Bad Day To Be A Fat Dude

Meatloaf and Louie Anderson have shuffled off.

Getting My Greeble On

The cyan lines will be changed to shallow grooves so the print looks more interesting.

Thank The Gods for the mirror tool!

UPDATE!:  

Got the top surface plotted out, now I need to extrude it into the surface and subtract it from the solid to leave a groove the printer can see.

Clear As Mud

I can see what's going on because I made the model.

The one on the right is the rearranged version.

Upper and lower cargo and being able to isolate the passenger section makes more sense to me.

Never mind the original seems to have forgotten an airlock...

QOTD

"I'd rather have questions I can't answer than answers I can't question."

-- R Feynman

Fusion

I did a comparison between the fusion plants in Traveller: Interstellar Wars and GURPS: Transhuman Space.

The Traveller plant gives 2.5 times the power for the same space in the ship.

I think I know why.

Traveller has miraculous gravitics.

They're using gravity manipulation to smush the fuel to a fusion state.

Transhuman is harder, crunchier, science fiction and is constrained by real world theory for the physics.

Kinda neat!

Something else I realized is that a Traveller plant requires tremendous power requirements at start-up to create the initial state.

Everyone Makes A High Power Now

Even FN!

Sort of.

They made it ambi and increased capacity to 17 rounds.

Sure didn't come down on the price from the old version...

While it's interesting, at that price point I'm prolly not going to be the one writing a review unless someone at FN reads this and says, "Hey, Thag, we sure wanna hear what you think about it and we're sending one to you."

Simians may also issue forth from my alimentary canal with great force, taking on a ballistic trajectory.

What I want to know, though, is magazine compatibility with the old guns.

OK Deckplans Have At Thee!

I noticed that the cargo bay as shown was too small.

So I extended it forward a lot.

Then I started looking at the layout and thought, "this is not set up well at all."

So I started rearranging components.

This got especially drastic when I found that there's no place to put the power plant in engineering as shown on the rules-as-written deck plans.

Fine, you're gonna make me rearrange, then lets REARRANGE!

Passenger staterooms have been moved to the lower deck.

Some of the cargo has been moved to the upper deck and an air-raft sized deck elevator installed there.

Passenger country can be isolated from the rest of the ship.

Airlock and companionway have been added to the port side so the passengers don't have to walk through the cargo bay or engineering to get to their staterooms.

Best of all, it all fits properly in the 3D model I showed the other day!  Huzzah!

Unsubscribe

I've been stabbing unsubscribe on a lot of YouTube channels I used to enjoy.

Repetitious and boring sums up most of them.

But a couple of car channels actively shying away from interesting projects to stay on the repetitious, boring and predictable formula was the last straw.

That thing right there that you're refusing to work on?  I want to watch you work on that you talentless hack!

No, there is no schematic or manual for this.  You can't plug it into a computer to diagnose it.

I thought you were a mechanic.

But you pale compared to the idiot who keeps bringing these projects to you.

And idiot is an act.

He's flipping these cars for a profit and making a big deal about how he paid so little to get the car and so much to fix it...

But he shows his house in the vids.  He's not hurting.

But he's got the viewers hooked that he's going broke doing this.

If that were true, it would have ended a long while ago.

Change The Deck Plans!

I can make my hull shape work with some small changes to the deck plans.

Two corridors outboard and forward of staterooms 13 and 16 are crawl-spaces; but that's OK because there's a corridor aft of these rooms that connects to the inboard ones.

The corridors that go around staterooms 3 and 4 lose a little bit of headroom forward and outboard, but that's mostly up above the drop ceiling.

The cargo bay gets expanded out to meet the hull in the aft portion and extended under the staterooms almost to under the bridge with a 9' ceiling.

Staterooms 13 and 16 lose some headroom in the head because of the angle of the hull.

Simplistic

I think that, if it were my design, I'd have made the Lightning a bit less, well, slab sided and flat.

I'm modeling it as the artwork in the book says to do it.

And I just noticed that the cargo hold, as shown in the deck plans is a mere 78.5 dTon when it's supposed to be 162 dTon.

I assumed a 9' ceiling and to make volume it needs a 20' ceiling.  Or it needs to be twice as long as shown on the plans.

That means a substantial redesign of my model...  Grumble!

