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The local brewery had the WNBA draft on the TV last night.
I looked over at Marv and said, "We could be watching Golf."
He agreed that watching the draft was, indeed, worse than watching Golf.
Happily, there was a ring of condensation on the bar from our beer we could watch drying.
Some things move slowly at Casa McThag.
Take tires for The Beast; I originally got them back in April 2022, almost 32 thousand miles ago. I tossed four, apparently, good tires because I had a bad vibration at interstate speeds. I blamed the balance and the previous owner's notorious tendency to buy cheap tires.
It was not the tires.
I spent the next two years and 16 thousand miles replacing front suspension parts in the most commonly to be the problem to least likely to be the problem. It was the left front control arms. The design of the control arms makes diagnosing them difficult because they don't get hand-wobbly when they're loaded-wobbly.
One reason that it took so long to fix is that the vibration didn't really happen at speeds around town, and I don't really go on long trips much any more. Vibration at interstate speeds? Stay off the interstate! Problem successfully ignored!
Oh, and drive Moxie more...
I discovered, sadly, that replacing the offending suspension components did not completely cure the vibration in the steering wheel, but now it was cyclic. Every minute or so on the interstate it'd shake and every minute or so would stop.
When I got the Camaro rims, the road-force balancing discovered two of my tires were out of round.
That made sense. The suspension shake was rather violent, it could have damaged the tires. Another clue is I can mitigate the cycle somewhat by rotating a wheel a lug or two.
Here's hoping that new tires cures this!
The main UPS is a CyberPower 1,500w unit I bought from Wal Mart right before Milton came through in October 2024.
I replaced the APC 600w unit in the garage with a CyberPower 425w in September 2025.
I bought new batteries for the dead APC 1,500w in September 2025, it's in storage. I don't remember when I purchased it originally, but this might be the second set of batteries.
I replaced the battery in the dead APC 600w (originally purchased in September 2020) in September 2025 and it was in storage until tonight when I finally admitted the Amazon Basics 400w UPS from February 2023 wasn't surviving even minor power interruptions.
This is me putting this information in one place so I can, hopefully, find it later.
USAA has membership perks.
I normally ignore the emails reminding of them because they trend towards vacation packages at places I can't afford.
But I clicked to see this time and saw they have a 25% off on Goodyear tires.
That's a four tires for the price of three!
The Beast is needing tires, so we plunked down for some Eagle F1 All Seasons.
Something else new is the mobile installer.
That's kinda cool.
I have not been rolling on Goodyears since the Eagle GT II's I had on The Biscayne SS in 2004 when I replaced the 15" rims with Impala SS 17" rims.
I used to buy Goodyear exclusively before then.
I guess, technically, I was running Goodyears when I bought The Precious, but I chucked the run-flats at 16k miles because they really rode poorly.
This is the second time I've been offered a deal on Goodyears, and the first time I've taken advantage of it. A while back, one of you generous readers gave me a code for your employee discount that I promptly forgot about until today. I still appreciated that, even if we didn't use it.
Unintended and unexpected are not the same word.
Most, if not all, unintended consequences from socialist "planning" seem to come with the expected consequences.
Most, if not all, unintended consequences are predicted before the "planning" can be implemented.
What's amazing is how many people are still surprised when the Gods of the Copybook Headings, with terror and slaughter, return.
California has become the latest state to notice that upping the minimum wage to a stupidly high level doesn't result in comfortable lifestyles for the people earning that wage.
The best case was inflation eating up all the gains in income, and they are not getting the best case. When the one-time costs of automation are cheaper than the ongoing expenses of keeping an employee, the bot gets the job.
If the cost of employing people makes a business unprofitable, then it closes.
In both cases, the minimum wage worker will be getting the true minimum wage.
In so many ways watching YouTube will make me curl up in a ball and ask Harvey to sell my tools.
Mike Finnegan is making a drag and drive Cadillac and...
The stuff they just casually do and all of the tools and expertise on display!
Yeah.
That's not me.
I don't have the money to get the entry level versions of those tools to begin to cultivate the skills; let alone the gigantic space needed to have all of those tools.
I can't do what they're doing and I never will be able to do it, so let's just drop the facade and get a Honda?
He's not inspiring me, he's making me feel inadequate.
The one channel that was making me feel like working on my junk was Saturday Garage.
He went out and got a job! Now he's too busy to make videos.
Plus I am recovering from Moxie going unreliable and replacing Harvey's car.
I just hit me why the sequels to The Curse of the Black Pearl fell flat for me.
The complicated fight sequence is a pause in the plot. The longer that runs, the longer I have to wait before the story starts moving again.
Especially since the story doesn't depend on that fight being there.
Especially since it's obvious that the fight with deadly weapons will not result in any bloodshed, let alone a death, because all of the principals are essential to the plot.
A plot on hold while they have their flashy little tiff.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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...
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.
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!
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.
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...
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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| 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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Smith and Wesson is, apparently, giving away some 3rd Gen pistols.
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...
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...
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.
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!
But, how is it?
Oh my! It's good! I think I have a new favorite bourbon.
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.
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...
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.
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!
