Perfection

There is no perfect hot-rod.

This is because what makes such a thing is entirely subjective.

Marv and I have been comparing our "what if we won the lottery" builds and we don't agree on very much at all.

He's thinking first generation Firebird.

I'm thinking early to mid 1960's full size.

We tend to agree about LS engines and 6+ gear slush boxes.

But I wanna car that cruises all day and am willing to accept some performance sacrifices to be comfortable for 12 hours on the road.

Marv wants exceptional skid-pad performance and an impressive 1/4 mile time.

We both want modern climate control and electronic fuel injection.

We're both aiming at something where the body control module doesn't get a veto.

But neither of us is screaming the other is wrong!

His vision is awesome.  I hope he wins the lottery and makes his dream Firebird.

It's a really cool car!

A car that I think we'd both be miserable in if we tried to take it on the Hot Rod Power Tour.

Contrariwise,  my vision is awesome at things like the Power Tour and will not carve the corners or win any drive and drag events.

We both want something that's reliable, though.  Being miserable or losing an event doesn't mean we wanna be on the side of the road fixing it.

Hot Rodding is best when you can not agree about what to build, but be totally excited about someone realizing a vision you don't share. 

Relationship Advice

Make them happy.

That is all.

If they aren't happy, then they will make damn sure you're not happy either.

It doesn't even have to be diamonds!

An order of boneless chicken wings will suffice when you promised to check on seeing if the local brewery's food truck had them.

Pay attention and it pays dividends! 

Worst MRE Of All Time

Being of moderately high mileage, my only experience with MRE's is the OG brown bag ones with the original 12 menus.

Wikipedia says these were from 1981 to 1987 and are MRE I to VII.

To me, the absolute worst thing in those 12 selections was the Beef Stew.  It's a holdover from the MCI rations (erroneously called C-rats) and, apparently, lima beans were more popular with Boomers than us GenX motherfuckers.

Despite my service dates being from 1987 to 1990, I never saw anything from the MRE VIII to XII (1988 to 1992) menu.

I liked several things that others hated, so I was a happy trooper.

I like Vienna sausages, and the "four fingers of death," to me, were four giant Vienna sausages and not hot-dogs.  If you look at it from my perspective, it's good.  If you wanted hot-dogs, it's bad.

The dehydrated meat patties were fine eaten dry as far as I was concerned.  Same for the dehydrated fruits.  Something with a non-mush texture with some flavor?  I'm in!

But looking at the 12 choices, it's clear that I never had a couple.  Beef slices in BBQ sauce and ground beef in spiced sauce I remember seeing, but not eating.

My willingness to eat the dehydrated patties meant trade opportunities.  People would offer desserts to take the pork patty if I'd give them the BBQ slices.

Crumbled up beef patty soaked in the chicken-a-la-king and heated was decent. 

Which reminds me of something I rarely dealt with.

Eating them cold.

Avco-Lycoming was kind enough to develop an MRE heater and Chrysler was kind enough to include it in every M1 Abrams.

When you have a back-deck bar and grill, you never have eat a cold MRE. 

While I Get It

I understand that sending Artemis up and around the moon was something that needed to be done to confirm that the equipment worked...

It's the same mission that Apollo 8 did.

All the "ground breaking" is 58 years old.

We're retracing our old steps, and I'm OK with doing it, but I refuse to act like it's never been done before.

We have done it before.

Do we even have a vehicle for the Apollo 9 and 10 analogs?

Do we have a lander for those mission analogs?

Are we even going to use this same capsule past the next Artemis launch?

There's only one more SLS stack, right?

I am excited we're going back to the moon, but...

There's only one instance of Kitty Hawk.  There's just one Blériot flight that matters.  There's just one Spirit of St Louis flight that crossed the Atlantic.  There's just one Apollo 8...

The firsts matter.

Who made the second powered flight?

Who was the second person to cross the English channel in the air?

Who was the second person to make a trans-Atlantic flight?

Hell, who was the crew of Apollo 8?  Because their absolutely essential mission to prove the gear pales to insignificance against the Apollo 11 mission.

Nobody was watching the Apollo 13 mission until everything went wrong.

I have the newspaper clippings for Apollo 17...  It's not first page news.

I want to participate in the hype, but I worry that if we don't get back to the Moon before Trump leaves office, we're not getting there until SpaceX ignores the FAA and launches his mission that doesn't come back; but establishes a base.

So, goody for the crew of Artemis II and I wish the program all the luck in the world.

But we need to get on with it and stop with dead ends like SLS.

Kinda Want

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of Special Forces.

But I know what The People's Republic of Pineland is...

Linky.

But Marinara Is Simple

I guess if your grand parents never taught you to cook, then you have to resort to cans...

Even resorting to cans, I'm not using any of the above choices.  Cooking tomatoes down to sauce is a pain, so using a can of tomato sauce is acceptable.

But marinara is essentially just tomato sauce with some spices tossed in, for fuck's sake.

Not that I make marinara very often.  I make a variation of Bolognese sauce with Italian sausage; just like great-grandma taught us!

We never used it to make Ragu Bolognese though, it was just spaghetti sauce to us.

GASP!

Coming up for air from getting all of the ammo-tables from the various GURPS High-Tech books into one spot.

I did this with the guns too, once upon a time, and it really helps when making handouts for the player.

It's not difficult, just tedious.

Especially since their pet gun nerd, Hans-Christian Vorstich, defaults to Universal Metric or the common name for a round in the EU today.

The US will call a round something else entirely and he catches it most of the time, but he screws up what a Brit would call it because of his preference for the Universal Metric designations.

That makes checking on the introduction dates tiresome because 1.65" Hotchkiss comes right up and 42x235mmR doesn't.

Then there's Wikipedia that's scoured the articles on individual rounds and lumped them into caliber.  Thus, they no longer tell me when 20x102mm is introduced.  I didn't remember if it predates the Vulcan or not.  It does.  It's also not the same round as 20x110mm USN.  Yes, it matters!

For Fuck's Sake

Let's worry about tattoos as if they haven't been around for centuries!

If tattoos were a significant health risk, we'd have seen significant numbers of people being unhealthy from them over the entirety of human history.

Tattoos predate history.

I have a lot of old friends who've passed on, both with and without ink who died of similar things.

You know, typical old age things.

But, I guess we gotta worry about everything now.

Dissonance

The Real History of the American Indian, with Matt Walsh.

I have not checked anything he says, but I've seen excerpts that agree with stuff I've already found for Sabers and...

State Of The Alternates

Last Year.

Using availability at Midway as a proxy for popularity.

6.5 Grendel.

21 loadings from 11 manufacturers.  20 available, 1 you can back-order.

6.8 SPC

16 loadings from 9 manufacturers.  9 available, 3 you can back-order.

.300 AAC Blackout.

86 loadings from 25 manufacturers.  48 available, 15 you can back-order, 3 coming soon.

22 ARC

5 loadings from 1 manufacturer.  5 available.

6mm ARC

15 loadings from 8 manufacturers.  10 available, 4 you can back-order. 

.30 AR

1 loading from 1 manufacturer.  1 unavailable.

Oh Sweet Innocent AI

Oh, you sweet, innocent, thing.

I don't need you to tell me why the press isn't saying they're sorry.

It's because they are proud of what they've done. 

I Coulda Told Him That Would Happen

Apparently, allegedly, the Trump administration tried to get some small arms to the people of Iran so they could more effectively rebel against the theocracy.

Also, apparently and allegedly, they used Kurds as intermediaries to move the guns.

Apparently and allegedly, these same Kurds kept the guns for themselves.

Um.

Duh.

They've no reason to believe that the people of Iran, once the theocracy is deposed,  will be any different than the Ottomans about letting them have an independent existence.

But I can see them trying to secede once the theocracy is weak enough. 

Slow Your Roll

Harvey found me sloth themed dice!

They're absolutely the cutest!

Mixed Feelings

First off, she's lying, they are not banning classic cars with this bill.  Bad way to start.

What they are changing is the issuance and usage of cars with the special classic car license plate.

Near as I can tell, if you register your hot-rod normal like, you are not constrained by the new rules.

At the moment you pay $13.50 for a rear plate or, optionally, $15.50 for front and rear plates; plus $150 for sales tax and $25 one-time registration.  It's always been the law that you can't use it for "general transportation purposes."  So $178.50 and your car is registered forever in Minnesota.

