Neural Misfires

What's in my pocket right now?

2011-09-25T17:43:00.000-07:00

A Kershaw. More specifically, a Kershaw Storm II serrated folder, as designed by the fertile mind of knifemonger Ken Onion. I bought 5 of these when Cabela's was selling them for $19.95 each. I figured if I ruined one, I could always bring the spare(s) into action. I'm still on Number 1, though.

When not packing the Kershaw, it's a Benchmade Eclipse Serrated that rides along with me. The Benchmade is also one heck of a pocketknife, but it appears Benchmade ain't making them anymore - as is the case when one finds something that really works well and takes a shine to it...

Everything old is new again...

2011-09-02T17:58:00.000-07:00

Hardly does one week go by when I don't either hear or read about the FedGov's plan to deny We The People of the right to buy illumination created by running electrical current through a filament of some sorts.

No, says they, one must shed light by exciting mercury vapor in twisted little tubes that emulate real-by-Gawd light bulbs. We're determined to save you from the evils of incandescent light!

You want to have instantaneous light out on the back patio deck or the unheated garage in North Frostbite Falls during wintertime? Tough noogies - wait for those CFLs to warm up, which I'll tell you right now, takes absolutely friggin' FOREVER.

I got news for the mental midgets who first took my high-flow shower head, then my industrial grade single-flush Ferguson commode - PISS OFF!

I've already converted about 75% of all the lights in this house to CFLs of one form or another over the last several years, usually when the incandescent bulbs in those fixtures gave up the ghost. Did I realize a savings by way of the wattmeter spinning away outside? Yup, definitely. But that ain't the whole story.

I've had to replace several of the CFL bulbs that just didn't cut it. Either they died a premature death, or couldn't hack the environment they were placed in.

The front and back porch are back to incandescent, as are the accent lanterns on either side of the garage door. The lights on the garage door opener are back to incandescent. Two of the biggest lights in that same unheated garage are back to incandescent.

Every friggin' dimmable light fixture in the house is back to incandescent. I bought several of the "dimmable" CFL bulbs, and guess what - they don't. They "dim" to about 50% power, and then either cut out or oscillate in brightness while emitting a high pitched television flyback transformer whine. Sorry, Philips/GE/Sylvania, your engineers have more work to do in that application.

As a matter of fact, the "dimmable" small 14-watt CFL in my computer desk lamp just plain refused to cooperate, so I decided enough was enough and headed over to the local Menards to find a solution.

I found one. Actually, several, and they aren't going to make the CFL proponents very happy, I'm afraid. Menards is now selling retro-style Edison incandescent light bulbs, with long serpentine filaments and envelopes that look hand-blown, for a whopping $8.00 each. Of course, they're made in China, but damned if they don't just reach out and grab you. I know, I grabbed two of them, just in case the FedGov made it a limited time offer.

Now, I really hope it's all bluffoonery regarding this impending incandescent ban, but I'm convinced I'll head back to Menards this weekend and grab a couple more. I mean, just look at how that filament glows!

For 60 watts, it doesn't really run too hot. I'm sure the efficiency sucks, but I usually run my desk lamp dimmed down pretty low anyway, almost to the same filament color as the vacuum tube amplifier running on the desk. (Which feeds the computer's sound output into two huge floor towers on either side, something I will also not give up to the more-efficient transistors now all the rage)

I like it. Next stop, the nightstand light, also dimmable. Put that in your pipe, FedGov. Oh, and thanks, Menards, you've restored my faith in baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet!

A dog named (wait for this...) Turbo!

2011-07-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

The story is that he was sitting out in a field near an office complex, looking dehydrated, emaciated, and infected all at once. She Who Would Rescue The World calls me on the cell phone, telling me she has a "problem" and needs to see me at work over lunch. The "problem" was a tiny little furball, lethargic and looking as if today were going to be his last. She saw him out of the corner of her eye as she was driving to lunch. Honest to Gawd, I think she honestly scans for such things...

So I give in. Which I always friggin' do. I knock off a couple hours early, go grab the little doober from the house, and head straight to the family pet doc.

I walk out of there $65.00 lighter, knowing that the 15-ounce furball is seriously dehydrated, has worms, a massive respiratory infection, is a boy, and should perk up after getting de-wormed and as he sucks down the antibiotics and prescription (!) canned food.

Within just a couple treatments of the antibiotics, he comes to life. This is him after just one day of feeding and antibiotics:

He's gained an absolutely amazing amount of strength and ambition since the above photo, so much so that we call him "Turbo" because he does everything in top gear. Even making room in the litter box for deposits results in mass quantities of Tidy Cat being flung halfway across the interim nursery. That's fine, his disposition and zest for all things both cat and human are refreshing, although his introduction to the two big dogs in the house is on a rocky start. Since the photo above he's gained more weight, and has no qualms about attacking me from halfway across the room. Tonight, it's "rush the old man from across the bed, then veer off for another attack from a different angle" night:

Here's to you, Turbo. Hope you and the dogs get along, because I'd hate to have to give you up now that we've become acquainted...

Old meets New

2011-06-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

I finally fixed the gremlins found lurking inside my antique Hickok Model 665 oscilloscope (O-silly-scope?) and returned it to service. For now, it sits in a place of honor to the right of my 2009-vintage IBM IntelliStation Z-Pro 9228, which takes the vacuum tube switching technology of the Hickok and multiplies it several millions of times.

True to form, this particular IBM workstation is water-cooled, to keep the dual Xeon 5160 (aka, Woodcrest) 3.0Ghz dual-core processors happy while playing Fallout New Vegas or running SolidWorks, Adobe CS5, etc. There are 10Gb of FB-DIMM memory onboard, a monster MSI TwinFrozr Radeon HD6870 1Gb video card to feed the monitor, a Western Digital Caviar Black 1Tb hard drive keeping the files in order (hence the Masscool blower keeping the HD temps down), and a Koolance Exos 2 running blue coolant through the gold-plated waterblocks attached to both Xeon CPUs. The operating system of choice to run this 64-bit beast is Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, which is pretty much a seamless transition from its 32-bit sibling, save for my Canon LiDE 30 scanner drivers.

The Hickok oscilloscope will soon be attached to the output of the computer's sound card, to give a visual representation of whatever music or Windows Media Center TV/DVD I happen to be enjoying at the given time. That, or I'll attach it to the output of the MGE Pulsar EX30 UPS to show the perfect 60-cycle power feed...

Lest We Forget...

2011-05-30T09:01:00.001-07:00

(The True Meaning of Memorial Day, that is...)

Serious Smoke on a Sunday Afternoon...

2011-05-01T14:08:00.000-07:00

But it's ok, really.

The weather is pushing 60 degrees, clear skies, the birds are singing, and I had this nice beef brisket getting all lonely and stuff in the freezer.

So it got soaked in apple cider for 6 hours yesterday, then patted down and given a spice rub coat to wear overnight. Now it's being accompanied by apple wood chips, and a firebox full of lump hardwood charcoal at around 225 degrees for 8 hours. As a matter of fact, I've got to get back to stoking that fire, so I'll leave y'all with a "before" picture.

Blustery Saturday Afternoon Cast Boolits!

2011-04-04T17:45:00.000-07:00

I'd finished putting new rotors, wheel bearings, and brake pads on the truck around noon last Saturday, so I had some extra time to myself to work on another project I'd been meaning to undertake.

I have a goodly stockpile of raw wheel weights in a 5-gallon bucket, and an even greater amount of sheet, pipe, and ingot lead accumulated over the last 10 years or so. This is good, because Santa Claus brought me a new Lyman 457132 mold to keep my 32" 1874 Sharps Business Rifle fed with nice big 535gr Postells.

It was cool outside, not too breezy, and I was seriously hankerin' to cast some boolits. First things first, I had to reduce all those wheel weights to ingot form. I used a small muffin pan that held 24 portions - it works perfectly for casting ingots small enough to alloy 30:1 bullet metal using wheel weight ingots and straight lead ingots.

Then I cast straight lead ingots from the sheet and pipe lead scraps. Boy, that stuff is dirty and required a lot of fluxing! Soon enough, I had several dozen small pure lead ingots, ready to go. There was a big pile of wheel weight ingots, and an even bigger pile of lead ingots - a recipe for success!

I'd settled on 9 ingots of lead to one ingot of wheel weight to make my 30:1 alloy. It's probably not exactly 30:1, but close enough to fill out the mold nicely, while still casting boolits soft enough to "bump up" in front of a 70gr charge of Goex Cartridge BP upon firing. It took some time for the mold to get up to temperature, so there were more than a couple wrinkly boolits that dropped at first. That's fine, back into the pot they go for another shot at greatness.

By the time the sun started going down, I had culled down the afternoon's work to approximately 5 dozen 535gr Postell bullets, ready to run through the lube-sizer and eventually load into my favorite .45-70 BP rounds. That's work for another day, though. In the meantime, it's nice converting scrap metal into an intrinsically beautiful piece of functional metallic art, ain't it?

The Perigee Moon of March, 2011

2011-03-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

Tonight's full moon looked every bit as impressive as the news people said it would. I moved a bar stool to the back deck, plopped the Nikon 8700 onto the mini tripod, screwed in the 1.5x telephoto lens, and let fly using the auto timer for the shutter. Keeping the two dogs from tromping around on the deck while I held still was almost more of a task than composing the shot. It seems to have worked, though. I had only a few minutes to take the photo, the cloud cover was pretty heavy with only a few "windows" of opportunity.

It's not Chernobyl Pt. II, honest.

2011-03-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

And to the fearmongers sowing panic like so many meadow muffins from the backside of a manure spreader, shame on you.

Chernobyl was a graphite-moderated reactor, aka RBMK Reactor, with no containment vessel. The former design feature is very much obsolete, and the missing latter feature in conjunction with all that flammable graphite are what made Chernobyl, well, Chernobyl.

Japan's Fukushima Daiichi reactors are light-water reactors, aka LWR or Boiling Water Reactors, with proper containment vessels. There's none of that graphite stuff, and the reactor cores are well-contained inside exceptionally thick steel and concrete pressure vessels designed to keep all the bad stuff inside where it belongs.

It's an apples-to-oranges comparison in every way. Japan's broken reactors will never become a Chernobyl-style catastrophe, because it's physically impossible.

I'll skip the human-induced fumbling that started the Chernobyl catastrophe, and simply state that a hydrogen bubble ignited and burst open the reactor building when the fuel rods lost their cooling water. That's what happens in nearly all reactors using water as the working fluid when they run dry. The increasing residual heat melts and oxidizes the zirconium alloy cladding of the fuel rods, the remaining water flashes to steam, hydrogen splits from the water in the steam, and you have this big honkin' hydrogen bubble under pressure looking to recombine with oxygen at its earliest convenience. Why did it burst open the reactor building? Because there was no reactor pressure vessel, no real primary containment of the reactor's core, and no real way to prevent the hydrogen from getting intimate with the oxygen it wanted back.

In doing so, the bursting of the reactor building exposed the reactor core itself to the environment. Remember those graphite moderator rods I mentioned earlier? They're graphite. That's a very pure form of carbon, halfway between charcoal and diamond. It burns like all get out, and generates some serious heat at very high temperatures once ignited.

So now you have a reactor core exposed to the environment due to the lack of a reactor pressure vessel, no cooling water, residuals of a hydrogen/oxygen "recombination event" that lifted the lid off of that reactor building, and oh yeah, tons and tons of graphite fire starter sticks. This is a recipe, lest anybody miss what's coming up next...

And boy, howdy, did it ever come up in grand fashion! As many Soviet military conscripts and career troops gave their lives to throw sand, boron, and other agents into the gaping maw of a ruptured Chernobyl, the fire in that big old Weber Grill ran hot enough to climb way up there into the atmosphere. So high, in fact, that it intercepted the Jet Stream. That ain't good, because the witches brew of daughter isotopes created in the reactor both before and after the accident found a convenient dispersal path thanks to the lack of a pressure vessel plus the super-hot, graphite-fueled fire. You've seen the pictures of livestock, produce, and dairy products that were destroyed as the plume dropped isotopes over the region. The Jet Stream carried the physically lighter isotopes around the world, and we (crazy bastards flying USAF nuclear reconnaissance jets) found activity off the West Coast of the U.S. in short order. It wasn't a dangerous level of REMs, but it indicated the nature of the reactor accident when the owners weren't exactly forthcoming with the info. The fuel rods did undergo a total meltdown, and they later found the solidified and formerly molten blob in the basement of the facility right where they figured it would go. It didn't burn down to the earth's core, and it didn't undergo an uncontrolled fission reaction. It melted, burned through the floor, and solidified into a huge "elephant's foot" of an intensely radioactive uranium metal sculpture which will remain there for many generations if not longer.

Contrast that to what's going on in Japan this week. These reactors are contained, are being fed boron and seawater, and are "burped" on occasion to keep pressures down. Those "burps" release pressure and allow more cooling water to be pumped into the reactor pressure vessels. It's not easy pumping water into a pressurized boiler, as anybody who knows about feedwater pumps on steam locomotives can tell you. Unfortunately, those "burps" also contain hydrogen gas and radioisotopes, which are responsible for the external explosions we saw that lifted the roofs off of at least two of the reactor buildings. They didn't blow the reactor pressure vessels, but they did make some serious skylights overhead. The reactor cores are still contained, which is in stark contrast to Chernobyl, where Pandora's Box was out there in the open for all to experience.

Radiation, while a fine trigger for genetic diversity in Homo Sapiens and other species of flora and fauna, really isn't too healthy to living organisms in larger doses. I know, I absorbed more than a few beta and gamma hits when inserting the pointy end of a jet into a suspected nuclear debris cloud to get a good sample. As crazy as the mission might seem, we still stayed safe by following some basic rules.

Time, Distance, and Shielding are what saves your bacon. Time means minimal time spent in contact with radiation. Distance means that the specific energies of those alpha, beta, and gamma emitters drop off considerably with the more distance you put between yourself and them, roughly an inverse square formula. Shielding means that you put something that blocks those ionizing energies via the appropriate material for the radiation you want to stop. Alpha's easy, a sheet of paper will do. Beta needs something a bit more substantial, and Gamma's no fun at all. I'm seeing evidence of all three methods of protection being used by our Japanese friends while they're fighting the reactor problems and keeping the Japanese public safe. Somebody's got their head screwed on straight, especially after the double whammy of a 9.0 earthquake and the tsunami it spawned hit them in rapid succession.

As far as I'm concerned, the Japanese reactor crews and Japanese Self Defense Forces are doing the appropriate textbook maneuvers to keep a bad situation from getting worse. Sure, the non-pure seawater will permanently ruin those reactor cores, but it'll cool down the fuel rod assemblies over time until they're safe to extract and reprocess (save for the Tokai-Mura incident, Japan's pretty good at reprocessing spent fuel rods). The venting of excess core steam pressure prevents damage to the reactor pressure vessels, and allows the cooling water to be pumped in with considerably less resistance. The vented steam will contain radioisotopes and hydrogen, especially now that seawater is the expedient coolant of choice, but it's way less activity than were those pressure vessels to rupture and cause the fuel rods catch fire while exposed to the environment.

And that released radioactivity is much, much less than what Chernobyl scattered hither and yon, with fewer isotopes and lower specific activities in the shorter, lower-altitude dispersed plumes. In the meantime, all the scared folks buying Potassium Iodide tablets in Washington, Oregon and California are merely providing the industry with a temporary monetary boost. Those poor sods will never have occasion to use them here in the U.S., and if they do use them without actually being in contact with radionuclides, they'll booger up their thyroid glands something fierce. How's that for cruel irony? The fearmongers cause injuries by scaring people into sucking down potassium iodide tablets like candy, when the plume coming from Japan never carries enough debris to injure folks here, let alone make it across the Pacific. Wunnerful!

Instead of spending money on potassium iodide tablets, how's about writing a check to the relief fund of your choice to help the folks on the other side of the Pacific who have no electricity, no food, no water, no shelter, and need to get their lives back on an even keel after witnessing so much death and destruction? You'll feel better, honest. In the meantime, Uncle Sam is monitoring the situation probably better than anyone else in the world...

Spalted Maple 1911 Grips!

2011-02-14T15:48:00.000-08:00

The last time I put "fancy" grips on any of my handguns, they were highly figured walnut Altamont finger-groove grips for my S&W Model 696, taking it pretty close to Barbeque Gun status, albeit missing the obligatory engraving. Otherwise, most of my tools wear Hogue rubber Monogrips, w/finger grooves, including my raceguns. They earned my trust during IPSC and USPSA competitions over the years, and I figured a parkerized gun can't be made to look dressy, regardless.

I wasn't particularly looking for dress-up bits for my 1911s, but when I was just noodling around on eBay, these caught my eye. I dunno why, other than the mineral streaks and figure of the light maple, but they were indeed striking. So striking, in fact, that I bought them. It appears they have taken up residence on my Dick Bancroft-assembled Norinco/Kart/Videcki/Ed Brown/Brownells 1911 variant (Known in various circles as either Raunchorinco or The Gook Cup), and I dare say they look good. As a matter of fact, the old Hogue monogrip may not return, either.

Right side:

Left side:

Not bad. Not bad at all!

Vicious Snow Dog!

2011-02-06T15:27:00.000-08:00

Well, not really, but when you whistle and Quinn of the North Woods comes charging your direction, having the camera ready is a reward unto itself...

Yuengling Lager in Wisconsin!

2011-01-31T12:23:00.000-08:00

In their infinite wisdom (ala' Coors back in the day) Yuengling Breweries won't distribute their stuff to points west of the Eastern Seaboard. That's too bad, because some of us Damn Yankees who spent lots of time south of the Mason-Dixon line have a real hankering for Yuengling, shucked oysters, pulled pork sammiches, and decent buffalo wings.

I didn't fix the problem, but rather treated the symptoms. I ordered a case of Yuengling online from www.laurentiwines.com and by Gawd they shipped it! They were even good enough to wait for the weather to go above zero degrees Fondly Fahrenheit so that the bottles wouldn't burst in transit.

So as I sit here awaiting the 20 inches of snow they're predicting by Wednesday AM, there's a crock pot of chili simmering, and many bottles of Yuengling chilling on the back deck in a positive application of fluffy frozen raindrops.

They Trademarked "Tactical"!

2011-01-30T20:28:00.000-08:00

I kid you not. Usually, if you paint something black and attach rails to it, you get a cart-blanche excuse to call it "tactical". I've seen tactical flashlights w/scalloped bezels, tactical letter openers, tactical coffee mugs (Thanks, Oleg!), and damned near everything else labeled with that particular adjective.

I'd resigned myself to the fact that the term "tactical" is pretty much a marketing ploy and nothing else, but I was floored today when I received my Cabela's sale flyer. There it was - Federal American Eagle TACTICAL ammo, with the nice Registered Trademark right behind "tactical". Yup. The summonabenches trademarked it.

That worries me now. Will Federal/American Eagle go after the makers of my tactical toilet tissue? How about the Tactical Air Command patch memento in my shadow box? What if something just plain looks tactical, like the knives made by my late knife and gunsmith? That Caspian Officer's ACP of mine? Yeah, it's probably tactical, too. Well, it could be strategic, I suppose, but that's not a sales buzzword...

Noodler's "Dark Matter" & Lamy Safari

2011-01-22T18:31:00.000-08:00

I know I reviewed Noodler's "Dark Matter" with both a Cross ATX and Lanbitou 866 fountain pen earlier on this blog, but I've since found another combination that works exceptionally well.

Lamy makes a mostly-plastic fountain pen called the Safari, and while it isn't the most classical looking thing, the fit, form and function are top notch. I purchased my fine nib Safari, plus converter, on Amazon.com over the holidays thanks to a sale offer that found its way to my email. The price was right, and my bottle of Dark Matter was still pretty full, so what the heck?

My first impression upon arrival was that the pen was really light. So light, in fact, that I don't like writing with it unless it's posted - otherwise the balance is way off. My next impression was that the converter reservoir was very generous in capacity. It holds a lot of ink, much more so than my Cross. That's a Good Thing when I'm writing 20+ page engineering reports longhand, so Lamy gets bonus points from me right there. Having a couple clear windows in the barrel to view the ink levels doesn't hurt, either.

The fine steel nib has a dark oxide finish that complements the charcoal color of the barrel and cap. There aren't a lot of frills or flourishes on this pen, and the most "artsy" part of the Safari is probably the wire pocket clip. That's not a real problem for a daily-use pen, and the ergonomics of the Safari design more than make up for any lacking aesthetics. The triangular barrel section that interfaces with the writer's fingers and thumb are perfectly shaped, and the nib fairly glides over the paper with nary a thought. The scratchiness of the Lanbitou 866 and occasional edge grab of the Cross ATX are long things of the past with the Lamy Safari pen.

I have noticed that Noodler's "Dark Matter" is very flowy in this pen, while still being smooth and very dark in color. Not quite gushing ink, mind you, but one has to wait just a few seconds to allow the ink to dry before stacking other documents on the just-written page, but it's actually quicker to dry than our company-provided UniBall Gel pens. The latter smear quite horribly in comparison to the Safari/Dark Matter combination.

I'm inclined to believe the light weight and ergonomics of the Safari combine to make this an enjoyable pen, reducing fatigue when writing for extended periods. From my own, somewhat limited experience with fountain pens, this makes for a great value when one's writing so much that refillable fountain pens eclipse the practice of buying ballpoint refills. Kudos to Lamy for their Safari pen, and kudos to Noodler's for their Dark Matter ink!

Nikon Cameras -They Breed!

2011-01-22T18:18:00.000-08:00

At last count, there were 3 Nikons and one Canon in the house. I used the Canon PowerShot S50 to take pics of the 2 Nikon CoolPix 5700s and CoolPix 8700 during a rare moment when all 4 cameras were having their CF cards backed up to the server. I've been wanting to go the DSLR route, but the Nikon photos are so nice, and the little Canon is so handy...

Chances are, if you see photos uploaded across the web by your's truly, they were taken with one of these cameras!

Western Electric Red Alert Phone

2011-01-14T21:09:00.000-08:00

This is my Western Electric 502 phone, a former alert phone from a USAF installation. I had it re-wired for the standard modular phone jack, and it's tied into the house Vonage phone system. Unfortunately, the ringer will wake the dead, even at its quietest settings. When that happens, one of the dogs starts howling, and the other dog starts looking for me to make it stop.

So in the interest of domestic tranquility, I wrapped duct tape around the electromagnet's clapper. Now it just buzzes when an incoming call rings in. The little white AT&T box behind it and to the right? That's an inline touch tone dialer, with 4 programmable speed-dial buttons in front, and a full keypad hidden under the flip-top cover. It's pretty handy to have if you want to make outbound calls on a receive-only handset, otherwise I'd have to rely on my old Radio Shack pocket tone dialer pressed against the mouthpiece...

I've always wanted a weather station...

2011-01-01T15:27:00.001-08:00

Lo and behold, Santa Claus delivered a LaCrosse WS1510U-IT weather station this Christmas, thanks to a little bird who told him I'd wanted something along those lines. On New Year's Eve Day the weather warmed up to 49 degrees, melting the snow and making the installation task much more tolerable.

I knew the biggest problem with any weather station installation in my residence was going to be having the wind vane and anemometer seeing winds that would otherwise be masked by the height of the house. Were I to place the system further out in my back yard, I'd probably exceed the 300 foot range of the remote transmitters to the base unit. What to do?

My deck on the south side of the house is already 6' up off the ground, so that gave me an idea. I bought 2 each 10' sections of 1 3/8" galvanized steel chain link fence tubing, and a half-dozen clamp brackets to anchor things securely. My intent was to make a 20' instrument pole, and secure it to the 6' high deck for a total of 26' instrument height. That should allow the wind vane and anemometer to see winds coming over the house from the north, but if I didn't anchor things really well, I'd also have something that would dance nicely in heavier winds if it didn't plain fall over.

I used 5 of the clamp brackets to secure the instrument mast to the deck and upper railing. I'd considered drilling both a clamp and the mast to use a sheet metal screw for rotational stability, but I can't twist the mast now with 5 clamps holding it, regardless. I'm going to leave that portion alone for now, because I plan on taking the rig down later this summer for modifications.

Here's the mast as attached to the deck:

The thermometer/hygrometer/transmitter is visible attached to the deck support. The wind data wire coming from inside the mast attaches to the unit, so that it can transmit everything but the rainfall amounts - which are handled by a separate tipping-bucket rain gauge mounted elsewhere. I placed the thermometer/hygrometer/transmitter under the deck, to protect it from rainfall and also keep the summer sun from exaggerating temperatures via direct heating.

The upper portion of the mast mounts were attached to the deck railing, along with the aforementioned rain gauge. The rain gauge is mounted on standoffs to allow the measured rainfall to dump directly to the ground below. Looking up, one can see how it sits:

That's a makeshift plywood dog gate at the top of the outside deck stairs, until I come up with something a bit more substantial. The two 10' mast sections fit together via a 4" end section that's swaged down to about 1" in diameter. It made for a tight fit, but I added extra insurance in the form of a few sheet metal screws installed through the overlapping pipe sections. They're just barely visible near the joint in this view of the mast looking up towards the instruments:

As it looks from a normal vantage point on the deck, the rain gauge sitting nearby:

If you take your camera and point it up towards the instruments, then hit the zoom, you can see them way up there:

The top portion of the mast looks unfinished to me, even with the wind vane swinging and anemometer spinning away. So later this coming summer I will take everything down and install a 12-volt high brightness automotive red LED taillight bulb as a mast cap, illuminating the wind vane and acting as a beacon of sorts. This will serve as a visual reference in late evenings when the wind gusts are heavy during thunderstorm season, and also act as a landmark to see my house from the highway at night.

Once the three sets of batteries were installed, it was time to see what the weather station reported. I fired up WeatherUnderground.com to synchronize my barometer readings and compare the displayed data with that of other local public and private weather stations, and was pleased to see it matched theirs almost exactly! Now that's what I'm talking about!

An AOC 2770vh1 monitor followed me home!

2010-12-15T19:13:00.000-08:00

And darned if that big flat 27" monitor didn't fit nicely on my cluttered-up computer desk! It kinda dwarfs both my red alert phone and Eddie, but makes 1920x1080 under Windows 7 Pro really pop out at you. Now I wonder how I ever made do with a 24" monitor...

Pumpkin Carving 2010

2010-12-10T18:01:00.000-08:00

I finally put away all the pumpkin carving tools this weekend. This year proved our most intricate with respect to making cool things out of those oversized squash. Next year, I don't know if I'll have the patience...

Just a little Wisconsin pond...

2010-11-25T12:04:00.000-08:00

But the late afternoon lighting caught my eye, especially as it illuminated the dried vegetation on the pond's shore opposite the pending sunset. I grabbed the Nikon to capture the moment, and let go with the shutter for lots of frames. This one does a good job of expressing the still beauty of the scene:

Helping out Wikipedia with a Remington Model 8...

2010-11-17T17:30:00.000-08:00

I note that Wikipedia has an absolute dearth of firearm images in some of their entries. I reckon I should fix those omissions, so I've begun inserting examples from my own personal collection wherever appropriate. That way, somebody else can enjoy the fruits of my labors, and the firearms can see the light of day from the otherwise dark confines of their gun safes.

First contribution, my restored Remington Model 8 in .32 Remington, which I spent a goodly amount of time getting to its present condition:

More to follow, I promise.

San Francisco cracks down on McDonald's Happy Meals

2010-11-09T19:19:00.000-08:00

More specifically, Happy Meals w/toys that don't meet their arbitrary nutritional requirements.

IOW, they've decided that they don't want the wrong things going into the wrong human orifices out there.

Mr. Irony, when have you ever been so unbelievably obvious?

Sunday Breakfast - Something Different...

2010-11-07T14:24:00.000-08:00

In a fit of breakfast creativity, I took two fresh chicken tamales from the local Mercado Marimar, added two eggs, a generous helping of shredded Colby Jack cheese, and threw in a sprinkling of Tabasco. Mmmm-good!

2010 Strawberry Wine

2010-10-24T18:50:00.000-07:00

15 pounds of fresh June strawberries makes 3 gallons of strawberry wine, ready to bottle in October! This batch took a bit of work, from the picking of the strawberries, to the mushing up and constant agitation through primary fermentation, to the straining of the yeast-digested fruit when it went into the secondary fermentation carboy. (Mushing vs. a blender, because the latter would've chopped all the tiny strawberry seeds, releasing a bitter component the wine could do without...)

I was concerned that the wine would go straw or golden in color, but it finished as a dark reddish-amber. The specific gravity started at 1.110 and wound up at 0.990 in the end, so it took a goodly amount of sweetener to bring it back to a semi-sweet bottling stage. Due to the high acid levels of fresh strawberries, I used champagne yeast, so there's a relatively high alcohol content - but it is subdued in presence by the strawberry flavor, with a very clean finish on the palate.

I'm sure this batch of 15 bottles will disappear well before I pick another 15 pounds next spring.

I Drink the IBM Kool-Aid

2010-09-26T19:47:00.000-07:00

It never fails. Some time ago, I donated one of my spare IBM Intellistation M-Pro workstations to a worthy cause in Indianapolis. When the vinyl graphics business in our garage and my wife's new work-at-home job required hardware upgrades for their M-Pro workstations, I figured it would be no big deal. Unfortunately, the Intellistation M-Pro 6850 models have become more rare over the last year or so, something I hadn't really counted on. In the meantime, cannibalizing my own 3.0Ghz IBM Intellistation M-Pro for those badly-needed parts was just the opportunity I needed to find yet another orphaned corporate lease IBM and give it a loving home.

Mission accomplished. This rescued IBM Intellistation Z-Pro 6221 is slightly smaller in width and depth than the previous Intellistation M-Pro models, but packs 2 each hyperthreaded Xeon 3.2Ghz processors (4 logical processors in the Windows Task Manager), 4Gb memory, 320Gb HD, 8Gb SSD pagefile, and Radeon HD4670 video at 1920x1080 resolution under the sheet metal.

I'm pleased to report that the little fellow below is quite happy running Windows 7 Pro at a brisk pace, with blue (appropriate color for IBM!) antifreeze gurgling through its innards!

Moving the Windows pagefile to flash/SSD drives - revisited...

2010-09-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

It's been about a year and a half since I first started playing with moving a portion of the Microsoft Windows operating system to solid-state devices like Compact Flash cards and DOM Flash drives. My goal was twofold: to check the reliability of the solid-state drives, and to see if I could realize a boost in Windows perfomance compared to the spinning platter alternatives.

There were concerns at the time that Flash memory had a limited lifespan, and couldn't really handle repeated read/write cycles over time. I had no idea how much of a problem that would be during a long term test, but I was willing to sacrifice an Industrial CF card and Flash DOM drive to the cause, regardless.

To be honest, the Windows XP pagefile really doesn't hit things too hard. That could be attributed to the fact that I run dual hyperthreaded Xeon processors (4 logical processors in the Task Manager), and never had less than 2Gb of RAM in any of the test machines, with a total of 3.5Gb in one of them. With that much memory and parallel processing power, Windows XP Pro probably didn't need to access the pagefile as much as it could have with fewer resources available.

I said earlier I used Industrial Compact Flash - there's a reason for that. I learned that not all Compact Flash is created equally. If you want to use a Compact Flash card as a real hard drive, it has to be compatible with the IDE or SATA bus of a computer's motherboard. Using an IDE-to-CF adapter card, I discovered that some CF cards are UDMA compatible, most are not. The ONLY way to guarantee hard drive compatibility in the CF card world is to purchase Industrial Compact Flash, which is specifically designed for hard drive replacement use in embedded systems. While this guarantees they can be used as IDE hard drives, something tells me they may also be rated for heavier use in read/write cycles, too. That may be cheating with respect to my long term test, but looking for compatible CF cards via hit-or-miss purchasing didn't sound too appealing, either.

So how did they work? Pretty well, actually. Neither the CF card nor the Flash DOM module gave up the ghost, and were used every day for that year and a half. Under Windows XP Pro SP3, I was not able to format either in NTFS, but was able to use them formatted in FAT32 - so I left them in that configuration. I did not defragment them, nor did I set Windows to flush the pagefile during shutdown. I let Windows manage the pagefile size automatically, and was never in danger of running out of space on either the 4Gb CF card, or 8Gb Flash DOM module. I did use the HDDLED utility to show when the pagefiles were being accessed, and noted the greatest usage was during boot-up and when minimizing open applications. There were sporadic flashes of activity throughout a Windows session, but the majority of pagefile hits came from the instances I mentioned.

Applications like Adobe Creative Suite 3, Quark Passport, Microsoft Office 2007, and IE/Firefox browsers opened noticeably more quickly, with Adobe really standing out as a benefactor. Fragmentation of the main system hard drive sans the pagefile was also reduced, which is to be expected.

What I managed to accomplish was prevent the system hard drive from moving the read/write head all over the disk platter trying to concurrently access both a running application and the Windows pagefile. I also freed up several GB of hard drive space by moving the pagefile to the separate flash device on a different IDE channel. The system hard drive endured less fragmentation, and the pagefile took advantage of the excellent random access read characteristics inherent to solid-state devices. I can understand why both Microsoft and Intel recommend using these devices for such a purpose now.

I've since taken the concept just a wee bit further, by obtaining another IBM workstation, and outfitting it with a more recent version of the earlier flash drives, a purpose-built 8GB SSD drive built by Transcend. This was installed into an IBM Intellistation Z-Pro workstation, with 2 hyperthreaded 3.2Ghz Xeon processors, and 4Gb memory. Windows 7 Professional 32-Bit was installed, and this time, I was able to format the SSD drive using NTFS. Here's the drive box:

Here's the drive installed into the IBM's hard drive cage:

These are a bit faster in the read/write access times, per the manufacturer's data sheet. