[scorn=ON] [ridicule=ON] Scooooorrrnnnn and ridicuuulllle! The enngineeers sent an order of twenty-five desktop systems – mini towers, standard 5.25” half-height bays for optical drives. The optical drives they put on the bill of materials are slimlines meant for laptops, 1U rackmount servers, micro-desktops, and the like. Ignorant useless illiterate worthless moronic WASTES-OF-OXYGEN! AH’M A-GETTIN’ MAH SPEAR!
Nary a day passes without something very much like that happening. I am not coming back to this job after their six-month tax-break contract thingy. Big Electronics Company Sucks! [/ridicule] [/scorn]
Ya know it's really darn cold around here right now.
2401 - Wednesday, 9 December 2009: Record cold. Still dry, but ice forecast for the weekend.
Comes word the correct optical drives won’t be in for one or possibly TWO WEEKS, which is Stupid, or the customer and enngineeers may get adapter brackets for the slimline drives in a conventional chassis, which is even Stupider. So now I’m building incomplete systems which will take up shelf space which could be used for stuff that could actually ship, and then when the parts, whatever they may eventually be, do finally come in, I’ll have to handle all those systems again, spending Therbligs like Congress does tax dollars. It would make more sense to get all this sorted out before issuing the build order but THAT NEVER HAPPENS. BECAUSE THEY’RE STUPID.
(Sis, do you have to put up with this where you work?)
I should update my Laws of Production Work....
Breathtaking arrogance. Is it time to shoot the bastards yet?
2A & Commerce Clause, hmm. Sorta the other side of the coin from the Firearms Freedom Acts.
Speaking of that very thing, The Lairds of Fairfax. Sigh. For this I’m making EPL payments?
GP100 now available in 5”. Probably would fit the Fobus I already have. But there’s no way I’m blowing $500 yipe, $600+ on a variant of a weapon I already have. –Davidson’s Gallery of Guns was on the show a week or three ago and Tom Gresham was pointing out how they get nonstandard, un-cataloged models, in very limited quantities of course.
GRE St. Louis smacks Bloomberg, again.
Free-market education now. Because it works. And who opposes it? And what results do their methods produce?
The quote, or words to its effect, is attributed to Mark Twain: ”History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Not unrelated, When Facts Don’t Matter.
The War.
THUGS. WITH. BADGES. First comment is the Quote o’ the Day. I’ve seen the truth of it, more often, more personally, and more recently than I like.
Another Quote worth Quoting: "When a condescending know-nothing moron, like Al Gore, muscles his way behind the steering wheel of this planet, life has jumped the shark." (Ref. for the generationally- and/or pop-culture-challenged)
2402 - Thursday, 10 December 2009: Really freaking cold. Mid-teens F at the hovel, single-digit at work. Could damn well use some o’ that “global warming”. Oh wait! They made that up! DAMMIT!
Uh huh.
Mm-hm.
Tenth Amendment thingy.
Warmists aren’t the only psychotics in the political arena; and “antis” aren’t just about our favorite hardware. Eric Puryear has a graphic example today.
Speaking of psychotics, Epic Duh o’ the Day: ”Government is a consumer of wealth, not a producer.” Some people can’t grok that.
Codrea reviews a book (which has also been on the show).
Never trust a cop of any kind. We gonna hafta wire our cars with cameras now? They turn theirs off.
Fox gets Stossel. Oughta near make up for Geraldo. I don’t get TV but I do have my sweet, sweet intarwebz.
Yuri podcasts!
Hey – suppose Jews – proud, historically-conscious, Never-Again-and-we-really-effing-mean-it Jews - were to build a battleship. What would they name it? (For the Japanese population of the same planet, battleship names are easy - Yamato, Musashi, Shinano (that last was a Yamato-class hull redirected to carrier).) -Hm, I’ve already used Masada, but I’m using largely American naming conventions (which, in the above case at least, the Japanese also used) – battleships named for states or equivalents, cruisers named for cities or battles, and Masada was a cruiser, as are her sisters Alamo and Chosin. But if I do write a new segment it would be post-War and the name would be available.
Working on 2x4 Shoot video - got the vid edited, want to add an explanatory thingy to the beginning.
2403 - Friday, 11 December 2009: Still really freaking cold. Precipitation tonight, mass incompetence tomorrow.
Golob & Hupp on Gun Talk this Sunday.
DIY Kydex.
Even More Authorized Journalists.
Sorta related, Image o’ the Day. I had an idea to make an activism poster – a “NO GUNS” sign with a bullet hole, and maybe some spilled blood or a corpse nearby – but real life, and Oleg Volk of course, beat me to it.
Two from Codrea today: DOJ sez cops can’t shoot & Prohibition FAIL; and Appleseed. I intend to make the next Patriot’s Day weekend, with The Queen, with which I still haven’t shot Expert by their reckoning. (Quick links to reports on my four Appleseeds so far here.) But with the economy going over the cliff, and dragging the Constitution with it, I might have more important things to shoot at than paper.
Permits are infringement. Prior restraint, waste of resources, teh st00pid, and a bucketful of unintended consequences. We’re not the ones causing harm. All we want is to be left alone.
”You’re gonna need a bigger boat hammer.” If only....
Historical tidbit: On this day in 1941, Adolf Hitler made the other Biggest Military Blunder Evar. One, obviously, was invading Russia that summer, but it would take a while for that to sink in. Likewise this one: Declaring war on the United States of America. At that point we were only at war with Japan. There have been a few AltHist treatments of this, notably Gingrich & Forstchen's 1945 from Baen. In OTL (Original Timeline for those of you who don't read enough speculative fiction), the lesson is: Don't Tick Off the Americans.
2404 - Saturday, 12 December 2009: Zzzz. Skipping the show this month, constantly trying to control spending, don't dare go near that '62 Colt repro. And besides zzzz.
Last night's preemptive precipitation panic didn't pan out - it's just wet. Could all freeze tonight though and that would be ugly.
Vegging....
2405 - Sunday, 13 December 2009: Zzzzz.
Leetle ice out there. But sunshine.
Show & chat every Sunday 1100PT.
Government-Media Complex.
Didn't I! Tell ya!
2x4 video done! CLICK HERE for a 44Mb .WMV. Also CLICK HERE for my First Evar YouTube submission, yays. Software used was CyberLink's DVD Suite v5, 2007, a stripped-down version bundled with product and fished out of the recycle bin at work. There are More Things, i.e. voice-over, text-over, and music-over, and more transitions, I can do with even that less-than-fully-functional software. Learning.
2406 - Monday, 14 December 2009: Evil....
No ice this morning. Forecast now 50s F by the weekend. Like they know.
Cruffler emails that the ’62 Colt sold. Ah well, they’re still being made. Although the Remington is a better design of course.
Aaand I’m up to #95 as other folks’ stats settle. (No change for me in the West region.) I don’t expect to have another of these matches ‘til May, though there are more around than I’ve been attending.
This would be a nice Christmas present.... My current machine has two drives, an 80Gb for the OS and apps, and another 80Gb (both of which are closer to 75Gb) for the hunnerds & hunnerds of pictures I take at matches and such, and the gazillion other files I’ve been accumulating for years (electronic packrat-ism!). The first, I try to keep as empty as possible on the theory this will keep the machine running smoother. The second is full, as in less-than-3Gb-free-FULL. I have the 120 (112) Gb drive from the previous RatsNestOS, which I can wipe and use, and there is a place to put it in the system if I share one IDE channel with the DVD drive, hm.... The old HP mainboard has two IDE channels, each of which can support two devices. Both hard drives are naturally on the primary channel. On the secondary channel I have two DVD-ROMs, one being a player only (which will not handle CDs) and the other being a DVD/CD RW, which I use rather a lot for various projects. The player-only, in the Slave position, is acting flaky and I’m pretty sure it’s not the controller or cable since it was doing the same thing with a different cable in the Master position on the same channel, so I could yank it and stuff the other HDD in its place. But at the rate I’m going, and with my newfound video-editing capability, I can see a need for Moar Storage Space.
And a newer faster machine too of course – the render time for that .WMV was three times the play time. (My first option, saving it as .AVI, ended up over half a Gb. The raw .AVIs from the Canon A580, before cropping for content (some of those guys took a long time to cut through their boards), were 900Mb.)
CyberLink’s DVD Suite, v5, comes with PowerDirector, which is what I used to edit the video, and it strikes me as a decent app. There’s a storyboard where you can drag & drop raw files on four tracks: stills/video, transitions/text-over, voice-over, and music-over. You can then drag each component, within it’s own track, to overlap other tracks, i.e. having the voice start at this point when that image is displayed and it shows this text and the music starts there. Decent interface, rather intuitive, not hard to learn and probably more powerful than I’ve yet explored. Screenshots of the latest version show essentially the same interface, and investigations of other softwares suggest they’re laid out alike. Spendy though, if you don’t have a recycle bin at the Big Electronics Company to fish an older copy out of. There are limitations – in this stripped-down version there are only a few output choices, and it can’t handle .FLV video, or audio tracks straight from a CD, but considering what I paid for it it’s pretty darn good.
Bill of Rights rewrite, hm.
My YouTube channel. Yay internets!
Gah, ammunition. Again. And again and again. No pins this weekend, this is one of the off months, but plates on the 26th and I’ll have to cast more. I have enough .45 for the 1911, but it needs degooping. –Setting up for casting will be a bit of a problem ‘cause it’s really darn cold out and I prefer to cast outside for ventilation. Also it tends to rain, or otherwise precipitate, in Oregon in this part of the year, and falling water + molten lead = Bad. I’ll manage somehow. I’ll focus on the .357, for which I’ll have to get a 6-cav mold later – I’ll make some .30s for testing, now that I have everything for it; and I might not have gumption to try the 6-cav .45, which I don’t need more of right now, or the 2-cav Lyman 250gr .45.
2407 - Tuesday, Bill of Rights Day, 15 December 2009: Click. Read.
Rain. Not freezing.
Another tool-using species. Now ain’t that somethin’? So them stories about bug-eyed tentacled aliens have merit.
Jeeeeepers. (No I don’t want one for Christmas. Besides it doesn’t actually do anything. I mean if it at least lit up and went BZZZOWNT, and maybe had a thingy going around the doohickey and venting a little steam - but it doesn’t. Steampunk cosplay is FAKE and FAKE IS LAME!)
(...Now how hard would it be to put one of these on a somewhat-less-fake Destabilizer-Ray Rifle or Anti-Coherence Projector? Can it run on batteries? A few square 12V lantern units maybe? Or perhaps a motorcycle battery, hm. Backpack power with a cable running to it? Visual and audio effects can be generated with modern electronics and concealed with a variety of materials.... Or heck, just get some $20 gun-show-flea-market tasers and kitbash them.)
Illinois really sucks. Pols traipsing around in armored limos with MP5-toting thugs, telling taxpayers to lie down and take it (on several levels). But hey look! More Guns = Less Crime! Who’d’a thunk it? Certainly not the thugs-with-badges and unstable-freaks-in-black-robes.
Why We Hate Cops. Let me count the ways....
New Year’s Resolution. (Summarily deleted, unread, by staff....)
Later, in Codrea’s third GRE column for the day, gibberish (see comments) from an ignorant bigoted anti – but gibberish she would have enforced on all of us.
Nanny State. The servants need to be put back in their place. And the peaceful methods aren’t working anymore....
Seen at Bi-Mart, a Significant Quantity of 500rnd bricks of Remington-Peters brown-box .22LR solid, $16.97 each. One brick = one Appleseed. Primers & powder still very low though.
Speaking of Appleseed, if you still don’t have an LTR, I’m seeing base-model 10/22s retailing around $200, while the Marlin M795 is around $150 or less (depending on local sale pricing). Get a spare magazine for ~$15, blow another $70-odd for Tech Sights (I note they’re adding more models, like the Mossberg 702), pack a lunch and hit the range.
Some time ago a reader sent me several links for converting .FLV, i.e. saved from SaveTube or DownloadHelper, to other formats which can then be imported to video editors and subsequently burned to DVD. With my recent progress on that front, I’m finally getting around to looking at them. This appears to be exactly what I was looking for. Now I can, for example, grab lolcat .FLVs from ICHC and make a nice long DVD for my sister to laugh herself ill over – but the activism potential here should be obvious as well. Grab public-domain video of pols saying one thing and doing another, or of them being proven liars, splice in your commentary, slap together a DVD (blanks are $10/50 on sale at my local variety store) and hand them out like candy. (Most computers made in the last couple years come with a DVD burner, and you can add one even to older machines.)
Blank CD-Rs are usually the same price as blank DVD-/+Rs. I’ve tried a couple times to make VCDs – video CDs which are supposed to play in regular DVD players – without success. But since the price for blanks is the same, and most computers which haven’t been sent to the recycling yard yet have DVD drives anyway, shrug.
*&^%$#@^&#$!@&(**($#$#$!@Q#@@#%%*&(*&)&^!@$%&*
TRAFFIC!!!!!
...Eventually installed the 112Gb drive as described yesterday and wiped it. That'll hold me for a while but, like ammunition, Too Much Drive Space Doesn't Happen.
...Found around:
2408 - Wednesday, 16 December 2009: Traffic....
Anniversary.
I haven’t linked this yet? How negligent of me.
And besides there’s no sights! How do these people aim?! -Like ST:TNG I guess, start the hose-fire going and walk it into the target, through whatever primitive natives happen to be in the way.
Of course if you want a really big gun....
The people who fight for free speech should get free speech. Respecting the chain of command is important, armies need discipline, but what line has this man crossed? On the GovSchool issue alone I have to take his side – I escaped from those indoctrination centers.
Ruger YouTube channel.
Break the teachers’ unions.
Cato Institute on BofR.
Don’t boycott Kohl’s? (Ref.)
One of my readers works for a company which works with Boeing, and has sent this video of the 787’s first flight.
Yes, I’ve thought of a 2x4 shoot for rifles. Edge-on, a precision event - 1.5 inches at 100 yards. In the spirit of the handgun version, I’d have to say: Hunting-type, field-type rifles (like the Bubba match); no capacity greater than five rounds; no bore size over .375. Probably a bench competition but I’d just as soon have it from prone.
Sooo... in today's politically-correct, culturally-sensitive America, this is protected activity but Appleseeds get shut down? Kafka was a bloody amateur.
2409 - Thursday, 17 December 2009:
Q: Why are Oregon drivers so stupid?
A: Because they’re from California.
Anniversary.
Speaking of flying, Jihadis intercept drone video feed. Are you tellin’ me these things are flying around up there and they’re not even encrypted?
...Although, when GovThugs start using this technology to wreck what’s left of the Bill of Rights, a lot of Our Kind have the know-how to Take Appropriate Action.... And remember, many of the guys who run the things aren’t just on Our Side, they are Our Side. The guy who gets the orders gets a vote too.
Denver GRE deconstructs the “guns are a public-health problem” argument.
Codrea has another New Year’s Resolution.
Speaking of the Dreamliner....
Barsoom 9, Synthetic Men of Mars (serialized 1939), does after all put forth – for perhaps the first time – the concept of a created race (Cylons, Terminators, Berserkers) rebelling and enslaving or destroying their creators – except the creations are biological instead of mechanical. (IMO Shelley’s Frankenstein didn’t go that far, having just the one creation running amok and seeking personal revenge.)
Reader points out an AR lower for FIFTY DOLLARS (FFL req. natch’).
2410 - Friday, 18 December 2009: I forgot to get recertified as an RSO at the club. Have to be one to be a match director – four days’ service required per year, running a match counts as one, I run twelve matches a year so I never have to pull regular RSO duty. I’d signed up for the class right after the November plate match but spaced it and then stuff happened and other stuff happened. Distractions....
In the Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot department, Mad Mike Williamson comments on the decline of this once-great nation. How did it come to this? As Pournelle would put it, the legions are loyal – but who’s loyal to them?
Looks like that $50 AR lower from yesterday is sold out.
Several things to take care of tomorrow, starting with the most important:
2411 - Saturday, 19 December 2009: Zzzzz.
Quote o' the Day: "What's at stake is the whole future of the American experiment of putting freedom and liberty ahead of security and welfare. 'We believe that each man is the best judge of his own interest.' That's what's at stake. This may be the last opportunity for that view of the world."
WRSA sez train realistically.
2412 - Sunday, 20 December 2009: Zzzzzz!
Show & chat every Sunday 1100PT.
What in the hell is going on with the Army? Chicago GRE pointedly asks, "Might Major Hassan have been dissuaded from carrying out his attack if he had been required to register his pistol and declare it to base guards before bringing it onto the base?" NO. NO HE WOULDN'T. YOU STAGGERING MORONS. ARM THE TROOPS.
Casting bullets. Lee #90388, 2-cav .38 tumble-lube RN, gives fine results with minimum effort; the used # 90362, 2-cav gas-check .30, doesn't - like it's running cold or something. More care must be taken to fill each cavity, or the metal clogs at the sprue plate hole and doesn't fill at all (which is darn peculiar since Lee uses the exact same sprue plate, with the exact same holes, on all three Lee 2-cav molds I have). Got enough for testing at least. The Lyman #454190, 2-cav 250gr .45, is heavier and more fatiguing, but gives good-looking results when it finally gets up to operating temperature; hope to have a batch tested and ready for January pins. The meplat is not as honkin' huge as I first thought, but that just means it should feed easier in the 1911. The Lee #90286, 6-cav .45, feels lighter than the 2-cav steel Lyman. Using it takes some getting used to - timing, etc. - but eventually one gets good results and plenty of them.
2413 - Monday, 21 December 2009: EVIL, EVIL MONDAY! OF EVIL!
Six more weeks.... I would actually be looking forward to being unemployed - I never get enough sleep, and I have a lot of brass to process and rounds to make - if not for that money thing.
The biggest problem with the new Lee 6-cav .45 mold is, it often sticks on opening – the steel index pin on the far end. Thus you have to close it and try to open it again, and again, and some of the bullets get chewed up. Maybe some careful use of Dremel & rouge on the pin or it’s hole. When it does open easily results are excellent. As for filling, my technique is, with the far end angled up and the handles angled down, start with the cavity nearest the handles and work my way uphill to the far end, with each overflow flowing together to create one big sprue. That sprue is broken by the cam-equipped sprue plate handle, no hammer required (except to drive the wooden handle back onto its shaft). This is a little stiff until the mold reaches operating temperature, but then it shears off easily – or more accurately, I break it when the metal is still a little soft. Lightweight Lee aluminum is vastly less fatiguing than anyone else’s steel. I’ll surely be getting a .38 6-cav later.
I’m gonna need a bigger boat water-drop pan.... Got everything lubed last night, and impatiently sized and relubed the .30 and 250gr .45. The Hornady gas checks seated and crimped onto the .30 bullets through the Lee .308 sizer as advertised, though there was more resistance in the single-stage press than expected. ...Didn’t actually measure the diameter of the output before lubing or after sizing, and now the twenty good .30 bullets I got are all double-lubed, which will interfere with an accurate reading. Next time, for Science. Last time I made the .38s they sized very easily, being very close to the desired size as dropped; their first coat of lube is drying as I type (ditto the 230gr .45 truncated-cone, which I also neglected to measure before lubing). I will be wanting the Lee Factory Crimp Die for .357 Magnum later though; recall the failure I experienced in October’s IPSC shoot. The Lyman 250gr seemed rather oversized, judging by the resistance in the sizer; didn’t measure them before sizing either, got carried away – not expecting a feeding problem there as I’m using the same .451 sizer, and my .45ACP setup includes the FCD. (Remember the Lee Factory Crimp Die, for straight-wall handgun cartridges, resizes the entire finished cartridge in addition to applying the appropriate taper or roll crimp. Rifle FCDs create a collet crimp strong enough to force a cannelure into even jacketed bullets, and have no sizing function.)
Quote o’ the Day, which strikes me as related to yesterday’s and today’s Chicago GRE columns on Ft. Hood: "[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it." - Federal Farmer, Antifederalist Letter, No.18
“Select militia” means a standing army, a national, federal, permanent army taking its orders and it’s pay from a central federal government. Compare to this. –I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this. I’m not saying that the United States Army is an immediate threat to liberty, though the Founders would certainly see it that way and wrote a restriction into the 1787 Constitution (yes I’ve actually read the thing) (thank the gods for the Oath Keepers, whose numbers I have reason to believe are far greater than advertised). But something, somewhere, is Wrong with the Army. How can the very people who stand in defense of the Constitution be denied the human rights guaranteed by that Constitution? (To include aforementioned free speech.) Seems to me a lot of people need to pull their heads out of their brasses.
[pointing] Hah-hah.
”Just give them what they want”?
Seattle GRE examines a cop who drew his weapon on a snowball fight (also WoGged). –Many in the RKBA community, often blindly, “support law enforcement”. Workman has at least one eye open. (When I shop for AR parts in Shotgun News I study the photo ads. If it says “law enforcement discount”, I turn the page. Losing. My. Business.)
The question is no longer “Are we screwed?” but ”How screwed are we?”
Cleveland GRE begins a different take on Scrooge.
.38 bullets sized and relubed. As before, almost no resistance in the sizer, but I expect they'll bulge the cases just enough when loaded to make chambering more difficult. Starting on the .45s from the 6-cav - also very little resistance in the sizer, suggesting they're dropping close to the desired size. Christmas Day I'll be sitting at the DDRT(oD).
2414 - Tuesday, 22 December 2009: Anniversary.
More from Chicago GRE on Ft. Hood. Something is Wrong with the Army.
Huh, yesterday was Winter Solstice. More daylight.
Inconvenient Truth.
ZOMG ZORK! I played that on an Apple IIe!
Screwed.... Seriously, will there be elections anymore?
More Scrooge.
2415 - Wednesday, 23 December 2009: Cold again.
The Konus 90x spotting scope I got a couple years ago works, and sometimes works very well, but leaves some things to be desired. My previous scope was a Simmons 60x, which I sold to Yuri after getting the Konus; before that a Tasco 45x I gave to sis after getting the Simmons. Now comes this for a low-low price, hm, and with a nice-looking tripod and window mount besides. I got the Simmons from the same vendor for a comparable price. If they still have some a couple pay periods from now I might hafta. –I can throw in the .357 FCD while I’m ordering too – except I’m not finding it there, except for the older crimp-only die which doesn’t resize the finished round.
All bullets from the last casting session sized and double-lubed. Need to process & prime brass.
Yes, there will be more videos on my YouTube channel, when I have gumption. I have .AVIs stacked up from years ago (hence the need for Moar Drive Space).
Snork.
Starting JWR’s Patriots.
This from BTR, on the psychotic disconnect of those in power, goes with this from Pournelle and this from WoG and this from Michael Bane, on slightly different flavors of the same thing. I’ve ranted on this before. They do not acknowledge us as human. They never will. And the peaceful methods of opposition are no longer effective. Prepare, prepare, prepare.
With friends like these.
It’s not about guns, it’s about control.
Scrooge pt. 3.
Hat-Cam! One of these with a cable running down your back to a belt pouch containing a netbook like Yuri’s. A leetle more work and you could weapon-mount it too, I mean duct tape fer cryin’ out loud. Hmmm. Yuri! Wake up! You gotta try IPSC and bring yer electronics!
...Duuuude, depending on connectivity you could stream live IPSC runs. Hooahh!
...Ya know, with some duct tape and packing foam for getting the right angle, I could do the Hat-Cam with the RCA Small Wonder. Hmmm. Prolly get a hardhat at a second-hand store for a more rigid mount. Srsly I’m’na try it at Wolverton’s spring IPSC.
Oleg does it again.
CAN'T. MAKE. THIS. STUFF. UP.
And now for something completely different: The Little Ship That Could. Holy smoking smoke.
2416 - Thursday, Christmas Eve, 24 December 2009: Frost on the road this morning, more toward work with its higher elevation. Less traffic this morning, many have the day off. This job gets off two hours early for holidays. –Wow, it’ll still be daylight when I get back to the hovel! For a couple minutes.
So ObamaCare has passed the Senate. How screwed are we? Pundits say this will wreck the Democrat party’s electability, but the damage is done now, spineless RINOs can’t and won’t make any repairs, and seriously I’m wondering how many more elections there will be.
Rawles’ Patriots isn’t cheering me up neither. Like Forstchen’s One Second After, a plausible, researched, real-world horror story. I can see it from here.
Bigotry. They do not acknowledge us as human.
Via WoG, WTF? I mean I know Hussein & co. are wiping their backsides with the Constitution but how much damage are they capable of? If there is another “election” will there be anything left to save?
Prohibition FAIL. Encore l’DUH.
Scrooge pt. 4.
Yyyep.
Streaming live IPSC runs... there is no connectivity at most of the places I shoot but aside from that I think Skype might handle it. Somewhere I have an old USB webcam, and if I can’t find it I can grab a new one cheap – I’ll have to test it for a future podcast.
Ah, there it is, good. Little buggy in the search engine I guess. I Very Strongly recommend the Lee factory crimp die for any metallic cartridge you reload, especially if you’re doing bulk handgun rounds on a progressive press. Put it in the last station and it’ll kill your feeding problems dead.
2417 - Friday, Christmas Day, 25 December 2009: Merry Christmas!
Zzzz....
Scrooge, The End.
Yuri sends Christmas Kittehs!
Fiddling with more video for YouTube. I have two (functioning) video cameras: The excellent Canon A580 and the much lower-quality RCA Small Wonder (EZ207). Both save in .AVI, but they use different flavors of that format (codecs?). The Canon has four modes; the highest is 640x480 at 20fps, saving about 12½ minutes per Gb. The RCA has only two, the highest also being 640x480 (can't find a frames-per-second spec), at about half an hour per Gb. Yet, when I run the files through CyberLink PowerDirector 5, from the Canon, with spliced-in stills, text, and voiceover, I get 8m37s in 44Mb; but when I crop one single file from the RCA down to five minutes with nothing added, the result is 122Mb and poor quality. Huh!? Yyyyet, when I run it thorugh the RCA software, which is nowhere near as powerful, I get the same five minutes at even-more-reduced quality at 20Mb. Double huh?! Anyhow it's from the June Appleseed and you can see it here, assuming everything went well with the upload which it seems to have.
Well. Certainly no buyer's remorse on the Canon. The A580 is discontinued now of course, in favor of newer models with more features like image stabilization, but I'm quite satisfied with the brand. Thanks again to my sister for the FinePix A345, which was such a cool birthday gift I used it all to pieces and had to buy another!
2418 - Saturday, 26 December 2009: Plates!
Really Super Cold. At least it was clear and dry and the roads were decent. Surprisingly large turnout, 26 entries. I got 2nd Revolver of six, beat by Breen and narrowly at that (he's switched to a 625, and moon clips beat Safariland Comp 2s). Got some good video for YouTube later. Definitely need to get my old tumbler fixed so I can experiment with mass degooping of LLA - it causes real chambering issues with the GP100. The 1911 ran well, but went into premature slide lock at one point with the old McCormick 10-round; the new McCormick 10 worked perfectly and probably I was just shivering so hard I bumped the extended slide lock lever - I'll call it another zero-malf day for the pistol. LLA is less an issue in the 1911, since the pistol rams the cartridge home for you, but there's a big difference in the revolver between plated Xtreme which plummets into the chambers, and LLA which mushes in.
Post-match letdown.... I'm about ready to stop running the match, it's a lot of work for little reward. Every. Single. Month (except last December when it was snowed out). For three years. One of the regulars might step up if I can't get my RSO status (required to be a match director) renewed. (I've done tech support, I've been a match director, I even worked on a car lot for a while. I've done the Sucky Jobs.) (I've never worked food though.)
'Round the 'blogosphere: 
[scorn=ON] Enngineeers. There’s this system I’m building and they want six hard drives on it. Fine, except they also want a DVD drive. Fine, except all these drives use the SATA interface. Now the last time I checked, six + one = seven and there are only six COUNT’em OneTwoThreeFourFixeSIX SATA ports on the selected motherboard. Obviously a change must be made to the system’s configuration – the simple and elegant solution is to drop one of the hard drives and I can finish the thing in about 37 minutes. The usual option is to add an adapter cage and controller to gang the drives together through only two cables, which makes for a longer and more difficult build, and of course there’s another hardware adapter to mount the cage in the chassis and of course that part is out of stock so it’s going to sit on the shelf for days and maybe bits will grow legs and walk off it ya know. This is only the hundred-and-umpteenth time they’ve sent an order to the builders this way.... But nooooo, no, it must be the builders’ fault ‘cause they’ve only built several hundred systems just like this so naturally the builders can’t possibly know what they’re doing and besides We’re Engineers And We Drink Latté!
