Fun With Headlines / QOTD - Elections

 Found at Newsmax. First the headline:

Musk Talks 2024: Want Someone 'Fairly Normal' for President

and the quote:

"I've said publicly that my preference — and I think it would be the preference for most Americans — is willing to have someone fairly normal in office," Musk said.

 Wouldn't we all. Note that he is not asking for complete normality, just mostly normality. In Washington, this may be a high bar, but certainly less so for the rest of us. Note as well that this plea is coming from a man who does not think it unreasonable to be planning to move to Mars. 

Celtic Metal

 Your head hasn't really been properly banged unless a bagpipe is involved, so go here for some semi-symphonic pieces by Antti Martikainen of Finland who has a knack for this sort of stuff.

In the comments you'll find references to other artists along similar lines.

A welcome break from politics.

Illegal Fireworks

 The sound of illegal fireworks in my neighborhood: The sound of individuals declaring their independence.

Daily Grind

 So it's 18 degrees out with 2" of snow on the ground and my trusty snow blower has decided it doesn't want to start. I'm supposed to go get a Covid test today so the doctors can laser my colon Friday so I need to get out. OK no big deal. Just would have been nicer with the blower working.

I got a High Tower Armory bullpup stock for the Hi Point back in January and installed it. From reading the reviews, I seem to be the only person in the country having troubles with it so there's that. Andy Wentzel at HTA has been very helpful to me on this.  I made some minor tweaks to it this month which seem to have fixed the problems, and took it to a club IDPA match. 

Everything worked fine. The only problems were from me needing to adjust to the new balance and functions. Safety and mag release are in new places, the mag release needs to be padded to protect my amputated finger or I need to learn to use a different finger. Either way the process is smoother. Having learned to point shoot the stock Hi Point I now find that the same muscle memory puts the point of impact significantly higher with the bullpup. Need to work on that.

Gun shoots fine, left hand or right, but the red dot is a bit lower on the bullpup so getting on target takes a bit longer. 

Daughter got married Saturday and now I'm a step-grandpa in a vastly expanded family.

Product Endorsement

OK it's early, but here's my initial reaction. The aftermarket automotive fuel pump previous owner had installed on my Yamaha failed in that it would run for only about 10-12 minutes before ceasing operations. A 10 minute wait would get me back on the road for another 10 minutes but this is obviously not going to cut it.

Fuel pumps of the type normally fitter to the bike are available on e-bay at prices ranging from $15 to slightly over $500. Go figure. The same pump seems to be pictured in all ads. With some skepticism. I got one labeled "high performance". Not sure what that means in a fuel pump but aftermarket parts on e-bay tend to be factory seconds from China so any additional endorsement helps. Price was a bit under $21 so not bad, and it ships from CA. Surprisingly it arrived 3 days sooner than I had expected.

Not mentioned in the ad was any useful specs like flow rate or pressure. Not mentioned on the pump is any indication of inlet or outlet. You have to figure this out yourself. Put a few drops of gas down each of the hose connections and put some power to it and flow direction will become immediately obvious. Hose size is 5/16" which of course I didn't have lying around. No big deal. Pressure turns out to be about 3 psi which is fine for a carbureted motorcycle. One more thing: This is possibly the noisiest fuel pump I've ever dealt with. The rattle from this thing rivals the exhaust noise. It's louder when there's no fuel in it so I suppose it will be easy to tell when I've run out of gas. Or maybe it's just quiet in the garage by myself.

I'll take it out on a test drive today. I expect it will get me there and back again with no problems.

UPDATE: OK under normal running conditions I can barely hear it at idle so I was right about the garage being quiet. Forget what I said about the noise.

Bill Gates, Scott Adams, and Clean Power

When I can, I listen to Scott Adams Periscopes which appear at 8AM Mountain time Here. There's supposed to be a way to get notifications of when he starts one of these but Google hates him so the notifications don't seem to work, at least not on my desktop. Thus the link will send you to the right page for the article I'm talking about here, but you will likely have to select the current periscope when it comes up as live to catch them on a daily basis.

The one I'm citing at the link has a segment in it regarding Bill Gates, China, the U.S. Bureaucracy, President Trump, and clean, cheap, safe nuclear power. All this in one segment along with a plaintive cry that Mr. Adams in apparently in a zone slated for a possible power cutoff around noon today due to wildfire dangers due to state mismanagement of various resources.

Mr Adams notes that Bill Gates has sponsored/assisted/obtained a complete set of plans for a Gen 4 nuclear power plant using "spent" nuclear fuel rod material as at least part of the fuel. These things are idiot proof*, pretty much walk-away safe, and when freed of NIMBY type interference, notably cheaper to build and operate than existing generating facilities of similar output. Gates was ready to sponsor the construction of a demonstration plant in the U.S. but couldn't get the regulatory approvals so he went to China where he got them. Of course next, a bit of a trade kerfuffle broke out so his China plant is now on indefinite hold.

In an election year (every year) it would be worthwhile to ask the candidates where they stand on the issue of making America a 3rd world country with rolling blackouts and outdated generating systems or outrageously expensive and inefficient "renewable" based stuff when the solution is ready to be implemented now.

*Yes I know, the more you try to make things fool proof, the more nature produces better fools. I used to design consumer products.

Suppressors - How Well Do They Work?

The folks at Ammo To Go have run some tests on suppressors with both pistols and rifles and published the results here. Spoiler: Rifles don't get noticeably louder or quieter with changes in barrel length, and everything gets about 25 dB quieter with a can. Nice, but only the .22s get below the hearing damage level.

While barrel length doesn't seem to make much difference on the rifles, I have noticed that shooting PCC class in IDPA that the pistol caliber carbines are enough quieter than the pistols that the shot timers sometimes have trouble hearing them. Add a can, and they could become quite user friendly. Alas, no PCCs were tested.

One might note that in the case of the Virginia office shooting, the use of a suppressor on a .45 cal pistol likely had no effect at all on any ones ability to hear the gun and locate the shooter.

Bumper stickers

Just print out in landscape, fold to size, and tape to window. Post election you can pull it off.

If you wait for real stickers, the election will be over before they ship.

Thank You

A heartfelt thanks is due and goes out to the people who made Justice Kavanaugh possible.

First Sen. Harry Reid who made thenecessary reforms to the filibuster system.

Second to the Democratic Senators who were the face of the Democratic party during the hearings and made it crystal clear who Judge Ks enemies were. After all one can learn about as much about a man from his enemies as one can from his friends.

Thirdly, if any doubt remained, I'd like to add the boys and girls of Antifa for providing the anti-social behavior up to and including the death threats to the congressmen, their spouses, their friends, and their children. We now fully understand that behind the collegiality of the hearings there is an army of kneecappers ready and willing to commit violence against our elected representatives. 

Fourthly the various witnesses provided by the Dems who got up there and forthrightly showed us that there are an unlimited number of the party faithful who are willing to risk charges of perjury, witness tampering, and suborning of perjury and the associated time in the Federal Clink, to take one (or more) for the team. Suggestion: Next time don't use Hollywood horror movie writers to prepare your scripts. They come across as a bit over the top.

Lastly I'd like to thank the Republican Senators who have figured out that standing up to bullies will berewarded at the polls. 

NOTE 1: If you think the Donks have learned anything from this, just wait. If Notorious RBG should shuffle off the mortal coil on Trumps watch, the use of nuclear weapons will not be off the table. Kim Jong-Un could probably sell one to Antifa for delivery in Mexico with shipping up to the customer.

Note 2: If you think Roe v Wade has anything at all to do with this, be advised that the Donks don't really care if you live or die. After all you vote for them either way. Just watch the gun control laws that now come up for review. Armed, mad, taxpayers are the lefts worst nightmare.

