Under The Knife

Young Shadow is going to the vet to be spayed tomorrow.

She is very upset about the "no food or water" cut off.

I Want(ed) A Fake Passport

Not a fake passport to trick anyone or to commit a crime.

A joke passport is prolly closer to what I'm after.

A local brewery tasting room gives a 30%* discount for hospitality workers on Mondays and a 20%* discount for cops, firemen, first responders, teachers and veterans on Thursdays.

The discounts are *- Libations only.

I've commented, "but I'm not from Libatia."

Then came the idea of getting a passport from Libatia.

Then the realization that doing so is pushing the limits of legality HARD when you search for "Fake Passport for non-fraud" and "Fake Passport for TV/Movie" and the top ten hits include official warnings about not proceeding further.

Yeah...

I think this joke can sit here unrealized.

Spinning

Getting from "the car is shaking like it's going to fall apart" to "running like it should" on your own is a nice feeling.

"On my own" includes the generous help of Marv and JT who loaned time, tools and expertise to the solution.

There's just a couple of tools for cars that I will, likely, never own.

Tire machine.

Balancing machine.

Alignment rack.

I needed two of those to solve the problem, but I figured out I needed them via my own level of Mechanic/TL8 (Automobile).

I know a couple of fine people who wouldn't even be able to communicate the problem to a mechanic, let along begin fixing it.

I think it's interesting that Marv did much the same work on his Impala SS not too long ago and the two cars are as different as night and day about how the front suspension works.

He's got double a-arms and shocks.  I have dual lower control arms and struts.  Both are coil spring set-ups.

Suggestion

I have a bill for the FL GOA.

No, not a bill.  A constitutional referendum.

If a bill passes one house, it automatically must get a vote in the other.

That will stop the old-boy-RINO-network from killing pro-gun bills by simply not submitting a FL senate version when the Florida Sheriff's Association says "no!"

Inflacja Jest Dziwką

My Tantal Kbk wz.88n I made from a kit ran me $950.  Six years ago.

If you want, essentially, the same rifle today, Atlantic will ask you for $1,800.

Dzięki Joe!

Get 'em while they're cheap, I guess.

I Like Big Brakes And I Cannot Lie

Now that a full test drive has confirmed the front suspension and wheel balance is FINALLY sorted out...

Time for a fun run!

There's a road near here that's got lots of tight corners and few long straights that is perfect for testing your handling (and skills and nerve).

The Beast took it with aplomb!

The big multi-piston brakes helped a lot because she gets going so damn smooth it sneaks up on you how fast you're going and it's time to slow down to about 50 for the 25 marked corner...

GRIN.

She definitely handles better than the '91 Biscayne SS.

At least as much fun as both the Biscayne SS and The Precious.

Fair And Balanced

Sucked it up and took The Beast back to Tire Kingdom.

Told them that, now that everything is tight, I can feel something is wrong.

I told them about the vibration and how it moved when I did a tire rotation.

That impressed the mechanic listening over the managers shoulder.

They got me right in and balanced all four wheels.

Two of them needed a 1/2 ounce change.  One needed a full ounce.

!!!!

That's a lot of change to me!

They didn't charge me, so I am not complaining.

On the drive home I got in a couple of sprints.  Both felt smooth and free of vibrations.  Aside; though this car is short 80 horses and half a ton heavier than The Precious it still gets up and goes when you stab the accelerator!

This is the shop that originally installed the tires a couple of years ago and just did the alignment.

I recommend them if you're local.  Corner of US19 and Alt 19 in Holiday, FL.

UPDATE:  

Longer test drive at interstate speeds confirms the shakes, shimmies, and vibrations are quelled.

National Retro Day?

 

My Kind Isn't Welcome

SJ Games on Facebook was mentioning it's getting to be convention season and asked what conventions people were planning on attending.

The answer is simple.

None.

Check the rules of every science fiction, comic or gaming convention and you will find language to the effect of:

THE CONVENTION AND HOST HOTEL ARE A GUN FREE ZONE

Yeah, not going to do that.

I'd love to attend one, but they ALL have that language.

Beast Update

A different tire place did the alignment today.

They didn't complain of anything under the car being put on wrong and had me done by the promised time.  Almost as if the first shop was lying?

I, however, was fucking rancid on my test drive when the steering wheel had picked its old shimmy back up.  Pretty much the same shimmy that started me working on the front end to begin with!

Starting about 50 the wheel would shake from side to side, getting worse until about 85.  It had a cycle to it as well, every 30-40 seconds it would stop then start then stop...

Nothing appears loose on the front end and I sat baffled.

So I canvassed my friends!

JT suggested seeing if it was a rim or tire by doing a tire rotation.

So I did.

Test drive confirms the vibration has moved to the rear of the car and there's nothing being transmitted directly into the steering wheel any more.

I think I put too many miles on the tires with all the worn out parts and I've cupped a tire slightly.

Or I shed a wheel weight.  It was really shaking at times before I did the tie-rods.

The car is far more driveable now than it's ever been!

Terminology That Texas Got Right

Throwing hot dogs or burgers on the grill is grilling, not barbecuing.

Barbecue is entirely different and Texas uses the term correctly.

Dunno if they originated this usage, but they own it.

He Said She Said

Someone's deleted for not signing it comment suggested I turn the assholes at Tires Plus into the DMV.

Their word against mine, and nothing happens.

Posting to Facebook and tagging The Lovely Harvey...  Her friends can see, their husbands will hear...

If any of them were using that location, they'll stop.

That'll do far more damage than siccing the gubmint on them.

This word of mouth thing has killed other shops in the area.  There's a Goodyear Tire and Auto location that is gone because of this.

Toe And Go

I took it upon myself to see if I could get a crude alignment done by adjusting the toe on the driver's front tire and then going around the block and see if the car went straight.

After about five tries, including an over-correction, The Beast now tracks straight.

I still want to put it on an alignment rack.  Going straight doesn't mean the tires aren't going to wear unevenly.

To that end, I'd scheduled an appointment with a different shop for 3pm today and when I arrived... They were swamped.  Jobs that were taking longer than expected and several walk-ins.

Sunday is a busy day, it seems.

Plus the person I'd made the appointment with had double booked a couple of jobs, adding to the mayhem.

