Working On The Car All Day*

I have begun to dismantle the interior of The Beast to swap the HVAC box and, hopefully, restore air conditioning!

This is the result of four hours of work:

I'm about half done with the take-apart portion of the event.  Taking it slow, taking it easy.

Odd, not being in a rush about it is making it less stressful.

There is a funny moment, though.

I needed to remove the shift knob.

The shift lever needs to be in L to get at the screw that holds it on.

No problem, thinks I!

I'd disconnected the battery, but there's a way to get it out of park without the batt.

There isn't a way to get it back into park if you've removed the trigger on the front of the knob to access the screw that you find you can't find.  (Once the knob is removed you can press the center of the shifter shaft down and get it into park.)

This would not be a problem if the emergency brake actually held the car OR if I'd remembered to put chocks down.

So I am sitting here, in gear, holding the brake to keep the car from rolling into the street...

So I scream for Harvey.

She can't hear me because The Boy is "singing" in the back and she's got her work headphones on.

Worse, she thinks what she can hear is The Boy's "singing."

Eventually I get her and two of the neighbors to come help and Harvey gets the wheels chocked.

As a matter of fact, that IS my petard, why do you ask?

*Sung to the tune of "Waiting on the Bus All Day" by ZZ Top. 

Wildly Optimistic

Twilight: 2000 was written in a time where we thought the Soviet Union was at least as strong and capable as we were.

It was first published in 1984.

In 1984 we didn't know what we know now.

T2K has since become an alternate history and the "what if" being presented is, "What if the USSR was really as good as the US Army Green Book said it was?"

Their equipment has parity with ours.

Their tactics are as effective as ours.

Their logistics system is as efficient as ours. 

Their economy is, at least, as good as ours.

They have numbers and a shorter supply line.

It's actually kind of amazing that NATO fights them to a draw by July 2000.

Among the things we have to accept as givens in this alternate history is the Soviet ICBMs being both reliable and accurate enough to hit the 78 targets shown on the map in the previous post.

The USA Hit List from Challenge issue 27 lists the total megatonnage dropped on a spot, my little experiment with Nukemap shows a single hit with that value centered on the thing most likely being aimed at.

Cape Kennedy, for example, in Urban Guerilla:

[R]eceived the attentions of a 10 warhead MIRV'd (one-megaton total) device. Unlike the other strikes, this was a series of pin-point attacks upon the launch sites themselves. The resulting blasts vaporized nine of the 11 launchpads and the vehicle assembly building.

That's to get enough spread to get all of the launch sites, which a single 1 mt ground burst wouldn't.

 I centered the 1mt ground burst on the vehicle assembly building.  You'll note that most of Cape Canaveral AFB is well clear of the blast effects.

As far as accuracy goes, the 500 kt missile aimed at Mayport:

Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville suffered a near miss that landed in the sea just offshore. The resulting nuclear-induced tidal wave and wide-spread radioactive seawater contamination were dreadful and deadly. Millions died, both in the wave surge and in the subsequent legacy of nuclear poisoning, disease, starvation, and chaos that followed.

A problem with the Challenge article is it lacks details given in the modules.

The hit list is also hampered with a lack of information about which warheads the Soviets were using.  The KSC strike matches a sub-launched R-39 pretty well.

Of note, the Soviet Union had thousands of warheads and just over 100 are fired at the US and Canada.  Likewise, the US response was very restrained.

There were more nuclear strikes in Germany and Poland than in all of the US and Canada.  Seems to me that these nations might be a bit bitter about that once the war fizzles out and notes can be compared.

We know from the game 2300: AD, set in the same setting 300 years later, that the world does recover, for the most part, by 2020. 

Kaboom!

There's a web page called Nukemap.

You move ground zero where you want it, select a warhead or yield and see the rings of destruction!

So I took the USA hit list from Challenge Magazine issue 27 and did all the targets.

Basically it's all the refineries and select military targets.

Here's MacDill and it's 1mt airburst hit:

It's bad to be in the orange.

The small orange circle is the fireball radius (0.66mi).
The orange-gray circle is the 5psi line for moderate blast damage (4.37mi).
The larger orange circle is the thermal radiation radius for 3rd degree burns (7.57mi).
The big gray circle is the 1psi line for light blast damage (12.3mi).

I am well clear of it!

Security Classifications Are Strange

 

I can, practically, get scalable drawings of the entire W54 SADM nuke.

I can't get the weight of the explosive filler in a 40mm thermobaric round.

BLINK BLINK 

Oops

I just noticed something.

I'd made a "what if" version of myself from Twilight: 2000 on the assumption that I was in Florida.

A fair assumption since I came down here in late September 1997.

What I'd forgotten was I'd driven back to Iowa to get my stuff and was at my mom's in Ames for Thanksgiving that year.

I'd have been in Ames for the general nuclear exchange.

It's my party and I can change it if I want to...  In the T2K universe I got my stuff earlier and was here for Thanksgiving.

I like the Dunedin militia version of the character better.

What it raises is the question of where was FuzzyGeff when the bombs fell.  If we time it right, he's down here helping me move for Thanksgiving.  It hardly matters, I suppose.  Without his medication, asthma prolly gets him before anything else. 

"Don't You Wish We Had Some Grenades?" J. Cobb

I have broken tradition.

I have equipped my T2K NPCs with a selection of hand grenades.

Grenades are simply something that we always overlooked when running games set where you could have some.

Often the game rules made them a pain to employ.

They're a little awkward in GURPS because the fuse time is multiple turns in most cases.

I don't recall if any of the players took any, but since they skimped on body armor, I suspect they don't have any encumbrance left. 

Different Words Is A Clue

I don't think many politicians understand what "affordable" means.

It means that I have enough money to afford it.

It can mean that it costs less or that I have more money.

Too often, having more money has come with the cost climbing to meet the raise, or surpassing it.

Affordable doesn't mean that I want someone else to pay for it.

Affordable doesn't mean that I don't want the person selling it to not make a profit.

But I keep seeing a strong correlation between how tightly something is regulated and how expensive it is, along with a strong correlation between whether most people pay for it out of pocket or if an insurance company typically pays.  There is also a strong relationship between government supplying the money for a good and the prices spiraling out of control.

Combine any or all of these things and it's logarithmic and/or exponentially more expensive.

Sprinkle in some union influence for the maximum price increases for minimum increase in value.

Just as macroeconomics can be summed up as, "Supply and demand, that's it!":  Eliminating the middle man is one of the surest ways to make the price of something go down. 

What Did He Mean Slow?

Reader Terrapod generously sent me a used laptop a while ago.

Today I finally got around to firing it up and finishing the installation that JT did for me when we put a 2tb drive into it.

I am posting from it now on Ubuntu 26.04.1!  I cannot post pics from a URL without manually entering the HTML on this machine either.

Thank you Terrapod!

It's got a cracked corner from when the people he bought it from dropped it, he warned me about this cosmetic damage.  I was VERY relieved to find that they had not epoxied in the screw that should be right about where the repair is. 

It appears to be running like it should.

JT named it Freebie when he installed the drive and OS.

I'm calling it TANSTAAFL. 

Let's Game It

There's a Hadji hiding behind a low, 30" thick, mud/brick wall.

That's DR 80* and proof against 5.56 from an M4.

So let's fire an M433 HEDP at him!  That's 5d(10) cr ex linked 5d[2d] cr ex.

The basic roll gives 17.5 on average against an adjusted DR 8, so 9 penetrates.  The linked explosion does 30 points for being in contact and fails to penetrate.

If we guessed correctly about where he was hiding behind the wall, that's a decent hit.  But it's -4 to hit him, so we probably won't.

But if we're using an XM1019 round, it does 8d(0.5) pi+ linked 4d[1d+2] cr ex.

It, emphatically, does not punch the wall, but since we can tell it to go boom behind the wall if we fire over it...  Let's set the range for the hex behind the wall and fire a yard above it.

Now the explosion that averages a roll of 14, which we divide by 3 because it went off a yard from our Hadji for 4 points of concussion.  The chance to hit for the fragments is 15 without a penalty for range and the average "to hit" roll of 10 gets us two fragment hits of 1d+2 cut each.  That's an average of 5 each which becomes 7 after penetrating his unarmored torso for a total of 14 from fragments and 18 overall.

