Past The Tipping Point

Parts are going back into The Beast!

Huzzah!

Too Big An Ask

The woman suing Torchy's for $250k...

First off, finding that tooth is kinda proof that it's really beef.

Secondly you were not actually harmed.

You found something icky, true, but you weren't hurt.

Now, some stout fines are in order for both Torchy's and their meat supplier.

This sort of thing shouldn't make it into the customer's meal. 

Ruger Day

 

All Ruger, all .22LR brace on 10/22!

RIP Viper

Tom Skerritt, a steady and reliable dancing monkey, has shuffled off the mortal coil.

I can't think of a truly bad performance. 

Success!

Got the dash tie-bar out!

The way is now clear to remove the heater box!

The worrisome bolt that the service manual says you need the windshield out of the way to remove the tie-bar...

Turned out to be a non-issue.  It pulls up far enough to clear the tab it screws into.

I had been informed that it either wasn't going to be an issue, or I'd have to be cutting them down.

It turned out to be no issue!  Thank the Gods!

The service manual also forgot the three screws down by the brake booster that needed to come out.  I was very vexed about that because I'd removed everything it'd said to remove, and then some, already!

Addendums Provisos And Quid Pro Quos

The service manual has been an unalloyed boon in the process of taking the car apart.

But it's got blind spots you can ram the Death Star through!

"Remove and move wiring harness as necessary..."  Means YOU figured it out because we can't be arsed to tell you what harnesses run where.

What they should have done is put a big plug on each end and have the harness come out with the tie-bar.

I know they can because there's such a big plug under the passenger side kick panel that you have to unplug and feed through a hole in the tie-bar and flop it all the way to the driver's side.

Where the driver's side of the harness disappears into the kick panel you don't need to separate it from the tie-bar because they ran it behind it not through it. 

I've also been clipping a lot of the abandoned in place upfitter wiring. 

I'm Having A Week

Went to pick up a patty melt for Harvey.

Tripped on the damn curb of the restaurant and skinned my damn knee like a five year old!

Second time in three days I feel like a fool. 

Nothing Can Stop Me Now!

Because I don't have ANY brakes!

Or at least I don't have any brake pedals.

Savage And Wesson?

Looks like S&W just bought Savage Arms.

I happen to like my Savage rifles, I sure hope this doesn't fuck up their secret sauce.

 There's a very vocal cadre out there wanting the Model 99 back.  I wonder if this is their moment!

Progressing

Got the dash part of the dash out!

The garage is getting full, though.

I hope to attack the cross-body brace tomorrow.

Working On The Car All Day*

I have begun to dismantle the interior of The Beast to swap the HVAC box and, hopefully, restore air conditioning!

This is the result of four hours of work:

I'm about half done with the take-apart portion of the event.  Taking it slow, taking it easy.

Odd, not being in a rush about it is making it less stressful.

There is a funny moment, though.

I needed to remove the shift knob.

The shift lever needs to be in L to get at the screw that holds it on.

No problem, thinks I!

I'd disconnected the battery, but there's a way to get it out of park without the batt.

There isn't a way to get it back into park if you've removed the trigger on the front of the knob to access the screw that you find you can't find.  (Once the knob is removed you can press the center of the shifter shaft down and get it into park.)

This would not be a problem if the emergency brake actually held the car OR if I'd remembered to put chocks down.

So I am sitting here, in gear, holding the brake to keep the car from rolling into the street...

So I scream for Harvey.

She can't hear me because The Boy is "singing" in the back and she's got her work headphones on.

Worse, she thinks what she can hear is The Boy's "singing."

Eventually I get her and two of the neighbors to come help and Harvey gets the wheels chocked.

As a matter of fact, that IS my petard, why do you ask?

*Sung to the tune of "Waiting on the Bus All Day" by ZZ Top. 

Wildly Optimistic

Twilight: 2000 was written in a time where we thought the Soviet Union was at least as strong and capable as we were.

It was first published in 1984.

In 1984 we didn't know what we know now.

T2K has since become an alternate history and the "what if" being presented is, "What if the USSR was really as good as the US Army Green Book said it was?"

Their equipment has parity with ours.

Their tactics are as effective as ours.

Their logistics system is as efficient as ours. 

Their economy is, at least, as good as ours.

They have numbers and a shorter supply line.

It's actually kind of amazing that NATO fights them to a draw by July 2000.

Among the things we have to accept as givens in this alternate history is the Soviet ICBMs being both reliable and accurate enough to hit the 78 targets shown on the map in the previous post.

The USA Hit List from Challenge issue 27 lists the total megatonnage dropped on a spot, my little experiment with Nukemap shows a single hit with that value centered on the thing most likely being aimed at.

Cape Kennedy, for example, in Urban Guerilla:

[R]eceived the attentions of a 10 warhead MIRV'd (one-megaton total) device. Unlike the other strikes, this was a series of pin-point attacks upon the launch sites themselves. The resulting blasts vaporized nine of the 11 launchpads and the vehicle assembly building.

That's to get enough spread to get all of the launch sites, which a single 1 mt ground burst wouldn't.

 I centered the 1mt ground burst on the vehicle assembly building.  You'll note that most of Cape Canaveral AFB is well clear of the blast effects.

As far as accuracy goes, the 500 kt missile aimed at Mayport:

Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville suffered a near miss that landed in the sea just offshore. The resulting nuclear-induced tidal wave and wide-spread radioactive seawater contamination were dreadful and deadly. Millions died, both in the wave surge and in the subsequent legacy of nuclear poisoning, disease, starvation, and chaos that followed.

A problem with the Challenge article is it lacks details given in the modules.

The hit list is also hampered with a lack of information about which warheads the Soviets were using.  The KSC strike matches a sub-launched R-39 pretty well.

Of note, the Soviet Union had thousands of warheads and just over 100 are fired at the US and Canada.  Likewise, the US response was very restrained.

There were more nuclear strikes in Germany and Poland than in all of the US and Canada.  Seems to me that these nations might be a bit bitter about that once the war fizzles out and notes can be compared.

