GoFundMe

I am thinking of setting up a GoFundMe to repair our storm damage.

$20 seems a worthy goal.

Let Us Give Thanks

I attribute our light weather from Hurricane Idalia to Marv's offering to The Cantore.

He completed the ritual that repelled the harbinger of bad weather, protecting the entire neighborhood!

Fashion Victim

Since my go "bag" is a plate carrier...

When its time to repel looters I will be wearing body armor.

It seems sensible to wear the PASGT helmet I snagged too.

BUT!

The plate carrier is coyote brown.

The PASGT helmet has a woodland cover.

How gauche!

At this point I am wondering if I should even bother getting the kilt out for storms.

Might as well just wear short-shorts and a wife-beater like all the neighbors.

We're Still Here

No damage to report except the data feed wire for our Halloween/Christmas LED strips came unanchored from the brittle plastic clips.

USCG HH-60 traffic to the east is near constant.  I'll add a pic if I can snag a good shot.  They're not hovering, passing by in both directions.

My favorite brewery made it, they're already on Facebook saying they're opening early.

Still have to check the Waffle House to properly assess the damage.

I'm For Bed

I went out back to sniff the air and there were stars in the sky instead of unbroken overcast.

Despite reports of 61 mph gusts, I'm seeing breezy.

So Far So Good

We got some rain.

It's breezy, not windy.

We got a lot less wind than we were expecting and it was mostly from a direction that has a good break for my house provided by houses at a higher elevation than me.

When the wind shifts to the "bad" direction, Idalia will be weaker and farther away.

Knock on wood, the power has been steady.  That makes sense because they were JUST out here for a fallen tree and they took chainsaws to a lot of other threatening wood when they were fixing the downed line.

Looks like it's going to be serious up north and possibly a Cat 4!

Fingers crossed for them.

Looter Repellant Standing By

 

Fresh batteries, water in the canteen.  Lots of dust and cat hair removed (but not near all of it).

Ready for the worst case scenario.

A scenario which is increasingly unlikely as the storm goes past.

What's that line?  Better to have it and not need it...

Under The Edge

 

No wind here yet, but this is the edge of the cloud band from Idalia.

It's presently projected to go North of my location and we're not expected to get much from it.

It'll be windy and rainy and we might lose power, but we're kinda ready for that.

PS: Thanks to all the off-topic comments wishing me luck for this storm!  Even if I did delete them for being off-topic!  I didn't really give you a place to make such wishes, so consider this post your chance!

THANKS!

Intended Role

Dialing the way-back machine here.

Tinkering with my P220 makes me wonder about the pistol market back before you could get a CCW for the asking most places.

I remember most guns being full-size service pistols.

That you couldn't carry or hunt with.

Do you remember the gunwriters being shocked at how small a Glock 19 was back then?

I do.

Hacksaw Ridge Korea

 

Captain Glover is using an M1 carbine with adjustable rear sight and bayonet lug.

During the battle for Okinawa in early 1945.

While the sight and lug were type classified by the time this battle took place, hardly any were in the hands of the troops until well after the war ended.

Gun nerd shit like this is what I live for.

Singapore

My little corner of the blogosphere is popular in Singapore with people using mobile Safari from an Android phone.

I suspect that there's not any real readers there.

Shines The Name

I've encountered this a couple of times.

I cannot read Medal of Honor citations.

They have too much dust on them.

The Important Preps

 

Meanwhile, at Marv's...

No reason to take chances!

...Or Flight

Fluids checked in all three vehicles just in case we need to flee the wrath of Vidalia Onion hurricane Idalia.

Tires checked to have the proper pounds per square inch.

Basic checks that I do every few weeks anyways.

Something new is The Beast takes Dextron VI transmission fluid for its power steering system.

I wonder if it works as brake fluid too!

New Code Word

Is Caribbean Festival a new code phrase the press uses for gatherings of certain criminal elements of society who happen to have a certain complexion because they don't want to sound racist when making simple reporting of fact?

Also, I thought that Massachusetts had stricter gun laws than this; which I was assured would keep things like this from happening.

RIP Ms Sorkin

Arleen Sorkin, the original voice of Harley Quinn, has passed on.

She made a role so iconic for a TV show that they retconned the character to the comics.

Punctuated Equilibrium

The media finally has an actual racist who killed more than one person.  In Florida no less!

Be still their beating hearts!

How many years have they been hunting this unicorn?

I'm going to guess the racist's manifesto will be published toot-sweet while we keep waiting on the Nashville shooter's.

Nope no bias there...

We're All Gonna Die!!!!

Quick!  Buy milk, bread and eggs!

Looks like there's a hurricane brewing down by the Yucatan.

Early assessment is a strong tropical storm to a weak Cat 1 landing a bit North to a lot North of here.

Two A Week

 We have an alcohol czar?

Two drinks a week?

Canada did this too, a while back.

This is from the same bunch of ninnies who demanded all kinds of bullshit about Wu Ping Cough too.

I think I shall ignore them, since they're proven to be wrong about every time they speak.

Something Of An Endorsement

Vivek Ramaswamy is taking hits from both sides.

Both sides sure seem to be worried about him.

I tend to like candidates that worry the Uniparty like this.

I don't know fuck all about him, but he's pissing off people I enjoy seeing pissed off.

What Exactly Were Those Points?

 NBC accuses Republican candidate of issuing Neo-Nazi talking points.

How did they miss that he's a full blooded Aryan in their accusation?

But what I want to know is what, exactly, did he say that's a Neo-Nazi talking point?

I'm not going to say I don't trust the media's opinion of what a Neo-Nazi talking point is...  Nope, not going to SAY it.

It's just that they lie so often that my Murray Gell Mann amnesia is fully suppressed.

In particular, they lie about people being racist, sexist and bigoted quite often, and most frequently in deliberately misquoting stuff which is not racist, sexist or bigoted in context.

Notice the lack of both a quote and context in their accusation?

That's one of their tells that they're lying.

So What?

The county south of here started a program of giving free bus rides between downtown St Petersburg to St Petersburg Beach last October.

Ostensibly, it was to provide cheap transportation for the guesstimated 40k low income workers along the routes to get to work.

What it's become is a rolling homeless shelter.

Enough of the homeless are staying at the beach end overnight that Pinellas County's Sheriff is spending $10k a week policing them up.

That's a big enough dent in their budget they're delivering ultimatums to the bus agency to start charging fares to cut down on the homeless migrations.

