed better because both bulbs are seated correctly.
I never take a shotgun when making a character, but this is a neat trick that you'd have to show the GM the video for them to let it happen.
Update: Hope everyone saw that, YouTube has decided that loading an extra round in your shotgun is violation of their terms.
I found this great spot on a grassy knoll and I'm standing there, braced and aiming when his fucking head explodes! Then the bimbo is on the trunk lid picking up parts and they speed off.
I didn't even have to shoot!
That fucker you picked to take the blame actually did it!
Yes, I still want paid, you cheap bastard.
One nice thing about having never been cool is that I'm never going to try to get it back.
I feel left out of the cool kids things from time to time, but it's better to have never been cool than it is to have once been.
Bonus, there's no urge to change to remain cool or cutting edge.
I don't have to jump to the next big thing just to stay where I am.
I'm looking at a couple of bloggers who're clearly broken by Trump 47 in a way they never were by any previous president. They say they aren't, but didn't feel the need to justify their actions when they were doing then what they are doing now... Even though now is much more pointed, harsh and frequent than then.
I will even cop to agreeing with several of their points!
I can't put my finger on, exactly, what reads different now, but it is different.
It might just be that it's no longer cool do be doing their schtick with the current Ocupante de la Casa Blanca.
Neil DeGrass-Tyson says there's only eight planets.
OK Boomer. I have a different scientist of equal credibility!
Interplanet Janet says nine.
Got a couple pieces of good news from my doc at the VA.
First, for the first time ever, I lost some weight! Just five pounds from last year, but it's not a ten pound increase like it's been for the past five. At this rate I will get to my target weight just in time to die of old age.
Second, he's referring me to the neuro people to confirm the neuropathy diagnosis I'd gotten after my bone scan five years ago. If they confirm it, then it will go a long ways towards increasing my disability percentage.
My cholesterol is par for the course for my family. Higher than they like, but without any of the things that it's normally a precursor to. McThags don't have heart problems as long as we avoid diabetes (and my A1C is perfect!). We have cancer, liver and dementia killing us.
What makes a battle rifle?
What distinguishes it from an assault rifle?
Easy, right?
Turns out, it's nothing official.
The M16 isn't called an assault rifle. It's just a rifle. "Rifle, 5.56mm, M16" in fact.
Change that to M16A1, M16A2, M16A3 or M16A4 as needed.
Surely the M14 is a battle rifle then?
Nope, "Rifle, 7.62mm, M14."
Yet.
We know what we mean when we say "assault rifle" and "battle rifle" don't we?
They're informal designations.
Looked at one way, "assault rifle" can mean any rifle used in an assault. A battle rifle can be any rifle used in battle.
But we typically mean that an assault rifle is select fire, detachable magazine fed and firing an intermediate power round.
A battle rifle is the same, but firing full power rounds. Right?
But isn't a Garand a battle rifle? K.98k?
Not so clear cut is it?
Especially since battle rifle is used informally for any military issue rifle, regardless of if it's full power or intermediate.
I know where I first saw the distinction. Twilight: 2000. The FAL and G3 were battle rifles. The M16A2, AKM and AK-74 were assault rifles. I am sure they didn't invent the terms.
The agreement to defend Ukraine's borders if they gave up their nukes was meaningless when they wrote it up.
The president of Ukraine was Moscow's buddy and they were really looking for assurances that NATO wasn't going to invade them and if they did, Russia would help stop the slavering western hordes.
NATO knew they weren't going to invade because NATO doesn't do that.
Russia knew they weren't going to invade because they had an agreeable government in place in Kiev.
That Ukraine would become pro-West and anti-Russia was never contemplated.
Russia invading wasn't on anyone's bingo card in 1994.
It was a big, meaningless media event calculated to make Bill Clinton and the UK leadership look good in the press at the time. "Look! We're bringing peace forever by reducing the number of nukes out there."
Actually it was good, those nukes were aimed at the West at the time too.
The Budapst Memorandum is doubly meaningless because the actions required of the signatories are minimal.