Next Election

OK there are a couple of things on the ballot this year which probably deserve to pass. Initiative 109 promises to do much needed road repair without hitting us with a big tax increase. One can hope.

Items X and Y promise new and improved gerrymandering. They're one of those things where the Stupid party and the Evil party get together to do something that's both evil and stupid which is called bipartisanship. Might help, might not but it seems like it shouldn't make it any worse.

Here's a sticker that should get you through most elections. You should never have to take it off from one election to the next. Click to get the full size, print it out on landscape and tape it to your back window.

Privatizing Tyranny

Of late the left has come up with new and improved ways of getting their agenda enacted, this time without having to bother with a troublesome legislature. The very latest is anti-gun Gov. Cuomo's effort to cripple the NRA by threatening any bank or insurance company that does business with them with delisting or at least crippling in the large New York market. Here he gets around any prohibitions against interfering with interstate commerce by simply threatening a long and expensive deluge of red tape. In the end I suspect he would lose, but getting from here to there would take six to 10 years and cost a fortune.

Shopify has announced that it will no longer support sales of anything gun related, and defines this using the boilerplate Bloomberg definitions pushed by the most restrictive states.

Twitter and Facebook are busily suppressing all the conservative messages they can find conveniently just before the elections so that any legal efforts to make them honor the first amendment probably won't get a hearing before the 2020 elections. Their argument is that as private businesses they can do as they please, which reminds me of the signs I used to see in businesses in the '50s stating "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." which was weasel-speak for "We don't serve blacks here."

My bullet and reloading stuff supplier, Rocky Mountain Reloading, was recently hit with a notice that their brass and lead component business was outside the realm of what their financial services supplier wanted to serve and that they had zero time to go somewhere else. This involved ginning up a new website as well.

You may be asking yourself why we would be switching to a new website when we just barely launched the one we had back in December. Well, we are free to finally make this announcement. We were one of the gun related companies that was targeted for destruction through elimination of our credit card processor. Luckily we had the foresight, knowing that it could become an issue, to put it in writing that they would not ever drop us because of our involvement in the firearm industry. Even so, we were issued a termination letter with threats to hold our deposits for up to six months. At the time we had over $40k in deposits for them to hold. We wouldn't have been able to pay our bills and we have been in a very bad position. Anyway, we contacted a lawyer and informed them that we were doing so and we were able to get them to allow us a window for finding a new credit card processor. That in-and-of-itself would be no big deal but the current website provider only had Paypal and our processor as payment options. Neither of which would allow bullet or casing sales. Again all this because the financial wonks have caved to the leftists and can use the "we're a private business and can refuse service to anyone." argument. If you reload, check them out. Good product, good prices. My own bank, Bank of the West has been overtaken by the PC movement as well. When I first started there it was a local operation and very friendly. They're still friendly enough but they've changed hands several times and the current parent company doesn't want to have anything to do with the tobacco, energy, or firearms businesses. The energy industry supplies a lot of jobs here in Colorado and I like it when people have jobs. They tend to vote Republican in order to help them keep more of their hard earned money. I'll be reluctantly be looking for a new bank then. So we see, more and more, the infringements on our rights are coming less directly from the government, which wouldn't be allowed to do that anyway, and more from private industry which depends on licenses and approvals from governments to exist. Tyranny by proxy, neatly privatized and all legal. Expect a lot more of this if no one figures out how to stop it. By way of stopping it, I'm told that if Twitter and Facebook were to be declared to be "common carriers" they would have to accept anyone and anything at all. Shades of the good old days. This would require legislation however, and requiring those two to allow free speech would open any politician supporting such an idea to charges of supporting Nazis and pedos from people who like having their opposition silenced.

Health Issues 2 – Prostate Cancer

A column in todays WSJ is suggesting that discussing ones setbacks in life may well be good for you as you frequently enough find others in similar situations with whom you can discuss your problems and possibly discover solutions.

