See You Next Year

 

Gonna burn some burgers, blow up some imported Chinese products and have a couple beers.

New Battery

New battery installed in Willard's AT&T Cingular Flip IV (U102AA).

Phone still doesn't connect to a carrier, but it will show one bar on the connection now.

As soon as he retrieves it, I've done all I can do.

The "Cingular" part is a clue I'd missed.  That, I think, makes it a pre-paid phone.

The "problem" might be as simple as his account expired when the battery was dead.

The specter of AT&T dropping support for this elderly phone is another.  I've found a couple of posts from people who've discovered that their phone was dropped by the carrier; and that such drops occurred unevenly.

It Was What?

Reading the obit for Linda Lavin I discovered that the TV show, Alice was based on the premise of the movie "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore."

We watched that show its entire run and I never knew that.

Something Afoot

FuzzyGeff sold me one of his cast-off old machines.

I already updated it from 22.04 to 24.04.

Getting Prime Movies to play turned out to be a little frustrating.  When I got Crispy IV running, the "play DRM" was checked automatically.  Not so DerpyPuter.

Now Burn In Hell

He might have been a genuinely nice guy, but he fucked up America so bad it took the likes of Obama and Brandon to be worse presidents.

Jimmah is in Hell.

It terrifies me that the three worst presidents in US history are within my living memory.

Though FDR and LBJ fought hard to get in the top three...

How Did We Get Here

We forget things.

Well, call me a primary source.

I was all set, once I'd left the Army, to be an aerospace engineer.

If you've been keeping notes, I got out of the Army just about the same time the Cold War ended.

With the massive contraction of the defense industry, there were lots of overqualified engineers on the job market.  Lots of engineer supply, low engineer demand.

So I changed majors.

In that job market it was difficult to find even drafting work because a company could hire an experienced engineer for what I'd ask.  Many of them just needed a small income to bide the time to when they could retire.  (Oh, and when they finally did start retiring, drafting had become so automated that you no longer needed a specialist to do the job.)

This situation created a disruption in the supply of new engineers.

That created an opportunity to import engineering talent from overseas.  We had engineering jobs sitting empty because of a lack of qualified candidates.

Back to back, glut of engineers and using a supply of engineers from the third world got companies used to the idea that engineers worked cheap and could be rode hard and put away wet.

When the American education system started cranking a few new ones these newly frocked kids wanted jobs that would pay the bills AND service their student loans.

Why would a company do that when they could get three H1B dudes from India.  Never mind that the person in charge of engineering is, now, from India and those three new guys know their place in the caste structure he still believes in.

Smart people entering college can see this.  They know what their chances of getting a good job as an engineer look like and see that it's very dependent on luck rather than merit.  So they chose a different major!

And here we are.

You say you want talented, creative, smart and driven American engineers?  Well you're going to have to create incentives so that creative, smart and driven Americans WANT to be engineers.

That will mean dumping the cheap labor model and getting protectionist.

Yes, that will be expensive.  But it's an investment.

Employers have to learn to think longer term and for that to happen we must look to changing the laws around the stock market.  There's no inducement to making a 20 year plan because you have to show the stockholders an increase every quarter.  The incentives are only for short term gains and the people who can do it for a couple of years get away rich after the things they did to get the short term returns collapse the company.

Perverse Incentives

The main problem with H1B visas with regards to domestic workers is that it disincentivizes Americans from getting the skills, credentials and degrees needed to get the jobs.

To fix the problem and incentivize Americans to become talented and creative engineers and programmers, the playing field needs to be level.

A programmer from India isn't bringing the mountain of debt with them that an American will have amassed; thus they can work for much lower wages.

That programmer from India is NEVER going to have that mountain of debt so why would an American ever get the skills to compete with them?

There's two solutions.

One is to stop H1B or severely restrict it.  Restrict it in a,"you have to take a barely qualified American over a well qualified foreigner," way.

If these folks coming over here are such wonderful additions to America, then why don't they come over as genuine immigrants and become Americans?  The answer is they dont' want to.  They want to remain nationals of their home country and suck up the much better wages and conditions here.

I am against any sizeable number of foreigners remaining so while they live here.  Don't want to be an American, fuck off right back home.

The second solution is to wipe those debts away for anyone with an "essential" STEM degree and that will allow our fresh faced grads the ability to accept lower pay for the same quality of life.

By the way, it's not racism to want to limit the number of foreigners living here.

It's NATIONALISM.

Get it right.

From Hell's Heart He Stabs At Me

Family membership at the local range went from $250 a year with my veteran's discount to $300.

Dang it.

Every damn membership comes due in December and it's when we stretched thinnest.

Couple that with my birthday being in December as well, all the government shit comes due too.

SIGH.

Going to have to get the generic bottom ramen for a few weeks instead of the bougie TOP Ramen.

Were We Running Short Of RINOs?

Another Democrat has switched parties up in Tallahassee.

This time Hillary Cassel from the 101st district.  That's 'round about Hollywood, FL and part of the southern blue blot on the east coast.

I wonder if she can hear herself when she says that she wants, "to build a world where her children are judged by the content of their character and their actions not on their labels," then in the very next breath says, "As a proud Jewish woman..."

Labels shouldn't matter, here are mine!

I guess we'll see how she votes, but we've too many purple Republicans at the state capital already.

There Will Be Signs

I have joined millions of others in the sure thing known as the Lotto.

1.1 billion dollar prize that will buy a happy meal once taxes and fees are subtracted.

Absolutely no (realistic) chance of winning; but it's fun to drop a buck or two here and there and dream.

Same Same

Both AR's.

Both flat-tops.

Both fixed stocked.

Both olive drab green.

Neither in 5.56.

Both with magnified optics.

Identical!

Oh, wait...

This is AR-15 v AR-10.  6.8x43mm v 7.62x51mm.  16" v 20".  Fixed power v variable.  3-prong v A2.

6d pi v 7d pi.  820/3,500 v 1,000/4,200. 8.8 lb. v 11.6 lb.  27 v 20 shots.

Previously Deported

The illegal alien who burned a NYFC subway passenger alive had been previously deported.

We'd managed to catch him and sent him back to Guatemala and he just came right back up here.

To do a job that Americans won't do: Burn homeless women alive on subway cars.

This is the kind of shit that makes me go, "explain to me again how being an illegal is 'just' a misdemeanor and the punishment is 'merely' a fine, in a dismissive manner and tone that makes it sound like it's not a problem."

Go on.

Explain to me that it's not a problem.  Don't forget to add that they have all the same rights I do.

Go on.

I think it's high time we revive the idea of being outlawed.

The illegal immigrant problem will cure itself.

Oh, and something had better get done in a positive manner real soon now or The People are going to start taking shit into their own hands without consulting with any level of government.

Government that, I might add, has shown to be far more sympathetic to these criminals than the citizens they swore to protect from such unlawfulness.

People are already grumbling that something effective be done.  They're not demanding a nebulous "something" they are demanding results that matter.

I Say The Same Thing I Said To The Firearms Industry

When a state passes punitive legislation against your business: Stop doing business there.

I said that about California when they started getting stupid about guns.

No sales to anyone in the state until everyone in the state can buy.

People can't have, Government can't have.

Well Vermont and New York have gone insane about petroleum.

Fuck 'em.

Stop sales in those states.

Take the hit.

I'd love to see what happens to those two states when there's no gas, diesel, propane or fuel oil.

Set the cutoff date for February 1, 2025.

That's the height of winter, isn't it?

Being stupid should be painful and I think that the legislatures and voters in those two states deserve some pain from this idiocy.

Expensive Joke

In Australia, my car could be had with a manual transmission.

It's "doable" to convert a PPV from a slushbox to rowing your own.

The pedal assembly is a, nearly, bolt in deal.