Windows

 I got the bridge windows and the refueling scoops on!  Coming up with an aesthetically pleasing and not wildly out of scale set of windows was a pain in the ass!

Greebeling is no darn fun when the feature has to have some real function that's identifiable.

Getting Usage

 

Don't have a stand yet, but I'm having fun with using it!

In this case Liquid Garage's Backfire, passion fruit habenero sour

Plain Print

JT printed the Lightning without any greebling so I can do some drawing on the plain part to plan the greebling.

Notice that it seems to dwarf the Type-R?

The differences in volume can be illusory.  I think the Type-R should come in a bit larger than the Lightning by volume despite appearing smaller here.

I Forgot

Now that the ransom has been paid, the hostage has been returned.

I have my Shield Plus, she has hers.

All is once again well.

I feel better that she's now packing a gun that she can fully operate and the upgrade to 9x19mm from 9x17mm is a bonus.

Let Me Check My Notes

JT got a good print of the Type-R Subsidized Merchant and we made our first run of an un-greebeled Lightning Frontier Merchant in 1/270 scale!

Uh...  Isn't the Lightning a 400 dTon ship, like the Type-R?

This is what happens when you use a GURPS book for the dimensions where a hex is 1 yard across flats.  So this was scaled in inches...  The slicer defaults to millimeters.

A scaled up version is printing right now!

Cautious Optimism

For just $1400 the plumber came (um, phrasing), snaked the shitter (PHRASING!), and grouted the base of the commode.

He said he felt something solid blocking things and knocked it down the drain.

It appears to flush fine now!

He didn't even take the crapper off the floor, so we're being optimistic about it.

Knocking Off Rust (Updated With Pics)

The Lovely Harvey shot her Shield Plus today.

She started off shooting quite a bit to the right and was getting a little frustrated when, suddenly, something went "click" and she pulled her groups back centered.

First target, pulling to the right:

Second target once things started to click for her:

Decent grouping too!

I am sure she's fighting the "I used to be a better shot" gremlins because she has not shot regularly for almost a decade.

No malfunctions from the gun in the first 100 rounds.  A good sign.  It doesn't preclude future failures, of course, but at least it appears to be made correctly from the factory.

Gen 1 Glock 17

I've got a nascent want for a first generation Glock 17.

Because I had one when I was in the Army and was forced to sell it before I returned CONUS because of the lack of years on my ID.  Technically the gun was illegally purchased on a special dispensation from on high to get us equipped with 9mm pistols before we went to the Czech border.

I've told this story before.  We'd turned in our 1911's and .45 ammo and drawn 9mm ammo only to be informed that the M9's weren't coming before we loaded the tanks on the train.

So we were turned loose on the rod and gun clubs in the area with signed waivers to buy anything that shot 9mm.

I chose a Glock 17 because, of course I did.

This purchase dispensation didn't allow me to bring it back, so I sold it to a fellow down the hall.

Once I got out of the Army I bought another Glock 17, this one having adjustable sights.

I should have hung onto it, but I was chasing some shiny chimera and sold it off.

Once I'd gotten myself sorted, I wanted to replace it and discovered that 1st Gen Glocks are rare collectable items.

UGH!

That's why I have a police-trade-in 2nd Gen.  Close enough!  Or is it?

The Lipsey's P80 Retro Glock might scratch the 1st Gen itch... Or will it?

A real one is still expensive.  Too expensive, I think.

On the plus side, the Lipsey's don't appear to have become too pricey, and have come down a bit since they were first released.  On the negative, it's marked P80 and not 17 on the slide.

Toxicology Is In

My buddy Ray died of an accidental OD of oxycontin.

Dammit.

His family, of course, is using this as evidence that he was still a scumbag alcoholic who just switched to being a scumbag addict.

SIGH.

It's so damn clear that they had not spoken to him even remotely recently.

Trust me, The Lovely Harvey and I know from addicts and Ray wasn't.  The tells were absent.

Especially when he called and talked to her about the topic of addiction.  A road she traveled herself in high school.

We think that he was in a great deal of physical pain from his cellulitis and a bad back and he simply took too many pills too fast.

It happens.

A little too often, but it does.

Memories

Talk about SKS prices on Arfcom reminded me of a funny.

A friend, who shall remain nameless, decided they needed 7.62x39mm to feed their SKS.

