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Arrrrrrrrrr

September 19, 2014, 12:07 pm
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Fifteen Men on a dead man's chest. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
the mate was fixed by the sosun's pike
The bosun brained with a marlinspike
And cookey's throat was marked belike
It had been gripped by fingers ten;
And there they lay, all good dead men
Like break o'day in a boozing ken, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of the whole ship's list, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and be damned and the rest gone whist!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore
And the scullion he was stabbed times four
And there they lay, and the soggy skies
Dripped down in up-staring eyes
In murk sunset and foul sunrise, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the murder mark! Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
'Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead
Or a oawing hole in a battered head
And the scuppers' glut with a rotting red
And there they lay, aye, damn my eyes
Looking up at paradise
All souls bound just contrawise, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of 'em good and true, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ev'ry man jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest of Spanish gold
With a ton of plate in the middle hold
And the cabins riot of stuff untold,
And they lay there that took the plum
With sightless glare and their lips struck dumb
While we shared all by the rule of thumb,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

More was seen through a sternlight screen...
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Chartings undoubt where a woman had been
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
'Twas a flimsy shift on a bunker cot
With a dirk slit sheer through the bosom spot
And the lace stiff dry in a purplish blot
Oh was she wench or some shudderin' maid
That dared the knife and took the blade
By God! she had stuff for a plucky jade, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.


Fifteen men on a dead man's chest, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
We wrapped 'em all in a mains'l tight
With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight
And we heaved 'em over and out of sight
With a Yo-Heave-Ho! and a fare-you-well
And a sudden plunge in the sullen swell
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
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He's Lurch Not Satan

September 19, 2014, 7:25 pm
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Rick Scott might not be a great governor.

He isn't.

The problem Charlie Crist has going for him is he has already been governor, and he wasn't a better governor than Rick Scott.

Running ads telling me about how awful Mr Scott is when I am aware of how bad Mr Crist was... Doesn't work.

Especially since many of the dings that the various organizations against Governor Scott cite, are things that Governor Crist signed into law.  Oops!

The most damning thing Mr Crist has against him is he was a Republican when he was governor, a republican in the primary for a US Senator seat, then an independent when he lost that primary and now he's a Democrat to be governor again.  All in the short span of four years.

It pissed me off when he kept the campaign donations from his senate run that were garnered before there was a primary challenge.  I wager that many of those donations were intended for the Republican candidate in general and not specifically for Charlie Crist.
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Four More Years!

September 20, 2014, 1:52 pm
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Today is the 4th birthday of this blog at Blogger!

250k visits since then.
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Once Upon A Time

September 20, 2014, 2:30 pm
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My gaming group in Iowa tended to specialize in what we called "nexus worlds".

These are worlds were circumstances allow off and out worlders.

With GURPS' ability to seamlessly let you create anything you can imagine, we did.

Standing Bear was running one of his standard fantasy worlds with the twist that we could play any character we could conceive of as long as it didn't break the 3e 100/40/5 limits.

I made a Marine from Twilight 2000.

The highlight of this campaign was a dealing with a local merchant.

He was ripping us off and we knew it.  Appeals to the local authority revealed they were in cahoots.

So I upped my bid.

I offered to trade the merchant the entire pile for a "magic egg".

This egg, if you pull this ring here, at exactly, precisely at midnight of a new moon would grant one wish!  A split second too soon or too late and you're dead!  Oh and you must be absolutely alone, if there's anyone within so much as 20 yards you're dead!

The merchant solemnly agreed to the trade and I repeated my dire warning several times.  By the end I even had the local authority asking the merchant if he was sure he wanted to take the risk!

As you may surmise, the "magic egg" was an M67 fragmentation grenade.

When the thing went off three days later at midnight of the full moon, two people were killed; so they assumed he'd not followed the detailed instructions I'd given!
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How Low Can You Go

September 20, 2014, 5:35 pm
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When there's no risk of actual life and limb and zero threat of disciplinary action, buzzing the tower becomes routine.
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Cluttered Desk ATF

September 20, 2014, 6:10 pm
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Oban, Rocky Patel Howitzer and a Colt .38 Super Series 80 Gov't Model.

With some random items that routinely clutter my computer spaces.
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The Deal

September 20, 2014, 6:29 pm
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While I prefer the OSX operating system, I don't consider myself a fanboi.

It's a preference and I've no problems with using Win 7 or XP.  I have a boot partition set up for Win 7 on my Mac Pro, in fact.

'Twas the threat of Vista that drove me to Mac.  I was perfectly happy with XP, but if you wanted a new computer at the time with the latest hardware; you got Vista or OSX.  (Or Linux which I am not knowledgeable enough to operate).

I started with a Mid 2007 15" MacBook Pro model A1226.  The video card died.

The warranty coverage warned several times about backing up my data because if the computer was too dead they'd replace the whole thing with a new one and my data would be gone.

So I bought an Early 2008 15" MacBook Pro model 1260 to replace it.

