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The only two science fiction movies or TV shows I can think of that used realistic and plausible ships are 2001: A Space Odyessy and 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
Neither is what I'd call an action film.
Am I the only one upset that we don't even have HAL, let alone manned vessels out to Jupiter?
Aue aue.
There's a few times when what quiets the...
Stuff.
Requires self medication in the form of alcohol.
While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done
I know what that means to me.
Does it mean that to you too?
Do people not understand when you try to explain?
Me too.
I know people who got locked in their school locker whom would beat the shit out of the current generation.
That does not speak well of the current generation.
An engine builder mentioned in the Facebook thread where I posted my oil pressure adventure that the numbers I measured were what they were looking for on a new engine with a standard pressure oil pump!
Huzzah!
Dianne "Turn 'Em All In" Feinstein is dead.
Good.
Pity it took so damn long.
I hope she suffered.
I hope the religious types are correct and there's a Hell for her suffering to continue, forever.
File under: "Stop liking things I don't like!"
Found a thread at the wretched hive of scum and villainy known as Arfcom asking what the point of owning a Browning High Power was.
Other than I like it?
The only real "problem" with one compared to a more modern design is that it's heavy. But it's not THAT heavy. Same weight at a Beretta M9, and just 0.3 lb. heavier than a Glock 17.
People forget that extra mass helps with recoil.
Lots of people complaining about the feel of the grip. Can't agree with them here, mine fits like it was made for my hand. I think JMB and I have the same hands, I've seen this with his designs before.
The difference in capacity is mitigated by there being flush 15-round magazines for them (and cheaper and more available than the original 13-rounders too).
Hammer bite is real, and mine bites me. It's not that big a deal. Take. The. Pain.
Some stuff that didn't come up were the sights being products of their time. There's not a lot you can do about the with early through Mk.2 guns; unless you completely disregard future collectors and have the slide milled for dovetails.
Have you ever noticed that the venerable High Power is nearly the same size as a Glock 19 which everyone loves? Actually, it's smaller than a 19 because it's slimmer.
The trigger is kinda bad, but it's nothing you can't get used to and shoot good groups with.
The magazine disconnect is irritating, but it's easily removed and improves the trigger.
Would I carry one?
Qualified, "no." I bought one to have one and have never invested in any holsters. You are not unarmed with one and I've carried older designs.
Do I carry one?
No. I carry a souless plastic fantastic.
But that's not the point of owning a classic!
Life would be very dull if I pared things down to just what was needful.
Prolly only have about three guns here too.
The past week has been traumatic for a friend of Harvey's.
They got evicted from the house they'd been renting for the past 17 years.
The place they'd rented in a whirlwind turns out to not be owned by the person they paid and signed a lease with.
The cops, upon informing them of this, checked their ID and there was a bench warrant for her arrest!
If it weren't for bad luck, they'd have no luck at all?
Well...
Here's were I get to be judgemental.
For 15 of those 17 years it was her mother, not she or her husband, paying the bills because Mom inherited her husbands pension.
That pension did not transfer a second time.
For the past year, their landlord has been telling them they want out of the rental property game. The friend begged them for more time and got a year's reprieve.
For the past year and a half, it also appears that she was borrowing from Peter to pay Paul and had not paid the rent for months.
SIGH.
So they were evicted with cause.
They also squandered that reprieve and weren't even looking for a new place. Having more time to shop might have allowed them to avoid getting defrauded by a fake landlord.
But the real kicker is what the arrest warrant was.
Writing bad checks.
In Florida, a bad check for more than $150 is a 3rd degree Felony.
When her husband asked about this when she called from jail, she thought it was much older than it was. That kind of says that she's floated checks before to me.
Yikes! That can be up to five years and $1,000 in fines.
Even worse, her husband discovered that their bank account is overdrawn by $70 more than his check. Not only did he not have the money to pay for bail, the paycheck he was expecting this afternoon is already gone.
Harvey gave them the $180 for the bondsman and she should be home by now...
