23 February 2025

I Guess We'll See How It Goes

I am uncertain that having the same person be the director of both the FBI and BATFE is a good idea.

My objections are pretty nebulous, but I cannot help but think they are separate organizations for a reason and separate orgs need separate leadership.

I've been wrong before.  I could be wrong now and worrying about nothing.

I hope so.

Speaking Of Banned Books

I'm watching "The Order" and they mention "The Turner Diaries" many times.

I've heard of this book many times.

I've seen it for sale at a couple of gun shows.  You know the guy who has all the Nazi memorabilia?  Yeah, that guy sells them.

Being a curious monkey, I wondered if it counted as a banned book and how easy it was to lay hands on a copy.

Amazon does not carry it.

Books-A-Million does.

Interestingly, if you can read German, Amazon will sell you a copy of Mein Kampf.  Well, they'll sell it to you even if you can't...

Every title that the liberal types say was banned by Florida's so called, "Don't say gay," law is readily available on Amazon.

So much for being banned.

Not that I want to actually own anything on that list, or a copy of The Turner Diaries.

But it's interesting to see what is banned vs what is not available.

And I Will Take It

Dream Giveaways is giving away a pair of Challengers.

The old one is a 1970 R/T 400-Six Pack Trak-Pack.

390 hp, 490 ft-lb.

3,700 rpm on the interstate where it will get, perhaps, 9 miles per gallon.

With the 18 gallon tank that means a 162 mile range.

Because of the 4.10 rear gear, it's barely going to get past 100 before it runs out of revs.

It's astonishing how far technology has come.

The Beast makes almost as much power, gets more than double the mileage and has a top speed just past 150.  Same 0-60 time.  With a superbike's worth of engine missing (7.2 v 6.0 liters).

The Dodge is just two tenths faster in the 1/4-mile.  13.6@101 vs 13.8@101. 

Did I mention the weight difference?  The Challenger is 3,671 lb., The Beast is 4,162 lb.  Technology is amazing!

A lot of it has to do with the gearing in the transmission.  Even with the 2.92 diff, the Caprice has more than a 13:1 final ratio in first, compared to just 10:1 on the Challenger, AND the torque multiplication from the converter inherent in a slushbox.

But the old Challenger definitely has more style.

Where Did It All Come From

OK, I do know where it all came from, but I didn't realize I'd accumulated so much.

We deleted about a terabyte of movies off the NAS tonight.

Lots of watched once with no rewatch potential and no need to retain the local copy.

22 February 2025

Favoring It Doesn't Work

On average, my right leg hurts worse than my left despite the damage being similar bilaterally.

According to the doc, the bones are healed well, but neuropathy doesn't care.

But, the primitive portion of my brain still programs a limp to favor the right leg because it hurts.

That causes me to over stress my left hip.

Now the real pain can begin!

It was very difficult getting up and out the door today because my hip was saying, "Fuck you!"

Putting a lot more weight on the cane let it get back to a semblance of normalcy.

Still hurts, but it's a dull roar now.

Bonus TMI fact!

When my hip is out of place like this, sitting on a barstool cuts off blood to my nuts and left leg!  The tingly effect of "foot's asleep" in your junk is an oddly painful thing.

206

The United States has owned Florida for 206 204 years today!

The Adam-Onis treaty was signed today in 1819 and became effective two years later with Florida on the US side of the US-Spanish border.

 

21 February 2025

Oh Arfcom...

Originally Posted By SuperSixOne:
8% per year isn't 35% over 5 years. That's not how math works.

But it is.

I'll grant, it's not quite 35%, it's very close.

0.92^5 is 65.91% or a 34.09% total reduction.

Do it another way...

8% reduction in the first year is 92%

8% the second year is 84.64%

8% the third year is 77.87%

8% the fourth year is 71.64%

8% in the fifth year brings us to 65.91%!

It's pretty simple math.

One Hour Forty Minutes

Crispy IV the hoary old Lenovo T420S running Ubuntu on an SSD gets one hour forty minutes on a charge with light surfing.

The battery dies with 5% showing, so some training might be in order.

I'm not unhappy with this performance, truth be told.  The 420S is distinct from the more workman 420 in its smaller, lighter chassis and smaller battery.  It's intended to be more portable and compromises are part of that.

Doing good for a machine made 14 years ago.

20 February 2025

Three Hours Fifty Minutes

DerpyPuter gets three hours and fifty minutes of generic surfing on the new battery before it died.

Doing the full recharge with the laptop off now.

I'm fairly impressed, actually.

I could prolly stretch more time out of it by changing from balanced to power saver too.

Handy Trumps Handsome Again

The Lovely Harvey collects crosses.

 One of her displays is frequently disturbed by Beeper.

All it needed was some plexiglass fitted to the box to keep her from dislodging the crosses.

I found some Lexan™ at Home Depot and cut it to fit.

Simple job, as it turned out, because my tin snips cut it readily.

I am struck, again, at how something simple for me is magnified by the happiness from the wife.

And happy wife, happy life!

Digital Changed Everything

I have very few photos from before I got a digital camera.

Film cost money.

Getting film developed cost money.

Developed pictures take up space.

Not knowing if your picture had come out until it was back from the lab was discouraging and the learning curve was a kinda steep.

Starting in 2000 with a Kodak DC3200 digital camera, all that started to change.

We could see if we'd gotten the shot right away on the teeny little screen on the back.

Then we got cell phones that were as good or better than that bulky Kodak.

Now I have pictures of everything.

For the cost of a few electrons.

It means we can afford to "waste" shots.  To play with settings on the "real" camera just to see what they do.  Play that Marv did with film!  He's been a great advisor!

My cell phone is as good a camera as I need for most things.

It doesn't change that I want a "pro" camera.  Real cameras with huge sensors are fun!

Quality glass does show up when you zoom in.

I only wish that I'd been aware that the M series cameras from Canon were going to be abandoned just after I committed.

Unplugged

DerpyPuter, the $1 laptop ($48 when you add the keyboard and battery), is now operating without a tether!

The battery finally arrived from China.

I'm doing the recommended run it all the way out process now.

I can't think of a better way to get that done than to use the computer as normal.

Not That Impressive

Guns.com says there are over 30-million ARs and AKs in circulation.

The problem is that is only like fifteen of us gun owners judging from the pictures on forums...

19 February 2025

Crank It Up

Put on the headphones.

Crank up the volume.


Best transition is at 0:47.

Juxtaposition

Three thousand quatloos to the person, in the comments, who can tell me how "Hold My Hand" by Lady Gaga and "Everything" by Alanis Morissette are related.

Google will not help you.

Two And A Half Pounds

The Shell Mk.1 for the QF 20-pdr Mk.1 has 2.5 lb. (TNT equivalent) of explosive filler.

Nominally a 50-50 RDX/BWX mix.  BWX is beeswax; it's to 'desensitize' the shell to keep it from going boom when you don't want it to.  RDX/BWX is also known as Composition A-3 and has a REF value of 1.7.  That means the filling is actually just 1.5 lb.

That will give 6dx3[3d] cr ex.

Finding that filler weight was surprisingly hard to find considering how widely used the QF-20 was.

I know this was driving you nuts too.

18 February 2025

They Go Together

Everyday, in the news, is a story about some new tragedy and fentanyl.

There is no doubt, it's a dangerous drug.  It is lethal in astonishingly small amounts.

But where did it come from?

The war on drugs.

The war on drugs made making, shipping, and prescribing opioids more difficult.

This created an incentive to create synthetic versions of them so it would be easier to eliminate the natural sources of the drugs and the criminal side of opioid manufacture.

The war on drugs is good at stopping the vehicles bringing in large amounts of drugs.

When I was young and Nancy was telling me to, "just say no!" I remember stories of boats and planes getting nailed for being loaded with marijuana.  By the time I'd graduated high school, those boats and planes were carrying cocaine.

The cost/benefit analysis of smuggling mary-jane was upside down, but cocaine wasn't.  Heroin, same same.

The price of cocaine created a market for amphetamines, like meth.  Meth can be made domestically and cheaply.  And thanks to the war on drugs, we can't get cold medicine that works anymore.  Oh, and by making the chemicals that would make WW2 era amphetamines illegal; the modern version is both dangerous to make and more dangerous to the user.  Winning?

