Cautious Optimism

Got the new brake position sensor installed and calibrated (as is implied a couple of posts ago).  It's showing almost 300 ohm more than the old one.

Eyes crossed that this holds.

JT's Tech 2 lost comms a couple of times during calibration, so we had to do it more than once.

It went perfectly once we'd cleared all the codes first...  Doh!

If you let the battery run down, it will set all manner of lost communication codes in the body control module that don't show up on the dash in any way.

Getting the sensor back in was "fun."

It's awkward to get into the footwell to see what you're doing with both hands available to work.

My back muscles decided to spasm pretty well and that made my hands go all palsy; so I'm trying to line up the screws and get them started with almost no fine motor control... all while what I need to see is NOT in the close-up portion of my glasses.

Good thing I'm a stubborn prick.

I Think That's Pretty Close

“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” 

E. Hemingway

Note

Clear all of the codes before doing a brake pedal position sensor calibration.

Otherwise the service active handling light turns back on.

The first press of the brake pedal appears to be part of the calibration, do this first press with the engine running so you don't press against a hard pedal from a lack of vacuum boost.  <- This matches our observations, it's not in the documentation.

Otherwise the car will show the full motion of the pedal as a low-voltage and out of range code.

This is why using a pot as a switch is stupid!

Waiting On Amazon

 

The Precious awaiting the $14 part that fixes the recurring problem.

Grumble.

I think I might just order a couple spares.

It's Her Own Damn Fault

My buddy, Grog, is divorced with two kids.

To say that he was in a bad place after losing his job, then his wife then his house is putting it mildly.

Happily,  he managed to pull out of the dive and get his shit back together.

Like most people who recover from such, he's still got a long climb, but he's being realistic about it even while being ambitious.

While he was in the depths of despair, he crawled into a bottle and wasn't paying child support.

Because of his lack of employment, that support bill was an "easy" $50 a month.

Isn't it interesting that when you're homeless and your income is $0 a month, they think you should pay $50?

But he got sober, got assistance, got some training and got a job.  Not a great job, but sufficient.

He took that job and attacked the arrears of his child support with gusto and started paying $250 a month extra too.

His ex-wife, The Whore, is a piece of work.  She's horrible with money, horrible with time and can't hold a job longer than a year, averaging six months.

She's constantly bitching that he's not paying enough.

It appears that she decided to involve The State because they will probably say that he owes $600 a month.

When you file this in the state they live in, The State sends her a check directly and bills him every month.

Guess how much they're sending her!  $50.

Now she's calling him a deadbeat for not mailing her the remaining $250 he had been sending.

He's like, "I am fulfilling my full legal obligation to you at the level they are garnishing."  By the way, she's committed fraud to get on child support recovery.  He's regretting "making it easier" by paying cash instead of an instrument that proves he paid her.  I told him to tell her, "your inability to cash the check doesn't constitute a crisis on my end."

He's decided to spend it on the kids directly rather than filtering it through The Whore.  Smart, I think.

As soon as the eviction moratorium ends where they live, he's going to get his own place and custody of the younger kid, who's expressed no love for The Whore.  That should really upend her dreams of free money from garnishment!

We're pulling for you Grog!

Woah

Looking at what rental prices in my area have soared to...

I love my mortgage!

I love my fixed rate mortgage!

I also notice that we still have our house when several of the people who called us fools for taking a slightly higher interest rate to get it fixed have lost their variable rate homes.

My mortgage payment is about half what I could rent the place for right now.

Moar Teh Stoopid

I've done a deep dive of the function of the brake pedal position sensor.

It is a potentiometer.

What it does is drop the 5v signal voltage to alert the body control module (BCM) that the brake pedal has been depressed.

I haven't done the math to determine what the actual voltages are...

There will be two voltages less than 5v it's looking for.  The lower value is for the pedal at rest and the higher with it depressed.

Literally using a pot as a switch to send a binary signal.

The brake light logic is IF voltage > X volts THEN pedal is depressed.

When the pedal is shown as depressed it turns on the brake lights and lets other brake related things happen, like ABS.

The BCM determines how MUCH the pedal has moved by measuring the pressure of the brake fluid.

Grumble.

This Is The Stupid

The sensor is supposed to show 1k to 4k across its entire range.

The arm should rest at 3.1k and signal the brakes being applied at 2.9k.

My sensor reads 937 to 3,630 ohms across the range.

With the arm at the rest position it reads ≈2.8k and ≈2.6k with the pedal pressed.  My rest resistance is below the expected brakes-on resistance, so the BCM thinks the pedal is pressed at rest.

If I had a Tech-2 or equivalent I could run the calibration routine and see if it would resume working.

I have to cajole JT into using his.

Fuck You GM

Fuck you for this brake position sensor that's fragile as a soap bubble.

Fuck you for a brake switch that's a rheostat with 5° of travel that wears a groove in the traces unless the Chinese slave did a good job that day.

Fuck you for making the diagnostic equipment proprietary and expensive.

Fuck you for having to have a Tech 2 to calibrate the damn thing!

I am sick of replacing this gorram part.

Lower Decks

I am a fan of the original Star Trek.  I like most of the movies with the original cast.  I even liked the animated season.

I enjoyed Next Generation.  The movies... not so much.

I didn't watch Deep Throat Space 9 very long.

I wanted to like Voyager (especially since Voyager is my Chicago class) but it never got traction with me.

I wanted to like Enterprise, but the interstitial stuff mentioned in the opening log entry always sounded more interesting than the episode we were about to watch.

I came within moments of buying JT a new television when I almost threw something at the screen in the third episode of Discovery.

Me and Star Trek have parted ways.  They left me, I didn't leave them.

But I gave Lower Decks a try.

They're mocking all the shit I hate about the NG and later stuff and it's wonderful!

The characters are grating, but I'm still enjoying it.

Willard In The Mornings

 

He's Dead And I'm OK With It

I've never hid that I detested them and I feel like I'd be a hypocrite if I expressed any remorse now they've died.

They wronged a friend and never said sorry.