A home they have no right to reside in. With no money to secure a different place.
Even when I was couch surfing, I don't think I'd gotten this far down the hole.
I am watching two sides of a fight where the fighters are not directly engaged in dialog.
They are talking about each other.
One side is taking screen shots to support their position.
The other is making claims without any substantiation.
It definitely skews which side I'm believing.
Not that my belief matters a bit.
The side showing screen shots is every bit as guilty of some of their accusations as the person they're slamming.
They're just demanding you be in lock step with their tune than the other guy.
And that shoves me back to neutrality.
Old metal guns have soul.
So far, I've not gotten an old gun that won't shoot as well as a new one.
But souless guns are more durable and lighter.
One of the best things about America is not having to choose one over the other for the collection.
You can own them all if you've got the money.
The Beast doesn't have an oil pressure gauge.
It has an oil pressure sender, but it doesn't send to any display in the car.
My handy scanner will show live data, but oil pressure is not among the streams.
My unhandy laptop based program, though, will show it!
I'm getting 25-27 psi at idle and 55-60 psi at 4,000 rpm with the coolant reading 200° F.
That's about perfect!
Since the sender is brand new, I figure this is as an accurate of a reading I will get from it.
SanFran mayor to require drug testing for eligibility for welfare benefits.
I remember the near universal condemnation of this idea when Florida implemented it. So long ago, I don't remember when.
2014! Thanks, Internet!
Oh, and it was ruled unconstitutional.
I have a plan that's totally constitutional and would work, which is why nobody will ever try it.
First, we dump the drug laws. It's not the State's job to save you from yourself. That job is impossibly big anyway.
Second, we end welfare. If there's nothing to abuse, then it's impossible to abuse it. Nothing about this point says we're making charity illegal. You want to "save" the homeless on your own dime, go for it.
Third, we unshackle the owners of property to do whatever they see fit to expel trespassers.
Fourth, we unshackle the citizenry with regards to their response to crime. The police were never supposed to have a monopoly here. This one is complicated and will require some nuance to get right. But I am aiming for justice rather than compliance with a list of rules.
It turns out I have several spare laptop batteries that fit the current laptop that I don't remember buying.
Several meaning, three.
Two registered 0% and one 5% when I installed them.
The first took about three hours to get to 99% and stalled there with a minute remaining for about an hour.
Second one took about two hours to get fully charged.
The one that started at 5% is currently charging and, so far, the time remaining is consistent with the estimate given minus elapsed time.
I am glad that I didn't count on them being charged up.
I think the last time I did was... Uh...
I don't remember when the last time I charged them was.
In my relationship with The Lovely Harvey, I am the one who keeps track of the significant dates.
Today is the anniversary of our first date.
She had not remembered.
Again.
We laugh every year about that.
We didn't go out for dinner, we grilled burgers.
After supper we drove to where we had dinner on that first date.
It's no longer there. It's been replaced with a Century 21 office.
Then we went to where the bar we went to after dinner.
It's no longer there. It's been replaced with a Taco Bell/KFC.
Then we went to the little park where we held hands.
It's still there!
Watched the sun set from the fishing pier.
The test procedure for the RR wheel speed sensor is simple and terrifying for Moxie.
1. Ignition OFF, disconnect the harness connector at the appropriate B5 wheel speed sensor. It may take up
to 2 minutes for all vehicle systems to power down.
2. Test for less than 5 ohms between the low reference circuit terminal 2 (white) and ground.
If 5 ohms or greater
1. Ignition OFF, disconnect the harness connector at the K17 electronic brake control module.
2. Test for less than 2 ohms in the low reference circuit (white) end to end.
If 2 ohms or greater, repair the open/high resistance in the circuit.
If less than 2 ohms, replace the K17 electronic brake control module.