I offered to come back tomorrow, they gratefully accepted my offer.

Unaligned

The local Tires Plus lied today.

They claimed a tie rod wasn't torqued to spec.

They offered to tighten it down for $350.

I declined and took The Beast home.

So I checked.

Inners were still at 66 ft-lb, which is to spec.

Outers were still the fucking tight of 30 ft-lb plus 60 degrees.

No play in the steering.

So I called the shop back.

The guy on the phone swore that something was finger tight and only engaged by a couple of threads.

With him on the phone and shaking things I could not find anything finger tight or engaged by a couple of threads.

This is all especially galling because they were the last place to touch those tie rods because I took the car straight from installing the tie rods to them for an alignment.

I strongly suspect that they made this up because one of the managers offered to upgrade my alignment from last year to a lifetime for the difference between what I'd already paid and the upgraded service.

This is exactly the kind of bullshit that led me to learn to wrench in the first place.

Very telling was the conversation about the inner tie rod ends and his bafflement about the non-factory metal-zip tie's I'd used to retain the boots over them.  He'd described removing and installing the factory wire retainer.

My zip ties were still on the boots and tight as ever.

I'm beyond furious, but what recourse do I have except to go elsewhere?

Two Forward One Back Mox Nix

Got the front left control arms replaced on The Beast.

Marv came to the rescue with take-apart tools for the recalcitrant rearmost arm's ball joint.

Pickle fork?  No-go because the tips hit the spindle before it could get enough wedge in.

Genuine powered-by-Archimedes ball joint tool worked, but we had to shorten the stem of the ball joint to get it wide enough to go over it and THEN had to cut the nut off the stem because it kept walking off the tip when we applied torque.

Once we got the new ones in and torqued down, it was obvious I'd need an alignment, but this was not unexpected.

What surprised me was the Stabilitrak going tits up on the test drive because the wheel was too far over.

C0710 5A for those scoring at home.  It's because there's steering input and no yaw signal.  It should clear itself once I have a good alignment on it, which happens tomorrow.

PS: The right turn shimmy appears to be corrected and the rearmost control arm bushing was shot.

Two Two Three

 

Today is 2-23.

.223!  Get it?

I'm here all night, try the veal, don't forget to tip your waitress.

Did You Know

Did you know that if your student loan is cancelled by Joe, you can still vote for a Republican?

The recipient of this largess is not obligated to be grateful for it, especially since it's the Democrats who are largely responsible for ruining the conditions where a degree in navel lint weaving led to a good job; and thus are responsible for holders of such degrees not being able to find work.

I am hearing rumblings that the appreciation of the forgiveness isn't going to last into the voting booth.  Harvey has several friends whom expect to benefit who're not planning on voting for Brandon again.

It's Good To Be A King's Man

Now that we've all seen the "shots fired" acorn video.

Imagine if you, as a private citizen had sprayed and prayed that hard at what turned out to be nothing.

If you're having the realization that you'd be in jail and notice that our panicky police shooter got to quit their job...

With all the talk of racism and illegals being second class citizens, we keep missing that most of us already are second class citizens.  Or lower.

Don't take me wrong, I'm all for the cops getting to shoot back and end threats, I simply want the same laws for all.

I can't, cop can't.  Cop can, I can.  Simple.

After all, they're supposed to be civilians, just like us.

But if you even hint at making the laws the same, the cops and their unions and professional organizations flip the fuck out.

No first class citizen wants the second class elevated to their level (or to be reduced).

GURPS Shotguns

All shotgun ammunition fires at nearly the same velocity.

That means a pellet of a given size is going to do the same damage regardless of gauge.  They will also have the same 1/2D and Max ranges.

What will matter after that is how many pellets.

00 Buck is the baseline pellet for GURPS shotguns, and most gauges smaller than 12 don't get a 00 option.

Check the ammo sellers.

.410 is the exception because you can get 000 loads.

Starting at #1 Buck, the pellets get pi-.

Many of the smaller rounds don't even get a slug option.

It makes it easy to spec out a new shotgun once you do the math for a given pellet.

How Bad Is It

It's so bad that the guy who had "Hillary 2016" and "Biden 2020" in his yard doesn't have a "Biden 2024" sign up.

"Hillary 2016" stayed there until the "Biden 2020" sign went up.

"Biden 2020" lasted right up to "Let's Go Brandon" became a meme.

After All That

The City of Manor, Texas is the source of the first example of Texans don't pronounce things right I found.

But it's worse than that.

It's spelled like the English word pronounced "Manner" or "Manohr"

But it's named after a person, James B Manor.

I don't know how he said it, but the official pronunciation is "May-Ner."

Locals say, "May-Nohr".

But people from Florida should be mocked for not knowing any of this?

Have another bowl of enchilada sauce, I guess.

Made Of Wait

My control arms have made it Florida, but aren't out for delivery.

They're still optimistically saying they will arrive before the end of the day, but...

Probably not.

The odd mental block I've discovered is that I don't want to take the car apart until I have the parts in hand.

The job really will get done sooner if I do, but I'm not gonna.

Well Put

 

Getting Things Apart

Since I am going to be doing the control arms on The Beast tomorrow...

I've been considering tools that will get the ball joints out of the spindle.

The method I prefer is to thread the nut to the end of its threads and hit it with a hammer.  That normally pops it right out.

This also, normally, allows it to be reused.

A video I watched, though, said (in a wonderful Australian accent), "You're throwin' this part away, no need to be gentle!"

He's so right!

If the hammer fails, I have a pickle fork around here someplace.

It surprises me the number of videos I've seen with people struggling with some sort of screw driven contraption when a good whack with a hammer would suffice.

Didn't Read It Did You

The Wicked Witch of the West is not some misunderstood victim of The Wizard of Oz.

She's the bad guy.

She's an unrepentant bad guy.

She doesn't need a redemption arc or a story from her perspective where she's the hero.

Why?

Because the fucks at the Wannsee Conference, from their perspective, thought they were the heroes too.

Of course, given the level of antisemitism from Hollywood of late, perhaps the dancing monkeys would agree the Nazis were the good guys...

I'd Put The Time Of Death In 2012

Reading about further shenanigans surrounding the Hugo award I am reminded that it really became irrelevant in 2012 when the nominations and awards went full liberal.

