A Thousand Small Changes

The longer I use Gun Stats, the more I'm getting comfortable with the results.

It's caused some changes to my "pull it from my ass" numbers because this is a system.

Some rounds and guns have produced surprising results.

Because a given load can differ wildly from another, picking the "right" representative load is important.

I guess you could calculate for each and every different round; this is realistic because you have to re-zero when you change loads.

I prefer to generate an exemplar and let it ride.  I usually pick what appears to be the most common bullet weight and brand... 

I've gone through pretty much every round me and my friends have that didn't have an official set of stats and amended them.

Some got easier to shoot, some got harder.  In game terms anyways.

.270 Win going from ST 9†, Rcl 3 to ST 10†, Rcl 4 was a bit of a surprise, but the stats generated a much better round than Pulp Guns did.

Lots of fun stuff. 

Opening Beer With A Knife

Harvey found a vid where someone, effortlessly, opens a beer with a butter knife.

They tap the neck twice, then the body twice then sweep off the cap.

Sensing bullshit, we gave it the ol' college try.

The taps do nothing.

Any motion that brushes the cap will just knock the bottle over.

HOWEVER!

I remembered how to open champagne bottle with a saber and the same technique works with a beer and a butter knife.

It is also, like a saber with champagne, impervious to being filmed.

I opened three bottles of champagne with a saber at a wedding, with a wedding photographer trying to capture it, and he didn't manage to catch the moment even once!

The same thing happened with Harvey trying to video it.  As soon as she hit stop, with me flailing away, I hit the sweet spot and off the top of the bottle flew!

No Show

Harvey and I attempted to go to a car show about 45 minutes away.

While it was a pleasant drive, the show was a no show.

The food trucks had arrived, but at 5:20 pm of a 4-8pm car show...  Yeah.

But we got a good drive out of it.

Trans temp peaked at 93°C (199.4°F) in stop and go traffic getting to the Suncoast Parkway.  That plummeted to 76°C (168.8°F) when it got into lock up at 70 mph.

In stop and go traffic on the way home, it barely broke 90°C. 

A Moment

Yesterday, doing the test loop that has all the speeds I needed to check for vibration, I had a moment at a stop light.

The sun was just in the right spot.  The music was on point.

I was happy and it felt like cruising did back when I had the '79 Camaro.

It was kinda like deja vu.

Harvey, driving around somewhere else, with a friend, felt the same feeling.

It was neat.

Made Out Pretty Well

Harvey got me this absolutely deadly projectile weapon!

The "primers" are the triggers and the spring that lobs the plastic projectile is contained inside the case.  The problem is when you load a round and close the action, the "primer" hits the breech face and goes off.

3D printing makes for a lot of fun!

A sword shaped dice box was not something I'd even thought of, and here it is.

Willard gave the best gift, though!

He says that it's been whining about being at his house among the Smith and Wessons.

If it looks familiar, it's the same gun I sold him to pay for my air conditioning a few years ago.

Slow Year

We love Halloween here.

We decorate and we give out little plushies instead of candy.

We only had 40 people stop by this year.

We're a little bummed.

Trunk-O-Ween events are killing trick-or-treating.

But we stay open late, just in case the kids wanna go out after they get home from the strip-mall.

However, there's just 365 days until Halloween...

Halloween Nears

The Lovely Harvey and I consider Halloween our Christmas in terms of decorating and having fun.

This year She wanted to put a Grim Reaper in our annual graveyard.

After seeing that a life sized reaper is $300...

Off to YouTube!

I think we're still under $50 at this point:

That's a 3/4" PVC frame and a couple of canvas painter's drop cloths with some skeletal hands stolen from a broken decoration.

She's going to paint the canvas and we're looking for better hands.

I'm making a scythe. 

 

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.

Unalloyed Joy

The Boy, like many boys of his mental age, loves dinosaurs.

Jurassic Quest is in town, so I suggested to Harvey that we go.

We even shanghaied Marv into it.

$112 for the four of us.

If it were not for the happy-awed look on The Boy's face seeing those life-size recreations of dinosaurs, I'd have said it was a massive rip off.

Fun, but overpriced.

I liked seeing these critters in person full sized.

The Brontosaur Apatosaur seemed smaller than my mind said it should and a couple of the ceratopsians were a lot smaller than I'd thought.

Triceratops set the size for a ceratops in my head.  There are several species that are smaller, even much smaller, like the brachyceratops.  Brachyceratops probably isn't even its own critter, they're likely juvenile styracosaurs.

We had fun, making the gigantic rip-off worth it.

Exploding Kittens

Exploding Kittens is a delightful card game that 3+ players can enjoy.

We use the Imploding Kittens expansion set and are having great fun!

Good Day

The rain never came.

Burned some burgers and dogs.

Had some beer.

Boosted the Chinese economy by setting off fireworks.

Chilled a bit after.

Did not use AK.

Not For Me Thanks

A long time ago, I realized I was different.

I see things that I'm not into, and I don't care if others are into it.

Like a .460 Magnum revolver.

Like a 2,000 horsepower streetable car.

I don't want either.  I certainly don't need any, but I'm delighted that things like that can exist and are out there with people enjoying them.

Nobody Does Coriolanus

She does a great job with the works of Shakespeare.

Worth a watch for the LOLs.

Happy Halloween!

It's our favoritest holiday!

Arts And Crafts

I am making little paracord skeletons!

The Lovely Harvey is gifting them to her co-workers.

On A Long Lonesome Highway North Of Tampa Bay

Had the cell phone charging on the window mount, so taking a pic was simple.

The weather was perfect to drive with the top off.  The Boy and Mr Sloth enjoyed our outing.

First Full Moon

This year is kind of nifty for a Halloween lover.

Not only did we get this beautiful full moon at the beginning of the month...

We're also getting a blue moon for Halloween itself!

Pretty neat if you ask me.

Trainwreck Transfer

He formatted it incorrectly on his blog, so I just copy-pasta'd it here.

Update: And the little piece of HTML I copied and posted here has was deleted.

Thanks Google!

So I've tried to restore it...

Busy Day

Ran out with Marv to get parts to fix his bike.  Two inner tubes and a chain.

I needed a new seat.  The narrow one that came with the bike simply isn't up to supporting my ample ass.

The reason we wanted our bikes fixed was to pace The Boy on his 5k walk for Virtual Special Olympics!

The Boy did his 3.1 miles in just over an hour.

Then I made celebratory burgers, supported a local brewery's 3 for 2 sale and bought some hot fudge sundaes.

Loads of fun!

Fireworks

This year is unusual for fireworks.

We buy the mortars during the buy one get two free sales in the off times and the "happy fun" variety packs on the 4th.

The tents were cleaned out.

Our initial thought was that supplies were low, because of Wu Ping Cough.

Listening to the cracking and banging...

Supplies were fine, sales must have been brisk.

It feels good to hear.

I hope it portends well for the future that people are celebrating this day 244 years ago when we collectively told our government to fuck off, we can do better.