28 February 2022

Mass Denial

It appears that BATFE is bouncing back any and all Form 1 for a silencer on the grounds that you can't make a suppressor without making parts and every single part is, in and of itself, a suppressor.

I shit you not.

Write your congress critter and see if we can get some traction for a bill that redefines the damn things as an assembly or at least restores the definition to the serialized portion of that assembly.

Even better, get them to remove silencers, SBRs and SBSs from the NFA altogether.

I'd say to scrap the whole NFA, but there's no appetite in Peoria for things making that much sense.

Heeeeeey Baybeeeeeee

DiFi's hubby passed away, putting her back on the market for anyone willing to launder her Chinese business deals through the thin veneer of marriage.

Do you dare to be her fourth hubby?

Willard Relays

Willard tells me that he's read an account where a couple of Russian tanks had been abandoned by their crews after running out of fuel.

The locals, helpfully, towed them away and refueled them.

Sadly, when the Ukrainian government asked after them, it turns out they had been lost by the locals in a tragic boating accident.

27 February 2022

I Haven't Seen Anyone Comment On It

I've seen several photos of Russian POW's wearing NBC detection tape on their uniforms.

I think that's significant.

Does anyone else think that matters?


UPDATE: Just in case...  NBC tape is chemical detection tape only.  It doesn't detect nukes or bio.

What's supposed to happen is that it changes color to let you know you've brushed against something that's got a chem agent on it.  As has been mentioned in comments, LOTS of things give false positives.

But the fact that the Russians are wearing the tape means they were expecting someone to be using chem weapons at some point.

Also note, chem tape is worn differently and is very distinct from the arm-bands that some units are wearing for IFF.  Hint, look at their legs.

I Do So Love Reading People Who've Never Been In Combat Writing About It Like They Know

The helos flying with impunity are doing so because the Russians have achieved LOCAL air superiority.

That does not imply that they've managed to get air supremacy.

Notice that those two terms are different, because they mean different things.

Air superiority can be fleeting and temporary, but it means the enemy is not flying where you're in control at this time.

Air supremacy is when the enemy doesn't fly at all.

AND NEITHER TERM HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH GROUND FIRE, TRIPLE-A, SAMS OR IADS.

Example: Coalition forces had complete and dominant air supremacy over Baghdad; but no control over the ground thus all the tracers...

You don't build your air-head into a contested landing zone if you know what you're doing and the Russians actually do know what they are doing here.

Sabre Drill

While Marv and Harvey were tending a nice fire in the firepit, I decided to get some exercise for my right arm since it's been very much sidelined by the accident.

So I grabbed my cavalry saber off the wall and did some basic drills.

My forearm is very rubbery now.

The good news is my shoulder is not in pain and I got nothing hurting from the ribs!

Huzzah!

I can tell there will be some sore muscles tomorrow, but that's OK.

26 February 2022

45 Pictures

 

Top Row (L-R) M1911A1, Star PD, SIG-Sauer P220, S&W 625-3 Model of 1989.
Bottom Row (L-R) Glock 21, CZ 97B, Kahr CT-45, S&W M&P 45C. 
 
Only the Glock and Kahr have no factory means of altering the grip.

To be fair, we're going to have to go shooting.  .45 is a bit hard to come by at the moment.

 

The Contenders

There isn't much to differentiate between most of the forty-fives in GURPS terms.

Just adjust the shots, weight and reload times, really.

Oh, and prices...

That Reminds Me

I really wish someone would make a damn clone of the Finnish AK.

The scanty few Valmet imports are breathtakingly expensive.

C'mon PSA!  Get on it!

Hakkaa Päälle Bitches

Putin has threatened vague bad consequences to Finland and Sweden should they seek to join NATO.

Putie, Baby, Finland beat Russia every time it attacked without US material support.

But, what if they take you at your word?  Now.  While you're all distracted?

Can you shift your forces back North in time while still making sure Ukraine doesn't bite you in the ass?

What if Sweden joins in.

They've been fed up with your incursions into their waters with your submarines for years.

I think they've got the sand to seriously fuck up that giant naval base you've got up there.

Just sayin'.

Besides, both these nations are bug-fuck nuts.

Never fuck with crazy, Vlad.

Here's An Idea

If China goes for Taiwan we should reunify Korea.

Make them react to us for a change.

I'm Old Enough To Remember

Remember when it was Kiev not Kyiv?

Peking not Beijing.

Saigon not Ho Chi Min City.

Bandar Shapur not Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni.

Salisbury not Harare.

There's many others.

I Dunno What They're Doing

In my quest to replace The Precious I've been tracking a particular '49 Chevy Styleline DeLuxe.

The car is at a local branch of Streetside Classic Cars.

It's as original as you want such a car to be.

The big changes are an r134 AC system (essential for Florida), 12v electrical system, electric fan for cooling and auxiliary gauges added.

It appears to be a straight, rust-free restoration running the original 216 stovebolt and three-on-the-tree.

I've been watching Streetside Classic Cars relist this thing for a month.

It's not bidding over $12k and that doesn't make reserve.

They list it as a classified ad with "make an offer" active and end the ad early to relist it as an auction minutes later.

I think they're in violation of ebay's terms of service because they are required to respond to my offer, even if they end the ad early.  My offer got no response and they ended the ad early to relist as an auction.

I don't know what they're up to, but selling cars doesn't appear to be what they do.

Dim Recollection

I remember in a way-back...

Ukraine was petitioning to join NATO.

Russia wasn't happy about that, Poland had just joined...

In the talks something to the effect of, "you have to stop actively antagonizing the Russians, you know," was stated.

"Why would we stop doing that?" was the crux of their reply.

For me that was a headdesk moment and foretold what is happening today.