The Sad and Rabid Puppy campaigns simply proved that the nomination and voting were compromised and the WSFS was not going to return to allowing the fans to pick what they wanted without a filter to exclude "undesirable" conservative stories and votes.

The bullshit at the Chengdu Worldcon is just another cherry atop a very large sundae.

Texans Again

NASA's first 2-man spacecraft has a bit of a controversy about how to pronounce Gemini.

To the entire rest of the world it's pronounced Jem In Eye.

To insiders and cool kids at NASA it's said Jih mih nee.

I think it's linked to the brand new control center in Houston and Texans inability to pronounce common words, like Manor or Texas.  (X is pronounced as a hard H in Spanish).

Like skipping the beans in chili, they think it's cute and endearing, but it's really just making them look stupid.

It'd be one thing if they were preserving the original pronunciation and everyone else had changed.  Lost in the Pond on YouTube details a lot of cases like this where American English is preserving how something was originally said and England has changed.

But Texas keeps changing the pronunciation of words, with no clear logic or rules.

It's not a case of using Spanish rules on English characters, or vice versa; except sometimes at random (Texas is said English and spelled Spanish for example but Manor is not pronounced English OR Spanish).

My pointing all this out just makes them double down and have another bowl of salsa.

And if you think all I do is shit on Texas; them fuckers have nailed BBQ.  Do like unto Texas your brisket!

Unexpectedly

REAL unexpectedly, not the Democrat Captive Media "unexpectedly."

We've been watching the so-bad-it's-good-but-not-really-because-it's-THAT-bad show La Brea.

The Lovely Harvey and I just finished the last episode tonight.

We gutted through it when we should have rage quit two seasons ago.

I had more self consistent science fiction stories when I was in 9th grade playing Star Frontiers.

It's making Space: 1999 easier to watch.

Read that again: It's making Space: 1999 easier to watch.

I am tempted to find the OG Land of the Lost and see if it's better or worse than La Brea.

As A General Rule

As a general rule I don't take advice about whether I should own a firearm from stoners or felons.

Mr Chong is both.

No matter that his felony is a bullshit conviction, he's a felon nonetheless.

I find his sudden condemnation of firearm ownership odd.

Almost as if he feels that if he can't have a gun, nobody else should have one either.

He even once mentioned that as something he was no longer allowed to do...  Like he was once a gun owner.

Oh, I most especially don't listen to the mores of fucking Canadian dancing monkeys!  There's too fucking many of them here trying to tell us Americans how to do things.

 

 

Hrrrrrm

 

I wonder...

When I was a kid, we were raised in a "free-range" manner.

No smart phones, no internet and even if we were allowed in the house during the day; three channels.

School was 90% reading, writing and arithmetic.  Science was actual science stuff and there were more than one specialty to choose from.

I wonder if we learned to use our brains better and are, thus, better able to operate after losing a few cells.

High Concept Schlock

I am, manfully, trying to watch Space: 1999.

It's so very high minded, reasonably well filmed in the first season...

and it's dreck.

When I was 7 it was a lot more impressive.

The initial premise is just... wrong.

Ignoring how much energy is used to get the moon moving at what looks to be about 6G for a few minutes...

6G for a few minutes leaves the moon...  In orbit around Earth.  A different shape orbit, perhaps disastrously different.

But it doesn't get the moon outside the solar system.

I suspect some drugs that you cannot readily get anymore were involved in conceiving the show.  Like 'ludes.

Wiggle Wiggle

I went for a long drive last night to investigate the shimmy.

It's only in right hand turns and only under what I'd call moderate steering.

More steering input, no wiggle.

Past a certain lateral G, no wiggle.

Less steering input, no wiggle.

Below a certain lateral G, no wiggle.

Below 40 mph, no wiggle.

At 55, very pronounced.

Marv is the one who remembered that if you have this kind of shimmy, only in turns, then there's something loose on the outside of the turn as the weight shifts onto the suspension there.

The driver's side did seem a little looser than the driver's when I had the struts out...

Control arms are so much cheaper than struts and MUCH simpler to install.  Oh, you can install them one at a time instead of in pairs.

We Love To Watch Her Strut

Changed the front struts in The Beast.

Marv came over to be safety observer while I used the spring compressors.

Spring compressors give me the willies.

Seen too many scary videos of them going wrong.

But they're in now.

The shimmy is not cured, but it's better.  Everything I've done has made an improvement.

Control arms are next on my list.

If Ever There Was A Day For It

Since it's President's Day (three days too soon to be Washington's birthday, a week late for Lincoln) I need to find a range that will let me do an El Presidente drill.

The range I'm a member of is closed on Mondays and wouldn't allow such shooting anyways.

At Least Once

Probably more than once.

I have been told that my bloated, crippled ass will not be participating in any upcoming civil war.

Au Contraire!

I know The Math.  And other equations.

I even calculated them myself.

Even if we assume that I am killed when the police arrive to confiscate my firearms; how many cops do I have to assign to my honor guard in Hell for the pro-gun side to win because the anti-gun side has run out of people in uniform?

I'm pretty sure they think we're not going to fight back.

I'm pretty sure they're wrong.

Well, they might be mostly right, but the odds are ever in our favor.

I've said it many times now.

The decision to have this fight is not up to us.  It's up to people who're stupid as fuck.

Fuck Off Officer

 Fuck the Florida Senate too.

I WANT to support the police, but they keep pulling this shit while doing everything in their power to subvert my rights.

But I do know one thing about this bill, that should be fucking obvious.

The citizenry didn't demand it.

This is entirely a the creature of law enforcement associations.

This is exactly the opposite of what the legislators are supposed to be doing.  They're there to represent US, not our employees against us.

It's interesting that the FL Senate can pull crap like this and can't bother to let the committees even talk about pro-gun legislation. 

Especially after passing that law about slowing down for any government employee parked on the side of the road last year.

It's primarying time!

U After O Except When It's No

There are a couple of words that I spell English instead of American because I learned to spell them from reading before I learned there was a preferred way to spell them here.

Smoulder is one of them.  I can type smolder if I focus on it, but my fingers add the 'u' 9 times out of 10.

Of note:  Neither spelling has the "you spelled it wrong" red line under it as I type this.

