Coincidence?

The government shut down and just a bit more than a month later BuzzFeed and HuffPo start major downsizing?

SHEEEEEIT!

Let's see if we can get CNN and CBS next!

Spinning Gears

CMP told #2695 to send his payment information today.

They informed #4765 they had a number assigned.

There's 19,000 packets, so they're through about 19.8% of the packets for issuing a randomly generated number.

There's about 6,500 pistols in this tranche of M1911A1's, so they're through about 26% of the guns.

This is since the end of October.

If this pace continues, that means 12 more months to tell everyone their number and 9 to ship the last gun.

The pace at present is a lot faster than it was two months ago.  At that rate I'd be looking at mid-March not next week!

Where'd They Find The Money?

Just the other day the FBI was moaning that it was out of the funds that it needed to operate.

Yet it still managed to scrape enough to arrest Roger Stone for Robert Mueller?

Isn't it amazing how there's always money for some things and never any for others?

Unsurprising Bummer

It would appear Hudson Manufacturing, makers of the H9 might be in bankruptcy.

Maybe.

Possibly.

The entry on Wikipedia is not encouraging.

Even a small company with a problem free launch can just shrivel up and die.

A small company whose sole product turns out to have some major deficiencies that defy fixing with warranty service which gets slower and slower...

Just damn.

Looks like the H9 joins the R51 on the scrap pile of interesting but flawed pistols.

You Didn't Seem To Being Doing Such A Bang Up Job Before

The FBI Agents Association, which advocates for 14,000 active and former FBI Special agents, also released a report earlier this week of grievances from FBI employees, including one who said the shutdown “has eliminated any ability to operate.”

 Compared to what?

From all of the obvious crimes from the Obama Administration, I think we're finally paying a fair price for the services we've been receiving from the FBI.

I hope you fucks starve to death.  In the cold.  With an incurable and painful disease.

How Much Jet-A Is That?

It's about a 4,000 mile flight from La Guardia to Ambri.  It has a stated max range of 4,200 miles.

Economy cruise speed is 445 knots per hour.  512 miles per hour.  7.812 hours.  More because take-off, climb, descent and landing are at slower speeds.  Let's call it 8 hours to make it round.

The very fuel efficient Gulfstream IV uses 479 gallons per hour at cruise.

That will take more than 3,832 gallons to make the flight from a 4,305 gallon tank.

One reason that it will take more fuel is take-off and climb consume a much more fuel than cruise, sometimes 4 times as much per hour.

Descent and landing use less, but not zero.  It's maths and I don't have the books to look up the precise figures.

Double this amount for the return flight.

7,664 gallons of Jet-A to fly on your private jet to Davos to lecture me on global warming.

My gas guzzling 2008 Corvette averages 20 miles per gallon with the kind of driving I do on a daily basis.  I just crossed the 160k mile mark.  I bought the car in October 2007.  In eleven plus years of ownership I have just barely used as much gas a rich scold uses to fly to Switzerland to scold me.

Who's doing more damage do you think?

Let us also remember that the pollution my car shits out is done at a much lower altitude and is more subject to processes which make it a non-pollutant than spitting it out at 45k feet.

But wait!  There's more!  It's predicted that there will be over 1,500 private flights into Davos for the climate conference.  They're also noting that the trend is not towards the relatively fuel sipping GS-IV, but larger planes.

I will begin to believe global warming is a crisis when the scolds start behaving as if it is.

PS:
It's both better and worse for some of these flights.  The scolds flying in from other European locations will be flying many fewer miles; but they will be doing so where they could have taken one of their prized and low-carbon emitting trains.

As Soon As Tomorrow

CMP managed to wade through 206 requests for payment information today.

They started with #2435 a 0900 and had hit #2641 by 1500.

My number is 2764.

If they keep up this pace I will get the call tomorrow!

I'm still a bit lot short of money on hand!

It's good thing I have Hydroxyzine prescribed for panic attacks.

Do You Want Inflation?

From the Gods of the Copybook Headings file...

A Florida Constitutional Amendment to increase minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Presently the minimum wage in Florida is $8.46 an hour.

Shall we talk about those copybook headings and the concept of supply and demand?

Changing the price changes the demand.

When you make something more expensive, but not more valuable, demand falls.

This is the real core of why minimum wage laws are wrong.  They break important price signals from the market.

The "product" being purchased by the minimum wage is literally the least valuable labor available.

But, let's (incorrectly) assume that the demand for zero skill labor is inelastic and that zero jobs will be eliminated by this wage increase.

This makes the price of anything sold by a place that employs such labor more expensive.  Prices must increase to account for the extra expense. 