I have been diagnosed with Prostate cancer. This is not as bad as it sounds at the topmost level as it was caught at an early stage and treatment is simple and quick. That is for certain definitions of the word “simple”. Preparation includes inserting 4 short pieces of gold wire into the prostate so the targeting x-ray can actually see where the prostate is. The staff is provided with directions from the urologist as to where the cancer is located with reference to the wire locations. X-radiation therapy is applied using the very latest Allaudium Q-39 planetary nebulizer, an example of which in action can be seen here. All that was missing was the earth-shattering ka-boom.

The example shown has the machine working on the patients neck (Thyroid?) and emitting a red beam. In my case the patient was reversed and the machine was working on my crotch. In operation it's like having a 1-ton Labrador retriever carefully sniffing you so as to carefully commit to its memory all your pertinent statistics. No there is no red beam although there is a red laser cross hair roughly centered on the area of interest. The big head on the machine is the X-ray generator.

The many and varied angles it shoots from enables a session to hit the targeted spot from lots of different angles at one sitting and reduces the treatment time from 45 days to 5. I have now completed 5 treatments of 30 minutes each so by now all the bad stuff has presumably been shuffled off the mortal coil. That part was easy and painless although the side effects began to show up after treatment 3.

Most of my readers should be familiar with the 4 rules of gun safety, of which #4 is “Be sure of your target and what's beyond.” In this case, what's beyond is my intestines. Seems the cancer requires a fairly forceful push but my intestines don't take as much persuading. As a result I'm now on probiotics to try and restore my digestive functions. It also seems my lower intestine was weakened to the point that whereas in the past I'd get a polite warning about visiting the loo followed by a somewhat stronger one. Not any more. I get one warning and that's NOT advisory. It says I'd better be within 10 yards of the facilities OR ELSE! Even worse, no one has been willing to hazard a guess as to exactly how long this should be expected to drag on. Best guess so far is about 2 weeks.

There is a list of dietary restrictions that goes with this process that basically boils down to “Anything you eat will come back to haunt you in about 4 hours so remember the 10 yard rule. Attempting to follow this has lost me about 10 lbs in the last week. So the cancer is gone in 5 easy treatments and now all I have to do is nothing until my guts recover from the collateral damage. Other restrictions include No Bicycles which I'm finding out has to do with introducing vibratory stimulus to the lower intestine area. When you apply vibration to something thick and slow moving, it becomes thin and fast moving. Riding a motorcycle is less stressful, but has the same end result. Walking around also introduces vibration and the dog is missing her morning walks.

The probiotics are a pricey set of pills to be taken for about 2 weeks. One of my friends suggested that knowing what the effect on ones gut flora is about to be, perhaps the treatment center should work in a step involving refining a stool sample from the patient before the procedure and saving the refined flora in the fridge until after completion at which time it could be replaced in one or two passes to give the patient back 100% of his original biota. I ran this by the folks at the treatment facility who had mixed reactions to the idea although they all agreed that this might be a good application for the fecal transplant technology.

FWIW:

Renew Life brand Digest Smart eliminates gas way better than Beano and Garden Life brand Raw Probiotics (refrigerated) for men 51 and older is recommended for us older farts.

Mad Science department:

I also suggested a money saving method of doing this which was met with somewhat less enthusiasm. One visits the Salvation Army store and picks up a blender and a coffee maker. Rub them through your dish washer until your sterilization standards are met. Place stool sample and about 3 cups of distilled water in the blender, and reduce the mixture to brown liquid. Set up the coffee maker with the filter holder over the carafe, and pour the liquid through a coffee filter. This should yield a couple of cups of what the old Chinese physicians referred to as "yellow soup". Repeat the filtering process until all solid material has been removed. Use an eyedropper to load up some gelatin capsules with the soup and put them into secondary capsules, and refrigerate. Post treatment, take 2 in the evening before bed time for about 2 weeks. That should do it. DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor. Do this at your own risk. Not responsible for anything. There are outfits that do this sort of thing and if you find one in your neighborhood, they might be able to help you out. It certainly adds a level of professionalism to the process though.