They slighted me, and I walked away.

My anger with them kept me from maintaining a couple of friendships.

I know this is a bit inside baseball...

I guess I should explain.

Once upon a time there was a car club, The Gulf Coast SS Club.

The president of that club, effectively, declared himself President for Life and we disposed him.  It was over a matter of kicking two members out without even discussing it with us, the members.  It was HIS club, not our club.

The entire point of the revolution was to eschew the rules common with car clubs and just be "The Club Without Rules".

Two of our members were friends with the people who're a big, national, Impala SS and Caprice club.  INC, for Impalas-N-Caprices.  But they weren't big or national at the time.

So we became INC - FLA and everyone was all happy.  INC the big car club didn't care because we're all friends here.

But The Departed had other ideas.  He wanted the club to become an official affiliate of INC the big car club.

One day we were INC-TPA, there were bylaws and rules and he was President for Life.

I was meh until he harangued a longtime member who'd also had long running health problems and threatened to boot him from the club if he didn't attend the minimum number of meetings.  When I objected to this, I was also "put in my place".

So I quit.

Disappointingly, the club continued without me and didn't mind the President for Life situation and I became more disgusted that they accepted it.  They just accepted that he could tell someone they weren't a member anymore and didn't even fight him over it.

He never apologized to the longtime member.  Or his widow.

He never apologized to me.

Now he never will.

Call me old fashioned, but I feel that the first step in forgiveness is that apology.

I can forget it, I can ignore it, but I can't forgive it until remorse is expressed.

I was ignoring it.

Now he's dead and I don't mourn.

Can't Think Of Anything Else

So you get a picture!

It occurred to me that I'd never documented the addition of the American Defense mount for the red-dot mounted on the rifle thanks to the light in my preferred photo taking place being all wrong for weeks.

Private Organization

While the libertarians apologize for Big Tech® for being all censorious because they're private entities rather than Government...

Let me remind everyone that The Democrat and Republican Parties are also non-governmental entities with the stated goal of electing people office to impost their goals on us via government.

These two private entities are, in large if not totally, funded by the so-called private corporations...

He who pays the fiddler decides the tune.

I don't see the way out of it either.

Fooking Hot

The great dust removal of 2021 appears to show that the problem getting to the Win7 Bootcamp install was heat related.

If the fans were barely keeping things at bay, it prolly got to overheated temps in the short period when they were off during the reboot process.

Fans are running normal speeds now and I got Win7 to recover to an unspecified older point in time.

Caution is presently colored with optimism.

Watership Video Card

I flushed an entire warren of dustbunnies from all the hard to reach crevices of The Mac Pro today.

The video card being most affected.

Fan speeds are back to normal and it's much quieter in here.

JT found me some alternate desktop machines to consider for a moderate sum.

While it may still come to that, I'm good for the nonce, though if you want to READ about my battles getting a refurbished Dell to run Ubuntu and replace a Late 2008 Mac Pro, please stab that tip jar over there to the right!

Modeling

As the models get better, the disaster gets smaller.

This is how science is supposed to work.  Hypothesis, experiment, data, refined hypothesis lather, rinse, repeat.

East coast of Florida is unhappy with the best case from the most detailed model, but not devastated and out forever.  They've survived hurricane storm surges higher than that.

The tsunami will come without wind and rain.  Better than a hurricane surge by far.

Fingers crossed.

Made It Just In Time For The Ending

Last week FuzzyGeff recommended a webcomic, "Will Save World for Gold".

It's run every day since September 12, 2011.

I started in on the archives and got caught up on Thursday (9/23/21).

I would appear that September 24, 2021 is the last comic!

Well, poop!

Might Be New Computer Time

My desktop is an old Late 2008 Mac Pro.

I tried to change over to Win7 on Bootcamp and it locked the fuck up.

I just spent the last two hours just getting OSX to come back.

It's up, for now, but I worry that I'm on very borrowed time.

I liked this computer.  I still like this computer.

It does everything I want except get on the internet now.

Hitting the tip jar would help a lot with keeping The Abode of McThag online and on the air!

Shutterbug

Flier's holster, Model 15, shoot-me-first vest, coat hook...

Still life!

Success

Got the M1956A2 to the range.

Not shabby for 50 yards and irons!  20 shot group 21 seconds.

No stoppages or malfunctions.

Inshallah

It's like manana without all the damn rush.

The stars did not align to get to the range to test the M1956A2 today.

Gotta give some time between jigger and trigger and we had a couple beers at lunch.

Perhaps tomorrow.

New Leather

Got an aircrewman's M3 holster for the Model 15.

It's a known method of carry for a SEAL in Vietnam, so (of course) I'd have to snag one.  You could flip a coin over it being brown or black.  The Navy had brown in inventory and Army had black.  A SEAL would have grabbed it from whatever supply chain was handy, perhaps even trading an Army aviator for it.

World War Supply has a very nice, affordable, repop.

It is very tight on a 15 because it's meant for a Model 10 with a different hammer and sights.  Being leather, it'll stretch.

So What?

Much is being made of Biden being unpopular.

So what?

Unless he's impeached or removed via 25th amendment proceedings, he's going to be president until January 20, 2025 at a minimum, regardless of his approval ratings.

He's unlikely to be impeached because of the make-up of Congress and whom will replace him.

He's unlikely to be removed for similar reasons.

Goldfish mock the length of time Americans can remember something negative about a candidate.

Sure, Joe is unpopular now, but nobody will remember that once there's a Nazi Republican in spitting distance of winning an election.

What Language Is This?

I'm usually good a figuring what what language is being spoken, even if I can't understand it.

These set up cop ass ninjas got the whole hood fucking with em. Ninja dats my homies and they ain't going down like that. I got propositions for these hoes if they dont want they matha fucking heads split wide the fuck open like a bad night leaving the cino bino almost like getting ass rapped in the booty whole with no lupe cuz thats how bad it hurt after loosing all your money. Well ill be an investigator tf some shit like that happen. Hood that is hood. I got loyalty for ninjas who had it for me. Anyways propositions homie bring your gangster with ya too u finna need it.

