Under The Knife

Young Shadow is going to the vet to be spayed tomorrow.

She is very upset about the "no food or water" cut off.

I Want(ed) A Fake Passport

Not a fake passport to trick anyone or to commit a crime.

A joke passport is prolly closer to what I'm after.

A local brewery tasting room gives a 30%* discount for hospitality workers on Mondays and a 20%* discount for cops, firemen, first responders, teachers and veterans on Thursdays.

The discounts are *- Libations only.

I've commented, "but I'm not from Libatia."

Then came the idea of getting a passport from Libatia.

Then the realization that doing so is pushing the limits of legality HARD when you search for "Fake Passport for non-fraud" and "Fake Passport for TV/Movie" and the top ten hits include official warnings about not proceeding further.

Yeah...

I think this joke can sit here unrealized.

Spinning

Getting from "the car is shaking like it's going to fall apart" to "running like it should" on your own is a nice feeling.

"On my own" includes the generous help of Marv and JT who loaned time, tools and expertise to the solution.

There's just a couple of tools for cars that I will, likely, never own.

Tire machine.

Balancing machine.

Alignment rack.

I needed two of those to solve the problem, but I figured out I needed them via my own level of Mechanic/TL8 (Automobile).

I know a couple of fine people who wouldn't even be able to communicate the problem to a mechanic, let along begin fixing it.

I think it's interesting that Marv did much the same work on his Impala SS not too long ago and the two cars are as different as night and day about how the front suspension works.

He's got double a-arms and shocks.  I have dual lower control arms and struts.  Both are coil spring set-ups.

Suggestion

I have a bill for the FL GOA.

No, not a bill.  A constitutional referendum.

If a bill passes one house, it automatically must get a vote in the other.

That will stop the old-boy-RINO-network from killing pro-gun bills by simply not submitting a FL senate version when the Florida Sheriff's Association says "no!"

Inflacja Jest Dziwką

My Tantal Kbk wz.88n I made from a kit ran me $950.  Six years ago.

If you want, essentially, the same rifle today, Atlantic will ask you for $1,800.

Dzięki Joe!

Get 'em while they're cheap, I guess.

I Like Big Brakes And I Cannot Lie

Now that a full test drive has confirmed the front suspension and wheel balance is FINALLY sorted out...

Time for a fun run!

There's a road near here that's got lots of tight corners and few long straights that is perfect for testing your handling (and skills and nerve).

The Beast took it with aplomb!

The big multi-piston brakes helped a lot because she gets going so damn smooth it sneaks up on you how fast you're going and it's time to slow down to about 50 for the 25 marked corner...

GRIN.

She definitely handles better than the '91 Biscayne SS.

At least as much fun as both the Biscayne SS and The Precious.

Fair And Balanced

Sucked it up and took The Beast back to Tire Kingdom.

Told them that, now that everything is tight, I can feel something is wrong.

I told them about the vibration and how it moved when I did a tire rotation.

That impressed the mechanic listening over the managers shoulder.

They got me right in and balanced all four wheels.

Two of them needed a 1/2 ounce change.  One needed a full ounce.

!!!!

That's a lot of change to me!

They didn't charge me, so I am not complaining.

On the drive home I got in a couple of sprints.  Both felt smooth and free of vibrations.  Aside; though this car is short 80 horses and half a ton heavier than The Precious it still gets up and goes when you stab the accelerator!

This is the shop that originally installed the tires a couple of years ago and just did the alignment.

I recommend them if you're local.  Corner of US19 and Alt 19 in Holiday, FL.

UPDATE:  

Longer test drive at interstate speeds confirms the shakes, shimmies, and vibrations are quelled.

National Retro Day?

 

My Kind Isn't Welcome

SJ Games on Facebook was mentioning it's getting to be convention season and asked what conventions people were planning on attending.

The answer is simple.

None.

Check the rules of every science fiction, comic or gaming convention and you will find language to the effect of:

THE CONVENTION AND HOST HOTEL ARE A GUN FREE ZONE

Yeah, not going to do that.

I'd love to attend one, but they ALL have that language.

Beast Update

A different tire place did the alignment today.