General transportation purposes is not actually defined.

The proposed bill really defines, and limits, what you can do with your special, lifetime, registered car.

I am not that shocked that they went very restricted.

But you takes the tax break, you takes what restrictions come with it.

This is not going to destroy the hobby and most people who actually qualify for the plate as it was originally intended have the money to register and insure their cars with normal plates and can drive as much as they like, anywhere they like.

Betcha that there's a lot of shitboxes that are 2006 and older that have a "Collector's Vehicle, collector plate" who are doing it to avoid the 10% of original MSRP plus 1.575% of current value.

For reference a '69 Chevelle's MSRP is in the $2,600 ballpark.  Current value is VERY subjective, so let's say $50k because that's what Autotempest says.  So $1,047.50 a year to register your '69 Chevelle in Minnesota.  That's steep.

A 2006 Toyota Corolla ran $14,725 sticker price and is worth $6,500 today.  $1,574.88 a year.

See the incentive to call your shitbox a collector car?

The Rat Rod people have also made it difficult to make a, "is this a collector car?" decision on condition.

Club memberships don't really help either, there's scads of Ricer clubs that will include that Corolla.

Considering that I paid $250 total for three cars in Florida, I can see that the real problem isn't the definition of "Hot Rod" but a rapacious and greedy Democrat controlled government.

You Have A Right To _Say_ It Not *DO* It

I have said before that you have every right to be a hateful racist.  You have no right to act on your hate.

I prefer bigots to be open and honest about it so that I can avoid them better.

Them being open and honest about it also means that when they act on their hate, it becomes a sentence enhancer.

Case in point.

Calling someone a filthy Jew is being very rude and obnoxious; but it's probably protected speech.

Assaulting someone after calling them a filthy Jew is a hate crime.

And, yes, you don't have to actually touch someone to commit assault!

Once you've articulated an actionable threat that appears to be imminent, you're assaulting.

And you're lucky if your chosen victim is armed and declines to shoot you.

It's noteworthy that this happened in Florida and the actual victim is home, safe, with their family and the (alleged) perpetrator is behind bars without bail. 

We're The Ones Who Got Ozymandius Motherfucker

 

https://x.com/Arrogance_0024/status/2040700125882859864

I am shocked that a Frenchman can't understand it.

French gives us the ultimate explanation in one short sentence, "Tous pour un et un pour tous!"

Heinlein explained it in Starship Troopers.

"Are a thousand unreleased prisoners sufficient reason to start or resume a war? Bear in mind that millions of innocent people may die, almost certainly will die, if war is started or resumed."

I didn't hesitate. "Yes, sir! More than enough reason."

"'More than enough.' Very well, is one prisoner unreleased by the enemy, enough reason to start or resume a war?"

I hesitated. I knew the M.I. answer -- but I didn't think that was the one he wanted. He said sharply, "Come, come, Mister! We have an upper limit of one thousand; I invited you to consider a lower limit of one. But you can't pay a promissory note which reads 'somewhere between one and one thousand pounds' -- and starting a war is much more serious than paying a trifle of money. Wouldn't it be criminal to endanger a country -- two countries, in fact -- to save one man? Especially as he may not deserve it? Or may die in the meantime? Thousands of people get killed every day in accidents ... so why hesitate over one man? Answer! Answer yes, or answer no -- you're holding up the class."

He got my goat. I gave him the cap trooper's answer. "Yes, sir!"

"'Yes' what?"

"It doesn't matter if it's a thousand -- or just one, sir. You fight."

"Aha! The number of prisoners is irrelevant. Good. Now prove your answer."

I was stuck. I knew it was the right answer. But I didn't know why. He kept hounding me. "Speak up, Mr. Rico. This is an exact science. You have made a mathematical statement; you must give proof. Someone may claim that you have asserted, by analogy, that one potato is worth the same price, no more, no less, as a thousand potatoes. No?"

"No, sir!"

"Why not? Prove it."

"Men are not potatoes." 

I still say our policy about ANY American, ANYWHERE, is that it should be safer to eat white arsenic than to harm our citizens. 

Does This Mean Veterans Too?

