The Galactica Connection

Geek with a .45 releases some spoilers for this season of Battlestar Galactica. Colonel Tigh runs for President based on his military service record with a Number 6 posing as his second wife, a beer heiress.

Via Kim du Toit:

Of course, this would explain a lot. We all thought that McCain was talking about throwing open our borders to Mexicans, when in fact his plan was to allow unrestricted intergalactic immigration.

The Electric 7

The ThoRR is a nice idea. You take the chassis of a Caterham 7 (or clone) and replace the internal combustion components with electric equivalents. Since the car weighs next to nothing to start with and is designed to run well on a comparatively small engines, you get an electric car with relatively high performance. As a bonus, sevens are so minimalist that they don't have many power draining features like air conditioning or even radios.

The design also cures some problems with the original design. Stock Sevens are very loud, but the Thorr is nearly silent. The driver and passenger foot boxes of sevens are notoriously hot because of residual engine heat. The electric shouldn't have that problem either. Interesting. I wonder if they implemented some form of regenerative braking? More importantly, what's the ThoRR's final sales price?

Game Lust

Amy and I watched a fair amount of GTA4 coverage on the G4 network last night. I want it. PS3 and GTA4 please. My brother brought his PS3 over a while back so we could feed the HDTV some high def. It was pretty. With bluray and built in wireless networking so I could websurf on my HDTV, it's useful for more than just games.

The problem? Nobody seems to be selling anything other than the 40GB unit that completely lacks backwards compatibility. Eventually my PS2 is going to die. I want backwards compatibility for those games on the PS3, even if it is just software emulation.

So looks like I'll be saving the $600 Uncle Sam direct deposited into my account yesterday. At least until my options improve.

The Poor Are Hardest Hit

The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor.

John Scalzi phrases this biblical truth more snarkily in a recent criticism of cliched newspaper writing:

Really? The poor suffering the most? It’s hard to imagine. Because, you know, usually when there’s a major global crisis of any sort, it’s the poor sitting there on the sidelines, going whew, dodged that bullet.

Via Instapundit.

Learning Shooting Technique

Riflecraft is tricky because while you have a longer sight radius and better sights than pistolcraft, you are shooting at much longer ranges. I generally don't bother shooting pistols past 10 yards, but the Ommelanden rifle range goes out to 50 meters (~55 yards) and that's still pretty short by rifle standards. These longer ranges requires actual technique to support the weight of the gun and build a level of consistency that I haven't found in practical pistol shooting.

There are essentially 4 shooting positions: prone, sitting, kneeling, and standing. This is useful information, but like many explanations I've found, these are overly brief. Finding detailed explanations of these is difficult and the devil is in the details. Example: do not support your elbow with your knee when kneeling. It's like trying to balance one ball on top of another one, everything just starts rolling all over the place. Oops. Many of the detailed guides are also very text heavy and picture light, which also isn't helpful.

This week I stumbled across a short YouTube series called Improving Your Shooting, created by a high power rifle competitor. While he hasn't gotten to the classic Standing, Sitting, Kneeling, Prone rifle positions yet, he does have three videos on sling use (hasty sling, the leather 1907 sling, and the GI web sling) and one on shooting from a bench. Since I've been trying to find explanations of good sling technique forever, these were a real boon to me. Now I just need to put sling swivels on my .22

If you know any good sites on the subject, feel free to list them in the comments.

Making Garfield New Again

Once upon a time Garfield was funny and innovative. I think that was when I was five. Since then? Well not so much. Izzy at work pointed Garfield Minus Garfield to me. It is far better than anything Jim Davis and Co. have put out in a long time.

It is a site that removes Garfield and his thought-bubble commentary from the strips. Because nobody in Jon Arbuckle's world can actually hear Garfield talk of course. You are left with the world Jon inhabits and it's bitter commentary on the pathetic life of a single suburban male.

UPDATE: Huh, there are two strips like this. Arbuckle features redrawn Garfield strips that still have Garfield and Odie, just not their thought balloons.

Contest Outcomes

My household was left reeling from last night's results. No, not Clinton/Obama. The outcome of that match up was as expected, an 8-12 point win for Hillary. I mean that the Flyers beat the Capitals last night in Game 7 to clinch their NHL playoff series. That's right dear, my Flyers just knocked out your Capitals. Hope this doesn't ruin your day off.

G.I. Joe

I have no idea if the movie's script will suck, but I must say that Ray Park's Snake Eyes and Dennis Quaid's General Hawk both look pretty sweet. But Duke, Scarlett, and the Wayan's brother look like they're about to go BMW biking or something. Storm Shadow looks even worse. I guess I shouldn't expect fashion sense from a ninja who dresses all in white.

Understated Activism

If you notice students sporting empty holsters on the University of Tennessee campus today, it's likely the sign of a protest, not a lost handgun.

This was organized by the national student group Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. It's an interesting idea and I like it.

The only problem with pursuing this sort of thing is that concealed carry on college campuses is bound to be less effective than with the general public. Why? Because buying, possessing, and carrying handguns is much more difficult for people under 21. That's most of the undergraduate student body. But hey, if I was 21 I'd still want to be able to do it.

Breaching the Hive

At lunch today, the topic of over-seasoning food came up. I mentioned that Marylanders put Old Bay on everything. Everyone at the table looked at me and said "But it does taste great on everything." They began to go around the table listing the wonderful Old Bay flavored foods they enjoyed. Many of them, like Potato Chips, were completely unrelated to crab. They were hard pressed to come up with any food that wouldn't taste better with the addition of Old Bay.

