Annual ATF

 

ABC

It is 1:23 of 12 31 23.

123123123!

RIP Herr Gaston

Gaston Glock has passed on.

I've owned a couple of his products over the years...

Last Post

Unless the muse wakes her ass up, this will be the last post of the 2023 calendar year.

Only Game In Town

For a good long time I was the only person who was willing the be the gamemaster.

I was aching to be a player, but nobody else would deign be creative and make a world to make characters for.

I rather thought I was good at it.

Turns out, I was mistaken.  I was just the only one dumb enough to take the extra time and do the job.

Why, yes, I am bitter about that.

It also turns out that I would not be welcome at the table over some slight from nearly three decades ago.

So be it.

But if we're talking about shit where I should have walked away...

How's about not bothering to make characters...

Wait!

Something is clear now.

Every time I came to visit and offered them a world to play in, they had not bothered to make characters until I showed up.  It was a stalling tactic, hoping we'd run out of time before we could start playing.

Well.  I feel better knowing that.

A little sad, but.

I wonder what I can get for these books on ebay?

According To The Stats

I see I must have new readers beyond the the normal thousand a day or so.

So you might be forgiven for not reading the rules over there to the right or noticing the numerous posts like this one explaining to the audience that you MUST SIGN YOUR POSTS.

Failure to sign is the number one way to get the content of that comment deleted regardless of what you said.

Please, though, get butt hurt that your witticism was deleted.

Comment again complaining about it without signing it.

Mocking your inability to read the rules (which are both on the sidebar to the right and repeated in a large block in the comment section) gives me something to do on a slow news day.

X

Xmas is Christmas.

Therefore "Train Xing" must be "Train Christing."

Because it's not Crossmas.

Subverted?

After the Civil War, lots of officers were demoted if they remained in service.

George A Custer is a famous example going from Major General to Lieutenant Colonel.

To prevent losing too much face, they retained their higher rank as a brevet rank.

The losses in rank was not applied evenly across the Army.

There was more than a little resentment over whom retained their original ranks and who got breveted down.

Something I've noticed more than once is a brevet who should never have had the higher rank in the first place on account of The Incompetence™.

Custer is, again, a famous example.  The man was famously and fabulously lucky; but he was rarely accused of being good at being a commander.

Surely, though, there must be people breveted who were solidly competent, but didn't have the favor of the people making the decision.

I don't recall any stories about them.

I am thinking of making a 1st Lieutenant brevet Colonel who's a good commander, just unlikable.  Nothing but competence.  No social graces.

The kind of guy who shines when the bullets are flying, but is a disaster at the officer's cotillion.

Pure Nostalgia Bait

Eddie Murphy is back as Axel Foley in a fourth installment of Beverly Hills Cop.

The first thing I notice is that he's still rockin' the High-Power!

The next thing you notice is everyone but Eddie has aged significantly.

I'm sure to watch it.

Damn You McCollum!

Gun Jeebus reminds me that I missed the PMM for my T2K to GURPS conversion.

High Tech had the stats already, but I had forgotten them, and a citation, in my conversion.

Ian's vid gives additional details about the pistol that will be handy for the T2K user too!

Zoom?

With Zoom meetings being a thing, I wonder if I can reconnect with the gaming group in Ames without the attendant trip to Iowa.

Sabers and Sorcery needs some playtesting.

Pontiac Delete

While the G8 headlight switch granted functionality to the fog lights, the red back lighting bothered me.

Marv, being a deft hand with a soldering iron and knowing what resistors to substitute, changed the LED's on a second switch thusly:

Now it looks much more like a Chevy switch!

Bonus points if you know why the red and green lights are the way they are.

Is This Something?

This sure looks like it has the potential to be something.

Not Very Green

The Tesla model Y battery. It takes up all of the space under the passenger compartment of the car.

To manufacture it you need:

--12 tons of rock for Lithium (can also beextracted from sea water)

-- 5 tons of cobalt minerals (Most cobalt is made as a byproduct of the processing of copper and nickel ores. It is the most difficult material to obtain for a battery and the most expensive.)

