29 September 2008

Guns Of My Mother's Father

Here's a comparison of Grampa's .32 revolvers.


This is an Hopkins and Allen Safety Police in .32 S&W. I bought it for parts to repair grampa's gun. They are not the same inside, so now I have this one and...

His.


This is his Iver Johnson Safety Hammer Automatic 3rd Model, .32 S&W. The automatic refers to the ejection of spent casings.


Last, but not least is this Harrington and Richardson 2nd Model 1st Variation Automatic Revolver, .32 S&W Long. Both the caliber and capacity differ from the other three. This one holds six shots.


All the functional guns together.

Quote Of The Random Interval

"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church, for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

--Robert A. Heinlein, "Revolt in 2100"

28 September 2008

Ha HA

I, in my back yard, armed only with binoculars, located and observed Andromeda!

Despite the light pollution around here, viewing conditions were pretty damn good.

Marv even saw it.

26 September 2008

Today Eleven Years Ago

I arrived in Florida from Iowa with a sure plan. I was going to hang out with my friend Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel, have a little fun, say goodbye and head down to Key West and shoot myself next to the marker for the "farthest South point of the US".

Today also marks the moment where that plan flew off the rails.  The Lovely Harvey and I fell in love.

We went out to JD Penguin's, I got drunk, she took advantage of me. [grin!]

Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel warned me that this was just The Lovely Harvey having a fling and that it would only last for two weeks. Here we are, 570 weeks past expiration and still sickeningly sweetly in love!

24 September 2008

Back To My More Usual Type Of Post

Some good break-downs of what happened with Fannie and Freddie.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aSKSoiNbnQY0

http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-you-know-when-theres-problem.html

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/how-wall-streets-quants-lied-to-their-computers/

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

by Rudyard Kipling

I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.

22 September 2008

New Game Machine

And I don't know what to do!

If I make an XP box, all it will be is a game box. I no longer like working on PCs now that I have gotten used to where Mac keeps things.

Mac OS 10.5 has a thing called Bootcamp. It allows a dual boot so you can run XP native. There is also an app called Parallel that allows you to run XP inside 10.5. AutoCAD runs fine under Parallel. Supposedly so does IL2. Not sure about Wings Over Vietnam.

The flight sims are better run under XP native, but there are several programs for XP that would be nice to have while the normal Mac stuff was running, like AutoCAD.

What surprised me is a Mac Pro is only about $500 more than an XP box if you match hardware relatively closely. There are, however, many lower levels available for XP that just don't exist when buying a Mac.

I just don't know what to do!

Comments welcome.

20 September 2008

Military Cemetaries



I've spoken before about the crosses at the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.

There's a loud movement to get them removed.

I've said strong words about how I would stand between someone tearing them down and the memorial.

Yes, it is a religious symbol on Federal land and maintained with Federal money.

This fight is not about State Religion. It is about the rights of veterans to choose how their cemeteries look. We want the crosses there. The fallen have paid in blood for the right to have any symbol we want on the ground that is supposed to honor their, ultimate, sacrifice. We, the veterans, reject the whims, arguments and claims of those who have sacrificed nothing to decide how we choose to honor our dead.

The monies spent by the Feds is merely a small stipend that goes to pay back some of what these people gave. We owe them more than we can ever pay, and never pay in mere money.

If your feelings are hurt when I say that I would be more willing to see you dead than those crosses taken down, tough shit.

18 September 2008

Well Well

Looking at the stock market lately, I am SO glad I foolishly bought a Corvette instead of "intelligently" left the money I got from Mom's 401k in the REAL-ESTATE WEIGHTED portfolio she had it in.

I have a car.

For some reason there was a residual $640 left in all the various funds and stuff. There's $90 today. That means that I would have just $20k left in the account if I had left it alone. The Vette is definitely worth more than $20k!

If my mom was still alive, this would have ended her retirement.

Please do not make comments about what gubmint entity caused this mess. There's enough blame for both parties in the public sector and the private side is not innocent either.

17 September 2008

To All Political Types

Common sense: If it takes more than a paragraph to explain it to a random stranger on the street, it's not common sense.