So, the behind defilade air burst is a better attack than blasting through the wall!

Voting Not Voting

Got a text from a pollster asking whom I was voting for in Florida's 16th Congressional District.

Um...

Nobody.

Not because I am not voting, but because I don't live in the 16th. 

Good Guy With A Gun

A good guy with a gun got to the shooter in Bend, Oregon three minutes before the cops got there.

That's the part that needs to sink in.

It's been said before, "When seconds count, the cops are minutes away."

It was true when coined and remains true today.

Much emphasis is being put on the good Samaritan having a concealed carry license.

Like doing this good deed without one would make it wrong.

Of note:  Both the shooter and the good Samaritan were in violation of Oregon's gun-free school law.  The Bend-La Pine district has opted in to banning guns from school property.

I am glad our hero decided to break the law to save lives rather than give an interview saying, "I could have run in and stopped him, but it was illegal to have my gun in there and, as we all know, breaking the law is wrong." 

Lies!

Amazon Prime Video claims that they carry hockey games.

Not that I've been able to watch.

Tonight's game said it was a regional thing.

We get the home team's games over old fashioned broadcast, but it'd be nice to see what the rest of the league is up to.

But there's some secret to watching the other teams on Amazon that they are not helping me with figuring out.

I suspect it's the good old fashioned lock if you are outside the team's local region AND you are locked if you are inside the region and there's a non-Amazon method of watching the game. 

Roll Eyes

I do not understand GM's design philosophy that requires removing the exhaust to get the starter out.

I first encountered this with The Precious.

Marv is now fighting it with his '11 PPV.

While I broke a stud removing my cat-converters, at least my fasteners were removable.

The bolts on Marv's are welded to the flange!

I guess that helps with people trying to steal the cats, but it makes it a lot more irritating to get them out of the way.

But it shouldn't be necessary at all! 

I Love The Concept

Way back in the OICW days, the idea of a grenade that air-burst just past the barrier the bad guys were hiding behind had an instant appeal.

The problem with it is the interface.

The operator lases for range, adds or subtracts from that distance for the burst distance and then the computer in the sight tells the round when to go boom after firing.

That transmission was a problem for a long while, but it appears that the XM25 shows that it can be reliable.  The XM25 isn't, quite, ready for prime time and even with hand made rounds it had some issues.

But I see that we're pressing forward with the concept with Barrett taking over the design of the weapon.

TL9 stuff at TL8!  Or TL9 depending on which edition you're using. 

Sad Day

Last Saturday was The Precious' birthday.

She would have been 19 if I had not slammed her into that tree.

My only new car to date. 

Ruger Is Discontinuing A Bunch Of Models

The American Rifleman reports that Ruger is discontinuing the following:

Revolvers: LCR, SP101, GP100, Redhawk, Super Redhawk, Blackhawk, Super Blackhawk, Single-Series, Vaquero and Bearcat.

Semi-Auto Pistols: SR1911, PC Charger, LC Charger

Rifles: LC Carbine, PC Carbine, No. 1, 77-series, Hawkeye and Ruger Precision.

25x40 and 25x59mm

The 25x59mm XM1019 High-Explosive Air Burst round fired from a Barrett XM109 does 8d(0.5) pi+ linked 4d[1d+2] cr ex out to 950/3,400.  The XM307 will have the same range stats.

The XM1049 Armor Piercing (HEDP-AB in GURPS terms) does 4d(10) cr ex linked 4d+2[1d+1] cr ex out to 890/3,200.

The 25x40mm and the XM25 were supposed to use the same warheads as the longer cased rounds for the XM307, but both were cancelled.

The HEAB round does 4d(0.5) cr linked 4d[1d+2] cr ex out to 570/2,100.  The HEDP-AB does does 4d(10) cr ex linked 4d+2[1d+1] cr ex out to 530/1,900.

The XM25 is Acc 3; ST 12, Bulk -5, Rcl 4.

The XM109 is Acc 3; ST 14B; Bulk -7; Rcl 4.

The XM307 is Acc 3; ST 19M; Bulk -7; Rcl 4.

All three are equipped with Computer Sights (HT p. 157) without any night-vision capability.

Wildly Optimistic

Did the GURPS gun stats the 25x40mm and 25x59mm grenades.