-- 3 tons nickel ore

-- 12 tons of copper ore

You must move 250 tons of soil to obtain:

-- 26.5 pounds of Lithium

-- 30 pounds of nickel

-- 48.5 pounds of manganese

-- 15 pounds of cobalt

To manufacture the battery also requires:

-- 441 pounds of aluminum, steel and/or plastic

-- 112 pounds of graphite

The Caterpillar 994A is used for the earthmoving to obtain the essential minerals. It consumes 264 gallons of diesel in 12 hours.

Finally you get a “zero emissions” car.

Presently, the bulk of the necessary minerals for manufacturing the batteries come from China or Africa. Much of the labor for getting the minerals in Africa is done by children! If we buy electric cars, it's China who profits most!

BTW, this 2021 Tesla Model Y OEM battery (the cheapest Tesla battery) is currently for sale on the Internet for $4,999 not including shipping or installation. The battery weighs 1,000 pounds (you can imagine the shipping cost). The cost of Tesla batteries is:

Model 3 -- $14,000+ (Car MSRP $38,990)

Model Y -- $5,000–$5,500 (Car MSRP $47,740)

Model S -- $13,000–$20,000 (Car MSRP $74,990)

Model X -- $13,000+ (Car MSRP $79,990)

It takes SEVEN years for an electric car to reach net-zero CO2. The life expectancy of the batteries is 10 years (average). Only in the last three years do you begin to reduce your carbon footprint. Then the batteries have to be replaced and you lose all the gains you made in those three years.

Player Character

Michael Fassbender's character in The Killer is a player character.

I highly recommend it.

Oh! Sweet Nuthin' (2015 Remastered)

I am kinda surprised my dad didn't introduce me to The Velvet Underground.  It's his speed.

Relief

The insurance inspector came today.

He found nothing that should disqualify us from getting our insurance renewed.

Except...

We have a fuse box instead of a breaker panel.

Apparently some companies freak out about that.

I think we're grandfathered because of the build date of our house.

Random IDF Helmet Camera Footage

I notice some Tavors in this too!

I guess it was lack of footage making it to the internet than a lack of the guns, but still mostly M16 derivatives.

Hot Rod History

Camaro... for when you wanted a Vette, but your wife insists there be a seat for the kids.

Or you're single it's the only V-8 rear wheel drive car you can afford because they made metric shittons of them.

I've had two 2nd Gen Camaros.

A '76 Type LT and a '79 Berlinetta.

The '76 was affectionately known as The Rust Monster because it was rusted a foot up from the rocker panels front to rear.  Ruined maroon on the outside and red inside.

She's the car I really learned to wrench on.

305 cubic inches and the factory 2-bbl.

Me and The Bat kept that thing running far too long.

We replaced it with The Silver Bullet.  Same 305.  Same 2-bbl.

I did a lot more with this car.

Put a '72 350 from a pick-up in it.

Put too big of a Holley double pumper on it.  Twice.

Bought the wrong intake for the first too big carb.

Hooker headers, thrush pipes!

Three rear ends.

Subframe connectors.

Then I got serious!

A buddy of mine, dying of AIDS, offered his help and we went nuts!

When I let her go, she was a sleeper.

We'd got a Jaguar rear from someone who had a dead XJ in their barn.  Gay Eric knew how to weld (he's the one who installed my subframe connectors) and he replaced the wagon springs in the back with the Jag's suspension.

His uncle redid the front suspension geometry.

The Bullet could corner like it was on rails.

I got to hate it.

The raw performance was great.  It was too damn loud, sprung very tight and the race seats would grind your ass and back to a nub.

I sold it for far too little, and I cried a bit.  OK.  A lot.

I only missed it a little bit, after a time.

The next hot rod was a '91 Caprice Classic.

305 a-fucking-gain!  But this time throttle-body-injected.

That car morphed into The Biscayne and got the drivetrain from a '95 Impala SS put under her.

I really loved that car, but I couldn't afford to keep her and The Precious.  But she's found a good home with the friend I got The Beast from.

Parallel List

 I am sure that every hot rodder has their own list of nevers in their cars.

Mine is:

1: No Ford, Mercury, Lincoln.  I am three for three in negative experiences with the brand.  I got to drive the '73 Mustang a whole 35 miles before being arrested because I'd bought a stolen car.  Mercury Lynx is an Escort and teh suxxor.  And I had a real Escort too.  Sours one on the brand.