So it gets spelled English a lot because I have to really focus on spelling it American style and most of the time I'm going too fast for that kind of focus.

I houpe this douesn't coulour youur oupinoun ouf me.

It's A Tell

Have you noticed that the GunTubers shilling for USCCA "insurance" are all lawyers?

It's Bad Enough

It's bad enough you're a fraud, but now you've become gun grabber?

Unlike a lot of people, I know people who were farmers when the farm crisis was going on.

I remember Farm Aid.

I remember a couple of acquaintances who applied for assistance from Farm Aid.

Guess what they got.

Go on.

Bupkiss.

The monies collected paid pennies on the kilobuck to the people they claimed they were trying to help.

Now this fuck wants to ban guns?

Bite me, Mr Cougar.

It would be best if you were to explore the LD100 dose of...  Pick something, anything.

As for seeing bodies to make people support banning guns?

I've seen my share.  That, more than anything else, led to me abandoning my "only the government should have guns" and becoming the gun toting person I am today.

Wanna bet that someone such as Willard, who is far more blooded than I, will likewise support gun ownership?  Hint: Sucker bet.

But corpses from the result of crime in America?

It's not the murder weapon that's the problem, Mr Cougar.  It's DA's who don't prosecute criminals.  It's shitheels like Soros who fund the elections of DA's who don't prosecute criminals.  It's a subculture that is a low-trust honor culture that doesn't view crime and murder as being wrong.  It's a media who support moral equivalence and perpetuate this subculture.

In short, it's not the guns.

Dice

I'd bought the 36 die set from Chessex when I first got a copy of Gelatinous.

As a backup, in case I lost it.  You don't really need the official game and dice to play.

But I liked the color I'd chosen enough to get a complete set for D&D.

They glow under black-light too!?

I don't even have much of a dice collection compared to some.

Itty Bitty

 

The Lovely Harvey, seeing that I'd ordered yet more dice, presented me with this fine set of polyhedrons and cunning carrying case.

I'm tickled!

Full Time All Cylinder Drive

JT brought his HP Tuners box over today.  THANKS!

We unchecked the AFM box and now The Beast no longer runs in Ricer Mode.

I need to make a road trip to see how mileage is affected, but the DIC shows numbers that are very similar to how they read when DoD was still enabled.

The big improvement is there's no longer a "flutter" from the throttle when I try to add a very small amount of pedal to when in traffic while maintaining speed with the car in front of me.

It was a slight hesitation and it was kinda irritating.

Add a little pedal and it'd feel like it was fluttering then add a little more and it'd change to 8 cylinder mode for, like, a second then I'd speed up then I'd lift a little and back into 4 cylinder mode.

It was getting old.

I'm Not Such A Bad Chap

I really want to get a Hasbro Black Series Captain Rex helmet and film "Rex" doing lines from Once Were Warriors.

It's silly, but it might be amusing.

Paranoia

The Beast has displacement on demand.

The failure of the system appears to be random with some people experiencing several failures with relatively low miles and some people putting hundreds of thousands miles without trouble.

The PPV community is savage about deleting it.

It's regarded as a flaw that will leave you stranded.

I'm poised to make a trip to Texas for the eclipse in April and I wasn't sweating it... until...

A buddy's truck bend a push-rod from a DoD lifter failure.

Now I'm jumpy.

I guess I could take Moxie instead, but...

I am sitting here wondering if I could knock out a DoD delete before it's time to go.

It's not a matter of time, it's a matter of money.  I just don't have the cash up front, and won't before it's time to leave.  Definitely have it done this year, though.

I plan on having the system disabled this week.

This Should Not Bother Me

Despite never once needing one in any game I've ever played: I just noticed that I no longer own a d30.

Further, it bothers me that I cannot make a matching set of dice from Chessex in the pearlescent purple color.  That color is unique to the d30 they currently offer.

Ideally it would be available in the clear purple or bright green I already have.

Series List

Some recent series:

Parks and Recreation.  Rage quit in second season.

The Tudors.  Gutted it out but wasn't having much fun.

Brooklyn 99.  Enjoying it.

La Brea.  Love to hate it, but gutting it out.  (Bus!  Magic bus!)

B5.  Season 5 can be skipped.

BSG.  Stop once they hit New Caprica.

OG Star Trek.  Gutted it out.  "79 episodes, about 30 good ones," P J Fry.

Succession.  Gutted it out.

Attack on Titan.  Getting to the good part is gutting it out.  Once past that line, it's decent. 

Update:

How could I forget The Expanse!  The season where they're stuck on one world going blind is the only weak season, but it was a weak book too.  Necessary for the last three books, and as yet unfilmed last three seasons.

That SHOULD Be The Least Of Their Worries

 

Cold Steel makes this charming hand weapon.

Though they call it a warhammer, its more of a pick in GURPS terms.  Really a mertel de fer... which is a pick with a hammer head.

Picks and warhammers are good at punching armor and do impaling damage on the spike side.  They also have reduced penalties for striking chinks in the armor.

But!

The real danger of this particular design is:

WARNING: This product can expose you to Nickel (Metallic), which is known to the State of California to cause cancer. For more information go to - www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.

Ignore that gaping hole in your sternum, you've been exposed to nickel!

Rage Quit Or Gut It Out

I tend to watch TV in a binge long after the show is off the air.

Some series I've gutted it out to the end.

Some I give up before I'm done with the second season.

Many I go all the way to the end and I feel satisfied.

Some I get to the end and feel like I would have been better off quitting early.

Where do you most often quit?

Might As Well Be 2.56!

The Beast has a 2.92:1 rear gear ratio.

The bigger the number before the :1, the faster you accelerate...  Within reason.

The problem with thinking this way is there's something with ratios on the other end of that driveshaft.

The Beast, in first gear will spin the engine 11.76 times for every time the rear tire spins once.

That's actually pretty deep.

The Biscayne with a 3.08 rear gear was just 9.42.

Marv dropped a very deep 3.73 rear in his Impala SS and rocks a 11.41.  That's not as good as The Beast!

There's lots of people who're putting 3.27 and 3.56 rears into their Caprice PPV's.  The complete differential from a 5th Gen Camaro bolts right in.