They didn't complain of anything under the car being put on wrong and had me done by the promised time.  Almost as if the first shop was lying?

I, however, was fucking rancid on my test drive when the steering wheel had picked its old shimmy back up.  Pretty much the same shimmy that started me working on the front end to begin with!

Starting about 50 the wheel would shake from side to side, getting worse until about 85.  It had a cycle to it as well, every 30-40 seconds it would stop then start then stop...

Nothing appears loose on the front end and I sat baffled.

So I canvassed my friends!

JT suggested seeing if it was a rim or tire by doing a tire rotation.

So I did.

Test drive confirms the vibration has moved to the rear of the car and there's nothing being transmitted directly into the steering wheel any more.

I think I put too many miles on the tires with all the worn out parts and I've cupped a tire slightly.

Or I shed a wheel weight.  It was really shaking at times before I did the tie-rods.

The car is far more driveable now than it's ever been!

Terminology That Texas Got Right

Throwing hot dogs or burgers on the grill is grilling, not barbecuing.

Barbecue is entirely different and Texas uses the term correctly.

Dunno if they originated this usage, but they own it.

He Said She Said

Someone's deleted for not signing it comment suggested I turn the assholes at Tires Plus into the DMV.

Their word against mine, and nothing happens.

Posting to Facebook and tagging The Lovely Harvey...  Her friends can see, their husbands will hear...

If any of them were using that location, they'll stop.

That'll do far more damage than siccing the gubmint on them.

This word of mouth thing has killed other shops in the area.  There's a Goodyear Tire and Auto location that is gone because of this.

Toe And Go

I took it upon myself to see if I could get a crude alignment done by adjusting the toe on the driver's front tire and then going around the block and see if the car went straight.

After about five tries, including an over-correction, The Beast now tracks straight.

I still want to put it on an alignment rack.  Going straight doesn't mean the tires aren't going to wear unevenly.

To that end, I'd scheduled an appointment with a different shop for 3pm today and when I arrived... They were swamped.  Jobs that were taking longer than expected and several walk-ins.

Sunday is a busy day, it seems.

Plus the person I'd made the appointment with had double booked a couple of jobs, adding to the mayhem.

I offered to come back tomorrow, they gratefully accepted my offer.

Unaligned

The local Tires Plus lied today.

They claimed a tie rod wasn't torqued to spec.

They offered to tighten it down for $350.

I declined and took The Beast home.

So I checked.

Inners were still at 66 ft-lb, which is to spec.

Outers were still the fucking tight of 30 ft-lb plus 60 degrees.

No play in the steering.

So I called the shop back.

The guy on the phone swore that something was finger tight and only engaged by a couple of threads.

With him on the phone and shaking things I could not find anything finger tight or engaged by a couple of threads.

This is all especially galling because they were the last place to touch those tie rods because I took the car straight from installing the tie rods to them for an alignment.

I strongly suspect that they made this up because one of the managers offered to upgrade my alignment from last year to a lifetime for the difference between what I'd already paid and the upgraded service.

This is exactly the kind of bullshit that led me to learn to wrench in the first place.

Very telling was the conversation about the inner tie rod ends and his bafflement about the non-factory metal-zip tie's I'd used to retain the boots over them.  He'd described removing and installing the factory wire retainer.

My zip ties were still on the boots and tight as ever.

I'm beyond furious, but what recourse do I have except to go elsewhere?

Two Forward One Back Mox Nix

Got the front left control arms replaced on The Beast.

Marv came to the rescue with take-apart tools for the recalcitrant rearmost arm's ball joint.

Pickle fork?  No-go because the tips hit the spindle before it could get enough wedge in.

Genuine powered-by-Archimedes ball joint tool worked, but we had to shorten the stem of the ball joint to get it wide enough to go over it and THEN had to cut the nut off the stem because it kept walking off the tip when we applied torque.

Once we got the new ones in and torqued down, it was obvious I'd need an alignment, but this was not unexpected.

What surprised me was the Stabilitrak going tits up on the test drive because the wheel was too far over.

C0710 5A for those scoring at home.  It's because there's steering input and no yaw signal.  It should clear itself once I have a good alignment on it, which happens tomorrow.

PS: The right turn shimmy appears to be corrected and the rearmost control arm bushing was shot.

Two Two Three

 

Today is 2-23.

.223!  Get it?

I'm here all night, try the veal, don't forget to tip your waitress.

Did You Know

Did you know that if your student loan is cancelled by Joe, you can still vote for a Republican?

The recipient of this largess is not obligated to be grateful for it, especially since it's the Democrats who are largely responsible for ruining the conditions where a degree in navel lint weaving led to a good job; and thus are responsible for holders of such degrees not being able to find work.

I am hearing rumblings that the appreciation of the forgiveness isn't going to last into the voting booth.  Harvey has several friends whom expect to benefit who're not planning on voting for Brandon again.

It's Good To Be A King's Man

Now that we've all seen the "shots fired" acorn video.

Imagine if you, as a private citizen had sprayed and prayed that hard at what turned out to be nothing.

If you're having the realization that you'd be in jail and notice that our panicky police shooter got to quit their job...

With all the talk of racism and illegals being second class citizens, we keep missing that most of us already are second class citizens.  Or lower.

Don't take me wrong, I'm all for the cops getting to shoot back and end threats, I simply want the same laws for all.

I can't, cop can't.  Cop can, I can.  Simple.

After all, they're supposed to be civilians, just like us.

But if you even hint at making the laws the same, the cops and their unions and professional organizations flip the fuck out.

No first class citizen wants the second class elevated to their level (or to be reduced).

GURPS Shotguns

All shotgun ammunition fires at nearly the same velocity.

That means a pellet of a given size is going to do the same damage regardless of gauge.  They will also have the same 1/2D and Max ranges.

What will matter after that is how many pellets.

00 Buck is the baseline pellet for GURPS shotguns, and most gauges smaller than 12 don't get a 00 option.

Check the ammo sellers.

.410 is the exception because you can get 000 loads.

Starting at #1 Buck, the pellets get pi-.

Many of the smaller rounds don't even get a slug option.

It makes it easy to spec out a new shotgun once you do the math for a given pellet.

How Bad Is It

It's so bad that the guy who had "Hillary 2016" and "Biden 2020" in his yard doesn't have a "Biden 2024" sign up.

"Hillary 2016" stayed there until the "Biden 2020" sign went up.

"Biden 2020" lasted right up to "Let's Go Brandon" became a meme.

After All That

The City of Manor, Texas is the source of the first example of Texans don't pronounce things right I found.

But it's worse than that.

It's spelled like the English word pronounced "Manner" or "Manohr"

But it's named after a person, James B Manor.

I don't know how he said it, but the official pronunciation is "May-Ner."

Locals say, "May-Nohr".

But people from Florida should be mocked for not knowing any of this?

Have another bowl of enchilada sauce, I guess.

Made Of Wait

My control arms have made it Florida, but aren't out for delivery.

They're still optimistically saying they will arrive before the end of the day, but...

Probably not.

The odd mental block I've discovered is that I don't want to take the car apart until I have the parts in hand.

The job really will get done sooner if I do, but I'm not gonna.

Well Put

 

Getting Things Apart

Since I am going to be doing the control arms on The Beast tomorrow...

I've been considering tools that will get the ball joints out of the spindle.

The method I prefer is to thread the nut to the end of its threads and hit it with a hammer.  That normally pops it right out.

This also, normally, allows it to be reused.

A video I watched, though, said (in a wonderful Australian accent), "You're throwin' this part away, no need to be gentle!"

He's so right!

If the hammer fails, I have a pickle fork around here someplace.

It surprises me the number of videos I've seen with people struggling with some sort of screw driven contraption when a good whack with a hammer would suffice.

Didn't Read It Did You

The Wicked Witch of the West is not some misunderstood victim of The Wizard of Oz.

She's the bad guy.

She's an unrepentant bad guy.

She doesn't need a redemption arc or a story from her perspective where she's the hero.

Why?

Because the fucks at the Wannsee Conference, from their perspective, thought they were the heroes too.

Of course, given the level of antisemitism from Hollywood of late, perhaps the dancing monkeys would agree the Nazis were the good guys...

