Gone

I tried to share a picture with Marv with regards to the guts of his new Glock purchase.

This information is scoured from the internet.

Wrong Is Wrong

A word I'm entirely too familiar with is hypocrisy.

Have you noticed how many things are wrong conditionally and the condition is whom caused it?

Gas is over $4 when Biden or Obama is president: This is good.  We're saving the planet, you should drive less!

Gas is over $4 when Trump is president:  This is bad.  There's no qualifier like there is for saving the planet.

Black people can be as racist as they want.  Brown people can be as racist as they want.

Muslims can be as intolerant and homophobic as they want.

Indians can discriminate in hiring all they want.

If you're in a protected category, you can break the law for, literally, decades until you finally do something the press is concerned about.  If you're not, you can catch a felony for behavior that didn't even seem like a crime when you did it (look up three felonies a day).

If you are in a protected category, any slight against you is a hate crime.  If you are not, then even actual crime isn't treated as criminal in many cases; especially theft.

Speech and words are forbidden to you if you're white, straight and male.  These same words may be freely used if you are not.  There are no slurs about straight white men that are off limits to anyone.

Racism is racism regardless of whom does it.

Sexism is sexism regardless of whom does it.

Hate is hate.

Crime is criminal.

Discrimination is discrimination.

Now, to separate this rant from Storm Front...

I don't want it to be OK for white people to be racist.  I want it to be wrong for ANYONE to be racist.

I don't want it to be OK for men to be sexist.  I want it to be wrong for ANYONE to be sexist.

I don't want it to be OK for straight people to be intolerant.  I want it to be wrong for ANYONE to be intolerant.

OR 

I want it to be OK for EVERYONE to be racist, sexist or intolerant and let the games begin.  Because nobody likes it, except straight white men, when that happens.

You want racism?  We're good at it and only stopped because we were convinced that it was wrong.

What you're doing now is convincing us that, though racism was wrong, it was a mistake to stop being racist.  Which isn't really related, but being punished for being racist without getting any credit for the work done to end racism by white people makes us feel a bit put upon.

The entire idea was that black people and white people were equal and could be the same.

That includes following the rules, obeying the law and observing the social norms.  If we're equal, it's easy!  If not, then you shouldn't be granted access to things you cannot handle.  Like the children the Klan insists you are.

Why, in Gods sake, are you out there proving the inbred morons of the KKK right?  Granted that it's just a stopped clock being right twice a day moment but it's getting uncanny how you announce the time twice a day.

In short, stop fucking around and actually join Western Civilization.

It's a great deal.  Western Civ gave us the USA and "Liberty and Justice for all."

But that's not the only tool in the Western Civ toolbox.  Fascism and Communism are from Western Civ too.  You get to choose, but two of them you can vote your way into, not out of.

1 is 1.

An Army Travels On Its Stomach

Two things I know from doing a lot of research for GURPS: WW2 and doing some reinacting.

The K-ration was not intended to be eaten for very long.

Many troops got them exclusively for a very long time.

He should have gotten a few more C-rations.

Telling

I still find it telling that the Army and Vortex have not released a weight for the M157 optic.

You can infer its mass from other published numbers, but still.

It Could Be The Plan

Back in April 2022 I closed on talking about the, then, XM5 that SIG's plan might have been to get the MCX-Spear in the door and once the boondoggle nature of the 6.8x51mm's extreme chamber pressures and expensive case construction were impossible to deny...

"Hey, look we have almost the same gun in 5.56, the troops don't even have to learn new controls!" - SIG Marketing Dept.

Daosus in the comments wondered something similar when they mentioned that 6.8x51 is MUCH heavier than 5.56x45.

Something else the troops complained about was the small magazine size and SIG offered a 25 rounder.  Using the SR-25 magwell means you can take advantage of a wider selection than proprietary magazines would.

But...  Larger magazines don't cure the weight problem.  25% more of the same cartridge is 25% more mass.

A PMAG LR 25-rounder all loaded up is 1.5 lb. each, which isn't too much more than the 1.4 lb. 20-rounder, but still it's an additional 0.7 lb. to lug around to get an extra 35 rounds, or 175 total.