They spotted a crate near the entrance to the gun show the moment we walked in.  So they bought it immediately.

And lugged the heavy ass thing for the next couple of hours while we continued to shop...

It was only when we got to the car they said, "why didn't I just take it to the car right away?"

"Or buy it on the way out the door?" chimed in another friend.

24/7 My Ass

The shitter in the main bathroom is flushing very slowly.

I wouldn't trust it with poop.

The toilet flange appears to have finally given up the ghost and that's a repair above my pay grade.

So we called a plumber we'd used before and had given us good service.

Got their answering machine.

That was at 11:40 this morning.

They have yet to respond.

I guess we will call a different plumber now.

Luckily, this is a two-hole house, so we aren't reduced to running two houses down to the inlaws to shit.

8x21mm

.30 Super Carry is actually a .313" bullet.  7.95mm.

A 100 grain 0.313" bullet at 1,250 feet per second comes out to 2d+2 pi- and 160/1,700 range.

That's less than the bog standard 9x19mm with its 2d+2 pi.

.30 SC vs torso will give an average of 4.  9mm will give a 9.

That's important!

Changing to HP ammo gets a bit better with the .30 SC changing to 2d+2(0.5) pi.  That will give an 8 against someone wearing a t-shirt.

9mm becomes 2d+2(0.5) pi+ and gets 12 on that same shot.

Perhaps its better compared to .380 ACP?

.380 will do 2d pi with an average of 7 against the torso with ball and 2d(0.5) pi+ with an average of 9 against that t-shirt with hollow points.

Uh...

GURPS has been eerily good at predicting how well a gun will hurt someone and this is looking less impressive now.  If only it could ditch the pi-...  But if 7.65x25mm Mauser and 7.62 Tokarev don't make the "high velocity" cut for pi, neither does this!

Speaking Of Student Loans

Navient has agreed to cancel a shit ton of student loans.

I wonder if mine is in that pile.

I attended a school that got shut down for predatory lending.

Intent

As soon as she gets her new toy to the range to verify we don't have a warranty claim against S&W, The Lovely Harvey intends to use it to replace her SIG P232.

We're prolly going to sell it.

That will leave the old Colt pocket hammerless as the only .380 in the house.

We used to have several more.

I used to have a SIG P232 and P238.

Harvey's P232 was bought because she liked mine...  Age doth betray us all.

Meanwhile...

She got to shoot Marv's S&W 459 and she proclaimed it "heavy".  Which it is by comparison to the Shield Plus.

That reminds me that I haven't given a report on the S&W 59 I've been toting since the weather cooled.

Still carrying it.  It's still a full-sized duty pistol in a shoulder holster.

I still shoot it well.

Marv's 459 shoots high, and we lacked a suitable tool to adjust the rear sight.

Next trip!

This also reminds me to find the little screwdriver bit holder I want to keep in my range bag because of the lack.

UPDATE:

Screwdriver located!

I Have Reclaimed That Which Is Mine!

The Lovely Harvey foolishly generously and lovingly granted permission for me to replace the stolen Shield Plus.

So I did.

 

She promptly returned my old pistol and laid claim to the new one.

SIGH

Happy Wife, don't get killed in your sleep from multiple stab wounds to the chest and groin HAPPY LIFE!

She never really did steal my original.  I got the new one as a gift as soon as I dropped her off at home to tend The Boy.

But never, ever, let the facts get in the way of a good story!

My Wife Is A Thief

The Lovely Harvey had the day off and the afternoon free after running her mom to the eye doctor.

She suggested we go shooting.

So we grabbed some pistols and hit the range with Marv.

She's lost some grip strength as she's aged so the SIG P232 is getting to be a bear to operate.

I suggested she try my S&W M&P 9 Sheild Plus...

I shouldn't have.

She shot better with it than the other three guns I brought and she has not given it back.

I think she plans on letting me buy me a replacement.

I think...

Thwapt!

That sound that a bullet makes as it passes nearby...

But you've got to walk over there and you're just sick of it so you keep walking figuring that if they finally figure out the sights and the range you get to stop walking.

And so does everyone else.

Fuck taking cover, if they were serious there would be mortars or something, right?

Hurt

I have to agree that Johnny Cash did, indeed, make Trent Reznor his bitch when he covered Hurt.