We know from the game 2300: AD, set in the same setting 300 years later, that the world does recover, for the most part, by 2020. 

Kaboom!

There's a web page called Nukemap.

You move ground zero where you want it, select a warhead or yield and see the rings of destruction!

So I took the USA hit list from Challenge Magazine issue 27 and did all the targets.

Basically it's all the refineries and select military targets.

Here's MacDill and it's 1mt airburst hit:

It's bad to be in the orange.

The small orange circle is the fireball radius (0.66mi).
The orange-gray circle is the 5psi line for moderate blast damage (4.37mi).
The larger orange circle is the thermal radiation radius for 3rd degree burns (7.57mi).
The big gray circle is the 1psi line for light blast damage (12.3mi).

I am well clear of it!

Security Classifications Are Strange

 

I can, practically, get scalable drawings of the entire W54 SADM nuke.

I can't get the weight of the explosive filler in a 40mm thermobaric round.

BLINK BLINK 

Oops

I just noticed something.

I'd made a "what if" version of myself from Twilight: 2000 on the assumption that I was in Florida.

A fair assumption since I came down here in late September 1997.

What I'd forgotten was I'd driven back to Iowa to get my stuff and was at my mom's in Ames for Thanksgiving that year.

I'd have been in Ames for the general nuclear exchange.

It's my party and I can change it if I want to...  In the T2K universe I got my stuff earlier and was here for Thanksgiving.

I like the Dunedin militia version of the character better.

What it raises is the question of where was FuzzyGeff when the bombs fell.  If we time it right, he's down here helping me move for Thanksgiving.  It hardly matters, I suppose.  Without his medication, asthma prolly gets him before anything else. 

"Don't You Wish We Had Some Grenades?" J. Cobb

I have broken tradition.

I have equipped my T2K NPCs with a selection of hand grenades.

Grenades are simply something that we always overlooked when running games set where you could have some.

Often the game rules made them a pain to employ.

They're a little awkward in GURPS because the fuse time is multiple turns in most cases.

I don't recall if any of the players took any, but since they skimped on body armor, I suspect they don't have any encumbrance left. 

Different Words Is A Clue

I don't think many politicians understand what "affordable" means.

It means that I have enough money to afford it.

It can mean that it costs less or that I have more money.

Too often, having more money has come with the cost climbing to meet the raise, or surpassing it.

Affordable doesn't mean that I want someone else to pay for it.

Affordable doesn't mean that I don't want the person selling it to not make a profit.

But I keep seeing a strong correlation between how tightly something is regulated and how expensive it is, along with a strong correlation between whether most people pay for it out of pocket or if an insurance company typically pays.  There is also a strong relationship between government supplying the money for a good and the prices spiraling out of control.

Combine any or all of these things and it's logarithmic and/or exponentially more expensive.

Sprinkle in some union influence for the maximum price increases for minimum increase in value.

Just as macroeconomics can be summed up as, "Supply and demand, that's it!":  Eliminating the middle man is one of the surest ways to make the price of something go down. 

What Did He Mean Slow?

Reader Terrapod generously sent me a used laptop a while ago.

Today I finally got around to firing it up and finishing the installation that JT did for me when we put a 2tb drive into it.

I am posting from it now on Ubuntu 26.04.1!  I cannot post pics from a URL without manually entering the HTML on this machine either.

Thank you Terrapod!

It's got a cracked corner from when the people he bought it from dropped it, he warned me about this cosmetic damage.  I was VERY relieved to find that they had not epoxied in the screw that should be right about where the repair is. 

It appears to be running like it should.

JT named it Freebie when he installed the drive and OS.

I'm calling it TANSTAAFL. 

Let's Game It

There's a Hadji hiding behind a low, 30" thick, mud/brick wall.

That's DR 80* and proof against 5.56 from an M4.

So let's fire an M433 HEDP at him!  That's 5d(10) cr ex linked 5d[2d] cr ex.

The basic roll gives 17.5 on average against an adjusted DR 8, so 9 penetrates.  The linked explosion does 30 points for being in contact and fails to penetrate.

If we guessed correctly about where he was hiding behind the wall, that's a decent hit.  But it's -4 to hit him, so we probably won't.

But if we're using an XM1019 round, it does 8d(0.5) pi+ linked 4d[1d+2] cr ex.

It, emphatically, does not punch the wall, but since we can tell it to go boom behind the wall if we fire over it...  Let's set the range for the hex behind the wall and fire a yard above it.

Now the explosion that averages a roll of 14, which we divide by 3 because it went off a yard from our Hadji for 4 points of concussion.  The chance to hit for the fragments is 15 without a penalty for range and the average "to hit" roll of 10 gets us two fragment hits of 1d+2 cut each.  That's an average of 5 each which becomes 7 after penetrating his unarmored torso for a total of 14 from fragments and 18 overall.

So, the behind defilade air burst is a better attack than blasting through the wall!

Voting Not Voting

Got a text from a pollster asking whom I was voting for in Florida's 16th Congressional District.

Um...

Nobody.

Not because I am not voting, but because I don't live in the 16th. 

Good Guy With A Gun

A good guy with a gun got to the shooter in Bend, Oregon three minutes before the cops got there.

That's the part that needs to sink in.

It's been said before, "When seconds count, the cops are minutes away."

It was true when coined and remains true today.

Much emphasis is being put on the good Samaritan having a concealed carry license.

Like doing this good deed without one would make it wrong.

Of note:  Both the shooter and the good Samaritan were in violation of Oregon's gun-free school law.  The Bend-La Pine district has opted in to banning guns from school property.

I am glad our hero decided to break the law to save lives rather than give an interview saying, "I could have run in and stopped him, but it was illegal to have my gun in there and, as we all know, breaking the law is wrong." 

Lies!

Amazon Prime Video claims that they carry hockey games.

Not that I've been able to watch.

Tonight's game said it was a regional thing.

We get the home team's games over old fashioned broadcast, but it'd be nice to see what the rest of the league is up to.

But there's some secret to watching the other teams on Amazon that they are not helping me with figuring out.

I suspect it's the good old fashioned lock if you are outside the team's local region AND you are locked if you are inside the region and there's a non-Amazon method of watching the game. 

Roll Eyes

I do not understand GM's design philosophy that requires removing the exhaust to get the starter out.

I first encountered this with The Precious.

Marv is now fighting it with his '11 PPV.

While I broke a stud removing my cat-converters, at least my fasteners were removable.

The bolts on Marv's are welded to the flange!

I guess that helps with people trying to steal the cats, but it makes it a lot more irritating to get them out of the way.

But it shouldn't be necessary at all! 

I Love The Concept

Way back in the OICW days, the idea of a grenade that air-burst just past the barrier the bad guys were hiding behind had an instant appeal.

The problem with it is the interface.

The operator lases for range, adds or subtracts from that distance for the burst distance and then the computer in the sight tells the round when to go boom after firing.

That transmission was a problem for a long while, but it appears that the XM25 shows that it can be reliable.  The XM25 isn't, quite, ready for prime time and even with hand made rounds it had some issues.

But I see that we're pressing forward with the concept with Barrett taking over the design of the weapon.

TL9 stuff at TL8!  Or TL9 depending on which edition you're using. 

Sad Day

Last Saturday was The Precious' birthday.

She would have been 19 if I had not slammed her into that tree.

My only new car to date. 

Ruger Is Discontinuing A Bunch Of Models

The American Rifleman reports that Ruger is discontinuing the following:

Revolvers: LCR, SP101, GP100, Redhawk, Super Redhawk, Blackhawk, Super Blackhawk, Single-Series, Vaquero and Bearcat.

Semi-Auto Pistols: SR1911, PC Charger, LC Charger

Rifles: LC Carbine, PC Carbine, No. 1, 77-series, Hawkeye and Ruger Precision.

25x40 and 25x59mm

The 25x59mm XM1019 High-Explosive Air Burst round fired from a Barrett XM109 does 8d(0.5) pi+ linked 4d[1d+2] cr ex out to 950/3,400.  The XM307 will have the same range stats.

The XM1049 Armor Piercing (HEDP-AB in GURPS terms) does 4d(10) cr ex linked 4d+2[1d+1] cr ex out to 890/3,200.

The 25x40mm and the XM25 were supposed to use the same warheads as the longer cased rounds for the XM307, but both were cancelled.

The HEAB round does 4d(0.5) cr linked 4d[1d+2] cr ex out to 570/2,100.  The HEDP-AB does does 4d(10) cr ex linked 4d+2[1d+1] cr ex out to 530/1,900.

The XM25 is Acc 3; ST 12, Bulk -5, Rcl 4.

The XM109 is Acc 3; ST 14B; Bulk -7; Rcl 4.

The XM307 is Acc 3; ST 19M; Bulk -7; Rcl 4.

All three are equipped with Computer Sights (HT p. 157) without any night-vision capability.

Wildly Optimistic

Did the GURPS gun stats the 25x40mm and 25x59mm grenades.

That also meant generating stats for the XM25, XM109 and XM307.

The XM307, being the mounted gun meant digging into the stats more deeply because it can be broken down for "easy" carriage.

Repeated, over and over, is, "50 lb. for gun, mount and fire control."  Approximately 80 lb. with ammo.

So I started looking around for quotes on the individual parts and...

They kept saying the mount was 16 lb.

Photos clearly show the M205 tripod, which is 34 lb.

Then I remembered that that M205 is 16 lb. lighter than the M3 with T/E mechanism and realized someone had transposed weight savings for weight and the media and internet repeated that.

So I have, 30 for the gun, 6.5 for the fire-control/sight (w/o thermal), 34 for the mount and 11.8 lb for 31 rounds of ammo.

For a total of 82.3 lb!

Close enough!

All this for a discontinued weapon that might appear in a "what if" game.

I Had A Point

I think I might have misspoke in the comments about the utility of the Military Rank advantage in a Poland T2K campaign.

If a player had taken rank, they'd have NPCs associated with that rank under them because of the Duty disad everyone took with their MOS template. 

But it appears to be latent in late June 2000 in Poland because the party is placed outside the command structure by the collapse of 5th ID at Kalisz.

Their rank and duty means they can be collected by another refugee of that battle and be commanded by them if they outrank the party.  Wanna bet they resent it if I do place them under such command?

This same rank could be used to collect other NPC's and command THEM... if anyone had bothered to take it. 

Now that I've written the introduction to the point I was going to make...

What was the point I was going to make again?

I've lost it.

I will point out that point based systems will always, seemingly, charge you for things you're not using at the same rate as if you were using them.

Wasted points until the circumstances they can be used in comes up.

As a GM who thinks he's dealing with enough just translating the setting from a 41 year old game to a 22 year old game...  I don't think I want to deal with charging for an advantage situationally.

Sure, military rank is not as useful in Poland as the players flee Kalisz, but it will have its value restored when they respond to Operation Omega. 

Concussive

File under "obvious when you think about it".

The suppressor on the M7 and XM8 is necessary because the insane chamber pressures and short barrels mean the muzzle blast is otherwise a health hazard.

Even with hearing protection, I am told. 

That's got me wondering just how high the pressure IS at a bare muzzle.

It also has me wondering just how quiet the weapon is, because the M7/XM8 advocates are quick to point out that an M4 is longer and heavier with a suppressor too.

But I know how much quieter an M4 is with the issue suppressor, it's nearly naked ear safe.  That's worth the extra length and mass.

If a suppressor is needed to bring it back to M16 bare muzzle sound pressures...  Couldn't we get the same thing from 5" more barrel and lower chamber pressures?

I ask because 6.5x51mm is emulating .270 Winchester in bullet weight and velocity; the big difference is pressure and barrel length.

.270 is using 24" of barrel, but far lower pressures.

It makes me wonder if my Savage is quieter than an XM8. 

It Hasn't Come Up Yet

I need to dig into my materials and figure out how MilGov and CivGov are handling gun control.

That also means deciding if The Brady Act and The Assault Weapons Ban were passed in the political climate of Twilight: 2000.

Would Bill Clinton have been elected if The Cold War had continued?

Would G. H. W. Bush have been re-elected?

Who would be elected in '96?

If Bush was re-elected, he's in lame-duck mode when he orders US troops across the inter-German border just days after election day 1996!

If it's a re-elected Clinton...  Oh Lordy.

Someone else entirely?  Ross Perot?  Oh, fucking, Lordy. 

Alternate histories are messy.

Though having Perot win in '92 has some appeal just for the amusement value and having someone else be the president-elect in November '96 when he sends in the troops really helps explain the CivGov/MilGov divide present in the game. 

Not A Fan

I've tried a couple of different fore-grips now.

The Magpul AFG and a vertical fore-grip on my M16A4 clone.

 I can't say I care for them all that much.

The AFG is in a box in the garage someplace.

The vertical grip is on Valentine, but that's because it's a clone not because I prefer it.

I think if I'd my druthers for setting her up for use I might just go T2K on her and put the A2 handguards back on.  It'd be lighter, but I'd lose my light.  I paid a lot for that light and I intend to use it!

I'm already farbing it up with the Primary Arms optic instead of the ACOG...

Still, the fore-grips don't seem to help me with shooting or maneuvering at all, and I tend to really try to cant the rifle off kilter with the vertical grip.  Never mind that I can't seem to find a position that lets me access the light's controls easily.

I paid a lot to upgrade that light, I intend to use it!  Did I mention that?  Wait, that's another farb!

There goes my GWOT reinactor street cred!

My T2K cred is doing OK. 

Rat Update

The blocks of poison are being eaten and the ones by the garbage can keep disappearing.

Not sure how long the poison takes to kill a rat, or how many are out there in the garage.

Prolly more than I'd like.

It's tempting to send everyone out someplace else and fire up the car in the garage for a few hours. 

Permanent Daylight Savings Time

Making daylight savings time permanent is not a great idea.

It was tried in 1974 and it didn't work out well come winter.

Children ended up dying trying to get to school in the dark.

People have been mentioning their kids are heading to school at 0600 already and that it's dark even in standard time. 

But why are children up so damned early?

In a word: busses.

The schools have staggered start times because there aren't enough busses to transport all of the students at the same time.

Thanks to decisions stemming from the Civil Rights Act, many students are not attending the school that's nearest their home.  Bussing is mandatory.

So you end up with three start times for the students and one group has to be first to go and you have to make sure the last group dismissed is home by supper.

That means you can only start classes earlier to create the stagger.

Which means one, bleary-eyed, group is going to school in the dark regardless of it's standard or daylight savings time.

The solution isn't moving the clock around.  It's to stop moving the kids around so much.

Return to the model where it's "The School" and not "the elementary school, the middle school and the high school."

If they're all going the same place, you can shove them onto one bus at the same time.

Returning to a model where you go to the school that's closest to your house also means fewer busses are needed.

Yes, I am aware of why we moved away from this model, but I think much of this is now obsolete. 

Can't Mary Sue

I redid several of my favorite T2K characters in GURPS and I can't introduce them as my Mary Sues because they all have rank.

The ranking PC in the party, so far, is a Specialist!

The "what if I'd never broken my legs and stayed in" literally Me is a sergeant 1st class.  "I'd" have been in the service for 13 years at that point.

My other favorite Mary Sue is 2nd Lieutenant Thomas MacTavish.  The party can't afford no NPC officers.  When I was running MacTavish, two of the players outranked him.

OG T2K made it easier than GURPS to be an officer because it didn't take from other things to be one.  In fact, it was a bonus in the OG rules. 

Hmmmmmm Beeeeeeeef

Reading this review of the World Without Cows documentary, I am reminded of something I witnessed.

The Iowa Cattlemen's Association dinner in Des Moines was being protested by PETA or some similar organization.

An attendee and his wife were walking past the protesters on their way inside when one of the protesters threw some kind of bright red liquid all over her fur coat.

The police were swift to get between the man and the protesters and he fumed for a moment, made sure no real harm was done to his wife and proceeded inside.

This is where I spotted something the cops missed.

The reason I was there was waiting in line to get into the gun show that was at the upper floor of the same venue as the dinner.

Mr Cattleman did not continue to the downstairs entrance, he went up the escalator to the gun show.

I leaned over the rope at the PETA folks and mentioned, "he's prolly buying something to shoot y'all."

They laughed, but the police overheard me and two of them detached to head upstairs.

THAT made the PETA folks stop laughing.

The cops taking it seriously, to them, meant what I said could be true.

Soon after the PETA people were moved to the other side of the street from the venue. 

Compiled

This is an interesting article that compiles a lot of what I'd been reading about 400 years of North American history and inter-civilizational conflict.

Worth your time, especially if it inspires you to read more about it! 

Some what's in it is why I've hit a writer's block about the Sioux, the 77th Cavalry expedition and the Goo-Goo. 

I Have A Suggestion

We should execute Hasan with Daisy Red-Riders.

I know that some folk say that a BB gun can't kill a condemned prisoner.

Impatient folk. 

Just Normal Guns Now

ATF says for short barrel rifles, short barrel shotguns, suppressors and any other weapons, at gun shops you fill out a 4473 and we can roll our own at will as long as our state laws are cool with that.

The further specify they aren't gonna bother trying to sort out who is actually a plaintiff here.  Past present and future members of two different gun orgs would be a nightmare to sort through.

I, for one, am not sick of winning yet. 

Dead Che Day!

 

59 years ago, today, the much maligned M1 carbine proved it had what it takes to make good commies!

It is a moment that should be celebrated by everyone everywhere because he was a murderous scumbag who righteously deserved to be shot for even a small portion of what he'd done.

It's a pity they couldn't execute him more than once, to be honest! 

Live Streamed Execution

Hegseth has said they are going to live stream the execution.