Marijuana is domestically grown, or smuggled differently, but it's still widely available on the illicit market even as it becomes legal.

But let's come back to the cost/benefit curve.

If you can get the same return on a suitcase full of fentanyl as a whole narco-sub full of cocaine; what are you going to smuggle in?

It seems strange, but legalizing heroin and cocaine would, basically, end much of the problems with fentanyl.

I'm not saying we wouldn't have problems, but we know how to deal with those already and they might be lesser problems than what we're heading into.

Never mind that study after study keeps finding that treatment works far better than incarceration for drug abusers. 

PS: Let is never forget that the government is in your bank account so that drug dealers can't use banks.  How many other privacy items are void because of the war on drugs?  How many innocent people are killed in no-knock searches?  To mirror the liberal side of things, "even one is too many!"

Heresy Or Sacrilege?

I have learned that Criterion makes, occasionally, M1 Garand barrels in .270 Winchester.

It's not a bolt in job because the chamber will need to be finish reamed for headspace.

As a devotee of Jack O'Connor, I am fascinated by the idea.

17 February 2025

Plug And Play

For a change I thought it was getting a bit cold in here.

Odd.

Check the thermostat and it's set to 50!

The buttons don't work.

Dammit.

Remove the batteries for a second and the buttons started working again.

Tell Harvey.

Go to Liquid Garage for a beer and hockey.

Harvey texts, "It's gone to 50."

Dammit.

Head home and try changing the batteries.

No joy, no button function.

TO WAL MART!

The Honeywell thermostat that just died has a neat feature.  A universal base.  All of their newer stats use the same base and pin-out.  That means I don't have to rewire for the new unit.

In theory this is an upgrade that we can program for different times and days.  But we set it up just like the old one.  Maybe later.

The old one lasted for about six years.  Decent for us.

I Think I Know Some Of Them Though

 


These are the age ranges of everyone alive in the United States today according to the Social Security Administration.

While everyone is making note of the millions of people older than the oldest known person, and the record oldest person ever, someone else did the arithmetic and noticed that if you add them all up you have more people than the population of the US by quite a bit.

There's people who don't exist on this list by two methods and they are almost definitely collecting a Social Security check.

Stopping those payments should be uncontroversial.  Yet...

16 February 2025

Weaponized Free Speech My Delicate Pink Sphincter

For anyone who thinks that free speech run amok is what caused National Socialist Germany to be evil needs to remember Weiße Rose (White Rose.)

The White Rose was a completely non-violent opposition group to the National Socialist German Worker's Party and its policies.

All they did was speak.

You know, attempt some free speech.

They got killed for it.

Not very weaponized if you can be executed by the state for saying it, huh?

Willkommen!

 Willkommen, Leser aus Deutschland und Australien... äh... Österreich!

Ihr habt in den letzten Wochen ziemlich viel im Blog geschrieben und ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, was ihr hier lest.

Just in case, though...

أهلاً بكم أيها القراء من ألمانيا والنمسا!

لقد كنتم تتصفحون المدونة بشكل مكثف خلال الأسبوعين الماضيين ولا أستطيع أن أتخيل ما تقرأونه هنا.

and

Almanya ve Avusturya'dan gelen okuyuculara hoş geldiniz!

Son birkaç haftadır bloga oldukça yoğun bir şekilde girdiniz ve burada ne okuduğunuzu hayal bile edemiyorum.

I mean, it's a big assumption that it's Europeans who are visiting the blog, they're barely a majority in their own nations.

Copying Me

President Trump was not the first person to drive a "Beast" around Daytona International Speedway.

My The Beast has done it three times now!

I did it with far less fanfare, and no paying audience.

Realistic vs Real

For a long time I've aimed at a certain level of realism in my gaming.

It seems strange, considering the massive levels of absolutely unreality in many of them.

In the real world there is no provable magic, no half-animal people no gigantic tornado of eldritch energy in New Mexico or Antarctica and penguins show no affinity to Communism or malice towards mankind.

So, why, does it matter if PV2 Astaire from weapons squad hangs out with 2nd squad all the time?

Because when I make a change from the real world to a myth-parallel, I want the change to be because I made a decision.

Willard did convey that the squad composition shortly after Vietnam was officially what I had in this post; but it didn't always work like that.


The 1/17th and 2/75 had the same TOE except for the M113 tracks, and the fact that the Ragnars actually had warm bodies to fill all the slots.  Rifle platoon has four squads: three rifle squads, one weapons squad.  Weapons squad has three GPMG teams.  Mortars and Recoilless Rifles live in the Company Weapons Platoon and get assigned by the CO, or in some units the XO.
 
Deployed in the field:  In defense the guns are sited first, as determined by the terrain, then the rifle squads are deployed to protect the guns.  During movement the gun teams will usually be assigned to a rifle squad and come under the command of the rifle squad leader.  That frees up the weapons squad leader to either ride herd on any attached weapon system or become a defacto [3rd in command] for the platoon.  It's a good system, nice and flexible.
 
The flaw is that it's too easy to just assign a gun to each squad, and then leave them there.  People will tell you that makes the unit "balanced" but that's just an excuse.  Over time I personally came around to prefer an unbalanced platoon, but that's another, different rant.
 
In my entire time in the US Army I never saw anyone designated as an automatic rifleman except on old organizational charts.   Fact of the matter, the US Army usually used the M 60 as if it were a product improved BAR, with a single guy  carrying the thing and its basic load of ammunition.  The Ranger Battalions were the only unit I know of that had the people and resources to form machinegun teams and train them.
 
The received wisdom (from Vietnam) regarding the 90 mm was that they were pure hell with the "canister round"  which, in the '70s even the Rangers couldn't scare up from the supply system.

The airborne unit in my original post shows 2x M60 MG's and 2x M67 recoilless rifles in the weapons squad.  The diagram also dates from before we actually tried using helicopters in combat.  Moving the recoilless rifles to the company level, adding an MG and a dedicated mage might just be what the 101st does.

The 101st Spellborne isn't a prestige unit like the 75th Ranger Battalion, but it's very much in the spotlight.  It's using lots of new ideas and I'll have to decide if the higher powers want them to succeed or not.

If they want them to fail, then people and resources to form proper MG teams will be withheld.  If they want them to succeed, then those things will be available in abundance.

I did figure out what they meant by "Automatic Rifleman" in that diagram.  It dates from when the US service rifle was the M14 and its automatic rifle variant the M15.  When everyone has an M16, everyone can play automatic rifleman so the job is, effectively, eliminated.

Something I need to decide is where the guy who flies the magic carpet sits in this.  Is he assigned to the aircraft, platoon or an independent entity?  I'm leaning to making them a company level asset, like the mortars.

 

They Still Do That?

I was reading about President Trump being at the Daytona 500.

I was struck that I had not actually watched a NACSAR race in years and years.

Not since...  Why did I stop watching?

It was a stupid rule change.

I think it was the change to stop the races twice a race and the bullshit with the points to determine who gets the Winston Nextel Sprint Monster Energy NASCAR Cup.

Never mind there's nothing stock about a National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing car any more.

I understand what they were trying to do, but they did it in such a way as to alienate established fans.

Adulting

When I was young; a picture of me was in the entry for "Financial Irresponsibility" dictionary entry.

My first credit card got run up and I lost my job almost simultaneously.

I was unable to find a job that paid all my bills for too long.

This has a negative effect on your credit score, and knowing I was irresponsible, I didn't apply for new credit.

I am much better.  Now.

Especially so since I did what I am supposed to do and paid off my shiny, new credit card last Friday.

Who am I?  And what did I do with Thag?

IF this keeps up my car insurance rates will have to plummet!

It's Like Exercise

We have a fire pit in the back yard.

It's great for socializing.

It means we have to split wood.

After a couple of times of doing it the old fashioned way; Marv bought a hydraulic splitter.

A manual, hydraulic splitter.

It's a bottle jack on its side with two pump handles with different rates.

It works, but it's a work out.  Easier than the hammer and wedge method, but still non-zero levels of effort.

Why Isn't There More News About This

I've been seeing a couple car-related YouTubers talking about this:

It's great news, but doesn't seem to be getting a lot of coverage.

I want to know the specifics, and I am not finding anyone who's giving any.

15 February 2025

Old Tanks

One thing that's nice about making GURPS stats for old tanks is the thickness of the armor is the same as the rolled homogeneous armor equivalent!

3" on the armor diagram is 3" of armor and DR 210.

Sloped at 30° and it's DR 315.

Sloped at 60° and it's DR 420.

Simple!

Something interesting I read is that 1" of hard aluminum armor is the same as 1.2" of RHAE.  I'll bet there's a solid reason that it doesn't get too thick though.

This Time For Reals

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has closed down for reals.

A good bye place keeper is there and no archives.

It's simply gone.

C'est la blog.

14 February 2025

The Wrong People Are Worried

The Lovely Harvey works for a small college.

She's worried about DOGE and her job.

The more I look at what DOGE could find the less worried I get about her career.

Small colleges have a higher bar to clear to get and retain Department of Education funding from grants and student loans than the much larger land-grant state universities.

Small colleges are also more focused on classes that teach skills that are applied to a job and degrees that lead to employment.  They have to be, proving they are is part of them keeping that funding!

I think that when DOGE starts going through the books that little schools are going to have the, "this is how much we got, this is where we spent it," answer ready and none of the money will have been appropriated or spent in a questionable manner.

State universities with huge social justice positions?  Not so much. 

Further proof that the small colleges are safer than they think stems from Obama, essentially, forcing most of them to become not-for-profit schools.  Not-for-profit has a higher standard of record keeping than for profit.

Small schools have their ducks in a row already.  Big schools are accustomed to being unaccountable.

Running Out Of Time

Literally Hitler only has, about, a month to get those LGBTQ concentration camps going to match Actual Real Hitler's timeline.

Considering that he's appointed openly gay people to several important spots; I suspect he's the worst Hitler evah.  Even worse than Chimpy McBushitler.  It's like there isn't going to be an LGBT genocide at all!  Legacy Media and Panic-Mongers most affected.

Literally Hitler isn't even doing a good job of being Literally Mussolini.

Even when Obama was emulating Mussolini pretty damn hard he never achieved being literally Mussolini.  And there's a lower bar to be Mussolini than Hitler!

Immigrant Is The Wrong Operative Term

A person who moves to another nation to become a citizen of that nation is an immigrant.

A person who moves to another nation to remain a citizen if their home country is a colonist.

Even if every person pouring over the border was coming here to be Americans, there's a limit to how many can be assimilated.

Exceeding that limit means you get defacto colonization because the new comers will cluster together in enclaves where they're not subjected to assimilation pressures and it ends up being a little colony of their homeland.

Even this isn't a problem if they are good neighbors.

But many of these enclaves aren't.

Enough that people even want the good neighbors gone.

That's telling.

Is Treason Too Strong A Term

I'm reading the news about all the millions and millions of dollars that have been spent that don't seem to have a thing to do with the agency spending them and the word, "stolen," keeps resonating in my mind.

These agencies stole from the treasury to pay for this stuff.

Stealing from the treasury under color of authority should be treason.

12 February 2025

Oh My Gods

Yes, you are very clever having looked up some information on the internet.

But you missed some shit.

Yes, Kontakt-5 was developed in 1985.

Yes, that predates the deployment of the M900 APFSDSDU.

The date you give for the deployment of the M900 is wrong, we had it in the tanks in 1988, not 1990.  I was there, saw it with my own eyes what it takes to turn in and sign for "nuclear materials" when we traded in the M883 rounds.

Yes, Kontakt-5 premiered on the T-80U, which also first appeared in 1985.  But they didn't field them until closer to 1990.  Again, I was there.

While the US intelligence agencies missed a lot of things about how good or bad Soviet stuff was, we had our own eyes to see what was right across the damn border.  Forgot the USMLM exploits, didn't you?

No, the T-72 didn't get Kontakt-5 in 1989 except at trade shows.  The Russians had the same problem with defense spending we had then, the Cold War was ending around them before it ended around us.  T-72B3 didn't get into deployable numbers until 2010!

Plus!  In 1990 we got to see what the East Germans had.  Some of that was sobering, much of it wasn't.

Armor and penetration values are very hard to make apples to apples comparisons with.  It's especially hard to get two sources to use the same methods.  Is that penetration value at the muzzle or is it at 2,000 meters?  Is it LOS thickness, is it the actual thickness at 0°, is it "rolled homogeneous armor equivalent"?  Lots of times it doesn't say and you get to make assumptions.

Take the, speculative, penetration values for M900 for example.  The 520mm value I found against RHAE is almost certainly the 2km @ 0° value.  The 650mm value I found recently is probably the 100m value (which is the cannon equivalent to muzzle velocity.)

There's a lot on the internet that's presented as absolute values without considering that the first appearance of something isn't the date that it's really available.

If that were true, 3-34AR would have had M1A1's instead of M1(IP)'s in 1987.  They still had M60A3(TTS) (and were called 2-37AR) the day I arrived in the midst of a unit designation change AND turning in the M60's.  The M1A1(HA) starts production in 1988 but we didn't get any until 1990.

See how that works?

So stop telling me, from Canada, to ignore my lying eyes.  I am what historians call a primary source!

Gunner Sabot Tank

We're taking our M1(IP) out today against a Godless Soviet T-72B1V.

It's covered in Kontakt-1 ERA.

Hull front is DR 1,130L, turret front is DR 1,695L.

The 105mm M900 does 6dx34(2) pi++ inc.

On average that's a roll of 714 (a roll of 21 on the dice)  which will penetrate 1,428 DR of armor.

We will punch the hull, on average, but not the turret.

Since we're normally aiming for the center of the glacis, that's fine.

Note that we only need to roll 25 on the dice to punch the turret.

This is assuming that M900 is good for punching 520mm RHAE.

If it can punch 650mm, like some sources say, then the average roll of 21 is multiplied by 42 instead for 882 and penetrating 1,764 DR.

Knock knock, we're in the turret!

How will we do against a T-80BV equipped with Kontakt-5 ERA?

The frontal armor is 2,176 for the hull and 1,500 for the turret.  Aim a bit higher there, gunner.

If Kontakt-5 reduces penetration by 20% then we will, reliably, penetrate 1,411 DR.  Uh oh!  Bad news in Twilight: 2000 but the T-80 didn't have Kontakt-5 when the M1(IP) roamed the earth.

A T-90 is going to be laughing at us from the front with 2,190 on the hull and 1,725 on the turret.

T2K will not have the M1(IP), it's going to have the M1A1(HA) at the minimum.

The M829A1 round is subject to the effects of the Kontakt-5.  Its 6dx46(2) pi++ inc will reliably penetrate DR 1,932, or 1,545 if protected by Kontakt-5.  Good enough for the turret on a T-80BV, but not enough for a T-90.

The M829A2, however, does 6dx48(2) pi++ inc and the average hit will punch 2,016 DR and it will ignore the ERA.  Not good enough for the T-80BV or T-90 hull, but we're back in the turret!

Again, on average.  Players seem exceptionally good at rolling above average when it matters.

Something else to make note of is we trained to a 6-second reload cycle.  Most of our loaders could do 4.  A second shot in the place where the ERA had just been activated on the target was not out of the question.  That means that M900 will penetrate the turret armor with the second shot; if it, indeed, can penetrate 650mm of RHAE.

It's Like They Wanted To Lose (Mild Update)

There's an arfcom thread about the development of the main battle tank.

As such things go, our personal experiences get mentioned.

I've mentioned the M900 105mm round before.

I think it would have done the trick against the tanks we were expected to shoot at.

But someone in England did some testing and wrote a paper and got their findings published in Jane's in 2007.

I remember that testing, findings and paper.

Lacking scientific vigor, I think, sums it up.

They made the leap from Kontakt-5 explosive reactive armor being invented in 1985 to the conclusion that it had been fielded since 1985.

It had not.

You will have to take my word for it that I know that.

Kontakt-1 was, but it doesn't affect APFSDSDU.  Makes shooting HEAT and HESH almost useless.

5 does.

But by the time it was fielded, we'd figured out some methods of keeping our pentrators intact.

