New To Me

Andre Norton wrote a book, "Star Rangers."

I read it in junior high.

I recognize the cover of the copy I got from ebay.

I remember a line or two, here and there.

But the book was as if I'd never read it.

If you wait four decades before you re-read it, it's gonna be fresh again!

Huzzah!

There's a second book set in the same universe, "Star Guard," that came in the same clump of Andre Norton books that I got "Star Rangers" with.  I only found out about "Star Guard" when I started looking around for "Star Rangers.

Looking forward to reading it! 

This Is The End

The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season is over.

It's been effectively over for some time as the weather cooperated and didn't spin up the normal Caribbean and Gulf storms in the latter half of the season.

The December 2024 prediction was 15 named storms, 7 hurricanes (3 being major).

The June 2025 prediction, as the season was starting was 17-9-4.

What we got was 13-5-4; and just one that was really bad.

Fish storms were the norm this year.

I'll take it. 

Littered About

Still thinking about the world of Twilight: 2000 and things that I never considered back in 1985 when I first got the game and started playing.

We didn't do mines, so there were no minefields.  There should have been.  There should, at least, be signage indicating minefields, even if they are fake, just to keep some of the marauders out of the crops.

Unexploded ordnance would be everywhere.  The T2K world exists before agreements about cluster munitions were signed and Soviet bomblets had a depressingly high percentage that didn't go off on impact as intended.

Because of marauders and how the militaries generally treated the civilian populations, they should be a lot more hostile to the party escaping Kalisz.  It makes me wonder if a re-writing The Seven Samurai for T2K would work...  No, I don't wonder, it'd work great!  The big question is whether the players would be the Samurai or the bandits.  It works great both ways.

Because the characters are soldiers and the equipment list is, essentially, a weapons list; two big things get missed.

The Battle of Kalisz is the end of the war.  The party runs for it, but the battle ends with both sides basically wiping each other out.  WW3 is over except for the mopping up.

Because the war is over, they can participate in the rebuilding of society and having a part in how that proceeds.  They can settle.  They can try to get home.  They can be part of a local warlord or town becoming a government or nation.

The vistas are wider than I would have imagined in 1985 when the Soviet Union was just a solid as the West and NATO. 

Ewwwwwww You Check

Holdout is the GURPS skill that allows you to conceal things on your person.

A medieval crossbow is a -6 penalty to your holdout skill.

Being naked is a -7 penalty to your holdout skill.

That this means is a normally clothed person has an extremely good chance (74%) of concealing a crossbow on their person with a skill of 18.

It also means that a naked person with a skill of 18 has a chance at all (a bit less than 5%). 

Odd Solution

I wanted to post a picture to Facebook, but my phone doesn't have the login.

How do I get it to my laptop? 

The phone, which took the picture, does have my Google Chat login.

So send the picture to Marv, copy it from the message, paste to Facebook.

Voila!

The thread on Facebook was about a man over 50 being required to carry a knife in their pocket and getting bonus points if you can use it to open a can or bottle.

I have used that can opener to open cans and it mystifies some people. 

Matches My Research

Thanksgiving post at ¡No Pasarán!

My research has led to some awkward conversations with my Blackfoot wife, Harvey.

Nobody wants their ancestors to be the baddies.

This research has made it exceedingly difficult to make progress with my little Sabers and Sorcerers story because all the bad shit I'd planned for the Googoo to do to show how baddie they are...  The Sioux did in real history!

Never mind the Sioux crossing to the alternate Earth, Maka Tanka, and doing unto the Googoo what white gold prospectors and the US government did to the Sioux in the Black Hills.  For the Sioux it's kind of a repeat because they'd already done it to the Cheyenne and Pawnee.

SIGH

Encumbrance

Thinking about sidearms reminded me of something that has failed in many game rule sets.

The encumbrance rules almost always just track the weight or mass of what the character is carrying and not the bulk.

The first time it came to a head was when I tried to railroad a player's character into being captured via their weapon, an M16A2, jamming in Twilight: 2000.

This gambit failed because they had enough encumbrance to have been lugging FOUR M16A2'a around with them.

I've carried four of those things around before, and you're not going to be very tactical while doing so.

Even slinging three of them across your back doesn't really get them out of the way.

There's nothing in GURPS that reflects the tanglefoot contraption that is a Stewart saber hanger.

This doesn't interfere while mounted, but even then you're supposed to unclip it from the chaff and attach it to the saddle in front of your left knee.

But even clipping the sword higher doesn't keep the bottom of the scabbard off the ground.

The rules don't account for this and a GM would have to do what I did and try to walk around wearing one to see what's wrong.

The rules also don't account for about 1/3 of those rounds being really hard to reach and half of them can't be reached unless you change hands.

Encumbrance does not GURPS.

Sidearm

A thread about swords on Arfcom got me thinking...

Swords are sidearms, not primary weapons most of the time.  It's the weapon you pull when your main weapon goes tits up.

It's a weapon to show your status.

That's not how most of us gamers did it most of the time...

When we did, however, we hardly ever had cause to use them.

I've got so many character sheets that have secondary weapons that I never used.

Not a sword when I had a polearm.

Not a pistol when I had a rifle.

But...  You never knew when the GM would decide to break your main weapon and better to have it and not need it that to need it and not have it.

Where have I heard that before?

Figured Something Out

Flickr adds a lot of extraneous stuff onto the end of the image links.

The full size photo link is:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54825718145_1d2ce9b74d_o.jpg?s=eyJpIjo1NDgyNTcxODE0NSwiZSI6MTc2NDMxNjI1NywicyI6ImEzMWJjY2EwZTE3NmRhMWI0ZGUxZmJhYTk5OGEwOTExMGE4MjJlMTUiLCJ2IjoxfQ

Won't work to insert an image using the URL link with Blogger.  You have to trim it down to: 

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54825718145_1d2ce9b74d_o.jpg

Even that doesn't always work...  But selecting the 1024 image often does...

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54825718145_5ff00e1a42_b.jpg

Manually copying the HMTL code always works!  This is that overlong string.

The links are good, but Blogger refuses to fix their "what you see is what you get" editor.

Shiny Let's Be Badguys

It's recently come to my attention that Pam Bondi's office thinks that SBRs are just for criminals.

What a waste of $600 on tax stamps and being all law abiding and shit.

I guess I'm just a very odd criminal that lets the government know what I'm doing...

Not so odd in putting my "crime" on the internet.  I've seen many real criminals do that.

Itch Fully Scratched

There's a local gun shop that's doing door-buster Black Friday deals.

Among them are $99 Glocks.

Besides not being willing to engage in hand to hand combat to get close enough to the door when they open to snag one before they sell out...

My Glock itch is fully scratched.

The Glock 21 is my lesson to not trade off a gun for stupid reasons.

The two Glock 17's are nostalgia purchases to fill the holes left by my first two Gen1's.

The Glock 45 is my "modern" Glock, which I mainly got because Glock offered Blue Label guns to veterans.

S&W M&P are my plastic fantastics of choice.

Deviled Egg Salad

The Lovely Harvey makes deviled eggs for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Far more often she makes egg salad.

She put the halves of the whites in the holder and started mixing up the yolks with the deviled egg ingredients.

Turns out there's a lot of overlap between what goes into egg salad and deviled eggs and while on autopilot she can add the stuff that's outside the overlap.

Like the dill relish.

Good news!  If you've made this mistake, chop up the whites and mix with the yolk concoction and you've got egg salad!

Bad news!  It's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and someone (me) needs to hit the grocery store for eggs.

Happily, everyone was focused and cheerful at Publix and the only thing the employees said was in short supply was gravy from the deli.

I got eggs, beer, chips and some Pubsubs with little drama.

Something To Remember

The entire world was on the gold standard in the 16th and 17th centuries.

One of the reasons for the golden age of piracy was the massive devaluation of gold thanks to Spain massively increasing the supply of available gold in Europe because they were moving it from the new world.

It's a great example of how even gold can have inflation.

It seems unlikely that we're going to find a massive enough amount of gold to cause it to devalue like when Spain toppled all those kingdoms in the new world, but Elon is still working on super heavy launchers.

Who knows what's in the asteroids?

I'm Gonna Save Y'all 22 Minutes.

Got a link to this video in the comments.

It's 22 minutes of, basically, repeating the same thing over and over about each of the bad brands.  Tedious delivery of good advice.

The bad brands listed are:

#11 Safeway
#10 7-Eleven
#9 Sam's Club
#8 Circle K
#7 Murphy USA
#6 Speedway
#5 Love's Travel Stops
#4 Amoco
#3 Pilot Flying J
#2 Sunoco Regular Grade
#1 Unnamed bulk suppliers, very unhelpful inclusion

Good brands: 

#5 Chevron with Techron

#4 Shell

#3 Exxon Mobil

#2 Costco

#1 BP-Amoco Ultimate (Isn't it odd that Amoco is the #4 worst, but this sub-brand is excellent?)

I'm a devotee of the Top-Tier Brands, so this wasn't a shock to me.

The Lovely Harvey did an, unplanned, experiment with our 2002 Civic and got it to run like garbage because she'd fill up at the closest, handiest place like she had to WALK to get gas and carry it in red Solo cups.  The car got carbon build up something fierce and we managed to correct it by putting Sea-Foam in the tank for several tanks. 

I've two friends with Corvettes and both buy gas from 7-Eleven and it makes me twitch every time they get gas.

The local Shell stations are on my shit list.  They're normally 5-10 cents more per gallon anyways, and they ALWAYS charge 10 cents more to pay at pump.  Worse, their loyalty rewards program changed from 5 cents to 3 cents.

A nearby 7-Eleven, though, has Mobil gas and doesn't play games with the prices. 

Brace For Impact

Something else that encourages bigger houses in my area is the impact fee.

This is a charge on new-build houses that's supposed to go towards the infrastructure to support the new housing developments.

Finding out exactly how much this is in my area has defied a simple search, but a couple of sites are saying $13,500 to $20,000 per home.  The variation is based on the exact parcel and is not changed by making the house larger or smaller.

If we assume $150 per square foot for a new house...  My house, plus garage and porches, is about $240k new built; but it has the same impact fee as a house twice the size.

Would you rather pay a 10% fee or a 5% fee?

But, since the fees are assessed to the builders and developers before construction begins it trends to fewer lots and larger houses so as to make the fee a smaller portion of the cost of construction. 

Compression

Accidentally stumbled upon something interesting...

2011 to 2013 Caprice PPV fuel recommendation is 87 octane.

2014 to 2017 Caprice PPV fuel recommendation for V8 engines is premium 91 octane.

From what I've been reading the fuel tables are the same for all years.

The engines are mechanically identical.

I think they use the same PCM. 

My "runs smoother" feeling seems to have some empirical basis to it.

Supply And Demand That's It

If something is too expensive you have two choices to make it cheaper:  Increase the supply or reduce the demand.

Considering that an increasing price is the invisible hand pushing on demand... you really only have one choice.

It's super simple in theory and ultimately, everything in practice will boil down to supply and demand.

Another part of this bedrock is "scarcity" which is Econ 101 for "finite" or "there's only so much of something to go around at any given time."

And we keep talking about "affordable" housing.

How do you make it cheaper?

Make more houses seems the obvious answer.

Well, you cannot build a house like mine in my county any more.

The minimum lot size is now 10,000 sq ft.

Mines just under 5,500.

So we already have decided to have fewer houses in the same area.

The max footprint of the house cannot exceed 40% of the lot's, and my little place is just 30%.

There's not a damn thing wrong with my old house for a single family.  I know this because we ARE a single family and we're doing fine.

My county appears to be addressing the housing "shortage" not by making smaller lots with smaller houses, but by making much bigger buildings and MUCH smaller dwellings.

Apartment complexes.

It's like they don't want people to own a home.

Critical Hits

In GURPS on the critical hit table you roll 3d after getting a critical hit; which is making the roll by 10 or more or rolling a natural 3 or 4.

Results 3 and 18 do triple damage.

Results 5 and 16 do double damage.

Results 6 and 15 do maximum normal damage. 

Any of these results explain Charlie Kirk's injuries and rapid death following the shot.

The problem is the critical hit itself.

It would mean that the shooter was aiming for the neck.

That doesn't taste right and that's why I didn't calculate the values.

Aiming for the skull or heart make more sense, especially if the shooter learned to shoot via hunting.

Visualizing

I was talking with Harvey about my Will it GURPS of the Kennedy assassination and she asked if the shot was really hard or not.

One thing I expressed was the distances weren't terribly long for a rifle.

I reminded her of the time we spent on a 100 yard range once and said, "that's as far away as Kennedy ever got from Oswald."

She said, "that was pretty long..."

I replied, "But did I have any trouble hitting with my Springfield?"

"Oh!" she said.

The difference in elevation and the movement of the car are complications, but not insurmountable ones.

It's moderately difficult, not impossible.

It is within the skill set of most hunters.

Understanding The Rat Rod

I washed and waxed The Beast in preparation for a car show at a favorite local brewery.

A Caprice PPV is NOT a small car.

I am gaining an understanding in why rat rods are getting some traction in the hot-rodding hobby.

When it's got "patina" you don't have to do near as good a job washing.  Plus, "Wax?  What is wax?"

Well, I've got a minimum of "patina" and rust spots on it and I want it to stay that way!

So, it's washed and waxed.

I even have windshield wipers and a headliner!  David Freiburger can't say that about a lot of his cars!

Shooting Mr Connally With Standard Assumptions

An M91/38 carbine does 5d pi.  That is 5-30 points of damage (17.5 average) with ball ammo to the body.

The second shot hits Kennedy in the back, exits the front and hits Connally in the back, exits the front and hits his wrist (hand location for GURPS).

Using the standard Overpenetration rules on page B408, a person provides a DR of what ever DR they're wearing on each side penetrated and their hit points.

So a person wearing DR 3 front and back with a ST of 12 will provide DR 18 for the person standing behind them; or in front if them if shot in the back.

Kennedy is not wearing armor, and we're assuming his frail condition leaves him 10 hit points; so he's DR 10 for Connally.

Connally's torso is DR 10 to protect his wrist.

So, as before; 23 points of damage will penetrate both Kennedy and Connally's torsos and do enough damage to cripple the hand and cause Connally to drop his hat.

The difference is Kennedy takes 23 points of damage to the torso this time.  Then Connally takes 13 to the torso and then 3 to the hand.

So Kennedy will need a consciousness roll (which he makes because he's holding his throat when round number 3 hits him in the skull) and will need a death roll (which he also appears to make).  The 60 that we assigned to the skull brings him to -73 hit points.  -50 is auto death.

Connally needs two consciousness rolls (he makes both) and will not need a death roll because he's only at -6 HP.

The Kennedy Assassination still GURPS.

Update:  Alternate rules interpretation:

One could take the position that you roll the 5d pi damage for every thing in the path of the bullet and subtract the DR of the intervening cover each time.

So Kennedy just needs to take more than HP worth of damage to allow the round to hit Connally and then Connally has to take more than HP worth of damage to get to the hand and that just needs 3 points to cripple it, and 5 is the minimum.

Shut Up The Shooter Explained

Charlie Kirk was struck in the neck by a .30-06 round.

.30-06 will do 7d+1 pi damage.  Hollow point or soft-tip ammo will do 7d+1(0.5) pi+ damage.

If you use the Bleeding and Body Hits rules as I did in the Kennedy assassination write up, the max damage you can do is equal to the hit points, the rest carries on to whatever is behind them.

The neck is the same as the body for piercing attacks.

So...

Ball round will do 8 to 43 points of damage (25 on average).  Hollow point will do 10 to 63 (36 on average).

If Mr Kirk had 11 Hit Points (he was stocky, so maybe)...

Standard rules:  Average ball round will get a consciousness roll and a death roll.  Average hollow point will get a consciousness roll and two death rolls.

Optional rules:  Average ball hit will do 11 points of damage and get a consciousness roll and a -5 to the Health roll for bleeding.  Hollow point will also do 11 points of damage, but get a consciousness roll and -7 on the HT roll for bleeding.  With a HT of 11 that's a 6 or less to prevent 1 HP of damage every minute with a ball round or 4 or less to prevent that loss with a hollow point.

Using the standard rules, it GURPS.

Using the, optional, Body Hits rules with bleeding does not.

Getting Organized

For some reason I was not putting the ammo I've been buying into the clearly marked ammo cans I have just for storing ammunition in a manner that lets me find it when I want it.

That means four boxes of .30-06 and ten of M193 have moved from a shelf NEAR the safe to the cans labeled for them.

I think some of the M193 is from last year's Ammo Day too.

From The Grassy Knoll I Shoot At Thee

Assuming Oswald makes the relatively simple shot...

-7 for the skull.

+4 for Acc for aiming.

+1 for braced.

40 yards for the first shot, (-10 for elevation) effectively 30.  -7 for range.

The 20 yards per second speed of the limo adds to the range making it 50 yards, effectively, and -8 to hit.

-10 to hit, this is the shot that missed!  He'd need a skill of, at least, 13 to get a roll at all.

70 yards for the second shot.  90 for the third.  Very little lateral movement from vehicle speed.

-9 for the second shot and -10 for the third.

-7 to hit the skull.

+4 for Acc for aiming.

+1 for braced.

-11 for the second shot, -12 for the third.

To get a roll at all for the third shot, Oswald has to have a skill of, at least, 15.

I've statted myself at 16 from measuring my groups and accounting for all the variables and I don't think of myself as an awesome shot...

I've seen players roll statistically unlikely rolls in the game before, so a skill of 18 and a rolls of 9+, 7- and 6- in a row is plausible.

5d pi to the neck/body.  No DR.  10 HP.  Avg damage roll will be 17.5 points, or 17.  Possible damage ranges from 5 to 30 points.

10 HP done to Kennedy, 7 continues to Connally.

Hit to the body.  If average hit, wrist cannot be struck.

Normally the rules don't allow for the wrist to be struck either, but we can extrapolate...

It would take 3 points of damage to cripple a hand.  That means Connally had to have taken 13 points of damage and Kennedy 23.

Using both the Bleeding rules from B420 and the Body Hits rules from High Tech 162, the first shot only does 10 points of damage to Kennedy and 13 to Connally.

Both people hit appear to have made their consciousness rolls.

5d pi to the skull.  DR 2 from the bone.  An average, 17 point, hit will get 15 points to penetrate and is quadrupled for 60.  Auto death.

The Kennedy assassination GURPS. 

Update:  Simple math mistake fixed and the effects of that changed.  4 x 15 is NOT 30.  DURRRR.

Mobile Gltich

The crash glitch on Crispy IV moves from one box to another.

I have two T420S boxes.

Moving the hard drives from the newer (to me) machine to the older (to me) machine moves the glitch.

That makes me think that it's not the box, but something on the drive.

I have JT on the case and he's thinking hard upon it.

Some Things Need Details

The Dungeon Dudes are using the default game rules for their setting, which means you just buy the equipment off the table included in the Player's Handbook.

For a GURPS Fantasy setting you have to pick a tech level.

I've mentioned that much of the armor depicted in D&D is actually TL4 when most people think of TL3 when they're thinking Fantasy.

The easy way out is, "A wizard did it!"

Or, rather, the Elves and Dwarves did it.

Through different methodologies, they make the TL4 armor that most players expect, and the player will pay twice as much as listed for the privilege.  Rather more, actually, since the armors that the Elves and Dwarves sell are typically decorated, and really should be fitted because of the pride of the makers.

They just don't make cheap, "mass produced" examples of their best types.

Interestingly, this should make the four times as expensive bronze plate armors cheaper than steel. 

It'll Never Work

Here's the Trump peace plan to end the war between Ukraine and Russia.

I think you can click to embiggen.

I want it to work, but... 

Polishing The Cannonball

Ginny Di posted a video where she interviewed The Dungeon Dudes...

It made me realize that I was overprepping for things that never happen, or are going to happen and that my most successful worlds were ones where I'd come up with the idea the previous Wednesday, run it past FuzzyGeff or Mikhail Ronaldovich on Thursday and we made characters on Thursday.

Prep that I'd never do if I were running Twilight: 2000 or main timeline Traveller.

Though I need to do a bit more prep the next time I try T2K to get all the units on at least one map so I can better herd the players down the railroad to their doom give the players rational choices to give them a better experience.

But lots my Traveller time is just winging it.  It tends to work.

I will heed their advice about the pantheon of a fantasy world.  They're correct, I really only need the party's cleric's god and, maybe, the opposition's god too.  And a general framework for what kind of pantheon/holy aspects there are will suffice.

I feel better now!

And sad.  I think I've taken the Interstellar Wars era campaign about as far as I can.

To go much further means risking the entire party on the whims of the ship combat system and a Lightning class merchant is not a real warship. 

Speaking Of Guzzlean

The Beast has 10.4:1 compression.

In ye olde days that would mean 87 octane would be a no-go.

This is because a distributors couldn't retard the timing far enough to prevent detonation.

Now that electronically controlled ignition is here, there's no actual limit to how far the timing can go.

So the car is tuned to use 87 octane and it runs just fine on it.

It also has a table for E85, which it also runs just fine on.

Just for fun, I've been running 93 octane, despite not having a fuel table that will advance the timing to take advantage of the compression that's mechanically part of the engine.

It's "seat of the pants" smoother with more octane.

It will not show even a thousandth of a second improvement in the 1/4 mile.

It gets about 1.5 mpg better mileage, but that's because the smoother means I stay out the pedal more not because the engine is being inherently more efficient on higher octane.

I've paid for HP tuners.  Supposedly you can add a 93 octane timing table and keep the ability to run 87.  I know The Precious did.

It's Like They Don't Want The Money Sometimes

About once a quarter or so, I have trouble finding a gas station willing to sell gas.

The preferred station, a Mobil, didn't have a single pump in service.

The Shell across the street from them refuses to let me pay at pump, but wants me to see the cashier...

The Wa Wa down the road worked fine, but I prefer to get the "Top Tier" gas as recommended by GM for my motor.  Wa Wa is not "Top Tier" 

Damn Just Damn

Gyroscopic forces are amazing.

When the plane rotates on take-off the engine, whose fan is basically a big gyroscope, doesn't want to go with.  That puts tremendous force on the mounts that are forcing the fan to change plane with the aircraft.

Those same spinning forces send the engine off over to the right.

Also of note is there's enough fuel and fuel pressure in the feed lines to run the engine after it has separated from the wing.  That's why it got so far above the wing when it broke free.  Frame 5 shows the smoke of it flaming out.

Damn.

I think that the only airport they could have brought it down safely once this happened is Edwards Air Force Base. 

Dear Tax Fattened Hyenas

Swalwell's little mortgage problem reminds me of others, but something isn't always pointed out about them: 

A politicians primary residence, by law, is supposed to be in the place that elected them.

If they don't live in their districts, they're ineligible to be elected.

Swalwell is from California and was elected by the people of their 14th congressional district.  His primary residence is suppose to be within the confines of that district and not in Washington DC or surrounds; even if he spends a lot of time in DC doing his job as a representative.

So if his primary residence is, indeed, in DC, then the fraud he needs to be prosecuted for is election fraud instead of mortgage fraud.

The real problem is we let congress creatures get rich enough to buy land around DC.

I propose building luxury condos for The Old Guard and moving Congress into the, now, vacant barracks at Fort Myer.

Be a handy reminder that they SERVE and not rule. 

Bringing In The Pros

A local shop we used in the distant past is going to diagnose Moxie properly for us!

They guesstimate it will take about an hour and cost about $138.

I admit, she has me stumped.

But the pros have the scan tools that can isolate modules to see where breaks in wires are without manually tearing into every bundle. 

Times To Try My Soul

Got ready to run Marv to get a new battery for his car and got the low tire pressure light.