Ukraine and Russia were going to have this war eventually, and letting Ukraine into NATO or the EU would just drag everyone else in like WW1.

What's surprising is none of Europe, NATO or US aligned ourselves to send troops in the event of an invasion.

Not Mutually Inclusive

I hear that Putin is calling the leadership of Ukraine "neo-nazi" and Zelenskyy is countering that his government cannot be neo-nazi because he's Jewish.

While that's a damn good defense against the charge of being a nazi, it's not air tight.

Nothing about National Socialism demands antisemitism.

It's entirely possible to be full on fascists without being antisemitic.

Italy did it, for example.

Antisemitism is a common feature of fascism, but not an integral part.

All that said, I have no idea if the accusation of nazism is true or not.

Considering the accuser, probably not.

Neither side in this is particularly saintly.

If we're going to be slinging comparisons to nazis, we need to point out that Hitler invaded a couple of places on the pretext of protecting German descended peoples living there.

Putin is explicitly doing that.

Pot, Kettle, similarly dark shades.

Armed

 

I don't know what he's planning here, but...

WAR!

I always wondered what the average person felt like when Hearst started publishing headlines about USS Maine blowing up.

Yellow journalism is alive and well in America today!

And here we were worried it'd died.

Rejoice!

23 February 2022

Compliance Test

The Lovely Harvey is a senior-manager of the department that does the "this call may be monitored" stuff.

She regales me with stories of the stupidity her fellow employees do on monitored and recorded phone calls.

Car salesmen would listen to this shit and be horrified at the ethics on display to make a sale!

One of the departments in her company is being reorganized and an entire job title is being eliminated from on department.

There's opportunity to move laterally for most of them, and a chance to move up rather than be laid off.

The chance to move up means taking a "compliance test".

It's 20 questions concerning what's allowed and not allowed of the people on the phones.  16 of them are so fucking obvious that even I got them right.  The other four are part of the everyday work her company does, so any employee on the phones should be familiar with what the answers should be (and even I got two of them right).

You need to get 18 out of 20 correct and she says that it's commonplace for them to get fewer than 10.  (Remember, I managed 18 out of 20 without any training at all.)

Did I mention that everyone taking this test received training on the answers and receives periodic refresher training?

There's just no excuse for these people to not know the answers... yet...

I Love A Happy Ending

Guy, a convicted sex offender no less, shoots a deputy and while on the run breaks into some random citizen's house.

Random citizen shoots him dead right there.

U-S-A! Flor-I-Da! U-S-A! Flor-I-Da! U-S-A! Flor-I-Da!

Yikes!

Because of the impending delivery of my new bed, we're looking to rearrange the bedroom.

I have three short book shelves and would like to consolidate them into a taller and wider single book shelf.

I am not prepared to sell a kidney to get it.

Found It!

When Willard started loaning guns for the .45 Comparison, Marv wondered about the "45 ACP revolver" Willard was known to have.

Willard indicated that he was "pretty sure" he knew where it was.

He was not even close!

I was moving things around in MY garage and noticed a gun rag where there shouldn't have been one.

When I grabbed it to move it to where such things are kept, I noticed it seemed a bit on the heavy side for an empty gun rag...

Shown in the picture above is the contents of that empty rag.

It's been here since we did the .45 Colt v .45 ACP comparison way back in... so long ago I can't remember the post let alone when!  We might not have even made the post.

At any rate it's been here and it's been safe.

What missing that hurts is an Astra 600/43 in 9x19mm WITH holster and spare magazine.

As you can see, it's been on my workbench as recently as July 3, 2017 and at the range on August 9, 2017.  After that, we lose track of it.  I think it got left with Willard's shooting gear in the back of the Endeavor.  I don't think I ended up with it here.

I will keep looking.  I didn't expect to find a S&W revolver here.


22 February 2022

Can't Sleep Clown Will Eat Me

I am now well enough that moving at all doesn't hurt.

That means I can sit, pain free, in more than just one position.

That creates the illusion that I can move without pain.

WRONG!

The pain that's left is VERY sharp and only when I extend or bend too far.

My body has taken the lack of pain as a signal to try rolling over in the recliner I've been sleeping in.

Guess what this leads to!

Extending and bending too far.  That wakes me up but good.

Giving Up iTunes

On both Android and Ubuntu if my downloaded song from iTunes is a .m4a file it's got DRM and won't play.

If the song is a .m4p it plays just fine.

Fortuneately, most of the music from iTunes is DRM free, but you'll need to address the ones that aren't. 

If you ripped the songs from a CD then you will have a DRM free version of the file, either mp3 or m4p.

Amazon sells unrestricted .mp3 files which also play just fine.

Or you can hoist the Jolly Roger!

Two

 It is 0222 22Feb22.

Why I Don't Have Solar Panels

This bullshit aside.

Let's say I buy enough panels and storage that I don't need a connection to the mains.

There's a law what says that my house in uninhabitable if it's not connected, and I have to pay a minimum fee to the electric company even if I'm not using any electricity from them.

They are slowly, but surely, raising the minimum fee.

We have, as a given, stated that I have enough solar panels and storage to run my place without the mains connected, that means that I don't need the mains... but they are hooked up anyways.

A storm blows through and the mains are severed!

No problem, right?  I have enough panels and storage to go without them, right?

Nope.

Not unless I paid almost five times as much for the panels and storage and didn't take advantage of any of the incentives or breaks to get them.

Because it's illegal to install a simple, automatic, switching system that prevents my panels and storage from back-feeding the mains in the event of a black-out.  BUT ONLY IF I TOOK ADVANTAGE OF THE INCENTIVE PROGRAMS!

You read that right.

Even though I have a fucking power plant on my roof, it's useless unless a power plant miles from here is making power that reaches my meter.

