Legalize hemp. I’m nae so fussed about the smoking of it but we’re eventually gonna need a lot of rope. — Roberta X, about the taxes to support government-run advertising campaigns.
wrm
Delicious irony
[…]
Not surprisingly, Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for thieves and con-men. As one organizer complains, “Stealing is our biggest problem at the moment.”
Then there are the bums. Originally, from what I can tell, street people were actively recruited by the Occupiers as a way of adding to their somewhat anemic numbers. But the naïve young hippies who make up the bulk of the movement are quickly discovering what the rest of us, with the benefit of actual life experience, already know about “the homeless.”
Over at Occupy Boston, a protester complains, “It’s turning into us against them. They come in here and they’re looking at it as a way of getting a free meal and a place to crash, which is totally fine, but they don’t bring anything to the table at all.” Another report concludes with a similar sentiment.
“We have compassion toward everyone. However, we have certain rules and guidelines,” said Lauren Digioia, 26, a member of the sanitation committee. “If you’re going to come here and get our food, bedding and clothing, have books and medical supplies for no charge, they need to give back,” Digioia said. “There’s a lot of takers here and they feel entitled.”
These kids had better watch out. If they start thinking that like this, pretty soon they might find themselves at a Tea Party rally.
[…]
Yet you have to sympathize with the cooks who have been besieged by moochers. Behind the hypocrisy, there are real lessons to be learned: lessons about the relationship between productive people and freeloaders. About the need for police to protect decent people from criminals. About how con-men and power-lusters always take over utopian schemes for their own benefit. About the taxing power and unaccountability of central authorities.
7mm International Rimmed
The 7mm International Rimmed is a wildcat cartridge developed by Elgin Gates in the seventies. Nothing strange about it, take a 30-30 case, neck it down to 7mm, and there you are. You don’t need to trim the brass or anything.
Before (bottom) and after fireforming.
Compare this to the 7-30 Waters, developed by Ken Waters (also in the seventies) specifically for levergun use. It’s also a 30-30 case necked down to 7mm, but in this case the neck is much shorter, giving more case capacity and of course more velocity.
30-30, necked to 7mm, and fireformed. (Image source: levergunscommunity.com)
I’ve been shooting the 7mm TC/U in my 14″ Thompson Contender for a few years. Nothing wrong with the cartridge, shoots great, adequate power and everything… but the 7mm TC/U headspaces on the shoulder, and that means that if you don’t get your resize operation just right, you either can’t close the gun, or your brass stretches and the case head separates after a few shots. I carry a tap in my shooting box, this has saved the day for me and for at least one other shooter caught with half a case stuck in the chamber. A TC ideally needs a rimmed case.
So I had the choice of 7-30 Waters or the much less popular 7mm IntR, and I chose the latter because, as I said, the 7mm TC/U already has enough power for what I need to do, I don’t need power, I just need a rim on the case.
7TC/U : 25.5gr S335 : 145 grain cast RCBS-145-SIL : 2000fps : my 7mm TC/U silhouette load, accurate.
7mm IntR : 29gr S335 : 160gr jacketed : 1900fps : accurate, 3 shot velocity spread = 6 fps, SD = 3.
7-30 Waters : Factory load : 120gr Nostler : 2400 fps from 14″ TC barrel.
I think 7mm International Rimmed is the best 7mm TC silhouette shooting option, now to do some further load development.
Enough to make you cry
I found this forgotten picture on my cellphone. Took it in Los Angeles in June.
This is 1.75 liters of Jim, normal selling price $23, special price unfortunately not in the frame (you do need to be some type of cardholder member for the special price).
$23 is R180 to R200, depending on what the exchange rate is doing. For that, I can get 750ml of Jim locally.
*sigh*
Silhouette Nationals
So it came to pass that I was selected to the Western Province (B) team for smallbore handgun. Shot a very decent 35/40 in Production, with my Anschutz Exemplar, and in as good if not better conditions the next day only managed 29 in Unlimited.
Feh.
The main problem is that the ammo I’m using came from the last Swartklip run before they closed the factory, and I think by then they were keeping the machines together with duct tape and funny putty. And I didn’t think to shoot all forty shots from the same box — no, another box of 22LR bearing the same batch number should be the same…
Not the case.
Ah well, live and learn.
My standing continues to suck, bringing my aggregate down to 101/160 for the four events. We still managed to finish fourth, we beat the Eastern Province A team (but in all fairness, they only had two people on their team, not three, so they were destined to lose) and the Free State B team.
I also shot my new (although I still have to licence it) Freedom Arms 454 Casull, it was shooting way high with the Cowboy 45 Colt ammo I got from someone else when I bought a Ruger from him. On rams, I could actually aim at the targets and not at the flowers between me and the target, and I managed 8/10. One always shoots really well with a gun before you actually pay for it.
My shooting partner for the lever action fun event tricked me into shooting after him, and since we were running an hour and a half late, it got somewhat dark, leading to guess-where-the-target-is. I managed 13, he beat me with a 14. Barstard.
Hey, a bad week shooting beats a good week at work. And this was a good week shooting :-)
I have a funny funny bone
You’ll either get it or you won’t, and in general it’s probably safer to bet on the latter.
I found the following while scratching around on The Digital Antiquarian*, and it really tickled my funny bone.
“Who knows?” I said. “The store only sold Clothes. In sets, though. That’s something.”
They asked what we would eat. “Food,” I said. “Just ‘Food.’ Make your peace with it.”
Of course, my frame of reference for all of this is relatively recent, I grew up playing Hammurabi.
* “Filfre” is of course an obscure text adventure game reference.
An Apple a day
(Or how I came back into the light)
Way back in I guess 1980 or thereabouts my father had a friend who (amongst other things) was involved in importing Apple ][ clones from “China” (which in those days was Taiwan and Hong Kong). My father bought us a “Unitron” Apple ][, and it was probably one of the best purchases he made, ever.
These machines were all 64K Apple ][+ spec, but at first we only had the tape interface and, not knowing anything about the Woz, I set out writing a breakout game. I seem to remember that it was in Integer Basic (Applesoft Basic on the mainboard, but I did have a language card) but I can’t remember just why I would have chosen Integer Basic. Anyway, this potential work of genius* was lost to the vagrancies of the tape drive. It wasn’t long until we got disk drives.
Anyway, *wavy lines* to the present, and my brother falls pregnant and mostly kicks me out. So I moved a whole bunch of stuff, including a Puma, a pinball machine and an Apple ][, to Fish Hoek.
And then I had to make it work again. We truly live in the future. Resources I used to dream about are now a ten minute download away. For example, Understanding the Apple II is available from Asimov or our local mirror or ReactiveMicro and it really describes the genius grade weirdness well. There are also various guides to quick troubleshooting at the above and other sites.
My Apple was dead. No reset “beep”. A logic probe showed activity on the address lines and on all but one data line of the 6502. Checked the other side of the buffer, same thing. Through the keyboard MUX and the data latches, same thing. I was loathe to set up the ‘scope to see whether it was a read or a write cycle, so I pulled the processor and found that I still had data on seven of the eight RAM chips (because the video logic still drives an address into the ram every other cycle). Replaced the RAM chip from one of the other banks and was rewarded by a “beep” and a cursor.
Not having any 4116es on hand, I went to my stash (at my brother’s place, refer to the “mostly” kicked out above) and retrieved 25 x 4164 all nicely labelled in a tube. I have a lot of shit, but it’s useful shit, and I know where to find it most of the time. With a bit of a mod, 1/4 x 4164 works well in the place of a 4116. Runs cooler too.
(Very) fortunately Jason Scott is wrong when it comes to my floppies. The few I tested (starting with completely unimportant ones, and after cleaning the drive head) boot and run just fine. I don’t think he’s far wrong though — I will be making copies with ADT Real Soon Now.
Unfortunately, my keyboard is not happy. The D key is Dee Eee Dee dead. Makes it difficult to play Castle Wolfenstein.
Oh, and I found a game I remembered about a year or so ago, that I could not remember anything more of than “The object of the game is to figure out the object of the game”. That game is of course Nightmare #6, written in Integer Basic by some hacker, maybe even the Woz himself.
* Yea right.
I feel so… inadequate.
I mean, look at Marko’s! But hey, everybody’s doing it, so…
Just your generic Swiss Army knife. This is my third — I bought #1 in Switzerland in 1984 and wore it out about two years ago — the corkscrew tore out of the frame. I promptly replaced it — they’re cheap, less than a case of beer — and shortly afterwards donated the replacement to a baggage handler in San Francisco after forgetting to stick the damn thing in the checked luggage.
It has everything I need in an everyday carry knife. A bottle opener, another bottle opener, and occasionally I even use the blade.
Thanks Og.
Spotted on Boyes Drive
Driving to work this morning.
See that little white car parked on the side of the road?
Yes, that’s the only piece of yellow line for about two kilometers.
Shelving sort of done, for now
As mentioned previously, I finally got around to completing firstly the door and then the TV part of the shelving.
Well, the third shelf also materialised, with a lot of fighting and cursing.
Update: and after populating with a small selection of our books:
