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FedEx claims they attempted delivery today.
The time stamp on the "attempt" matches the time I was looking out the window on the front door.
There was no truck, there was no driver.
There is no sticker on my door.
In short, the driver lied.
Now I am going to drive 20 miles to their hub and scream at a manager about this serial lying from their worthless piece of shit drivers.
A pox upon FedEx.
Waiting for the shipment from S&W is a bit like it being Christmas Eve and waiting for Santa.
When I first talked about this on a forum there was a lot of hopeful speculation that I'd be getting a brand new gun because the Sigma is abandonware at S&W and that there weren't parts available to fix the problem mine had.
I'd assumed since they just gave me a tracking number that I was getting my original Sigma back.
A different gun would require shipping to an FFL because The Law, right?
A couple of responses in that thread have mentioned brand new guns being sent directly to the customer in lieu of the busted original.
I really did think that was illegal. Anyone know for sure? A reply on a gun forum is worth what you pay for it, so they could simply be wrong.
Not really all that adventuresome at the end of the day.
Computers that use a GUI for the user to run things are more alike than different for most things the average person does.
I'm at the level where if I have to leave that GUI bubble, I will have no idea what to do with Linux. Which is pretty much the same as is that happening with OSX 10.6 too.
I know a spattering of terminal stuff for Windows from my 3.11 days, but a whole lot.
The only "pressing" problem for me and using Ubuntu is to get special characters like the cross/dagger symbol, accented characters, money characters etc... That appears to be handled with a character map application. I need to explore making keyboard shortcuts for the ones I use most.
The Mac handled this about best of any OS I've dealt with.
Something I'd forgotten when doing the "set up new computer" thing was all the personalization you take for granted. Like your RSS notifier and script blocker.
I'm getting there.
18.04 proved to be unable to play movies and TV shows from Amazon Prime.
20.04 has show it can after downloading a new version of the browser.
Mutter, mutter, mutter...
Never mind that it appears to work fine on earlier versions of the OS and browser...
Odd problems are what I have.
Because I am not an OS warrior, I've noticed that past a certain date, a computer is a computer with some small differences in where the buttons are hidden.
I posted this from Ubuntu 18.04 off a thumb drive from the same machine I had Win 7 installed on.
Update: because there's no Thunderbird 78 for this distro I can't move my email profile to the new OS.
I really dislike computers.
They've got their uses, but I don't really like them.
Especially when they don't do what they're supposed to do when you've told them to do it.
The more I read the mass media attributing every instance of opposition to "white supremacy" I keep wondering:
If white supremacists are so damn powerful, why the heck aren't they in complete and uncontested control of everything?
It's the same question that comes up about Jews as the National Socialists take control of Germany.
In both cases, the "power" is simply an illusory attribution of a group of people looking for a scapegoat to blame to avoid scrutiny being applied to themselves for their own failures.
I've mentioned it before, ANYONE CAN BE THE JEW.
Today, THE JEW is some reddit users showing the hedge fund managers have no clothes on.
Tomorrow, it could be you.
Now that I've tasted the sweet nectar of the S&W 59, I am reminded that I don't have a pistol caliber carbine of any kind.
That leads to contemplation of the Marlin Camp Carbine.
This path leads to madness. Those things are as expensive as crack!
The sad truth is the the pistol caliber carbine I really want is an old 9mm CAR-15.
The Marlin is absolutely affordable by comparison. Especially when you factor in that the SBR version of that CAR-15 is the one I want...
The 9mm AR doesn't even take any magazine I currently have.
The Marlin would use the S&W 59 mags.
A Kel-Tec SUB-2000 comes in a couple flavors of magazine I already have.
There's AR's what take Glock mags, but... I think they look silly.
Which brings us to the king of silly looking PCC, the Ruger PCC.
And at the end of the day, you have what amounts to a huge pistol.
There's a fine line between here and insanity.
Is it just me, or do the old S&W boxes remind you of something you'd get from Ollivander's in Diagon Alley?
Hmfph! Muggle weapons.
If the girls don't find you handsome, at least let them find you handy.
I fixed the kitchen drain today.
A down-drain extension and a p-trap were NOT in stock at either the local Home Despot or Louie's.
The rinky-dink teeny Ace Hardware... They had everything I needed.
The old drain was slipping off the strainer's down-pipe because the nylon compression washers were getting stiff and had shrunk. There was also a drip at the wall stub because the previous installation had used a compression fitting instead of the correct gasketed one.
All better now.
Of course, The Lovely Harvey, only informed me of the slipping last night. She'd be stuffing things back together for about 2-1/2 years. This could have been fixed YEARS ago!
Less than half and hour, less than $20.
The Sigma appears to be winging its way back to me.
They never did contact me about the cost of the repair, but the "Adult Signature Required" with the tracking information informs me that it's the same gun I sent them in the first place.
Now we wait to see if they fixed it, or if it's in the same state as when it left.
Eyes crossed.
The AMC and Gamestop stock climb fucking the hedge funds with dicks dipped in resin then rolled in ground glass is making me laugh ruefully.
I am wondering, after reading a couple of analyses, if there isn't a revenge factor involved here.
How many people lost a shit-ton in 2008 and are aware that hedge funds were at the core of that?
"The Big Short" did well at the box office, and probable informed a lot more people.
There's a worry about what will happen when the WallStreetBets people start selling.
Selling is what people who bought stocks to make money do.
People who bought these stocks to fuck hedge funds have made their purchase and don't care as long as the hedge funds got fucked. It's also very likely that they didn't buy enough for a complete loss to hurt them at all.
The Mec-Gar MG-SW59-17 magazines aren't quite flush... They have a plastic bumper/baseplate instead of a sheet metal one, like the OEM mags. This plastic bumper is the norm for 3rd Gen S&W mags.
Stock 14-rounder:
Mec-Gar 17-rounder:
GURPS is coarse.
Sometimes real world things don't show up because the granularity is too coarse.
A classic example came up today.
The S&W Model 59 is 2.3 lb. loaded with its stock 0.6 lb. 14-round magazine.
A 17-round magazine is also 0.6 lb.!
This is because you round to the nearest 1/10 lb. for most things. Too heavy for "neg" weight, but lighter than 0.1 lb. will go to more decimal places. .22LR is a classic example of this because if you make it negligible, the players will start carrying boxcar loads.
But do the magazines, in fact, weigh the same?
No, they do not.
The 14-round magazine is 8.8 oz. The 17-round magazine is 10.1 oz.
Making that decimal pounds comes to 0.55 and 0.63125 lb. respectively. They both round to 0.6.
The MecGar 17-round mags fit and feed just fine. Happy Dance!
This has come up a few times before where the extended capacity magazine weighs the same as the original in GURPS terms. A 15-round mag for a Browning High-Power is the same as a 13-round.
There's a thread on Arfcom about someone who bought an $80 grand chopper from Orange County Choppers at the height of the show's popularity and discovering that it's worth about what the stock Harley motor what's in it is.
The stock, 65hp Harley motor...
You'd think for $80k you'd get something from S&S with more balls.
We watched the show back in the day and we'd frequently notice and comment on
the slip-shod quality and general lack of craftsmanship on the signature,
theme builds. I mean, how many times do you have to chase the clogged
threads from powdercoating before you stop being surprised that it happens, or
tell the powdercoater to plug the threaded holes?
It turns out that those theme builds on the show were them exhibiting their utmost attention to detail compared to the bikes they sold from their showroom.
There are also videos about the greatness of them!
Hilarity.
In 1955 the US Army, after dangling the promise of a large order and a prize for winning the competition in front of the firearms industry... decided that they had plenty of serviceable M1911A1's and wouldn't be needing a new pistol after all.
Smith and Wesson took their X100 design to market as the Model 39.
My favorite 9x19 is, by far, the JMB inspired, Dieudonné Joseph Saive developed, Grand Puissance.
When your gun is used by both sides in WW2 and almost everyone in NATO adopts it, you made a winner.
It stuck the landing so hard that it took concerted effort with the wonder nines to supplant it.
FN even registered protests with the US pistols trials over the double action requirements.
Though the first 9mm I owned was a Glock, my love has always been to HP.
The HP appears on so very many character sheets in historical settings thanks to its 13 round magazine. More beans is never a bad choice in any RPG with firearms. The High Power is available from 1936, and there isn't another double stack that you can convince a GM actually existed until 1971 and the S&W Model 59 hits the shelves.
Smith and Wesson introduced the 2nd Gen version of the Model 59 as their entrant into the XM9 pistol competition.
The 459 was almost the same as the 59 except with the addition of a firing pin block.
The 459 didn't win, the Beretta 92 did.
I never really warmed to the M9. I was issued one and didn't do well with it. Lost my "expert" pistol badge for "marksman" in the transition from .45 to 9mm in the bargain. The "expert" tank-weapons badge salved my pain some.
The Beretta's safety is better placed than the 59, though.
There's a part of me that's watching foreign companies supply all of our small arms that thinks we should have put a thumb on the scale for Smith.
Of course, if you'd asked me in the Iowa State Memorial Union in 1986 while we were playing Twilight: 2000 I'd have told you that we should have adopted the Glock 17.
I am a willow, not an oak.
We've done a couple three alternate versions of Twilight: 2000 set in different years than the original game.
It's included "what-if" weapons on occasion.
One version had secondary standard rifles because Springfield wasn't able to keep up with production of the M14. So we had H&R making the US version of the FAL as the M17 and Colt making a version of the AR-10 as the M16.
Other "what-if" weapons have seen the S&W Model 39 as the M4 pistol.
Remembering that got me to thinking that if the Army had gone with the M4 back in '55; pitching the 459 for the XM9 competition might have been a shoe-in.
In the wooden stocks, weighing in at 2 lb. loaded with 8-shots: A 1975-1976 Model 39!
In the nylon stocks, weighing in at 2.3 lb. loaded with 14-shots: A 1974-1975 Model 59!
These are the first generation of Smith and Wesson's semi-auto lineup.
They are way more similar than different.
The slides even nearly interchange! The safety won't engage with the 39 slide on the 59 frame. The 59 slide on the 39 frame is fully functional.
Be careful you don't get them mixed up!
The 39 has an arched back strap, the 59 is flat. This give the 39 about 1/8" less reach for the trigger.
The 39 is only slightly narrower overall 1-3/16" vs 1-5/16".
The shape of the grips are completely different, the 39 is much more oval.
Neither is uncomfortable, but the 39 is more comfortable.
Special thanks! to The Chomps Collection for the loan of the Model 39!
Delving deeper into how the 1st Gen S&W Semi-Auto works...
There's two things that disable the trigger on this Model 59. It holds true of the 3rd Gen as well.
The safety and the magazine disconnect.
Both are nubbins in the slide which press down on a lever in the frame.
The safety also trips the sear and drops the hammer.
Both levers press the trigger bar out of engagement with the hammer and sear.
Simple.
That's Washington PNW not Washington DC.
Renewed my Utah non-resident CCW permit and it gets me Washington over my Florida resident permit.
Used to get me Washington and Wisconsin, but Wisconsin and Florida appear to have kissed and made up so I get The Mystical Land of Cheese with my native permit now.
My wide-body Model 39 arrived today!
We went, had supper, drank a couple beers, played some Gelatinous and I feel energized!
Here she is!
It got the original box, the cleaning rod and brush, a spare magazine and a warranty card. I am SO very tempted to fill out that card!
The spare magazine has been electropenciled with a different serial number from the pistol.
It tips the scales at 2.3 lb. loaded with 14 rounds of 9mm, a loaded magazine is 0.6. I've got two Mec-Gar 17-rounders coming.
The trigger is fairly smooth in double action at 12 lb. 8 oz. Single is excellent at 5 lb. 5 oz.
This compares favorable with a Model 39's 11 lb. 7 oz. double and 4 lb. 8 oz. single.
It's far better than the budget 3rd gen 915 and 910.
Interestingly, the 59, 915 and 910 all seem to share the same magazine, except, the stock 59 magazines will not lock into the 910. It doesn't quite make it up far enough to lock in.
Can a model 59 take a lanyard?
Why, yes, it can!
Definitely more to come!
First we awoke this morning to the overwhelming stench of piss.
The Boy's meds strike again. They knock him out so fully that he pissed the bed.
Normally we keep pads and stuff to keep it from ruining the mattress, but sometimes the wash schedule gets off and he wets it anyway.
This was the last time the mattress would bear it.
New mattress from GoodWill. They don't even accept old mattresses thanks to all the bed-bug infestations. It was more than I wanted to spend, but a lot less than I expected.
Then we moved on to the main shitter. The toilet flange had corroded beyond serviceable use.
We used a crutch flange thing that bolts to the floor. Hopefully that will buy us a couple of years.
The S&W 59 arrived! Too pooped to take more than the most cursory picture with my phone for now...
It actually looks better in person than in the auction.
I was told promised that if we raised the age to purchase a firearm to 21, banned bumpstocks and enacted red-flag laws that we'd never see high school students shooting at other students again.
I guess they were wrong, I wish someone had said something.
The Chomps Collection has loaned me a CZ 75 P-01.
The original CZ-75 is one of the original wonder-nines.
Prices on those things are impressively high and full of the big-names of customization.
The P-01 will have to serve as a representational sample of the breed for purposes of comparison.
It might not be a perfect comparison because the P-01 has a decocker. The original had a safety.
The decocker also means there's three trigger pulls for this pistol. One probably shouldn't be used...
The one that shouldn't be used is with the hammer fully down, even though there is a firing pin block.
But you have a different pull from fully down, half cock and full cock. Half cock is where the decocker drops the hammer.
I remember when, before the Wu Ping Cough, when you could order something from Midway and expect it to leave the building that same day.
Now it takes them a week to get it out the door.
Even the Obama panic didn't cause this much slow down. The only problem then was it being out of stock, or over priced.
Now it's in stock, but they're so damn busy they can't process the orders quickly anymore.
This bodes well for our team with regards to the constituents reaction to gun control.
Time and time again...
Dem: We need to elect a Democrat!
Me: I disagree, they're going to do X and you won't like it.
Dem: No they won't, we donated to their campaign!
Democrat they support gets elected. They do X.
Dem: How did this happen? Why didn't anyone warn us?
This time it's watching the unions freak out about oil leases.
Despite not being much of a fan of magazine disconnects, I seem to accumulate designs with this feature.
On most guns, it's pretty easy to disable.
You just have to figure out how they work.
Smith and Wesson's family of semi-auto pistols starting with the Model 39 have one.
I'd read, in several places, to disable it, you needed to remove the rear sight.
That got me really curious about how it worked.
It's really simple.
The ejector is also a lever.
If it's pressed down into the frame, it disconnects the trigger.
There's a plunger in the slide, under the rear sight, which presses down on the ejector.
The magazine pushes the ejector back up and lets the trigger work.
So far I have resisted taking the Model 910 down far enough to see HOW depressing the ejector disables the trigger.
Mira Furlan, who played Delenn on Babylon 5 has passed away from West Nile Virus at the age of 65.
There's damn few of the main cast still with us and that sucks.
Babylon 5 stood out for a number of reasons to me.
The overarching, multi-season plot was not least of it.
The fact that it was actual, Niven definition, science fiction made it really break out from it's Star Dreck competition.
It never had the budget that Paramount threw casually at Star Trek, which made costuming and sets kind of cheap, but it used state of the art CGI for all of the outside shots.
The Lovely Harvey was just saying the other day that she had just started getting into photography when The Boy came along and everything became work all the time.
Her mom shares a similar story with film photography.
FuzzyGeff conspired to get Harvey a Canon EOS M3!
 |
| M3 with 18-55mm on the left, M50 with 15-45mm on the right. |
I chipped in for the 18-55mm lens.
She's going to want a zoom before too long, but she's already been playing with it and making happy noises.
Happy Dance!™
The germ of this obsession begins with my noticing that there isn't another double stack 9mm for around 35 years after the FN/Browning Grand Puissance sticks the landing.
The H&K VP.70 almost doesn't even count, but low production and unpopular doesn't knock it off the list.
But we brainstormed the contenders (and forgot the VP.70) and came up with HP-35, S&W 59 then Beretta 92 then a gap until Glock and then suddenly EVERYONE. Paging Gary Oldman, paging Gary Oldman.
That got me looking at what makes a wonder-9 and thinking about going hands on with the historical analysis.
The road to getting the Model 59 leads through the Navy SEALs.
Specifically me doing the GURPS: SEALs in Vietnam playtest.
But it doesn't even start there!
Where this really starts is when I tried to find the missing M numbers.
There are a lot of M numbers which have been assigned, but not recorded because they are XM designations.
This missing M search led me to find the several attempts to replace the M1911A1 with a 9x19mm NATO pistol. I think the S&W X100 would have been the M4 pistol had DoD proceeded with the program... but don't quote me on that.
The X100 is refined into the S&W 39, they'd spent the money developing it, why not see if it would sell on the commercial market?
Although the Army didn't replace the M1911A1 with the Model 39, the SEALs bought a few. They also modified some into the 9mm Pistol and Suppressor Kit Mk23 Mod0 (Mk22 Mod0 pistol plus Mk3 Mod0 suppressor) or "Hush Puppy".
Someone with the SEALs said, "wouldn't this be 20% cooler if it could take High Power magazines?"
Custom made guns were made by... someone... and S&W was asked if they could make more.
S&W reckoned that they could (with a proprietary magazine), but didn't get finished developing their version until the war in Vietnam was all but over and the SEALs were no longer receiving lavish funding that could drive weapons development.
S&W asks, again, "we spent all that money developing it, why not see if the commercial market wants it?"
And they made over 200,000 of the things in just under 10 years.
The S&W 59 quest led to actually looking up if there was an "official" definition for "wonder nine".
Sort of?
Wikipedia says, "'Wonder Nine' refers to any semi-automatic pistol that is chambered in 9×19mm Parabellum and has a staggered column magazine, as well as a double-action trigger for at least the first shot"
They list some examples, including the VP-70 and Glock 17. That surprised me, I'd been thinking that to be a wonder nine you had to have a hammer.
This would make the VP-70 the first wonder nine, but I don't recall that the term pre-dating the S&W 59.
I did find this interesting write up about them though.
I did find out who coined the phrase:
"Wondernine: A term coined by gunwriter Robert T. Shimek to denote the modern breed of 9mm Parabellum auto pistols of recent design, usually featuring high magazine capacity and a double-action trigger mechanism or other modern ignition system (e.g., the squeeze-cocker of the Heckler & Kock P7 series or the Safe Action of the Glock)."
J. Libourel
One thing about buying a pistol from the 70's that's actually been shot a bit is you can look at things like this:
I just noticed my Gunbroker order number is 1,131,049 higher for the 59 than for the 45C.
In two months from late November to mid-January.
Five months before (June to November) that the order number had shifted 1,727,750.
Purchases are accelerating?
One thing is reasonable certain, nobody is buying this stuff with the intention of handing it back.
I gutted it out as long as I could.
Willard spotted me the money for a S&W 59.
I had narrowed my choices down three.
An early ('74-'75) one with both magazines, cleaning kit and the box that was ending within 24 hours.
A new in box ('77-'78) example with all the accessories that ends in three days.
A very nice last year ('81) with just the gun and a single magazine with a buy it now and weeks to go.
The first one ended in the wee hours this morning and that's where I had my bid. I dig the "PAT PEND" roll mark on the slide...
I won!
Buyer's remorse of a sort is setting in as I watch nobody bidding on that NIB example; however I've been watching similar 59's going for near $700 and the bidding getting intense. Just a bit more than I had to spend.
Never mind I have an aversion to being the first person to shoot a gun that's been kept new for so long. Worse than a gun you can't shoot is a gun you won't.
Almost as nice, but with some wear? Where's the ammo? Let's go shootin'!
The NIB example starts $20 more than my winning bid on the first one, had the highest credit card fee and highest shipping charge. I've forgotten to take this into account before. In this case, if it goes for the initial bid that $20 extra bucks becomes $40 more when the dust settles. Not a lot... but.
The pistol I did win also had a phenomenon I've noticed many times at ebay and Gunbroker.
Nobody bids on it, it gets relisted several times, I bid on it, several other people begin bidding as well. There's times I wish I'd finished that psych degree and could get a grant to study things like this.
In a thread about SIG-Sauer deciding to discontinue pistols in .40 S&W this little gem was seen:
".40 cal was made for cop-wannabees who could never in their wildest dreams make the cut."
Being paranoid, I check the differential and transmission levels on The Precious every few months.
Because the concept of a dipstick has been lost to modern automotive engineering, you have to unscrew the fill port to check the fluid level.
That means putting the car in the air, and because nobody would ever service their car at home with a floor jack... the car must also be level when you make your check.
Because the transmission and differential are in the back, to make the car level you have to have the front in the air too.
Everything was properly filled.
Since the front was already in the air... Might as well change the oil!
Two birds, one stone.
More fun than watching the media suck an old man's cock today.
GURPS makes no distinction between the sexes with regards to stats.
The average woman gets the same ST 10 as the average man.
Adventurers get a lot more points than the average person, but the starting strength for both sexes is still 10.
But...
In the real world I've been bumping into lots and lots of XX chromosome people who can't rack a slide.
In the Vette world I've seen many ladies who cannot remove the targa top on their own car without assistance.
It makes you wonder if ST 10 is appropriate, in the real world, for the average woman.
There's no debate in a game world. A game is supposed to be FUN and starting two points short on ST without any corresponding advantage isn't fun.
I haven't bothered to watch the damn thing since before I was allowed to vote, what makes this agent provocateur think I'm going to drive a thousand miles (one way) to get my ass arrested?
Because that's what's going to happen to the LUCKY people who're dumb enough to try to violently protest the swearing in of Joe Biden.
The unlucky might just get themselves shot.
The National Guard is not well known for trigger discipline in the face of unruly crowds (cough cough Kent State).
These exhortations to come be violent at the new government smack of traps.
Considering that the majority of membership in several racist organizations was undercover feds at several points in history, it's entirely believable that some Agence trois lettres is selling rope for hangings and will let you buy as much as you'd like.