Now, if I decided to buy an emergency, whole-house, natural gas fueled generator that simple, automatic, switching system comes with it.  Why?  Because such a switch is required by law for every power generation system EXCEPT solar in Florida.

Solar is a con, and I'm not quite sure who the con is, but I'm damn sure who the marks are.

Speaking Of Open Source

Having spent a not inconsiderable sum on music at iTunes, I was reluctant to abandon a platform which played those songs.

Because Apple has been fairly proactive in getting the artists to agree to unlocking the DRM, most of the music is playable with Rhythmbox on Ubuntu.

Sadly, that's not all of my music.

Happily and sadly, Amazon is perfectly willing to sell me the missing songs in unrestricted mp3 format.  The sad part is buying the songs again.

There's a lot of music I've paid for multiple times.

Vinyl to cassette.

Cassette to CD.

CD to digital.

And now... digital to digital!

CDs lasted the shortest.

Vinyl is restricted to my childhood.  I don't think I even owned a record past the age of 12.

8-track was fewer than a dozen tapes and mostly because the stereo my mom bought had a player.

Cassettes were my mainstay for near 20 years.

CDs had just started to supplant the tapes when Napster hit.

Since then we've been getting our tuneage exclusively online.

Don't Throw Me In The Briar Patch

The overpaid babies of Major League Baseball are threatening a walkout if their extortion is not acquiesced to.

Go ahead and walk you fucking parasites!

And I hope that you starve too.

My only worry is that the larger parasites, the team owners, won't also starve.

They have their own worries about their teams.

The threat of leaving town if they don't get new palaces to baseball isn't working like it used.

The Tampa Bay Rays keep making this threat about leaving St Pete and moving if the area doesn't build them a new stadium.

The voters keep telling the city councils and county commissions that the door should not be allowed to strike them in the ass as they depart because, so far, professional sports has been all costs and no gains with the exception of our NHL team.

Fucking HOCKEY is the professional sport that actually benefits the area overall?

It's not normally popular enough to do that, but it could be a happy middle ground where it's not popular enough to raise crime during home games and the fans aren't destructive after wins.

Who Says I Can't Plan?

I have the 2023 annual ATF pic queued up and ready to go!

I found a lovely lager from Źywiec in the local store and figured an all Polish theme would be great.

The Lovely Harvey helped with composition and provided the cigarettes.

All y'all are going to have to wait ten months to see it unless you're smart enough to figure out where the pics are hosted.

21 February 2022

The Path To Open Source

It was Office that did it.

One of the things I am famous(ish) for is a conversion of the original 1984 edition of Twilight: 2000 to GURPS.

First in 3e, then 3e(r) then 4e.

I was happily banging it out in MS Word format and using the rest of Office too.

Then one day I tried to email someone a copy of the conversion and saw how big it had become.

I didn't know how to pare it down, but I discovered why it was so large.

Every single change is hidden in there.  Every change EVER.  It adds up.

I am fortunate that I didn't work from a template or starting with another document in a similar format where someone could back up those changes and see earlier versions of the document.

FuzzyGeff suggested Open Office to replace it.

Once I'd done that I started replacing other MS products.  Thunderbird replaced Outlook.  Firefox replaced Internet Explorer.

And I kept these products when I moved to OSX.

I used Safari for a while, but changed to Chrome and Firefox depending on what was working and what wasn't as web pages changed.

Neo Office replaced Open Office on the Mac Pro as well.  I still use it there.

Thunderbird and Firefox run on Ubuntu.  LibreOffice replaces Neo and Open Offices and documents done in one are compatible with the other two!

The down side is there's a few things I needed to bug a couple of friends to walk me through from the terminal to get working the way I wanted, but nothing terrifyingly hard.

VLC has been running on all my machines for quite a while, it plays movies way better than iTunes for Windows and provides an excellent DVD player for Windows as well.

So far I've yet to see an open source product not do what it said and say what it does.  They also seem more resistant to the idea of feature creep than shit from Apple and MS.

It's also very nice that all of the open source programs I've adopted have been platform independent.  I am not married to a single OS.

Never Run Out Of Material

If all I did was post about every little foible of whatever Windows OS I was running, I would have a daily post and I primarily use Ubuntu and an obsolete Mac Pro!

The Win7 installs are secondary use only.

And I still have something to complain about daily.

Notice that I don't complain about Ubuntu 20.04.3 or OSX 10.6.8?

And this has been true for decades of using a computer for stuff.

I get that M$ needed to crack down on piracy and all, but their activation process is opaque and mercurial.

One machine activated just by clicking the button.  The other needed me to phone the hotline and...

Listen.

To.

The.

Instructions.

Very.

Slowly.

Sads

Today would have been my buddy Ray's 56th birthday.

As you may recall, he died just after Christmas last year.

As with everyone who's preceded me into the void, it's the first few anniversary moments that are the hardest.

But, as long as we remember, they are not truly dead.

Happy Birthday to my Nordic Giant friend, Grog.

Because They Always Have

Anyone who observes history is not surprised that the RCMP went all jack-boot and hoof-trample over actual peaceful protests.

Something the badge kissers constantly miss is the cops are far more The State than they are part of the community or fellow citizens.

When the choice between The State and citizen is presented, they always choose to remain part of The State.

This is a Rule 34 moment.

Beyond a few individuals, who did not affect the outcome even a little, there are no exceptions to the police backing a state which morphs from liberal democracy to totalitarian.

None.

I've always taken the long view here and if The State is my enemy, then all of its agents must be looked at askance at all times.

That means no support for cops, teachers, mailmen, meter maids, etc.

They are, at best, fair weather friends and we rarely get them in fair weather.