I'd Put The Time Of Death In 2012

Reading about further shenanigans surrounding the Hugo award I am reminded that it really became irrelevant in 2012 when the nominations and awards went full liberal.

The Sad and Rabid Puppy campaigns simply proved that the nomination and voting were compromised and the WSFS was not going to return to allowing the fans to pick what they wanted without a filter to exclude "undesirable" conservative stories and votes.

The bullshit at the Chengdu Worldcon is just another cherry atop a very large sundae.

Texans Again

NASA's first 2-man spacecraft has a bit of a controversy about how to pronounce Gemini.

To the entire rest of the world it's pronounced Jem In Eye.

To insiders and cool kids at NASA it's said Jih mih nee.

I think it's linked to the brand new control center in Houston and Texans inability to pronounce common words, like Manor or Texas.  (X is pronounced as a hard H in Spanish).

Like skipping the beans in chili, they think it's cute and endearing, but it's really just making them look stupid.

It'd be one thing if they were preserving the original pronunciation and everyone else had changed.  Lost in the Pond on YouTube details a lot of cases like this where American English is preserving how something was originally said and England has changed.

But Texas keeps changing the pronunciation of words, with no clear logic or rules.

It's not a case of using Spanish rules on English characters, or vice versa; except sometimes at random (Texas is said English and spelled Spanish for example but Manor is not pronounced English OR Spanish).

My pointing all this out just makes them double down and have another bowl of salsa.

And if you think all I do is shit on Texas; them fuckers have nailed BBQ.  Do like unto Texas your brisket!

Unexpectedly

REAL unexpectedly, not the Democrat Captive Media "unexpectedly."

We've been watching the so-bad-it's-good-but-not-really-because-it's-THAT-bad show La Brea.

The Lovely Harvey and I just finished the last episode tonight.

We gutted through it when we should have rage quit two seasons ago.

I had more self consistent science fiction stories when I was in 9th grade playing Star Frontiers.

It's making Space: 1999 easier to watch.

Read that again: It's making Space: 1999 easier to watch.

I am tempted to find the OG Land of the Lost and see if it's better or worse than La Brea.

As A General Rule

As a general rule I don't take advice about whether I should own a firearm from stoners or felons.

Mr Chong is both.

No matter that his felony is a bullshit conviction, he's a felon nonetheless.

I find his sudden condemnation of firearm ownership odd.

Almost as if he feels that if he can't have a gun, nobody else should have one either.

He even once mentioned that as something he was no longer allowed to do...  Like he was once a gun owner.

Oh, I most especially don't listen to the mores of fucking Canadian dancing monkeys!  There's too fucking many of them here trying to tell us Americans how to do things.

 

 

Hrrrrrm

 

I wonder...

When I was a kid, we were raised in a "free-range" manner.

No smart phones, no internet and even if we were allowed in the house during the day; three channels.

School was 90% reading, writing and arithmetic.  Science was actual science stuff and there were more than one specialty to choose from.

I wonder if we learned to use our brains better and are, thus, better able to operate after losing a few cells.

High Concept Schlock

I am, manfully, trying to watch Space: 1999.

It's so very high minded, reasonably well filmed in the first season...

and it's dreck.

When I was 7 it was a lot more impressive.

The initial premise is just... wrong.

Ignoring how much energy is used to get the moon moving at what looks to be about 6G for a few minutes...

6G for a few minutes leaves the moon...  In orbit around Earth.  A different shape orbit, perhaps disastrously different.

But it doesn't get the moon outside the solar system.

I suspect some drugs that you cannot readily get anymore were involved in conceiving the show.  Like 'ludes.

Wiggle Wiggle

I went for a long drive last night to investigate the shimmy.

It's only in right hand turns and only under what I'd call moderate steering.

More steering input, no wiggle.

Past a certain lateral G, no wiggle.

Less steering input, no wiggle.

Below a certain lateral G, no wiggle.

Below 40 mph, no wiggle.

At 55, very pronounced.

Marv is the one who remembered that if you have this kind of shimmy, only in turns, then there's something loose on the outside of the turn as the weight shifts onto the suspension there.

The driver's side did seem a little looser than the driver's when I had the struts out...

Control arms are so much cheaper than struts and MUCH simpler to install.  Oh, you can install them one at a time instead of in pairs.

We Love To Watch Her Strut

Changed the front struts in The Beast.

Marv came over to be safety observer while I used the spring compressors.

Spring compressors give me the willies.

Seen too many scary videos of them going wrong.

But they're in now.

The shimmy is not cured, but it's better.  Everything I've done has made an improvement.

Control arms are next on my list.

If Ever There Was A Day For It

Since it's President's Day (three days too soon to be Washington's birthday, a week late for Lincoln) I need to find a range that will let me do an El Presidente drill.

The range I'm a member of is closed on Mondays and wouldn't allow such shooting anyways.

At Least Once

Probably more than once.

I have been told that my bloated, crippled ass will not be participating in any upcoming civil war.

Au Contraire!

I know The Math.  And other equations.

I even calculated them myself.

Even if we assume that I am killed when the police arrive to confiscate my firearms; how many cops do I have to assign to my honor guard in Hell for the pro-gun side to win because the anti-gun side has run out of people in uniform?

I'm pretty sure they think we're not going to fight back.

I'm pretty sure they're wrong.

Well, they might be mostly right, but the odds are ever in our favor.

I've said it many times now.

The decision to have this fight is not up to us.  It's up to people who're stupid as fuck.

Fuck Off Officer

 Fuck the Florida Senate too.

I WANT to support the police, but they keep pulling this shit while doing everything in their power to subvert my rights.

But I do know one thing about this bill, that should be fucking obvious.

The citizenry didn't demand it.

This is entirely a the creature of law enforcement associations.

This is exactly the opposite of what the legislators are supposed to be doing.  They're there to represent US, not our employees against us.

It's interesting that the FL Senate can pull crap like this and can't bother to let the committees even talk about pro-gun legislation. 

Especially after passing that law about slowing down for any government employee parked on the side of the road last year.

It's primarying time!

U After O Except When It's No

There are a couple of words that I spell English instead of American because I learned to spell them from reading before I learned there was a preferred way to spell them here.

Smoulder is one of them.  I can type smolder if I focus on it, but my fingers add the 'u' 9 times out of 10.

Of note:  Neither spelling has the "you spelled it wrong" red line under it as I type this.

So it gets spelled English a lot because I have to really focus on spelling it American style and most of the time I'm going too fast for that kind of focus.

I houpe this douesn't coulour youur oupinoun ouf me.

It's A Tell

Have you noticed that the GunTubers shilling for USCCA "insurance" are all lawyers?

It's Bad Enough

It's bad enough you're a fraud, but now you've become gun grabber?

Unlike a lot of people, I know people who were farmers when the farm crisis was going on.

I remember Farm Aid.

I remember a couple of acquaintances who applied for assistance from Farm Aid.

Guess what they got.

Go on.

Bupkiss.

The monies collected paid pennies on the kilobuck to the people they claimed they were trying to help.

Now this fuck wants to ban guns?

Bite me, Mr Cougar.

It would be best if you were to explore the LD100 dose of...  Pick something, anything.

As for seeing bodies to make people support banning guns?

I've seen my share.  That, more than anything else, led to me abandoning my "only the government should have guns" and becoming the gun toting person I am today.

Wanna bet that someone such as Willard, who is far more blooded than I, will likewise support gun ownership?  Hint: Sucker bet.

But corpses from the result of crime in America?

It's not the murder weapon that's the problem, Mr Cougar.  It's DA's who don't prosecute criminals.  It's shitheels like Soros who fund the elections of DA's who don't prosecute criminals.  It's a subculture that is a low-trust honor culture that doesn't view crime and murder as being wrong.  It's a media who support moral equivalence and perpetuate this subculture.

In short, it's not the guns.

Dice

I'd bought the 36 die set from Chessex when I first got a copy of Gelatinous.

As a backup, in case I lost it.  You don't really need the official game and dice to play.

But I liked the color I'd chosen enough to get a complete set for D&D.

They glow under black-light too!?

I don't even have much of a dice collection compared to some.