It's interesting that we didn't dramatically change our ammo in response to getting hold of actual Kontakt-5 blocks...  Almost as if they didn't perform up to the hype.

The Russians lied?  I am shocked.

Also: Tandem HEAT warheads treat them all the same.  First warhead sets off the ERA, second warhead punches the armor.

Notes for later:

Kontakt-1 adds an effective 350-400mm (965 to 1,102 DR) to the thickness of the underlying armor against HEAT rounds.

Kontakt-5 adds an effective 450mm (1,240 DR) to the thickness of the underlying armor against HEAT rounds and reduces the penetration of KE penetrators by about 20%.  Rounds such as the 120mm M829A2 have features that allow it to penetrate the ERA without detonating it.  A3 and A4 rounds further enhance this feature...  Measure/Counter-Measure/Counter-Counter-Measure...

Nihz appears to halve the penetration of KE penetrators.


11 February 2025

I Wasn't Counting

Some campaigns that went far longer than 7-sessions that I can remember.

Carl's Champions world and my character Prowler.

Carl's AD&D dungeon world where we could play ourselves.  Thag the Evil Magic User was a force to be reckoned with there.

He rebooted that world for GURPS and it ran all summer.  One of the players sleeping with his wife killed that one dead...

He ran a more conventional fantasy world with GURPS we played for a couple of years.  My GM'ing schedule caused me to drop out.

Standing Bear ran many fantasy worlds that lasted for years and years.  From his homebrew version of D&D through GURPS.

FuzzyGeff ran an excellent nexus campaign that definitely ran longer than 7 sessions.

My first Traveller campaign ran twice a week for 9 months.  With just "The Traveller Book" and no modules no less.

Before I left for the Army, my Twilight: 2000 game ran for two years.

My semi-comical pirates campaign ran longer than 7 sessions.  It even had people watching us do the roleplaying part.  That one fell apart when two players abruptly decided they needed to leave and rather than take ten minutes to get their characters back to the ship, chose to let another player run their characters.  That player chose to sacrifice their characters to a tribal god to make peace with an island of savages.  Somehow that was MY fault.  Sigh.

T2K runs well with GURPS.  But I remember Kalisz more times than Krakow, so the campaigns must have been short.

Traveller and GURPS got some excellent runs.

Modred ran a good long time.  Alternate history where the Nazis murdering Jews opens a rift that lets magic and demons into the world.  Letting the players play characters who were both from the world and from other worlds really helped let them make characters they wanted.

But there's a scrap yard of worlds that only made it a session or two.  Players leave and don't come back after establishing themselves as essential to the campaign at a point where you can't work around it being an all to common occurrence.

K'Tanga was one such.  A gateway to another world from Zaire was the hook.  I let the players decide who was going to assume what roles and the person who took the "chosen one" job quit after two sessions and did it in the middle of the game by not coming back from dinner.

Mebbe Better

At one time I speculated that the M900 105mm APFSDSDU round penetrated 520mm RHAE.

More up to date speculation suggests that it can penetrate 650mm.

That would change the damage from 6dx34(2) pi++ inc to 6dx42(2) pi++ inc.

That's just barely below what the M829A1 120mm APFSDSDU can do with 6dx46(2) pi++ inc.

We were better armed than I thought.

Seven Sessions

I've been watching D&D content creators lately and they agree that the average "campaign" makes it seven sessions.

This is for a variety of reasons, but it's real enough.

It really shines a light on why games like GURPS aren't as popular.

You're going to be spending your entire first session making the character in GURPS.

Then, on average, six sessions later; the campaign is done and you have to make a new character.

Now I'm trying to recall how long my average was.

I can definitely recall several that only lasted a single session past making characters.

10 February 2025

The Important Question

While watching Boom Supersonic conclude it's flight test regime with their XB-1 a thought occurred:

If Boom can do this, why can't Boeing?

Why can't Airbus?

Northup-Grumman?

LockMart?

Bueller?  Bueller?

Listening to the founder talk about how long between new designs we are and slow iteration has gotten.

Maybe their way is the future.  I hope so.

09 February 2025

Effects

Say there's a Chinese copy of a PT-76 charging at the gate of your Special Forces outpost.

You've managed to find someone who remembered where the HEAT rounds for the M67 recoilless rifle were kept in time to fire them.

The thick armor is the front of the turret.  15mm RHAE.

That's DR 41.

The average hit from the M371A1's 6dx3(10) does 63 points of raw damage, but divides the armor by 10, so only 4 points is stopped by it.  59 will penetrate.

The reckless rifle will definitely put a hurt on a PT-76.

So will an M72 LAWS.  It does the same damage.  It's a LOT lighter, just 5.2 lb.

Of course, a LAWS can't bring the hate of the canister round...

With a skill of 11 at a range of 50 yards...

 +4 for aiming.  +1 for bracing.  +1 for the optic.  +11 for rapid fire.

-8 for range.

Chance to hit is 20.

Average roll of 10, hits by 10 so 11 flechettes will hit.

2d cutting each, average hit of 7 points, 10 after penetrating the VC's uniform...  110 damage on a HP 10 person is well past the unresurrectable auto-death.  Pink mist territory.

Oh, and it's a cone, so his buddies get to share in the fun.

Reckless Rifle

I now have GURPS stats for the M67 Recoilless Rifle.

There are three rounds in 1967.

M371A1 HEAT - 6dx3(10) cr ex with linked 6dx3 cr ex.

M590 Canister - 2d cut; but there's 2,400 of them.

M591 HE - 4dx5 cr ex.

The down side is the tube is 37.5 lb. and the rounds weigh about 7 to 10 lb. each.

Dust Covers

A PMAG D-60 comes with this rubber dust cover:


 But a normal Gen 3 PMAG dust cover will also work!


 This is handy if you misplace or lose your rubber cover.

I Voted

My NRA ballot is filled out and stamped and ready for the USPS to whisk it to be counted.

Thanks to everyone who provided links to places with information about who deserved my votes.

Don't Throw Me In The Briar Patch Brer Kim

 Democrat Senator threatens to shut down the government because DOGE is shutting down the government.

OK.

Do it.

Shut the whole bitch down.

Let America discover how little they need you and the government.

If I were him, I'd be a lot more worried that the people discovered they liked having no federal government than he appears to be.

Plus, with the blinders off, he's not going to be able to blame Trump for the pains that come.

Don't Lie

The prices on Wanad pistols have come down enough for me to think that I could almost afford one.

Knowing the cut-off for C&R is now 1975, that means that some of them are eligible.

This is where the "fun" begins.

Many sellers on Gunbroker indicate that if they don't specifically state "C&R OK" then it's "C&R No".

Many don't say, so I ask.

A couple have replied that they don't because of the "increasing number of state laws restricting C&R pistol sales."

That sounded plausible.

So I tried looking up state laws restricting sales of pistols to C&R FFLs.

I am having trouble coming up with a state that says a C&R FFL has to go through a normal FFL to receive a pistol.  California, for Fuck's sake, even exempts Crufflers from the handgun roster!

New York is the only state I found, so far, that has additional requirements for a C&R holder and that's to register it like any other handgun in the state.

Maybe my google-fu has failed me, but if it's this hard to find, it's usually just an excuse for a normal FFL to not deal with collectors...  You know, the actual market for an obscure Polish military pistol?

Why Did They Still Have Them

Reading about how Trump is revoking security clearances left and right I am struck with something:

Why did they still retain them?

I remember having a clearance and once I left the job I needed it for, it expired.

Most of the people he's been naming have long since left positions were they needed a clearance for their government job.

The nation doesn't need for them to have access to secret material any longer, so why did they get to keep it?

The cynical answer is so they could get a job feeding those secrets to the private sector and be paid for it.

I'm OK with his decision.

08 February 2025

I Am Remiss

I have my NRA ballot in hand.

I have no idea whom to vote for this year.

Can someone who's been paying attention to the board of directors election while life was distracting me give me a hand?

07 February 2025

Stupor Bowel

I've never been a football fan.

It was definitely my dad's worship of the game and interacting with high school and college level players that did that.

The money wasted on it is absolutely appalling.

I only object to that spending when it's MY money and high school and college sports do consume taxes.  No matter what the lying bastards running the schools claim.  Every honest audit shows sports is funded out of funds beyond donations by the alumni.

But that objection pales next to the assumption that because I'm an American male that I like, watch, and follow football.

Fuck off is as nice as I can make it come out when someone asks whom I am rooting for.

I try really hard not to force my liking of hockey onto others.  Asking the TV nearest me to be tuned to the game is as far as I go.

Even so, I'm not memorizing or doing much debating about individual players and teams.

It's just another form of entertainment.  I am not personally harmed by a loss or enriched by a win of the local team.

I cheer and groan while watching, but it's not a lasting feeling. 

I don't dedicate a weekend to drinking and eating for any game in hockey.

Of course, hockey decides the champion of the season by playing multiple series of games rather than one big one.  It's more like baseball that way.

Opposite

On The Beast, I went with a red display for my radio and a blue bowtie.


 

Marv has gone with a blue display and a red bowtie. 

We laughed at that.

For me the radio is red because I couldn't find a brightness setting with the blue that I liked while driving at night.  Marv stayed blue because red means warning and would keep distracting him.

For the bow tie, it's an old tradition.  Red is the performance color and Marv has had a red bow tie on his Impala SS for as long as we can remember.

The Biscayne SS got a blue bow tie because I wasn't aiming at "performance" but a phantom of a car Chevy never made.  The Biscayne was either a stripped down fleet car; or it was the top end luxo-barge.  There was never a super sport version, so I stayed with the more mundane color.

Quote Of The Day

 


Tear Up The Interstates Too

The Wall Street Journal has a (paywalled) article about how the Department of Education was something the KKK wanted.

So we're racists if we think that the DoE has some things we want to keep now?

The dates they throw around, though, tell the tale of you take the time to look.

1920's KKK wanted a protestant, white education system were Americans were the product.

Health, Education and Welfare didn't come about until 1953.

DoE didn't get split off from them until 1979.

The Klan was not a major political player at either point, sorry Mr Hamburger.

But if we're going to tear down something every time we find a bigot agrees with it, we're going to have damn few things left.  Say the stopped clock of bigotry can be right twice a day and move on (bigotry relies on twisting an apparent truth, it's never completely made up from whole cloth).

Especially since a unified education system that produces Americans would actually be a good thing.

Input huddled masses yearning to be free:  Output critically thinking, productive, American citizens.

Notice that I don't mention race, religion, sex, gender, etc.?

Americans come in all colors and flavors.

E Pluribus Unum bitches!

Check Check Check

Thanks to Wollfe in the comments we know that I didn't quite get it right from what C&Rsenal showed.

The Winchester Model 1887 shotgun has a cartridge elevator akin to the Lebel.

You can load the tube with all five rounds, put a round on the elevator and pop a round in the chamber then close the action without stripping the round off the elevator.

That's a shots+2 action because a Lebel is shown that way too.

I needed to put an extended magazine on my 870 to get more than 5 rounds total!

JMB(PBUH)! for the win!

06 February 2025

Thing Completed!

Finished my "black edition" bow tie.

First I put a couple coats of clear over the color to seal it in and protect it a bit.

Then some 3M double sticky tape.

Then attach it to the grill.

Pretty fetching if you ask me!

Super subtle as well.

Another Link

A bit more detail about soldier feedback on the XM7 and XM157.

05 February 2025

I Am Shocked

An old military adage goes, "If you seal a private in an empty room, naked, with an anvil and a bowling ball; when you check on them in an hour the bowling ball will be missing and the anvil will be broken."

It would appear that the new XM157 optic is not private proof.

Who could have predicted this?

Happy...

In addition to it being Black History Month; February is also American Heart Month (irony!); National Bird Feeding Month, National Children's Dental Health Month and Turner Syndrome Awareness Month.

We have a lot of things to pay attention to and even the months are multi-tasking.

Department Of Higher Education

The Department of Education was broken out of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare by congress under The Department of Education Organization Act.

Ostensibly to improve K-12 scores?

HEW was around since 1953.

It sprang from the Federal Security Agency from 1939.

All you have to do to see that K-12 education in America was not aided by these agencies is to compare today's reading levels to just about any private's letter in Civil War Diaries.

Or grab a grade school grammar primer from when one room school houses were prevalent.

It's in America's interest to have an educated populace.

A populace that knows how to read, write, do math and understand civics.

It would appear that we did that better before the Federal government got involved.

There's always a but.

Something that the DoE actually does well is provide access to money that many people otherwise would not get so that they can get an education beyond high school.

Primarily through grants and student loans to trade schools.

This turns minimum wage (best case) workers into people who will pay significantly more in taxes (actually pay and not get more back than they put in).  People who can afford to buy stuff and keep other parts of the economy running.

So I think we should change the DoE into an agency that processes those loans and get them out of the credential and syllabus business.

The only thing that should matter is if the borrower graduates, gets a job and repays the loans.

If Auntie Pearl's School of Underwater Latinx Naval Gazing produces graduates who can do that, then they, and their students, are eligible to receive funding.

I would also demand that all schools meet this standard.

If a state wants to pour their own money into something that doesn't lead to a paying job most of the time, they're free to do so, but the federal money is tied to programs that lead to productive citizens.

The model is already running.  How do you think college football is funded?

Get the alumni to fork over the cash!

The Key To Everything

Well, only if you need to ask a question.

The keyboard from Poland arrived today for DerpyPuter to replace the one that lost its '?' key to a cat claw.

Everything appears to work.

The $1 laptop is now up to $24.


04 February 2025

Reality Check

Thanks to C&Rsenal I now know that the capacity of the Winchester 1887 is different from what GURPS says.

The real gun holds 5 in the tube magazine and can have one in the chamber and one on the shell elevator.

That makes the shots 5+2.

Changes made to my consolidated chart.

Oops!

I misinterpreted it.

What you can do is load five in the tube, put one on the carrier then close the action, making it 5+1!

For both 10 and 12 gauge.

Paint On

Got the paint applied to my bow-tie!

Not bonded back together yet, need to put some clear over the color before I do, but you get the idea.

The black part is scratched and pitted and I don't think it's worth making perfect on a 10 foot car.  It might stand out if I make it too nice!

Baby With Bathwater

The drive to kill off the Department of Education has a lot of merit, but it's using artillery to kill a mosquito.

Something that's lost out there in the ravings is the existence of trade schools and small colleges providing educations for people who are out there working with those educations.

The reason they're out there working is independent colleges need to show that 70+ percent of their students take that education to work.

That means they pay their student loans back, kids.

It also means they don't have classes in underwater inverted naval gazing.

These schools aren't the problem, but their funding is on the block alongside the land-grant universities who have been and continue to abuse the system.

Worse, no state is going to help out a small college in favor of its land grants should DoE be eliminated and the student loans go away.

But I have been reading the more detailed statements of desired policy and it doesn't have shit to do with higher education.

They're trying to kill off the DoE to get K-12 bullshit stopped.

But nuking the whole thing would be like eliminating the entire military because the Coast Guard isn't doing their job.

Or, better analogy, nuking the Coast Guard for failing to interdict the flow of drugs and not replacing their other duties like light houses, buoys and search and rescue.

There's stuff that we want to keep.

On the plus side, Trump and the DOGE boys have to convince congress to make most of the sweeping changes they're after and there's no appetite in the senate to wipe the entire department off the face of the earth.

The executive, after all, executes the law; all of them.  People tend to forget that.

Pain vs Death

The reason that Canada and Mexico are toeing the line is the persistent fact that while these tariffs will be very painful for the US, they will be fatal to Canada and Mexico.

If they go on long enough, the US will shift gears and start producing the products again, while the neighbor's currency devalues to the point where their retaliatory tariffs don't increase the pre-trade-war prices much.

I think it's possible that this has little to do with immigration and Warren D Rugs.

It's a message to China and the EU.

The US has not really retaliated against unfair trade practices for a very long time.

The EU is one of the most protectionist markets on the planet and they have managed to convince lots of people they aren't.  Just look at some of the details of Brexit to see how protectionist they are.

A self sufficient United States kills all of their leverage, and they know it.

I Like This Guy

 


03 February 2025

About Them Tariffs

Here's a list I found on the internet about the tariffs that Canada assigned to our goods BEFORE Justin Castro got in the pissing contest with The Orange One.

238%  on poultry products
100%  on fish products
100+%  on tobacco products
 30%  on clothing
  20%  on lumber
 163%  on eggs
 160%  on barley
  94%  on wheat
 265%  on sugar
 295%  on peanut butter
 150%  on rice
 100%  on vegetables
  25%  on various metal products
  30%  on wool
  30%  on cocoa

I find this fascinating. 

Mostly because there are, at least, three agreements between the US and Canada that eliminated those tariffs.  Two of them include Mexico.

It's also fascinating to watch the reaction to the US imposing tariffs on Canada.

They seem to think that the US will be crippled without Canadian goods.  Specifically they cite the integration of the auto-makers.

I'd like to point out that we traded with Canada when they were fucking us on our goods with those tariffs.

I also note that since they dropped the 100% tariff on vegetables, they've become our biggest customer for them.

I'm trying to find historical produce prices and coming up with bupkiss, but I suspect that Canada benefited more from the tariff drops than the US; and both nations did benefit.

And what they need to do to get that punitive 25% tariff dropped is to simply not allow people from outside of Canada to transit to the US.  They keep saying it's "only" 20,000 people compared to 20,000,000 from Mexico.

That almost seems reasonable until you realize that it took fewer than 20 people to pull off 9/11.

Best Woman And Man Of Honor

It occurs to me that my wedding was, unconventional.

The most appropriate friend to be the "best man" was, in fact a female.

Aunt The Bat was that woman.

Harvey, likewise, didn't have any girls she knew well enough to do the maid of honor job, so it fell to a mutal, male, friend to be the "man of honor".

It might be odd, but it worked and we're celebrating 25 years this summer!

I'm Doing A Thing

 

In fact, I am copying something Marv did.

He painted the chrome part red and the gold part black.

It looks pretty fetching, actually.

I've got mine apart and I'm getting ready to scuff things so they will take paint.

Just like when I was doing B-Bodies, I'm not going for red.  I'm going with blue.

I think I have some black around here, someplace.  Might have to hit a hardware store tomorrow.

02 February 2025

Happy Unbirthday To Me

Today was my due date when Mom found out she was pregnant with me!

I did not stick to that plan and came out a month and half earlier.

I might have been a little bit fun to have been born on Groundhog Day.

01 February 2025

Porn Free

We have discovered an unexpected problem with Florida creating a situation where the porn sites deny people with a Florida IP address access to their sites.

The Boy, apparently, was an avid user of at least one of those sites and he's been... um...  on edge.

We put two and two together today and had the embarrassing conversation with him about it.

We can't put a VPN on his computer because it's in the living room.

We don't want a VPN on his phone because it's got tracking apps to let us locate him during a walkabout.

So we're going to have to get it the old fashioned way.

DVD.

Illegal Aliens

Phil Foglio and Nick Pollotta co-authored an amusing science fiction novel titled "Illegal Aliens."

It was a book I gave away to people to share my enjoyment.

To my horror, I discovered that later editions didn't have the illustrations that Mr Foglio made for the book.

Thanks to the wonders of the intertubes, I have secured a first printing and I now have an illustrated copy again.

I wonder why the illustrations are omitted from current editions.

Banned Books

h/t Technomad


30 January 2025

Ignurt

Still not coming across a simple, easy to game, break down of a Vietnam infantry platoon's deployment after contact.

It's frustrating because the organization charts I've found put the machine guns in a different squad from the riflemen and I am not sure how much the the squads keep to themselves or even how or if they are kept apart from one another.

It matters because the players should be a group that socializes together.

If they're all one big platoon and the squads are notional, then mox nix.

I was in tanks.  Our platoons are tiny, manpower wise, compared to infantry.

Our "squad" is a single tank and crew.  I know we hung out as a platoon not as segregated crews.

Is it the same for the grunts?

My main source for questions like this doesn't reply any more...  Hope he's OK.

Speaking Of De Oppressah

Trump, apparently, is the harbinger of LGBT genocide.

I keep hearing it repeated uncritically and something stands out:

If there was much, if any, violence against LGBT people the press would be all over it.

We know this because they were all over the fake violence against them.

It's like when they drop reporting of a mass shooting because the perpetrator wasn't a straight white dude.

I have also noticed that there's a massive misunderstanding about why people are upset about children being introduced to sexualization at young ages.

It's being ignored that these parents are objecting to teaching kids about straight sex so young as well.

I've done something that I don't think some of the LGBT side has done.  Looked at some of the so-called banned books.

Aside: If they were banned why were they so easy to find and read?  Being able to make a display in your book store with rainbow colored lettering saying "BANNED BOOKS" means they are not actually banned.

Age restricted is the phrase you're looking for here.

Several of the banned books I've looked through are porn.  Some as low level as a tawdry romance novel.  Some with graphic, but cartoon, illustrations.

Some are simply inserting same sex relationships.

But the LGBT side went to the mat to keep the porn.  Demanded that they be made available to children who aren't going to understand what they're looking at and didn't bat an eye about equivalent straight-sex materials being banned from school libraries.

They don't even try to advocate that ALL positions be taught, just theirs.

That alone raises my generally pro-LGBT ire.

It is often forgotten that knowledge is built from small parts eventually assembled into a whole.

I've tackled the task of explaining history to fairly young people in the course of gaming because I often do alternate histories.  The first presentation of history must be simplified, and sanitized.  More detail (and nuance) gets added later as they can begin to understand it.

And some things they just aren't going to grasp no matter how simple, because they don't know what they don't know.

Sex is even worse than history.

And the same because if you start their education with bias and lies, they end up being biased.

And THAT is why the parents are up in arms.

And we don't believe the innocence of the teachers because we watched them lie to our kids during the Wu Ping Cough lock-downs.

I've Noticed Something

I've a few liberal acquaintances who are extremely pro-choice.

The reversal of Roe v Wade has them really pissed off.

They all have something in common.

Stable marriage and no kids.

Something else in common:  When I ask how did they manage to stay married so long without having kids, they don't mention getting abortions.

So I then ask, "why can't everyone use your methods to avoid having unwanted kids?"

That's when I get yelled at.

It always puzzles me, because they know I'm not exactly a staunch supporter of the pro-life side.

29 January 2025

Parts Is Parts

Thanks to feline assistance the "?" on DerpyPuter (a System 76 Gazelle (gaze10) aka Clevo W650RZ) is no longer attached.

The little tabs on the key are broken and no longer hold onto the cradle.

Parts for this computer are a little thin on the ground, but I found a whole new (US layout) keyboard from Poland for about $30.

It will be here this month, I am assured.

I found a different company that will sell a new key and cradle for $18 shipped.

If the Polish board don't work, I will try that.

Today I removed the board and put it back in to prove the guide I'd found was correct.

It was!

I had a moment of panic because I had a spare screw at the end.

Nothing I did, one of the fan mounting screws must have been loose.  "Spare" screw returned to its hole.

Perspective

My tiny little house was $70k in 2004 when we started our mortgage.

I think of it as a $70k house.

That means when we get a bill for near $6k for things like the duct work, I see it as a 8.5% the value of the house and balk at it not adding value commensurately.

But it's NOT a $70k house any more.

Zillow thinks it's $174k now.

The county is taxing us as if it's worth $152.5k

So the ducts were closer to 4%.  That fits into "maintenance" rather than "modification" in my brain.

It's strange to be tossing these big numbers around.

Oh, the new ducts do seem to be doing their job.  There's that!

Fall By Wire

I noticed something in this vid of the F-35A crash in Alaska:

The control surfaces are not moving.  Even if the pilot ejects, the flight control computer will still try to keep flying and those surfaces should have been moving all about in the attempt.

But they're fixed here.

Next year when the report comes out, I think we're going to hear about a flight control failure.

Adulting

I am not following today's leg of Sick Week because I am standing by to translate for the inlaws to the tech from our ISP.

Their internet has become unreliable and I am sick of talking to the drone in India and going through her slow paced troubleshooting script.

Absolutely fed up.

And even if you tried all that before you called, you have to do it again at 1/3 speed with them on the phone.

What's the definition of insanity again?

The worst part is we've been here before with them.

It's the ONT.

The internet at my house did the exact same thing two years ago and after repeated calls they gave up and finally sent out a tech who got it fixed in about an hour.

This time I went off on the drone and told her to send the damn tech and she was, "we need to do some troubleshooting..."  To which I screamed, "NO!  We did that yesterday to get 16 hours of restored service, your tech can troubleshoot to his heart's content when they get here!"

28 January 2025

Round Fivish

The CMP just announced that it's resuming 1911 sales.

The round four people will be taken care of in the order of their randomly generated number.

Then the remaining pistols will be sold on a first come, first served basis.

$1,300 for Service Grade

$1,200 for Field Grade

$1,100 for Rack Grade

$1,150 for Range Grade

They're up a bit since round one.

Power Tour

My body is ready!

Pretty short tour, 567 miles.  Except for the drives to and from the start and finish points 2,700 miles round trip.

I wanna, very badly.

27 January 2025

K2 Magazines

I've been looking around and, near as I can tell, Korea is still using the old gray body magazine we had so many troubles with.

That makes me remember that when I first got into AR's, I had a bunch of black-follower M16 magazines that worked just fine in the DR-200, but discovered would not feed the last three rounds in Kaylee.

We found this was consistent.  Magazines that didn't work in an AR still worked fine in the Daewoo.

I wonder why.

26 January 2025

Counterintuitive

I have a suggestion for the DoD with regards to acquisitions.

Every program must have two different designs that get made.

It seems wasteful, two programs MUST be more expensive than just one, right?

Well, it's how we used to do it.

It keeps both parties honest about what things cost, in general, and if one program turns into a money sink you can dump it for the one still running.  This was the most common outcome.

"But didn't we do that with the Little Crappy Littoral Combat Ship?" I can hear you ask.

It's the exception that proves the rule.

If neither contractor can make it work then the problem is the specification, not the design.

Sometimes you get two excellent items that compliment each other and dispersed production as a bonus.

T2K Nostalgia Intensifies


 I have always thought that bullpup guns looked neat.

The Royal Army's L85 has always tugged at my imagination.

Pity that the actual gun is kind of a dog and for reasons beyond the configuration.

George Bush Sr kept a semi-auto version from being imported and lots of us sighed in relief when the stories about build quality and reliability started pouring in.

But the wants don't care about practicalities.  Do they?

25 January 2025

Pic From Daytona

 Going about 90 here and not catching up with Marv much...

Marv got his pics too, he cropped his down a bit.



24 January 2025

It's Important To Have Goals

It has been three years since I have driven a car into a tree.

Pyrates

Chugging away at George MacDonald Fraiser's Pyrates.

I am enjoying this so much more than the Flashman books I've attempted.

I knew he could write something I'd like!  Because I'd enjoyed "Quartered Safe Out Here."

But it was striking me as familiar...

Then it hit me!  Nick Pollotta used a style very similar to this in his Bureau 13 books.

It's fun.

DeDucted

Here's my old duct work.

Notice the smushed one?

New plenum boxes installed, new ducts, new distribution thingy.

Heat is on and we went from 68 to 70 in less than half an hour.  That took about an hour before.

Now that everything is properly sealed we notice a lack of sounds in the garage too.

This cannot help but help with the power bill now that we're not heating or cooling the attic any longer.

Next thing up there is to blow in some fresh insulation.

Not Wired For It

Winter things I notice in Florida that were invisible in Iowa like a fish doesn't notice the water.

Florida doesn't have coat hooks.  We so rarely need coats.

Hardly any place has a double door entrance to help keep the heat in.

This just doesn't come up very often here.

Pedant

A charging handle is something that charges the gun, and doesn't move except when being pulled by the operator.

If it moves with the action it is a bolt handle.

If you used the terms correctly you wouldn't have to mention if it reciprocates or not.

False Equivalence

Something I'm seeing from my LGBT friends is an increasing frenzy about how Trump's election will affect them.

The core of it is coming from the extreme end of their political spectrum and it stems from a false equivalence.

Refusal to advocate for something is not the same as suppressing it.

These people wouldn't know suppression if it bit them in their ass.

What they're complaining about, mostly, is they don't have the ear of the people in power any more and their demands will not be transmitted uncritically to the masses now.

Now they have to convince people on the merits of their arguments.

Which, I remind them, worked when the topics of right to exist at all and being able to marry.

I also point out that they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by inviting groomers into the tent.  That mistake will be costing them for decades and it's going to have a negative affect on a lot of people who've no interest in distorting children.

Way too many groups do this.

They win their fight and then realize that the prestige, money and power that came along with leading the fight goes away with the fight.

So they start another one!

Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a great example as well.  They got enforcement up and enforcement based on a scientifically provable level of impairment from blood alcohol levels.  And it worked!  Rational people saw the increased enforcement and either stopped drinking before they got to 0.10 or didn't drive if they did.  After a, brief, spike in drunk driving arrests the cops found there was nobody to pull over.

Faced with the loss of power, they got the BAC reduced to 0.08 in most places.  0.08 is not impairing for nearly everyone.  A driver at this BAC isn't impaired and isn't a real danger (as long as they stay off their phone).  Now people are resentful of the enforcement because it's targeting people who aren't impaired...

OK

Florida's HVAC market is jacked compared to everywhere else that's reported in.

Yes, the prices are appalling.  Especially compared to places where AC is a luxury not life support.

The licensing requirements are steep.

The state and county regulations are numerous and hostile.

So my ducts will seem to be very expensive if you live in a more permissive location.

There's also the trust factor.  Do I trust the company that's doing the work?

In my case, yes.  They've dealt with me honestly in the past.

We've already experienced the shady side and we're willing to pay more for someone who will actually answer the phone when we need warranty work done.

We haven't even scratched what the federal environoweeny regs will be doing.

If you haven't had your HVAC done in the last few months and are expecting it to be like it was 10 years ago, be braced for a bit of a shock.  $2,000 systems are near $7,000 now because they can't just use refrigerants that work, they have to be under patent or they will destroy the ozone layer.

I'm still waiting on the explanation about how a heavier than air gas gets up to the ozone layer.  I'm also waiting for an explanation about how a gas that breaks down into harmless sub-components when exposed to sunlight survives the climb as well.

Freon just... can't do what the alarmists say it did.

Speaking of things with low probability:  How did all that CFC in North America not create an ozone hole at the North Pole?  Most stuff stays on its side of the equator and the southern hemisphere is way behind the northern for emissions.  Yet smoke stays up north, but CFCs damage the south?  Pull the other one, it has bells.

23 January 2025

I Feel Like An Adult

This has proven so very hard to phrase to my liking.

Our duct work needs replaced.  It's causing an excessive pressure differential and that will kill the AC system prematurely.  This is spending money to save money later.

We misunderstood that the tech told us last year and "$1,000 per vent" became "$1,000 for the whole job."

So we saved up that $1,000 and were shocked to learn that the job was really $1,250 per vent and $600 for a new plenum box for the air handler.

It needs done, and the company offered financing.

Being responsible all these years finally paid off with improved credit the other day and we were approved for the $4,600 balance.  I am as shocked as you are!

Harvey is handling the details.  She's the financial person here.

It's strange that we can do this now.  Like adults do things.  It's weird!

PS: This is a second attempt at what I was saying in the deleted "Clinched" post.

The JMB Collection

Braved the cold to show off the "Touched by JMB" collection.


L->R

Colt 1908 Pocket Hammerless (.380 ACP)
Colt 1908 Vest Pocket (.25 ACP)
FN 1905 Vest Pocket (.25ACP)
Colt Challenger (.22 LR)
Ithaca M1911A1 (.45 ACP)
Colt Gov't Model (.38 Super)
FN Hi-Power (9x19mm Parabellum)

Um Yeah

TikTok being cut off with just a few clicks of some buttons is proof why we should never go to full digital currency.

-The Roediger Report

Why Isn't This A National Holiday

Happy birthday to John Moses Browning!

I only own a couple examples of his work, but they're among my favorites.

 I'd not hesitate to buy more.

22 January 2025

Finish Line In Sight

My mortgage is now 21 years old!

I bought it a drink.

Since we've been adding a little principle every month for a while, our 30 year mortgage is prolly a 26.5 year.

Feels good to be getting there.