For a while I had two laptops once the 1226 came back from warranty.  I preferred the 1260 because it had a 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo and 512mb of VRAM compared to the 1226's 2.4GHz and 256.

A while back the video died on the 1260.

No warranty left.  Back to the 1226.

A burr crawled up my ass and I decided I liked the touch-pad of the 1260 better and it had a 200gb 7200 rpm drive instead of a 5400rpm 160gb.  The 1260's screen was in better shape too.

So I did some parts swapping.

Just the other day the 1226 video card died again.

I just found out about the recall that was in effect when the 1260 died, but has expired now.  It pisses me off that Apple didn't send an email to people with affected computers to tell them that they'd recalled them.  The reason for the recall is two-fold.  First the ATI chipset they bought was not well made and sensitive to the heat levels that Steve Jobs seemed to think was acceptable.  Second the Chinese slaves who soldered it to the logic board didn't do a good job.

Right now I am looking at $270 to buy a refurbished logic board for the 1260.  It's 2.5GHz instead of 2.6GHz but it has the 512mb video.  The good news about refurbs is ATI did manage to make a chipset that could take the heat and the refurbishment centers are doing a good job with the solder.

Time to do some saving.  The laptop will have to get in line.  I have $750 to save up and drop on tires for the Vette and $150 for front tires on the Biscayne.
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Yarp

September 20, 2014, 7:15 pm
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The Most Important Words In Science

September 21, 2014, 10:42 am
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Huh, I didn't expect that!

Unexpected results advance things farther and faster than experiments that confirm expectations.

It's because you've found something new.
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Miserable Son Of A...

September 21, 2014, 12:51 pm
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The main reason that prick down Okeechobee way should die in a fire is the closing of comments on Tam's other blog.

Now I can't ask questions except indirectly here and hope she sees them.

I'd like to see how the linkage for the cylinder stop works in the top of the frame on that .32 Hand Eject.
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Raining And Pouring

September 22, 2014, 1:07 pm
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The anti-biotic regimen for Shi-Shu beat back the abscess for a while.

It's back with a vengeance.

So we're back to begging for assistance.

Stab that pay-pal button if you've the means to donate to a very small, specific charity.

You can see under his left eye where the abscess has come up through his cheek from the bad tooth.

Our goal is a meager $400.
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I'm Not A Birther

September 23, 2014, 9:38 am
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Return Of The Ford

September 23, 2014, 9:56 am
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F4D-1 Skyray, also know affectionately as the Ford.  The Skyray didn't come with any official Strike Fighters release and is the product of dedicated hobbyists.

She's a hot ship for 1956 and is seen here over Israel.  I'm doing a what-if scenario where Washington sends a squadron (VMF-114 Death Dealers) of USMC Skyrays to help with the Suez Crisis.

The Suez Canal looking north.


I've flown this what-if and this plane before.  What I lacked before was knowing about the pitch trimmers that are on either side of the exhaust.  They are assigned the same control axis as thrust vectoring on the harrier and with that wheel in its normal full forward position, it gave nose-down trim that got stronger as more speed was added.  That's why I had no pitch authority when I played previously!

Edit to show the pitch trimmers...




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Worth The Price Of Admission

September 23, 2014, 11:00 am
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The scene in the kitchen with Quicksilver makes the purchase price of X-Men Days of Future Past worth it all by itself.

It also underscores that Bryan Singer is the only X-Men director who gets them.

Spoiler below:




By the way, the most masterful deletion of a hated sequel ever done!
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More On F4D

September 24, 2014, 1:20 pm
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The F4D-1 has guns.  Four 20mm Mk.12 guns in the wings.

What it lacks is ammo!  260 rounds total for all four guns (65 rounds each).  Each gun fires at 1,000 rounds per minute, so that's a total of 3.9 seconds of shooting.

The Skyray can be equipped with air-to-air rockets and sidewinders.

The rockets are useless.  Unguided rockets fired in a massive salvo were stylish in the early fifties for interceptors, but they turn out to be a idea that looks good on paper.

The AIM-9B Sidewinder is nearly useless against anything that can pull even a modicum of g to get away.  The seeker heads field of view is narrow and cannot gymbal very fast to keep tracking, never mind that the gymbal limits are also very narrow.

It was an interceptor, the AIM-9B works like a charm on bombers.

That was real world, the next is a game.  A simulation.

What I am finding in my what-if Suez crisis is the Egyptians don't have much for bombers.  I've gotten a couple of fighter kills with the 'Winder but it's mostly luck.

That the majority of my kills are with the gun says something of my accuracy since I don't have many rounds to play with.  That I can actually take time to aim says a lot of the mount.  The Skyray can maneuver with the Soviet fighters of 1956.
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Of Eagles And Tomcats

September 24, 2014, 1:55 pm
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If you want a discussion with less venom, just talk about politics or religion...

Well, this actually is a religious discussion.

This is a continuation of what I started here.

Which plane is better?

This all started because The Aviationist published gun camera footage from an F-14A with the guns pipper squarely on the helmet of the pilot of an F-15C...


