Unsubscribe

I've been stabbing unsubscribe on a lot of YouTube channels I used to enjoy.

Repetitious and boring sums up most of them.

But a couple of car channels actively shying away from interesting projects to stay on the repetitious, boring and predictable formula was the last straw.

That thing right there that you're refusing to work on?  I want to watch you work on that you talentless hack!

No, there is no schematic or manual for this.  You can't plug it into a computer to diagnose it.

I thought you were a mechanic.

But you pale compared to the idiot who keeps bringing these projects to you.

And idiot is an act.

He's flipping these cars for a profit and making a big deal about how he paid so little to get the car and so much to fix it...

But he shows his house in the vids.  He's not hurting.

But he's got the viewers hooked that he's going broke doing this.

If that were true, it would have ended a long while ago.

Made It Just In Time For The Ending

Last week FuzzyGeff recommended a webcomic, "Will Save World for Gold".

It's run every day since September 12, 2011.

I started in on the archives and got caught up on Thursday (9/23/21).

I would appear that September 24, 2021 is the last comic!

Well, poop!

Accepting Reality

I like flight sims.

I used to sit at my computer and fly all manner of planes in a virtual space.

But not for a long time despite still having the computer and software I last used.

I've been watching videos of people playing Digital Combat Simulator (DCS) and got excited for a while to play this new, gorgeous, sim.

I started accumulating information on what my new computer would need to be and...

I'm never going to save up the money.

It's not a matter of getting the money together.  It's that I don't want this new, expensive, computer to play a game more than I want dozens of other pass-times.

Let's face it, except for this game, it's not going to do any other computer thing I wanna do better than a far cheaper machine.

So, with a heavy heart, I unsubscribed from the channels where I'd been watching other people play the game and stopped going to forums dedicated to it.

I've got mixed emotions.  There's a measure of sadness to let this hobby go, but also no small amount of relief too.

Need A New Music Player

Not a player, per se, but an app to play my mp3's on my phone.

Google Play was willing to let me flick a switch and see only the music I'd placed on the SD card and the interface was intuitive for me.

Google Play has been disabled and supplanted by YouTube Music (YTM).

I don't like the interface and it won't be limited to showing me just the music I've downloaded.

It's primarily a streaming service, not a music player.

Even worse, I've read reports that once you've "transferred" the music on your SD card to YTM that's it you're done adding to the SD card and having YTM see it.  Unless you subscribe for $10 a month, which includes just playing everything via streaming.

Amazon Music appears to work as well as Google Play, so there's that.

VLC gets stuck "parsing" the library on the card at 67%.  It's really crunching away at something too because my phone gets very toasty.

Any other suggestions?

Zoom

While I haven't had the AR500 Testudo out to play yet.

The rest of it is my go-bag and what's been to two carbine classes.

I rag on such classes being mandatory and considering them to be the only way to learn the material.

I think of these classes like the Navy thinks of TOPGUN.  They're not training A pilot to be a master dogfighter.  They're creating a teacher who goes back to the fleet and their squadron to pass the information on.

Yes, thinking of it that way breaks the gun-dojo secret arts model.

Such classes are great fun, and if you can convince someone else to pay for them, they're even more enjoyable.  I am not sure I really learned much, but I got to practice.  Practice is never wasted.

I certainly learned that I am definitely low-speed, high-drag thanks to the gimpy leg.  Oddly this made me do better than some because I naturally don't move as fast.  I think it made me more careful about the shooting part to make up for the moving part being much slower.

Friend who paid asked to be anonymous, place we went had given him a "friend" discount so, likewise, didn't want us bragging about that.

Not that you've ever heard of them.  Just another veteran making a buck from stuff they learned as a grunt.

But that's not what hit me.

I take good care of my guns.  Even so, Kaylee is showing honest wear.  Little nicks and scratches.  Finish being worn off the high spots.  Small accumulations of range crud that were somehow missed in the last clean-up.

She'd prolly look worse if I had not changed the furniture and barrel several times.

It's also interesting to me that after all those swaps...  The USGI M4 stuff is what turned out to be the most comfortable.

Just For Fun

The cowboy and Indian guns are a pure delight.

This is not to say they are purely delightful guns in function and design.  They're brutally obsolete.

But they're still enjoyable.

They're fun!

I read so many places in the gunblogosphere where everything is dour need and reduced to efficient functionality that I think many of the writers have forgotten that "new shooter smile" they once wore and fallen prey to thinking that a firearm must have a useful purpose to justify ownership.

I tend to agree, if that's your only firearm.

Don't get so wrapped up in this that you forget to enjoy yourself.

Honestly, nobody is paying most of us to go shooting, so it'd better be fun or you'll stop doing it regular.

My collecting of web gear and LBE to put with guns from the same period is a dual bit of fun.  I like playing with cameras and doing, shallow, research into the equipment.

Aside: Have you noticed how expensive helmets of all damn things have gotten to be when trying to get a good issue equipment pic together?  M1 steel pots used to cost less than a candy bar.  Look at them now!