The person uttering this is a white girl displaying a confederate flag in her profile photo on Facebook no less.

Obligatory Photo

I remember that I'd dubbed the DIY AR-10 the M1956A2.

Clean And Reassembled

Willard's DIY AR-10 is back together.  One of the local shops had a gas tube so I didn't have to wait for Brownell's.

Next stop, test firing!

Unrelated, I bought a little bottle of Lucas gun oil to try.  A couple of YouTube gunsmiths seem to like it.

You Know You Were Thinking It

The Gabby Petito murder bubbled up a very inappropriate thought...

But I think that Brian Laundrie simply did what most Floridians think about doing at least three times a year.

Killed someone from New York.

I wonder if her last words were something like, "Back in New York this was better..."

Too soon?

That's Not Right...

The gas tube on Willard's DIY AR-10 is bulged right where it enters the upper...  That bulge also bent the tube so that the gas-key was hitting at about 2-3 o'clock instead of going over smoothly.

Initial inspection of the bolt carrier revealed that gas wasn't getting into the expansion chamber behind the bolt, I was able to blow the blockage out.

Carbon.

There was a great deal of hard carbon built up in the expansion chamber too.

That's all cleaned out now.

I don't remember if we checked the bolt carrier for carbon before the new barrel went on.  If it was clean, then Malaysian surplus is some dirty shit!

It ate the Malaysian stuff all day without problems back when we did the NATO battle rifle comparo.  It was when we changed to commercial ammo and tried to do a side by side with the BRN-10 it started being finicky.

New gas tube is ordered from Brownell's.  Should be here on the first.

Anachronism

 

I'm pretty sure that when the Egyptians and Romans fought, they had nearly identical kit and the Egyptian would not be using a bronze khopesh.

¡Cortez Y Todos!

Lego has made a lot of historical pairings.

Aztec jaguar warrior with macauitl vs Spanish conquistador!

They're decently detailed.

Lego Arena

I ended up with two of the Lego retarii and some spare Brick Warriors add-on parts.

I didn't have two nets.  But I did have a lasso!

A retarius with a lasso instead of a net is a laquerius!

Uhhhhhhhh

This article on USS Wasp even has a picture of USS Wasp!

This USS Wasp, in fact:

A pity that the article is about THIS USS Wasp...

I guess we're lucky we didn't get THIS USS Wasp...

How embarrassing for them!

Riddle Of Steel

Steel making at TL3 starts with iron ore.

You first bake the ore to dry it.

Then you toss it in a bloomery and really heat it.

This gets you to about 2000˚ F and gets you bloomery or sponge iron.

The bloom is then bashed into wrought iron and can be further worked into steel.

Not a quick and easy process.

But somewhere between TL3 and TL4 we figured out how to take that bloom and make crucible steel without all that bashing and hammering to remove inclusions.

It's a matter of temperature and for a long time we couldn't get the furnace hot enough to actually melt the iron.

The little crucibles didn't make a lot of steel and took a lot of fuel, about twice as much as making the bloom in the first place.

Good for swords and smaller items, not so great for breastplates.

The blast furnace was likely accidentally discovered in an attempt to get higher temperatures.

TL3 fantasy worlds have something we didn't have historically.

Magic.

With the GURPS: Magic spell Heat you can add 20˚ per minute to an item.

While you could go from room temperature to the 2,800˚ limit, there's mundane ways to start at a higher temp.

Super-heating a bread oven gets you to 600, easy.

For one endurance point per 20˚/minute we can heat a fist sized lump or about 5 lb.  For double the energy we can heat a cubic yard of hematite and get about two and a half tons of steel in about a day's worth of work for a mage with just a few fire spells.

This makes many TL4 items available at TL3 and makes many staple fantasy world items available.

Because we're adding a mage to the process of making the steel, prices would conform to the GURPS standard of doubling the price for each TL difference.

And it's worth it!

A DR 6 medium plate cuirass is made from bronze at TL 1-3.  It's G$ 10,000.

At TL4 it's made from steel and G$ 2,500.  Getting it at TL3 would make it G$ 5,000.

Cheaper than bronze!

Go go Magic!

I Know The Next Step

Protestors in Melbourne break through police line.

Some of the cops were injured and the government's statements show they're totally clueless.

They are studiously ignoring what happens next time.

Instead of breaking through the shield-wall, the protestors break up the members of that wall; isolating them from each other, and beat the living shit out of them.

If worked up enough, beating the enforcers of a tyrannical edict to death.

The government is ignoring that the consent of the governed is being withdrawn.

Square Cube

Something that a "generic universal" role playing system should have in it is a means to calculate armor for super human characters.

I have stats for armor for a human, but what about a 12' tall giant?

Nuthin'.

Then it hit me that the answer is simple.

The cost and weight of the armor is are increased by the square of the difference in size between human and non-human.

That's because armor is a surface area item.  A given amount of DR isn't thicker because the area it covers is larger...

This is going to make things easier and harder.

Elementary With Silent E

I can turn an on into a one.

It's my number on one most common typo here at the block blog.

I am reasonably certain that I'm hitting the 'e', I must not be stabbing it hard enough when I'm typing fast.

28mm Not Minifig

This is VERY cool!

h/t Erin!

The only "drawback" is the scale isn't Minifig...  28mm minis are far more common with gamers though.

Speaking Of Gunsmithing

Assuming Willard will forgive my earlier trespasses...

He's got a DIY AR-10 clone that ran fine for a while then became unreliable.

I have some theories, but would need loan of the gun to do some testing.

I wanna probe the gas-port, for one.

Tools

I am a sucker for tools.

It's all I can do to keep from ordering the $70 Sterret punch set from Brownell's.  I have good punches already!

But those are BETTER punches...

It's a $70 question of the punches in hand being good enough.