It was at that moment I realize that I was eating among pod people or perhaps crazed cultists. Sure they looked just like me, but something was terribly wrong with them. I didn't drive, so I quickly said "Yes, of course it tastes great on everything!" to the true believers before I wound up stranded far from the office for my culinary sacrilege.

When I arrived back at the office, I walked straight to a former Midwesterner. "Old Bay Chips really are nasty, right?" "Oh God yes." Whew, safe.

Power Outage

Work lost power for an hour and a half because of a sub-station fire. Members of my branch were forced to perform team building exercises around our conference table.

Dropping XP

It doesn't make much sense to me either.

Steam Wars?

Action figure character designs for a Steampunk Star Wars. Kind of neat, but Luke is boring and Obi-wan is overwrought. Vader could use a cape and something to suggest that his legs and arms are mechanical, but his concept is generally solid.

Working in a Toxic Atmosphere

Amybear has been working at Sylvan Learning Center since we came back from our honeymoon. She does their testing and is currently the acting Director of Education at a Delaware center. It's been a rocky two years for her, mostly because of Sylvan's toxic management style.

Sylvan's curriculum and testing systems are fully developed and work well, but their attitude towards their employees stinks. The company just needs warm bodies to fill the instructor and administrative slots. Staff members are largely interchangeable provided they are trained within the existing system and curriculum. This works because there are lots people with education degrees (new graduates, part-time homemakers, etc.) they can hire to staff most open positions. Interchangeable staff also allows them to control costs and maintain profitability. That's important when you're paid by kid's parents directly and not through their tax dollars.

But, staff members are treated like gears in a machine, pushed and pulled, bent and spindled. Amy has been lied to on several occasions by management in order to manipulate her for their advantage. She changed centers because she was promised the possibility for promotion, only to have that snatched away. They've placed ads for her job and her boss's online as an incentive for them to work harder, keep quiet, and do as they're told. When staff members have had enough, they quit.

Amybear just found out that it is her turn to quit. A job interview last week paid off and she can give Sylvan her two weeks notice. Her new job will give her higher wages, more hours, and a shorter commute. She is understandably happy about this. I am understandably happy about this as well because I don't have to cheer her up after every crappy day at work anymore.

UPDATE: Amy's been gone from Sylvan for quite a while, so I'm restoring this post to its original honesty.

Landscaping

I spent some time on Saturday seeding the barren swathes of my back yard with grass seed. It rained yesterday, which was handy because grass seed likes that sort of thing. In hopes of continued propitious precipitation, I have just washed my car.

From My Cold Dead Hands!

I picked up a Marlin 60 SB at Walmart yesterday as a birthday present and Buy a Gun Day purchase. It's a semi-automatic tube-fed rimfire .22 rifle. It even came with a really crappy scope (complete with crappy rings). I went with the stainless model mostly because it has better "iron" sights. The 60 is the most popular .22 in the world with over 11 million built since 1960.

While not as modifiable as the Ruger 10/22, the nice thing about the 60 is that you don't really have to change much. Rugers commonly get worked over quite heavily with new triggers, stocks, and barrels. All the 60 really needs is a fluff and buff to improve the trigger a bit. I'll probably take it to the range and then see if it needs it.

Should it prove itself worthy of a name, I believe I may call it Charlton or perhaps Charlie.

UPDATE: While Simmons scopes don't generally get a lot of respect in the gun world, their .22 mag Adjustable Objective variable seems to be well liked. Well that will save me some money.

The Home Depot Naginata

I ran across the Ames Ditch Bank Blade at my local Home Depot today while looking for a yard rake, insecticide, and grass seed. Wow. If your yard should ever be infested with the walking dead, this the tool to use to solve your problem.

Zombie Shoot

This makes me wish I lived in Minnesota. It's a weekend shooting competition with three zombie-based courses of fire using AR-15s for the first two and your gun of choice for the last one. Fun.

Government Card Fraud

I've seen this story about abuse of government cards on QandO and now at Kim's place. I've commented both places, but I'll leave a record here as well.

I'm a government travel card holder. I have to undergo regular travel card fraud/waste/abuse training. The training is mostly bullshit because using travel cards is common sense and abusing them is premeditated.

The reason people are pulling this crap is because they know they can get away with it. Their organizations are lenient or just don't bother to follow up properly and the kiddies using the cards know it. If they didn't know this in advance, they wouldn't be making the charges. Why? Because on a travel card, the card holder (me) is stuck with the bill not the government. I get permission to travel, but I'm personally responsible for everything on the card. The government simply reimburses me for the valid expenses before I get the bill. And that bill is due, payable in full, when it shows up at your door at the end of the month. Nobody is going to pull this crap if they don't know they can get away with it in advance, because nobody wants to get stuck holding the bill.

If you want to see this stuff stop, you just start leaving people with the bill for these abuses. If the auditors let them slip through, you fire them for not doing their jobs. The problem is that you need someone with the stones to implement this as policy. Crack down on this and you'll see it grind to a halt just like it did years ago in the corporate world.

Now That's a Troop Formation

That's 18,000 men at Camp Dodge, Iowa in 1918. Kind of makes the marching bands in the Rose Bowl Parade look lightweight doesn't it?