Notice that the elevons are full deflection on the Eagle.  He's pulling for all he has to get away.  On the right is the range scale.  The 1 is a mile, the little > at near the bottom of the scale means they are CLOSE.  On the left is the closure rate scale in 100's of knots.  Notice how the < is just barely above the zero?  That means this is no boom and zoom kill.  He's in the phone booth with the knife and he's maneuvering with the F-15C.  Jose "Hoser" Satrapa knows his job and knows his plane.

Let's be cold and calculating about it.

The Eagle has much better engines.  In pretty much every respect the F100 is better than the TF-30.

The Eagle has better thrust to weight and has less bleed for a given g at a given speed.

The Tomcat has much better radar and a dedicated operator for it and is a lot better at low speed, low altitude.

Those little factoids add up to the time honored, "do not fight as your enemy fights." It's something that every armchair aviator seems to forget.

Fighter pilots, being fighter pilots, never wish to acknowledge any personal failing that led to being shot down...  But you can get them talking honestly.  The Tomcat drivers I've talked to have admitted that getting an Eagle in 1v1 guns is WORK and it was mostly the skill set the Navy promotes with it's culture that gave them enough edge to pull it off.

This is somewhat confirmed through pilot exchange programs.  The differing cultures between the USAF and USN tend to make different rates of aggressiveness.  I've read that this is because the Navy's approach is, "as long as there's nothing prohibiting it, it's OK to do" and the Air Force is, "unless it's specifically allowed, it's forbidden."

Back to plane v plane.

If you're willing to use an AIM-54 on a fighter, the Tomcat wins about 4:1 before the F-15C can even see the Tomcat.  Some people say that it should be a higher ratio than that.  Into Sparrow range the Tomcat has a slight edge because the AWG-9 and RIO combination really helps get the first shot in, but not by more than a split second.

Once all aspect sidewinders appear, there's no difference.  Prior to that the Navy's Sidewinders were better than the AF and if the Tomcat got into trail, the Eagle was at a bigger disadvantage than if the opposite was true.

At guns ranges...  Given an equal stick the Eagle wins.  Consistently.

In exercise after exercise the Eagle wins too.  The armchair pundits like to point this out as proof but it fails to account for something very important.  The Navy put lots of performance restraints on the F-14A in peacetime training so as to not affect airframe life.  Those things are expensive, see?

When the artificial constraints are removed, the F-14A starts winning, consistently.  And it comes down to the Navy having a better training program than the Air Force when it comes to dogfighting in the late '70s and early '80s.

As training became more equal, the F-14A+ (aka F-14B) and F-14D starting coming down the pipe.  The engine in these versions of the Tomcat are derived from the same engine the F-15C uses.  The Tomcat community stopped referring to beating an F-15 as WORK, but they will concede that it was still not a sure thing because the Air Force guys were getting better skill wise through the '90s.
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TATTOOING Close Up (in Slow Motion) - Smarter Every Day 122

September 24, 2014, 3:08 pm
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Rifles From Lands Of Ice And Snow From The Midnight Sun Where The Hot Springs Flow

September 25, 2014, 12:05 pm
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Top, Finnish Kiv-28/30 by SAKO.
Bottom, Swedish Gevär m/96 by Carl Gustav Mauser.

Willard scored on that Swede.  Numbers matching, bore looks very nice.  The only thing "wrong" is there are tapped holes on the rear of the receiver for a Lyman sight.

NOT a Lyman.  One of these rear sights!



I won't say how much, but if I wasn't saving to fix the puppy's tooth (and begging for help) I could have gotten it.
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Sample Size Of Two

September 25, 2014, 12:22 pm
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"The series 80 ruined the trigger..."

"1911's are unreliable."


Top is Marv's MK IV Series 80 .45; bottom is my Government Model Series 80 .38 Super.

Marv's is old enough it even has the barrel collet!  It was originally bought by Willard in 84-85...  Then sold to Marv in the mid-90's.

It's never failed Marv, but apparently wouldn't feed ball ammo out of the box.  Willard got warranty service on it and a free trigger job was thrown in.

My .38 Super has had two failure to feed the first round when I tripped the slide stop and those were in the first three magazines.  No other problems to report.

Both guns have excellent triggers, with Marv's being borderline too light.  Neither gun is completely stock...  Marv did sights, I did a trigger swap (no changes to the sear), stocks and mainspring housing.

All in all we're pleased with our acquisitions.

It's been fun comparing how they came from the factory.  The older gun was A1 all the way with Pacmeyer grips.  Mine had a flat mainspring housing and long trigger on an otherwise A1 gun and the colletted barrel had long since been discarded.

Trivia, what made the Series 70 a Series 70 was that collet!  Calling pre-80 Series or guns without the firing pin block "Series 70" is something of a misnomer.
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What About Us

September 26, 2014, 4:59 am
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Tam mentioned once, something to the effect, that government cannot summarily fire someone because due process.

OK.

Where's my due process about the hiring?
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