Assuming it's because it was the cold, I pulled up the pressure display and saw that it was 32 psi on every tire but the right rear that was at 22 psi.  It's ALWAYS the right rear.

I sigh and grab the pump and ran it up to 35 psi and heard hissing.

Not gonna stay 35 long with audible hissing.

Hoping for a quick plug job, I have Harvey back the car so the screw I found was at an angle to work with; and I gashed my head open on the garage door rail!

Then I couldn't find the rubberized ropes to save my life.

So Harvey ran Marv to get his battery and I asked them to pick up some new ropes on their way back.

Pretty much as soon as she was out of sight, I found the old ropes.

I then discovered that I couldn't get enough push under the car to get the ropes into the freshly reamed out hole (which was now also spewing air).

GRUMBLE!

Pull car forward again, pull the wheel, fire up the pump and try to get a rope in.

I have never had to fight so hard to use one of these things in my life.

It would almost go in and then the insertion tool would cut the rope.

I repeated this step seven times before I managed to get one to insert properly.

Even lubing them up with rubber cement didn't help!

All's well that ends well, I guess. 

T2K LARP

The AKB-23 gets run through its paces by GunJesus®.

 

 I still have latent wants for an L85 because of my long association with Twlight: 2000.

I've fired a lot of bullpups and never really found one I loved.

The FN FS2000 is closest, so far.  It's also the newest one I've shot.

I think there's an irony that I didn't really care for shooting the L85A1 when we did a little cultural exchange with the Brits in Germany; but I still kinda want one.

I wonder if that SUSAT is more expensive than the whole rest of the gun. 

National Ammo Day

November 19th is national ammo day, where we gun owners are supposed to go out and show how much economic clout we have by buying 100 rounds of centerfire ammo.

Thanks to the fine folks at Widner's, my tally is 40 rounds of .30-06 M2 ball and 60 rounds of 5.56x45mm M193. 

That Did Not Take Long

 

The things are barely on the shelves and someone has already managed to make a switch for one despite all of the anti-Glock Switch provisions Glock made to change from Gen5 to GenV. 

With enough effort, any semi-automatic firearm can be converted to full auto or select fire.

Even the more complicated 1911 has been so converted.  All the way back in the 1920's!

PS: You will note that I did not tag this post with the "crime" label.  This Glock Switch appears to have been made by a licensed SOT/FFL, and is thus perfectly legal.

A Matter Of Tips

I just read that it's been 33 years since Dateline NBC tried to convince America that Estes rocket motors were OEM parts on 1973 to 1987 GM pickups.

I had something of a personal connection to this story.

Michael "Boom Boom" Gartner left NBC to come back to Iowa and run the Ames Tribune.

He'd order pizza from the place I worked as a delivery driver.

We'd fight over who had to take that order because he was a notoriously bad tipper.

As far as I know, I was the only driver who knew about his connection to Dateline NBC.

The other drivers just knew the tip would be bad and it'd happened enough they remembered the name and address.

We were very aware of the tips.

On the other hand there was a Mexican restaurant and a motel we fought to get the delivery.

Both were excellent sources of tips.  Interestingly, the motel was the one the dancers at a local strip club stayed at.  Strippers are EXCELLENT tippers.  They were also very casual about getting dressed when answering the door.

Burner Baby Burner!

Got my burners replaced! 

No idea how much I saved doing it myself instead of calling an appliance repairman.

I do know a brand new glass-top range is about $500 (plus taxes and shipping) if I install it myself.

This was a mere $145 total.

Amazon screwed up and their packing allowed the ceramic terminal block to get broken, luckily, one of the old burner's block was intact and I reused it.

I'm too lazy and apathetic to demand a return.

All Electrical All The Time

Our motion light on the garage side of the house decided to become a disco light show instead of staying on.

Lots of clicking from the unit like it was a bad relay or something.

It's only been up there for... uh... years.

Got the new one up and it's passed all the daylight tests.

Waiting for it to get dark enough for a night test of the motion detector. 

Update: It has passed nighttime testing.