A Plane Plan

 If I were to win one of those massive lottery jackpots, it would be far simpler and cheaper for me to just eat a .30-06 round than to buy an airplane.

Despite a lifelong fascination with aviation and airplanes, I lack the nature to be a pilot for reals.

I'm the person you read about in the aviation magazines who made a series of simple errors that individually would be fine, but collectively lead to a smouldering crater.

What sets me apart from those people is the realization that I am one of them long before even talking to a flight school.

It made me very sad to realize this about myself, I am fascinated with planes still.

Of Course It Matters

There is a 0.9 ounce difference in weight between the Triple-K magazine (right) and a genuine Beretta (left) magazine for a Beretta M1951.

Loaded that is 0.3 lb. (Triple-K) vs 0.4 lb. (Beretta).

The Beretta magazine seems to work slightly better.  It's worked for a whole box without failures.  The Triple-K has a failure to extract about once a box.

Not sure why the magazine affects extraction, but it's real with this pistol.

I've Said It Before

There are between 1,000 and 2,000 people who stop by my little corner of the internet every day.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my drivel.

There are, maybe, 2 to 3 comments every third post.

I nearly always recognize the person commenting.  There are a, maximum, of ten people who comment here and, for the most part, are polite and follow the rules listed in the right sidebar well.

A couple have decided to be dicks lately and will be finding their comments aren't being published.

If they rage quit my blog...

Between 1,000 and 2,000 people will stop by my little corner of the internet every day.

There will be 2-3 comments every third post.

How can I be so sanguine about this?

Because I have shed commenters and readers before.  I've been at this for almost twenty years.

Wanna know a secret?

I'm not doing it for the audience or the feedback.

I'm doing it for me.

This is my release valve.

In the beginning I didn't even blog where I could accumulate much of an audience.  I was shocked that 30 people stopped by my LiveJournal on a weekly basis.

If everyone reading this stopped, I would still be writing and posting and I will until Google pulls the plug.

You're Free To Go Read Something Else You Know

Dear negative commenters:

You are getting exactly what you are paying for here.

If you find it's not to your liking, go the fuck away.

Do not pass go.

Do not collect $200.

Do not let the door hit you in the ass.

Because your comments aren't going leave moderation.

You want to sponsor this blog, plans start at $4,000 a week.

When you're paying this amount or higher, you get a say in what I write and how I write it.

Until then...

You get what you get and it's what I want to say and how I want to say it.

Even if I say it poorly or if I'm totally off base or wrong.

Tough shit if you don't like it or have a different opinion from me.

Perhaps you should get your own blog and castigate me there instead of trying to do so in the comments.

Because all you're getting from me, from now on, is, "oh it's THEM," and sent to the spam folder.

Bittersweet

While I enjoy reading about liberal bastions suffering under their sanctuary city policies now that the invading aliens are being shipped directly to them.

I am still upset that the aliens are here.

I also marvel that these same liberal bastions can't make the connection between what they're going through NOW and what the non-liberal states on the borders have been dealing with for decades.

Did He Really Just...

In the Putin interview:

Poland started WW2 because they left Hitler no other choice.

Yes, he really said that.

Then in the next breath he says that Ukraine left him no other choice.

BLINK BLINK BLINK

Putin just equated himself with Hitler?

THE Hitler.

Wow!

Thank you, Mr Carlson for letting him run at the mouth.

PS: I heard from a friend who has a friend in Russia that their rumor mill says Puti-Baby died of a heart attack six months ago and the FSB has been using body double meat-puppets to run the show since.

Beltalowda!

Past Its Useful Service Life

The driver's side mount was definitely in an advanced state of decay.

L to R:  Driver's side, new replacement, passenger's side.

The driver's side being this bad and feeling it from the right side makes sense because the sway bar's job is to transfer from the loaded side to the unloaded.

I will give Holden credit for making the nuts visible, but doing the 1/16th turn thing is irritating because they routed the positive battery cable right where I wanted my wrench to turn; on both sides!

I'm taking a break to eat before I put the wheels back on and test drive.

They Are Beyond Needing Their Wings

 

Look, PETA, if you're going to try this, at least be serious.

Wings are what's left over when the rest of the bird is butchered and divvied up for sale.

They were the least cut and often were difficult to unload, so they were often the cheapest poultry available.

There are a lot of poor people whose only meat would be those wings.

Now that we live in times of plenty, wings are a treat.

But the important take-away is:  The chicken is fucking dead.  It'd be dead if nobody ate chicken wings on Stupid Bore Sunday.  Wings do not drive the chicken meat industry.

WTAF

The spirit of Aloha trumps the Constitution?