My service connected disability gets me a gate pass to go to the commissary on post.

Does Hegseth's lifting of the gun free zone apply to everyone allowed on post or just active duty?

I haven't seen it clearly stated one way or the other (or I'm missing where it was). 

Even if I am still barred from carry on post, it's a great step forward. 

Mostly Elbow Grease

Due to our drought conditions, we're restricted from washing the cars except on one designated day of the week based on the last number of our address.

That means Friday here.

All three cars needed a wash, Moxie the worst.

Harvey and I knocked it out and waxed today.

Like gun cleaning products, car care products have improved dramatically since I first got into this.

Harvey was able to wax both Alice and Moxie in direct sunlight because Garage One GT makes a spray-on/wipe-off wax you can use that way.

It looks spectacular! 

Anyone Wanna Give Me $10k?

David Freiburger is selling a car for a friend:

Bone stock!

Slant-6, 3-speed push-button automatic.

No heat, no AC, AM radio.

She's a keeper!

Photobombed

 

Marv tried to take a nice picture of this bald eagle, but NASA decided to shoot off some fireworks in the background.

He's secured legal representation.

Pretty Decent

Got cheap beer from one brewery and free beer from another.

Didn't have to use my AK.

Gotta admit: it's a good Friday.

I Noticed Something They Have In Common

Several youtubers and podcasters who cover entertainment have been mentioning that Hollywood is increasingly concerned that all the jobs are disappearing and that LA will start looking like Detroit soon.

Let's just look at the similarities!

Democrat run mayor's office.

Pivotal industry in an environment that's increasingly hostile to it.

Pivotal industry dominated by many unions, driving production to places where such domination is much reduced or eliminated.

Welcome to your own goal territory, Hollywood!

The automakers never really solved for the union problem, and it's following them even to right-to-work states.

Democrat run mayor's offices are much harder nuts to crack because by the time things are REALLY wrong, all the people who'd vote against them (and their businesses) are long relocated.

Worse for them is the increasing push-back from places that emigrants from self-blighted places are getting from their new homes.

"Don't California My Texas," and, "Don't New York My Florida," are popular slogans.

I think it's fair to say the model of Democrats and Unions is that of locusts.

Itchy Itchy

I just did a 24 hour heart monitor.

The tape holding the little sensor pads on was dreadfully itchy.

I sure hope they got a good reading, because I don't wanna do a repeat.

PS: It's precautionary, not because they think there's something amiss.

What Else Would You Call It?

Viagra is a recreational pharmaceutical.

Change my mind.

One Point Nine

The M157 optic has been, unofficially, described as "just shy of two pounds."

That's a great deal lighter than 2.2 kg!

That is well within the 1.16 to 2.26 lb. I'd found previously.

So I'm calling it 1.9 lb. for GURPS purposes.

M7 "Rifle": 9.8 lb. loaded with a 20 round magazine.  9.9 lb. loaded with a 25 round magazine.
Suppressor: 1.5 lb.
M157 Optic: 1.9 lb.

13.2 lb. or 13.3 lb. all up!

XM8 Carbine: 8.9 lb. loaded with a 25 round magazine.
Suppressor: 1.3 lb.
M157 Optic: 1.9 lb.

12.1 lb. all up.

Since it looks like troop feedback is leading to using the Magpul PMAG-25 LR/SR, I've given the higher cap mag weight for the M7 too.

This means the basic load of spare ammo is 9 lb. and 22.3 lb. for the M7 and 21.1 lb. for the XM8.

Still 6.4 lb. heavier than a suppressed M4A1+ with suppressor and 35 rounds short with the M7.  5.9 lb. heavier with the XM8.

That's not horrid.

Now they need to fix the reliability issues with the optic.

And accuracy issues with the M7.

And the eye-watering price of the 6.8x51mm ammo.

Increase While Decreasing

Smith and Wesson is, apparently, giving away some 3rd Gen pistols.

If you click this cunningly crafted link, and enter yourself into the sweepstakes, I get 15 additional entries and, thus, increase my chance of winning slightly. 

Giving me more entries than you reduces your chance of winning, but you're here to help, right? 

PS: It could be an April Fools prank, but they already have my contact information from doing a warranty return, so... 