Now, what if the good being sold has an elastic demand?  That means, "what if the customer can skip buying it?"  It will mean that if the price goes up, demand goes down and fewer sales are made.

While $8.46 an hour for 20 hours ($169.20) doesn't seem like a lot; it's a lot more than $15 an hour for zero hours.

Zero hours is what a lot of places are offering in places that have $15 an hour minimum wages.

Disney is already paying $15 an hour.  A one day ticket for an adult is $109 to $129.  In 2010, when the minimum wage was $7.25 an hour, that same ticket was $79 to $82.  In 2000, when the minimum wage was $5.15 an hour that ticket was $46.  In 1990 the minimum wage was $3.80 an hour and it cost $29 to $31 to spend a day in Magic Kingdom.

Notice a trend?

In 1990 it cost 7.63 to 8.16 minimum wage hours for a ticket.
In 2000 it's 8.93 hours.
In 2010 it's 10.9 to 11.31 hours.
Today it's 12.88 to 15.24 hours at minimum wage or 7.27 to 8.6 hours for the base Disney pay...

It's the same product, it just costs more.

On One Hand...

On one hand I am glad that Florida Carry has decided to become a co-plaintiff in the suit to end the federal bump-stock ban.

On the other hand, even if the federal restriction is lifted; bump-stocks are still banned by law in Florida.

It makes me wonder why a Florida gun-rights group is expending capital on the issue at this level.

Even if successful it will have no impact on Florida.

More Same Caliber

Remington 341A Sportsmaster in .22 Short, Long and Long Rifle.  Grampa's vermin slayer from 1938.

Colt Challenger in .22 Long Rifle from 1953.

Nope

I'm busy on Thursday evenings, so I was watching The Orville streamed from Fox TV's web page.

They have decided that I need to prove I'm paying someone to watch TV before I can do that now.

If this proof would lead to a commercial free experience on their stream, I might consider it; but it doesn't.

Fox, there are advertisers paying you to get me to watch their ads while your show runs.  If you don't let me watch the show, I won't be exposed to the ads and your advertisers don't get a chance to influence my purchase decisions.

What Fox has missed in this is that television shows are supposed to be entertainment, not work.  They've made viewing their show work.

To get me to work you have to pay me.  The value of this show is below my personal minimum wage.

Congratulations!  One less viewer.

It Does Feel Good In The Hand

The local pawn has a Hudson H9.

It does feel very good in the hand and has an excellent feeling trigger with a dry fire.

I can see why someone would want one.

It just feels right.

I find it telling that the boys at InRange have both switched back to Glock when using a modern 9mm in their 2-gun videos.

The Very Definition Of Bad Day

Deer Hunter in Clearwater has this fine example of a S&W Model 29.

Chuck, the owner of the store, says the owner of the gun dropped it off and said, "Keep it!"

The gun's owner told a story that when it'd blown a buddy of his says, "I'd wondered where those Ruger only loads had gotten to!  Sorry."

Pandering To My Readers

The same caliber rifle/pistol...  What is the proper term?  Battery?  Brace?

Anyways we found this lovely at the local pawn today:

In case you can't read the caliber on the ammo box.

It does mate well with the Auto-Ordinance M1 Carbine!

The carbine is just a bit more than double the weight of the revolver.  The revolver feels heavier in the hand though.

The Blackhawk is a 1969 made gun, which is the first year of actual production in this chambering with only one .30 Carbine being made in 1968.  This is amusing because Willard and I were just talking about how C&R is a rolling 50-year age.  This revolver will be C&R sometime this year.

Anti-Catholic

The Democrats are always for it before they are against it.

I remember just the other day when they were telling me that one could be Catholic and still be a fine citizen and be trusted to separate their religion from their politics.

Then Ted Kennedy died...

Goodness But We're A Generous Lot

I'm seeing business after business offering discounts and deals for furloughed government employees and their families.

Americans are a generous people.

Who else would offer to help a class of folks who normally only exist by, nearly literally, stealing the food from our tables and money from our pockets?  People who, after that theft, return nothing of value to society at all.

We can tell their worth by how their absence from their jobs is affecting our daily lives.

I Wonder If He Still Reads Here

Former friend Anglave became a former friend because he'd become someone who argued relentlessly in bad faith.

The specific conversation was about global warming, but it'd been long in coming.

This article reminds me so much of how he argued.

Particularly:

This concept ties into Artificial Intelligence efforts, which have yet to deal with a very specific problem. Software may be written that is very dynamic, that can learn. You can show the software, for instance, 5,000 pictures of deciduous trees, and eventually it learns (to a reasonable level of accuracy) that which is probably a tree. But then you show it a coniferous tree, and it will not recognize it as also being a tree. Now you must show thousands of additional pictures, and tell it these are all trees. Yet, show a toddler who can barely talk a picture of one tree, and he can usually make the intellectual leap. He grasps quickly the essence of what tree is.