OK, you stupid fucking wastes of oxygen, you have literally cited religious belief as a means to deny 2nd amendment rights.

LITERALLY cited a State religion in the face of both the 1st and 14th amendments.

This is definitely something already decided by the supreme court.

I keep thinking that America needs to start invading all these defacto seceded states and force them back to the rule of law.

Another period of reconstruction would do them good.

My carpet bag is ready!

PS: In America, there is no such thing as Hawai'i.  It's just Hawaii.  Anyone who can't accept that should be disbarred because this is, literally, the legal spelling of the last state.  Push it hard enough and we'll go back to calling it The Sandwich Islands.

Out Of The Way

Here's the passenger side sway bar bushing:

A little further back:

Even farther...

Can you still see it?

The rear nut looks pretty easy from the wheel well.  The front one looks easier from the top through the hood after I yank the intake trunk.

Inaccessible

When I installed the fog lights, I saw there was a connector that was unplugged.

This was the bumper harness connector.  It runs power to the side marker lights.

I plugged it back in, but it seemed like it didn't get latched.

Today, while tearing the car apart to start my strut R&R, I decided to see if the reason the side markers weren't working was the bulb.

With the fender liner almost out of the way you can reach around the horn and get at the plug for the bulb.

I fished out the bulb and discovered that it was fine.  A 9-volt confirmed it.

This is when I notice that plug was unplugged again!

Plug it back in, no click on the latch, but the lights work now.

There's no way to get two hands on it, and it's not going home with what force I can exert with my feeble arthritic left paw.  The only paw I can get on it.

Removing the horn creates a clear path to the connector, and thus I can get a pair of channel-locks on it!

Just a little pressure and it goes, "click!"

Hurrah!  Now my lights work!

Now, back to the struts...

To make sure that it really is the strut I start grabbing things and seeing if they're loose.

Passenger side inventory:

Forward lower control arm?  Firm.

Rear lower control arm?  Firm.

Tie rods, inner and outer?  Firm.

Sway bar end links?  Firm at the top, but bottom is loose!

"Odd," I think, "I just changed those."

Shake it again and see it's not the end link that's loose.

The entire front sway bar is moving left to right four inches (10.16 cm for you metric motherfuckers)!

This does a better job of explaining why the steering wheel shakes in right turns only.

New bushings on order and we'll see if that solves it without changing the struts.

I Can't Be The Only One

I'm reading that NBC is considering cancelling Saturday Night Live. 

“The show hasn’t been funny in years,” remarked a high-ranking NBC executive, who wished to remain anonymous.

I agree.

I found that stopped being funny about the same time I became old enough to stay up late enough to watch it openly.

For me that also coincides with the original cast leaving.

I don't think I'm alone in the discovery that it's much less funny when you're not thwarting your parents and your bedtime.

Which really shows the demographic they've been aiming for all these years...

Mojo Nixon Has Left The Building

Article

It seems really wrong that he preceded Don Henley. 

I leave you with the Dead Milkmen.

You Can Tell From The Photo

In my hood, the houses are close together side to side.

But we have big back yards.

The neighboring hoods have wider lots, with more space between the houses.

And almost no back yard.

They get bigger houses too.

I think I prefer my smaller house with a big yard to the other option.

Get Well Soon

If you've been wondering why Girl Genius has not updated since Friday.

It's been reported that Phil Foglio has tweeted that Kaja needed emergency gall bladder surgery.

It is also reported that it went well and she's recovering nicely.

Get well soon Mrs Foglio!

Streisand Effect Inbound

Taylor Swift, a known dancing monkey, is upset that the publicly available ADS-B data is publicly available and that someone is making it publicly available.

That someone is publishing the movement of her private jet.

Ms Swift, you can avoid being tracked like this by simply not flying.

This someone isn't tracking ME.

Simple.  Easy.  Affordable!

I didn't even need a lawyer.

You might even shake it off by flying commercial.

They have no way of knowing what plane you're on and, thus, no idea which ADS-B signal to track.

Hulk Mode Walkabout Prevention

All of The Boy's exits now go into the fenced in area of our property!

Secondary feature:  The neighbor's trash pile will stay on their side of the property line.

Tertiary feature:  It's astounding how much this cuts the light bounce from the other house onto our wall.  This might be worth a couple of degrees come summer. 

One thing I am baffled by:  Round fence posts are $24.  Pressure treated 4x4's are $9.  The square posts are better for attaching the panels, yet are cheaper.

Update: We're leaving the chain link between the back yards so that we may look through the neighbor's yard and see Harvey's parent's yard.

Combat ≠ War

AuricTech Shipyards has commented that there's a lot of people who've honorably served in combat whom are nearing retirement, but they are not the people who are almost all gone I was talking about.

