Search This Blog

Friday, May 31, 2013

If You Want Americana....

Go here. You will spend a great deal of time there. He is an accomplished writer and has spent a great deal of time researching our past. Americana. Before anywhere you go it all looks the same.

Oh, and if he can whip old photos and illustrations like this out with his captions added, so much the better!

I hoped that in his postcards of motels he had The Blu-Vue from my home town. Sadly he did not. I think a Costco or some such is there now. 


You will go down the rabbit hole and you will be impressed! 


 


Tuesday, May 28, 2013

So the Cool Kids Have Fun....

Murphy's Law and OldNFO get together to shoot some really great looking hardware. A great tribute for Memorial Day. Anytime these two Gentlemen whip a Firearm out it is always interesting. I need to get back up there!

Me? A simple task that reminds me of the incredible price paid in blood for me to do it. I gave the new ride its first bath and polish. Why does this remind me of the huge sacrifice of our Military? Because. A famous quote: "The Ford Mustang is American as hell. No other Country would have produced it, and its slavish love of it's antiquated rear axle pushed with obscene horsepower proves it." Heh. Much like the 1911 or M1 huh?

So we get to it. 


 



 







I don't wax cars. I polish them with Zaino. Much easier to apply, longer lasting, and without the flaky crap to get stuck everywhere. The right shoulder is for absorbing recoil, not the "Wax on wax off" workout. Of course I can whip out the Porter Cable random orbital buffer, the air chisel, air grinder, or the bondo depending on how bad it gets, but this was a cake walk.

So of course while I'm taking a break someone stops by to comment on my work. 





 
 










 Thanks!

So I need to take the new ride on a road trip soon. Stretch my long gun game out. 














See some friends. I can't wait! 



Sunday, May 26, 2013

You Don't See These Every Day

So at the range today my friend whips this out:



















Sorry about the crappy iThing photo, but it's a Smith and Wesson Model 622. This .22LR was made from 1989-1996. Single action stainless alloy with 10 round magazine. A great little pistol! This one seems to be from the first of the run with a mfg date of 1990.

Back In the Day

I met two woman the day before. I had to be at a training class at 0800 hours the next day for the new job. What do I do? Well travel oh an hour or so to meet them. Then it got to well, lets say I don't dance. I did to this though. At some bar.



I have two steps and I have them down pat! I Stayed uh somewhere that night. 

Oh crap! At o'dark thirty I had to leave them to well uh, go back to work! 

I get in the really crappy Mid 80's Mustang (4 banger, really) and driving straight for work. After 3 hours of sleep. The Stereo in the car plays this as I am wishing I could sleep! 



That pretty much sums it up. I used to be happy to shut the clubs down. I'm now happy if I can shut the Cracker Barrel down! 
  



Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Congrats To My Friend!

This person is special to me. I have worked with him for over 20 years. I have watched his children grow up. I had his Daughter in my Basic Pistol class. A couple of weekends ago this happened.

















Congratulations to the new couple and +1 for my friend for whipping out a Shotgun! It was not a Shotgun wedding, his daughter requested the pic! 

Oh. It's his Fathers shotty. He passed away a long time ago. These things are important. Generation to generation. We cannot forget. We must pass it down. It's a Winchester of course. We just have them laying around down here in the south =). 

Monday, May 20, 2013

Well When I Worked for The Bell System....

Calls of this nature never happened!























Sigh...... An Illustration from 1938. I think Esquire. I'm not sure. 

Friday, May 17, 2013

That Time of the Month Again?

Yes! It seems like 17 or so new shooters will be present tomorrow. An indeterminate number will be present for Concealed Carry Handgun class on Sunday (don't ask, we never know until we go).


















Wish me luck! I always enjoy it. If you get a chance come meet me at Elite! I always take a break every hour on the hour.

Thank God They had a Gun!




Wife who can't load shotgun uses it to club bear attacking husband

Oh, wait......

 

Thursday, May 16, 2013

True That!

One of the Blogs I follow hit one out of the park. Here is the link.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Don't Forget!

Sunday, May 12th is Mother's Day! 

If you are blessed enough to still be able to call, write, or go see her, do! I still do love this nice yard too! I Visit every chance I get! I will save the view from the front porch (to the right of this photo) for a retro Sunday. Simply breathtaking! If you need to see a "mill town" I have it in spades.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Ah. The 80's.

Yeah if you did not live through them you would not understand. Here is a tune from Steve Winwood back in 1986. When MTV played music videos! Warning! An ad before the video!