If less than 5 ohms
3. Ignition ON.
4. Test for greater than 11 V between the signal circuit terminal 1 (#43 brn from EBCM blk from sensor) and ground.
If less than 11 V
1. Ignition OFF, disconnect the harness connector at the K17 electronic brake control module.
2. Test for infinite resistance between the signal circuit and ground.
If less than infinite resistance, repair the short to ground on the circuit.
If infinite resistance.
3. Test for less than 2 ohms in the signal circuit end to end.
If 2 ohms or greater, repair the open/high resistance in the circuit.
If less than 2 ohms, replace the K17 electronic brake control module.
If 11 V or greater
5. Install a 3 A fused jumper wire at the signal circuit terminal 1, ignition ON.
6. Verify the scan tool Wheel Speed Sensor parameter changes while rapidly tapping the fused jumper wire
to the low reference circuit terminal 2.
If the parameter does not change
1. Ignition OFF, disconnect the harness connector at the K17 electronic brake control module, ignition
ON.
2. Test for less than 1 V between the signal circuit and ground.
If 1 V or greater, repair the short to voltage on the circuit.
If less than 1 V
3. Replace the K17 electronic brake control module.
If the parameter changes
7. Test or replace the B5 wheel speed sensor.
Simple, because straight-forward.
Terrifying because the EBCM is upwards from $800 for a used unit on ebay.
So many science fiction settings have utterly miraculous drives.
And that's without even breaking physics and going faster than light.
Making a plausible and realistic ship means a dramatic drop in performance compared to so many settings.
It's frustrating in many ways.
One becomes used to breaking the laws of physics.
Part of the problem is I'm not used to the paradigm of the realistic drives and what's impressively fast and what's not.
Transhuman Space is a good primer to figure this out.
When you update the NAS, you need to reindex the thing so that the Roku can see the media files.
Terima kasih kerana berminat dengan blog saya.
Saya sangat menghargai, lebih, sepuluh ribu hits yang anda berikan pada halaman saya yang sederhana setiap hari.
Saya tidak tahu bahawa GURPS dan senjata api begitu popular di Singapura!
In addition to shedding employees, the rumors are also saying that KE Arms has stopped making the KP-15 lower and the last run was in 2021.
Clearly they made plenty, because they still have stock, but this is sounding familiar.
GWACS did a big run and sold lowers for a while after they'd stopped making new ones too.
For this one I am wondering if the idea of a monolithic polymer lower is just too much for people.
I know people who are still waiting for this whole plastic pistol thing to blow over.
And 5.56 is just a phase that will end once sensible people take over too.
Too revolutionary coupled with the bad blood that is being cultivated between disparate political factions... That could chill the heck out of sales.
The bummer part is it didn't have to be.
You want to sell to bible thumping conservatives AND Antifa?
Don't mention your politics at all and take money from anyone who can pass the background check.
Take sides? Expect the side you don't support to look elsewhere.
I remember when GURPS: Vehicles first came out, in 1993, and I was using it to make real vehicles to reality check the numbers.
With pen and paper because I didn't have a computer!
I knew a guy who was a submariner and I asked him how many megawatts the LA class's reactor put out.
He declined to say because it was, in his opinion, classified.
While I had a book that gave the shaft-horsepower, it didn't give me the reactor output.
Well, you can just check Wikipedia now.
The S6G makes between 150 and 165 MW.
Now I know.
It's only been bugging me for 30 years.
That 1947 Colt we was shootin' the other day?
The OG style mags that came with the gun ran great.
The 8-shot, stainless, Nighthawk brand mag...
Not so much.
The last round would fail to eject and the slide would munch the spent case about half the time.
I don't think that's acceptable for a $40 magazine.
There's a rumor floating around that KE Arms, maker of the KP-15 monolithic polymer lower, has shrunk from about 50 people to around three to five.
I wonder if it's because of the rhetoric that Russel Fagen was tossing around.
You can read here that I'm good with LGBT folks and hardly a transphobe. I get shit from the more conservative commenters about it too.
But if your sales director is out there saying shit that sure sounds like, "if you're not completely and totally fine with grooming kids to be trans, then fuck you we don't want your fucking business!"