That also meant generating stats for the XM25, XM109 and XM307.

The XM307, being the mounted gun meant digging into the stats more deeply because it can be broken down for "easy" carriage.

Repeated, over and over, is, "50 lb. for gun, mount and fire control."  Approximately 80 lb. with ammo.

So I started looking around for quotes on the individual parts and...

They kept saying the mount was 16 lb.

Photos clearly show the M205 tripod, which is 34 lb.

Then I remembered that that M205 is 16 lb. lighter than the M3 with T/E mechanism and realized someone had transposed weight savings for weight and the media and internet repeated that.

So I have, 30 for the gun, 6.5 for the fire-control/sight (w/o thermal), 34 for the mount and 11.8 lb for 31 rounds of ammo.

For a total of 82.3 lb!

Close enough!

All this for a discontinued weapon that might appear in a "what if" game.

I Had A Point

I think I might have misspoke in the comments about the utility of the Military Rank advantage in a Poland T2K campaign.

If a player had taken rank, they'd have NPCs associated with that rank under them because of the Duty disad everyone took with their MOS template. 

But it appears to be latent in late June 2000 in Poland because the party is placed outside the command structure by the collapse of 5th ID at Kalisz.

Their rank and duty means they can be collected by another refugee of that battle and be commanded by them if they outrank the party.  Wanna bet they resent it if I do place them under such command?

This same rank could be used to collect other NPC's and command THEM... if anyone had bothered to take it. 

Now that I've written the introduction to the point I was going to make...

What was the point I was going to make again?

I've lost it.

I will point out that point based systems will always, seemingly, charge you for things you're not using at the same rate as if you were using them.

Wasted points until the circumstances they can be used in comes up.

As a GM who thinks he's dealing with enough just translating the setting from a 41 year old game to a 22 year old game...  I don't think I want to deal with charging for an advantage situationally.

Sure, military rank is not as useful in Poland as the players flee Kalisz, but it will have its value restored when they respond to Operation Omega. 

Concussive

File under "obvious when you think about it".

The suppressor on the M7 and XM8 is necessary because the insane chamber pressures and short barrels mean the muzzle blast is otherwise a health hazard.

Even with hearing protection, I am told. 

That's got me wondering just how high the pressure IS at a bare muzzle.

It also has me wondering just how quiet the weapon is, because the M7/XM8 advocates are quick to point out that an M4 is longer and heavier with a suppressor too.

But I know how much quieter an M4 is with the issue suppressor, it's nearly naked ear safe.  That's worth the extra length and mass.

If a suppressor is needed to bring it back to M16 bare muzzle sound pressures...  Couldn't we get the same thing from 5" more barrel and lower chamber pressures?

I ask because 6.5x51mm is emulating .270 Winchester in bullet weight and velocity; the big difference is pressure and barrel length.

.270 is using 24" of barrel, but far lower pressures.

It makes me wonder if my Savage is quieter than an XM8. 

It Hasn't Come Up Yet

I need to dig into my materials and figure out how MilGov and CivGov are handling gun control.

That also means deciding if The Brady Act and The Assault Weapons Ban were passed in the political climate of Twilight: 2000.

Would Bill Clinton have been elected if The Cold War had continued?

Would G. H. W. Bush have been re-elected?

Who would be elected in '96?

If Bush was re-elected, he's in lame-duck mode when he orders US troops across the inter-German border just days after election day 1996!

If it's a re-elected Clinton...  Oh Lordy.

Someone else entirely?  Ross Perot?  Oh, fucking, Lordy. 

Alternate histories are messy.

Though having Perot win in '92 has some appeal just for the amusement value and having someone else be the president-elect in November '96 when he sends in the troops really helps explain the CivGov/MilGov divide present in the game. 

Not A Fan

I've tried a couple of different fore-grips now.

The Magpul AFG and a vertical fore-grip on my M16A4 clone.

 I can't say I care for them all that much.

The AFG is in a box in the garage someplace.

The vertical grip is on Valentine, but that's because it's a clone not because I prefer it.

I think if I'd my druthers for setting her up for use I might just go T2K on her and put the A2 handguards back on.  It'd be lighter, but I'd lose my light.  I paid a lot for that light and I intend to use it!