I wonder if that's too deep.  Sure the launch is epic, but you're grabbing for 2nd gear way too fast and losing all the benefit.  You're in the redline by 40 with 3.27; 30 with a 3.56.

2.92 is not hitting red until past 40.

The Camaro rear has a larger diameter ring gear.  That's more durable.

There's a lot more math to crunch.

The people who've done this tend to be in the "I got the best 1/4 mile time!" groups and are willing to sacrifice mileage and driveability for the time.

Not so much for me.

Sabers And... Snippet 18

The truth be told, Fowler thought, not all of the Indians had disappeared twenty years ago.

The Commanche were still where they'd, finally, been corralled and disarmed.

The Blackfoots, Crow and Pawnee were living comfortably on their reservations; having once been aligned with the US against their... fellow wasn't the right word... neighboring tribes.

There was old blood there.

It was Crow shamans who'd helped the scholars from Yale figure out what spells had been used to make the spook-holes.

The Commanche had been especially restive and it was clear that the secret of the spell had been deliberately withheld from them by their neighbors.

It seemed that nobody wanted to live next door to them if they could help it.

Indian Territory problem, not a 77th Expeditionary problem...

And this expedition.

Fowler was feeling a little bitter about it.

His Army had been well starved by a Congress that didn't have an enemy to the North and felt that it was large enough to handle a foe to the South.

If the invasion of Cuba, last year, had not been such a near thing, funding would probably still be strangling.

But now we're needed again, he thought.

Urgently now that some members of Congress were noticing that only the Commanche needed active management and all of the other native tribes had absconded.  They were chipping away hard at the monies promised to a Bureau of Indian Affairs that kept watch on a rather small population of Indians.

He had to admit, the lack of Indians had allowed the Army to do its job and kept Indian Territory from being overrun by white settlers a decade ago and the BIA had realized that without an Indian Territory they'd have been wiped out completely by, then, President Harrison.  So they backed the Army in keeping the settlers out.

But there used to be reservations all over the nation, not just Indian Territory.

The Bureau was interested in keep the money taps open and their nests well feathered.

So it was up to The Army, Colonel Fowler and the 77th to prove there were still Indians out there, somewhere.

Which brought up a problem.

The scouts that were integral to his expedition were inexperienced.  In the past, he'd have simply enlisted the aid of a Crow or Blackfoot scout.

But he was ordered to make peaceful contact with the Sioux or Cheyenne, if possible.  He doubted in his bones if that were possible if he brought even one of their eternal foes with him.

General Crook agreed that it was going to be more likely to be found by the Sioux than to find them himself, especially if he didn't do any sneaking about.  As if a formation of this size could do any sneaking.

More Importantly

More important than the shooter being trans is the shooter was a leftist.

That's been the common thread to a lot of these shooters.

It's just them doing their predictable thing and despite how obvious it is, nothing is done about it.

Especially not when both sides blame the wrong thing for the occurrence.

Until 1703 The Next Day

I successfully avoided learning who had won the Stupid Bowel until just after five this evening when my loving wife read the story to me while I was cooking supper.

What Odds

Another shooter turns out to be transgender.

I am going to guess that the conservative side's response will be some action against transgender people in the same knee-jerk reaction as liberals have when they blame guns.

ie Nothing that will help.

A gigantic problem is that transgender is often an outward symptom of something else.  It's rarely the primary thing going on.

So it's a lot like blaming a runny nose and ignoring the flu and raging fever.

Mental healthcare is a shambles in America.

Ironically this particular niche problem can be laid at the feet of the LGBTQ+ groups who've decided that we have to ignore any underlying mental health problem that presents as gender dysphoria.

When you're mandated to ignore the root cause of something for political correctness you never get to a solution that will stick.

The solutions being offered by the conservative side often involve punishing sick people for being unwell.

Again.  Still.  Always?

I am constantly baffled that the most religious Christians can't find a gram of compassion in them.

I think there's a way out of this, but we have to be able to say that someone suffering from a mental disorder is, in fact, suffering from a mental disorder and to do so without malice and hatred.  That covers both sides of this debate.

We have one side that DEMANDS that the disorder be labeled as such and to do as much to make the problem worse as they possibly can because they CANNOT be bothered to show any compassion, offer any assistance or accommodation because they will NOT be party to "someone else's delusion."

Then we have the other side that DEMANDS that we act as if abnormal is, in fact, normal.  They make the situation worse because they actively prevent people from seeking care that could alleviate the symptoms and perhaps let the afflicted live a normal life.

Aside, left handed people are also abnormal.  It doesn't always mean something debilitating.  Also, "different from you" isn't always "abnormal."

Get this far without rage quitting?

Being gay is about as abnormal as having blue eyes or being left handed.  It's not debilitating.  This is not about being gay.

Stand alone gender dysphoria is relatively mild and doesn't need to be debilitating.

Gender dysphoria as a symptom of something else is often the harbinger of something debilitating and dangerous, most often to the sufferer and occasionally to others.

We'd be far better served sorting out who's who here than just assuming that anybody who wants to dress in the wrong clothes is a murderous monster waiting to explode.

We on the conservative side should be a bit more supportive here because this argument is exactly the same argument the liberals make about gun owners being murderous monsters just waiting to explode.

Coincidence

When making my TL5 character for the little TL Project I looked up names common to Hesse-Kassel and picked Meylin.

Kasper Meylin.

A possible inventor of the Pennsylvania long rifle he owns is Martin Meylin of Prussia (Rhineland-Palatinate).

Pure coincidence, but a neat one.

Darn It

I posted about NBC considering cancelling Saturday Night Live.

A satire site did one better and wrote that it HAD been cancelled.

I spent hours trying to find a second source for that news before I realized that I had not noticed it was satire.

Good one!

Glad I looked for confirmation of the news before I went off half cocked.

May 9, 2007

Hey, Jill, it wasn't my son; it was my mom, but I still remember the exact day she died.

That day does not fade even though the grief cannot be measured years.

Wait, yes it can.  Almost fourteen.  Being that it's a date, it's quantifiable.

Even more, it's not unusual for a parent to die before their child.  It's the norm.

A child dying before the parent is noteworthy.  Sadder.

It should stand out in their mind as long as they have one.

Which brings us to the salient point, "Doctor:"  Joe has left the building.

People like you have carted the poor man out and robbed him of what little dignity a life-long politician has in their decline.

While he might have good days, he's mostly not home.

Not someone we should want at the levers of power at all.

A Plane Plan

 If I were to win one of those massive lottery jackpots, it would be far simpler and cheaper for me to just eat a .30-06 round than to buy an airplane.

Despite a lifelong fascination with aviation and airplanes, I lack the nature to be a pilot for reals.

I'm the person you read about in the aviation magazines who made a series of simple errors that individually would be fine, but collectively lead to a smouldering crater.

What sets me apart from those people is the realization that I am one of them long before even talking to a flight school.

It made me very sad to realize this about myself, I am fascinated with planes still.

Of Course It Matters

There is a 0.9 ounce difference in weight between the Triple-K magazine (right) and a genuine Beretta (left) magazine for a Beretta M1951.

Loaded that is 0.3 lb. (Triple-K) vs 0.4 lb. (Beretta).

The Beretta magazine seems to work slightly better.  It's worked for a whole box without failures.  The Triple-K has a failure to extract about once a box.

Not sure why the magazine affects extraction, but it's real with this pistol.

I've Said It Before

There are between 1,000 and 2,000 people who stop by my little corner of the internet every day.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my drivel.

There are, maybe, 2 to 3 comments every third post.

I nearly always recognize the person commenting.  There are a, maximum, of ten people who comment here and, for the most part, are polite and follow the rules listed in the right sidebar well.

A couple have decided to be dicks lately and will be finding their comments aren't being published.

If they rage quit my blog...

Between 1,000 and 2,000 people will stop by my little corner of the internet every day.

There will be 2-3 comments every third post.

How can I be so sanguine about this?

Because I have shed commenters and readers before.  I've been at this for almost twenty years.

Wanna know a secret?

I'm not doing it for the audience or the feedback.

I'm doing it for me.

This is my release valve.

In the beginning I didn't even blog where I could accumulate much of an audience.  I was shocked that 30 people stopped by my LiveJournal on a weekly basis.

If everyone reading this stopped, I would still be writing and posting and I will until Google pulls the plug.

You're Free To Go Read Something Else You Know

Dear negative commenters:

You are getting exactly what you are paying for here.

If you find it's not to your liking, go the fuck away.

Do not pass go.

Do not collect $200.

Do not let the door hit you in the ass.

Because your comments aren't going leave moderation.

You want to sponsor this blog, plans start at $4,000 a week.

When you're paying this amount or higher, you get a say in what I write and how I write it.

Until then...

You get what you get and it's what I want to say and how I want to say it.

Even if I say it poorly or if I'm totally off base or wrong.

Tough shit if you don't like it or have a different opinion from me.

Perhaps you should get your own blog and castigate me there instead of trying to do so in the comments.

Because all you're getting from me, from now on, is, "oh it's THEM," and sent to the spam folder.

Bittersweet

While I enjoy reading about liberal bastions suffering under their sanctuary city policies now that the invading aliens are being shipped directly to them.

I am still upset that the aliens are here.

I also marvel that these same liberal bastions can't make the connection between what they're going through NOW and what the non-liberal states on the borders have been dealing with for decades.

Did He Really Just...

In the Putin interview:

Poland started WW2 because they left Hitler no other choice.

Yes, he really said that.

Then in the next breath he says that Ukraine left him no other choice.

BLINK BLINK BLINK

Putin just equated himself with Hitler?

THE Hitler.

Wow!

Thank you, Mr Carlson for letting him run at the mouth.

PS: I heard from a friend who has a friend in Russia that their rumor mill says Puti-Baby died of a heart attack six months ago and the FSB has been using body double meat-puppets to run the show since.

Beltalowda!

Past Its Useful Service Life

The driver's side mount was definitely in an advanced state of decay.

L to R:  Driver's side, new replacement, passenger's side.

The driver's side being this bad and feeling it from the right side makes sense because the sway bar's job is to transfer from the loaded side to the unloaded.

I will give Holden credit for making the nuts visible, but doing the 1/16th turn thing is irritating because they routed the positive battery cable right where I wanted my wrench to turn; on both sides!

I'm taking a break to eat before I put the wheels back on and test drive.

They Are Beyond Needing Their Wings

 

Look, PETA, if you're going to try this, at least be serious.

Wings are what's left over when the rest of the bird is butchered and divvied up for sale.

They were the least cut and often were difficult to unload, so they were often the cheapest poultry available.

There are a lot of poor people whose only meat would be those wings.

Now that we live in times of plenty, wings are a treat.

But the important take-away is:  The chicken is fucking dead.  It'd be dead if nobody ate chicken wings on Stupid Bore Sunday.  Wings do not drive the chicken meat industry.

WTAF

The spirit of Aloha trumps the Constitution?

OK, you stupid fucking wastes of oxygen, you have literally cited religious belief as a means to deny 2nd amendment rights.

LITERALLY cited a State religion in the face of both the 1st and 14th amendments.

This is definitely something already decided by the supreme court.

I keep thinking that America needs to start invading all these defacto seceded states and force them back to the rule of law.

Another period of reconstruction would do them good.

My carpet bag is ready!

PS: In America, there is no such thing as Hawai'i.  It's just Hawaii.  Anyone who can't accept that should be disbarred because this is, literally, the legal spelling of the last state.  Push it hard enough and we'll go back to calling it The Sandwich Islands.

Out Of The Way

Here's the passenger side sway bar bushing:

A little further back:

Even farther...

Can you still see it?

The rear nut looks pretty easy from the wheel well.  The front one looks easier from the top through the hood after I yank the intake trunk.

Inaccessible

When I installed the fog lights, I saw there was a connector that was unplugged.

This was the bumper harness connector.  It runs power to the side marker lights.

I plugged it back in, but it seemed like it didn't get latched.

Today, while tearing the car apart to start my strut R&R, I decided to see if the reason the side markers weren't working was the bulb.

With the fender liner almost out of the way you can reach around the horn and get at the plug for the bulb.

I fished out the bulb and discovered that it was fine.  A 9-volt confirmed it.

This is when I notice that plug was unplugged again!

Plug it back in, no click on the latch, but the lights work now.

There's no way to get two hands on it, and it's not going home with what force I can exert with my feeble arthritic left paw.  The only paw I can get on it.

Removing the horn creates a clear path to the connector, and thus I can get a pair of channel-locks on it!

Just a little pressure and it goes, "click!"

Hurrah!  Now my lights work!

Now, back to the struts...

To make sure that it really is the strut I start grabbing things and seeing if they're loose.

Passenger side inventory:

Forward lower control arm?  Firm.

Rear lower control arm?  Firm.

Tie rods, inner and outer?  Firm.

Sway bar end links?  Firm at the top, but bottom is loose!

"Odd," I think, "I just changed those."

Shake it again and see it's not the end link that's loose.

The entire front sway bar is moving left to right four inches (10.16 cm for you metric motherfuckers)!

This does a better job of explaining why the steering wheel shakes in right turns only.

New bushings on order and we'll see if that solves it without changing the struts.

I Can't Be The Only One

I'm reading that NBC is considering cancelling Saturday Night Live. 

“The show hasn’t been funny in years,” remarked a high-ranking NBC executive, who wished to remain anonymous.

I agree.

I found that stopped being funny about the same time I became old enough to stay up late enough to watch it openly.

For me that also coincides with the original cast leaving.

I don't think I'm alone in the discovery that it's much less funny when you're not thwarting your parents and your bedtime.

Which really shows the demographic they've been aiming for all these years...

Mojo Nixon Has Left The Building

Article

It seems really wrong that he preceded Don Henley. 

I leave you with the Dead Milkmen.

You Can Tell From The Photo

In my hood, the houses are close together side to side.

But we have big back yards.

The neighboring hoods have wider lots, with more space between the houses.

And almost no back yard.

They get bigger houses too.

I think I prefer my smaller house with a big yard to the other option.

Get Well Soon

If you've been wondering why Girl Genius has not updated since Friday.

It's been reported that Phil Foglio has tweeted that Kaja needed emergency gall bladder surgery.

It is also reported that it went well and she's recovering nicely.

Get well soon Mrs Foglio!

Streisand Effect Inbound

Taylor Swift, a known dancing monkey, is upset that the publicly available ADS-B data is publicly available and that someone is making it publicly available.

That someone is publishing the movement of her private jet.

Ms Swift, you can avoid being tracked like this by simply not flying.

This someone isn't tracking ME.

Simple.  Easy.  Affordable!

I didn't even need a lawyer.

You might even shake it off by flying commercial.

They have no way of knowing what plane you're on and, thus, no idea which ADS-B signal to track.

Hulk Mode Walkabout Prevention

All of The Boy's exits now go into the fenced in area of our property!

Secondary feature:  The neighbor's trash pile will stay on their side of the property line.

Tertiary feature:  It's astounding how much this cuts the light bounce from the other house onto our wall.  This might be worth a couple of degrees come summer. 

One thing I am baffled by:  Round fence posts are $24.  Pressure treated 4x4's are $9.  The square posts are better for attaching the panels, yet are cheaper.

Update: We're leaving the chain link between the back yards so that we may look through the neighbor's yard and see Harvey's parent's yard.

Combat ≠ War

AuricTech Shipyards has commented that there's a lot of people who've honorably served in combat whom are nearing retirement, but they are not the people who are almost all gone I was talking about.

Despite sending our troops into combat, we did not actually go to war.

We did something that is included when you do war, but we didn't conclude it.

Fighting, and even winning, battles is only part of the whole thing.

We never defeated the enemy.

We won battles but never vanquished our opponents.

And we've been doing it since Korea. 

The bad guys know they just need to wait until we get bored and head home.  We snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Which is why I'm an advocate of killing instead of humanitarian efforts.

Again, when you find the Curtis LeMay quote I'm coyly referring to, a lot becomes clear.

Oh God

Watching a video of Mike Rowe interviewing Neal McDonough.

Mr McDonough mentioned his conversion to Catholicism and they chatted about religion for a while.

The conversation made me think of a couple of things.

First was related to McDonough playing Satan in an upcoming role.

God is all forgiving, right?

What if Satan truly repented and God had forgiven him?

But then The Word had not made it to us humans...

There might be an interesting bit of fiction in that.

Next was realizing that religion was a much bigger part of most American lives in 1896 and I'll have to account for it in Sabers and...

Plus, it reminded me of dealing with religion in fantasy games.

Most of them have polytheistic religions.

That struck me as odd since the feudal and medieval settings are all monotheistic.

When there's clerics, and God is real...

We don't need no stinking FAITH!  We have genuine miracles performed every day by the devout.

I wonder the effect that would have on sin.

God says, "don't do that, or else," and the "or else" is provably happening...

FuzzyGeff came up with a great punishment for a member of the clergy who'd used their position for personal gain and God was onto the idea of a deathbed confession (and why would God be fooled by such?)!

Granting them eternal life until they've atoned for their sins and visiting them with all manner of shit until they got to work on that.  No eternal health, just life.

Love To Watch Her Strut

Chasing the next most likely cause of a steering wheel shake.

Everything I've done has made it better, but...

First was the strut mounts.  A common failure point because they were originally designed for the much lighter Catera.

Then I moved to the tie rods.  First outer, then inner.

Then the sway bar end links.

Soon, the struts.

If that don't cure it, it'll be one of the control arms which have passed the "shake real hard" test.

Thanks Joe!

24 feet of fence with posts is $350 and I still have to put it up myself.

I did twice that length in the back yard for less under a different president seven years ago.

We've decided to put a fence between us and the north neighbor so their trash stays on their property.

Simpler

Watching "war" on the news appears to have a lot of people confused.

Kids, you've never seen one.

The last people in America who have are almost all gone.

I am talking about just killing those who attack us and our interests.

No building churches.

No digging wells.

No delivery of humanitarian supplies.

No half assed attempts to make a government friendly to us.

Just blowing up everything and killing everyone until our people and interests are secure.

No sorting out the innocent from the guilty.

Don't fucking care any more.

I did direct you all at Curtis LeMay, he has the pertinent quote.

If The Hague complains, we can blow that useless appendage up too.

If we're going to Empire, then let's EMPIRE.

I've long held that if someone hates you no matter what you do, then do shit they will hate.

America Fuck Yeah

 

Seems I'm not the only one using rods to the hogshead!

I Find Your Terms Acceptable

 "The US-British coalition’s bombing of a number of Yemeni provinces will not change our position, and we affirm that our military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us," Houthi spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti wrote on X.

Curtis LeMay wrote on this.

Have fun sacrificing!

Tail Codes

 

Apathy

Gun content has been light because I've just been shooting.

No new guns and new ammo is not very interesting for photos or conversation.

I'm getting a little faster and the groups are staying about the same.

Local range has enforced the "no photography" rule pretty hard lately too.

They are not explaining why the went from no enforcement to strict enforcement either.

There's a story they're not telling, I am sure.

Harvey likes her new glasses and is doing much better!

I watched all the content from SHOT and hardly a thing twitched my needles.

I am braced for the BM-59 to be totally wrong.  Manufacturers need to figure out that the nostalgia bug demands accurate reproductions with all features.

Brownell's can give a class on this with their, discontinued, Retro line of complete rifles.  Too many farbs.

I am not so much apathetic as content with my collection.

A Wizard Did It

The nice thing about the older games, and even 3e GURPS was you could just declare an effect and that's all you needed.

Technically, that's still all I need to do.

But I set myself to learning how to do it as if I was making a character when I make these beast conversions.

It's been needed a couple of times because some of them are races, not monsters.

If you can define it, you can assign points, you can make a character from it.

As far back as early 3e FuzzyGeff made a fox with human intelligence.  A couple of cats and a skunk too, if I am not mistaken.

Mikhail made a human intelligence horse.

I did pseudo dragons.

It's fun to go off page.

Spinning Wrench Philosophy

I am not entirely opposed to hiring people to handle shit I cannot do.

I don't have, and cannot afford some critical tools.

I don't have an alignment rack.

I don't have the machines to mount or balance tires.

I don't have a paint booth.

I don't have a dyno.

The people I rail against are the folks who don't do anything at all.

They don't change oil.

They don't trouble shoot.

They don't make repairs.

They don't do mods.

There's too many people in that category.

I want to like them, but they keep wanting to act like their paying someone else is the same as my getting my hands dirty. 

Watching the people entered into the Sick Week Drags rammed it home.  Those people did their own shit because they couldn't take it to a shop when they bend a rod and need to be at the next stop in 12 hours.

Cat V Clone

The AT-TE dismounts from the 501st have remounted their vehicle to protect them from Shadow.

Some required rescue from the prison camp under the bed she was operating in direct contravention of the Geneva Accords.

Fair Winds Greef Karga

Carl Weathers has shuffled off this mortal coil.

I enjoyed his work to the end, and I will miss it.

He's also the rare actor who portrayed a character that I went out of my way to get a minifig of.

Road Rage

I was involved in a road rage incident yesterday.

I went around someone who was not noticing the way was clear after giving them a toot of the horn to get them to notice.

They pulled up on me and asked if that was really necessary.

When I replied that, yes, it was; they went off on me.

I am a nasty bald cracker with a shitty car.

I confirmed with the, black, manager of the tobacco store that was my destination that "cracker" is, indeed, a racist phrase.

Two days into black history month I have been shit on by a bigot.

By the way, fucknut, nobody who drives a Hyundai gets to say that anyone else has a shitty car.

Also, I was assured that this sort of thing would result in someone getting shot if conceal carry was made legal, if conceal carry without a permit was allowed... etc.

Thanks War Thunder

War Thunder has been a great resource for making Twilight: 2000 GURPS stats.

The best part is it's a game being used for a game.  The accuracy just needs to be plausible.

The M8 Buford suffered a bit...

But it's nice to have a picture showing the ammo storage.

If We're Gonna Do This

If we're going to talk about black history to the exclusion of all else in February, let's talk about black people who are worth emulating.

I give you George Washington Carver, fellow transient resident of Ames, Iowa.

I first learned of him in 4th grade when I lived in the 'burbs of Chicago.

The focus was all the stuff you could do with peanuts that Carver had developed.

Somehow appropriate, given that a peanut farmer was president at the time.

There's No Such Thing

History is history.

You cannot tell black history in the USA without the white history that overlaps on the Venn diagram.

Likewise, you can't tell white history without the black history.

It is intertwined.

It is insuperable.

It does not matter if you're happy with it.

It is.

Spicy

Shadow is hiding and growling at us.

I remember when I got my shots in basic and I was very sore.

I think she's doing the same.

Poor kitty.

Prisoner

 

"Not a prisoner, I'm a free cat!"

Shadow has been to the vet for the first time in her entire life!

Absolutely perfect health.  Got her shots and a timeline to get spayed.

Subtle Mod

Since The Beast is a flex-fuel car, I decided I needed a Flex-Fuel™ badge.

There's a funny associated with this mod.

Lemme know if you figure it out in the comments.

Who Knew?

If you're going to access your NAS box, you have to be connected to the same network it's connected to.

Learn something new everyday!

I knew this, but didn't notice that my laptop had decided to connect to the OTHER wifi when there was a connection hiccup.

I don't have the knowing to tell it to use one over the other when both are available and to disconnect from one to the other when the preferred one is down but returns after the machine connects to the secondary.

If You're Going To Have A Hot Rod...

There's two paths to owning a hot rod.

One requires a ton of money.

This path involves hiring someone to do all the work and you call them when something goes wrong.

The second path still requires money, but not near so much, and buying tools.

When you're on this path, you get on a forum or group when something goes wrong and ask questions of the accumulated experience.

But, remember what I said about tools?

With a modern, computer controlled, engine, a scan TOOL is...  For fuck's sake tool is in the gorram name.

If you're in limp mode and the check engine light is on, you're going to need the codes the computer is throwing to have a decent chance of fixing it.

The service manual is another, expensive, tool.

It includes several if/then tables to get you from that code to fixed.

The code might be "I cannot read this sensor" and the sensor might just be OK.  It could be a wire.  It could be the computer.

If you say that you replaced the sensor(s) and still have the codes I am going to say that you didn't troubleshoot the problem very well.

When you get angry at people asking detailed questions about your problem, including asking what codes your code scanner read...

I recommend you change to the first path of hot rod ownership.  You're obviously not well suited to the second.