Whirlwind

The days have been consumed by locusts lately, leaving no time to do anything that shows up here.

Every day I feel a little better.

Every day I find something I'm still unable to do.

Every day there are fewer things I am unable to do.

I am taking this as a sign that I am actually healing correctly.

Still no decision on the car.

We'd arranged the garage carefully around The Precious and anything longer would be a serious problem now.

All of the cars I've been looking at are much longer.

A 2008 Corvette coupe is 175.6".

The '49 Styleline being shortest at 197".

A 1996 Caprice/Impala is 214.1".

The Caprice PPV is 204.2".

18 February 2022

Fuck All That

I cancelled my appointment with the VA.

I can let the do nothing fucks do nothing without me.

17 February 2022

Are You Shitting Me?

The local branch of the VA Healthcare system is really pissing me off.

First the dissembling about making an appointment to follow up on the injuries incurred in my car wreck and having to accept the annual check-up that I made a year ago as that follow-up.

A week from today that appointment is.

Today they use their most passive aggressive system of making contact, the MyHealthEVet's secure message system, to tell me that nobody had bothered to schedule the labs last year.

I am getting entirely too fed up with people who don't do anything when I ask them to, but demand that I jump to when they want something.

How Do You Do That?

The upcoming series on Amazon that's supposed to be a prequel to The Lord of the Rings doesn't have the film rights to any of Tolkien's works set before The Hobbit.

Um...

How do you do that?

You pull it out of your ass while carefully avoiding anything actually published about the timeframe you're filming.

Never mind the all-in on minority casting.

I, for one, cannot WAIT for a remake of Chaka Zulu with diversity casting, or watching these fucks squirm when you insist that white people be inserted inappropriately into the story because otherwise they would be unrepresented.

Better yet, let's do a third telling of The Tuskeegee Airmen!

What do you mean they were historically all black?  You complained at the lack of minorities in 1917, which was historically all white.

Goose, have a taste of the gander's sauce.

Perhaps My Fault

Here's the whole laptop saga.

In 2015 I got a Lenovo T420S to replace my dead MacBook Pro.

The first thing I did was to up the RAM to 16mb and clone the 128gb drive over to a 750gb.  I barely used the original drive.

Later came a 1tb SSD running a fresh Win7 install, then a 1tb SSD running Ubuntu, with the Windows SSD in the removable superbay.

That machine decided that I didn't need to be able to turn off the keyboard light and I got sick of it.  It did this right after JT replaced the CPU cooler and fan, so I suspect we put something back together wrong.

But other than that it runs fine.

The new machine is also a refurb T420S and it was supposed to come with a 320gb drive with Win10 Home and 8gb of RAM.

It actually shipped with a 160gb SSD and Win10 Pro.

I swapped the RAM, hard drive and superbay from the old machine to the new machine.  New machine runs great!

Old machine booted fine with the 8gb or RAM and the 160gb SSD under Win10 Pro, but wouldn't activate.

Fresh install from new download on a thumb drive did not get me any closer to activation.

The old machine is going to become a dedicated host for the Tech2 software to us the VXDIAG dongle to be able to actually work on my cars.

Because that supports both Win7 and Win10, the original 128gb hard drive with Win7 Pro works just fine for my purposes.

I put it back in with a RAM upgrade and the machine is, indeed, happy.

If I had not wiped the hard drive attempting a fresh install on the 160gb SSD, I wonder if would have been fine in the new machine...

Oh well.

The outcome, at the end of the day, is an acceptable one. 

PS: I did not have to jump through any hoops at all to move the Ubuntu drive from one machine to the other.  Free OS is best OS.

16 February 2022

Looks Like PPV

It still doesn't speak to me, but it's a decent car and actually something I can afford.

The one I'm prolly going to end up with will need its spotlight replaced.  You have an ex-cop car you need to have a spot.

Windows 7 You Say?

Windows 10 refuses to authenticate.

Even with a fresh install with a known good code.

I still have the drive that came with the machine, so back in it goes!

Mutter Mutter Technology Mutter

I am dedicating a laptop to running the Tech2.

My old one.

I ordered a new one, old Lenovos are cheap, and swapped the drives between them.

Ubuntu and Win7 from the old machine woke up in their new digs and declared happiness and you cannot even tell I am using a new machine (except for the light that illuminates the keyboard is switchable again.)

The machine I ordered was supposed to come with Win10 Home on a 320gb drive.  What I received was a 128gb SSD and Win10 Pro.

Which will not activate.

JT talked me through all of his tricks to no avail.

So, we're downloading a fresh install of Win10 from M$ and seeing if that will work.  In theory I have three valid keys here, one from the laptop vendor and two from other machines which aren't running Win10.

Getting JT to talk me through it was an adventure itself!  My cell carrier decided to break one the towers in my area, putting me "out of range".  Happily I'm a dinosaur who clings to having a phone bolted to the wall.

15 February 2022

I Thought The Commenting Rules Were Simple...

Apparently they're complicated because I keep having to delete comments violating them.

They're right there in the block where you make your comment, read them before hitting submit.

I used verbage that any 12 year old can understand.

Avoidance

There was once a time when I used to go to car shows.  At least twice a week and I met with friends and we grabbed a bite to eat.

Then I had a disagreement with one and stopped being friends and I started to avoid car shows so as to not bump into them.

I am finding myself in a similar situation with a couple of the local breweries.

I've had the conflict with a friend on Facebook, I don't want to discuss it further and that leads to me to avoid places where I think I might encounter them.

That's That Then

I've had it with Facebook.

Actually, it's had it with Facebook again.

I managed to shut it off and happily go on with my life for quite a while but got sucked back in.

I'm back to the fed up point and this time I think I will simply let it wither on the vine rather than deleting it.  That will save me a bunch of "where did you go?" conversations.

Everyone notices that you've deleted the account.  Nobody notices that you stopped logging in.

History Of My Name

Angus McThag is not my real name (DUH).

It's my nom-de-blog.

I've been Thag for years and years.  It's my oldest nickname.

Dad was Og and mom was Shad.  This was after the characters in some play or movie my parents saw very near when I was born.

The Angus Mc part comes MUCH later when my SCA persona was Angus MacTavish.

Lots of people knew me as Thag and in the SCA so soon I was McThag.

Hardly ever was I Angus McThag, but I felt silly going by a mononym like a vapid celebrity.

I'm a vapid blogger and we have TWO names!

However, I am McThag and it seems strange for people to call me Angus.

So if you're going to call me familiar, call me McThag.

Kthanx!

Three Weeks

I am in my third week of recovery!

I am much less sore and sneezing doesn't make me feel like I am being impaled on a bat.

Still tired all the time.  Healing takes energy, apparently.

I have to go shopping for a bed soon.

We tossed the well worn and sagging king-size I was sleeping on before for a recliner.  Now I'm feeling better enough to consider sleeping on a bed and I don't have one.

I'm thinking of taking advantage of one of those president's day sales and going smaller than king-size.  We needed the big mattress when Harvey and I slept in the same room.  Our disparate sleep schedules, her snoring and my nightmares changed that.

Full size has proven adequate for a "bit of a cuddle" so I think I'll go that route.

The Woke Just Affects HER Now

Jennifer Sey's ox was finally gored.

Ms. Sey, you were perfectly OK with Levi's liberal positions when it aligned with your positions, so I don't really have a lot of sympathy for you.

Not-The-Bee, welcome to the party.  Levi's has hated us for, literally, decades.  This is nothing new.  They've been anti-gun since 2016, and that was while Ms Sey was a happy employee.

The problem is that companies have committees and meetings about what political stances and messages they wish to project.

How about just making pants?

How did making jeans become something that needed to project a political message?

More to the point, how does alienating, at least, half the potential buyers in your largest market make any kind of economic sense.

Moar 45 ACP

The Chomps Collection has loaned a couple extra .45 ACP pistols for comparison.

Photos not yet taken because I don't have space on the work bench for all seven guns.  Five's the limit there.

The outside gun-picture location is currently occupied with a Harvey project and must wait for ideal light anyways.

But very soon we're going to have a Kahr CT45 and a Star PD added into the comparison.

I think that Willard loans me these guns because he knows I'll clean them to make them more photogenic.  I am a labor saving device!

But pics are coming, along with objective measurements like weight and trigger pull.  Subjective opinion will accompany.

I Can't Remember

I created the turrets for the Lightning as a separate model because I knew it'd be getting revised several times and there's four of them.

In theory, the dwg reference I inserted into the grebel drawing will update as I make those changes.

But I cannot remember how to make it update to the new model.

It's simple, but I can't remember.

14 February 2022

Say It With Me

Dear Ebay,

The act of printing a label is not actually shipping the item.

It should not be marked as "shipped" until the tracking number registers as scanned at the shipper's facility.

Also, making me wait the entire estimated shipping time before I can complain about how the seller didn't actually ship the purchase is asinine.

The only action is "label created" and it's due today.  They're not going to miracle that parcel from California in the next seven and a half hours, so let's be honest about the time space continuum and let me start the process.

Thanks,

McThag

Against Doctor's Orders

I drove today!

I took The Boy to school and picked him up.

Considering that the VA is totally unconcerned with making a follow-up appointment to my emergency room visit, I guess I should be unconcerned as well.

They literally told me that since I had an appointment scheduled for later this month anyway, they could do the follow up then.

Almost a month to the day after the accident.

I have to ask, "What if I had not scheduled that appointment last year?"

I am not getting what I paid for from the VA.  I paid 50% use of one leg and 20% of the other to get a 10% disability rating and this level of care...

I am three years into the years long process of getting that rating increased.  They are dodging getting me in front a board like a... a... METAPHOR NOT FOUND.

Did You Know

5.56x45mm is superior to 5.45x39mm because every former Warsaw Pact nation that has joined NATO dropped 5.45 for 5.56.

Um...

That's not how that works at all.

Today's vocabulary word, "Interoperability".

13 February 2022

Have You Ever Seen One Of These

 


 

The Boy managed to break The Lovely Harvey's adorable little organizer.

It's originally from Big Lots, here's their archive link to the item.

If you know where we can find a replacement, I'd really appreciate your sharing it.

It's just nearly the ideal storage item for what Harvey was using it for and it appears to be a unique solution too.

Thanks in advance!

Wait! I Know This One

"The West’s arrogant, entitled political class, however, seems to model its approach on the Bourbons, the Romanovs, and the Ceausescus."

--G. Reynolds

 Not a smart paradigm to emulate considering how those all ended.

.45 ACP Spread

 

An array of pistols in .45 ACP roughly in reverse chronological order.

Left to Right:

S&W M&P 45C: 2.2 lb.; 10 shots.  Can be 2 lb.; 8 shots.  Striker fired, thumb safety.  The only ambidextrous choice on the bench.

CZ 97B: 3 lb.; 10 shots.  Hammer fired DA/SA, thumb safety.

Glock 21 Gen 2: 2.4 lb.; 13 shots.  Striker fired, no manual safety.

SIG P220: 2.3 lb.; 8 shots.  Hammer fired, decocker DA/SA.

Ithaca/Remington Rand M1911A1: 2.8 lb.; 7 shots.  Hammer fired, thumb safety, grip safety.

I'm going to try and dig deeper with more photos later.

Minor Update: The S&W and 1911 fit my hand best, followed by the SIG then the Glock then the CZ.  The CZ almost beats the Glock, but the back strap of the CZ has a place that I can tell, just handling it, will be sore after a day at the range.

The one place the Glock shines is that wide as grip spreads the recoil over a much wider area.

12 February 2022

You're Fucking High



OK, patina and rat rods are cool, I guess...

I was planning on replacing the entire interior anyways...

But the real shining glory is the motor, this is what makes it worth the entire $16,500 buy it now price!


You don't even get motor mounts!

You also don't get a trans crossmember or all the pan bolts for your TH400.

What the actual fuck?

A Caprice PPV is starting to look really good now.

Now He Can Say He's Exercising

This happened to my mother in law too.

The bed stops being at the right height to get in and out of.

Either too high or too low.

We solved this for Willard, we hope, by buying one of those step exercise things.

His bed, being a bit too high with a pulled muscle needed a step to aid in ingress and egress.

The little stool he'd scrounged was too tall, making the bed too short for getting out of.

The Step hits the Goldilocks zone and has traction surfaces built right in.  It's also a much larger target to hit than a little step stool.

But the real prize is he can now say he does a round of Stepercising every morning when he gets out of bed!

Player Controlled NPC

I've been watching the Critical Role based Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon.

While it might play well in Peoria, it's got no resemblance to any MurderHobo Inc.® player character group I've ever witnessed.

Well, that's not quite true.

How long is the party depicted in the series going to be first level played by people who've never gamed before?

They were presented as a group that had been there and done that long enough to have a few levels under their belts and...

Well...

It's An Honor

That Fucking Fleetwood has been left alone while his daughter is attending his grand-daughter's graduation from Navy basic training.

Marvyn and I have been swinging by at least once a day to make sure he's doing well, despite being sick as a dog these past few days.

If we were organized, we'd be dangerous!  But we're managing to actually help rather than hinder... at least so far.

The biggest hindrance has been getting through the fucking gate of his gated community.

It'd prolly be easier if I was cleared to drive, but we're managing well.

What I really want is a magic wand to make Willard all better and not need us to check up on him.

I'll bet he'd like to be magically healed too!

10,316

The Berlin Wall has been down for as long as it was up today.

I have been a cripple for as long as the Berlin was was up AND down now.

09 February 2022

Oh Thank God!

After watching the end of Rogue One I am struck with the question:

Did the Rebel troops lining up in the corridor just before the airlock hatch blew feel relieved that it was just stormtroopers coming through and not Lord Vader?

I can picture a scene on board the star destroyer right before the Tantive IV was secured...

"My Lord, we're trained for this.  It's our job.  Can we, pretty please, handle the boarding?"

"Very well, Major..."

08 February 2022

Success

The Lovely Thief Harvey reports that the Shield Plus is riding better than the SIG P232!

"It feels more balanced" she reports.

Huge win!

9mm has more thump than .380, the S&W holds more beans AND she shoots it better.

Epiphany

Talking to JT I realized something.

I'm not going to pay a premium for the car I'm going to hot-rod because I'm going to have to toss a lot of it away.

This is because I've come to genuinely believe that the value of such cars is entirely emotional.

You don't build and own a hot-rod to make money.  You do it for the love.

You love the car.  You love the research.  You love the work.

Love doesn't add monetary value to a project unless the buyer loves as you do.

Hint: The buyer doesn't love as you do.

You're not getting your money back, and if you do you're not getting your time back.

Hot-Rods are net losses.

It's why I'm not going to be buying the checks-off-all-the-rational-boxes Chevy Caprice PPV.

Totally modern, V-8 powered, rear wheel drive car with all the desirable safety features.

And it doesn't speak to me.

I would not hate it, but neither would I love it; and the first string of irritating failures and their attendant repairs: I would hate it.

What speaks to me, though, is out of reach.  I love the '62 Chevys.  They're just out of reach because I need to maintain a portion of the insurance pay-out for modernization.  Shit like air conditioning.

Brake upgrades.

Other safety stuff.

But they speak to me.

I think there's a bubble in these old classics, and it's set to burst.

I will wait.

And The Sun Came Up In The East Too

 Study says most homicide victims in Dem controlled cities are black.

Not news to those of us who're students of gun control's failures. 

That's because we check out the FBI crime data every year.

What they aren't mentioning is something that's also in the FBI crime data.

Your murderer is almost always the same race as you.

White people tend to kill white people.

Hispanic people tend to kill Hispanic people.

Black people tend to kill black people.

Not mentioning this does fit the narrative that America has it out for black men, but like most things that fit the narrative, it's a lie.

Black men are murdering black men.

To very little notice.

The number of black men killed by the police is barely statistical noise compared to black men killing each other, but we sure hear about every single time it happens, justified or not.

It's that cultural thing I mentioned a couple of posts ago.

The average black man in a Dem controlled city is not living as a member of Western Civilization or America.  They've their own culture with its attendant norms and murdering their fellows for minor slights is A-OK in the culture.

If they weren't around and among the rest of us in America, nobody would care that they've adopted this culture.  Nobody cares what happens in Africa...

How does one get them to abandon this savage culture for the more civilized culture of greater America?

That's the trick and the rub.

I know what worked on the Irish and Italians.

I've seen documentation that it was working on the darker skinned folks too.  Until Democrats fucked them over with welfare and red-lines.  Destroying the black nuclear family is the keystone event.

It was done by racists, and they weren't conservatives or Republicans.

Language Drift

C&Rsenal has reminded me of a term, "triple action".

I'd forgotten that was a thing.

In the way back... when revolvers that didn't need to be manually cocked between shots first came to be; triple action described a gun which could be fired both in single action and double action.