I'm already farbing it up with the Primary Arms optic instead of the ACOG...

Still, the fore-grips don't seem to help me with shooting or maneuvering at all, and I tend to really try to cant the rifle off kilter with the vertical grip.  Never mind that I can't seem to find a position that lets me access the light's controls easily.

I paid a lot to upgrade that light, I intend to use it!  Did I mention that?  Wait, that's another farb!

There goes my GWOT reinactor street cred!

My T2K cred is doing OK. 

Rat Update

The blocks of poison are being eaten and the ones by the garbage can keep disappearing.

Not sure how long the poison takes to kill a rat, or how many are out there in the garage.

Prolly more than I'd like.

It's tempting to send everyone out someplace else and fire up the car in the garage for a few hours. 

Permanent Daylight Savings Time

Making daylight savings time permanent is not a great idea.

It was tried in 1974 and it didn't work out well come winter.

Children ended up dying trying to get to school in the dark.

People have been mentioning their kids are heading to school at 0600 already and that it's dark even in standard time. 

But why are children up so damned early?

In a word: busses.

The schools have staggered start times because there aren't enough busses to transport all of the students at the same time.

Thanks to decisions stemming from the Civil Rights Act, many students are not attending the school that's nearest their home.  Bussing is mandatory.

So you end up with three start times for the students and one group has to be first to go and you have to make sure the last group dismissed is home by supper.

That means you can only start classes earlier to create the stagger.

Which means one, bleary-eyed, group is going to school in the dark regardless of it's standard or daylight savings time.

The solution isn't moving the clock around.  It's to stop moving the kids around so much.

Return to the model where it's "The School" and not "the elementary school, the middle school and the high school."

If they're all going the same place, you can shove them onto one bus at the same time.

Returning to a model where you go to the school that's closest to your house also means fewer busses are needed.

Yes, I am aware of why we moved away from this model, but I think much of this is now obsolete. 

Can't Mary Sue

I redid several of my favorite T2K characters in GURPS and I can't introduce them as my Mary Sues because they all have rank.

The ranking PC in the party, so far, is a Specialist!

The "what if I'd never broken my legs and stayed in" literally Me is a sergeant 1st class.  "I'd" have been in the service for 13 years at that point.

My other favorite Mary Sue is 2nd Lieutenant Thomas MacTavish.  The party can't afford no NPC officers.  When I was running MacTavish, two of the players outranked him.

OG T2K made it easier than GURPS to be an officer because it didn't take from other things to be one.  In fact, it was a bonus in the OG rules. 

Hmmmmmm Beeeeeeeef

Reading this review of the World Without Cows documentary, I am reminded of something I witnessed.

The Iowa Cattlemen's Association dinner in Des Moines was being protested by PETA or some similar organization.

An attendee and his wife were walking past the protesters on their way inside when one of the protesters threw some kind of bright red liquid all over her fur coat.

The police were swift to get between the man and the protesters and he fumed for a moment, made sure no real harm was done to his wife and proceeded inside.

This is where I spotted something the cops missed.

The reason I was there was waiting in line to get into the gun show that was at the upper floor of the same venue as the dinner.

Mr Cattleman did not continue to the downstairs entrance, he went up the escalator to the gun show.

I leaned over the rope at the PETA folks and mentioned, "he's prolly buying something to shoot y'all."

They laughed, but the police overheard me and two of them detached to head upstairs.

THAT made the PETA folks stop laughing.

The cops taking it seriously, to them, meant what I said could be true.

Soon after the PETA people were moved to the other side of the street from the venue. 

Compiled

This is an interesting article that compiles a lot of what I'd been reading about 400 years of North American history and inter-civilizational conflict.

Worth your time, especially if it inspires you to read more about it! 

Some what's in it is why I've hit a writer's block about the Sioux, the 77th Cavalry expedition and the Goo-Goo. 

I Have A Suggestion

We should execute Hasan with Daisy Red-Riders.

I know that some folk say that a BB gun can't kill a condemned prisoner.

Impatient folk. 

Just Normal Guns Now

ATF says for short barrel rifles, short barrel shotguns, suppressors and any other weapons, at gun shops you fill out a 4473 and we can roll our own at will as long as our state laws are cool with that.