I've long thought that executions should be public, so no problem with that.

What I worry about is if they're going to require a login to watch or just put it there.

The real shame is they will likely bury him in secrecy so his grave don't get violated. 

Mañana

Don't forget to have a rum and Coke tomorrow in honor of Dead Che Day!

 

SUDO APT INSTALL

I, alone, and with just one spur, have managed to install the fonts that go missing every time I upgrade the version of Ubuntu!

I hit the search engine and got an answer and, for a change, I've learned enough from the 20.04 days to be able to understand what I was doing!

Go me! 

For the most part it doesn't matter, but there's some spacing issues in my T2K conversion where the substitute for Arial doesn't line up quite right and it throws off the entire document. 

Did Monsieur Enjoy His Last Meal?

One of the blocks of rat poison we left out is about 1/4 eaten!

I have no idea how much of a block it needs to consume to meet Rat Jeebus, but this is a good sign we got the right poison! 

Picture Test

The insert a picture via URL works on Crispy with Firefox.  It does not work on Firefox with Derpy, but does work with Chromium.

Probably a stuck cookie somewhere.

I'd kinda hoped that the OS upgrade would clear it, but... 

Manually entering the html code still works on all my computers, but it's a little tedious. 

Garands?

I am sure it was click-bait, but saw a headline that said that they might be using Garands in the firing squad for Nidal Hasan.

What I wanna know is if the Army is a member of a recognized CMP-affiliated club and can prove participation in a marksmanship-related activity or otherwise show familiarity with the safe handling of firearms and range procedures.

I'm reasonably sure they meet the age and citizenship requirements. 

If It Ain't Broke

Looking up stuff to figure out 40mm smoke grenades led me to look at smoke hand grenades.

The US adopted the AN/M8 back in 1940.

Basically the same as the AN/M7 tear gas grenade from 1935 but burning HC (hexachloroethane) smoke instead of CN (chloroacetophenone).  M7A2 and M7A3 burn CS (2-chlorobenzalmalonnitrile).

The M8 was the standard white smoke grenade until replaced by the M83 in 1994, which burns for less time, but emits thicker smoke.

You need to read the markings to tell the M8 from the M83.  The M7 is a different color, but externally the same.

The M18 (1942) is the colored smoke version of the M8 and is externally identical, except for the markings and the color shade being painted on the top.  We still issue the AN/M18!

We changed our fragmentation grenade five times (or three times depending on how you count it) while we kept the same smoke grenades.  Mk II "Pineapple" to M26 to M61 to M33 to M67; though an argument can be made that the differences between the M26 and M61 and M33 and M57 are so small as to not really be a "change." 

That tells me we got the smoke grenade so right we couldn't really improve it. 

 

Update Day

Updated the Mother-In-Law's Lenovo T410 from Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04.5 to 26.04.1.

Updating Crispy from 22.04.5 to 26.04.1.

Considering doing the same with DerpyPuter. 

Much Delayed

Isaias is going to be the first hurricane of the 2026 season.

In October.

Wow.

Isaias is the 9th named storm, which matches the Colorado prediction from July.

We're still three short on hurricanes and one short on major storms this season and it seems unlikely we're even going to get a second hurricane at this point even if we get a couple more named storms.

I don't mind the break at all. 

If We're Going To Do This Let's Go All In

If we're going to fire White women for putting their hair in corn-rows then we have to fire a shit ton of Black women who straighten their hair on the same cultural appropriation grounds.

Fair is fair.

Alternatively, we can be sane and stop with thinking that there's a bad thing called cultural appropriation.

Someone copying your hairstyle is an expression of admiration, not contempt. 

Click Moment

I've been trying to Grok the Indian Wars and explain them to people who only get the movie version of history.

And it hit me.

Western Civ did not have total war and the American Indian never didn't have it.

That meant the Indian way of conducting war broke a lot of the rules that the West thought were inherent to having a war.

Unfortunately for the Indians, they learned something on page 2 of the Book of War:

Never teach Western Civ a new way of fighting.

Cowabunga it was.

Could Be A Twofer

The elections in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador and Honduras give me hope that our problem at the southern border might be self correcting as sane, non-socialist, policies take hold and allow business and commerce to thrive.

Improving the economic situation at home will make it less likely their citizens want to leave there for here.

That'd be great for all nations involved.

Now, if we could get Mexico on board... 

Back To The Terminator

I Think I Can Figure It Out

Gun Stats gives a way too small radius of effect for 40mm grenades.

1 yard vs 8 yards.

Something that burns for 25 seconds, as in the case of an M715, should fill more than a hex.

I can't find a video of anyone using a 40mm smoke round to make an evaluation.

An M18 smoke grenade burns for 50-90 seconds and it really doesn't cover the 7 yard radius promised on p.192 of High Tech.

 The M83 kinda does...

But with about on third the burn time, I'm starting to think that a trail of smoke about a yard wide and extending down wind is what you should expect.  Wind speed will determine the height and how wide the screen will get.

So maybe 2 yards in still wind for the 40mm and 7 yards is plausible for the hand grenades. 

 

 

M7 To M8

It's interesting reading about the changes to the M7 rifle that lead to the XM8 rifle that are based on troop feed back.

Almost exactly as if the M7 was a prototype that did troop trials and resulted in a production version!

And troop trials is something that's been sorely missing from weapons procurement since, at least, the Johnson administration.

When you skip handing a new weapon to a private, you lose a lot of important information about how the gun will get treated, used and abused.

Why did we stop troop trials?

The troops keep preferring the wrong gun.  That's why the M14 is a T44 not a T48 (aka FAL).  That why so many pistol competitions led to the M1911 being retained.  It's among the reasons the M4 carbine kept trucking on.

Troop trials find flaws in designs and that leads to politically connected companies not getting contracts!  Gods forbid a congressman not get feathers to line their nest! 

Troop trials take time and, sometimes, you need to get something out the door in quantity and fix it on the fly.  You do this too many times and you get to thinking this is the normal way of things.