For those that need to ask the parents about the really old tunes, he has more substance than this. Even older. A great tune with lyrics that speaks volumes.  He was the producer of this Album









 







In oh, 1971. I will never give up this album. My Grandmother gave it to me. She worked at a record store and I hear this album cover is worth some cash. No matter.  A great tune that still has meaning today.  I spin the record up on occasion. 




Yeah, another ad. 



My Grandmother gave me the gift of music. She loved it in all of its forms. R&B, Jazz, Country, Metal, etc. 

I am so happy to have this gift from her from so long ago. 


Thursday, May 9, 2013

Whatever You Have.

Tools are important. Mindset just as much. For over a decade I was denied the right to self defense with a firearm as I taught at a local community college in my local version of Mordor. I had this.



















Looked like a cell phone case back in the day. It in fact housed this.














I liked it! Two shots. Equipped with a safety. Was not sensitive to temperature variations. 

Then we get to the Kimber Pepper Blaster II. Same thing, but better ergonomics. It has sights and a little grip. 




 














Then we get to this if the standoff weapon does not work. 



 











One thing about a knife fight, you will get cut! I would prefer not to get into one. 


Then it goes here. MANY have disturbed electrons in this space about what caliber stopping round. I get that, but if I can stick this in my front jeans pocket, that counts for much. 

  























Yes the trigger is much like pulling a sled across a gravel pit! S&W Bodyguard .380.

Guess what. If I can stick this in my pocket as opposed to the duty rated belt and an M&P or a Colt Defender for short trips I will take it. It DOES beat a stiff word and rolled up newspaper! 

Tools are important. The mindset and awareness to use them is more important.  Mindset to not even get into a situation to get to this point is even more important to me. 

I don't care what you are carrying as long as you can use it effectively.  

Sunday, May 5, 2013

The AGC.

Many commented on my previous post. You can see the heart rate of Neal Armstrong go up as the AGC (Apollo Guidance Computer) starts throwing 1201 and 1202 alarms and really wants to put the Eagle LM in a crater. 

Here is all you need to know about the AGC.  


Here is what happened during the landing. 

PGNCS generated unanticipated warnings during Apollo 11's lunar descent, with the AGC showing a 1201 alarm ("Executive overflow - no vacant areas") and a 1202 alarm ("Executive overflow - no core sets").[9] The cause was a rapid, steady stream of spurious cycle steals from the rendezvous radar, intentionally left on standby during the descent in case it was needed for an abort.[10][11]
During this part of the approach the processor would normally be almost 85% loaded. The extra 6400 cycle steals per second added the equivalent of 13% load, leaving just enough time for all scheduled tasks to run to completion. Five minutes into the descent Buzz Aldrin gave the computer the command 1668 which instructed it to calculate and display DELTAH (the difference between altitude sensed by the radar and the computed altitude). This added an additional 10% to the processor workload causing executive overflow and a 1202 alarm. After being given the "GO" from Houston Aldrin entered 1668 again and another 1202 alarm occurred. When reporting the second alarm Aldrin added the comment "It appears to come up when we have a 1668 up". Happily for Apollo 11, the AGC software had been designed with priority scheduling. Just as it had been designed to do, the software automatically recovered, deleting lower priority tasks including the 1668 display task, to complete its critical guidance and control tasks. Guidance controller Steve Bales and his support team that included Jack Garman issued several "GO" calls and the landing was successful. For his role, Bales received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom on behalf of the entire control center team and the three Apollo astronauts.[12]
The problem was not a programming error in the AGC, nor was it pilot error. It was a peripheral hardware design bug that was already known and documented by Apollo 5 engineers.[13] However because the problem had only occurred once during testing they concluded that it was safer to fly with the existing hardware that they had already tested, than to fly with a newer but largely untested radar system. In the actual hardware, the position of the rendezvous radar was encoded with synchros excited by a different source of 800 Hz AC than the one used by the computer as a timing reference. The two 800 Hz sources were frequency locked but not phase locked, and the small random phase variations made it appear as though the antenna was rapidly "dithering" in position even though it was completely stationary. These phantom movements generated the rapid series of cycle steals.

A shout out to Michael Collins. He was the command module pilot orbiting the moon while all of this went down.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

This is cool.

A Web design place created this. A recreation of the Apollo 11 landing. It is covered in awesome sauce! Separate audio tracks for mission control and the command module and Lunar lander. h/t to Are We Lumberjacks for this one.

Awesome!