Egalitarian and equity gets mentioned over and over about charging a fare.

My favorite objection to charging a fare is how this will "disproportionately" affect the homeless who a.) don't have any money and b.) since the fares are electronically collected they have no means to pay even if they had the money.

I kinda think that was the point the sheriff was after.  Charging a fare keeps them off the busses and off the beach when its closed.

Last Chance

Last chance?  Maybe.

CMP announced that Round 3 is ending.

If you want a genuine M1911A1 you have to have your packet postmarked August 25, 2023.

Might be hard to get all the required stuff together on such short notice if you don't already have it.

They Used To Better About This

There was once a time when GM would just keep a part in stock, on a shelf, until the damn thing sold.

They created an impressive network that cross-referenced who had what where and deftly arranged for the part to be whisked to the buyer.

Now they can't even figure out if they have a part in stock, or not.

If they say "discontinued" it's certain it's gone.

But too many discontinued parts are listed as "in stock" and you don't get to find that out until they cancel your order a week later.

Traffic Laws? This Is A TANK!

This reminds me of one time we were coming back from the rail-head.

There was a red-light camera at one of the intersections and the entire column blew right through it.

We had Polizei blocking intersections, so we weren't supposed to stop.

The camera, likewise, wasn't supposed to be active.

But it was.

Even so, someone should have made note of the time and date and seen the Polizei in the photos.

Something should have kept them from mailing our CO about 40 citations for running the light.

The pictures of my platoon's tanks running the light were still on the bulletin board when I left.

It's All Perfectly Simple

Push me too far and we'll start in on pre-decimalization British money!

Same Or Different

There's a YouTube armor-historian pissing match going on about tank-engines.

Specifically, did the T-14 Armata use the engine out of a WW2 era German tank?

Specifically the SLA-16.

The 12N360 in the Armata is an X-engine configuration too.

The supposition LazerPig makes is that the 12N360 12-cylinder is a modified A-83-3A engine which was developed from captured 16-cylinder SLA-16 engines.

I think there's a case to be made. 

He's also on record saying that the V-12 engine the Russians have been using in their tanks is a derivation of the original V-2-34 from the T-34.  He's on firm ground here.

Nicholas "The Chieftan" Moran has snarked asking if the Continental AV-1790-5B from the M-47 is the same as the AVDS-1790-9AR in the Merkava III?

Well, Nick, yes; and no, not really.

Just as the small block from a 1955 Chevy is the same as the small-block in a 2002 Express.

The newer engines are evolved from the originals even if very few parts exchange. 

Just like the V-2-34 and V-92SF.

Complications

From my time working as a drafter/designer at a vending machine manufacturer, I know from sheet metal.

I'm presently enjoying someone explaining to me how difficult an AR-18 is to make and therefore the TRW Low Maintenance Rifle will also be difficult to make.

Actually...

The AR-18 is "difficult" to make because it's a fairly complicated design.  Much simpler than the Stoner 63, but still fairly complicated.

Even so, once you've got your dies, fixtures and jigs; not a difficult thing to manufacture.  Design and set-up is expensive and difficult, manufacturing is fairly cheap and easy if you can commit to volume and the machinery that allows it.  Small runs can't so they're much more expensive and labor intensive.

The TRW LMR isn't complex like that.  It's MUCH simpler.

Possibly it can be made from tube-stock.

But it's been fun letting this "expert" lecture me on stuff he's clearly never done.

Another Empty Threat

"The sequel won't be completed if you don't demand the studios cave to our demands!"

Actors, writers, studios; we're already used to the series we're enjoying being cancelled before it reaches a conclusion.

We're also getting accustomed to the series end being clumsily truncated to an unsatisfactory ending.

Never mind the tendency of padding the run time of what we do get to delay coming to the logical conclusion of the series.  When you combine that with a truncated conclusion all you can do is think of all the time they wasted on side quests and stories.

So it's not a threat to the consumer.

In fact, in many cases, we're waiting for an entire series to play and conclude before even starting it.

I Expected Defenestration

 Wagner chief on passenger manifest of plane crash.  No survivors.

 

Area Effect

My post speculating that the fine and punishment for owning an illegal machine gun is almost cheaper than the punishment of owning one legitimately has some interesting comments.

Something that comes up a lot about machine guns is people lamenting their lack of accuracy.

I think this stems from a misunderstanding of what a machine gun is for.

Despite firing bullets, they're not, primarily, point effect weapons.

A rifle is a point effect weapon.

Machine guns are area effect weapons.

This requires more dispersion between shots than a rifle so that the beaten zone is big enough to fix the bad guys in place with their heads down while the maneuver portion of the unit moves up on them.

Any hits that occur during this are bonuses.

The Army confuses the matter by putting scopes on some of their MGs.

The Marines REALLY confuse the matter by issuing a rifle, including a scope, as an LMG. 

None of this is clarified by the legal definition of machine gun, which doesn't match the military definition at all.

An Uzi isn't a machine gun to an Army, but it is to ATF.

An M16 is a rifle to the Army, but a machine gun to the ATF.

What's The Fine For An Illegal MG Again

 Morphy's has a transferable M249 up for auction.

Opening bid is $300,000.

Expected price is $600,000 to $1,000,000.

I can't help but think there's perverse incentives happening because of this.

The $250k max fine is still under the minimum bid... then there's the (up to) 10 year sentence.

First felony is free, they say.

When I speculate about this, I often wonder just how many unregistered machine guns are out there.

Not terribly long ago a search warrant for a completely unrelated to guns search found dozens of MG's at some guy's house.  And the evidence he was guilty of the crime they got the warrant for, but still.

He lived in the middle of nowhere and until the warrant, nobody appeared to be the wiser he was making MG's and shooting them on his property.

I want to say he was making M1919's, but I could be remembering wrong.

I've never been the target market for a machine gun.

I can barely afford to feed the semi-autos.

A giggle switch would lead to living in the dark.

Under a bridge.

In a refrigerator box.

With no guns at all.

Divorced.

And that's doing it by obeying the law!

If I was doing it illegally I'd have to hope the cops were faster than Harvey and got me into the police car before she cut my throat.

Yeah We Hate Them Too

We have politicritters that are going along with policy ideas from other states we don't care for in our own states.

Their going along with it doesn't change the state of origin of those idiotic policies and three states are the main source of these idiotic policies.