One gets the impression that the troops want their 210 round, 7 lb. ammo load back instead of a 140 round 9.8 lb. load or a 10.5 lb. 175 round load.

And even the lighter XM8 is still heavier than the M4...

One Of Us One Of Us

Today we welcome Marv into the cult club of double-stack .45 ACP goodness.   Also into the Cult of Gaston.

He's obtained an ex-cop Glock 21.3SF.  (That's model 21, Gen 3, slim-frame).

Glock Talk's serial number project has not yet reached his prefix, so we're not sure exactly when it was made.  Guessing 2011 from the number on the trigger bar.

The trigger breaks with a crisp 7.5 lb; but the take up is atrociously gritty.

The gritty could be from it having never been cleaned in the approximately 15 years it has been in service.

From the pattern of scratches and wear, it was worn by a right handed officer.

It's ever so much lighter than my Gen 2 and the "slim" part of the frame is in the palm.  We didn't know that.

I expect we're going to be making a range report before too long.

Double Carbine

First: The M7 is not a rifle, it's a carbine.  It's in the same series as the M1 and M4 carbines.

I have long giggled about the M1 carbine not actually being a carbine because a carbine is traditionally a shorter version of a rifle.

The M1 Carbine isn't a shorter version of anything.

I noticed, and mentioned, that the M4 was a real carbine because it was a short M16.

The M7 isn't a shorter anything and I don't know where on the rifle list it should come out if you wanted to call a 13.5" barreled gun a rifle.  M111 since there's a Knight's Armament M110?  Higher?  Dunno.

That makes this really funny is the M7 has finally had troop and field trials in the form of issuing them to the 101st Airborne.

They felt it was too heavy and too long.

So SIG is lopping 2" off the barrel and ditching the folding stock give us the XM8 Carbine (no relation).

A carbine version of a carbine.

There's A Resemblance

For some reason the gnome on the left reminds us of Willard.

Maybe it's the cigar.

Oh Gods!

 

This is a capture of a warning from The Gasmask and Respirator Wiki article on the M25 mask.

I wore an M25 often and for hours at a time.

The filter in question is the M10A1.  The, older, M10 filter sometimes contained asbestos.

Pick your brand of lung cancer!

I don't have any lung cancer at the moment, but the list of potential carcinogens (real ones not just shit that causes cancer in California) I was exposed to in tanks is getting longer and longer.

I'd been all worried about exposure to turbo-shaft oil and the gas mask was what I really should have been paying attention to!

I Need Credentials

I am thinking that being a corrective phrenologist (<--spell checker knew this word!) would suit me to the bone.

They say do something you love and you will never work a day in your life.

I don't see it listed in any college catalogs though.

h/t FuzzyGeff for the career name.

Pre-64

All Winchester Model 54 rifles are pre-64 because they stopped making them in 1936.

Dear sellers, you don't need to say that they're pre-64 guns.

Something I've found interesting in the pre-64 Winchester Model 70 market is how few 30-06 guns I've seen for sale.

Bunches and bunches of .270 Win guns though.

This is the inverse of the Model 54, where .30-06 guns are the majority.

I noticed because I have a .30-06 Model 54 and I window-shop for a .270 to go with it.

Go Go Detailed Records!

I keep a spreadsheet of all the maintenance and modifications I do to the cars.

That includes a date and mileage for when the maintenance is done.

This has helped with insurance twice now.

First was when they totaled The Precious and "calculated" a mileage value to devalue the car.  I'd recently changed the oil, so I knew there were many fewer miles on her than what they quoted and it got me a bigger check.

The second time was today when I got Alice on the policy to replace Noxious.  Despite both being 2013 Chevy Equinoxes, Alice was $71 a year more to insure.  Dunno how they figure this shit out, but if they wanna play games, so can I.

To the spreadsheet!

Thanks to work from home and a general case of "don't go no where." we're far below the "average" person's 12,000 to 15,000 miles per year.

The Beast is actually being driven about 5,000 miles per year.  Noxious was being driven about 4,000.

So I changed the values from 10,000 and 8,500, respectively, and dropped my insurance even lower than before we started.

If they complain about the miles, I can give them a spreadsheet showing my oil changes! 

Bold Move Cotton

 

How long is this guy gonna last before something kills him?

Related: We decline your request to be fucking idiots about this little war.

There's a recurring theme about how the world should work in that the people living near where resources are extracted should benefit from said extraction.

That they should have wealth and comfort from it.

Here's one for y'all.  It's not required.

If, say, France needs oil; then a French petroleum engineer can figure out where it is, bring a bunch of French roughnecks in to drill for it and then use a French team to set up pumps, pipelines and wharfs to get it on ships crewed by French sailors.

There's no need to pay a single, say, Iranian for any of this except out of common decency.

The world has seen what it gets for giving common decency to the regime of the past forty some years.

So, Mr Rezaee, you've been paid as much as you're going to get.

Perhaps some decent folks who will reciprocate with decency when they receive it will take your place.  We might help THEM rebuild. 

The Equinox Is Dead Long Live The Equinox

Noxious, a 2013 Equinox has been replaced with Alice the White Horse, a 2013 Equinox LT.

Harvey is extremely happy with spending $400 a month paying it off for the next year.

It's lower miles, in better condition and not falling apart.

Noxious has a myriad of issues.

Paint is coming off the top surfaces.

Hatch seal is chewed from constant ham-fisted Father-In-Law "assistance" with MIL's wheel chair.

AC clutch is dying on a good compressor.

The electronic brake control module has 90% failed.

But the real reason to bail is the excessive blow-by has blown the crank seal.

The LEA engine is known for this and you either have the bad rings, or you don't.

Moxie has the good rings.  Noxious doesn't.  Alice seems to have the good rings.  The 2013 I looked at Saturday definitely had the bad ones, worse than Noxious, but it had not clogged the PCV and blown the crank seal... yet.

We're confident we got a car that someone loved and took care of.

Dude We Got A Dell

Reader Terrapod generously shipped us a used laptop they scored from a county surplus equipment sale.

THANKS! from me, The Lovely Harvey and The Boy!

Need to exorcise Win11 from it and make it a Linux box.

Sadness

Harvey's beloved Equinox is not long for this world.

Sad face.

We're on the hunt for a replacement.

I thought we might have found it Friday, but obvious scummy small car lot was obviously scummy.

They dared us to bring a mechanic, so Marv and I showed up with a code scanner.

The one Harvey preferred was so very close to getting purchased...  But the airbag light was on and there was no code for it in the scan...  PROBLEM.  The "Service Stabilitrak" message was displayed, but the code scanner directed us to the firmly stuck traction control button.  The Eco-Mode button was likewise stuck.

Putting buttons adjacent to the cup holders is stupid, Dick.

We widened the search today and she got to look at some cars that were the same size, but not Equinoxes.

She likes the RAV-4 a lot, but so does the dealer we saw it at, and it's well out of budget.

We both agree that a Chevy Traverse would be an excellent upgrade for both of us.

We're avoiding getting her one because she knows that with more space she'd fee obligated to use as the hauler for her mother's wheelchair.  That would make her fall out of love with it from the extra wear and tear.

The current plan is to fix Moxie, which was originally her mom's car, and make that the wheelchair transport.  I think I want a Caravan for that!

Monday I'm going to be spending running around looking at cars she's found online and seeing if any will suffice to our needs.

This is Kaylee.

Kaylee is my first AR-15.  She started life as an attempt to make a clone of an XM177E2.  Unfortunately, I didn't know much about XM177E2's when I started; in fact I thought CAR-15 was the proper designation.  I later made a much more faithful clone of an XM177E2, and then I decided to make Kayee more of an Israeli  carbine.

This Israeli carbine, in fact.

But as time passes, plans change.  Kaylee was entirely too similar to The Lovely Harvey's Cheyenne.  Cheyenne is a clone of an R653-P because Harvey loves the carbine carried by SSG Barnes in the film Platoon.

Because she felt I was stepping on her toes, I changed Kaylee's furniture.  Then did some swapping with some Arfcommers and ditched the carry handle.

What we have here is a Del-Ton carbine kit that I have modified.  The 16" HBAR barrel that came with the kit was replaced with a 14.5" 1:7 nitrided Palmetto State Armory barrel with an A2 flash-hider (not shown is the $200 piece of paper that lets that be legal).  The C7 upper has been replaced with an Aero Precision flat-top and Matech BUIS.  The lower receiver came from Anvil Arms, who are no longer in business.  Surplus Colt M4 pistol grip, Damage Ind. M4 stock with QD and Colt M4 handguards.  Bravo Company mil-spec receiver extension and H Buffer.

Complete history after the fold.  There have been a lot of starts and stops along the way while I figured out what I wanted to do with her.  And yes, I give my rifle's girl's names.  And yes, you've seen this post before, it gets bumped and updated as I make changes.

Click Me For The Full Post

Form Over Function

I have had a KAC 600m folding sight on Kaylee since I first changed her over to a flat-top.

Over time she has become, more and more, an M4 clone.

The issue back-up sight for an Army M4 is a Matech BUIS.

I have finally gotten one!

With an M9 bayonet, because Army clone.

Folded:

Deployed at 200m:

Deployed at 600m:

The Matech BUIS is not known for its durability, but it is the correct rear sight for the clone, so...

It's a little heavier than the KAC, 3.4 oz. vs 2.0 oz.

The range adjustments are way easier to see, though.

That Time Of Year

 

Today is the Equinox, and I will be working on an Equinox...

I'd Giggle

The US, technically, doesn't need the oil that comes through the Straits of Hormuz.

That means that it's someone else that needs that waterway open.

And several of the nations who NEED that oil are refusing to help keep it open.

It'd be funny as fuck if we decided to just keep all that oil for ourselves since we're the ones keeping the shipping lane open and used it to lower domestic oil prices and just mailed copies of "The Little Red Hen" to everyone.

That's Not Big Enough For That

For some reason Lennar is spamming my Facebook with ads for their wares.

The house they keep showing me has a "3-Car Garage."

It's 30' wide and 20' deep.  Laundry is in a separate room inside the house.

That's not right.

My oversized one-car garage measures 22' deep and 14' wide.  27'x17' on the floor-plan.  There's shelves on the house side and a bathoom/laundry area at the back.

My inlaws house is the same builder as my house and their standard one-car is 24' deep and 14' wide on the floor plan; with laundry taking up the back.

Marv's "2-car" garage measures 22' deep and 20' wide (23x21 on the floor plan).  He can squeeze two cars in there with cabinets on one side and sink and laundry at the back.  You can just squeeze by the front of his Impala past the washer and dryer and he has to move one car to open the doors on the other.

New garages are widely optimistic about their capacity considering the two most popular vehicles in America are full sized pick-ups and those are larger than they've ever been!

Quoted In Full

Devon Eriksen says:

If you don't own a rifle, your opinion is mostly irrelevant.

Everything humans do to interact and work together is a proxy for force.

Force is base-level communication, because it requires no common language or concepts, and it definitively settles every dispute. Problem with it is, it's risky, expensive, and mostly not very enjoyable.

So we developed proxies for it. First language, then persuasion, deception, negotiation, money, blackmail, fake news, advertising, psychology, etc, etc, it's all a proxy for the underlying asset... force.

So if you have no weapon, then your opinion is only relevant when it influences those who do, whether directly or through second and higher order effects.

This places you at a considerable disadvantage, not only because those who can wield force directly can cut through the abstractions and wield that force directly, but also because the threat, stated or implied, of doing so carries weight and can change how others wield those higher-level abstractions.

This is why Jordan Peterson is wrong.

Free speech, when available, can be used to defend many things, but when it is under threat, it cannot be used to defend itself.

The right to bear arms, however, can be used to defend the right to bear arms.

And that is the difference.