While I promised Harvey that The Beast would remain an auto, it amuses me to think of putting in the pedals.

Even wire in the clutch pedal to the starter and shifter interlocks.

Boomer AND Millennial anti-theft.

Cheat Code

In GURPS 3e in particular the TL was defined by the years on the list.

TL6 is a range.

The GM would often tell us there was a year cut off for technology.  This kept us from getting better guns mostly.

Especially when I grabbed an FG.42!  It's real world flaws don't show up well in GURPS, so it was OP for the world the GM had made.

Pre WW2?  OK, I'll take a ZH-29 in any of several calibers.

Damn, Ian was rough back then!

But even limiting us to 1919 didn't slow me down much.

The Mondragon M1908 is a Garand decades early!

I studiously never mentioned that most South American nations banned military cartridges from civilians when the campaign was set there...

Not Rock

The Eagles are the first place I noticed.  They aren't a rock band.  They are a country band that gets played on rock stations.

It was years later when I finally figured out the con that Pink Floyd had played on so many rock stations.

"Composite Rock" is actually jazz.

Oh how we raged!

With our headphones on.

With "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" blasting.

FUCK!

We like jazz.

Phone Diagnostics

I have Willard's cell phone.

We ordered him a new battery for it on the assumption that the battery was dead in it.

On a whim, I tossed it on one of my chargers.

It's taking a charge!

I played with the buttons for a bit and it didn't lose much charge in 20 minutes of on-time.  It's looking like it was a charger issue at Willard's place rather than a battery issue.

What it appears to lack is service.  It's not seeing his carrier.  I can't call his phone and his phone can't call mine.

It connects to my wi-fi, and I am reminded why I never looked back when smart-phones hit.  Entering the password on the number-pad of his flip-phone was a flash-back to the bad old days of text messages.

If it's a carrier issue, Willard's going to have to talk to them.  I know he'll love that!

5.2x68mm Mondragon

That's a 92.6gr round going 2,723 feet per second.

That's zippy!

In GURPS that should be 6d pi with 800/4,200 range.

The strange slam-fire mode should get a RoF of 2.

There Are Deviled Eggs

This is a blatant attempt to get Willard to come visit.

Harvey made deviled eggs!  Just for you!

Update:

It worked!  Willard did visit and was given the eggs!

He brought his grand-daughter, fresh from the Red Sea and killin' drones.  I'm getting old, I remember when she was a wee bairn.

Gifts were exchanged!  Fun was had.

Where You At McThag?

Way back when the wall came down in Berlin, we were on alert just in case it was a clever ruse by the filthy commies to start WW3 with our pants down.

On that night I went from the top of an M1A1(HA) turret to the bottom of a ditch with an icy bottom.

I broke both legs.

Will it GURPS?

The fall was about 6.6 yards.

That gives a fall velocity of about 12.6 yards per second into a hard surface (double damage!)

That translates to 3d cr.

3d will do 10 points of damage.  Divided equally between both legs and assuming 10 HP, that will cripple both legs!  Since I did pass out from the pain, that tracks to failing consciousness rolls and 0 HP.

My injury GURPS!

But what about the lasting problems?

That's covered too under Lame p.B141 after getting a critical fail on my HT roll to see how lasting the injury was.

Under Pressure

We hooked up Marv's Torque Pro app into the ALDL port on The Beast.

Oil pressure was in the mid to high 40's cruising at 45 mph.

This compares with low 30's in The Precious.

I think my L77 is healthier than my LS3 was.

Happy dance!

Some Come Here To Be Americans

Some born here never will be.

Sad, really.

But Islam is a colonial movement.

Go For Broke

It's not a mainstream film, it's obscure now.

MGM says it turned a profit of $761,000 on $3,337,000 in ticket sales in 1951 bucks.

But it's public domain, like "It's A Wonderful Life."

It definitely deserves a remake.

Even The Droyne

 

Special guest star Erin Palette!

But We're Not Jewish

On Christmas Eve, my family gets Chinese food.

Christmas day was a big meal at Grandma's; so we didn't cook on the eve.

It was years later that I found out that we were joining the Jewish people in an ancient tradition.

I've always found that amusing.

Jews have no religious reason to celebrate Christmas, but they have Christmas traditions.

But, then, Christmas is also a pagan thing.

In America, it's a secular tradition too.

So Merry Christmas!

What About The 442nd Regimental Combat Team?

Watch this:

Back?

Netflix, you really want to do a story about a persecuted minority in WW2?

What about the 442nd?

The only mention in anything mainstream has been Mr Myagi from "The Karate Kid."

A unit that amassed 21 Medal of Honor, 29 Distinguished Service Crosses, 1 Distinguished Service Medal, 371 Silver Stars, 22 Legion of Merit Medals, 15 Soldier's Medals and 4,000 Bronze Stars is fucking worth making a movie about.

All that in about a year's worth of fighting.

And after getting fucked by their own government and being sent to internment camps.  They still volunteered.

You could even call the film, "Go For Broke."

Throw Me A Bone

Mild paraphrasing going on.

Me:  How much for the thing.

Them: $50.  Local pickup only.

Me: Monday and Thursday work for me!

Them: I'm free all day Monday.

Me: I can be there around noon, where do you want to meet?

Ten minutes later:

Me:  I can be there at noon, I need an address to tell the GPS.

Sixteen hours later:

Me: If you insist on local pickup, you have to tell me where to go.

Them: I don't appreciate your nasty tone.  I'm busy.  I work a lot.  Monday was the only break I've had in a long time.

Me: You ghosted me for 16 hours and didn't reply until I hurt your feelings.  And you still haven't told me where to meet you.  I don't think you're selling the thing.

Them: It's still for sale, Thursday is good.

What would you tell them?  I'm thinking of telling him I'm on the way to his house Thursday morning and giving updates on where I am for three hours then going silent right about when I should be arriving.

I have no idea where he lives, so telling him I'm on my way to his place might be hilarious.

Where The BLEEP Is The Roasting Pan?

Publix had a stupid good price on a standing rib roast so we got a small one.  Stupid good is still not cheap.

My original plan was to cut it into steaks, but then I remembered that you can do one these up like a prime rib.

If you can find your roasting pan.

Our roasting pan is gone.  Harvey remembers loaning it out and if it's who we think it is, we don't want it back!  Ick.

But any cookie sheet with a rack can be a roasting pan, we have those.

Crisis averted.

Prime rib for Christmas day dinner!

Never Remind The Customer You Hate Them

I've given up on another webcomic.

The author just couldn't not keep their political opinion to themselves.

I'm willing to read stuff by authors I disagree with, but this time they bloviated on how happy they were that they changed a character to no longer be a cop.

The reason for the thrill was that they wouldn't have to show in their comic that not all cops are bastards.

That would have been unthinkable!

You see cops are the symbol of a government that oppresses us all.  Minorities the most.

I don't think this fuck would know oppression if it threw him off a rooftop.  He moved to Canada for Christ's sake!

Disconnect

I've been friends with several Vietnam veterans.

To a man they've said that they didn't hold anything against the Black soldiers they served with.

Combat does have an equalizing agency that many other endeavors lack.

One even stated that his racist shit he'd gotten from his dad evaporated when he was under fire and everyone was doing their job regardless of the racial or social starting points.

But it's a matter of historical fact that racism was part of the Vietnam experience for Black troops.

It makes me wonder if the problem was REMF motherfuckers rather than the people actually going to the field.

Funny New Guys has me looking at it and it seems like Black troops caught more and harder punishments than White troops and that the people being anal about making sure punishment was meted out weren't the same people walking the bush.

I'm reading and learning.

Let's Hear From The Local Monotheists

Realizing that I had not yet purchased the annual eggnog and we didn't have Christmas morning simmanin rolls, I trekked to the store.

I stopped and got gas at the station across the street from the grocery and got to listen to the preacher on a speaker on the corner.