For fuck's sake, there's a debate on Arfcom about 1/2" breaker bars.  The "BUY MERCIAN!" contingent sure hates that the $12 bar from Harbor Freight will suffice for virtually all your breaker bar needs.  It's Northern Tools equivalent survived having a 6' cheater pipe slid over the end.

But, sometimes, better tools are better.

 

I started out doing AR barrels with a DPMS multi-tool (left).

It is an aggravating barrel nut wrench.  You'd think with all that engagement, it'd be near fool-proof too.  Wrong.  It's a pain to get lined up correctly and the little nubbins are just a teensy bit undersized compared to the grooves in the barrel nut.  That means you can be almost in the right spot, but only grasping 4 grooves 180° apart and not engaging the bottom at all.

It slips.  A lot.

I've completely destroyed one barrel nut and did real damage the one on Sabrina.

 

Notice the rounded off and burred teeth?

I keep it around because it's got the spanner that works on both styles of carbine receiver extension lock-nuts and the flat-bladed end matches the screw in a rifle stock.

My next tool is the genuine USGI model (middle).  It's easy to get lined up and it didn't slip until I tried to get a barrel that Palmetto State had loctite'd onto the upper off.  That only ruined three teeth, but it bent out one of the pins on the wrench!  That pin is now loose.  I've tapped it back in and staked it a couple of times, but the wobble is getting looser and looser.

I keep this one because it has a third slot in it that fits the moderator on Tabitha.  the others only fit a standard flash-hider and rifle receiver extension.

The most recent wrench is a HSLD-011 from 2Unique Products. (right).

It's got excellent engagement and is easy to get lined up!

Everyone wins!

You'd Think I'd Learn

Just once I'd like to recognize that someone was chucking my ass to the curb in time to be graceful about it.

Now To Get It Defined As A Disabilty So I Can Cash In!

I've long known that my sensitivity to sound was called misophonia.

Being pissed off at the fucking twitchers is called misokinesia.  I did not know that.

They're just now noticing it scientifically.

I wonder how I get in touch with the researchers.  Being a sufferer, I might be able to offer some insights.

¡Interesante!

So I decided to try taking one of the FACOGs apart to see what's inside.

Playing around with the ocular lens reveals that if I can just move it 0.040" to the rear the reticle is in focus!

I'll bet that a shim or thicker gasket would do it.

Marv has argon to displace the humid air when we seal it back up too.

Decision

I am not going to get The Man involved.

My friend is still independent enough that he could drive to help if he wanted it.

While somewhat isolated from visits to the house or phone, he's still got the car and email.

While I hope that he does get to a doctor, get the antibiotics, diuretics, compression socks and some extended time getting the swelling down...

I cannot, and will not, try to force him.

Speaking Of That Liberal Harridan

She posted Steve Hofstetter's "take-down" of the 2nd Amendment to her Facebook page.

I don't link to comedians who're not funny, so find it via Duck Duck Go if you really want.

I will post Colin Noir's fisking!

Points

While scouring all my character sheets for their guns, I noticed that I had darn few of the traditional 3e GURPS starting point level of 100/40/5.

That's 100 character points total with a limit of -40 in disadvantages and -5 in quirks.

There are lot of 150/50/5 characters in that pile.

I'm pretty sure that's because the player's complained that they couldn't get the characters they wanted at 100 points.

Because of the changes to how the basic stats (ST, DX, IQ and HT) are priced; a 3e 100/40/5 character is close to being a 150/40/5 in 4e.

This is making me want to convert a couple of the 3e 150 pointers to see how well the translate to 4e.

Among the old characters are a bunch with 42 starting points.

This is from one of Standing Bear's first GURPS worlds where FuzzyGeff and I were the rules referees but not the Game Masters.

There was no limit on disads but your willingness to play them and suffer the penalties of having them.

There was a bit of resentment at our willingness to enforce the disadvantages on the players while we tag-teamed being the GM's keeper of the rules.

An interesting bit from this world was, despite it being a standard TL3 fantasy world, there were no restrictions on technology.  Starting wealth was the limit on technology.

Modern worlds started with $10 to $15 thousand to start, fantasy worlds start with $1,000.  Hard to buy much high tech stuff without the standard wealth assumptions.

So I experimented with several character concepts to cheat the wealth to get what I wanted.

$1,000 starting in TL3 is one thousand dime sized silver pieces, or a pound of silver.

If the assumption was we started with a pound of silver, make the character from a place where silver is unusually valuable in notional dollars and buy the expensive high tech stuff with the notional dollar.

If the assumption was a $1,000 in local currency, then have the character buy their stuff where they can leverage arbitrage.

It turned out that silver was the basis and my Traveller Imperial Marine from metals poor world passed Bear's sniff test.

That Marine became his sword of righteous vengeance!

First was Vint.  He'd made a dragon and FuzzyGeff and I had made some rules mistakes in the racial package.  We caught our mistake after he'd played the character, told Bear and it was ruled that, "what's done is done," but anyone running a dragon from then on would be subject to the correct rules.

Vint played the dragon in such a way as to lord that he'd gotten over to Bear.  Bad plan.

Anthrophagism is not permitted in The Third Imperium and Vint's dragon had a habit of munching down on the bodies of the defeated.  The other players didn't care, because Orcs.  But my Marine would have cared a lot.  He did care a lot.

Me, the player, didn't want to notice; but Bear very pointedly told me I did notice and wouldn't let me out of it.

So the dragon took an FGMP-14 to the face.  Vint never forgave me that and stopped playing altogether.

The second instance was Angela.

Bear loathed psionics and ignored our advice to simply put an extortionate "unusual background" charge on anything he didn't want to deal with.

Imperial Marines don't like psi.  Mother ruttin' turbine-headed Zhodani scum are all psi and evil and all need to be wiped off the face of the universe... ahem.  None too fond.

Built into my helmet was a psi-shield and I was protected.  FuzzyGeff's character had me talked down from murdering her on the spot.  He made a rational argument, cited compelling data, and I accepted that her character didn't need destroying.

She, on the other hand, didn't like how my character had treated hers (and we didn't get along outside of the game either) so eventually she got hold of a very powerful item and wished my psi-shield away.