Cautious Optimism

Moxie is back!

She's perky compared to how she drove before.

The problem appears to have been the VVT solenoids.

OEM solenoids die in a way that shorts them to ground and that sets off the code associated with them.

Aftermarket solenoids mostly die the same way, but occasionally will fail mechanically so the computer will think they are working and notice it's getting out of range information from other sensors.

They don't fail all the way, so you get a long time of spurious and intermittent fails.

That's our story and we're sticking to it!

The shop put 20 miles into a test drive.  I just did 10 running around.

Related:  All three cars have new wiper blades.  My house is also out of equity from buying them...

Left Hand Is Unaware Of What The Right Hand Is Doing

Peddle sent me a text telling me that the driver was on the way to pick up Noxious.

"Odd," I thought, "We dropped her off at the towing company yesterday."

Moments later, they texted me that our driver, Steve, was at the location of our car.

Ah!  Steve just clocked in, because Noxious is at his workplace.

Moments later, they texted me that our car had been picked up by Steve.

We're thinking these transmissions are entirely automated in nature and are required to be sent regardless of how silly circumstances have made them. 

Silly Purchase

There's a company, 2nd Amendment Bourbon, that packages their whisky in faux gun cases.

We succumbed to the marketing gimmick.

We've seen three different colored cases, hunter orange, OD green and S&W blue.  We'd just come back from shooting our S&W's so...

 The little metal shot glass is patterned like a revolver cylinder!

 The stopper is embossed with the S&W logo, should you wish to display the bottle outside the case.

But, how is it?

Oh my!  It's good!  I think I have a new favorite bourbon.

Connector Difference

 

Zev connector on top, standard Glock connector on the bottom.

The Zev has just a bit more angle to make the trigger bar drop more easily.

Speaking Of Air Forces

One of the constant concerns that our allies have had about the F-35 was the online maintenance portion of the plane.

They point out that it's a vulnerability should someone hack in and be malicious.

Lockmart doesn't even need to hack in to disable who knows how much on the thing should we decide that we're upset with them...

Lemme Make Sure I Got This

Europe, including many NATO nations, is denying use of their airspace and the bases we've been using in their territory.

While this is their right, I don't think they've thought this through.

I mentioned before that if no oil is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, we're not really affected if we decline to sell our petroleum on the world market.

We're even less affected if we pull our Navy back to our side of the pond and prevent oil from leaving the Americas for parts ungrateful.

Free copies of "The Little Red Hen" available to European leaders on request.

Something they really haven't considered is: "What if WE close the strait?"

What are they gonna do about that?

Send their navies?  Send their air forces?

They sure aren't sending their armies, they need our airlift to do that.

Moxie Repairs

While we feared the fuel pump or the fuel pressure control module, it looks like it might be chewed wiring from a rodent's nest and bad cam timing solenoids.

The mechanic is reasonably confident this will take care of it.

Eyes crossed.

The sad thing is I'd replaced the solenoids six years and 13k miles ago.  Mutter mutter mutter.

At least this time we'll have a warranty!

Big Triggering

Marv did much the same experiment with his Ex-LEO Glock 21 Gen 3 Slim-Frame.

Stock it ran 7 lb. 8 oz. dirty and gritty.  7 lb. 14 oz. all cleaned up and polished.

Since the safety trigger stands proud of the real trigger, he found it irksome at this weight.

So he ordered the Zev connector and NY1 trigger spring before I did.  His talking about it is why I wanted to experiment here.

With the NY1 spring and Zev connector he gets a FIRM 8 lb. 2 oz. pull, exacerbating the trigger safety problem.

Going back to the stock spring drops the pull to 5 lb. 14 oz.  This is where he's decided to land.

Like I mentioned before, the best trigger pull is personal and it's cool we can personalize our guns.

My Glock 21 Gen 2 is a crisp 5.5 lb. with the standard connector and standard spring.

Replacing the connector with the Zev using the standard spring gets a scary light 4.7 lb.

Using the standard connector with the NY1 spring gets a gritty 9.6 lb.

Replacing the connector with the Zev and using the NY1 spring gets a gritty 8.1 lb. pull.

Triggering

I ordered an NY1 trigger spring and a Zev Technologies pro-connector.