They would have referred to a double-action-only gun as simply double-action.

07 February 2022

Best Wishes

That Fucker Fleetwood is sick as the proverbial dog.

He's stuck in bed with little more to do than surf the internet.

Leave him some entertaining comments to lift his spirits.

You're Not Going To Out-Grognard Me

Bitch, please, I remember when there weren't robots in Traveller.

You think you're going to bring up something I didn't know about the setting?

I played before there was a setting and we based shit on Dune.

It Happened To Be On

The TV above the bar was showing the Olympics women's hockey, USA v Switzerland.

The US team was showing some of the best aggressive, offense I've seen on the ice in a long time.

They kept the puck on Switzerland's end of the ice and made shot after shot.

In short, they were playing hard to win.  8 to 0 is definitely a win.

If the NHL showed such spirit, I would be a much happier viewer.

Just sayin'...

A Common Thought

There was once a point in my life where I was in control.

It is so far in the past that I can't remember more than the feeling that I once was in control...

Possible

The Lovely Harvey has a ex-cousin-in-law who has a 52 or 53 Chevy sitting under a car port for these past thirty years.

Like many a car project, he intended to get on it and...

Well, lots of them never get started let alone finished.

I could certainly get it done if I didn't have to buy the car.

The Trailblazer engine and electronics swap would be simple and without blowing half the budget on buying the destination for the swap...  I'd have money to make it pretty too.

She's going to get in touch with him this week and see.

We're not offering money, we're offering him seeing his vision realized and the car becoming a loved runner.

Eyes crossed!

06 February 2022

Because You'd Fucking Starve

Something about America that keeps coming up when I read about history:

If you're willing to adopt our ways as a member of Western Civilization, you will succeed.

Everyone is welcome, regardless of national origin, skin color, religion or native language.

The list of peoples who have passed through the melting pot is long.

The people who refused to join were subjected to horrendous discrimination and bigotry.

The Irish, arguably, had it worse than a black slave prior to the Civil War.  A slave was, at least, valuable property.  An Irishman?  Worthless, and there's ten more where that potato eater came from...

Signage that said, "No Dogs or Irish.  CENSORED and Chinese OK." were a real thing.

The Irish, eventually, shed their stigma by joining American society.  Not once, but twice.

"But they're white!" is the objection to black people choosing this option.

Asians aren't white.  Asians are undeniably successful in America.

You'd hardly be able to tell that a non-Dawes Indian wasn't white by their success.

The problem really is that a group of politicians who hate black people set things up to actively prevent them from joining American civilization.

They were not from the party of Lincoln.

An ounce of prevention stops a ton of cure.

Now it's a point of pride to be part of a culture apart from America.  To insult and abuse any crab trying to get out of the boil.

"Don't be like Whitey" is an admonition to reject joining the, proven, successful American civilization and remain a savage and BE The Other.

While we're being brutally honest here, if it weren't for a stubborn Christian compassion streak in America, those who refused to join our society as members would have long ago starved to death.

We don't even make them go hungry.

I feel pretty safe in making these observations because I am friends with several people who escaped the boil and are successful.  Not despite their dark-brown skin, but because they are Americans first and foremost rather than accepting they can't be successful because of that skin color.

Old Joke

 

Three guys were fishing on a lake one day, when Jesus walked across the water and joined them in the boat. When the three astonished men had settled down enough to speak, the first guy asked humbly, "Jesus, I've suffered from back pain ever since I took shrapnel in the Vietnam war...could you help me?"

"Of course, my son", Jesus said, and when he touched the man's back, he felt relief for the first time in years. The second man, who wore very thick glasses and had a hard time reading and driving, asked if Jesus could do anything about his eyesight. Jesus smiled, removed the man's glasses and tossed them in the lake. When they hit the water, the man's eyes cleared and he could see everything distinctly.

When Jesus turned to heal the last guy, the guy put his hands up and cried defensively, "Don't touch me! I'm on long term disability." (H/T TNDeplorable)

I'd let Jesus heal my crippled ass up.  The VA doesn't check to make sure I'm still fucked up at this point and I'm perfectly willing to lie to their useless asses about it if I got a miracle heal.

And Another Thing!

Most of the L6 research for the '47 will apply to any Chevy from '41 to '54.

The bodies changed a lot, but the under-pinning stays remarkable similar.

Similar enough for the rear-cradle swap I talked about anyway.

I Hate To Waste Planning

The initial research into working on a '47 Fleetline led to some interesting ideas.

The donor Trailblazer's rear end is on a cradle, so you could swap in the entire rear suspension and get a modern independent rear with discs with little to no bother.

That got me to wondering...

The front is on a cradle too.

Probably damaged from the crash that led the engine being available, but...

If one were to swap in the front suspension too, one will have all four wheel sensors for the anti-lock brakes, traction control and active handling.  You'd just have to figure out the brake position sensor, steering wheel sensor and placement of the yaw sensor to have that safety feature fully enabled.

Not really as hard as it seems.

Safety, Dear?  It'll be safe as houses!  Especially once we put in a hoop for the shoulder belts to attach to.

The cabin height is similar to that in an Equinox, so swapping those seats in would also net us the rear 3-point belts; with a bonus for being comfortable and durable.

It's nice to have options!

Truth be told, I have more lust for the '45-48 Chevies than the early '60's cars.  But they are a lot more work.

Notice that I started with swapping the entire suspension before I even mentioned engine and transmission swaps?

The '47 project would need more space that I have.  I need a stall to work in, a stall to store the parts from the '47 not being worked on and a stall for the Trailblazer hulk while I strip it.

I have a wide 1-car garage.

Oh, and the '47 will definitely need everyday life-support things like air conditioning.

'62 It Might Just Be

Found a '62 Biscayne that will certainly either not meet reserve or will bid up to far more than I have coming from USAA...

But, I feel lucky.

It'll need AC added without a doubt.

It'll want a modern fuel-injected-gets-good-mileage-makes-good-power-that's-easy-driveable engine like a Cadillac six-liter.

Then it'll want an overdrive transmixer to replace the Borg-Warner T-10.

Let us cross our eyes that this will be the car to replace The Precious in the garage and my heart.

PS: Seatbelts.  It will need seat belts.  Happily, a lap belt is an easy swap and shoulder isn't that much harder.  It feels a little odd to be thinking about doing stuff with a car that I actually know how to do already without consulting a service manual and looking up codes.

05 February 2022

Edjamakaytedd

“[D]a war is comin,  [F]orward dis shit to our tha goldhead caucasoid princess.”

What would he have said if he wasn't a professor? 

Update:  

Context.

Forever Young

If Trayvon Martin had not fucked around and found out, not only would he be 27 today; he'd be alive to celebrate!

04 February 2022

Safe Enough

It would appear that 1961 cars are safe and 1947 cars are not.

Fine by me.

How about a 1961 Biscayne?

With a '70 LT-1 and Muncie M-21?  12-bolt 3.73?

A bit of rust, but already converted to front discs.

Escalade LS3's with 8L90 transmixers are out there for reasonable.

Assuming the reserve for the car isn't as retarded as the buy it now, one could do this reasonable affordably and perhaps under the budget available.

03 February 2022

Implied Oral Consent

I was considering going to the local brewery this evening.

When I asked, I got the "well if you want to go, go."

I already know what that means.

Turns out I don't really want to go under those conditions.

The list of things I am unable to do is getting longer and I question my value to my family as I am presently all cost and zero benefit.

Brief Exposure

At the accident scene, two things happened.

The impact was sufficient to unsnap the holster the Model 59 was in.

The durn thing fell out right at the feet of a paramedic asking me questions.

I retrieved it from the ground and said, "you didn't see that."  He, properly, replied, "see what?"

A bit later, when we all recognized I was going to be going to the ER and would need to leave the pistol for Marv to take home for me...

I looked at the deputy running the scene and asked, "I'm going to need to open carry for a bit to take off the holster, we cool?"

We were.

The only aggravating thing was the EMT from earlier "helpfully" taking the pistol out of the holster and clearing it.

Both the deputy and I said something to the effect, "administrative handling is where accidents happen!"

That same EMT shoved the round that he cleared into the magazine...  There were 18 in that mag when I got the gun back from Marv.  A 17-rounder.  I wonder if he damaged the spring.

Game Called Due To Injury

The retro carry experiment with the S&W 59 is over.

I'm not able to carry such a heavy load at least for a few weeks!

I have a five pound limit until cleared by the doc.  While the shoulder rig is slightly under, it puts stress right on the worst place.  I'm also forbidden to drive myself.

So, back to pocket carry for a while and it's likely that it will warm up to where I can't carry the shoulder rig in the meantime. 

However!

I declare the experiment a success.

The 59 toted just fine while I was able to tote it.  Just as well as a more modern pistol, in fact.

Truth be told, just as well as the less modern 1911 I first carried in a Miami Classic II.

I've not put myself in a situation where the differences in the guns would matter.


02 February 2022

Sucked All The Fun Out

The Lovely Harvey has gone all passive aggressive with the idea of a new hot-rod and only makes comments about safety.

Well, that pretty much takes anything made before 2006 off the table.

Cars you can get four people into and are still cool and qualify as hot rods made after 2006 are... well...

They just don't exist.

This project has officially been still born.

C'est la vie.

Holy Fuck!

Well, had my first good sneezing fit since the accident.

The first thought is, "that fucking hurt a lot!"

The second is, "did that jar things enough to puncture a lung and kill me?"

The third thought, after the fifth sneeze, "what if this DOESN'T kill me and I have to do this again?"

Well She's Right

Whoopie Goldberg says she was suspended from her gig at The View because of racism.

She is absolutely correct!

What she doesn't see is that SHE is the racist.

Fun With Math

Doing some napkin calculations for the potential '47 Fleetmaster project.  3-Speed Chevrolet 341 manual and a 4.11 differential.

The donor engine would be from a 2006 Trailblazer.

That car comes with a 4-speed 4L60E transmission and a 3.42 diff.

Where the fun begins is comparing ratios and speculating what the mileage will be...

I want to use a 6L50 6-speed for the swap.  It's got a much deeper first gear and closer ratios.

That means I can run a much taller rear gear and not sacrifice acceleration while still dropping about 500 rpm off at highway speeds.

Which we're going to need to do because the Fleetmaster has a drag coefficient of 0.7 compared to the 0.45 of the Trailblazer.  The Trailblazer is not known for sipping fuel...

01 February 2022

Shockingly Durable

A small part on The Precious that kept breaking was the latch for the glove box.

The first time I mentioned here.  And here.  And two other times I didn't mention.

It's not a good design and I even have a spare made by an aftermarket company that reinforced the places that break most frequently.

Having that spare was a talisman that kept it from breaking again.

Guess what was functioning perfectly and unbroken after I tore the front right wheel off and pushed the battery into the space where the glove box lives!

Yup.

Mating

While considering the Atlas LL8 inline-6 I am confronted with its very limited transmission choices.

The Atlas series has its own trans bolt pattern.

That limits one to using the transmissions that came with the motors unless you can find an adapter plate, and I'm still early enough into looking into it that I dunno if people have.

It's one heck of an improvement over the old 216 L6.

I covered more power already, but it's also 150 lb. lighter.

Go go aluminum!

The trans I'd want to use is the 6L50.