The system fail tell-tales go off in the HUD and I work out if my character can work out who it was.

It is agreed that even if she didn't do it, she's the obvious suspect.

Angela gets several important lessons all at once.

Psi is line of sight only.  Hiding behind a 4' thick oak tree's trunk means she cannot see me, therefore cannot use her psi attacks on me.

Psi doesn't have the same kind of range that even primitive firearms have, let alone ultra-tech items like a fusion gun.

4' of oak is not concealment, advanced sensors can 'see' her back there.

4' of oak is not cover.  FGMP-14 punches through that like it's not there.

Vint had more of a chance.

She hated me personally for that.

I'm fine with that, she's a liberal harridan judging from her Facebook page.

Inventory

I grabbed my GURPS character folder and put all the guns in a spreadsheet.

I expected that FN would be over-represented.

I was incorrect!

Out of 67 characters:

The most common gun, by far, is the M1911A1 appearing on 13 character sheets.

Next up is the Glock 21 on 8.

.45 ACP is very well represented because there's even a .45 Luger in there.

Then the FG.42/I on 5.

The the M16A2 on 4.

The FAL and High Power appear just three times each and not on the same sheets.

I really thought there'd be more FAL and HP.

And more SMLE!

There was a day when I emptied my character folder into the trash, keeping only the active characters I was still playing.  Perhaps most of the Fabrique National guns were on those sheets?

Who knows?

Open Letter To Walgreens

It is unacceptable to allow customers to use the drive through to drop off a prescription and then wait for it to be filled.

It blocks the way for others.

Since the customer is incapable of being polite and pulling away for the 20-30 minutes it takes to fill a pill bottle (still wondering about that too) you have to TELL THEM to pull away and come back in 20-30.

You will also have to tell them to go away if they come back before their prescription is ready.

I only say this because I just spent an hour an a half behind three people.  All of whom put a prescription slip in the drawer then sat and waited for pill bottles.

The Giant Negative In The Room

If I sic the cops on my friend for a welfare check, they've got three ways to look at it.

1. My friend didn't realize how serious this was and get him to a hospital to get treated.  Once treated he can come home.  This is the only all positive.

2. They decide that my friend cannot understand how serious this is and commit him.  That's a Baker Act moment.  Since he's not mentally incompetent, he'll get treatment and be released after his psych eval no problems.

3. They decide that my friend cannot understand how serious this is and commit him.  That's a Baker Act moment.  Despite his mental clarity the physical neglect makes them think he cannot care for himself and they commit him to a assisted care facility.

Irregardless of how they decide to handle him, his step-daughter, an RN, could be cited for failure to report a serious medical condition.  It could even rise to the level of abuse of the elderly or infirm because of her advanced licenses.  She's not allowed to blow it off because he says he doesn't want to go to the hospital until she's got a "Against Medical Advice" release, and that requires a trip to a doctor to get.

And the mere act of siccing the cops on him for a welfare check will nuke the friendship forever.

How much difference is there between losing a friend to a horrible disease and losing them because you've offended them irreparably?

Still out a friend.  Him being alive to hate me is small solace.

Being unable to contact them makes this harder.  Can't swing by to see how they're doing because gated community and the step daughter not bothering to get the property manager to get them set up on the "we live here" list.

Can't call because... his phone is either dead or the daughter fucked up transferring service to a new carrier.

Email disappears into the void.

So I sit here hoping to see him pull into the driveway to show off his new bandages, reduced swelling and with a story about pretty nurses fending off his advances.

Or, at the very least, him pulling into the drive way and asking if The Lovely Harvey could look at it and have HER order him to the e-room.

I am beside myself.

Worst is the thought that he's fully aware of what he's got and is deliberately avoiding treatment.  Sepsis is a horrible way to commit suicide.

Show Me Your Bayonet Lugs!

Today the expiration of the federal ban on cosmetic features on firearms expired!

Happy 17th birthday Sundowned AWB.

Actual, Real, Bonafide Treason

I'm a good enough shot that I am sure I could be on the firing squad.

I'll even bring my own ammo.

Before, I thought him incompetent.  Now I see he's a traitor.

Gladiatory Update

I ordered some Roman gladiator accessories from Brick Warriors.

They make the Retiarius net I remembered seeing.  And his shoulder harness, which is hard to see here.

The Murmillo/Secutor/Thraex is sporting a galeri from Brick Warriors.

Because I upgraded my legionary, the Secutor gets the proper rectangular shield and the centurion gets a round.

Not The Same

Tartar and calculus as they pertain to teeth don't mean the same things as not.

I've got an impressive build-up on otherwise healthy, but neglected, teeth.

Because I'm about a year into being serious about brushing, where I wasn't serious at all for years, the tartar control toothpaste is starting to soften the stuff and it's coming off in chunks here and there.

Tonight the floss caught briefly and there was a snapping noise.

In the sink was a tiny triangle of the stuff and a gap where it came from behind my bottom front teeth.

Anyone got a spare $1,500 to get into the dentist for a proper cleaning?

Increasing Worry UPDATED

First they move into a gated community.

Then I express concern about their health.

Then their phone is "switched" to a new provider.

It's really starting to look like their "trusted loved ones" they live with are trying to isolate them from anyone who will try to help.

Especially since they're clearly suffering from something that requires professional medical attention and are likely relying on their "trusted loved one's" supposed expertise in blowing off getting to the emergency room and getting what's obviously weeping cellulitus the treatment that it requires.

I hesitate to post this.

I can't think of any way to get them to treatment that doesn't end the friendship.

At least one way of getting them treatment will cost the "trusted loved one" their professional license for ignoring the symptoms and not getting proper treatment.

I am worried.

I don't want to lose my friend.

I most especially don't want him to die from ignoring this.  It's not going to heal on its own.

I've already lost my mother's father from ignoring this.

I have another friend who's been in and out of the hospital for this.

Dammit!