My Glock 17 Gen 2 is a crisp 6.5 lb. with the standard connector and standard spring.

Replacing the connector with the Zev using the standard spring gets a crisp 5.5 lb.

Using the standard connector with the NY1 spring gets an erratic 8 to 11 lb. pull averaging at 9 lb.

Replacing the connector with the Zev and using the NY1 spring gets an interesting 8 lb. pull.  It builds to that break and is very consistent.

What I don't care for with the NY1 trigger is it binding up on disassembly and needing the trigger pulled again to free it.  It's like the worst of Glock and M&P on take-apart.

I also don't care for the little bit of trigger rebound after the sear breaks.

I was happy with the stock trigger, so I've reinstalled it and I'm marking this as an experiment.

I might see if I get completely different results from my Glock 21.

Or not...

Mission Complete

Peddle, the national car buyer, gave me the number of the tow place.

The reason they didn't come last night was their driver quit on them.

That sucks.

They were, however, willing to let me drive Noxious to them.  So I did.

They cut a check, I signed over the title, and we're done!

But there was a surprise in our visit...

The back office of the auto-shop is a gun shop!

I noticed by the Luger hanging on the back wall and the owner and I started talking about Lugers.

He's got a 1914 artillery model with all the magazines, holster and stock...  Paging Mr Fleetwood on the "I can't fucking afford that discourtesy phone!"

The Fire Hose

Traveller is a gigantic universe using just the published materials, let alone the shared stuff that GM's did on their own.

Traveller also has more than one published timeline, depending on the publisher.

OG GDW goes into Megatraveller and a new long night.

GURPS: Traveller and Mongoose reject the event that leads to that dark night.

"Long night?  NEW long night?  What are you on about, Thag?"

If you know Traveller history then you know that The Long Night is the collapse of the 2nd Imperium before the rise of the 3rd Imperium.  It's 1,500 years long.

In the generic Traveller campaign, it's 1,100 years ago.

I know all this because I've been playing since before this was established.

A problem for a new player is their character is FROM the Imperium.  They grew up there, they took history classes in school, they were raised with the cultural norms of the Empire.

How do they learn this?

Well, technically, they can learn the same way I did.  Open the books and read up on it!

Just the GURPS books are a stack more than a foot tall.

I read it in little bites from 1980 or so to present.

It's a big ask to expect the player to read all that.

So, how does one get a person from TL8 USA to make a character from TL11 3rd Imperium?

I figured out a cheat.

Have them make a character from a TL8 world that joined the Imperial military.

The Imperium pretty much HAS to have a training program to bootstrap people from low-tech backwaters to productive members of the military; otherwise only the high-population, industrial and technologically developed worlds will be carrying the entire load of defending the place.

The military isn't so much interested in their recruits learning Imperial culture, as they are to get them effective at their MOS.

So our prospective character has Cultural Familiarity in their home TL8 culture and their branch of service and they get to learn Imperial culture on the fly as the game proceeds!

An entire party of these waifs works because there are a lot of undeveloped worlds.

I suddenly see how the Traveller's Aid Society came into being!

Still Here

Apparently, the national company that's buying Noxious hires a handy, local, towing company to come seal the deal.

Also, apparently, they don't bother to check to see if that local towing company will be open during the promised pickup time.

So I sat here waiting between 3 and 8 pm for them when they closed at 5.

I'm betting they didn't even know they were supposed to come get the car.

I guess we'll see tomorrow.

Worth Your Time

 

Angus McThag And The Mystery Of The Missing Title

The reason we couldn't find the title for Noxious was we never had it.

We bought Noxious from a local car dealer and they filed the purchase as "release of lien" instead of "paid in full" and the system expects the lein holder to then request a title for the purchaser.

Because the car was paid for in full, the fine folks at the dealer didn't realize they'd checked the wrong box and our title has been electronically held for the past 8 years.

So, instead of $76 or so for a replacement title, I paid just under $13 for a first title.  Plus I took it home the same day.

Even more fun!

If you use one of the third party title services you pay between $150 and $180 depending how you want it shipped and wait one to three weeks for it.  Regardless of whether it's an initial title or a replacement.

Glad I spent the 45 minutes at the motor vehicle office today.