Ammo Comparisons 2 - Mo Data

The Ammo To Go people have been shooting the gel blocks and have added 16 more loads to their already extensive data base.

Click the link and see what they found out. Ignore the complaints in the comments about the terrible negligence in failing to test 25 different manufacturers offerings in such popular(?) calibers as .32 magnum, 9mm Makarov, 44 Magnum and .454 Casul. They do cover the better known ones of .380, 9mm Luger, .40 S&W, and .45ACP.

The latest additions focus on defensive ammo which means hollow points.

The Convention Of States

Now here's a topic some find downright scary, a convention of the states to consider amendments to the constitution. First, here's some background:


The current proposal is to word the petitions in the various legislatures to call for a convention to address 3 specific issues which might limit the thing to the 3 issues mentioned; Term limits, some sort of fiscal discipline, and a reduction in the size and scope of the federal government. That last one relates to the fed.gov taking on responsibilities they have no business getting in to in the first place.

More on the COS movement here.

Endorsement

Things you learn as you go along:

If you take an ordinary car and fit it with headers and a less restrictive exhaust system, like the previous owner did to my Camaro, the sensors in that system will report slightly different data to the computer, which causes the computer to panic and demand that you take the car in for therapy. Turns out this is a well known problem and the solution is a professional mental adjustment to the computer. Resist the temptation to do this yourself with a ball pien hammer, and take your car to a reputable speed shop.

I took mine to J&S Performance and Tuning and the folks there knew exactly what to do. Download the software in the ECU, revise a couple of numbers, and load it back in. The car now runs smooth as glass and the dashboard remains free of "service engine soon" lights. For a significantly larger fee they could also get me about 10% more horsepower, but considering where I'm starting from we both agreed it probably wasn't worth it. OTOH, if you drive a GM car and are frustrated that it's producing less than a respectable 450 hp, these folks can help. I looked over some of the cars in their shop and believe me, 450 hp is strictly for the economy cars.

Spell Casting, Efficacy Of

Headline #1
Tens of thousands of witches join forces every month to cast a spell on Donald Trump to 'protect the world'


Headline #2
POLL: TRUMP POPS TO 45%...

Probably not what they were thinking of, but if it helps, then good.

Food - Breakfast

I like an omlette for breakfast now and again, usually made with meat of some sort, hash browns, and cheese. One of these will keep me going until 2 PM easily. It also leaves me kind of logy if I don't have a non-stop project going.

Here's the solution: In a frying pan toss 1 strip of thick cut bacon or equivalent weight of other meat.
Add 3-4 tablespoons of this instead of any potatoes:

Note that they don't call it veggie mix or anything like that. It's "Bold Fiesta Protein".  The ingredient list is on the bag, just below the word Protein. In the lower right corner it notes that it must be cooked before using, so do that beforehand and store it in a container. Click the pic to make it readable.
Cook until the meat's done, add an egg, pre scrambled with Cholula sauce, and top with cheese. Serves one old guy.

Keeps me going until 2 pm and I never feel logy. Supposedly this stuff is better for you than potatoes but that can be adjusted with your meat selection. Delicious!

No one paid me for this endorsement. It's just too good not to share.

Exercise

That which doesn't kill me... yeah, yeah. The approach matters. Last weekend was supposed to be 2 bike rides, one of 22 miles and one of 7 which all together would visit 4 craft breweries. This is like finding those health boost boxes in a Doom game. 29 total miles, 4 beers and half an hour rest at each stop.

Didn't happen. Instead we got 8 inches of snow which makes for dicey bicycling, even with snow tires.

This weekend I tried a makeup ride. By way of prep I had Mexican breakfast of 2 eggs, Chorizo, potatoes, and green chili topping. Your heart starts slowing down just reading the menu at El Tejado. 5 cups of coffee counteracts this. Leaving my house, 16 miles up to Great Divide Barrel Bar, 2 beers, and back. Worked out pretty good. I only needed 45 minutes of unconsciousness when I got home to resume normal functions.