UPDATE:

The Lovely Harvey sends: "I will examine the situation and advise if the friend comes over.  Cellulitis is serious shit and turns septic on a dime.  Never mind necroticizing fasciitis."

Sometimes You Eat The Bear

FuzzyGeff's AR carbine has used almost all of the windage travel to get it zeroed.

That's often a sign of a canted front sight base.

Very often, there's enough play in the barrel indexing pin slot on the upper that if you apply counter-torque to the FSB you will correct for the cant.

So I made the attempt.

The slot is very tight so no change was made by counter-torquing.

I could make the slot wider...  But it zeros at all and making that slot wider can lead to other problems.

I'm Old Enough That...

I am old enough to remember when minority rights were something the left defended.

If most people are vaccinated against Wu Ping Cough, what does that make the unvaccinated?

It's OK if you have to take off your shoes to do the math.

How Many Taliban Again?

Not content to let Democrats carry gold, silver and bronze for worst living president; George W Bush conflated mass murder with breaking and entering.

So anyone who supported Trump on January 6th is a terrorist as bad as the Taliban or Al Qada?

Fine, asshole, we're terrorists now.

But let's do wee little bit of math, shall we?

How many Taliban did it take to send the US military home?

How many Trump "terrorists" are there?

The fucking Taliban didn't even have access to the families of the troops here.

You idiots are going to press the wrong button soon and someone is going to show what rank amateurs mass shooters have been compared to the folks you're actively pissing off.

The Battle Of The Turkey

Rolling the dice for our two young French noble idiots fighting for the honor of FuzzyGeff's character's bloated warthog lovely wife reminded me of another GURPS fight.

We were getting bored with the standard Fantasy character tropes so we went off the map and took advantage of the G part of GURPS 3e.

FuzzyGeff made a fox with human intelligence.

I made a disgraced baron, William the Landless.  The creative part for me was the "Dead Broke" level of wealth.  $0.00 starting wealth.

I got two pieces of equipment.  My threadbare noble's clothing and a signet ring.

Because we coordinated a bit, I took "Exalted Fox" as a language so I could understand FuzzyGeff's character and he took common to understand me.

Our first encounter in Carl's world was an orc.  He had a spear and leather armor and I had a crude club I made from picking up a branch.

It was a tough fight and I almost didn't make it, and wouldn't have without the fox's assistance.

But FuzzyGeff, it turns out, had the tougher fight ahead.

While my character was recovering from his injuries, the fox went hunting for something for me to cook.  He had a quirk about preferring cooked food and someone with thumbs really helped there.

His battle with the turkey took almost an hour of real time and was a very near thing!

The fox prevailed, but wow!  What a fight!

Corps-A-Corps

FuzzyGeff and I ran, over the phone, a series of duels to see if GURPS even came close to modeling reality with going corps-a-corps in a duel.

 

We made some character stand-ins with straight 10 stats and no points in skills.

It was obvious that the default DX brawling vs DX-5 smallsword that brawling would be the winning strategy, so we didn't play that out.

So we gave them each a point in Melee Weapon (Smallsword) for a skill of 9 and ran that.

FuzzyGeff won two out of three.

The brawling does have a place in the low-skill end of things and I almost won the first bout by all-out-attacking his face with the pommel of my sword rather than stabbing.

I rolled poorly, FuzzyGeff rolled well.

We verified that all-out-attack is high-risk, high-reward.

We discovered that you don't use the rapid strike rule (two attacks at -6) with a skill level of 9 because you will be very vulnerable to a critical failure and be disarmed against your opponent.  Fists against sword is a bad place to be and it's my only victory.

The Need Is Clearly Bullshit

Some things that stand out about the new vaxx mandate.

If it were genuinely vital that everyone be vaccinated, then everyone should be required to get it.

Why, then, are postal workers exempted?

Why, then, are illegal aliens exempted?

Why, then, is having fewer than 100 employees exempted?

Why do the exemptions seem to all be attached to union labor who support the party in power?

If it was truly vital, then they wouldn't be letting anyone out.

If you're vaccinated but are vulnerable to infection from the unvaccinated; you're not actually vaccinated.  Having the CDC change their definitions doesn't change what a vaccination means and has meant for more than 200 years.

Of course, most people prolly don't know why it's "vaccinate" in the first place.  Hint: cows.

Completely ignoring natural immunity is the epitome of unscientific.  Many of us are immune from simply catching it and surviving.

I think it will eventually be proven, and those at fault forced to admit it, that it is an escapee from a Chinese lab, and its development was funded by US tax money.

When that happens, one more reason to stand in the line in Hell and wait to kick Kissinger in the balls over.  Because without Kissinger and Nixon, China would be Cuba with a lot of land.  Hell, half of it would prolly be Russian now if we hadn't opened up to them.

Invasive Knowledge Freely Given

My obsessive logging of every gun my friends have ever shown me in GURPS terms has also led to me knowing the initial value of their collections.

I record the purchase prices on the weapon table, so some guns could very well be worth more than what I have listed.

Some guns are worth less...

Come to 1060 W. Addison if you want to see the list.  Ask for Elwood.

But It Rhymes

One of the things that allowed the rise of such charming folks as the Nazis was a huge number of returning soldiers who were shocked to see how bad it had gotten at home while they were at war and that they didn't feel defeated.

They felt betrayed by the powers that be.

It does not matter if they could have defeated the allies or not.

What matters is they didn't feel that they'd been defeated by the allies in the field.

The fighting in the streets right after the war also shows they had a lot of fight left in them too.

And here we are...

Home is all fucked up thanks to Wu Ping Cough.

The troops don't feel defeated.

They feel betrayed and humiliated by the way that the current admin called it quits and pulled out.

Times might just get interesting.

Rotary Air Displacement Device

The ceiling fan in the living room started sounding like a badly glazed brake rotor.

Bad sign.

I cycled through the speed settings and high was only churning at what was once medium speed and low was making electric motor trying its best noises and barely turning the blades.

Another bad sign was the motor housing was rather warm.

New fan has been installed in a record one hour ten minutes!