     Exception:  There are a couple of really old Ford bodies I'd own, but they'd have GM engines, transmission and electric in them.

2: No red interiors!  The Rust Monster and Lynx convinced me that it's the most brittle and delicate plastic color in the world.

3: 305 never again.  I have gotten rid of two of those misbegotten emissions compromised engines and replaced them with 350's and I would have been money ahead both times shopping a little harder for a car that came with the larger displacement mill.  It's not like a 4.8L LS motor.  You can get decent performance from a 4.8, not from a 305.

4: Throw away all the wiring in any MOPAR.  Even Ford does better with electrical systems.  Only Lucas does worse.

5: Nothing German.  I like simplicity over "elegant engineering".

6: No carburetors!  It'd have to be special to give up multi-port fuel injection.  My complaints about computer controls is being locked out of making changes and not that there's a computer running the show.

7: Yellow is not a good hot-rod color.

Some strange things appeal to me.

I have a recurring desire to replace an old Chevy inline 6 with a DOHC inline motor.  If only the Atlas engine had a more common transmission bolt pattern.  If only Toyota had not farmed out their latest I-6 to BMW.  If only.

Willard Has A Building Clearing Philosophy Too

IDF clearing rooms and analysis.

Willard's method doesn't involve going inside at all.

WW2 methods involved lots of grenades and spray with automatic fire.

Interestingly, house clearing as depicted on TV shows like Combat! (In Color!) showed actual tactics because they simply did what the vets on set said they'd done.

Doesn't Live Up To Its Name

Holden had a fun name for a color in the early '70's.

Lettuce Alone.

Cool name, I think, and it lets me break another of the Skeezer Rules.

Sadly, Lettuce Alone is best described as "baby poop" green.

Funds for paint aren't going to materialize for a good long time, but it's fun to plan.

We're oscillating between green and blue.

Green for the rules violation and because The Boy is a mini-hulk when he's in meltdown.

Blue for the car's nickname, The Beast which is what color Hank McCoy's fur is in X-Men.

I Think Not

No, Fox News, I will not be making a free account to read the rest of the story.

Your advertisers will have to figure out how to reach me on their own, thankyouverymuch.

You can blame the other websites who tricked me into giving them my email address for this.

But, another way to look at this is, your advertisers don't want me to see your content.

If I cannot see the content, I will stop going to your page.

If I stop going to the page, I will not see the advertising.

If I don't see the advertising, why would they keep paying you?

I lose little by not visiting a given site, what do you have to lose by driving me away?

But Where Are You Getting Stable Neutronium

Like dogs returning to their vomit, FuzzyGeff and I keep circling back to the apparent operation of physics violating drives in Traveller.

Whether they intended it or not, the maneuver drive in LBB Traveller moves a volume at a given acceleration regardless of mass.

Later versions applied a thrust to the mass, so a heavier ship will accelerate more slowly with a given drive than a lighter one.

LBB Traveller's drive allows something with normal physics thanks to how it seems to behave.

You can get a pretty massive mass going quite a clip with the maneuver drive.

Steer it into some magnetic loops and collect the energy of slowing it down.

You get an energy profit from this.

We know this because we know how much hydrogen is consumed in the power plant running that maneuver drive.

And this is just one of the simpler ways of getting free power out of the maneuver drive.

When you break physics there are implications beyond the effect you're looking to achieve.

If you want out of the hard equations you need to break physics.

Hard science fiction lacks a certain flare that space opera has in metric bucket loads.

Used To Getting Their Way

The Democrats appear to have lost the ability to negotiate.

I remember the Reagan and Tip O'Neill days.

Ronnie wanted more defense spending and Tip would get social programs in return.

Still dealing with the latter, but we got the military that ended the Soviet Union and defeated Iraq in a timescale unpredicted and unbelieved until it happened.

Now they want more money for Ukraine.

Ukraine does need it.

The Republicans are saying, "fine, but we want that border closed and aid for Israel and East China Taiwan."

And the Democrats are throwing a fit.

I'd be, "OK, leave the border open, but the NFA and GCA get repealed before another dime goes to Zelenski."

I'm OK with supporting Ukraine, but I think I want something for ME out of this... for a change.

Almost Forgot!

Happy birthday to the US Cavalry!

Being dragoons and calling themselves cavalry since 1776. 

Actually, I did forget, but I can back-date the post to hours before I posted it!

It's my blog and I do what I want!

Not The First

Way back when...

The Impala SS / Caprice club I was a member of had seen the Australian Super Car series late night on Speed.  Remember Speed Channel?  SIGH...

At any rate, we'd previously been unaware of Holden and that a branch of General Motors still made proper front engine, rear drive 4-door cars.

The Holden Commodore VT was made from 1997 to 2000.

Hot Wheels made a model of one of the Super Car series cars.  A Holden Commodore VT SS.

So my Commodore VF SSV is my second 1/64 scale Holden.

Something else I noticed going through my little car collection...

When I look for a car I own, I end up with a cop car more often than not...

Near as I can tell, Racing Champions is the only company to have ever made a skirted bubble Caprice.  In this case a Miami PD car from Fast and the Furious 2.  I removed the lightbar.

Matchbox

Only five years after it left production, Matchbox has made a Holden Commodore VF SSV.

The Caprice PPV is a lengthened variant of the Commodore.

The VF series is equivalent to the WN Caprice, and mine is a WM which corresponds to the VE series, so this model isn't quite The Beast in this scale.

It's likely as close as I will get.  The only WM/VE car they made was a Ute (read Aussie El Camino).

I found several for sale on ebay and bought two.

The one pictured above came on a blisterpack card, like you'd see at the local store.

The other set off a wave of nostalgia when I saw the listing.

The Matchbox box!

Back when I was a little kid, getting a new Matchbox car was something of a deal.

You didn't pluck one off a rack in the toy section.

You went to the photo counter of the local Osco/Jewel and there was a display case of, maybe, 12 cars in it.

You asked the person behind the counter to get you the one you wanted and they handed you a little box, like the one above.

It seemed more formal than today.

Quite A Curve

Thanks to Home Alone and Irish we know that a particular cart of groceries went from $19.83 in 1990 to $77.28 today.

389.7% inflation over 33 years.

Annualized, that's just 4.208% inflation, since the goal is 3%, that doesn't seem so bad.

The problem is that cart of goods was $44.40 last year.  That's an annual inflation of 2.4755% from 1990 to 2022.  Below the Fed's desired rate, good for us, bad for the national debt.

That means we had 174% inflation in one fucking year.

Did you get a 174% raise last year?  I didn't.

The politicritters are trying to convince me that the 3.2% increase in my VA disability is big money.

But it isn't keeping up with Bidenomics.

Now Ticks!

In addition to all the other, previously defeated, diseases returning to America with all the unculled illegal aliens...

They're importing ticks with rocky mountain spotted fever.

Hurrah!

Thanks Joe!

Wow

FuzzyGeff got himself a new set of Bluetooth noise cancelling headphones.

He got a deal on Amazon and recommended them to me.

I missed the deal he got, but got the same price because for shelling out to pay for Prime.

They arrived today.

The first thing I noticed is they didn't have the odd echo chamber effect on the person I was calling's end like my wired headset has.

The second thing I noticed was the noise cancelling fucking works!  They have a 3.5mm jack and I plugged into my computer to watch a movie.

All I could hear was the movie.

Color me impressed!

Transitioning From Roll To Role Playing

A pivotal point in my TTRPG experience was FuzzyGeff's brother when we were all in high school.

We asked an NPC in his AD&D world why we would want to take on the adventure and the NPC replied, "for the experience points!"

Even at that young age I found that a little too meta.

But it was a turning point, because I really was playing the character to get experience and advance in levels, but maintaining a thin veneer of role playing to justify my actions.

This expanded into Champions where who the character was mattered more when we were trying to replicate comic book heroes and not playing pieces on a board.

It led to us doing more of an amateur theater improv than strictly following the game rules.

Adopting role over roll.

We thought it was a lot more fun, actually.

We measured success in how well we adhered to our character's personality and background rather than how many experience points we gained or levels we attained.

LBB Traveller made that real easy, it's experience system was nearly non-existent.

GURPS made it even easier, because you could codify much of your characterization in the advantages, disadvantages and quirks.  To the point that I found it difficult to stay in character without those built in crutches.

It led to some conflicts.

But it was also rewarding.

The battle of the turkey was one such reward.

Another was being slain by a giant spider as I delivered a mortal blow to it while defending a helpless maiden.  I remember being thrilled that my character had died!  He'd died honorably, a hero's death.

Just playing the rules and a playing piece would not have given such a reward.

Wrong Focus

The research on the Indian Wars I've been doing has led me to believe that it was a mutual animosity that led to conflict and not entirely the fault of the white man.

But most of the narratives focus on this time period and blame whites for everything.

I'm of the position that the true evil done to Indians happens after the wars are over and they're confined to the reservations.

Killers of the Flower Moon is a movie about one such evil.

It's a movie, of course, but the main strokes of the story are true.

Poop

David Drake has passed on.

As a tanker, it was nice to have war science fiction about tanks instead of battle suits or some kind of space Navy.

.410 Brace

Even though all the ammo shown is 2-1/2", both guns are chambered for 3" shells.

I am not saying anything in this picture is practical.

I am saying don't avoid things that delight you.

The KSG410 is kinda a pistol caliber carbine similar to .44 Magnum in performance... kinda, sorta.

The wee little slugs are 3d+1 pi+ out to 100/1,200.

.44 Magnum from this barrel length gets 4d+1 pi+ to 620/3,600.  From a revolver, .44 does 3d+1 pi+ to 210/3,200.  That's right, this shoulder fired gun is outranged by a handgun!

Light projectiles and moderate velocities do that.

Finally!

I returned an item to Midway on October 27th.

It made it to my local post office and was picked up by someone the next day.

Then the tracking goes dead.

I complained that their choice of UPS Postal Innovations led to its loss and they should file an insurance claim for the lost package.

They refunded my money and agreed it was lost on November 22nd.

I kept the tracking number and have been checking every few days.

Today I checked and it shows delivered on December 7th!

Florida is a long ways from Missouri, but not that long a ways.

Definitely not six weeks away.

Rack 'Em

The ready magazines for boarder repelling were always falling off the shelf.

Harvey heard my growls of frustration and got me some organizers.

Only good for PMAG's, but those are what I've decided on for social purposes.  They're not intended for the 40-rounders, but they, obviously, fit well enough.

This is in addition to the magazines in the grab-bags.

Selling One Gun Makes You A Dealer

The comment period just ended.

I didn't even bother to comment this time, it never matters.

That it never matters is a violation of the law that requires a comment period...

Who watches the watchers?

But the rule being proposed essentially makes you a gun dealer for selling even one gun.

We can thank Congress for not actually defining "engaged in the business" so that it could not be perverted by lawyers and ATF.

We can further thank them for opening the door to this rule with the more recent Safer Communities act.

Because the gun grabbers are fond of saying we should make buying a gun more like buying a car [sic] I find it odd that I can find the clear line between selling a car and being a car dealer, but I cannot find this line in the law about being a gun dealer.

The same applies to selling my house vs being a realtor.  Helping Harvey dye her hair vs being a hair stylist.

The examples are endless.

I think we have a good case to make for the "engaged in the business of" being constitutionally vague when a clear line between just selling a gun and operating a business cannot not made.

As others have noticed, this is clearly an attempt to chill private sales and force people to start using FFL's for every transfer to shield them from prosecution.

In other words, they're trying to back door universal background checks and build a registration list.

That list has been made illegal so many times now...

Other Priorities

Marv has got hissef a silly .410 shotgun.

Kel Tec's KSG410.

Pictures to come.

It's renewed my interest in a Savage 42.

I stock .22 WMR for the Savage 93F and .410 for Bubba's Taurus Judge already.

I've always wanted a drilling bockbüchsflinte!

The $600 price of entry for a silly want like this keeps me away, especially when we've been doing home maintenance like madmen.

Maybe She Found Out MLK Was A Republican

Racist Right Wing KKK White Male Gun Owning Conservative tries to burn down Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s childhood home.

I don't actually know if she was a racist, but she isn't a white male.

I'm honestly shocked we didn't get a headline like my tongue planted firmly in my hyperbolic cheek from the mainstream media.

Demand for racism constantly outstrips supply.

I don't think they have a motive yet.

Just a black woman caught red-handed on camera doing the crime.