This happened when production problems with the M14 led to MacNamara saying, the troops need a rifle, the M16 is a rifle and the Air Force is happy with it, therefore the Army will be happy with it too (even if I have to order them to be!)

It's actually astonishing, considering the political pressure being brought to bear that the Army got a different version of the M16 from the Air Force AND that it got to the troops, as the XM16E1, as quickly as it did.

Vietnam served as the M16's troop trial.

I seem to recall that rollout was a bit bumpy... 

Rats!

It happens occasionally.

We have a fruit rat in the garage.

I thought I heard it chewing on something near the car-parts shelf, but couldn't flush it out.

Tonight we saw the cat food container was well chewed.

Poisons on order. 

It's Good To Be A King's Man

Deputy who killed Roger Fortson found not guilty.

What a travesty of justice.

This reminds me so very strongly of what happened to Eric Shaw. 

Obsolete

Didja know that the US doesn't manufacture or issue 40x46mmSR HE grenades anymore?

While I was doing the research to make Guns Stats versions of them I kept hitting the phrase "production complete."

This raises the question about what rounds are available in T2K.

According to Jane's Infantry Weapons 24th Edition 1998-99 the US issues:

M433 HEDP
M576E1 Shotshell
M661 Green Star Parachute
M662 Red Star Parachute
M715 Green Smoke Ground Marker
M716 Yellow Smoke Ground Marker
M674 CS Tear Gas

Compare with the 1967 Vietnam list... 

Does this mean there's no HE around?

No.

HE is still issued by several other nations with 40mm grenade launchers, such as the German DM 11.

40x46mmSR is a NATO standard round after all!

Scattered And Concentrated

I have a friend who is moderately afraid to come visit Florida because of Florida Man stories.

She's fully convinced that there's alligators in every yard.

Seeing a gator around here is uncommon enough we dive for a camera! 

FuzzyGeff recently was in San Francisco and didn't get a single hit on the bingo card for things I see breathlessly reported all the time about the homeless and druggies.

David Freiburger of Hot Rod, Car Craft and Roadkill fame has groused at people hating on the state he was born, raised and still lives in, California.

I know Florida best, and I think it's the same in California as it is here.

There's places you shouldn't go.

Places that are just bad.

What always messes with me about it is how sharp the lines between the good and bad places are.  Crime literally does not cross the street at the borders.

When I go looking, I found those lines in Los Angeles.  I found those lines in Miami-Dade.  I found those lines in Chicago.  I know where those lines are in my local area. 

There's people living perfectly normal, happy, lives in places that I'd consider a Hellhole because I only hear about the criminals across the line in their areas.

I should probably be less prejudiced. 

It's A Test Of Character

Sensitivity readers are a thing in gaming.

They walked over from video games and have infected tabletop role playing.

Pretty much all at once it seemed.

It's a pretty specific form of Karen where they play the tape slower and slower until, THERE'S A DIRTY WORD!

I do love the elaborate trap set in it.

If you don't care if Eskimos are offended by being exonymed...  You're insensitive and the bad guy.

You can't not care.

You MUST care and you must care CORRECTLY. 

What never factors into their decision that you need to be offended for the poor Inuit at being called Eskimos is it mattering.

They never consider the transaction.

What do I get if I stop using Eskimo and start using Inuit?

Aside: I have used the words Eskimo and Inuit more in this post than I have, combined, in my entire life.

If I keep using Eskimo to describe the native population of Alaska, how am I harmed?

Are they as harmed at being called Alaskans, North Americans or Americans?

Because they are Alaskans, Americans and North Americans.

All three terms are exonyms because they are in English. 

As for how this actually affects my life...  It doesn't.

I wasn't even aware that Inuit were offended by being labeled as Eskimos until someone at Steve Jackson Games decided to make certain they got sensitivity credit when they decided they didn't want to be offensive to the Inuit any longer.

Which brings us to the real point.

If you decide to stop being offensive, just stop being offensive.  It's its own reward.  Seeking a prize of recognition for it says you didn't do it because it's the right thing to do.

PS: This little debate makes a Homer Simpson line that much funnier,  "Lisa, vampires are make-believe, just like elves, gremlins, and Eskimos."  It's the Inuit and Yupik themselves who've insisted that there's no such people as Eskimos. 

I'm Out

I have given it my gamest shot but I am just not having fun at one of the local breweries any more.

It really got rammed home when the "free" monthly beer I get for being a member of their mug club isn't really worth coming in for any more because it's so fucking crowded and loud.

I might just be finding out how much money I've been spending at breweries if I stay home from now on.

It also means that will no longer risk bugging my friends with my discomfort.

Warts And All

Forgotten Weapons covering the French version of the Beretta 92 reminded me of a conscious decision.

There's guns I collect because I want to experience that gun.

I have decided that those guns will remain unaltered.

Well, mostly.  The Hi-Power got new stocks while retaining the magazine safety because the plastic stocks were ghastly and mismatched.

But my Beretta M9 keeps the safety-decocker of the FS rather than the just decocker of the G because my issue gun wasn't a G.

The decocker only is objectively better than the safety in that if I accidentally pull it down while racking the slide, I have not just disabled my pistol by putting it on safe unintentionally.

I've never done it, but I've seen it at matches.

This holds true of any pistol with a slide mounted safety.  S&W, I am looking at you.

Magazine safeties used to be something I scrupulously removed.

Now I keep them.

I remind myself that I bought the gun to experience it and the experience includes the magazine safety.

I also, for the most part, don't carry the nostalgia guns or intend to use them for anything serious.

The retro M16 clones stay locked up when we're hunkered down for hurricanes, for example, while the more modern versions of the AR are loaded. 

Two Things I Know Happened

There's two things that people (kooks, really) claim never happened that I am assured did happen by a simple test.

The Soviet Union agreed that they happened.

Those two things are the Moon landings and The Holocaust.

Why is the USSR agreeing they happened such a good barometer?

Because it was in their interest to show that they didn't happen.