The AI lacks the ability to extrapolate the essence of a thing. It’s a serious challenge in software development. Leftists pretend to lack this ability in order to score points. They want you to show them 5,000 Burger King hamburgers before admitting that this is fundamentally an American food. So I am withdrawing even the charity of suggesting they are stupid. They aren’t. Toddlers can do this, and they can’t? Give me a break. They know full well what they are doing. They are pretending to the stupidity if called out on their lies.

 It's not just you have to prove it's a tree to a ridiculous standard, it's that you have to prove it's a tree over and over and over.  Having to start from scratch from base principles every time any one of several topics comes up, and there's no avoiding those topics because they can't wait to bring them up.

Another irritant is the claim that they don't know much about a given topic, but sure do have copious links at hand to smother any statement you have to make on it.

More than once I took the time to read all of those links and the sub-links and found that despite the wide "consensus" they all, ultimately, led to a single source for their conclusion.

A source got presented as being multiple sources because many news outlets repeated it.

I am well rid of "friends" like that.

PS: He's also the first person of my acquaintance who gave me a lecture on why I shouldn't be offended when they were being offensive and refused to apologize for it.  Sadly, not the last.

Total Eclipse Of The Moon

Grainy as shit because lots of cropping and long exposure; but it captured the blood red!

Picture it was cropped from:

f/50, ISO 80, 5 sec exposure, zoomed all the way out max optical of 20x.

I Think Weaponsman Was Where I First Saw This Predicted

USAF 3D metal prints F-22A part.

Additive machining is going to be more and more mainstream as the technology gets better and cheaper.

The precision and resolution will get better, the costs will come down.

There are huge, fallow markets for all manner of no-longer-in-stock parts.

Especially cars.

A 3D laser scan to export dimensions and a printer with the right material and that dash piece on your Corvette is replaceable!  Get GM to do it and you won't even lose NCRS points!

Like metal injection molding, there will be parts that this means of production will not be appropriate.  But there's gobs and gobs of places where it's just fine.

There's ALCOHOL In Beer?

Vishnu Viswanath, 29, and his wife, Meenakshi Moorthy, 30, were found to have ethyl alcohol in their systems prior to falling 800 feet from Taft Point on Oct. 25, the results show. The substance is found in beer, wine and other drinks.
--Thanks Fox News!

 Why am I always the last one to know?

Before You Start Tinkering

Men must be made into women. Women are the perfect working model; men are the defective deviation from the proper functioning of the model.

h/t Ace

I hate to break it to all the people trying to tinker with a system they don't understand and constantly reveal their lack of understanding by making sweeping claims...

Sexual dimorphism is a proven species survival strategy.

Elimination of the masculine values will have unintended consequences we don't have metrics to measure.  We will regret doing it.

The good thing is there's been instant push-back for the Gillette ad and there's going to be a push against the APA "ruling".

In effect they're conflating the shorter lifespan of the male of the species with masculinity.

What they're missing but hard while condemning stoicism is that is the core of restraint that's part and parcel of being a man.

Eliminate the stressor of self restraint and men will become the brutes that we're constantly accused of being by people who couldn't spell dimorphism, let alone define it.

People Forget This

With nearly 160k miles on it was time to flush the brake lines of the 12 year old brake fluid.

Corvette John had a brand new pressure bleeder that needed the new knocked off it, so we flushed my lines at his house.

Look how CLEAN his garage is compared to mine!

The pedal feels much better than before!

I owe him lunch for his help.

Zero Dark Thirty

Based on their activity, people who can afford exotic sports cars are vampires.  As soon as the sun came up, they were all gone!

I went with Corvette John to the DuPont Registry Cars & Coffee in Largo.  To get a parking place in the domestics lot you have to arrive before 0600.

The show officially runs from 0700 to 0900, but pretty much everyone is gone before 0800.

The police were thick on my drive home, but I had the cruise set for the limit so I got to laugh at the people pulled over.

I also saw this fine example of Corvette heritage on my way home.

I hear there was snow up north...

I had my top off for the drive home!

Clean For 30 Minutes

Black cars look best for the 30 minutes immediately after waxing.

You'd never know she's just shy of 160,000 miles would you?

I even remembered to shine up the engine compartment a bit.

Oh Yeah That Was The Drug War

How did the banks obtain the power to peer into our purchases far enough to tell if we're buying guns?