Despite sending our troops into combat, we did not actually go to war.

We did something that is included when you do war, but we didn't conclude it.

Fighting, and even winning, battles is only part of the whole thing.

We never defeated the enemy.

We won battles but never vanquished our opponents.

And we've been doing it since Korea. 

The bad guys know they just need to wait until we get bored and head home.  We snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Which is why I'm an advocate of killing instead of humanitarian efforts.

Again, when you find the Curtis LeMay quote I'm coyly referring to, a lot becomes clear.

Oh God

Watching a video of Mike Rowe interviewing Neal McDonough.

Mr McDonough mentioned his conversion to Catholicism and they chatted about religion for a while.

The conversation made me think of a couple of things.

First was related to McDonough playing Satan in an upcoming role.

God is all forgiving, right?

What if Satan truly repented and God had forgiven him?

But then The Word had not made it to us humans...

There might be an interesting bit of fiction in that.

Next was realizing that religion was a much bigger part of most American lives in 1896 and I'll have to account for it in Sabers and...

Plus, it reminded me of dealing with religion in fantasy games.

Most of them have polytheistic religions.

That struck me as odd since the feudal and medieval settings are all monotheistic.

When there's clerics, and God is real...

We don't need no stinking FAITH!  We have genuine miracles performed every day by the devout.

I wonder the effect that would have on sin.

God says, "don't do that, or else," and the "or else" is provably happening...

FuzzyGeff came up with a great punishment for a member of the clergy who'd used their position for personal gain and God was onto the idea of a deathbed confession (and why would God be fooled by such?)!

Granting them eternal life until they've atoned for their sins and visiting them with all manner of shit until they got to work on that.  No eternal health, just life.

Love To Watch Her Strut

Chasing the next most likely cause of a steering wheel shake.

Everything I've done has made it better, but...

First was the strut mounts.  A common failure point because they were originally designed for the much lighter Catera.

Then I moved to the tie rods.  First outer, then inner.

Then the sway bar end links.

Soon, the struts.

If that don't cure it, it'll be one of the control arms which have passed the "shake real hard" test.

Thanks Joe!

24 feet of fence with posts is $350 and I still have to put it up myself.

I did twice that length in the back yard for less under a different president seven years ago.

We've decided to put a fence between us and the north neighbor so their trash stays on their property.

Simpler

Watching "war" on the news appears to have a lot of people confused.

Kids, you've never seen one.

The last people in America who have are almost all gone.

I am talking about just killing those who attack us and our interests.

No building churches.

No digging wells.

No delivery of humanitarian supplies.

No half assed attempts to make a government friendly to us.

Just blowing up everything and killing everyone until our people and interests are secure.

No sorting out the innocent from the guilty.

Don't fucking care any more.

I did direct you all at Curtis LeMay, he has the pertinent quote.

If The Hague complains, we can blow that useless appendage up too.

If we're going to Empire, then let's EMPIRE.

I've long held that if someone hates you no matter what you do, then do shit they will hate.

America Fuck Yeah

 

Seems I'm not the only one using rods to the hogshead!

I Find Your Terms Acceptable

 "The US-British coalition’s bombing of a number of Yemeni provinces will not change our position, and we affirm that our military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us," Houthi spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti wrote on X.

Curtis LeMay wrote on this.

Have fun sacrificing!

Tail Codes

 

Apathy

Gun content has been light because I've just been shooting.

No new guns and new ammo is not very interesting for photos or conversation.

I'm getting a little faster and the groups are staying about the same.

Local range has enforced the "no photography" rule pretty hard lately too.

They are not explaining why the went from no enforcement to strict enforcement either.

There's a story they're not telling, I am sure.

Harvey likes her new glasses and is doing much better!

I watched all the content from SHOT and hardly a thing twitched my needles.

I am braced for the BM-59 to be totally wrong.  Manufacturers need to figure out that the nostalgia bug demands accurate reproductions with all features.

Brownell's can give a class on this with their, discontinued, Retro line of complete rifles.  Too many farbs.

I am not so much apathetic as content with my collection.

A Wizard Did It

The nice thing about the older games, and even 3e GURPS was you could just declare an effect and that's all you needed.

Technically, that's still all I need to do.

But I set myself to learning how to do it as if I was making a character when I make these beast conversions.

It's been needed a couple of times because some of them are races, not monsters.

If you can define it, you can assign points, you can make a character from it.

As far back as early 3e FuzzyGeff made a fox with human intelligence.  A couple of cats and a skunk too, if I am not mistaken.

Mikhail made a human intelligence horse.

I did pseudo dragons.

It's fun to go off page.

Spinning Wrench Philosophy

I am not entirely opposed to hiring people to handle shit I cannot do.

I don't have, and cannot afford some critical tools.

I don't have an alignment rack.

I don't have the machines to mount or balance tires.

I don't have a paint booth.

I don't have a dyno.

The people I rail against are the folks who don't do anything at all.

They don't change oil.

They don't trouble shoot.

They don't make repairs.

They don't do mods.

There's too many people in that category.

I want to like them, but they keep wanting to act like their paying someone else is the same as my getting my hands dirty. 

Watching the people entered into the Sick Week Drags rammed it home.  Those people did their own shit because they couldn't take it to a shop when they bend a rod and need to be at the next stop in 12 hours.

Cat V Clone

The AT-TE dismounts from the 501st have remounted their vehicle to protect them from Shadow.

Some required rescue from the prison camp under the bed she was operating in direct contravention of the Geneva Accords.

Fair Winds Greef Karga

Carl Weathers has shuffled off this mortal coil.

I enjoyed his work to the end, and I will miss it.

He's also the rare actor who portrayed a character that I went out of my way to get a minifig of.

Road Rage

I was involved in a road rage incident yesterday.

I went around someone who was not noticing the way was clear after giving them a toot of the horn to get them to notice.

They pulled up on me and asked if that was really necessary.

When I replied that, yes, it was; they went off on me.

I am a nasty bald cracker with a shitty car.

I confirmed with the, black, manager of the tobacco store that was my destination that "cracker" is, indeed, a racist phrase.

Two days into black history month I have been shit on by a bigot.

By the way, fucknut, nobody who drives a Hyundai gets to say that anyone else has a shitty car.

Also, I was assured that this sort of thing would result in someone getting shot if conceal carry was made legal, if conceal carry without a permit was allowed... etc.

Thanks War Thunder

War Thunder has been a great resource for making Twilight: 2000 GURPS stats.

The best part is it's a game being used for a game.  The accuracy just needs to be plausible.

The M8 Buford suffered a bit...

But it's nice to have a picture showing the ammo storage.

If We're Gonna Do This

If we're going to talk about black history to the exclusion of all else in February, let's talk about black people who are worth emulating.

I give you George Washington Carver, fellow transient resident of Ames, Iowa.

I first learned of him in 4th grade when I lived in the 'burbs of Chicago.

The focus was all the stuff you could do with peanuts that Carver had developed.

Somehow appropriate, given that a peanut farmer was president at the time.

There's No Such Thing

History is history.

You cannot tell black history in the USA without the white history that overlaps on the Venn diagram.

Likewise, you can't tell white history without the black history.

It is intertwined.

It is insuperable.

It does not matter if you're happy with it.

It is.

Spicy

Shadow is hiding and growling at us.

I remember when I got my shots in basic and I was very sore.

I think she's doing the same.

Poor kitty.

Prisoner

 

"Not a prisoner, I'm a free cat!"

Shadow has been to the vet for the first time in her entire life!

Absolutely perfect health.  Got her shots and a timeline to get spayed.

Subtle Mod

Since The Beast is a flex-fuel car, I decided I needed a Flex-Fuel™ badge.

There's a funny associated with this mod.

Lemme know if you figure it out in the comments.

Who Knew?

If you're going to access your NAS box, you have to be connected to the same network it's connected to.

Learn something new everyday!

I knew this, but didn't notice that my laptop had decided to connect to the OTHER wifi when there was a connection hiccup.

I don't have the knowing to tell it to use one over the other when both are available and to disconnect from one to the other when the preferred one is down but returns after the machine connects to the secondary.

If You're Going To Have A Hot Rod...

There's two paths to owning a hot rod.

One requires a ton of money.

This path involves hiring someone to do all the work and you call them when something goes wrong.

The second path still requires money, but not near so much, and buying tools.

When you're on this path, you get on a forum or group when something goes wrong and ask questions of the accumulated experience.

But, remember what I said about tools?

With a modern, computer controlled, engine, a scan TOOL is...  For fuck's sake tool is in the gorram name.

If you're in limp mode and the check engine light is on, you're going to need the codes the computer is throwing to have a decent chance of fixing it.

The service manual is another, expensive, tool.

It includes several if/then tables to get you from that code to fixed.

The code might be "I cannot read this sensor" and the sensor might just be OK.  It could be a wire.  It could be the computer.

If you say that you replaced the sensor(s) and still have the codes I am going to say that you didn't troubleshoot the problem very well.

When you get angry at people asking detailed questions about your problem, including asking what codes your code scanner read...

I recommend you change to the first path of hot rod ownership.  You're obviously not well suited to the second.