Well, there's going to be some pushback and people will walk with their wallets.
I'm with them about fucking with the kids.
If you figure you're trans once the secondary sexual characteristics start coming in, then we need to start analyzing what's going on.
And if it's genuine, then let's get the proper accommodations going.
But it's not near as widespread as so many people think it is.
In many ways, the sudden upswing is a lot like Celiac Disease. No, you are not sensitive to gluten, and don't have Celiac's.
But the condition is in the media's mouth and lots of people are misinterpreting their "symptoms" and coming to the wrong conclusions.
Another issue is the apparent aligning with people who are threatening to murder anyone who doesn't toe their line about what, exactly, is a transsexual right.
I suspect I'd be on the death list because I'm insisting that we wait for puberty and then make sure it's one of the identifiable conditions before we start in with making changes we cannot reverse.
Yet, no problem with Erin... Or Tacticool Girlfriend, for that matter. They're grown-ups. Grown-ups get to make their own decisions.
And reap the rewards of consequences of those decisions.
The first cybertank is in prototype.
The question is: Will it follow Keith Laumer or Steve Jackson in its vision.
Thanks to glacial rebound, my home is sinking into the ocean.
At a rate of about 0.6mm per year.
I'd better start shopping for a house farther from the water soon.
The water will be up to the front yard in just 9,144 years!
Last time i mentioned it.
It would appear that Judge Benitez has ruled, again, that banning magazines by capacity is unconstitutional.
He had to rule again, because it got tossed back down because of Bruen.
Well.
Here we are.
Looks like a 10-day stay to let California make their near certain appeal to the ruling.
If I recall correctly, the path will then be a 3-judge panel of the 9th Circuit then an appeal to an en banc hearing of the 9th then to the US Supreme Court.
Again, I think...
It took about three years for that to wend its way up to USSC last time, I wonder if it will be quicker this time because it was a remand.
OR
California's gun grabbers will take the loss and limit the "damage" to just California, because a ruling from the 9th that agrees with Benitez's ruling means the whole 9th Circuit loses their magazine bans, meaning Hawaii, Oregon and Washington.
OR
They press this all the way to the Supremes again and... we add California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont's magazine bans to the burn barrel.
I think I need some popcorn!
Something of an update.
Sabers and... is still progressing.
I'm just so dang buried in world building that I'm not to the point of outlines or plotting, though I do have some good characters.
Trying to get Sioux culture right is vexing, because there's been some sanitizing over the years.
They've got some skeletons in their closets and some activists should really stop casting aspersions at the evol whyte mahn.
Slavery, misogyny and (possibly) cannibalism.
But no matter, my Sioux don't have to be the real, historical, Sioux any more than my 77th Cavalry is a real, historical, unit. (Hint, it's not)
But what hit home in my research is the American Indian is a TL0 culture.
They have access to TL5 technology, but they cannot make any of it.
The Googoo are also a TL0 culture without that access to high-tech.
I think the distinction I'm going to hang on the GooGoo is they're going to be, effectively, at TL0+1 society because they don't have a myth-parallel hanging over their heads forcing their society from changing thanks to ready access to magic.
Magic SHOULD change society markedly, but the myth-parallel keeps history on track without significant changes to the outcomes.
Like Kennedy still getting killed despite having an active missile-shield in place.
For the Sabers and... universe, the myth-parallel is intact until the mass emigration through the gates to Maka Tanka.
If your on-topic, non-offensive comment isn't getting posted and says, "this comment removed by a blog administrator," you forgot something.
Something that's in the sidebar.
Read the instructions.
It pains me to keep reminding people.
But just in case you're new here, I spell out my commenting policy over in the disclaimer.
Yesterday, at the range, a light bulb went on.
We were shooting at 7 yards on the 25 yard range.
There were several people with AR's shooting at the 10 yard line.
I see this a lot and didn't really make note of it.
What I noticed was that I never see these people on the 100 yard range.
Ever.
While I'll use the shorter ranges for zeroing, I always hit the longer range to confirm them. Most of the time I have to make adjustments to the zero too.
I feel the same way about never shooting a rifle past pistol ranges as I do about taking a ranged weapon into melee combat.
You're doing it wrong.
Even better, when your groups at 100 yards start shrinking, you really feel like you did something!
I will admit, though, there's a liberal application of glass between me and the target most of the time now. Getting old ain't for sissies.
The daughter of a friend is into guns in a big way.
She's just learning, but has the eager support of us all.
Especially her grandpa.
Sold her this fine, 1947 made, 1911 he's owned for... as long as anyone can remember.
It was nearly bound up from old, solidified lubricants.
So I gave it a detail strip.
It's been a while since I'd had a 1911 apart that far and I, of course, got the sear spring in all wrong.
I did that the very first time I detail stripped one in the Army too, and I had supervision for that!
I got it unfucked, but it's frustrating when you do that with both the sear and disconnect springs UNDER the parts they're supposed to be on top of.
I still don't know how I did it, but...
Proof I got it back together properly.
Got a letter from my house insurer saying they weren't going to renew our policy because we'd failed to respond.
"Respond to what?" I wondered.
It must have been among the dozens of "don't forget we're here for you" letters they spammed out right after Ian and Nicole.
Called my agent and it's they want us to get an inspection to make sure our roof will last another 5 years.
That will be awkward. We're still making repairs from Nicole because we can't find a contractor who will show up thanks to rampant new-construction in the area.
We've stabilized the front flashing that was damaged and were planning on putting up new wood as soon as it fails to hit 90 by noon.
I'm not too bad at carpentry.
John Lott speculated that Hunter Biden's defense to the gun charges will be that background checks are unconstitutional.
It'll strange to be rooting for a Biden to win.
There's a bit of confusion out there about the Galil and it's identical cousin the R4.
The ARM is the "basic" rifle with a bipod and a bayonet lug. The loaded 35 round magazine is 1.8 lb., the 50 rounder 2.3 lb.
That gives us an 18.1" barreled gun in 5.56 that weighs 11.3 lb. loaded with 35-rounds.
The AR is almost identical. The wire-cutting bipod and the folding carry handle are deleted, but the 18.1" barrel is retained.
This is a 10.4 lb. rifle loaded with 35-rounds. It's the "police and support" version.
The SAR is the short barreled version of the AR with no bayonet lug. Vehicle crews, staff and specialty troops get this one.
This is a 13.1" barreled rifle weighing 10 lb. with 35-rounds.
The Vektor made guns are:
The R4 is the same* as the ARM. The R5 is the same* as the SAR.
*- Yes, there are differences, but the basic configurations is what we're on about here.
Yes, the Galil is very heavy for what you get.
Now that I've done some wrenching on both my Australian Caprice and Canadian Equinoxes, I have to retract something I said earlier.
It is not NEW cars that are difficult to work on.
It was a 6th Generation Corvette that was hard to work on.
I am led to believe that the 7th Gen makes The Precious seem easy and the 8th Gen is figuratively sealed up to keep the home mechanic out.
The alternator/ac belt on the Equinox wasn't hard at all.
The belt that only ran the AC on The Precious took three times longer and involved a great deal of cussing.
The way the radiator had to come out still pisses me off.
I am coming to the idea that the Corvette engineers over thought things to the point that they created problems they didn't need to create without noticing.
Our local teachers are fomenting for more pay, again.
One of them posted what our county spends compared to neighboring counties, trying to show they deserve more.
My first thought was, "well then move to where they're paying more."
My second thought, though was under the heading of "per student spending."
My county spends $22,000 a year per student.
Classes are limited to 30 students per room.
$660,000 per classroom per year.
Teachers get $48,225 to $75,000 a year.
Assuming the top pay grade...
WHERE THE FUCK IS THE OTHER $585,000 GOING? I think we're getting ripped the fuck off here.