I noticed, recently, that we're losing the significance of this as the memory of the Cold War is increasingly in us aging Gen-X minds. 

It Occurs

It hit me today, after The Boy's doctor's office called at 0800 that the main reason us night people resent morning people is not that they call at 0800.

It's that morning people are spent by the time us night people are functioning.

We call after lunch and they're just done for the day.

The resentment comes from the expectation that everyone be ready to respond when THEY are ready, but they don't have to respond when WE'RE ready.

When you combine this with the realization that Government hires morning people almost exclusively... 

Hockey Night!

Today the local Hockey team plays their first game of the season.

Eyes crossed for a positive start of the season. 

Ya Know...

"Christa Pike, living proof that socialized medicine doesn't work."

- As found on Arfcom. 

This Didn't Happen With Hangings

Christa Pike has, apparently survived two attempts at lethal injection.

What the actual fuck?

Say what you will about other methods, most people don't survive the second application.

Hanging is wonderfully good at this.

Ain't dead!

Wait.

The method I like is nitrogen flooding.

Just flood the executing chamber and wait.  No hazmat problems!

Date Night!

Harvey and I did Painting with a Twist tonight!

What it was supposed to look like is on the wall.  We went our own way.

We used phosphorescent paint so they can glow in the dark under black light.

Case Small Arms Ammunition M16A1 Rifle

I mentioned that the real deal was thin on the ground.

The reproduction market has delivered!

It's a little shorter than the universal pouch and subtly wider.

That's so it can hold four 20-round M16 magazines easily!

The markings are inauthentic, but that's good because we don't want anyone passing them off as the real deal.

The material looks the part, but is much more supple.

Pairs well with a Retro M16A1!

It Never Ends

I had a T-72B1V in my T2K conversion.

Why would the Venezuelan version of the T-72B1 be in Poland?

Worse, I had it wrong.

I meant the T-72BA which is a T-72B with Kontakt-5 ERA.

I had been calling the T-72B the T-72B1, but mentioned the missile system.  The B1 variant is the one without the missile system!

Confusingly, the V suffix, for vzryvnoi, is often used when explosive reactive armor is applied, such as the T-72AV and T-72M1V with Kontakt-1 ERA. 

I might even have been using the wrong references and what I meant was T-72M1 and T-72M1V not T-72B1 and T-72B1V.

Happily, it just doesn't seem to come up all that often.  The differences between T-72 variations doesn't matter almost all of the times they appear in the game because the players generally lack the means to attack them effectively.

It's clear I need to make me a whole document of these things to go with my Leopard I and Patton files. 

 

 

True

 

Not An RPG

World of Warcraft is not a role playing game.

It's a more advanced version of Gauntlet.

Fight me. 

We're Early

We, with the generous assistance of Marv, have done the main portion of putting our Halloween decorations out.

Normally we wait until October first, but this year that falls on a week day and we're impatient!

Every year it's a little different, and we enjoy doing it.

If Only She Knew

I am proud of myself.

I did not do what I normally do and join the argument offered me.

I guess I am not as complete a moron as I has assumed!

We were at the local brewery and talking with one of the owners about her Disney Princess® moment with some deer on a path behind her subdivision.

We cautioned that a doe can do some real damage if it decides to, and she was accepting of that.

I quipped that the white tail hoof rat is the most dangerous animal in the US.

Enter a third party.

She starts saying that Republican men are the most dangerous thing in America.

Huh?

If that's true she should be more careful around us, huh?

But I didn't even engage with her.

It's not worth it. 

Sensitivity

I think I figured out the creepy feeling I get about sensitivity readers.

They do not consider how something is meant, only how it MIGHT be taken.

Increasingly it's not even worry about how the person referred to might take it, but how an uninvolved third party thinks that the person referred to SHOULD take it.

Ten to one they never even bother to check with the people they worry about.

I am, just, old enough to remember the flap about adding American to Indian when referring to Indians.

I know several Indians and they are not offended by being called Indian, and they thought it was silly to worry about adding American to it when there's so many other things that matter to them more, or at all.

Indian might be an exonym, but they've adopted the term to describe them because they know it's not meant to be an insult.

Until SJGames started revising the Basic Set, I'd never heard that Eskimo was even an insult, let alone a slur.  It was simply a word for the people who were native to Alaska prior to Western Civ taking over.

In Canada things are different, and the populations that Americans would call Eskimos without hatred expressed or implied emphatically reject the word and wish to be called by their own names, such as Inuit or Yupik.  Why?  Because in Canada, they use Eskimo as an insult and slur (or so I have been informed). 

Which is a good an example as any that you can make every word an insult or slur if you say it right.

It's how you MEAN the word that matters, not how the word is taken.

Even dueling societies had the knowing of this!

But the people with the vapors are everywhere making sure they're offended FOR the people who don't have the common sense to be offended for themselves.

At least that's how they act and don't seem to catch how bigoted it is.

As if someone can't tell if they'd been insulted on their own or make a decision about the insult being something to be offended over.

There's a lot of folks I don't give enough shit about to ever feel insulted by anything they call me.

Their, "boos," mean nothing because I've seen what makes them cheer. 

Bloop

I've got Gun Stats stats for all the US 40mm grenades I can find.

Even a couple German ones!

A problem with Gun Stats is the area filled with smoke or gas is much smaller than published numbers would suggest.

I think this is because Gun Stats gives you the instantaneous coverage, but the real rounds burn for a while.

Up to two minutes for a smoke round.

The M651 CS round, for example, calculates to a 1 yard radius, but the specifications for the round says almost 7 yards.  But it's got a 20-30 second burn time, so that would let the cloud grow.

I learned about a new-to-me idea for smoke rounds.  The canopy version has an X shaped parachute that doesn't slow it down much, but is intended to snag in branches and hang your 90 seconds of smoke from the top of a tree.

Special thanks to Kevin Dockery who tracked down some pretty detailed information and put it on a web page! 

Phone Tag

Spent the morning on the phone talking to, almost, every department of Florida DCF and Medicaid finding out why they declined to fill The Boy's prescription to his semaglutide.