Santa.

Is.

A.

Lie!

Great message for the impending day of your God's big day.

But Santa is part of Christian mythology.  He's derived from St Nicholas.  He's the embodiment of Christian charity.

But he's a lie.

The preacher also told me that when presented a choice between right and wrong, I always choose the wrong.

Setting up my rifle and popping his, insulting and offensive, loud mouth in the forehead is wrong.

I chose to do the right thing!  I "shall not killed" my ass off today!

Who's wrong now, Bitch!

PS: I probably shouldn't be associating these loud mouths with normal Christians, there's prolly only a tangential relationship to mainstream Christian theology.

And Yet...

I am laughing my ass off at the people doing Margaret Atwood cosplay and being in abject terror that Donald will go full Handmaid's Tale here when this sort of thing is happening in the real world.

This wouldn't be happening in Afghanistan if Mumbles hadn't pulled out of the place.

Ironically, the people most likely to be there defending these women's rights would have been the first people the cosplayers blame for trying to impose a gynophobic theocracy on them.

Never mind that if they tried their protesting in a place that's really doing what they're scared of, they'd be killed.

Cue the "What about Islam Dancers!"

Race Day

Hung out at Lead Foot City hanging with the guy I bought The Beast from (and sold The Biscayne SS to).  He made three runs in my old car.  He's making it into an Olds sedan.

It's an 1/8th mile track, so things ran slower than I'm accustomed at a drag strip.

We spent over two hours waiting on them cleaning up after a Mustang who should have lifted and coasted when he broke loose.

Short Day

It is the winter solstice!

There's 10 hours and 21 minutes of daylight today.  The least daylight of the entire year.

If we were still on daylight savings time there would be 10 hours and 21 minutes of daylight!  But the solstice would be at 5:20am instead of 4:20...

How About A Budget?

One of the House's responsibilities is to pass a budget.

It's something those insider trading fattened and tax finished hyenas have not managed to do, at least on time, in over four decades.

It's almost literally "you had ONE job!"

They're required by the constitution to do it and they fail, repeatedly.

Don't even get me started on the Senate passing budgets and sending them to the House...  That's backwards.  The budget is supposed to originate in the House and the Senate is supposed to just give an up or down vote.

Look it up!

Not Gimp Compatible

An anonymous comment states, "One other drawback to air/rail/bus is the last 5 mile issue. They all get you from station to station. But how do you get from that station to your final destination?" 

You hoof it!

What if you can't hoof?

Fuck you!  (also bake the cake and eat your bugs bigot!) <-- implied but never stated out loud. 

PS: Anon commenter, sign it next time.

Owning The Night

Chimera in Vietnam probably got a good reputation with their comrades once they put the racism aside.

Every Chimera has some sort of vision advantage.

Spiders have Night-Vision 6.

Coyotes have Night-Vision 5 and long-range Discriminatory Smell.

Cats have Night-Vision 9 and Parabolic Hearing.

Hawks have Acute Vision 4.

Snakes have Thermal Infrared Vision.

Foxes have Night-Vision 5, Discriminatory Smell and Parabolic Hearing.

All that conspires to make them better at spotting ambushes and/or working in the dark.

No wonder the 101st Spellborne was so effective.

No Half Measures

Funny New Guys is set in 1967.

That means that there are no halfling Chimera in the Army.

Chimera were born spontaneously to people born in the manafall beginning in 1945.

Halflings are born from a human and a chimera.

The oldest Chimera is 22.  That puts the oldest possible halfling at well under the 18 years of age the military demands.  That oldest possible also means some very young parents as well.  Laws were probably broken young...

IYKYK

Summoned, I come.

In Valen's name, I take the place that has been prepared for me.

I am Grey.

I stand between the candle and the star.

We are Grey.

We stand between the darkness and the light.

C-

Thanks to then Governor, now Senator, Rick "I suck cock by choice" Scott and the so called "republican" supermajority in the Florida legislature: Florida rates a C- from the Giffords Law Center.

Fucking turncoat pricks.

Worse, their successors must be proud of this rating because they adamantly refuse to consider undoing the fuckery.

A special thanks to the Florida Sheriff's Association.

Sense Of Entitlement

Something that finally clicked about something...

The disconnect that considers veteran's benefits as no different from welfare entitlements (hint they are both entitlement programs) is the same disconnect as the difference between a wall running the entire inter-German border and a wall between the US and Mexico.

Why.

The wall in Germany was to keep people IN.  The wall on the southern border is to keep people OUT.

Veterans are one of the very few groups that gave something to get their benefits rather than failing to launch.  The promised benefits are an enticement to get young people to sign up; part of the deal.  They are, on the whole, none too generous either.

I am at a loss to see what so many people living on welfare have given to the nation and thus, fail to see what it owes them.

I'm compassionate, I'd support some programs, but many fewer than what we have running today.  I'd put more conditions and restrictions on the recipients than now as well.

What worries me most about thinking of Welfare and VA Bennies as one and the same is the tendency to cut them together when government starts talking about being efficient and cutting costs.

Shitting on veterans is traditional in DC, after all.

Planes Trains And Automobiles

I am inundated on Facebook with suggestions about people touting the virtues of rail transportation and the lack of it in the US compared to Europe.

So I did some research.

It costs about $300 on a low-cost carrier to get from Tampa to Los Angeles and takes about 5 hours.

AmTrak will run about the same price and will take four days.  You spend as much time in Chicago changing trains as you would in the cattle car with wings.

When it takes ten times as long to get there, it needs to either be cheaper or a lot more comfortable.

The AmTrak seat looks a little more comfortable, but not a LOT more.

And that is why we don't have a lot of passenger rail in the USA.  Simple economics.

Rail is cheaper than trucks and trucks are cheaper than air for cargo...  This is because of the relative speed of the methods.

Rail not being cheaper than air is primarily because the passenger trains don't own a foot of track outside a couple commuter routes.  The freight carriers own the track and their stock takes priority over the AmTrak trains.

For the record:

It'd take me three days to drive it and more than $350 in gas to get to LA from here.  Plus two places to sleep.  Taking my car is a LOT more comfortable and fun than either a plane or train.  Plus, no TSA in my car.

Cheaper

The fly-away cost of an F-35A is now cheaper than an electric school bus!

But the price per charging station funded through NEVI and CFI is just, barely, less than $11.9 million!

Progression

I didn't get a good pic of it the day it arrived with the bull barrel and giant quad-rails.

AR-10ish clone we dubbed M1956A2.

This was the configuration before the BRN-10 came along.

Then I changed the furniture to Magpul and detached the detachable carry handle for a fixed rear sight.

The fixed rear sight was dropped for a MBUS Gen 3 when I played around with putting a Primary Arms SLx 5 scope on it.

That scope belongs to my 6.8 gun, Olive, so...

I suppose that I should take it out and zero it now that I've replaced the sights and scope at least twice, huh?  7.62 NATO is spendy.

Axial Tilt

Since this is a popular question in the comments.

Why yes, when it gets cooler north of the equator, it gets warmer south of the equator; and vice versa.

Swapping about every six months.

This is because Earth is tilted on her axis and one hemisphere will get more sun than the other when it's tilted at the sun instead of away.

It also gets cooler the farther from the equator and further from sea-level you go.

Now you can stop asking because I've answered.

If you're wondering where your comment went, 25 people asking the same thing in three posts makes me think "bot" and not "actual person" especially when there's no profile associated with the login.

Idle Hands

I decided to clean off the top of my gun safe.

I bumped into a never mounted Leupold Rifleman 3-9x40mm still in its box.

I have an AR-10 here that needs a scope...  I have a mount for a 1" tube leftover from the Olga build.

This story starts writing itself, don't it?

Pretty fetching, ain't she?

11.6 lb. as shown.