I Liked My DR200

I used to have a Daewoo DR200 which was a thumbhole stocked, semi-auto version of the K2.

I changed out the stock for one from ACE Ltd.  It was still fixed because AWB, and appears to be a surplus M249 stock adapted over to the DR200.

This gun never failed me.  It would even feed from worn out USGI black-follower magazines that wouldn't feed in an AR!

It departed the collection when a friend was willing to trade it for an exhaust system for The Biscayne SS and I was changing my 5.56 needs over to AR's.

A huge factor in being willing to let it go was a complete lack of spare parts.

I have a soft spot for the K2 and I'd be interested in seeing what SNT Motiv is going to be charging, especially since the tooling has to have been completely amortized since 1985.

I Knew It From Before

Some very smarter than me people have been doing some calculations on napkins and have noticed that there's not enough lithium and copper to make all the batteries and motors to make enough electric cars to replace all of the gas cars.

They report this as a problem.

The people advocating the mandates to change to EV's see this as a feature.

Mobility is a bug to them.  They want you where they can find you.

Ever notice that you can't anonymously charge your car?  Think about that "feature" for a while.

I Happen To Know A Lawyer

I sent the contract from Tru Vet Solutions (TVS) to a friend who's a lawyer.

Harvey and my reading of it was pretty much spot on.

I am obligated to pay them if my disability is increased.  Even if the VA spontaneously ups it outside of any action TVS takes.

They are obligated to let me hire their in-house doctor that I am obligated to hire and obligated to pay.

That's it.

Seven pages of them telling me what I'm going to pay them and not a sentence of what they're going to be doing for the money.

Fred noticed that all of the paperwork and filing is still my job.  While having help getting the correct form and filling it out is handy, he says ANY lawyer can do that and there are numerous acredited, legitimate, law firms who specialize in doing that.  For relatively small fees no less!

No I will not be signing that contract and I would advise my fellow veterans to do likewise.

Filed under: If it sounds too good to be true...

21 January 2025

So Much For My Credit Rating

I don't have the budget for this, but the wants are VERY strong.  I'd tell people it was an M17.
 

That Sucks

The 1969 model garage door decided to bind up and that caused me to overload the garage door's motor repeatedly trying to troubleshoot the problem.

That followed Harvey repeatedly stabbing the button trying to get it to close this morning.

We released the smoke.

Ironic that:  It's a Genie door opener.

Genie still sells the motor, though they no longer sell their trademark screw drive openers.

Home Depot still carries their screw drive units.  Comparable in price to the motor for the dead one...

Couched Lance

Lances.

They do thr+3 imp damage.

A stout knight with a ST 12 will do 1d+2 imp.

That's just him stabbing with it.  This is all you can do with a heavy spear without stirrups.

If he has stirrups and can couch the lance he can then charge with his ST 24, Move 7 Warhorse he can get trucking at a move of 8.

Figuring out the damage for this is (Horse's ST)*(Move Last Turn)/100.  This is 24*8/100 or 1.92 dice.

Or, 2d.  Add the +3 as well for 3d-1 imp.

That looks better!

1d+2 will average a hit of 5 and will deal 10 to an unarmored opponent.

3d-1 will average a hit of 9 and will deal 18.

A Napoleonic or Uhlan lancer use a lighter, faster horse with ST 22 and Move 8.  22*9/100 or 1.98 or...  The same 3d-1 imp.

That assumes the horse is in no-encumbrance state.

The example armor for a 15th century German Ritter is wearing 46.7 lb of armor and the horse has 54 lb of barding.  Plus the 150 lb Ritter, 6 lb. lance and 30 lb. saddle.  That's a total of 286.7 lb. of gear.

A heavy warhorse has a basic lift of 115.  286.7 lb. of gear is 2.49x the basic lift putting us in medium encumbrance and that changes the move from 7 to 4.

Charging speed of 5 results in a straight 2d imp.  That's an average hit of 7 and 14 dealt.  Better than just poking at them, but...

A lancer is not carrying near the mass of armor!  The Uhlan lancer is lugging a lot of gear nonetheless.

273.6 lb of rider and gear on his horse's basic lift of 97 lb.; 2.82x or medium encumbrance which makes the horse's move 4.  Charging speed of 5 gives 2d-1 imp.  That's an average hit of 6 for 12 past the armor.

Car Salesmen

I hesitate to name them because they obviously employ lawyers...

I got approached by a company that purported to be able to increase my disability rating and had a 95% success rate.

The first warning was how insistent they were with emails to get the documents from the VA and relay them to them.

The second warning was their contract.  It's full of my obligations and very light on theirs.

The next warning is the same barrage of emails directing me to sign the contract they sent.

Then the phone is ringing out of my pocket and bongs from the texts are getting insistent.

NOW I have an email warning me that the contract they sent expires on the 23rd.

I'd been trying to research them from before I got the contract but the terms of the contract really got me plugging away with my google-fu.

They're a class of company that will give you some basic guidance in getting the paperwork in your hands and telling you how to fill in the boxes.

They put you in contact with their doctor and you get to pay that doctor!  What sports!  The $350 teaser for the medical phone consult invariably turns into a series of examinations that often go north of ten grand.

I don't go in for high pressure sales tactics.

Further, what they are doing is directing you to commit fraud if you will let them.  Ultimately it's YOU filling out the paperwork and attesting to the veracity of the claim.

No, I don't think I will sign that contract.

20 January 2025

The View From Two Cars Ahead

Adam, driving my old '91 Caprice with a '96 LT1 in it...



You're Not Allowed To Pass The Pace Car

Click to embiggen.


The pace car is supposed to keep us heathen hot-rodders from exceeding the mandated 55 mph speed limit for the event.

Yeah...

That pace car took off and C8 Z06's were struggling to catch the fucker!

Speaking of C8's...

I walked away from one and the person behind him was behind me once we entered the road course section.

The C8 in question with the SUV that eventually caught up with me marshalling in the back straight.

It's my understanding that a stock Caprice PPV should not be able to do such things.  The driver must have choked.

The road course is WAY more fun that doing laps of the NASCAR set up.


I have a bunch of stuffed animal "beasts" on the parcel shelf in The Beast, they were FLYING back and forth in the mirror and I was giggling about it.

Sport mode is excellent for this work and it's really good at predicting what gear I'm going to be wanting from how I'm stabbing, steering and braking.

There is no evidence that I got to 90 trying to catch up with Adam and Marv going through the start-finish line.

Pics coming as soon as the track gets them posted.

MLK Day

It's in January because Martin Luther King Jr was born in January.

But his birthday was the 15th.

I don't object to honoring the man, but if you're going to base it on his birthday, then HAVE it on his birthday!

"But then we don't get a three day weekend, and sometimes we don't get a day off at all!"

Yeah, suck it.

Because if the point is to honor him then it shouldn't just be because it's a three day weekend.

And it's JUST a three day weekend to most people meaning it's completely failed to do honor to Mr King.

This is why I argue with people who complain about where Independence Day and Veteran's Day fall.  Those dates are picked for a reason and reducing them to a three day weekend cheapens the honor.

Look how diluted Memorial Day is.

19 January 2025

Places That No Longer Exist For 600

The Biscayne SS was, originally, the chief of police of Carlisle, Iowa's car.

He got the department to get him a cushy Caprice Classic instead of a spartan 9C1.

Wright Chevrolet was the dealer the department bought the cars through, logically enough.

I stumbled across the badge I removed years ago.

There is no longer a Wright Chevrolet in Carlisle, Iowa.

There is no Chevy dealer at all in Carlisle, Iowa.

That is a bummer and I have the sads.

David Freiburger loves pictures of this kind of thing.  I think he mourns for the loss as well.


Bimmer

Thanks to a conversation with Technomad I am thinking about Motorad BMW.

The pictured R65 is not the bike the Bimmerkundt rode when I was, initially, on an AMF Sportster or VF500 Interceptor.

Post-service I was a Suzuki person on a GS500L.

I'm happy at the half-liter level.

I can almost see myself with an R65.

The Bimmerkundt rode something like an R90S or R100.  They shunned a simple, normal riding position bike like the R65.

Now, I wonder if such things are even remotely affordable.  Ebay don't seem to have any listings...