Four bots and two live people finally got us to...

The primary care provider didn't have the most recent set of blood work because, for some reason, Quest Diagnostics only sent it to his psychiatrist.

I *THINK* I got it sorted out and everyone pointed at the information they need.

Hot buns crossed.

I now await a call from Medicare, 15 minutes late at time of posting, to get that activated. 

Does She Think It Will Be Hard To Find Candidates?

Tennessee woman on death row demands an all female firing squad.

I think that Harvey is free that day. 

...By Then The Entire Glee Club Had Died

Early bird, worm, and all that.

Called the Social Security Administration to set up an appointment to get The Boy enrolled in Medicare promptly at 0800 EDT.

When I told the robot what I wanted, it (female voice) told me the phone number for Medicare and stopped doing anything but repeating that number. 

Call Medicare and their robot, male voice this time, keeps asking me for The Boy's Medicare number.  It, helpfully, informs me that I can find this number on the red-white-and-blue Medicare card I don't have because The Boy is not yet enrolled.

After doing this loop for a bit, Live Person® gets on the line and says I should call SSA.

DEEP MEANINGFUL SIGH

Call SSA with the same number as before and tell the fembot the exact same thing as before, but (somehow) this time it works and I get Live Person®!

She asks questions, I answer them.  She gets the account information up and informs me that I cannot do anything because everything is set up for Harvey to administer.

Luckily, she's right there to step in!

They ask her a barrage of questions and she answers.

NOW I can talk to them about the account and getting him signed up.

Live Person® tells me he's not enrolled and isn't automatically enrolled because he's on SSI instead of SSDI.  Well, he was supposed to be...

Now I have a phone appointment for tomorrow afternoon to set things up correctly. 

Sealed For Your Protection

This two-factor authentication bullshit is bullshit.

We're trying to get The Boy's Medicare started.  He's been on SSI well past the requisite period.

"Just log in!" everyone says.

How?

Apparently we already had a login.gov account made for him, but we're damned if we can figure out the authentication app for it so the code they're sending as the second factor is disappearing into the aether.

We don't remember setting up any authentication apps.  For all I know you have to have your app downloaded and ready to go and almost anything will convince the setup daemon you're good to go... and it sends the code to the account you didn't realize you'd specified and didn't have ready because they don't really explain the process when they tell you all you need is their name, SSN, place of birth and Medicaid number to get it all done.

They cheerfully explain that you can delete the account and start over if you've lost access to the authentication app.

We might just have to do that.

I'm going to try calling the phone number to make an appointment and see if we can't get this done in person.  Joy!

That'll be another fight with Harvey.  I don't know everything and the information is not kept so that I can find or use it.

Worth Your 31 Minutes

He echoes some things I've said.

 Why am I not shocked that two of his cited examples originate with white women?  He doesn't say liberal, but I suspect.

Equinox

It is officially fall! 

Tested!

The “universal” in the designation indicated that it held 2x M14 rifle 20-rd magazines, 4x M16 rifle 20-rd magazines, 4x M2 carbine 30-rd magazines, a bandoleer of 6x 8-rd M1 rifle clips, 8x M1 clips without bandoleer, 2x BAR or Australian L1A1 rifle 20-rd magazines (tight fit), 24x 12-gauge shotgun shells, 3x 40mm grenades (two nose down, one horizontally on top), or 3x hand grenades internally. M16 magazines were too short to conveniently withdraw, so soldiers inserted a field dressing or folded sock underneath to raise them. Some pouches were too tight and held only three magazines.

M16 20-rounders are irritating if you forget or forgo a sock or dressing in the bottom of the pouch, and are real pain if you stuff the requisite 4 magazines in there.  Don't forget to stagger them so there's something to grab!  Two of my pouches fit them easily, one is very tight.

The carbine clips magazines were easy.

In most of these alternate uses of the universal small arms ammunition pouch, access is kind of an issue.

For the Garand clips, the four clips in the bottom are kinda fiddly to reach.

Twenty four 12-gauge shotgun shells.

Three 40x46mm grenades

Three hand-grenades.

One!

Two!

Three! BWAH HA HA HA HA

This is addition to the two that hang from the dedicated loops for grenades on the side of the pouch.

I know that M14 (not shown) fit, metric FAL and G3 magazines also fit no problem two at a time.

2x Metric FAL

2x Steel G3

You can even stuff 3 in if your try.

Not tested, so far, are BAR magazines.  Accepting donations...

The Cops Aren't Coming

I said it during the defund the police campaigns.

I'm saying it again with the local politicians talking about the potential effects of Florida's proposed Amendment 3.

If the cops aren't coming, then the cops aren't coming.

That means that the normal people are free to act against criminals in a way unremembered since we delegated our police power to the people doing it for a living.

Criminals, you REALLY want the cops to come because the average person has no way to jail you and no motivation at all to hold a trial after catching you red handed.

Essentially it's a judge, jury and (literal) executioner situation without worries of the cops second guessing the decision.

Bring it, you tax fattened hyenas. 

Satire Site

The satire site that fooled me was able to do so because they are hewing close to the truth with regards to the attitudes and expressions of the local politicians they are satirizing.

They've another one about how the people of St Pete are demanding high-rise apartments on the water, green spaces, elimination of car access, blah blah blah with an interview of a "local person" who says they just want to be able to afford their rent.

This is because St Pete has been tone deaf over the issues of housing and traffic.

The best satire always has a kernel of truth to it! 

For Photographic Purposes

Anyone got two M14 and two BAR magazines they'd like to loan me so that I can take some pictures of them in an M1956 ammo pouch?

Except for 40mm grenades that's all I'm lacking; and air-soft dummy versions of those are on the way from Amazon. 

Further Confirmation

Further referencing this post:

Yes, you can fit 4x 30-round M1 carbine magazines into an M1956 Universal Ammunition Small Arms Pouch.

Hell, you can fit FIVE 30-round M1 carbine magazines in one!  It's not even a tight fit like four 20-round M16 magazines.