All it really says is Ukraine's borders will be treated in accordance with the Helsinki accords.
You know the non-binding Helsinki Accords?
So if you're on your high horse saying we betrayed Ukraine, remember that doing nothing is allowed under the Helsinki Accords.
But I was around and blogging in 2014 when Russia invaded Ukraine the first time. Ukraine didn't give Crimea to Russia. Russia took it by force of arms.
Where were you Uke boys then? I heard nothing for 8 years. Obama certainly didn't send troops or arms.
Well, if you read the Budapest Memorandum and Helsinki Accords, we're supposed to head to the UN and hammer it out there.
We sure made some sternly phrased resolutions. That we did! Just like the non-binding-never-ratified memorandum says we should.
Read that part again.
NEVER RATIFIED!
Without ratification we're not obligated to do fuck all.
For 20 years everyone acted like we'd ratified it, but we hadn't.
It's like going to court for a crime that congress passed but the president didn't sign. It's not a law, so your behavior wasn't illegal.
So, for the "nobody is ever going to trust us again" crowd; you've been complaining for three years about something that wasn't ratified for 30. Where were you then?
I know where I was. I was thinking it was pretty slick of Willy to have gotten those nukes away from a pro-Russian state without giving them anything in return. And I hate that fucker. THAT was our national interest and national interest goal achieved without any losses.
I think a lot of people need to learn how things really work out there before they go a ranting about betrayal.
There's rumors flying that Neill Blomkamp is going to make a new Starship Troopers movie.
Further, the rumors state that he's going to stick to the book.
That's better than the previous attempt by Paul Verhoeven, if true.
Not sure how well the book can be translated to film, but I've seen a Japanese anime that did a better job than Paul "Everything Military Is Nazis" Verhoeven.
I've ranted continuously that if you're going to license a property, then DO that property.
We've got a few great examples that show that it's a good plan.
The Hunt for Miss Red October. <- This one stands out because other adaptations of the Clancyverse failed to adhere to the books and didn't do near so well at the box office.
The Lord of the Rings.
Harry Potter.
300.
Dune.
Stick to the source material and the fans who've been keeping the books in the best seller rack since... a long fucking time ago will plant their asses in the seats with popcorn.
Notice that the fans will forgive some departure from the text because they understand the differences between the mediums. But you have to hew close to the source!
I tend to be someone who yanks it out of the package and slaps it on the grill.
Tomorrow, though, is the inlaws anniversary and we wanted to make it special.
When they lived in Iowa, they'd hit Texas Roadhouse for dinner and split a ribeye.
They've complained about other steak places around here for not tasting right and I figured it had to be because of a rub.
Well, I found three sites with recipes that agree about what Texas Roadhouse is using for a rub and The Lovely Harvey said, "we have all that!"
So she mixed up the spices and I applied it to the steak for them tomorrow.
Plus a different rub that I had erroneously been led to believe was a clone of the one we found later.
I've never done a rub before.
We're going to cook them up and see if it triggers happy feelings.
They like medium well. Ugh!
I prefer medium minus. Maybe I can slip it past them cooked properly!
Harvey also says I should salt the others before cooking because it helps make a crust and retains moisture in the meat.
Going to be fun no matter what.
We're thawing some hamburger in case of a disaster.
Even if all goes wrong with the steaks, there will be baked potatoes. I know how to do those!
I noticed at the local tobaccanist there's a sign that says that "RJR Tobacco has been ordered to display this sign stating that smoking is harmful to your health by court order wherever our products are sold."
The phrasing of that really makes me think.
They're not saying their products cause harm. They're saying they've been ordered to say it.
It's like when your parents told you say thank you for the slipper socks from your aunt.
It's like then the coach tells you to say you're sorry and shake hands.
You don't mean it, but you have to say it.
Now, I am not saying that smoking is good for you.
I will go out on a limb and point out that neither side is being completely honest and that every single study on tobacco use was paid for by one side or the other and the results are suspect because of the "he who pays the piper calls the tune" bias.
Round-Up herbicide is the same sort of thing. Convincing a jury to pay out is not the same thing as the plaintiff's claims being actually true. There's a part of me that still believes that if it were truly harmful that after losing that case, the regulatory agency in charge of it would be forcing them to pull it off the market.
Helped a buddy replace the evaporator and heater core on his '99 TJ Wrangler.
That's a remove entire dash deal.
Just like The Beast will be.
Unlike my car, someone has been in there doing wiring.
Someone who wasn't very good at it. Worse than me!
It seemed to go pretty smooth until it came time to recharge the AC.
First we found that Marv's new AC gauges and lines leak like sieves.
His old set with the battered gauges work great and he ran home to get them.
That let us get the system evacuated and confirm that it'd hold a vacuum.
Then we couldn't get the compressor going.
Jumpering the pressure switches didn't engage the clutch, confirming that they were seeing pressure.
Jumpering the AC relay, however, did engage it. That let us finish charging it up.
We did a whole lot of tracing wires until I found that the damned fuse for the AC relay was missing. My buddy thinks that a fuse-tap got taken out of that slot and put back in another empty position in the fuse box. Putting a 10a fuse in the AC relay spot made the AC work correctly! HUZZAH!
Then there was no heat.
The heater hoses were getting plenty warm, so it wasn't a blockage.
I speculated it was the blend door being hung up and the blend door motor was visible with the dash back together. It was moving, maybe 10° when it needed to move 90°!
I pulled the motor and found that the blend door wouldn't move at all by hand.
We think that we got it jammed when we put the heater box back together. It's a fiddly part of the reassembly. To fix it would mean pulling the heater box back out and that means taking the whole damn dash apart again.
Summer is coming and winter is a long ways off. He's leaving it until then.
Can't says I blames him.
It's a long standing axiom in engineering that the last 10% of improvement costs the same as the first 90%.
It can be rephrased as, "perfect is the mortal enemy of good enough."
I was a kid in the 70's.
I remember all the pollution my, not liberal at all, parents talked about.
I got to experience the change in air quality as it was happening in the suburbs of Chicago.
The pollution was real. The improvement was real.
I've worked in water and wastewater treatment. One of our bread and butter items was selling treatment plants to places that had run out of grandfathering. The pollution was real. The improvement was real. Seeing how little a 1960's plant did to make the water better compared to a late '90's plant was sobering.
One of the things you get to see is the little chart of what's allowable. Get a substance below x parts per million and you're legal and it's good.
What if x is arsenic? Arsenic is poisonous! That's bad! Get rid of all of it!
Reducing it below the threshold where your body can deal with it is fairly simple and very cheap. Getting rid of all of it is not.
And that's where we are with the environmentalists.
We've gotten rid of most of the air and water pollution. Gotten it down below the harmful thresholds and life should be good.
But perfect is lurking, waiting, to kill off good enough to make life impossible.
That the environmentalists don't really seem to care about pollution but forcing a non-industrial lifestyle on everyone is evident in their making up new pollutants.
I am also old enough to remember when the goal was to get combustion from cars down to carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and water vapor. The GOAL!
As soon as the automakers had pretty much done that and horsepower was returning to cars... Nope! Carbon emissions need to be zero!
Plus, food crops cannot be counted for carbon absorption. Can't have man benefit from carbon in the air.
Got it right at peak!
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| Canon EOS M50; EF-S 55-250 IS II; f/5.6; 1/15"; 250mm; ISO 12,800 |
I'd have made a cropped version, but it's pretty fuzzy from the -3 exposure stops and the relatively high ISO.
Hand held, auto-focus, stabilization on...
Ain't heard from Willard in about a month.
So...
Why react when you can overreact?
So I searched for his full name and tagged it with "obituary."
No hits on obituary, but his full name got to his voter registration.
"Republican."
Excellent. That means he's still alive and kicking because if he wasn't, he'd be registered and voting Democrat.
Five million visitors and bots have hit this blog since I moved over from LiveJournal.
Huzzah!