You Know What Officer You're Right

Your job SHOULD be easy.

Yet...  There's that 4th Amendment in the way.  There's that 5th Amendment in the way.  There's that 6th Amendment in the way.  There's that 8th Amendment in the way.

Four amendments that are there, pretty much, solely to keep government from speedily and easily arresting, convicting and incarcerating us.

All of the Bill of Rights are about making the job of government harder because the liberty of the citizenry was thought to be more important than efficient government.

So, actually, Mr Spokesman of the Large Police Organization:  You are wrong.

Your job is supposed to be difficult.

You are supposed to work for it.  Earn it.

DEAL WITH IT.

Liberty does not come without warts, but you're supposed to exist in a world where us normal folk are in charge and giving you duties we want performed.  You're not supposed to be dictating terms to us and suborning our elected officials against us.

We'll, eventually, get those turncoats gone.

Then where will you be?

Can I quote someone whom you should be familiar with and emulating?

"[T]he power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect."

-R. Peel.

Learn it, love it, live it, Officer.

Still World Building

A wrinkle that's getting hard to deal with is Homo Neanderthalensis never developing ranged weapons past the occasional thrown spear.  From the pattern of bone breaks in several skeletons, "stab and hang on," appears to be the main tactic with a spear.

A developing hypothesis to their disappearance is from a rapid cooling period where the forests they dominated disappeared and their normal ambush hunting wasn't viable due to the lack of suitable cover.

Homo Sapiens thrived because of ranged weapons like the bow and arrow and atlatl.  They didn't need as much cover because we could shoot from outside the prey's alert distances.

The Homo Sapiens hunting style was also more wolf-like.  Persistence hunting is also better suited to open terrain.

But how does this affect Sabers and Sorcerers?

I've set it in an alternate Great Plains.  The very terrain that might have killed off historical Goo Goo!

I might have to do some rethinking of my bad-guys.

E Tu Australia

 

Again.

Your "searing" temperatures must be warmer than I set my air conditioner to be considered "hot".

I was just reading that Sydney had a high of 77° F and there was much ado about how hot that was.

Darwin and Port Hedlund are getting up there to some real heat at nearly 90° F, but that's just normal Florida heat.

But just the interior and the northern cities seem to be actually hot.  The middle of Australia is kinda known for being warmer than the rest because it's got unique weather patterns.  It's fascinating reading for someone from the midwest.  To me, "entire nation" means that, well, the entire nation should be having some damn heat and it looks like a normal distribution to me.

And are we going to ignore the elephant in the room or talk about how comfortable Tasmania is when "Entire Nation" is gripped by a heatwave?  That just makes me wonder how fucking cold that place is normally when flannel shirt weather is a heatwave.

By the way, it's summer in the down under, so summer weather and temperatures are to be expected.

Dear PETA

The stickers on the packages of meat are amusing, but...

That steak did not come from a cow named "Bella".

If that steer had a name at all, it was the number on their ear-tag.

But even that's irrelevant!

There are certainly steaks out there from cows with names.

My sister's 4H project was such a beast.  That bovine had a name, though I cannot recall it, and its destiny was to be processed into tasty hunks.

Whether she got a prize was based on the auction price of the steer and the quality of the meat from the slaughtering shortly following the auction.

There was no misconception about the destiny of the animal.

The same for the turkey I raised.

Ogie had a date with the Thanksgiving dinner table and my giving him a name didn't change that.

These critters are NOT pets!

I don't see a lot of PETA people with farm animals as pets, to be honest.

That cow was sold at auction, why didn't you go save Bella?  They don't care what you do with it after you buy it.  They assume you're going to be making beef, but you could have yourself a 1,500 lb. lap cow.

Great Fun!

Amazon Prime has a new Christmas Movie, Red One.

It's great fun!

Shut off your brain and eat your popcorn and sit back and enjoy it.

It's a bit corny and cliched, but Christmas movies are supposed to be!

TWO Dead

TWO dead.  Not three.

Don't count the scumbag among the victims.

Two victims and the scumbag are dead.

Stupid Copy Pasta

This is a test to see if the copy-paste of the previous post broke the default font of a typed in post.

Well OK Then

Dozens of luxury condos, hotels in Miami sinking at ‘unexpected’ rates, new study reveals...

Takeaway quote though:

Experts called the study a “game changer” that raises a host of questions about development on vulnerable barrier islands. For starters, experts said, this could be a sign that rising sea levels, caused by the continued emission of greenhouse gases, is accelerating the erosion of the limestone on which South Florida is built.

EVERYTHING is globull warmering. 

Except for the complete lack of measurable sea level rise.

Barrier islands are sand bars.  We didn't use to care about erosion on them and they did what the name said:  They were a barrier to the waves and protected the mainland.  It was only after we started building on them and oceanfront property going stratospheric in value we started noticing how they would be eroded by the water.

I'm willing to bet that building tall buildings on sand is a bad plan regardless of sea level.

PS: They mention that the measured sinkage is within the expectations of the engineers who designed the buildings.

Go Go Gun Free Zone!

Another school shooting.

Wisconsin has gun free schools.

In before finding out that the student was on the police's radar and/or some liberal victim class.  I only speculate on the victim class because it's a Christian school.

Mentality

For the director of the ATF I would prefer no prior experience in law enforcement.

The natural inclination of cops, and former cops, seems to be to better enforce the laws and not to reject enforcing laws which are unconstitutional.

Why does this concern me?

Because cops always enforce unconstitutional laws.

I personally know cops who agree with me on every point of gun control; but have arrested people for breaking laws they say are unconstitutional.

And they wonder why they don't get invited to parties any more...

It's simply a mindset that's incompatible with the idea of ordered liberty when they get put in charge.  Whether it's a small town department or a large federal agency; they take the cop outlook into the job.

What's needed for us pro-liberty, pro-gun, people is someone who is suspicious of law enforcement and the insidious encroachments against freedom their organization has made and can make.

In short, no a cop.

Perhaps best would be someone who is doing business as an SOT who has a clear idea about what would have made doing that easier if only they were in charge.

If You Want A Premium Price...

 That's the dash from The Beast, notice the lack of warning lights.

I've lost track of the number of sellers who are showing the check engine, stability control and TPMS lights lit then asking big bucks for the car.

Fine, you dropped significant coin on the supercharger.  Apparently you didn't do it right because the computer is saying something isn't in spec.

Tire pressure sensors aren't THAT expensive.

Traction control issues are.  Since that little display in the center isn't also showing either of the sport modes, that means something is broken.

Everything wrong with your car is something the buyer has to address and it means you can't charge the same price as a fully sorted car.

Kicking Him While He's Down

FuzzyGeff does not wrench.

There's no shame in that.  I don't program computers, he does.

But he just mentioned having to have the motor mounts changed on his car.

This is a time when I wish he was local, because that's not a hard job at all.

We'd have it knocked out in time to get dinner.

The thing that really hurts is that it's less than $100 in parts.

Same same for the exhaust he mentioned.

$300 in parts if we order from Rock Auto.

But he's not local.  And it hurts me that I cannot help. 

For the record:  I charge my choice of beverage while I'm working, tools that I don't already own and dinner once I'm done.  FOR FRIENDS ONLY!

If you, generously, offer more than that I will accept.

Some brands, however, will require more.  Mitsubishi and Korean stuff will need financial contributions because they just do things strange.

This Guy Is On My Frequency

I ranted about a lot of what he's talking about when I was working on The Precious.

Fraud?

A few years ago I stumbled across this neat little vid.

The other day I found this:

Follow up:

He mentions a couple of times that a 426 Hemi Challenger was a 14 second car.

The Beast is a 14 second car!

Technology, sometimes, rocks!

Making A Fire Control Module

The fire control module for the SIG 320 is deceptively simple.