The Government essentially eliminated anonymous transactions to stop drug dealers from putting their money into the banks.

To do that, they needed to see where the money came from and where it went.

Every penny.

Ever notice how hard it is to get an actual paycheck anymore?  How easy it is to get direct deposit?

But hey!  It was worth it because nobody can buy drugs now!

Right?

Oh wait...

.30-06 Airsoft?

The owner of one of the local gun shops presented Willard with this box:

Inside the box is:

What are they you ask?

.30-06 indoor training ammunition?

One forum I've found claims the SEC on the box means "securite" and that makes this riot control ammo!

Eeep!  Since other posters are talking about what that little plastic bullet will penetrate at close ranges.

As far as penetration goes, it's pretty much the polar opposite of...

...Cartridge, Caliber 30, Armor Piercing, M2!

Every Car Guy Knows

The reason I don't own a 10mm ACP gun is because of hard experience with 10mm and wrenching.

You go to the tool box and there's no 10mm socket.  Not in 3/8ths, not in 1/4.

Most of the time you can find the combination wrench after a search.

Now, why would I want a gun that's just going to go missing when I need it?

Actually Nancy...

“The date of the State of the Union is not a sacred date. It’s not constitutionally required."
-- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (CA-12)

 The State of the Union is required by The Constitution.

Article II, Section 3, requiring the President to periodically "give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

She's right that there's no date specified, but it does need to be done.

It would appear that it gets done at The President's discretion.

Wait For It

How long before the people who're insisting we should trust the government will tell us this report (link) cannot be trusted?

Once again, I notice that a government report on the "gun problem" says what we gun owners have been saying all along.

It's like we're experts.

To go all Godwin...

If you want to learn about Judaism do you ask a Nazi or a Rabbi?

Caliber Matching

In The Old West it was relatively common to see someone's rifle and revolver in the same caliber.

You can do the same thing today!

Willard's got a Rossi model 92 in .44 Magnum and a couple of .44 Revolvers.

The Lovely Harvey has a model 92 and a Peacemaker clone in .357 Magnum.

Marvyn is eyeing a 92 in .357 and we're sure to guilt cajole him into a .357 revolver of some stripe as well.  Perhaps an Astra just to be really strange?

Me?

I want my brace to be in .45 Colt.  The problem is what lever gun will go best with my SAA and Anaconda?

Model 73's and 92's are readily available.  So are clones of the old Colt Burgess.  Marlin 1894?  Maybe a Spencer?  Or a Lightning pump-action...

Or go all modern and get it in 9mm?  A 9mm CAR-15 sounds like fun.

There is a plethora of choices and I have GURPS stats for all of them...

It's Insulting

The Comic Con ban on weaponry insults me on two levels, but since it's shared with all gun grabbing nonsense, I decided to make a separate post.

The first insult from gun grabbers is the impugn that I am a criminal unless I can prove to their satisfaction that I am not.

The second is the assumption that nobody can be trusted with weapons inside the event.  Except that's not true, bet there's armed security and genuine state sanctified police on duty there.

Something else that bubbles up from gun-free zoning is there's never a guarantee of the customer's safety and quite often something in the attendance agreement that absolves the venue and event from liability from any harm done to you while attending.

Why should they worry that an attendee could be mugged, raped or murdered in the parking lot or restrooms when they're absolved from the repercussions?

The same thing applies to going to the courthouse or post office...

Gun Free Zone

The Central Florida Comic Con don't want gunowner's filthy lucre.

So I shan't give them any.

I am sick of this shit.

Do I Wanna Get Back On This Treadmill

I've long been a fan of flight sims.

I've spent many long hours buzzing the virtual towers.

Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, several iterations of Falcon, Navy Fighters, Strike Fighters...  Microsoft's Flight Simulator in lots of versions...

The bug is starting to bite again for DCS or Digital Combat Simulator.

Literally "The Bug" because the F/A-18C is one of the modules.  The F-14A and F-14B are very close to being released.  It also has something of a sim unicorn for me, the SAAB AJS-37 Viggen.  If it had the F-4 Phantom and F-8 Crusader I would already have sold a kidney to get it.

It looks absolutely stunning in the videos I've been watching of others playing it.

It has a lot more fidelity than Strike Fighters because it's a study sim instead of a survey sim.

Getting DCS would mean a new machine with a lot more smoke.  I think I'd also want to get some virtual reality in the form of an Occulus Rift.  The reviews are consistent about how much they improve situational awareness.

My current stick, throttle and pedals will serve, but I'd be wanting an expensive upgrade to those in short order I am sure.  If for no other reason than they're starting to wear out.

Picking Up Speed

The CMP has become more efficient or something.