The further specify they aren't gonna bother trying to sort out who is actually a plaintiff here.  Past present and future members of two different gun orgs would be a nightmare to sort through.

I, for one, am not sick of winning yet. 

Dead Che Day!

 

59 years ago, today, the much maligned M1 carbine proved it had what it takes to make good commies!

It is a moment that should be celebrated by everyone everywhere because he was a murderous scumbag who righteously deserved to be shot for even a small portion of what he'd done.

It's a pity they couldn't execute him more than once, to be honest! 

Live Streamed Execution

Hegseth has said they are going to live stream the execution.

I've long thought that executions should be public, so no problem with that.

What I worry about is if they're going to require a login to watch or just put it there.

The real shame is they will likely bury him in secrecy so his grave don't get violated. 

Mañana

Don't forget to have a rum and Coke tomorrow in honor of Dead Che Day!

 

SUDO APT INSTALL

I, alone, and with just one spur, have managed to install the fonts that go missing every time I upgrade the version of Ubuntu!

I hit the search engine and got an answer and, for a change, I've learned enough from the 20.04 days to be able to understand what I was doing!

Go me! 

For the most part it doesn't matter, but there's some spacing issues in my T2K conversion where the substitute for Arial doesn't line up quite right and it throws off the entire document. 

Did Monsieur Enjoy His Last Meal?

One of the blocks of rat poison we left out is about 1/4 eaten!

I have no idea how much of a block it needs to consume to meet Rat Jeebus, but this is a good sign we got the right poison! 

Picture Test

The insert a picture via URL works on Crispy with Firefox.  It does not work on Firefox with Derpy, but does work with Chromium.

Probably a stuck cookie somewhere.

I'd kinda hoped that the OS upgrade would clear it, but... 

Manually entering the html code still works on all my computers, but it's a little tedious. 

Garands?

I am sure it was click-bait, but saw a headline that said that they might be using Garands in the firing squad for Nidal Hasan.

What I wanna know is if the Army is a member of a recognized CMP-affiliated club and can prove participation in a marksmanship-related activity or otherwise show familiarity with the safe handling of firearms and range procedures.

I'm reasonably sure they meet the age and citizenship requirements. 

If It Ain't Broke

Looking up stuff to figure out 40mm smoke grenades led me to look at smoke hand grenades.

The US adopted the AN/M8 back in 1940.

Basically the same as the AN/M7 tear gas grenade from 1935 but burning HC (hexachloroethane) smoke instead of CN (chloroacetophenone).  M7A2 and M7A3 burn CS (2-chlorobenzalmalonnitrile).

The M8 was the standard white smoke grenade until replaced by the M83 in 1994, which burns for less time, but emits thicker smoke.

You need to read the markings to tell the M8 from the M83.  The M7 is a different color, but externally the same.

The M18 (1942) is the colored smoke version of the M8 and is externally identical, except for the markings and the color shade being painted on the top.  We still issue the AN/M18!

We changed our fragmentation grenade five times (or three times depending on how you count it) while we kept the same smoke grenades.  Mk II "Pineapple" to M26 to M61 to M33 to M67; though an argument can be made that the differences between the M26 and M61 and M33 and M57 are so small as to not really be a "change." 

That tells me we got the smoke grenade so right we couldn't really improve it. 

 

Update Day

Updated the Mother-In-Law's Lenovo T410 from Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04.5 to 26.04.1.

Updating Crispy from 22.04.5 to 26.04.1.

Considering doing the same with DerpyPuter. 

Much Delayed

Isaias is going to be the first hurricane of the 2026 season.

In October.

Wow.

Isaias is the 9th named storm, which matches the Colorado prediction from July.

We're still three short on hurricanes and one short on major storms this season and it seems unlikely we're even going to get a second hurricane at this point even if we get a couple more named storms.

I don't mind the break at all. 

If We're Going To Do This Let's Go All In

If we're going to fire White women for putting their hair in corn-rows then we have to fire a shit ton of Black women who straighten their hair on the same cultural appropriation grounds.

Fair is fair.

Alternatively, we can be sane and stop with thinking that there's a bad thing called cultural appropriation.

Someone copying your hairstyle is an expression of admiration, not contempt.