Great Divide had only just opened when I got there so no crowds. The Roadie Grapefruit Radler really hit the spot, thirst quenching, refreshing, vitamin C and 4% ABV which is about all I want. The Velvet Yeti Nitro Stout is a nice main course as well at 6% ABV and very smooth.

Ammo Testing - Winchester Train and Defense

The fine folks at Wideners Reloading and Shooting Supply  sent me some ammo to test, compare, and contrast and I now have something to report. I got Winchester Train and Defend, .40 cal. FMJ 180 grain Training ammo, and .40 cal JHP 180 grain Defense version. Both claim reduced recoil.

I tested each one with the Chrony in both my Gen 3 Glock 22, and my Hi Point Carbine on the premise that if the powder was of the slower type, I'd see a big jump in muzzle velocity. As to the recoil I can say that they both had lower recoil than either the Blazer or Tul ammo I had on hand with similar bullet weights but more than the hand loads I normally use in competition. In all fairness, my hand loads are powder puff loads with 165 gr bullets and minimum powder so comparing anything to them would be unfair. Still, the Winchester stuff wasn't all that much worse, so yes, reduced recoil.

The training ammo delivered an average of 956 fps through the Glock with no problems at all. Through the 16” barrel of the Hi Point it went up to 1062. I normally get 250 fps increase from the carbine and this modest increase suggests to me that the powder being used here is quite fast and doesn't take full advantage of the longer carbine barrel.

The Defensive stuff came in at 922 fps through the Glock and 1024 fps in the carbine. Again the powder seems to be quite fast to not take advantage of the longer carbine barrel. No problems were encountered of any kind during this testing.

Of note was the spent brass with the Defense brass looking about like you would expect but the Training brass looking like it just came off the stamping die. No fooling, this stuff is so clean you could probably reload it right off the ground. I wouldn't, but it was amazingly clean. Whatever they're using for powder, I hope it hits the reloading market soon. The use of 2 slightly different powders would explain the speed differences.

Fake News, All The Time

My favorite source of fake news is the National Weather Service. In their defense, they constantly revise their reports and by the time the weather disaster is over, they've generally got it called perfectly.

For this reason it's generally more important to follow the forecast trend than it is to just look at the forecast and move on. They've been calling for sub-zero temps and snow for about a week now so it seems pretty likely. As of this morning it looked like 3-7 inches starting Wednesday night and ending Thursday. Now the TV folks are saying this storm is going to make itself at home around here until Friday evening with accumulations up to a foot depending on what suburb you live in.

By Monday we're supposed to be back to 60 degree highs. "'Tis a privilege to live in Colorado." as the local fishwrap used to proclaim.

By way of getting ready, I've finally gotten around to replacing the rubber blades on my blower. This is a medium duty, single stage MTD with the spiral metal auger with rubber edges attached. 5 fasteners per long blade and two little ones in the middle. Now you would think that all those fasteners would be identical wouldn't you? You'd be wrong! There are 2 large(ish) sheet metal screws, 3 smaller sheet metal screws, and one large headed pop rivet (WTF) on each blade.

I tapped the pop rivet holes and replaced them with 1/4" machine screws so now at least the blades can be replaced with ordinary tools, but really! Who thought 3 different fasteners were needed here? I gather that MTD is just one iteration of a company with pretty good products that has changed hands and names a number of times. After a while you begin to understand why.

Not to be dissing the product, it works fine, just has a couple of quirks. It also has one of the better ideas I've seen on snow blowers, an electric starter. And not one of those battery jobs that's dead every winter when the first snow hits either, but a 120 volt job that will crank the thing at full chat until it fires off. If you shut it off for a few minutes out at the end of the sidewalk, no fear, the rope starter works fine on a warm engine. Full marks on that starter. More gas tools should include this, especially lawn mowers.