The Lovely Harvey is ecstatic!  "I can actually feel the air moving now!"

Happy wife, happy life.

Stack-Up

Lavender Linda's rear sight was almost to the limit of travel to the left to get it to zero.

I wondered if the front sight that I installed myself was canted to the left, and it was.

The slot in the upper receiver for the barrel index pin is, shall we say, generous.

And all of the generosity is in the same direction as the barrel nut turns.

In all likelihood I rotated the barrel while tightening it the first time.

So tonight I loosened the barrel nut, held the barrel all the way against the opposite side of the slot, and retorqued it.

Because I have a red-dot that is zeroed I can bring the irons to match them to be in the ball-park at the range... seven clicks towards the center gets the windage back to matching the red-dot!

The rear sight is now nearly centered between the ears of the carry handle, like I like them to be.

FuzzyGeff's carbine has the rear sight almost to the end of its travel too.  I will have to ask him if he wants me to mess around with it.  He might not care.  Zeroed is zeroed and having the rear aperture centered is aesthetics.

Maybe It Should

 If 7.5 million people losing their free ride is a big enough reduction in consumer spending to topple the economy, perhaps the economy was too shaky to stand.

That's just more than 2% of the US population.  That should be a marginal hit to the economy, not a devastating blow.

Taller Mount

The American Defence AD-T1 mount is just a little bit higher than the factory one, and since I had one laying around anyway...  It's a bottom half co-witness now and having the dot a little higher makes it a lot easier to acquire in some "point it around the bedroom" testing.  We only use the most rigorous testing protocols here at Casa de McThag!

The American Defence mount adds 1.1 oz. to the weight of the assembly, but the extra height and the option to quickly ditch it are nice.

I have also confirmed that the goose-neck mount will keep its zero, making security simpler because Linda can be stored in the M12 rack under lock and key instead of loose under lock and key in the secure closet.  I like having more than one layer of locks.

Gooseneck

Back when I was a kid, if you wanted to mount a red-dot on your AR, and you didn't want a chin-weld, you needed a goose-neck mount.

With a Primary Arms Micro Red-Dot MD-RBGII it has an absolute co-witness that is easy to get your eye on but near impossible to get a picture of.

 Can't see the dot, but you can see the sight picture, sort-of.

With the mount, it adds 9.1 oz. to the tare of the rifle.  I might get the thinnest of the height spacers to make it a 1/3 co-witness, but I will go shooting first.

I dialed the dot to rest on the top of the front-sight while looking through the sights; and it appears to hold zero when I remove the whole assembly from the carry handle.

That's important, because otherwise it wouldn't fit in my M12 rifle rack!

The sight picture really encourages the proper two-eyes open aiming method for red-dots!

Gotta Love The Royal Navy

China was bragging about how the three Type 093 subs they'd gotten close to the HMS Queen Elizabeth and her escorts.

Bragging that they'd done some firing solutions and such.

Odd that they didn't mention the Astute stalking them.

The British press certainly did.

If You're Not A Primate You're Not Human

Our full scientific name is Animalia Chordata Mammalia Primates Haplorhini Simiiformes Hominidae Homininae Homo Sapiens.

But someone doesn't think that applies.

Considering the fact that all the races interbreed fully, black people are indeed primates.

So are white people.

So are Asian people.

So are gay people.

So are straight people.

So are men.

So are women.

So are any combination of LGBTQ you can think of.

So are Catholics.

So are Moslems.

So are Jews.

So are heathen savages.

Primates we are, one and all!

Degenerate Into Fisticuffs

 If everything went right, this starts at 29:38 and YouTube hasn't taken it down...

  If it didn't start at 29:38 the skip ahead and start there.

A sword fight in GURPS, in my experience, has never had anyone use anything but their sword to attack or defend.

It's something I mean to explore.  Is there an advantage to climbing into the same hex as your opponent and beginning close combat?

This post is also a reminder to FuzzyGeff that he needs to refresh his memory of the close combat, brawling and grappling rules because I want to play through it next time we chat.

Willard Is Officially Famous

Apparently, Ian from Forgotten Weapons has forwarded John Wynne-Hopkins' picture of Willard to Mike from Bloke on the Range.  Mike then posted it to his Facebook page.

OMG the speculation about where this pic was taken!

I think he'd be surprised to find he was Canadian Op-For in the mid-80's!

Because One Is Getting Bigger

I am bemused that Hollywood still reports box-office in terms of dollars and not in terms of tickets sold.

Perhaps it's because inflation makes it appear that more tickets were sold?

It's been a long time since I watched a movie in a theater, but it was a lot more expensive than when I first started going.

If the ticket costs three times as much, you only need 1/3 the sales to say your movie did as well as a past blockbuster.

Never mind that Enron executives went to jail for using accounting practices which were transparent and honest compared to Hollywood Accounting.  (Enron was actually using an accepted accounting method which wasn't considered dishonest... but it was illegal for them to use it as a utility company).

But That Would Be Wrong

Being the retro-head I am, I have period magazines for each of my M16 recreations.

Gods forbid I use the wrong magazine when setting one aside for "home defense"...

There's one exception, the 1:12 guns get the 20-round USGI mags because all the 30-rounders are loaded with rounds too heavy to stabilize with the slow twist.

It's tedious, but the pictures will not be anachronistic!

One Good Thing

Remember when you were a kid and they told you that anyone could be president?

Joe Biden has proven that in spades.

OK There Is Some Grail

There are a few guns I'd love to have, but they're rather spendy.

One of those FG.42 clones would be fun, for example.

A Finnish AK or a Galil.

A Polish Beryl.

2nd Gen Smith.

S&W 19 that matches my 15.

Colt 10mm.

Winchester Model 54 in .270.

It's my silly obsession with food and shelter keeping me from these goals!

Decided Lack Of Grail

I'm looking at the gun cabinet and noting that I am astonishingly content.

There are a couple of designs that I'd still like to Grok in their fullness, but nothing too pressing.

I'd love to have an AR-180, but I'm familiar enough with the design that I don't need a vintage example to understand it.  FuzzyGeff's Bushmaster M-17 stood in for the operating system to let me understand it.

Pistols have been of the Browning pattern so long that there's scant few that raise my skirts kilt anymore.

I've tasted and Groked pretty much all the rifles there are.

It's weird to be here at the end of hands-on with lots of reading left to do.

You Might Wanna Hold Off On That Victory Lap

The Supreme Court did not rule that the new abortion law in Texas was Constitutional, they simply refused to issue an emergency stay.

In effect, they are saying that the Pro-Choice side must actually use the legal system and file suits and go through the entire due-process... which might lead to a ruling that Roe-v-Wade still stands.

Second, this law is to allow Karens to report on their neighbors and sue the abortion provider, not a prohibition on the actual post-hearbeat abortion.

Wanna bet that the courts are going to rule that third parties, like Karen, have no standing to sue because they're not an injured party?

Wanna bet?

Self Medicate Fail

There's times I wish that things like Gabapentin didn't make me wanna punch The Precious to max speed at a highway embankment.

Tonight is pain and the over-the-counter solutions are not solving anything!

Memory Is Associative

Reading the King Tut book reminds me WHY my mom scored those tickets.

The news was all full of the exhibition, and my teachers are all talking about it.

2nd grade teachers.

I found out, at the local library, that there was going to be a speaker talking about the tomb and the archaeological find.

Mom dropped me off at the unheard of hour of 6pm and picked me up at 10pm.

The speaker was kind of astonished to have a 2nd grader asking pointed, informed, questions about it, but loved that I was utterly fearless about asking about things I didn't know.

There is, after all, only one cure for ignorance.

I had a great time!

I should probably gotten a history degree, but shiny numbers and engineering stole my heart!

Speaking Of Lost Books

 

When we lived in Chicago my mom scored us tickets to see the King Tut exhibition at the Field Museum of Natural History.

I "camped" in the car with a buddy in the garage so we didn't have to worry about waking up and our moms drove us in.

The sole souvenir I got was a copy of this book.  It got lost with my AD&D books shipping to Germany.

Ebay to the rescue!

Hairy Hustler

 

This Matchbox car was a personal favorite of mine as a child.

I, despite my hoarder pack-rat tendencies, I don't have any of the Matchbox or Hot Wheels cars from when I was a kid.

But this car keeps coming to mind because it was also my main counter when I started playing Car Wars when I lived with my dad in Minnesota.

Mine was in about this shape when I repainted it dark blue to better represent my car in the game.

Sadly, I can't find that car's sheet.  I think it was with my AD&D books my Mom shipped to me in Germany and only 3 of 4 boxes made it.

You Keep Repeating That

OK, Cops, you keep saying something along the lines of, "people open carrying will make our jobs harder," and "letting people carry without a permit will make our jobs harder."

Leaving aside that your job is to enforce the laws that we the people enact through our duly elected legislatures regardless of the difficulty to the employees of the executive.  McDonald's is hiring if you're feeling too put upon.

How does this make your job harder?

You literally don't have to pay any attention to someone with a holstered or slung firearm now!  You don't have to respond to seeing a pistol in someone's waistband when their shirt flies up.

You don't have to detain, disarm and verify if someone who's printing has a valid packing permit any more.

This makes your job easier not harder.

You have fewer tasks, not more.

The person who might have more work is the 911 operator taking calls from Karen because she's unaccustomed to seeing people carrying guns.

Karen will become accustomed, eventually, and she will stop calling.

I am pretty sure that the truth of the matter is you fucks like being the only people who get to pack openly.  That you're the elite, that you're special, that you're better than the people you police.

You aren't and shouldn't be.

Before the wheels came off on American law enforcement you were not "law enforcement officers" but "peace officers".

You weren't above the citizens you were among, but a fellow citizen.

Before you got elite on us, you were one of us and we worked together in a partnership.

But your unions and professional organizations lobbied to exclude us from assisting you.  To the point that if a cop doesn't see the crime being committed, then no arrest will be made, despite ample evidence that a crime occurred.

No, Officer, tell your unions that I like it I have more freedom and if it makes your job more difficult; tough titty.

Time Flies

It has been more than five years since I took a chance on a Palmetto State Armory nitride finish barrel for Kaylee.

I have definitely not shot it enough to wear it out, but it, likewise, has not suddenly failed for no reason.

I've liked it well enough that all the 5.56 mid-length guns are running PSA nitride "Freedom" barrels.  4150CMV, 1:7 twist, 5.56x45mm chamber; winning.

As a matter of fact, the only barrel purchase since I changed to nitride that wasn't PSA or nitride is the 20" gov't profile barrel for the A4 clone from Brownells.

That one is 4150CMV, chrome lined and parkerized.  But for a clone, it needed to have a particular finish.

1:9 is running kind of thin lately too.  At one time 1:7 twist barrels were hard to find and cost a premium over the 1:9.  Now it seems to have become the standard.

Something else that used to be cheap was 1:12 20" pencil barrels.  Retro demand sent those to the stratosphere.  Vintage barrels are getting very expensive and the repops have several farbs which tick off the purists.  I had to resort to a repop for the M16A1 clone.

Disaster Averted

Softwarejanitor relates that Texas was saved from becoming a burned out shell from the riots caused by Constitutional Carry by the rain of liberal tears and unrelenting flow of urine from the pantswetting hysteria putting out the fires as fast as they could be lit.

Still Animated

It would appear that The Great Lich of San Franciso is still being animated by whatever unholy pacts she made.

Darn it!

I still wanna splash her with Holy water just to see...

Settled?

It's entirely possible that the Taliban just settled the entire AK vs AR debate.

They have the choice between them and appear to have universally changed over to the AR platform.

Oh Please

A thread on Arfcom says they heard a rumor that Dianne Feinstein has died.

Did sunlight hit her or something?

Fall on a wooden stake?

Tripped on the holy-water brazier and get soaked?

What else finishes off the undead?

It's completely unconfirmed, but it'd be great news if true.