I suspect that lots of people are going to learn that forming sheet metal isn't as easy as they think it is.

I learned a lot about it designing vending machines and their attendant little parts.

Tolerance stacking is not your friend and there are many forms that you can't make by simple bending.

If you want to give it a shot with a simpler exercise: Make a magazine.

It's just a rectangular tube, easy peasy!

What will be real fun is for someone to make a modular fire control unit that can be made from sheet stock from Home Depot and that little finger brake that Harbor Freight sells.

The Ghost Gun people gonna have a heart attack!

Not A Glock

OK, Ruger, Magpul, you have my attention with the RXM.

Picture from: https://grabagun.com/media/catalog/product/R/u/Ruger-RXM-19401-736676194018.jpg

A gen3 Glock 19 without the finger grooves?

Kinda want.

This also marks the moment that I've forgiven Ruger the company for the sins for Bill Ruger and his son.

At The Vet

Mist is doing great!  Especially for a FEMA Kitty.

No worms.

No FIV.

No Kitty-Leukemia.

Her head tilt is better.  Vet says that she, possibly, will grow out of it because she's not showing some of the secondary signs of some of the causes for it.  This might just be lingering effects of the severe ear infection we had treated when she first exited the cat distribution system.

She got round two of three for her shots.

She does NOT like going to the vet and will accept me as a substitute for Harvey to protect her.

What About The Children

The NFL is saying that they had a 20,000% increase in unauthorized drone flights over football stadiums and that it's only a matter of time before death and destruction ensues.

They demand that something be done.

I agree.

Ban football! The stadiums and their attendant games are clearly attractive nuisances to drone operators.

If it only saves one life...

Courage

Watching a vid about the Conqueror heavy tank.

You have to admire the British for being brave enough to have several electrically powered essential systems on their tanks.

Yes, those systems work as well as anything Lucas put in anything else.

Probably Nothing

Willard has gone dark.

His phone's battery died, so he cannot call.

I have spare batteries for a phone he once owned, but I don't know if they're for the phone he presently has.

He lives inside a gated community that keeps me from just swinging by to drop off the batteries.

We have his daughter's phone number and we've left messages for her to relay to him, but no replies from Willard.

Either she's not relaying, or he's not wanting to reply or...

He's not been commenting here lately either.

That makes me worry his computer has taken a dump.

Again, I can't just swing by and check.

I'm a worrier, so this worries me.

I Like This Mode

Nope, no Tropical Weather to see here.

Michael Mann failed to get his predicted number of storms too.  I've lost track of the number of predictions he's made where he's been flat wrong.

I can't figure out why he's still considered credible.

Has he ever predicted something that happened?

I'm The Wrong Market

For some reason the Daniel Defense H9 reinvention of the Hudson H9 has been in my mind lately.

It occurs to me, again, that it's $1,300 asking price ($1,000 from several vendors) is out of line.

It's a heavy, bulky striker fired pistol for just 15 rounds in the magazine.

Because of that capacity, it's not competing with full size pistols; it's competing with compacts like the Glock 19 and M&P 9 Compact.

Guns that are an easy $600 cheaper and, based on reviews, perform just as well.

Even the M&P metal isn't $1,300 MSRP; it's $900 ($800 retail).  $400 (or $200 retail) cheaper and it's smaller in every dimension and lighter with two more shots.

Hot Rod Philosophy

I've been watching a lot of David Freiburger on YouTube lately and I am struck by his very pragmatic approach to getting things done.

Special alumimun wrenches for tightening AN fittings?  Nope, normal wrenches.

Spend days on a side quest to make the part he's working on emaculate?  Nope, mask and rattle can after a quick spray of soap and water.

But he also still makes sure the job is getting done right when it matters.  If the goal is to make it run and live, but not to make it pretty, he dispenses with the pretty.  We've seen him make pretty stuff, he knows how.

Broke Three

 Mist has broken three pounds!  She is 3 lb. 2.5 oz.

Does she work for the Alliance or The Empire?

She's tracking very similarly to Shadow's weight a year ago, but she's much skinnier...  That means she's bigger.

Beeper is most affected because Mist doesn't back down like Shadow.

Butthurt Dem Signs On To Be RINO

Susan L Valdes has changed parties from Democrat to Republican.

I think I agree with the assessment that she's butthurt and not actually reconsidering her political feelings:

Valdes started her political career in 2016 when she won a seat on the Hillsborough County school board.

Valdes was elected unopposed on 6 November 2018 from the platform of the Democratic Party.

In 2020 and 2022, her Democratic Party primary was cancelled and she advanced to the general election without contest. Each time, she won reelection by a margin of over 5%.

On December 9, 2024, Valdes switched to the Republican party, which came only days after failing to become chair of the Hillsborough County Democratic Party.

Luis Valdez - Gunowners of America - Florida

Got skipped for a plum position and changed parties.    

This is a "Fuck all y'all I can be a RINO among RINOs as easily as I can be a Dem!"

And the idiot Republicans are bragging about it.

I'm more inclined to say, "don't want you, don't need you, we've enough RINO already."

Case 40mm M118

Thanks to various sites hosting pdf versions of all manner of ordnance manuals, I know the expected muzzle velocity of many rounds.

I know the total weight of the round.

I know the weight of the propellant used.

I don't know the weight of the projectile, and I need that for the GURPS damage calculations.

But if you subtract the weight of the case and the weight of the propellant...  You are left with the weight of the projectile!

I needed to find the weight of the case for a 40x46mm grenade.

I remembered that FuzzyGeff has such a case that he's had for as long as I've known him.  He can tell us how he came to own it if he'd like to comment.

What he could do was weight it!

1.6 oz. or 48g on his scale.

I can now calculate what a 40mm HE round does to its victim inside the arming distance.

0.503 lb. (3,521gr)  total weight.

0.1 lb. (700gr) is the case.  (Can you believe I actually used a calculator to go from oz to lb?)

330mg (5.1gr) is the powder.

That leaves 2,820.993gr (0.403 lb.) for the projectile!  (I'd guessed about 2,800gr earlier!)

250 fps is the muzzle velocity.

1d+2 using Douglas Cole's interior and terminal ballistics spreadsheet.  Just like it was with 2,800gr...  At least I know for certain now!

I decided to go with crushing damage because of the big frontal area and low velocity.  Other rounds get double knockback, so I did that too.  It seemed wrong for it to do pi++.

1d+2 cr dkb.

That will do an average of 5 rolled and 5 inflicted.

For the record a 90mph fast ball is a 73.66mm, 2,242 gr projectile at 132 fps. 

1d-2 cr dkb.

A 90 mph baseball does an average of 1 rolled and 1 inflicted.

Captain Tuttle

Ed B made a really clever reference to MASH in comments to the Anderson zombie post.

Kudos!

I've tossed things like that at the players a time or two, just to see who got it.

Captain Parmenter was commanding a troop of cavalry that encountered the players in an Old West campaign once.  They didn't even notice.

They ran into Captain (acting Major) William Martin of the Royal Marines in one Modred campaign.  Two people commented on that one.  Best comment, "Oh fuck!  We're mincemeat!"  <-- They got extra eeps.

Blackbeard slipped right by them by calling him "Old Bill Thatch".

Thag Not See Crash

There were lots of people showing the ADS-B track of an Il-76 that, maybe, had Assad on board.

It did a u-turn and then dumped altitude.

I think a lot of people forgot the Candid is a military transport.  The crew was, likewise, Syrian military.

To me that track looked like a drop in altitude to get below radar and shutting the ADS-B off to prevent being tracked and shot down when they then cut Northwest to escape nape of the earth style.

Reviving An Old Term

I see that we're blowing shit up in Syria.

With Grampa BUFF.

Arclight, bitches.

Steel Folding Chairs

In the way back...

The person I learned TTRPGing from was Standing Bear.

Bear was a veteran of WW2 and Korea.

He told us a tale of how folding chairs would disappear and how they played a shell game during inspections to fool the inspector into counting enough chairs that none appeared to be missing.

Fast forward to my own service.

The IG is going from building to building and I'm carrying, at least, six folding chairs from one place to another more than once...

"Holy shit!  I'm in Bear's story!" I was thinking at the time.

Bear laughed when I shared that and we got to share a "veteran moment".

Fast forward again, and Willard and I are comparing notes and HE has the exact same story about the chairs!

Which brings me to reading an article about how the Pentagon is having trouble doing audits and accounting for everything and then reading speculation about what the DOGE twins might do...

Considering that the Army alone appears to have lost more steel folding chairs than were ever made; and paid to replace them...  The numbers will never add up.

Before Nguyen There Was Anderson

The free form role playing that lead to the zombification of VC sapper Nguyen started with:

PFC "F": We have latrine duty.

PFC "M":  We're covered.

PFC "F": How are we covered?  I don't need another article 15.

PFC "M": Remember Anderson?

PFC "F": (guardedly) Yes...  Wait, didn't he get killed in that mortar attack?

PFC "M": He did.  And that's why he's pulling latrine duty for us!

PFC "F": You didn't!

PFC "M": I did!

PFC "F": That was wrong!  I should turn you in!

PFC "M": Didn't he owe you money?

PFC "F": I hope Sarge doesn't find out.

PFC "M": I don't think he's paying much attention.  I heard him mentioning to the LT that he was impressed at how hard Anderson has been working lately.  He'll prolly get the first posthumous ArCom.  Besides, Jackson wants to borrow him tomorrow for HIS turn at the burn barrel.

PFC "F": We're either going to get busted or promoted, aren't we?

A Day Which Lives In Infamy

83 years ago, this moment, the first wave of Imperial Japanese Navy bombers began their attack on Pearl Harbor and awakened a sleeping giant.

Less than four years later, and two applications of canned sunshine, they unconditionally surrendered on the deck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

Appropriately, Missouri is currently berthed next to USS Arizona today.

Yamamoto predicted the outcome.

Your Own Personal Nguyen

Funny New Guys lets one delve into some really creepy aspects of magery, magic and war.

Not least of which is the Zombie spell.  For a mere 8 FP and a minute of casting, plus a "relatively complete dead body," you can make yourself your own necromantic slave.

Learned some necromancy before dropping out of college and getting drafted?

Sick of digging latrines and sick of burning shit with diesel?

Wasn't there a dead VC sapper in the wire last night?

Private, your problems are OVER!

Until you get caught with your rotting pal who's... well, not very fun to be with or around.

It's Vietnam and it's HOT.  Your VC ditch digger is rotting!

Once the flesh falls from his bones, he will stop stinking and still be a useful skeleton, but until then...

No matter, have Nguyen stand on top of a handy ant hill until those, industrious, little insects pick him clean.  Better have him make a chicken wire enclosure to keep the birds off him, though, as they tend to dismember bodies while they snack.

But the entire platoon is going to be in on helping you violate the laws of modern warfare concerning the desecration of enemy bodies when they discover just how HANDY such a thing is for avoiding tedious manual labor.

Denying Our Troops Life-Saving Gear

In GURPS Magic there is a spell called Missile Shield.

It costs 7 fatigue to get started and 3 per minute after the first minute to keep going.

If you're not keeping track of fatigue, your average person has 10 and casting that spell is a hit to their available fatigue, but not crippling.

The problem is if you're humping the bush in Vietnam with medium encumbrance and it takes 4 FP an hour to march along.

The fire fight starts two hours in and you use a ring enchanted with Missile Shield to cast it and...  You're now on the verge of collapse with -5 FP.  See Basic Set p.426 for why this is VERY BAD.

Such a ring is 400 energy to make and that's a mere $150,000 if cast traditionally with "slow and sure" means and $20,000 if enchanted industrially.  With a starting wealth of  $15,000 and not enough demand to start an industrial production line...  It's probably not going to come up in play.

But something that will is a healing potion.

Chiron is the healing elixir.  Mass produced it will run a whopping $51.75 per dose.  That might seem a lot but it will heal 1d HP worth of damage per application; that's the same as 1 to 6 days of total rest and recuperation!  20 minutes of First Aid/TL7 will restore 1d-1 HP.  The standard issue field dressing has a dose of ointment form built right in!

Can you imagine how the media would be harping on things if the troops didn't get issued such a field dressing?  The medic will also be carrying a supply of Chiron too; in both powder and liquid forms.

There was sure to be a, sad faced, Walter Cronkite wondering why we couldn't spin up the production line for those rings.  60-Minutes has not yet aired...

M1952A Vest

In 1967 the issue fragmentation body armor vest was the M1952A.

In GURPS terms it's 8.5 lb., $400 and gives DR 4/2*.  The higher DR is vs pi and cut, lower against all other types.  The * means it's flexible armor.

The later M1969 vest is almost identical in GURPS terms.

Familiarity

The timeframe that Funny New Guys is set is 1967.

That sets some important points for weaponry.

It means all the "work" I did looking up Blooper stuff is still relevant and the more familiar M203 won't be on the scene yet.  The XM148 has started field trials.

It also amends my list of available rounds:

See High Tech p.143 and p.145 and SEALs in Vietnam p.33 for stats.

M381 HE (1967) - 3 yard min distance. 32g Comp-B. 0.503 lb.

M406 HE (1967) - 15 yard min distance. 32g Comp-B. 0.503 lb.

M576 MP (Multi-Projectile) (1967) - No min distance. 20 #4 Buckshot pellets. 0.254 lb.

M585 White Star Flare (1967) - 330 yard min distance, 7 sec, 55,000 candela. 0.41 lb.

M651 Riot Control CS tear gas (1967) - 33 yard min distance, 6.5 yard sphere, 20 sec burn time. 0.45 lb.

M676 Yellow Smoke (1967) - 150 yd. min distance. 90 sec burn time. 0.48 lb.

M680 White Smoke (1967) - 150 yd. min distance. 90 sec burn time. 0.48 lb.

M682 Red Smoke (1967) - 150 yd. min distance. 90 sec burn time. 0.48 lb.

I should also note that the date I've shown is just the earliest reference I have for the round in question.  Some of them must pre-date that because the M79 is first fielded in 1961.

That makes my infantry weapons list:

M16A1 rifle (XM16E1?)
M60 machine gun
M79 grenade launcher
M1911A1 pistol (but I'm amused to change that to M4...)
M26 (lemon) and M33 (baseball) are the common fragmentation grenades.

Being Rich Is Nice

I wish I was rich enough to own a professional sportsball team.

Because once you're that rich, you no longer have to pay for things.

Like the building called a "stadium" for your team to play in.

You make the taxpayers from the location of your stadium pay to build it.

If they don't you find a different group of politicians to cave into your demands and have THEIR taxpayers build it.

The taxpayer is rewarded with increased spending on law enforcement to combat the increased crime during games and events at the stadium.

They are rewarded with increased traffic congestion from games and events at the stadium.

The promises of increased business and economic benefits are illusory.

They have never once panned out.

And I say this as a hockey fan and a fan of the Tampa Lightning.

But if the Bolts demanded a new stadium on my back, I'd be helping them pack for their new home someplace else.  If they wanted to move to my county, I'd be lighting a fire under my administrators to nuke the deal.

Coincidentally, Amalie Arena, home of The Bolts, isn't my taxpaying problem.  It's Hillsborough County's.  I don't live there.

I live close enough to get all the benefit I want and far enough away to escape the costs.  I feel so damn clever at this bit of happenstance.

I'm Not Cheering

The CEO of United Healthcare got gunned down in NYFC.

I am not celebrating, but I am also not very surprised.

After dealing with insurance companies with Harvey's shoulder and knee I'd be writing to the Coast Guard to report them drowning instead of calling 911.

I am dead certain there are people who are dead because of a slow response from their insurance company, or from a flat denial of a claim.

That's sure to create a population of very bitter folks and if that population grows large enough, it's bound to include people who will act on that bitterness violently and with finality.

And here we are.

PS: Name me a single industry that's made better by insurance paying most of the providers.

If This Were Us

If I got busted selling an NFA item without a Form 4, or selling a non-transferable NFA item to a normal person:  I'd be in jail!

But Bradley Wendt, police chief of Adair, Iowa, is not in jail.

Is he?

Hey!  WAIT!  He is!  Or will be once he loses his appeal.

But something he says worries me.

"If I'm guilty of this, every cop in the nation's going to jail."

Exactly how widespread is cops selling NFA stuff without the proper taxes and licenses?

And, honestly, how can we get more of it because, clearly, the sales aren't feeding crime beyond the malum prohibitum violation of the NFA.

The only reason I wouldn't be getting an M134 from the trunk of my local LEO's car is I can't afford the $6,000 a minute rate of fire.  But I'd damn sure like a couple lowers with giggle switches.

I think that this conviction and the statement of the former police chief are evidence enough to end the stupidity of the NFA and let us have our liberty back.

Quote Of The Day

Taken in its entirety from Task And Purpose:

Normally, Thanksgiving is synonymous with food, family, friends, and giving thanks. For @TheEconomist, Thanksgiving apparently means taking a turkey-sized dump on disabled veterans. The other day I had the unfortunate opportunity to read an unattributed article on The Economist titled, “American veterans now receive absurdly generous benefits” and it left me with a lot of thoughts. (You can read it for yourself here: https://econ.st/3D0Nk87, just be ready to sign up for a subscription.)

The piece on The Economist has no author and reads like it was poorly run through ChatGPT. And the title of the piece is insultingly stupid. The definition of absurd is “wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate.” I’d challenge the anonymous cowards at The Economist to illuminate us on which parts of veterans’ healthcare and benefits are inappropriate, illogical, or wildly unreasonable?

I am a disabled veteran. I had my right leg blown to pieces on September 4, 2006, in Fallujah, Iraq. Since that time, I have had to walk with an above the knee prosthetic and I have not had an easy day physically for as long as I can remember. Hey, The Economist, which portion of my healthcare or benefits are wildly unreasonable?

Service to our country can be an incredibly uplifting and positive experience for many who wore the uniform, but that service can also involve hazards. Some disabled veterans struggle physically or mentally with the effects of their service. Bullet wounds, Traumatic Brain Injuries, Post Traumatic Stress, and other effects of a service can sometimes cause chronic issues for veterans, and providing care and benefits for those issues is certainly not inappropriate or illogical.

While the AI assisted “journalists” at The Economist boldly chose not to put their name on this piece, they did attribute a quote to another non-expert in veteran benefits, Mark Duggan from Stanford University. Mark foolishly stated about VA Disability and Compensation, “Once you qualify you have an incentive not to get better.” An incentive not to get better?!?!? Hey Mark, any clue how I can get my right leg back? I’d gladly give back the money I’ve received so I can get up out of bed without the assistance of a wheelchair or a prosthetic.

The meandering poorly structured article in The Economist highlighted a lot of increased numbers and statistics, many of these figures quoted began back in 2001. It highlighted the increased number of veterans with high disability ratings beginning to increase in 2001. However, nowhere in the article does it state what else began back in 2001. These dopes conveniently left out the Global War on Terror that began in 2001 lasted for TWENTY YEARS! A full 20 years of the same all-volunteer force serving over and over, and over again in the same toxic hellholes fighting the same brutal terrorists. Gee, I wonder why today’s veterans are presenting with more chronic ailments than generations that came before us.

Ivy League elitists like Mark Duggan and the pretentious wankers at the Economist clearly didn’t bother to do much research on veteran disability or bother to speak to one of the millions of disabled veterans like me. We would have told these arrogant snobs that certain injuries and illnesses are with us for life, and no disability rating is worth the difficulties that come with some of the aftereffects of service.

The real cherry on top of this turd sundae was the lazy suggestion (possibly lifted from the fools at the @washingtonpost Editorial Board) that VA should means test veterans before receiving benefits. As in, if you make enough money after service, you won’t be taken care of for the costs of war. If The Economist had bothered to attribute a name to this drivel, I would ask that idiot, “how would you means test my inability to teach my son to ride a bike?” It’s a pretty routine joy that most parents get the privilege of taking part in. However, my prosthetic leg doesn’t really function in a way that allows normal bike riding. So that is a simple joy I won’t get. How exactly do buffoons like Mark Duggan and the dollar store journalists at The Economist suggest factoring in that loss?

The last paragraph of this loosely compiled puddle of garbage juice included the statement, “Reducing payments to former soldiers will never be popular, but it would be wise. America’s veteran obsession has gone too far.” — TOO FAR?!?!? Holy hell, this sounds like it was written by a jealous also-ran who every veteran has probably met. The guy or girl who “totally would’ve joined…but I didn’t because I would’ve told-off a Drill Instructor if they got in my face”. Losers…

In the future, if any major publication wants to embarrass themselves by anonymously taking shots at disabled veterans, I’d like to offer my services. I can start by helping you research this subject to learn about the actual effects of service-connected injuries and illness. I can also connect you with other disabled veterans so you can hear first-hand accounts of some of the difficulties veterans face. I could even help google image search pictures of actual veterans, instead of the stock photo of firefighters The Economist used at the top of its trash piece on veterans. Then finally, if you are still intent on disparaging disabled veterans, I can assist you in removing your head from your ass…free of charge.

Patrick Murray, national legislative service director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars office in Washington, D.C.

I can't find a lot (or anything) to disagree with here.  Spending on veterans is among the first things DC nukes when they go towards balancing budgets.

I was there when Clinton was spending the peace dividend and noticing that a homeless people got better care from a for-profit hospital than a veteran got from the supposed-to-be-dedicated-to-them hospital.

I cannot help but wonder if there'd been proper care and therapy for my legs if I would be spared the constant pain from neuropathy. 

I'm sure that FuzzyGeff and Technomad can relate stories about how bad I was hurting and what a charming fellow it made me.

But too many people think that because veterans will stoically suffer that we SHOULD.

I won't even get into the weeds of talking about how the same people talking about cutting off support for veterans are the same assholes that tie the military's hands and prolong conflicts and assure there be no victory, lasting or fleeting.

In Honor Of The End Of Prohibition

Some bathtub gin!

Wetted For 91 Years

I almost missed end-of-Prohibition day!

Have a drink!

It's legal!

The "Benefits" Of Hearing Loss

A nice thing about losing a significant amount if hearing is losing the need to have a stereo past a certain point of fidelity and needing music past a certain bit rate.

Why pay for it if I can't hear it?

Since my hearing loss is focused on certain frequencies, I also don't need to waste money on subwoofers because I can hear bass quite well, thank you.

That sometimes makes me dial in the equalizer so that it sounds wrong to other people as I tune my experience to match my memories of a song before I murdered my ears.

I've also noticed that I am more sick of saying "What?" than people are of repeating themselves so I can understand (and they are VERY sick of it).  For many situations I just smile and nod until they quit talking than to bother to get them to say it so I can understand it.

Oddly, I can often pick out their voice better in a jumbled background than if it were merely quiet.

Not For Years

I feel like I should mention that I have not bought anything from iTunes for years.

Their store stops working when OS support ends.

So, when they stopped supporting my version of OSX, I stopped buying from them.

What I had used them for was to replace all the music I had on cassettes and CD's from the early '80's.

Napster facilitated my change from discrete physical media to using digital.

The music industry really should have realized that Napster was, effectively, a loss-leader that led many of us to be buying after trying.  It was handy for finding the correct version of the song I was wanting to buy.

They should also have noticed that a lot of the music people were "stealing" wasn't available for purchase because it was "out of print."  People wanted to buy it, but the music industry was refusing to sell it.  That did nobody any good.

Amazon has been just as convenient as iTunes for getting music, it's DRM free, and it works on all my devices.

Casette CD iTunes MP3

I'm getting a bit sick of rebuying my music.

For the most part, I had the problem solved with iTunes, but...

There's a few songs, here and there, that are in a format that can't be read by a device here and there.

Mutter mutter, grumble grumble.

The case in point is the stereo in The Beast cannot read m4a files, despite those files being DRM free from iTunes.

That means having to get new copies in mp3 that it can read so I can listen to them without fiddling with the phone and bluetooth.

The phone plays m4a files, but doesn't show the song on the screen.  If you can't see the song on the screen, you can't take a clever "Hulk In Tree!" pic.

Why no Hulk song?  Why Iron Man get song?

We take a series of "Hulk in the tree" pics every year, kinda like a fun, digital, advent calendar.

Where would you like to see Hulk?

Quicker

When looking up loads for the M79 I was struck that a shotgun is a higher velocity gun.

12ga is about 1350 feet per second with #4 buckshot.

The M576 round is a mere 885 fps with the same shot.

12ga is firing 24 pellets instead of 20 as well.

I can see the argument for using a shotgun instead of the blooper for close in work.

#4 buck was used extensively in Vietnam.

Why Can't We Get Along?

Because one side really believes this:

Exactly how many women have been arrested for having an abortion since Roe v Wade was overturned?

Exactly how many, of any kind, LGBTQ people have been jailed for simply being whom they are?

There's prolly something about illegal immigrants and racism in this "comic" too, but I am not liberal enough to parse the symbolism shown.

But the liberal side really does seem to think that with Trump back in office means tyranny and bigotry will reign.

Never mind the bigotry of showing a white man doing the oppressing in the illustration...

But it's OK to be bigoted against white men for... reasons... or something.

More Concerning

Past the cost of the new, flammable, refrigerants is the concerns about the leak detectors.

Having had to replace several, not very complicated, starter capacitors I am very concerned that the leak detector will fail and the failure mode is "I detect a leak!"

That will mean dragging the AC guys here with their leak detection stuff to confirm that there is no leak and no fire risk and then replace the sensor.

A new, hidden, cost!

It will only take a few laps of this sensor failing and there being nothing wrong besides the sensor before the do-it-yourselfer starts stocking the sensors, or wires around them.

Now we're going to see some flames!

Systems that cry wolf get ignored or bypassed.

If you don't believe me, just look into the window of a car in the other lane and notice how many are driving with amber and red warning lights on the dash.

Inside Minimum Distance

A 40x46mm round that hits someone inside it's arming distance will still do some damage.

1d+2(0.5) cr dkb (double knockback).  The unarmed slug of an M381 HE round will roll an average of 5.5.  That drops to 4 penetrating.  It also does 11 points of knockback and that will knock the average ST10 person back a yard.  Not a pleasant hit, but better than sucking up the 4d-1 [2d] cr ex of the round going off.

At 7 yards (with skill 11) we can expect to get 3 pellets of #4 buck from the M576 round that'd be 3x 1d-1(0.5) pi-.  Average of 7.5 points rolled, 4 penetrating and doing 2 points of damage.

But inside 3 yards:  You lose the bonus to hit from multi-projectile, but the damage swells to 7d(0.5) pi- and the target's DR is multiplied by 10 (plus the effects of the armor divisor).

That armor divisor also, normally, gives an unarmored target DR 1.  So it, too, swells to DR 10.

The average hit from "extremely close range" rolls 24.5.  That drops to 14 penetrating and doing 7 points of damage.

Not Quite As Bad

In 1972 the average price of regular gas was 36.9¢ per gallon.

With the 655.18% inflation since then, gas should be $2.789 per gallon.

Last time I filled it was $3.159.

Corrected for inflation, gas is about 13% more today than in 1972.

The $1.199 gas of 1991 should be $2.779 gas today.

But the $3.699 gas of 2012 should be $5.089 today, so something went right and gas prices broke from the rest of inflation.

Bloop

M79 ammo in Funny New Guys Vietnam.  Also for XM148 after 1965 and M203 after 1969.

See High Tech p.143 and p.145 and SEALs in Vietnam p.33 for stats.

M381 HE (1967) - 3 yard min distance.  32g Comp-B.  0.503 lb.

M406 HE (1967) - 15 yard min distance.  32g Comp-B.  0.503 lb.

M433 HEDP (1971) - 15 yard min distance.  45g Comp-A5.  0.507 lb.

M576 MP (Multi-Projectile) (1967) - No min distance.  20 #4 Buckshot pellets.  0.254 lb.

M583A1 White Parachute Star Flare (1972) - 600ft altitude, 40 sec, 90,000 candela.  0.49 lb.

M585 White Star Flare (1967) - 330 yard min distance, 7 sec, 55,000 candela.  0.41 lb.

M651 Riot Control CS tear gas (1967) - 33 yard min distance, 6.5 yard sphere, 20 sec burn time.  0.45 lb.

M661 Green Parachute Star Flare (1972) - 600ft altitude, 40 sec, 8,000 candela.  0.49 lb.

M662 Red Parachute Star Flare (1972) - 600ft altitude, 40 sec, 20,000 candela.  0.49 lb.

XM674 Riot Control CS tear gas (1968) - 33 yard min distance, 6 yard sphere, 36 sec burn time.  0.463 lb.

M676 Yellow Smoke (1967) - 150 yd. min distance.  90 sec burn time.  0.48 lb.

M680 White Smoke (1967) - 150 yd. min distance.  90 sec burn time.  0.48 lb.

M682 Red Smoke (1967) - 150 yd. min distance.  90 sec burn time.  0.48 lb.

There's a husha bomb "silent" HE round running around with the SEALs and some flechette rounds circulating too.
 

I Beg Your Pardon

Hunter Biden has gotten a sweet deal of a pardon!

Do not despair!

Biden the Younger may no longer plead the 5th if someone makes him testify now.

Everything has a silver lining!

Not that I expect anyone to supoena him...

That's Not The Official Loadout

With the idea of press-ganging Marv into making a Funny New Guys character, I decided to look up the loadouts for the various weapons carried in Vietnam.

I found this guy.

What I'd found in my research into the web gear made me think that 9 20-round magazines were carried for the M16.

He's saying they lugged around 20.

He's also carrying 200 rounds of spare ammo on 10-round clips.

Plus 200 rounds for the M60.

I'd encountered the carrying ammo for the M60 before.

I'd made characters who lugged around ammo in their packs to reload magazines later, an idea that Willard dissuaded me of, but it persists.

But, he was there, I was not.

Now I'm trying to figure out HOW he carried 20 magazines.  1 goes in the gun.  A magazine pouch will hold 4 each.  An ammo bandolier has 7 pockets and each will carry one magazine.  Three pouches and a bandolier will do it.

That bandolier came from an ammo can and was packed with 14 10-round clips.

I wonder if he was really carrying 140 spare rounds instead of 200 in clips.

Also of interest is the grenadier carrying 25 40mm grenades.  The standard bandolier carries a whopping 6. A vest would tote 24.  There are many bags available to carry them around loose though.

Most photos of grenadiers in 'Nam I've found are wearing the same LBE as the other grunts, and that makes me think that some were carried in the standard ammo pouch; 2 easily, maybe 3 but you'd need a DX roll or a Fast-Draw -4 to get just one out without pulling all three out.

This dude can lug around 30 grenades with his vest and bandolier.