Before the holidays they were running about 80 notifications a week for payment.

The first two weeks after were running about 140 a week.

This past week was 240.

If they keep up this pace, I am going to need my funding together a lot sooner than expected.

Two weeks from now instead of almost two months.

Even worse, they're hitting people's cards in two or three days after notification, so the funds would have to be deposited before the call to be sure the bank acknowledges the deposit.

It's getting exciting.

Annual Occurance

Every year around here the power company comes out with a crew of men to cut the trees away from their power lines.

It makes for some really ugly trees in the utility easement along the back of the yard.

Why do they do this?

Because we live in HurricaneLand!

We don't get even so much as a tropical storm every year, let alone a real live hurricane.

But if they know that if the power isn't flowing, the meters aren't turning and if the meters don't turn the money stops flowing.

It's pure rational self interest for them to keep the grid maintained and up in rather extreme wind conditions.

Doing this maintenance also absolves them from negligence should critical infrastructure lose power.

Critical infrastructure like an assisted care living facility (ACLF) with people depending on that electricity for their very lives.  Air conditioning being the most important life support system for a Florida summer and the elderly.

Because even the most well designed and maintained electrical grid can sometimes succumb to hurricane strength winds; ACLF's are required to have back-up power generation on site.

A couple of facilities didn't and are having their testicles sued off as I type.  People died.

Something else the clearing of trees and vegetation from the lines does is keeps them from sparking.  We don't normally have the kind of dry weather that leads to this sparking causing fires; but it seldom matters because the lines are kept clear.

Our rampant wildfires from a few years ago were traced to heat lightning, not power lines.  We've had a couple recently from campfires getting out of hand.

Remember how this clearing makes for ugly trees?

Something we don't have in Florida is any traction whatsoever for saving the appearance, or even existence, of a tree that's encroaching on a power line.

We also have extensive fire breaks cut into our wilderness to keep a fire from spreading too far.

In 2007 this system was sorely taxed, but it did contain the damage.

All of the above is why Floridians have scant sympathy for California's fire problem.  Not only are they doing nothing to keep the fires from happening, they are actively making the situation worse by preventing the prevention action.

Deliberate Misinformation

Chili isn't from Mexico, though I often attribute it to Mexico on purpose.

It's from a part of Texas that's predominately Mexican rather than Anglo.

It's original form didn't have beans.  Beans just don't grow there.

But if you're going to get all "traditional" and demand that chili not have beans because they didn't use beans in the 1850's...  Your base stock had better include suet.  And dried beef.

Chili was poor folk food.  It's got simple ingredients that aren't prime, marketable cuts.

Lots of staple foods start here.

Starting with fresh meat, skipping suet, adding tomatoes and beans... allowed.

My grandmother would object to all manner of things which are called spaghetti in restaurants today.  She refused to call MY spaghetti sauce "spaghetti".  Why?  Meat.  To her, spaghetti sauce was meatless (also distinct from the similarly meatless marinara).  But she did say it was very tasty and allowed that I could call it anything I wanted.

There's a story there too.

HER sauce wasn't spaghetti sauce to her neighbors back in the old country.  Why?  Because her sauce was associated with a different noodle than spaghetti with them.  They both made the same sauce, but used different pasta and thus used a different name.

The thing is, both my Grandma and Texas have lost this naming war.

When you ask someone to describe chili, you're going to get a bean and meat dish not a base sauce with some meat in it.  The fact that you have to say "Texas chili" to describe a base chili sauce without beans or tomatoes says everything about how Texas has lost this war.  Don't feel bad, Texas, Italy lost the war over what pizza is too.

Texas takes far too many things to religious fervor levels that really don't matter.

Brewing Vids

Please to click on this finely crafted link!

Brewing

Today I'm going down to Big Top Brewing Company to watch/assist a friend make a one-off batch of beer!

Should be informative.

Rate Reduced

Two things.



First, a bumpstock is a rate reducer for Mr Miculek.

Second, he's more accurate without a rear sight than most of us are with optics.

Picking Up Speed

CMP has, week over week, managed to speed up from 80 requests for payment to around 160 in the past week.

If they keep at the 160 a week pace then I will get the call in early Feb.

It's getting exciting!

And scary.

No reply from my inquiry about finding my old issue pistol.  I can't find it, but I recall they once said there would be no requests for serials in the 1911 sale.  C'est la vie if so.

Barring getting 1164935, I'd be pleased as punch to get a Colt frame, Remington-Rand slide like my old gun was.  There've been some pictures posted of some matching Colts that put the condition of Marv's to shame.

He's indicated he'd be jealous if I got one of those.