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State Alternative

August 30, 2015, 9:56 pm
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Periodically I see what's still out there and thriving.

I use Midway as my barometer.

6.5 Grendel:  5 loads from 2 manufacturers.  5 available.

6.8mm Remington Special/6.8 SPC/6.8x43mm:  19 loads from 7 manufacturers.  12 available, 2 back-order OK, 5 unavailable.

.300 AAC Blackout: 31 loads from 12 manufacturers.  25 available, 2 back-order OK, 3 unavailable, 1 temporary unavailable.

.300 AAC Blackout Subsonic:  11 loads from 9 manufacturers.  8 available, 1 back-order OK, 1 unavailable, 1 temporary unavailable.

.300 is teh new hotness, to be sure.

Grendel is hanging in there!

6.8 seems to have achieved stasis but is down a lot in variety since I started.

6.5 and 6.8 are the boutique alternates.  Rabid fans and dedicated followings.

And it's only been six months since last time I did this.
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Oldies But Goodies

August 30, 2015, 10:13 pm
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Quote Of The Day

August 31, 2015, 10:54 am
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Reality Check. The armed agents of the state have the same function in North Korea they do in the USA and vice versa. That is to intimidate those of questionable loyalty to the state. The goal is not to arrest or kill, it is to "keep 'em in line". When the armed agents have to arrest, club, kill, etc, etc, they have in a real sense, failed in their primary mission. The pivot point in the USA is that the definition of questionable loyalty has expanded, from a small minority of the population until it now includes just about everybody not a full time employee of the state. Therefore the armed agents must attempt to intimidate a wider and wider range of people, like those who cut down a tree in their back yard, or join a Tea Party, and so on, and on, and on. This requires an ever greater number of armed agents, who will fail (in the sense outlined above) ever more often. If the state finds it imperative to tax a single cigarette at thirty seven times its actual economic value the armed agents will have to arrest, club, kill, etc, the disloyal who act outside the states economic web (cf. NYC/NYPD). There it is.
W. Fleetwood in comments here.
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Lego Red 2

August 31, 2015, 1:35 pm
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This started as Lego 9493.



My changes to the X-Wing are minimal, just extending the stripe under the cockpit.  I also extended the nose gear one peg and added some 1x3 sloped bricks to the bottom engines to raise the height of the ship to the correct altitude when parked.


The big change to make it Wedge's mount was to get Wedge's helmet to add to the pilot figure and the proper astromech droid R2-A3.  This is for the Battle of Yavin.  For the Battle of Endor he's got a different astromech, R5-G8.



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Student Loans

August 31, 2015, 3:39 pm
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If you've been delaying paying because life...

You see that the clock is ticking on going into default...

And you contact the lenders to start making payments...

And make an arrangement including an amount...

Never mind, they're going to garnish your take-home wages 15%.  That's about triple the agreed amount.

Fuck me.  Well, fuck Harvey, since it's her loans coming due.

With a degree from a college that's worthless.  She's got a degree from Corinthian Colleges.  Remember them?
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Gettin' There

August 31, 2015, 10:00 pm
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I only have 2009 and nine months of 2010 left to transfer from LiveJournal.

If only the export function worked and I could just import it here, but no...

I have to copy-paste each post one at a time.

Lots of broken links and dead pictures.  I can fix the pictures.
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Attack On Titan

September 2, 2015, 10:34 am
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It's an anime.

It's like a zombie apocalypse where the zombies are 5 to 20 meters tall.

Definitely a WTF Japan item.

Some have complained about all the whining two of the main characters do, but it's significantly less whining than some other zombie apocalypse shows.

Realizing that it's a zombie apocalypse show also made me realize why I generally dislike zombie fiction.

There's zero hope.

While the main characters may solve the immediate problem, eventually sickness, injury or infirmity will eventually let the zombies get them and win.

Real life is full enough of no-win scenarios that I don't want them in my fiction where I go to escape the no-win scenarios of my real life.
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For Future Use...

September 2, 2015, 1:18 pm
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Kilted To Kick Cancer

September 3, 2015, 12:46 am
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There's hardly a person who reads this blog who isn't reading someone else who's participating, donate through their team.

The same four people will rake in all of the prizes, again, anyways, so just donate to one of those four and all will be good with the world.

Me?  I'm sick of people complaining that PCF mails them letters because they donated once.

So combine no chance of winning with the complaints as if I was personally responsible for junk mail broke this camel's back.

Do donate!  It's a good cause!

You just can't donate through my "team".

It was also disheartening that only one donation last time came from someone I had not harangued personally via IM or vox.  Only got one mention from a non-participating blogger.

I didn't even get a stinking t-shirt.
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Anti-Cop

September 3, 2015, 11:38 am
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The police are upset at the anti-cop sentiment that's recently come to boil over in some communities?

They're really oblivious to the role they've been playing in creating and sustaining that resentment too.

It wasn't a big role.

They're not solely, or even mostly responsible.

But their small portion is why the resentment has legs and is running.

Bad cops exist and department after department has been observed closing ranks and sheltering them once too often.  It was a topic of conversation before Ferguson.  A heated conversation.

If the bad apples had been expelled as quickly as they'd been discovered, the resentment we're seeing today would not have gotten the toehold it has.

But y'all listened to the union instead of the communities you're supposed to be serving.  You made the decision that your fellow officers deserved more consideration than the citizens you're supposed to be protecting.

In short you betrayed the trust put in you and are now shocked that such betrayals have consequences that affect you personally.

The worst part of this is now all police are the police because there are definitely departments that have actively culled their bad apples and are paragons of virtue.

It wasn't the citizenry that adopted an us versus them posture first; but they did recognize it and are now responding to it.

Congratulations on sowing the wind, Officer.  Congratulations for tarring what is almost definitely most cops and most departments with your filthy brush.

The lion's share of the blame is sitting in city council and county commission chambers, and that dumps it back at the feet of the people most affected by inaction in their police departments by not voting them out.

Full circle.

And we could focus a great deal more on how they've managed to do this to themselves if it weren't for the "Thin Blue Line®" and good officers compromising themselves to protect the bad ones.  But now that the avalanche has begun, the pebbles don't get to vote.
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We're Number One Forty

September 3, 2015, 2:04 pm
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Pasco County, Florida is #140 out of 3143 for population in the US with 475,502 residents.  868 sq mi.  547.8 people per square mile.

To contrast, Story County, Iowa (my former home) is #629 with 92,406 people.  574 sq mi.  161 people per square mile.

With 3.4 times as many people stuffed in a given space, it's no wonder the houses here are packed hook to jowl.

Both are roomier than my early childhood home of Will County, Illinois.  #90 with 682,829 people stuffed into 849 square miles (804.3 per sq mi).
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Do You Think

September 4, 2015, 11:41 am
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Every time I find someone talking about a nazi Hi Power, I wonder if the gun is thinking, "Je ne suis pas un nazi, je suis de Belgique!"

And if the Inglis made gun replies, "Il est pas si mal, tout le monde pense que je suis britannique, eh."
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Tools Are Investments

September 4, 2015, 2:41 pm
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Once again the tool-box which seemed so expensive to two exes and occasionally Harvey has paid for itself!

The right front caliper had become stuck.

Number one likely cause on a GM B-Body caliper is the sliders.  The outside slides on the tips of the slider pin and the inside slides on a sleeve that the pin passes through.

Gave the pins a good cleaning and put some dry lubricant on the o-rings they slide against in the caliper.

Pumped the brakes up a few times, worked the caliper back and forth with a c-clamp a few times.

Put it all back together and it seems fine now.

No pull to either side whether I am off or on the brakes now.  When it got stuck it was pulling hard and there was a serious vibration as the rotor was forced through the pads.

Let's hear it for tools and Mechanic/TL8 (Automobile)!
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Maybe They're Related

September 4, 2015, 7:45 pm
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Uh... Wait A Second...

September 5, 2015, 2:11 pm
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Reading this Car and Driver article.

That Weiand blower on Max's car...

It's a roots style blower, those are positive displacement.

That means if the rotors stop, so does the air; so that cute little switch on the shifter would kill the motor when it stopped driving the blower.
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Quote Of The Day

September 6, 2015, 11:57 am
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On Bronies, "There are definitely obnoxious and pushy fans, but so what?  If you could judge an entire fandom off the most annoying among them, sports and music would have been outlawed decades ago!"

From:

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Good Thing Too

September 6, 2015, 1:20 pm
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Baldric

September 6, 2015, 10:34 pm
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I forgot to mention!

I got a baldric for my sword.


Even dug out the tactical kilt for the pic.

There's no natural way to stand that doesn't hide things, so...
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Big Pile Of Stuff

September 7, 2015, 10:45 am
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The Son Tay raid, or Operation KINGPIN...

From GURPS: Special Ops 3e.

For 56 men on the ground.

2 AN/PRC-41 radios
10 AN/PRC-77 radios.
24 AN/PRC-88 radios.
92 AN/PRC-90 survival radios.

2 M16A1 rifles.
48 GAU-5A (R630) carbines.
250 30-round magazines.
50 Singlepoint OEG scopes.
51 M1911A1 pistols.
4 M60 machine guns.
4 M79 grenade launchers.
2 Remington 870 shotguns.

213 assorted hand grenades (mostly Mk3A2).
11 demo charges.

56 combat knives.

19,637 rounds 5.56x45mm.
1,162 rounds .45 ACP.
4,300 rounds 7.62x51mm.
219 rounds 40x46mmSR grenades.
100 rounds 12ga.

11 axes.
11 bolt-cutters.
12 wire cutters.
1 hammer and some nails.
2 oxy-acetylene torches.
5 crowbars.
2 chainsaws.
17 machetes.
34 miners lamps.
1x 14' ladder.
6 pairs of handcuffs.
2 crash ladders.
5 bullhorns.
6 IR flashlights.
6 AN/PVS-5
6x baton lights.
2 cameras.
56 pairs of goggles.
56 pen-lights.
56 survival kits.
56 pen-flares.
62 strobe lights.
56 compasses.
56 pairs nomex gloves.
56 sets LBE.
56 camo-kits.
150 cans of water.
100 poncho-blankets.
100 survival meals.
100 sets of pajamas, robes and sneakers.
144 bottles of Heinz baby food.
18 M5 medical kits.
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Ruptured Cases

September 8, 2015, 11:30 am
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Something that shows up over and over while reading about old guns is the pathways given to vent gas in the event of a case rupture.

It's good to have a plan for such an event.

I've never, personally, experienced a case rupture.  Have you?  I'm curious.

I'm not advocating eliminating the gas vents, I'm just wondering if this kind of problem was a great deal more common on "balloon" head ammunition and has mostly been eliminated by production changes in how cases are made.

On reason this suddenly stood out is I recently bumped into a discussion where they mention the AR has no vent path in the event of a case rupture.
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