If you need a further example, look at what is happening in Britain. The masters do not want their slaves expressing certain opinions, and they are imprisoning them for doing so.

Their real plan of attack, for course, has little to do with the people being imprisoned. They only have the resources to do that to a tiny fraction of the population.

The real plan is heads on spikes. It's using the fear of being one of those people to shut everyone up. Everyone but them.

But ask yourself... if you were British, or French, or Canadian, or Australian (or perhaps you actually are), instead of having the outrageous good fortune to be American, what the hell would you do?

How would you use the right of free speech to defend the right of free speech? If you say this is wrong, they'll find an excuse to call it hate speech and lock you up.

And you consented to this, you morons. A few crazies shot a vanishingly small percentage of kids, and instead of locking up the crazies, like any sensible population, you let them take away your only capacity to resist them.

You cheered for it.

You begged for it.

You brag about it.

You try to snap back at us with it, saying that at least .00000000001% of your schoolchildren (in the ghetto) aren't being shot (by other feral teens in the ghetto), as third-world barbarians hack your little girls to death with machetes and rape your teenage daughters and your own government won't lift a finger to stop it, because they hate you and they want it to happen.

You don't want to admit that the primary civil right, the right on which all the others is based, is the right to be armed.

Because if you did, you would have to face three horrifying truths:

1. You've been wrong all this time, and the very thing you were smuggest about was your biggest mistake.

2. You are in a shit situation, because you now have to figure out how to bring down a government that hates you, can use force on you any time they want, and you can't stop them.

3. America, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic are the only free countries on Earth. Everywhere else is a police state.

Americans have always known that ultimately, no matter who you are, now matter where you are, no one is coming to save you. You must possess the means to save yourself, or at least to fight back, to make yourself expensive and dangerous to kill, so you can save the next guy.

This is the reason, the real reason, why Americans love guns.

We let you pretend it was because we were fat stupid belligerent rednecks who like power fantasies, because that lie seemed to make you happy, and it's not nice to take away the comforting delusions of toddlers and crazy people.

But now that delusion is hurting you, and, contemptuous as you have been of us, you are fellow human beings, fellow civilized humans beings, and we don't want to see you die, so we have to tell you the truth.

We love guns because they are not only the tool of liberty, they are symbol of our value, not as tools or slaves of regime, but as independent, free human beings of inherent worth.

In America, when I walk past a police officer on the street, he has a badge and a gun. But I have a gun, too. Right there under my shirt. And [mine] works just like his.

And that changes everything. Because now I am not the only one dependent on the rule of law. He is dependent upon the rule of law, too. Because if the rule of law is the only thing that prevents him from killing me under color of authority, then the rule of law is the only thing that prevents me from killing him in the act of resistance.

The deterrents exist on both sides, and we all have to play nice. And mostly, we do. Because those deterrents make sure we really, really want to.

They're not playing nice any more on your side of the big blue wobbly thing. They have guns. All you have is a mouth and a keyboard.

How that working out for you?

An armed society is a polite society. That's not just a saying. That's not just fiction.

And Terry Pratchett was dead wrong. It doesn't just last until "some twerp drinks out of the wrong mug or picks up someone else's change by mistake and five minutes later you're picking noses out of the beer nuts."

Only a person from a disarmed society, who has never lived in a armed one, could have been so profoundly, pig-headedly, disastrously delusional.

If you haven't trained with guns, owned guns, carried guns, you have no idea what they're like, or what you would do if you had one, or what everyone would do in a bar where everyone had one.

Because the answer, the real answer, to "[what everyone does] in a pub where everyone goes armed" is "not get their goohuloog heads kicked in by the police for speaking out against their masters".

Killed By Death

The men in my family don't have a consistent problem that leads to their demise.

Grampa on Mom's side was a diabetic who didn't bother changing what he ate all that much and a one-two blow of dementia and heart problems associated with that neglect got him.  At 76 years old.

Great Grampa on Dad's side had his brain just quit.  85 years old.

Grampa on Dad's side got done in by undetected prostate cancer that had metastasized into his bones and further.  77 years old.

Dad is trucking along at 84 years old and nobody has told me about any health scares he's had.  We don't talk.

Nobody really did the diet and exercise bit, but all of them remained active.  Mom's dad probably should have watched what he ate though.

My dad's sister tells me that high cholesterol is a thing in the family and nothing really gets it under control and the women in the family have been making it to their 90's regular like.

About THAT Age

Because The Lovely Harvey is entering the post-menopause frisky stage and I have been afflicted with a common problem, I inquired as to the availability of little blue pills.

This triggered a, "let's make sure your heart is healthy enough to be frisky," set of tests.

EKG, then a 24 hour heart monitor, then a trip down to Bay Pines for an echo-cardiogram.

DUDE!

Makes one feel like the Grim Reaper is just the other side of the door.

Also in the visit was a cholesterol discussion.

One of the best ways to get my ratios right is to cut out fried foods.

Um...

Until I decided to follow this advice, I had no idea how much stuff was fried.

Holy snot!

I've been eating all wrong. 

Starting Wealth

TL8 starting wealth is $20,000.

Under standard, settled lifestyle, assumptions you can spend 1/5 of that on "adventuring gear."

Want a humbling moment?

Add up all of your assets and calculate how many starting wealths it takes to cover them.

My freaking house, according to Zillow, is $179,200.

If that's 4/5 of what I own then I need $224,000 for a starting wealth.

"Wealthy" is $100,000.  20 points.

"Very Wealthy" is $400,000.  30 points.

I'm somewhere between wealthy and very wealthy.

I don't FEEL wealthy, but here we are.

I can no longer relate to myself as a character.

Several of my friends are in better financial condition based on their home's value.

What the actual fuck?

Some Blobs Are Better Than Others

David Freiburger has a new T-shirt:

That image has an amazing resemblance to The Beast!

I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean MY V-8 powered, rear wheel drive, 362 hp, 391 ft-lb Holden.

But he's got his tastes and I have mine.

I happen to like my blob!

Blacklist

I've been watching, and enjoying, the NBC show "The Blacklist."

It's a bit formulaic, but lots of fun.

James Spader is a joy in this role.

Not the smallest matter of fun is his chosen pistol is a Browning Hi-Power.

Glad!

The HP is one of my all-time favorite nine millimeters.

If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up!

Broken Pics

Blogger continues to fail at hot-linked pics.

Flickr is not innocent because they keep giving links that expire almost instantly.

The work-around is to select the link for the 1024x768 sized image rather than the full sized 6000x4000 image.

I've fixed several, and will keep doing so as I encounter them.

The Highwaymen

Way back when the Kevin Costner movie "The Highwaymen" came out, I mentioned that I enjoyed it, but something just stuck that didn't at the time, though Beans mentioned it in the comments.

It's the first Bonnie and Clyde movie where the good guys are portrayed as the protagonists.

The Barrow gang were murdering criminals.  They were not the good guys, no matter how romanticized Hollywood wants them to be.

The realization of how rare it is for Hollywood to let the actual good guys be the heroes of the story really hits home.

It's remarkable and I am remarking on it.

Related is the constant refusal to take their own culture's side when portraying historical events.

That culture is the only reason your commie asses get to be millionaires, you should appreciate it more!

Of course, they're just emulating Herr Marx.  Not producing anything of value while mooching off friends and cheating on their spouses. 

I cannot think of how much better the world would be if McCarthy had owned a helicopter. 

Depopulation Bomb

Paul Erlich, a scientist known for making a bad prediction more than anything else, has passed.

If being wrong had been the only problem, we'd have never heard of him or made note of his passing.

The problem with his prediction is how many crappy policy decisions have been made since to avoid his apocalyptic prediction when the green revolution solved it without doing anything else.

Wrong Side Of The Bed

Don't interrupt a USMC air defense unit's naptime...

 Especially when they've got 3+ LAV-AD handy to let you know they're feeling grumpy.

Not Sending Ships

Japan and Australia have decided to not send ships to support Operation Epic Fury.

There's been a bit of sturm und drang about that, but I think that they just don't have the capability to do it.

Their navies are tiny by our standards and they just don't appear to have the excess capability to send boats to the region while still maintaining their commitments closer to home.

Australia is sending some significant air assets though.  It's not like they're refusing to help. 

Gas Masks

My foray into 20th Century body armor has hit protective masks, which are considered armor in GURPS.

They end up being a lot like helmets in that they have the same DR and about the same weight.

What I get to do is add in details like what filters they use and how much those cost and to make notes about tanker/aviator versions of things. 

Y+ 36

On this day, in 1990, a Caprice Classic completed final assembly in Willow Run, Michigan.

It was sold to the Carlisle, Iowa PD, despite not being a police package car.

Six years later, I bought it and hot rodded it for the next 24 years with it becoming The Biscayne SS.

I sold it to a friend, who has, likewise, passed it to someone in the 91-96 B-Body community.

 

 

It's Official

Traveller, set in the year 5621 at the beginning of most campaigns, is now officially an alternate history.

How can something set almost 3,600 years from now be an alternate history?

Because there was no Treaty of New York in 2024 where all of the nations of Earth ceded their sovereignty to the United Nations and made the UN the new world government. 

Genes

The Boy's psychiatrist ordered a round of genetic testing for him.

She did a bad job of explaining why, but we have the results in and...

It was a allele compatibility test with certain drugs and it actually explains a lot of observed things.

What it showed is that some drugs don't work like they're supposed to work with certain genetic markers.  Some as bad as having the opposite effect as expected.

This is particularly true of sedatives and The Boy.

The good news is that it also identifies drugs that should work correctly with his genetic markers.

It's kind of neat we're learning enough about this stuff to be able to tailor a cocktail just for one person. 

Tailor's Sword

A new term for me!

British officers were responsible for their own kit, so they'd head down to the tailor's for a uniform and while they were there, they'd buy the sword that goes with.

The tailor, quite often, did not sell swords that were a good idea to take into a fight.

But they met the size-shape regulations.

There's also a lot of fashion involved in a lot of swords.

Many surviving examples of blades that are intended to look good, but are compromised by how they were made.

There's even a couple of examples where the design is compromised to make it more comfortable to lug around!

How does one GURPS this?

The idea of a cheap quality sword with fine (decorated) has a lot of appeal to represent these, but even a cheap sword is considered to be correctly designed, just cheaper materials.  I think I need something like cheap (poorly balanced)... 

Please Wait

Tried to fire up LibreOffice on the Win7 machine because two big screens is better than one small one for doing my GURPS stuff.

Silver Light said to please wait while it updated my installation.

I know that LibreOffice has moved on and they don't support Win7 anymore, so I expected it to fail in a moment and let me continue.

Nope!

It finished an I got a "cannot find api-ms-win-core-path-l1-1-0.dll" and no LibreOffice 26.2.6 anymore.

Mutter mutter mutter.

I'll just repair the install of LibreOffice, I think.

No go.

So I uninstall it.

Reboot.

Cannot find the network.  This happens about once per 100 reboots for some reason.

Reboot.

Wait.

Reinstall.

Try to run it.

Silver Light, again, says to please wait while...

I stab the little red box with the X in it!

Try to run it again.

Loooooooooooong delay.

LibreOffice 25.2.6 lives!

Change the settings to stop checking for updates and to stop trying to automatically update.

Grumble.

The Win7 machine is perfectly fine offline, I just need to get programs to stop trying to reach the outside world!

Excellent News!

Getting some convictions against Antifa!

Andy Ngo, also remains a thorn in their sides.

Under Investigation

 That company from last year with the brutal contract I declined to sign...

They're getting investigated for fraud.

People who used them are also getting letters.

The lucky ones are getting a letter from a law firm telling them they might be entitled to have their fees returned because a veteran org can only charge a fixed fee and not a percentage of increase.

The unlucky ones are finding that they were coached into committing fraud by the company that helped them increase their rating.

This is an official crack down, it seems.