Counter-Intuitive: Sometimes the common sense approach is exactly wrong.

These are not definitions, rather, they are more usage guidelines.

14 September 2008

Historical Comparison


On top is a Laconic Arms VKb.07; below is a Springfield made M1 "Garand".

11 September 2008

Snark

Asking the media about Barak Obama is akin to asking Goebbels about Hitler.

Asking them about McCain is much like asking the Klan about blacks.

Perhaps not near as extreme as that, but the media has picked a side in this. Any information from them needs to be considered in that light.

9-11

Hey, it's September 11th again already.

Lot's of maudlin, in your cups kind of retrospective out there to read today. It's easy to find, if you look.

I've been avoiding it.

What I want to mention today, on the 7th anniversary, is that we haven't had a follow-up attack since.

We're cleaning up after our victory in Iraq.

We're winning.

To paraphrase Chris Titus; Never challenge the nation that created the monster truck to apply that creativity to war.

Fiction Fragment

Gigantic, panoramic windows. Every passenger ship has them. The wellers like to look at the stars. Us spacers have teeny little ports near the docking controls. If we need visual, a camera is almost always much better than a naked eye through a pane. A camera doesn't add a fragile piercing to the hull either.

There they were, the wellers, staring at the stars. Not much to see, really. But I guess I am used to them. I used to say this with contempt, but I sun burned my tongue standing slack-jawed on Earth staring up at the sky. The baby blue just goes up for...well, all the way into space!

08 September 2008

Picking A Teeny Little Nit

GURPS High Tech Pulp Guns Vol 1 has stats for the Mossberg Brownie. The Brownie is a neat little hold-out gun with four barrels each firing a single shot of .22 LR. The striker rotates to fire each barrel in turn with each pull of the double action only trigger. In other words, four shots as fast as you can pull the trigger.

The nit I am picking is the category that it is filed under, "Non-Repeating Pistols." Um, fires more than one round without reloading and it's double action, it's a repeater. I don't think he understands the term.

Becoming Numb

If you use the same insult enough, the words lose their power to insult.

If you use insults to attempt to affect another person's behavior, the repeated use of the same insult will also lose effect.

Calling me a racist all these years for virtually every activity under the sun no longer works, if indeed it ever did. I have been called a racist for merely being white.

Now I am being called a racist because I don't support Mr Obama. Him being a politician from Chicago has a lot more to do with my opposition than his race.

But thanks for wearing the last but of guilt off of the racist accusation for me!

07 September 2008

.32 Cubed

Here's a comparison between three rounds that used to be extremely popular and have become somewhat rare today.



Left to right; .32 S&W (1878), .32 ACP (1899) and .32 S&W Long (1896). The S&W Long is a wadcutter, a more conventional bullet would protrude from the case like the other two.

.32 S&W long is literally a .32 S&W with a longer case, so you can shoot the shorter round in guns chambered for the longer ones, like .38 Special/.357 Magnum, but there's not a lot of power difference between them in the smokeless loadings, unlike .38 Special/.357 Magnum. Modern loads typically have a 98 gr bullet running about 705 fps for a whopping 115 ft-lbs. Black powder loadings were 85 gr at 680 fps for 90 ft-lbs for the .32 S&W and 98 gr at 780 fps for 132 ft-lbs for the .32 S&W Long.

.32 ACP typically fires a 71 gr bullet at 905 fps giving 129 ft-lbs of energy.

Both the S&W rounds were originally black powder. .32 ACP was one of the very first smokeless rounds.

06 September 2008

John Moses Browning Super Genius



Doing some comparison studies.

Here we have three of the the five Automatic Colt Pistol (ACP) cartridges.
From left to right; .25 ACP (1906), .32 ACP (1899), .380 ACP (1908), and .45 ACP (1904). Not shown is .38 ACP (1897) because it's hard to find the ammo and guns to shoot it any more.


.25 and .32 are shown in FMJ, .380 and .45 are in JHP.

.25 ACP, .32 ACP, and .380 ACP are popular in Europe as 6.35x16mmSR, 7.65x17mmSR and 9x17mm respectively. .38 ACP never really had a chance against 9x19mm in Europe, so it didn't last long. It's also another example of a round cursed with a clunky gun. The Model 1903 Pocket Hammer was poorly balanced and looked disproportionate when compared to the Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless.

Three generations of guns designed by John Browning, in order of both design and manufacture.
From bottom to top; Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless in .32 ACP, made in 1912; Colt Model 1908 Vest Pocket in .25 ACP, made in 1919; Springfield Armory M-1911A1 GI, made in 2005.

05 September 2008

Poverty

I rant and rage a bit about Welfare. Some people don't understand why I get so damned upset about the useless dangling from Uncle Sugar's Teat.

Because I was honest to Gohd poor once! I am not any more.

What got me out of poverty in childhood was the hard, honest work of my mother. We got government assistance for one whole month before some apparatchik decided that the child support that my father wasn't sending put us over some etherial line and made us ineligible.

I returned to a level of poverty because of my stupid decisions later on. My fault, but some honest work and better judgement later, I am not what I would call poor.

My experience has left me some things to look for when deciding if someone else has really been poor or is just putting on the mantle.

Do you know what fried bologna is?

Do you have an opinion about what BRAND of ramen is best?

What kind of commercial cheese-food is most like the Government cheese brick?

I tend to fixate on the food items.

The Lovely Harvey comes from poverty as well. Her family was ineligible for welfare because her mother was married and Bubba supported his family. Hard work has put The Lovely Harvey out of poverty as well.

We're bitter because we watch people like Thunder McThighs and Dumbass Fuckwad Shitheel spawn child after child get welfare for being irresponsible. We're sick of watching them get more money from a tax 'return' than they paid in taxes, sometimes thousands more. We're sick of the government moving these dregs of society into the house next door and paying their rent for them while they destroy the house and suck my property value down with it.

Hard work and responsibility boot-strapped both of our families out, we expect nothing less of others.

PS, The Boy doesn't get a penny of support from Gubmint. The Lovely Harvey apparently makes too much to qualify.

Sarah Palin

The conservative base is energized by her addition to the ticket.

I cannot help but wonder if they are hoping that McCain croaks in office so she can get to be in charge since there's so much about him they don't really care for. I would have said 'we' but I am not a very good conservative outside of a few issues.

04 September 2008

More Old Guns

This is a Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless in .32 ACP. This particular gun was made in 1912, perhaps my oldest gun.

The corrosion is not as bad as the picture makes it seem. It's merely the blue worn off and a patina forming, it's still glassy smooth, just not uniform in color anymore. A neighbor of a friend asked me "what's it worth?" I told him I would give him $200 for it. He bit. It's worth a lot more, like $600 in this condition without a box.

Together with its younger cousin, the Model 1908 Vest Pocket in .25 ACP.


Quote Of The Day

"If you do not understand what is wrong with wearing a red shirt with a huge graphic of Chairman Mao on it while carrying a ratty-assed backpack plastered with “FREE TIBET” stickers, there is no help for you."

03 September 2008

Huh?

Me: Obama has no executive government experience, his voting record is in full accord with Das Kapital, Socialists and Socialism are dangerous and cannot be trusted.

Libtard: The daughter of McCain's VP pick is pregnant!

Me: I stand skewered on your rebuttal.

More Research

I discovered something last night on the Garand that was a little disappointing. Marked on the receiver is "RRAD 11/64" with an electric pencil. That means that in November of 1964 my gun was rebuilt a the Red River Army Depot. Since all of the parts are Springfield marked and have numbers that are correct for the November '44 manufacture date, it could just be that my gun was refinished as the M14 entered service and the Garands were put into storage.

The stock is marked with "RRA" meaning it came from a gun rebuilt in the Red River Arsenal.

I am pretty sure that RRAD and RRA are the same place.

I mentioned before that the Springfield stamp on the stock was for a gun made between August 1943 and October 1944. CMP guns are commonly restocked before distribution, so no biggie.

Having Some Fun

Marv has an old Smith & Wesson Victory model revolver in .38. It used to be his dad's and may likely have been the gun his father was issued in WW2.


And here is sixty-seven years of heritage in one picture. The stainless is my 640 in .357.