California, Massachusetts and New York.

California, in particular, leads the pack in shit that is imposed on the rest of the nation whether they like it or not.

But don't be acting sanctimonious that our politicritters went along with it.  We're primarying those pricks every election cycle.

That they've been reelected is more a function of the lesser of two evils than wanting them in office.

To cite the idea that amnesty is something idiot RINOS came up with and are pushing actively for means that you need to get out more.  The idiot RINOS are going along with the stupidity, we don't like it, but they aren't the originators of the dumbass idea.

That'd be California, again.

Especially bad that to accuse our RINO of leading the charge when Florida is at the forefront of stopping illegal immigration.

I don't see Governor Newsome suing the Feds to close the border or doing fuck all to ease the problem.

The comment that triggered this post was your third strike, Aesop.  Complain about me at your blog, again, but don't bother commenting here.

Well

I keep trying to say that this is my soapbox and not yours, but some of you can't learn.

Dammit!

Some of you have your own blogs to preach from, so it won't be a huge loss not being able to comment here.

But what a fucking morass to wade through.

No Frogs?

Considering I had to look for pictures after not finding them on the front pages of the news sites...

The "devastation" from Hilary is not as devastating as the predictions, uh, predicted.

Flooding is no joke, but it doesn't appear to be near as bad as New Orleans or Pine Island.

So:

Either the destruction isn't as bad as predicted...

OR

They're actively covering how bad it is.

It's sad that I even consider the latter, but they're such frequent liars...

Strike that!  I was looking at the news web pages.

But they post their videos to YouTube.

It's bad.

It remains to be seen, "How bad?"

Then the question will become, if the eco-freaks weren't so active, would it have been as bad?

Rain Of Frogs Coming

 California got an earthquake as the storm arrived.

Just a 5.1, but damn!

This is starting to read like The Bible.

Yul Brenner could not be reached for comment.

Because It's An Older Version

After successfully figuring out how to change the firing pin spring on the P220 by myself...

I went looking for "how-to" vids.

I'd known that SIG had changed from a sheet-metal slide to a milled slide at some point, but I didn't internalize the information until I watched a couple of videos explaining how to get the firing pin out of a milled slide.

Banned

 

Not a very effective ban if they're for sale in the open.

But the point they're attempting to make is these books have been removed from some audiences for various reasons at various times.

If you'd like an example of an actual banned book:  Go to Germany with copy of "Mein Kampf," and wave it under a cop's nose.

I remember the debate about AAFES selling it in on-post bookstores and how it was banned for reals in Germany.  The books were sold with a warning that you shouldn't take them off-post because even the status of forces agreement wouldn't protect you from prosecution.

I Seem To Recall

A while back when Florida was dealing with hurricane damage, there were some people in California running at the mouth about how they shouldn't have to pay for some other state's natural disasters.

I wonder if they will drown in the coming rains.

I'm willing to bet that there will be Floridians among those helping.

I am equally certain that there were Californian linemen here in Florida restoring power after Irma.

Sproing

I've felt that the recoil spring on the P220 was getting weak for a while.

The slide was getting sluggish after just a few magazines.

Since SIG's are known for consuming such springs, I ordered a replacement 18 lb. spring.

Wolff calls it a reduced power spring, but I found that the stock spring could be 15 lb. or 24 lb. from the factory.  With older German guns coming with the 15.

The new spring is noticeably longer than the older one.

The slide feels snappier with the new spring installed.

Included in the kit was this, smaller, spring.

What could this be for?  I wondered.

Well, reading the instructions informed me that it's a firing pin spring.

I'd never taken the firing pin block out before, so this was a fun new thing!

Simple and easy and I didn't even have to hit YouTube to figure it out.

Huzzah!

Also About The Ruger Standard

I decided it was time to clean the Ruger.

.22LR is extra dirty, and we had some malfunctions that were clearly from dirt.

The Ruger .22 handguns are legendary in being a pain in the ass to get back together, so people are reluctant to take them apart to clean.

I'm pretty deft at reassembly, so that doesn't dissuade me.

I'm lazy.

Plus, the thing runs fine when it's totally filthy.

So we have been.

Well, there's a limit and we hit it today.

And the powder residue gets EVERYWHERE inside the thing.

It's clean now, but I might wanna rethink my cleaning schedule just to make the job a bit easier.

Grouping

The Lovely Harvey made a huge leap in progress shooting today.

She's been firing 6-9" to the left at 7 yards pretty consistently for a while.

It's been frustrating for her, to put it mildly.

Today I drew a picture of her sights and asked her if that was what she saw, emphasizing getting the front sight centered in the rear sight groove.

She looked down her sights and drew two blurry blobs for the rear sight and a gigantic white dot for the front.

AHA!

So I had her take a shooting stance and looked at her eye-line.

She was looking right through the line where her bifocals took over.

Having done this myself a couple of times, I totally understood.

So she moved her head to put the reading part on the sights of the old Ruger Standard and suddenly she's shooting center!

We can fix this next time she gets glasses.  I know what to ask for.

We also changed out her grip panel on her M&P 2.0 9 Compact from the small to the large.  She'd been complaining that she couldn't feel her grip, and the larger panel gives her feedback.  This allowed her to loosen the death-grip a little and that improved her groups a ton.

Speaking of that 66 year old pistol...

I shot a thumb sized 9-round group with it today.  Harvey is jealous, but she hasn't been shooting regular for the past 35 years either.

I also did some drills with the Glock 45.  Harvey was about to ask me what was wrong when she saw I was doing Mozambique drills.  My groups open up a bit changing point of aim like that.  Still enough to get the task completed, but bigger than just focusing on one spot.

I can get faster and tighter, I am sure.

I'm not to the point of trying dot-torture, yet.

Still 15 Years Away

A small subplot of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is funding fusion research.

They mention that it's been five years away for 40 years.

I giggled.

Something I noticed about the film and the movie it's a sequel to.

Wall Street aged well; sequel didn't.

I don't know why I was surprised by that.

Hurricane Hilary

It's off the West coast of Mexico right now and it's a monster.

Looks to be hitting Southern California as a tropical storm in a few days.

The first tropical anything to hit Southern California since 1939.

I have to wonder...

Are hurricanes known to cause cancer in California according to prop 65?

The More I See

The more bad Star Trek and botched Star Wars I see...

The more I want to cajole my local resources and get back to playing Traveller.

I can't really do worse.