First, it shouldn't cost more than half a million bucks to educate 30 kids.
Especially since we're spending more than half a million per classroom and failing to educate them in stuff they're going to need when they're turned loose on the world.
Time to write the congress creatures again.
The Lovely Harvey sent me a picture of her dash with the battery light on.
Gee, wouldn't it be nice to have a voltage gauge?
She got it home just as the battery lost its last erg.
It's a good thing the water pump isn't driven by the serpentine belt, because it was MIA.
No apparent damage from its departure from the car, thankfully.
Putting the new belt on is awkward, but not overly difficult.
I have a bit of a leak at the crank seal I need to keep an eye on too.
With high-resolution medical imaging and 3D printing, there's no reason but cost to have a skull mug made from a scan of your own noggin.
Considering how often we're our own worst enemy, it'd still be drinking from the skill of an enemy!
Accelerating at 4g for a day gets to about 1% the speed of light.
That got me to wondering if I should be accounting for time dilation.
I found a table showing the X axis as a percentage of the speed of light labeled in tenths with 1.0 at the far right.
That had a sharp curve for the time dilation in the Y axis and 10x dilation at the upper right corner...
"Holy BLEEP!" I says.
Then I realized.
1.0 is 100%...
There's hardly any time dilation at 1% the speed of light.
According to that graph, even 90% the speed of light is around 2x dilation.
It's not near the issue science fiction led me to think it was with anything close to a plausibly realistic engine.
Unrealistic engines almost always come with a faster than light drive that takes the worries about relativity off the table.
Edit to add:
That graph I referenced should not be taken to mean that there's "only" 10x time dilation at the speed of light. That line is near vertical there and isn't quite at c. The closer you get to c, the more dilation you get, forever.
The two Size A engines on the Assault Scout appear to pull 4g for two days just by devouring one10cm diameter sphere of U238 apiece.
That's a total of 20kg of Uranium.
That's not much.
And it's JUST Uranium consumed from what I can fathom from the rules.
That description conforms to the fission fragment drive from Vehicles Expansion 1.
But those drives are not lightweight at all.
The engines in Star Frontiers are as realistic as the Epstien drives from The Expanse.
And The Expanse has fusion...
Star Frontiers has a near instantaneous FTL drive.
You spend three to fifteen seconds in "the void" once you've accelerated to 1% light speed.
Like so many other games, I don't think they did the math very well.
The assault scout's atomic engines can accelerate at 4g.
It only takes 21ish hours to get to 1% C... So basically two days to make a jump.
Ion drives accelerate at 1g. So, about a week.
Chemical drives also get 1g, but don't have enough fuel to get get to speed.
The system is not detailed very well.
I am considering doing some conversions to GURPS: Vehicles.
An interesting thing about Star Frontiers that didn't stick right away back in 9th Grade...
No fusion.
The atomic drives are explicitly fission using uranium or plutonium as fuel. No mention of reaction mass.
Ion and chemical drives are using hydrogen. Ion engines use the hydrogen as reaction mass, chemical drives also have oxygen tankage.
It will be interesting if I can recreate the game's performance numbers using hard-science assumptions.
The wee little engines on that assault scout hold enough fuel for three jumps. So I only need to figure out about a week's worth of thrust total... Wait... That's a LOT of reaction mass with an atomic engine.
Gonna be fun?
Update:
Using hard science numbers for the drives, I can't even get 1% of a G for the 42 hours needed to get to 1% C and back down to system speed for a jump.
It's the reaction mass.
The Assault Scout is supposed to be in the neighborhood of 9,000 cubic-feet. I can't pare that down hardly at all. Staying within the size constraints I can get 2 to 2.5 G for 15 minutes.
The equations, they be HARD.
The new Star Wars show has the bad guys using a thousand year old map to find the location of a person missing just a few years.
They need the old map to input data into their modern navigation computer.
It really felt like, "Boy! Hand me my Antikythera mechanism, I need to program the Garmin to get to the store!"