Reference

On occasion I use the line, "I, alone, and with only one spur..."

It's from Mage: The Hero Discovered by Matt Wagner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mage_(comics)

My Reader Rocks!

Terrapod donated a nice 30gb iPod Classic to The Boy!

He officially rocks!

A Day Consumed By Locusts

Setting off the bug bombs again just to make sure we've gotten all the damn eggs.

Going to get the bombs, clearing things off and then the blast and soak times just devour the entire morning.

Living in the future, however, means that I can sit on my back patio and still surf the intertubes on my laptop.

I picked a nice day for it.  Not yet too hot and humid here on the Suncoast of Florida.

YouTube Gun And Gun Accessory Review Drinking Game

Every time they go "uh": One drink.

Any word or phrase that's repeated three or more times: One drink per occurrence from the third time on.

Any background noise that blots out the audio: Drink as long as it persists.  WARNING BE CAREFUL WITH THIS ONE!

Reviewer either starts mumbling inaudibly or moves far enough from the mic that you can't hear them: Drink until you can understand them again.  WARNING BE CAREFUL WITH THIS ONE!

Reviewer treats you to the sounds of their asthma/emphysema: Whole drink.

Reads the instructions for what they're reviewing: Whole drink.

Camera is aimed at a still life of what's being reviewed for entire video: Whole drink.

Reviewer coon-fingers part in the still life while rambling:  Drink as long as it persists.  WARNING BE CAREFUL WITH THIS ONE!

Add your favorites in the comments.

Dye Dye Dye My Darling

I now have a purple PMAG Gen M3 to go with Lavender Linda.

Cavalry Manufacturing's "grape" is a bit bluer and Rit's "purple" is a bit redder.

We didn't pursue it too hard because of how three formulas for brown came out various shades of dark green.

Blue came out great!

Zombie Green came out excellent.  2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons of Lemon Yellow and 2 teaspoons of Aquamarine into about 4 cups of water in a glass bread pan.

The purple is 2 teaspoons of Purple into the same bread pan.

The blue is 2 tablespoons of Royal Blue.

The green is 2 tablespoons of Dark Brown!  Go figure.

Ready for Zombies!

We didn't want Willard to feel left out, so we dyed a PMAG-40 Gen M3 in this lovely shade of orange by putting 4 tablespoons of Tangerine into a 12x9 Pyrex pan.

And I forgot it at Marvs...

Happy Independence Day!

And what better way to celebrate than to make 80% lowers into 100% lowers?

Like A Tourist

Did the Seattle Experience Music Project thing today because we'd decided not to at the last second last decade when I was out here.  Always been curious since.

There was live string music put on by a local music school.  Strings playing interpretations of more modern songs is always fun.  My hosts appeared to be taking me there under protest, so I didn't just sit and listen.

The big exhibits were Hello Kitty (look impatient taking me to a museum and I can read every SINGLE placard on every exhibit) and a bunch of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror genre things.  Lots of prop weapons, and in person they are SO fake looking.  There's a reason it's called Hollywood Magic.  Lots of not-for-kids Hello Kitty in there too.  Nothing too risque, but still beyond their comprehension.

The shrines to Jimmie Hendrix and Kurt Cobain were kinda creepy and sad.

I also tend to disagree that grunge is the natural culmination of punk; a position taken and advanced by EMP

Not So Obsolete

My insistence on possessing at copy of my media isn't as obsolete as some people made it out to be.

I was told that I didn't need to own a copy of something because I could always stream it from Netflix...

There's much rending of garments over the present round of expirations.

Since I got my music and movies on a mirrored RAID I've not lost a single song or film.

Of course, I can see the day coming where streaming will be your only legal option.  I'm still old fashioned enough to want to control the file.

On A Hot Summer Night

Would you offer you throat to the wolf with the red roses?

Grumble

Things that were simple in AutoCAD r11 through AutoCAD 2002 are somehow obtuse and difficult with AutoCAD 2011.

I am glad I got the student-non-commercial discount on this or I'd be right peeved.

Maybe it's time to actually take the tutorial that's included.

Humanity

If you don't cry at the end of Ol' Yeller or at the beginning of Up, you're not completely human.

This is an Official Purity Test.

Cowboy Bebop

In episode 3 4, they capture someone "Twinkle" Maria Murdoc she's got a large bounty.

The bounty is cancelled because their prisoner's terrorist outfit has pressured the government issuing the reward into dropping it.

Jett and Spike are NPCs.

Player characters would shrug and space the bitch.

Starz Original Programming

If you are a writer or producer for a show on Starz, no matter how soon they renewed you for a second season; be sure you don't plan more than two seasons.

That's all you'll get.

There are only two series out of 13 that have gone past two seasons.  Not a good record.

The sad part is that much of it is quite good.

And, HBO, before you start clucking too loud; three seasons seems to be your cut-off.

Merry Christmas!

At the risk of being accused of being a homophobe...

Merry Christmas!

Happy Saturnalia!

What's Kwanza?

Chanukah is over, but I hope you had a good one.