Star Wars and Foundation have been very pretty, but not well made.

I REALLY can't do worse.

National Rum Day

Siesta Key "Traveling Barrel Series" Batch #4.  Aged in a beer barrel.

Wait

I was going to post a long, kind of researched, rebuttal.

Then I realized that I don't care that much.

I said what needed to be said and I don't need to do a research project to shut up a commenter who will never accept they're wrong anyways.

At least not accept that they're wrong in  the way I'm trying to explain.

Because they think they're right for different reasons, they're not going to comprehend the explanation.

Remember Water Vapor Kicks Carbon Dioxide's Ass

Tonga eruption increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere by 5%.

h/t Instapundit

That was almost a year ago that article was quietly published.

That one eruption did more in a week than we do in decades.

But we need to change how we behave because...  It will prevent plate tectonics? 

This comes to me just after I discover that a Nobel Prize winning physicist and a climatologist state that, "the man-made climate crisis is manufactured."

You Can Tell She's Not Mexican

 Some Ozzie Gint Hates America

She's sick of seeing the American flag everywhere while she's here in America.

First, if you don't like it, go home.

Second, I just FUCKING LOVE it when some fucking foreigner comes here to tell me what I'm doing wrong couched in the phrase, "nobody else does it."

Go back home, Bitch.  Stay there.

You have mistaken our leaving the door open as an invitation.

Just To Prove A Point

GURPS is nigh universally compatible with any other game system with a minor amount of tweaking.

I have a recurring urge to get a party together, starting with 150 point fantasy characters and...

Run the VAST ATDGQ series of AD&D modules.

• A 0-4 Against the Slave Lords
• T 1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil
• G 1-3 Against the Giants
• D 1-3 Descent Into the Depths of the Earth and Vault of the Drow
• Q 1 Queen of the Demonweb Pit

This is not a weekend's worth of playing.  This is a long campaign.

I'd need six to eight dedicated players to commit for as long as it takes.

With Zoom and such, it appears that it's possible to actually get a remote group together in real time.

It's an interesting idea.

That's Handy

Marv has added a SIG Romeo-1 Pro to his P320.

 

The weight of the optic is almost identical to the mass of the plate he had to remove from the top of the slide to uncover the mounting screws.

That means that adding an optic doesn't change the weight of the gun!

Excellent!

He's yet to get it to the range to see if it helps his shooting.

How Long In Kalikams?

The thing with measurements always brings up something that I never actually implement.

The Aslan, Droyne, Hiver, K'Kree, Vargr, Zhodani, and hundreds of minor races aren't going to be using the metric system.  The Vilani probably didn't use it before the Terrans conquered them, but the Third  Imperium and Solomani both do now.

The Klingons, Romulans, K'zinti, Gorn, Vulcans, Orions, etc... won't have the metric system either, unless Earth forced it on them as part of joining the Federation.

They might have analogous systems, but the base measurements will not be the same unless by epic coincidence.

Traveller covered some of the differences in calendars and clocks.

Metric for an Aslan would be in base 8 if we assume everyone uses their manipulating digits for the base number for their math.

Hivers?  Hexapods with six fingers per "leg" but four of the "legs" are "just" legs one is for manipulation and the third for making little Hiver babies...  Base 6?  36?

The Vargr are so fractured that becoming Balkanized would be a massive increase in organization.

It's a headache I've chosen to just ignore.

The Vargr didn't give the mass of the object in kilograms.  I translated it to kilograms, just like I translated Gvegh to English.  Hell, I might have further translated it to pounds because we're playing GURPS.

Still Waiting On Midway

Lego managed to get their shipper to send me the replacement order in three days using the same shipper.

Midway is using the exact same method they used unsuccessfully before and gave a 10 day expectation on a part I've already waited two weeks for.

Thanks, Sport!  Don't upgrade the shipping for your fuck-up to get it to me faster.

Clogged

A certain amount of water will get inside your doors.

They put little holes in the bottom to let that water out.

If those holes get clogged, you get water where it shouldn't get.

I had water on the rear left footwell of The Beast.

I even tracked down a rear door seal to fix the problem.

Today, I got to look at the car when it was still raining.

It wasn't leaking around the door seal.

It was coming from the door panel.

I shook the door and heard sloshing.

So I stuck my fingers up under the wind seal and moved it away from the holes and got drainage.

Running my finger along the wind seal got a lot of organic gunk.

Now all the holes are cleared and I will check the other three doors tomorrow.

My Mower's Engine

While watching videos to confirm the oil change procedure for my mower is really "turn it upside down and dump it out the fill hole." I've noticed that the Bolens by MTD with the Briggs and Stratton 500E engine is freaking beloved.

To think, we got it because it was cheapest mower Lowe's carried back in the day.

Foot Pound

Something I will give the metric system all day.

They have different units for torque and pressure.  Newton-Metres and Pascals.

In standard they're both foot-pounds.

One place metric fails epically, though is weight.

We tend to think of mass being the same as weight, but it's not.

Its because we don't go where there isn't 1g pulling on us all the time.

1kg is 1kg at 0g, 1g and 10g.

1lb at 1g is 100lb at 10g and 0lb at 0g.

That's because weight is mass at a given acceleration.

But SI doesn't have a weight unit and Imperial doesn't have a real mass unit.

It makes space gaming fun.

Especially when you try to explain how contragravity reducing a ship's weight to zero doesn't reduce its mass to zero and that while, even though it's buoyant in the local atmosphere, it will not shoot up like a rocket because of inertia from its mass.

PS: I know that the Pascal is a unit derived from Nm over an area (1 metre squared).

Lest I Be Misunderstood

In the metric vs standard debate, my position is really "pick one and stick to it."

It's the zealots who piss me off.

All of the units were arbitrarily picked.

Literally pulled out of their creator's asses.

Metric tried to put a scientific veneer on it, but it's still picking a point from a pile of points and moving outward from there.

Both come from trying to systematize measurements and both come from the late 18th centuries.

Standard consolidated the weights and measures already in place which were related only in the names of the units.

Metric created new units.

But you zealots can stop fighting.

Of note: I notice a lot of pro-metric people still use the standard units here in America.  You'd think a true zealot would be using the metric system in every encounter to make their point.

I have also noticed that the metric system is almost always imposed on a people, they don't seem to adopt it on their own.  That it's being resisted so strongly in America is our inbred inborn resistance to such top-down impositions.

Why Two Flags

Here's a history lesson that FuzzyGeff reminded me of.

Everyone knows that the rainbow flag means LGB, right?

But, did you know the original symbolism?

The rainbow is all the colors.  ALL.

The rainbow flag was to represent everyone, all of us.

To show that there was a place for everyone, in a time when there wasn't a place for homosexuals.

So, if the rainbow flag included everyone, even the cis and straights, then why would someone need to make a new flag outside that inclusion to represent them?

The only thing I can think of is to exclude people not like themselves.

That, ironically, means excluding the boring same-sex relationships of the everyday homosexual because they're too much like the cis-normative oppressors!

Am I the only one getting that vibe from them?

Of course, I've been doing the straight but not narrow thing so long I remember when it was just LGB and those 'B's' were looked at more askance than us straights.

They're All Arbitrary

The more I encounter metric zealots, the more I want to start using rods and hogheads for calculating my mileage.

Metric is not inherently better than Standard with regards to its units.

Mass and volume being derived from the properties of water of unnatural purity at a temperature and pressure that doesn't commonly occur...

Just as arbitrary as where Standard numbers are derived from.

I won't even start on how the meter's, original, definition was pulled out of someone's ass.

Where metric supposedly shines is the easy conversion of units...  Except it's not a conversion.  It's the same units!

For mass you're using grams.  A kilogram isn't a different unit, it's just a notation for moving the decimal place.

It IS simple, but...

Well, did you really have any trouble learning 16 ounces to a pound?

Standard isn't really that bad, it's not hard to learn and once learned it's simple to use.

It's just not quite as simple as metric because it's based on a natural human tendency to use fractions.

Despite the ten fingers, we are geared to run on fractions, not decimals.

We'd probably be better off converting to base 12.

Neither system is difficult, really.  You just need to learn them.

I worry, though, that learning in metric prevents your brain from getting some essential exercise early on.  Nobody, as far as I know, has studied this.

Oh, one thing that is certain.  The United States used the metric system to get to the moon.  The displays were graduated standard for the crews because they didn't think in it.

I've used both in my daily life and got to the point of thinking in them with either.

It doesn't take too long to adjust from pints to 0.5 L beers (you get just a little more beer in a half liter, just sayin').

I've watched people estimate range with wild inaccuracy so many times that I don't think that anyone can put a claim in that yards or meters is superior once you get past about 100 of them.

The one place where I prefer one system over the other is temperature.

Celsius is just too coarse.

Oh, and for you kids scoring at home, Fahrenheit is also based on water's behavior.  Sea water.  The units were defined by guessing the average human body temperature was 90° and making the boiling point of (regular) water two body temperatures from regular water freezing...

Full Fuel Replacement

I wondered how old the gas in the mower's can was.

I could not remember when we'd last bought ethanol-free mower gas.

That's usually a good indicator that it's been more than a year.

So I dumped it into the "firepit" gas jug and headed to the local Wawa and got me two new gallons.

When I go home, I realized that the gas in the mower was from that same old batch...

So I dumped it out and it was piss yellow.

Fresh gas added to the mower, I decided to run it for a bit to make sure the old gas was moved out of the bowl and carb.

That "run it for a bit" turned out to be me mowing the back yard.

A regular shake-down test.

When I had it apart I also adjusted the magneto to have the correct spacing.

Now it doesn't bog down in the one section of thick grass that never dries!

It also no longer surges.

I'm very happy with this small accomplishment!

I Just Saved At Least $220

The 8-year old mower failed to start the other day a couple of months ago.

Figuring we got our money's worth, we shopped for a replacement.

$400+ for a new one.

Knowing they're not very complicated, but also, not knowing how to fix it, we took it to a repair place.

We figured that if it was fixable and cheaper than a new mower, we're money ahead.

They charged a $50 deposit to figure it out.

So we paid that $50 and they got back to us in a few days.  $250 to repair the fuel system.

That's when I said to Harvey, "The $300 to fix it gets a 90 day warranty, $400 gets two years."

That's when Marv reminded me, "these things aren't that complicated, why don't you figure it out?"

There's dozens of youtube vids on how to remove the carburetor.  Which, by the way, is the entire fuel system plus a tank and hose.

So I looked up what replacing the entire fuel system would cost.

$30 for a carb, air-filter, primer-bulb and associated gaskets.  And the wrong spark plug, but hey; the old plug still works.

I'll change the oil tomorrow.

Missed That One

Watching Forgotten Weapons and Ian taking his PM-63C to a back-up gun match...

I don't have that gun on my T2K conversion!

How did I miss that?

SIGH.

It's in there now!

There's a lot of nation specific guns, mostly Polish, that my GURPS conversion has that aren't in any other T2K version out there. 

Damn, but the PM-63 is light for an SMG.

It really is a heavy pistol with select-fire rather than being a real submachine gun.

How's That Strike Going?

Bad news for the actors, studios and writers:

I'm watching all kinds of old movies.

Amazon makes lots of stuff I'd missed in theaters or other home media available.

Such as Road to El Dorado.

It was a box office bomb and was out of the theaters long before I could arrange going to see it.

Since it was an unknown, I wasn't about to buy it on DVD...

Blockbuster went away before I could remember to rent it.

But here it is, a 23 year old movie on my computer.

I can keep this up for YEARS.

Can they?

Did You Ever Notice?

I noticed a while ago that the mouth of the M8 scabbard did not match the contour of any bayonet's cross-guard.

Why is it angled away from the guard?

To match the profile of the top side of the M3 fighting knife AND so you can hang it from either hip!

I'm the only one who wondered, aren't I?

Did Some Bitching

I sent Lego an email with my order number and the tracking number and showed the lack of movement for two weeks.

They sent a new tracking number which is showing movement in less than a day.

Midway says that if I don't have my spring in hand by the end of day on the 14th, let them know and they will let ship me another one for UPS to lose...

You Can See Where They Were Heading

Willard stopped by for coffee, bearing gifts!

Remembering a post from five years ago; he got me a genuine, imitation, West Taiwanese made M3 fighting knife!

Considering that a real one is minimum $120 on ebay, and can go over $1,500, we're happy to have the West Taiwanese model.

You can definitely see that the M7 is just an M3 with plastic grips and bayonet attachments.

0.5 lb. naked, 0.8 lb. with scabbard.  It's a good quality small knife in GURPS terms.

Being a whimsical fellow, he also brought a Cold Steel "Chaos"

1.1 lb. bare, 1.3 lb. with scabbard.  I'd call that a fine quality large knife / brass knuckles combo weapon.  It might even be a decent representation of a Traveller Marine "Blade."

By comparison, the M1918 trench knife is a fine quality small knife / brass knuckles combo.  It's 1.1 lb. drawn and unobtanium scabbarded.

Be careful with your 1918, after 105 years it's still sharp as fuck!

The cats assisted when I was trying to walk to the door and I just barely brushed the edge of the blade keeping my balance.  Better than falling on it or dropping it into my foot, I think.

Rack The Slide

It occurs to me that there's a better noise than pumping the shotty to make the home invader shit themselves.

The sound that occurs from pulling the trigger.

Battle of Washita River

The Battle of Washita River is often cited as a "slaughter" or "massacre."

If you believe Custer's numbers, it is.

If you believe the Cheyenne's numbers, not so much.

It's also another example of the wrong village being attacked because the Army trusted their Indian scouts.

The Osage scouts, the Osage being "at war" with the Cheyenne, led Custer's unit to Black Kettle's encampment.

The Osage were perfectly happy if the 7th Cav wiped out the entire village.

They almost certainly told Custer that it was the group they were looking for and not Black Kettle's group which had negotiated a separate peace.

The group they were looking for was a legitimate target.

In the end, Black Kettle was killed trying to get clear of the fight.

The number of Indians killed in the fight was hotly contested back when it happened.

The Cheyenne themselves stating it was a fight, not a slaughter.  As few as 15 killed out of an encampment of 250.

Custer clearly padded his numbers.  If his were to be believed then every Cheyenne at the camp was either killed or captured, and that was obviously not true.  Blatantly not true.

Remiss

Yesterday, in 1945, the third atomic weapon ever detonated exploded just above Nagasaki, Japan.

Also noteworthy:

Second detonation of an implosion, plutonium device.

Last use of atomic weapons in war (so far).

78 years and counting since the last atomic war!

In 1950, I'll bet you wouldn't have found a single expert that would have predicted we'd have made it to 1965 without a second atomic war, let alone to putting the Soviet Union in its grave without one.

Interesting

I'm old enough to remember when Florida changed the time limit on abortions from 24 to 15 weeks being the end of the world and a crushing blow to women's rights.

I am not here to debate if it was or not.

What I am here to point out is that limit changed from 15 weeks to 6 weeks without hardly a mousefart from the usual screeching pro-choice advocacy groups.

That surprised me.

Perhaps the blurring of what's a woman by the people who normally politically align with the pro-choice has something to do with it.

How can you talk about women's rights when you can't even define what a woman is non-subjectively?

I need to speak to my primary care physician about my popcorn consumption watching these groups squabble.

Cool

Governor DeSantis just fired a State Attorney for being soft on crime.

Florida is strange in that the governor can fire an elected official for not doing their job.

It's subject to congressional approval, but it looks like congress agrees with the decision.

In a bold move, former state attorney Worrel says she will run for re-election and states that she will redefine the job outside the job description to continue to do what she just got fired for...

Good for her!

I love to see idiots waste money on lost causes.

It makes the popcorn go down easier.

I can see this cycle running...

Gets reelected.

Returns to the behavior that got her fired.

Gets fired again.

GOTO 10:

And if the people of Orlando keep reelecting here, then they deserve the crime wave that's coming to them.

Even liberal ass Pinellas near me doesn't do this catch and release stupidity.

Grudging Admission

I will have to admit that GM got the caliper design right on the 2nd Gen Equinox with regards to pad changes.

You undo one slider pin, and rotate the caliper up on the other.

The pads stay on the bracket in their little spring clips.

You don't need to worry about dropping the caliper and damaging the brake line.

So you yank the pads and springs, replace same, compress the piston, flip the caliper back down and replace the one bolt in one pin and viola!  Robert is your mother's brother!

This is so much better than the balancing act my F or B bodies had going on and holding the pads in the caliper until you could sneak up on the rotor and hunt for the slider-nut...  IT WAS JUST HERE WHERE THE FUCK DID IT GO WHY AM I SITTING ON IT HOW DID IT GET UNDER ME??

What The Actual

Because we're rabid Lego fans here, we order from Lego directly on occasion.

Lego has decided that USPS, Fed Ex, UPS and DHL are too reliable.

So they have changed to Laser Ship.

Laser ship's tracking has shown my package status as "waiting for receipt of package" since the 1st of the month.

You will note that today is the 10th.

Something I am just noticing is that Lego has no link for, "my shipment appears to be lost."

I'm ticked because I used my VIP points to make the purchase cheaper and to UPGRADE the shipping!

What the fuck, this is not an upgrade.

Adding to the frustration level is Midway.

UPS Postal innovations is a method of using the slowest method of moving a delivery from TWO shippers...  With the added risk of extra stops to lose the package.

My little spring disappeared from UPS on the way to USPS on the 4th.  They've changed the delivery dates every day since the 5th.  It's in the aether someplace between Orlando and here.

Pacing

The Lovely Harvey's car has new rotors and pads on all four corners.

Moxie now has new pads on all four corners to compliment the new caliper on her front right.

The heat is taxing.

Very taxing.

Draining, even.

Marv and I knocked out Harvey's car in one sitting so that I knew she had good brakes to take The Boy to the regional Special Olympics bowling competition.

She'd mentioned vibration and we knew that a rotor was on its way out before she became a work from home type.  It'd been fixed a long time ago if she was still commuting 80 miles a day.

I've changed her oil twice from age without the mileage or "change oil" light coming on.  Same for Moxie.

Moxie's brakes, I took in stages.  I did the caliper, brake line and pads one night, the other front the next and the rears today.

Pedal feels much better.  I'm probably tricking myself into thinking that I have more pedal too... but my subjective impression is that it's not going near so far to the floor to get the same braking.

It's no comparison to the 4-piston Brembos with braided stainless lines on The Beast, but it's also no Hot-Rod.

Road Trip

Bought a rear door seal for The Beast from someone I'd actually known for years, but didn't know I'd met.

He's also the owner of the New Caprice Forum.

The shipping options of the odd sized box came very close to the price of filling the tank, so I went with the "meet in Titusville" option.

And meet in Titusville, we did!

Dogs-R-Us is a fun bit of local color we hit almost every time we're over that way.

One of the nice things about having a road-trip car is taking them out in their native environment, set the cruise and, well, cruise.

The first 41 minutes of the two and a half hour trip was getting from the gulf coast to I75.  We averaged 18 miles an hour.

The rest of the trip was spent at 75 miles an hour or so, so our average went up to 50 miles an hour after 300 miles of travel...

Because getting to and from the interstate is mostly sitting at stop lights, not moving.

Purse Swinging

There's a tiff going on among tank-history YouTubers.

Something that's nice about making plausible tanks for GURPS: T2K is I'm making stats for a game where pi = 3!

I try to get a realistic number for guns and armor, but at the end of the day any errors I introduce don't matter because it's a game.

In the context of T2K, a Sherman is an unstoppable monster because nobody EVER buys an anti-tank weapon when the things are so darn rare.

My reputation for GURPS vehicles doesn't rely on getting things absolutely correct.

Just playable.

I just have to make sure that a round from a given gun spangs off the armor of a tank that's well known to be immune.

Powerless

Just as I was putting the wheel back on Moxie I heard a crackling bang and felt a thud in the ground.

Alarming to feel a thud when you've got the car up on jack-stands!

A tree decided to fall across our power lines six houses up.

I saw the lines down looking past the power company's truck when I took my test drive.

I will commend them for getting the lines back up and power restored in just three hours.

Huzzah!

More concerning was fire-rescue being at that same house just before the power company showed up, but after the power went out.

I don't know that neighbor, but I hope they weren't trimming when it fell and they got hurt.

Restored To Service

Moxie the other night decided that the RF brake would not release.

It'd happened once before and forcing the piston back into the bore on the caliper cured it for a year.

This time, I went for a more lasting fix.

I replaced the caliper AND the brake line.

The Lovely Harvey even played pedal monkey to bleed the brakes.

All done!  All better!

Tomorrow I think I shall do new pads on the other three corners to match the new ones on the new caliper.

Once it was all back together, I checked if it was the caliper or line that'd gone bad.

The sliders were nice and loose.

Without the line attached, the piston went back into the bore with just finger pressure.

Bad line!

This is the first time it's happened to me personally, but I am glad I took the belt and braces approach to the problem.  Replacing just the caliper and having the same issue in a few weeks would have upset me just a skosh.

Oh, doing it in the hot Florida evening sun was definitely a joy!

Missed It By That Much

Toyota missed something putting my car back together.

The electrical plug for the door-lock.

Easily corrected.

Did it myself.

My Week With Corolla

The Toyota dealer loaned me a '23 Corolla SE while they were working on The Beast.

It's chock full of nannies.

Lane assist is the most irritating.  It's like a stick shaker sort of deal that nudges you back into the center of the lane as Betty sees it.

There are many reasons to NOT be perfectly centered in the lane, and it gets old that Betty can't seem to perceive it.

One thing in particular was construction that had us crossing the centerline and Betty damn near yanking the wheel out my hand to stay on the right of it.

I am not a fan.

You can shut it off, but you have to shut it off every time you start the car.

Adaptive cruise control is kind of sort of neat once you figure out how it's supposed to work.

Nobody uses it as intended because the default settings hamstring the intent.

I read the manual.

People are out there using these features to thwart Darwin.

The infotainment system shows some signs of the future...  There's a nav function you can sign up for with just a small monthly fee...

But Sirius/XM works, the radio works.

The back up camera has laughably poor resolution.  The one I added to The Beast is SO much better, despite the much smaller screen on my car.

The AC takes forever to get going and waits for the "pay attention to traffic" screen to time out before firing up.  In Florida, this matters a lot.

Not surprisingly, there's a distinct lack of "go" from the small 4-banger.  Moxie is noticeably perkier.

The 27 mpg is nice, but it's matched by Moxie and The Beast isn't too far behind it.

Happy Hiroshima Day

Today, in 1945, the second atomic bomb ever detonated, and the first one ever used in war was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

If they'd signed the comment, they'd get credit for linking me to this:

 

1000% Excise?

Congressman Beyer (D-VA) is proposing a 1,000% excise tax on guns he doesn't like.

Fine.

But lets get something for our troubles this time.

Congress shall be taxed at 100% for every penny over their salary on their entire household.

I mean, if you're going to fuck me financially, congressman, I think it's fair that you are too.

My proposal also eliminates the dodge of putting shit in your spouse's name.

I am sure that Kerry and Pelosi will on board with that idea.

WHY

I don't remember if I mentioned it, but it bears repeating.

I support LGBT causes because, in the way back, the LGBT people supported me.

I was a gaming geek.

This was before video games and before table-top role playing games were mainstream.

Gaming geeks were subject to the usual bullying from the normal sources of bullies.

The only people in the entire high school who treated us as if we were humans were the LGBT folks.

Let me say that again.

THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO TREATED US AS IF WE WERE PEOPLE WERE THE LGBT PEOPLE.

I remember that kindness.

They earned my gratitude.

They had my back when everyone else was looking to stab it.

I will be there for them, and your invisible friend had better manifest and PROVE they're real before I turn my back on them.

You're invited to read someone else's blog if you don't like it.

Um, Yeah, Fuck YOU

Went to pay my car insurance.

$660 a month.

It was $500 for the previous six months.

It was $350 a month the six months before that and about $250 a month for the previous 11 years.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK USAA?

It's hard to comparison shop when hardly any insurance company lists my 2012 Caprice.

BUT!

State Farm threw a quote of $421 a month.

Looks like I'm changing insurance companies.

Unfunded Public Pensions

I guess that a couple of states have some massive shortfalls in their public pension funds.

I see that the state governments are completely, 100% to blame for this.

Not one iota of blame goes to the public employee unions who demanded those golden pensions or they would go on strike.

Nope, the noble Union public worker can't be at fault.

I notice that a LOT (enough to be noteworthy anyway) of these pensions pay for life and pay in full after just 15 years on the job.  People as young as 37 are retiring on a full pension in some cases and looking to getting at least 40 years of being paid out at the rate of their biggest ever paycheck (and that can include that one week you did 40 hours of overtime).

Even more fun is when that 37 year old "retiree" moves to a different place, does 15 more years and retires again at 52...  Got their pension and paycheck the whole time and is now getting two pensions a month.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

They do it AGAIN and retire a third time at 67, and really retire this time, and get three checks a month.

Most of these plans include full, no out of pocket medical.  Some even cover their nuclear family too.

Gee, how come the pension plans are all underfunded or broke?

I am aware that there are plans which don't start paying until you're 65 even if you did the requisite 15 years when you were 37.

There are even places that don't let you collect until you've stopped working.

I'm not sure if it's the norm, but...  There's some awfully young people here in Florida who are saying they're former NYFC cops who have awfully nice houses and don't go to work every morning.

Important Public Safety Message

Gen X is not locked in here with you.

You are locked in here with Gen X.

Adjust your plans accordingly, because we're functional without the internet and read and write cursive.

What If The Right Notices

A few times now I've noticed that resorting to violence gets your cause advanced in America or, at least, you get left alone to do your thing unopposed.

Nobody says boo to Islam.  Their community includes a portion that's perfectly willing to kill people to make their point.

People noticed and chilled their speech so as to not offend that portion of their community and keep from being targeted for death.

Black Lives Matter and Antifa are also out there committing violence and property damage.

They're left alone, for the most part.

What will happen when "the right" notices that violence works?

It's already been pointed out that if January 6th was an actual, armed insurrection then AOC would have literally been killed rather than the figurative death she's said was "literal".

Read that again, kids.

An actual armed insurrection would have seen those congress people trapped in the capitol building killed.

And lots of those cops helpfully opening the doors.

And lots of the insurrectionists because the cops would have been fighting back.

The right is painfully aware of what's happening to people who weren't doing any insurrecting at all that day.

I am wonder if any of them are having a Solzenitsyn moment sitting in jail waiting on their trespassing trial.

At the other end of the scale, people are starting to notice that if the cops aren't coming... It means THE COPS AREN'T COMING!

And if the cops aren't coming to stop the shoplifter, they aren't coming when you beat the shit out of them for stealing from you.  It's a short trip from there to shoot, shovel, shut up.

Those cameras were put in the convenience store to help ID the thief and enable the cops prosecute the criminal.  When those record vigilante justice instead...  Those cameras will disappear.

Stay frosty out there.

That's Some Expensive Labor There Dave

Our mower decided to do a no-start condition.

The local repair place wanted $50 to diagnose it, and that $50 would go into any repairs needed.

A direct replacement mower is $450 at Lowe's.

We figured we'd be money ahead having it fixed.

They called back today.

Another $250 to fix the carb, oil change, spark plug and air filter.  With a sharpening.

A whole new carb with plug and filter is $24.  A quart of oil is less than $10.

Since the diagnosis was all labor...  $266 to diagnose and replace about $35 in parts.

Yeah... no.

While still cheaper than $450 for a new mower, swapping a carb is within my skill set, so $24 is a LOT cheaper than $250 more.

I don't begrudge them the $50 diagnostic fee at all.  Thanks!

But $216 for another hour of work is excessive.

How it Works: The Pedersen Device

Brakes Only Slow You Down

Which is why The Lovely Harvey's car is rocking brand new pads and rotors on all four corners.

We definitely got our money's worth from those pads!  We were almost to metal on metal on one rear pad.

That rotor was definitely showing signs of being warped, thus more than just new pads.

She reports that the noise that made her mention I needed to check things is gone!

It was that warped rotor and nearly expended pad singing.

We shanghaied Marv into helping and I had him on Lug Nut Duty.

He gets to pick where I pay for his dinner tomorrow.

Responsible And Safe

I'll expand a little on what Mr Richardson says here.

First, nobody is more responsible or safe than the normal gun owner.

Citing "gun safety" and "gun responsibility" are attempts to mollify the normal gun owner into thinking the anti-gun crowd isn't talking about them.

Except, we're on to them now.

I'll put forth something else.

"Normal gun owner."

We don't murder people.

We don't randomly shoot things.

We don't carelessly discharge our guns.

We don't even brandish unless there's a threat to contend with and, most of the time, we don't even shoot the threat!

Notice I don't say "average" or "law abiding" gun owner.

First, never appeal to the mean.

Obeying the laws is no guarantee that you will be let alone by the tyrannically bent.

Lots of law abiding Jews are no longer with us.

Don't trust that your normal, unharmful, behavior will remain legal.  I remember when they "banned" assault rifles and something I'd done prior to September 13, 1994 became illegal if I did it for the next ten years.

I stopped referring to myself as a law abiding gun owner because the laws are capricious and mercurial.

But Does It Matter

 The 5th Circuit rules on the 2nd Amendment correctly about as often as the 9th Circuit rules on it incorrectly.

But it doesn't really matter until the Supreme Court shoves it down some throats that anything changes.

Even then, the anti-gun side fights so hard to avoid the Supreme Court ruling that nothing really changes until additional rulings are issued.

A large part of this is the Supreme's reluctance to give rulings that follow the implications of the narrow ruling they just issued.

If they issued wider rulings, like the 5th and 9th Circuits often do, then we'd be much farther along.

Their policy appears to be baby steps to oppose seven-league-boots.

I Have No Idea Who Zuby Is

But he makes sense:

I've felt this way about a lot of things.

I remember being controversial in my positions in the way-back.

I've watched a couple of my positions become mainstream, then looked on in horror as the victory morphed into something else entirely.

I wonder if Zuby is experiencing the same feeling.

Sanity Prevailed

Every once and a while, I wonder about a S&W 4506.

Marsellus Wallace toted one in Pulp Fiction.

Bigger and heavier than the P220 I already own.

Prices have come down a bit, but not so far that I'm even tempted.

I suppose if I skipped non-essential things like food and shelter I could have one paid for in a few months.

And I Hate It

The local Toyota dealer is loaning me a 2023 Corolla SE while they repair the damage to The Beast caused by their tire guy skipping lug nut day.

Ye gads I hate this car.

It's a real incentive to get the stuck caliper on Moxie fixed so I can avoid driving it.

Parts should be here today...

It's the embodiment of the nanny state in every aspect.

A speed limit sign flashes up on the dash to warn me I'm about to speed about 5 mph before I have a chance to actually speed.

The infotainment screen is obtrusively placed, and counterintuitive to operate.  Counterintuitive radios are SO safe...

I'm longing for a '70 Chevelle and a points distributor and manual brakes.

It takes a lot of poorly realized tech to make an automotive luddite out of me, but Toyota has succeeded.

You Are Not A Toad

 

Apparently this dry-foot Cuban did not get the memo that she's sitting on a toadstool.