Who am I agreeing with?

Trent Reznor!

OR!

My "buddy" who thinks he can outshoot anyone after 7 shots?

Give him something with sights that aren't regulated for any load you can still buy at any range we can actually go shooting at!

Like the SMLE.

You wanna hit center of the target with commercial .303 you're going to have aim about 50cm low at 100 yards.

3km

If you had a standard Vegas die made from neutron degenerate matter it would mass the same as a 3 km sphere of rock.  3.36x10^12 kg.

Without a stellar mass to keep it compressed to degeneracy, it's going to explosively expand, though.

There's a couple of small moons around Jupiter that are this size.  Lots of asteroids too.

I had to relearn how to calculate the fucking density from the numbers that physicists use back into simple shit like engineers use.

Prolly a web page that gives the simple 4.9x10^17 kg/m3 answer I figured out without needing to get as drunk as I did to kill knowing that math in order to retrieve it.

Oh, and don't fuck with me!  I can do this math when I can't fucking stand!

This all comes from someone who's Mr Trivia at our local watering hole asking how much a die's worth of neutronium weighs.

Notice I called it neutron degenerate matter?  We don't use nuetronium to describe it any more!

Lemme Get This Straight

You're betting me that you're going to a better shot than me with anything after seven shots?

Meet you at the range, motherfucker.

I'll bring something that recoils brutally and see how your non-shooter ass does.

I know I can shoot that painful shit.

But it takes time at the range to learn to control flinch and that's where I will have your braggart ass.

You're going to be in pain.  You're not going to be familiar with it and you will not shoot near so well.

It'd be worth borrowing Willard's 329PD and shoot full up .44 Magnum loads just to shut this guy up.

And I'm ready for him to shut up.

Especially since I pounded out this:

50 yards, irons, 21 seconds worth of function test, not an accuracy test.

That's with Willard's M1956A2 gun to make sure I'd cured the stoppage problem.

I've seen neophytes shoot .308 from a light gun like that before.  It amuses me a lot.  I wasn't even mad at them.

UPDATE: It just hit me.  With range time, ammo and targets this was about a $3 a second shoot.  I've gotten a better dollar to time value at a strip club!

Egregious Error

In HBO's miniseries "Band of Brothers" some of the bolts used in the Ford GPW Jeeps did not have 'F' scripts on them.

Why won't Hollywood get the simple things correct?

Admitting That YOU Aren't The Actual Indigenous People For $1,000 Alex

"Indigenous" people objecting to paleogenetic studies of people whom preceded them in the area by over 4,000 years.

Plus other interesting stuff.

For the record, if some paleontologist digs my ass up 5k years from now, they are free to experiment on my remains.  I'll be long finished with them by then.

The Democrat Party Is Dying

While that might be true, in a sense, I don't think it's going to literally happen.

The Dems will reinvent themselves into something that attracts voters again once a critical mass of losing elections finally gets them to clean house of the off-putting extremists.

The Republicans have done this a couple of times too.

We identify some of them as RINO today because they had to become more like unto Democrats to get elected at all.

But I welcome this shift.

It would be peachy if the choices between parties wasn't existential.

Republicans are just as bad as the Democrats when they get total control, but in the other direction.

It's why I was so happy watching Trump doing mean Tweets.  He isn't really from either party.  It disrupted the paradigm.

I want the difference between the parties to not matter a whit about essential policies, rights, freedom and liberty.

Sweeping through the halls of government with a, metaphorical, flamethrower to downsize it would actually attain that goal naturally.

If there's no power to be gained over your fellow man by attaining office, then the worst of them will not seek it.

It actually did work like that for decades, until FDR didn't let the Great Depression go to waste.  We're still paying for that shit.

To quote the noted American Philosopher F. Geff: "The Constitution may not be perfect, but it's a damn sight better than what we have now."

Damn Cat

 Beeper needed love, so she stood on the laptop's keyboard to get it.

Somehow she managed to turn on the num-lock.

Hard to enter the password to unlock the screen when 14 keys are not doing what I think they should do.

Better Living Through Chemistry

While FuzzyGeff was in town we frog marched Marv into making a Traveller Interstellar Wars character.

We skipped trying to integrate him into the existing campaign, so everyone made a Promethian belter.

The quick, light, scenario was them prospecting in the inner belt and finding a poorly disguised UN Navy listening post.

The first person they encounter was a buck naked, dead drunk Lieutenant Commander.

As they were leaving the asteroid base, the commander was stone sober.

I did not explain it to them, but the drug he took is called "purge".

It's a standard med found in Ultra-Tech that nullifies alcohol and recreational pharmaceuticals in a couple of minutes taken orally, or in a few seconds injected.

We ARE On The Cusp Of TL9 After All

.30 Super Carry.

GURPS Ultra-Tech 4e predicts a 7.5mm caseless round in a service pistol that has basically 9mm damage and range stats but a 30 round capacity.

So, .30 Super Carry still isn't there, but it looks like tech is advancing as expected.

TL9 is supposed to start in 2025 after all.

Making Luck

Bad luck can be catastrophic.

It will be pointed out that the better prepared always have better luck than the unprepared.

This is true.

There's an amount of luck in that too.

The luxury of nothing going catastrophic while you're getting ready.

Or a string of catastrophes which depletes the preps.

You can do everything in your power correctly and at the proper time and STILL get cut off at the knees if what's going wrong lasts too long or is something completely out of right field.

This should not exonerate those whom do everything wrong all the time and no amount of luck will lead them to any sort of lasting success.

Here at Casa McThag?

We've had a lot of bad luck.  We're getting our shit back together as we can, when we can.

Every year has been better than the last as we rebuild.  <-- That's tempting fate, ain't it?

But we look at The Shitheels and notice that we're living on our own, paying taxes, with occasional assistance from our generous friends (whom help voluntarily) compared to not paying any taxes and getting significant portions of their sustenance provided by taxpayers (whom help involuntarily).

Thanks to those who helped and are still helping!

Bollocks to you people who keep making it harder for us to dig out with your every shitty decision.

OK Boomer

 Something I hit over and over about student loans and the repayment thereof is "just pay them."

With what, sir?

Minimum wages?

Because the degree is valueless.

Not because it is a worthless field, like black women of south Toledo studies, but because degrees from that school are worthless.

Why would someone attend and graduate from a worthless school?

It happened while attending classes.

The small, reputable, business college was purchased by a larger education corporation and then that corp was bought by an even larger one.

Criminal proceedings around unfair and predatory loan practices happen.  Students were encouraged to over-borrow thinking they were being loaned "just enough" to cover the tuition, books and fees.

Because of those purchases, the accreditation was in flux and even if the student was aware that the value of their degree was waning, there was little to no chance of transferring to a different school with credit for classes already taken.

Hello again, sunk cost fallacy.

So, at the end of four years, you have a degree that's got almost the same value as your high school diploma and a pile of debt you will never be able to service.

Not because you're a deadbeat, but because the decisions of others devalued the thing you borrowed money to pay for so much that all you got out of the deal was the debt. 

A debt that cannot, ever, be cancelled via any normal means.

For fuck's sake, we let someone who takes out a mortgage for a house in a known flood zone cancel that debt via bankruptcy when the flood makes their house a plain again, but never student loans.

Why?

Because some rich fuckers took out loans, hid their wealth, and went bankrupt on them then went on to be lawyers and doctors.

There weren't many of them, but it got a lot of publicity.

The, "we must do something, this is something, we MUST do THIS," kind of publicity.

Did this fuck the rich people who started the problem?

Nope.

While it did force them to repay the loans, they could have done that without the job their degree gets.

Did this fuck most everyone else?

Sure did.

Something every single "work harder, smarter" person forgets while condemning lots of folks is that timing and luck are factors in success, and no amount of hard work can compensate for them when they fall the wrong way.

Your personal success is a factor of your hard work, smarts, timing and luck.  It might not apply to someone else.

The situation that you succeeded in might not even exist anymore and they way you succeeded might be impossible, or even illegal, now.

Even if that path is still there, an accident or illness can, forever, derail you.  It doesn't even have to be you who gets hurt or sick.  Having to care for a loved one can derail it too.

Lost Americana

Way back in 2009 was the last time I went to a drive-in movie.

Marv and I saw District 9.

I remember going frequently to drive-ins when I was a child and reasonably often as an adult.

Until the places started to disappear.

The place Marv and I went, the one time, has finally shut down.

It's partially our fault, we didn't go in the past 13 years.  But it appears that we weren't alone in avoiding the place.

But we weren't alone.

One culprit, mentioned by the owners, was that land is getting to be dear and they could make a ton more selling it than they would in decades of keeping the theater open.

Interesting

Someone has decided to convert their C6 Corvette to a Honda based K-24 inline four.

I dig on unusual engine swaps, but I found I got less and less interested in the project the more apparent it became that this was just a race machine and not a street car.

Otherwise, I think it's cool as shit.

It makes me wonder if a more modest power output more similar to the original power rating would be doable as a streetable machine.

A Vette sounding like a typical ricer's fart-pipe amuses me to no end.

I Am Surprised

JT has been fighting his 3D printer to make a Type-R Subsidized Merchant in 1/270 scale.

It's been a learning experience, more than the Energa.

That is not a forced perspective.

You can see the problem with the print here too.  JT calls it "elephant footing" and he's working on a solution.

But what I really noticed is the 400 dTon Type-R's rear section is a lot bigger than The Falcon.

Since the Type-R, if being faithful to the deckplans, comes out closer to 500 dTon in size, and only the aft third is here, that means Han's ride is probably not even 100 dTon.  It's especially apparent when you consider that the wedge shaped thing in front of The Falcon's mandibles is a 10 dTon launch.

We Gonna Ignore This Elephant?

Rents are through the roof in the Tampa area because of lots of people moving here?

We gonna ignore how landlords got shafted for a year and a half for their rent and are finally able to recoup it and how?

Lots of them are, I am certain, looking to make up for the missing rents by increasing them now because they've got costs associated with ownership that didn't stop when their tenants stopped paying.

A Moment Of Silence

The Coverking Neoprene seat covers I put in the car back in 2009 have finally given up the ghost.

The foam backing was turning to powder and the seams were separating.

They did their duty and protected the leather from wear though:

I dunno if I am going to replace them or save a bit for new leather.  There's a fake suede that would be outstanding here and more durable than the factory covering.

I Tend To Agree

 

Though shooting might be too nice for pedos.

Electrothermal

I remember, way back, when I first read about electro-thermal guns for tanks and I immediately figured the technology would be applied to small arms.

I made GURPS stats for them long before GURPS had them for 3e in Ultra-Tech 2 in 1997.  I wonder if I still have the weapons tables in a folder somewhere...  FuzzyGeff printed several copies for my players and me.

Simply, they use a liquid propellant that's excited by electricity to a plasma state to shove the projectile down the barrel.

I also had dual-propellant guns with two stable chemicals that were hypergolic or would only light when an electrothermal impulse was applied.  4e doesn't even have that!

Electrothermal is a modification to the conventional slugthrowers with 1.5 times the damage and range for double the price.  A fair cop!

Car Show Tomorrow!

One of the local breweries does a car show on irregular Sundays.

I am washed and waxed.

Still need to do the glass and interior.

SA-35

Watching reviews of the HP clone from Springfield and I wonder:

Have we forgiven them for hiring people who supported gun control yet?

Moar Climate Change Please!

The excess of CO2 in the atmosphere tracks with increased crop yields per hectare.

We should be making more CO2 if we don't wanna starve.  And stop burning food to make our cars have shitty mileage and fragile fuel systems.

Plants like more CO2, hotter and wetter for the most part.

They give us food and oxygen in return.

Everyone wins!

Of course the people bothered by this news also can't grasp that we're going to need to triple the power production in the US to replace gasoline cars with electric vehicles.  I know they don't grasp this because they're opposed to any technology that will actually supply more power to the grid, especially if it's reliable power.

Right now your EV is powered by coal and natural gas.  It could be nuclear powered.  It will not be wind and solar powered.  Not when coal and natural gas are banned or regulated as tightly as nukes.

We should have non-uranium nuclear plants all over the place already, but the fucking greenies don't understand science, let alone engineering, so they're scared of thorium and neptunium.

The Worst Part Of Owning An Elephant Rifle

It's all the damn questions the cops have when you're at the zoo.

It's worse than the supermarket during turkey season!

Almost The Same Scale

The Falcon is in 1/270.

The Abrams and the Ogre are in 1/285.

It's really close enough.

One Of Willard And My Favorite People Gets Skewered

Not once, not twice, but three times!

Sprey died on us last year.  Good riddance.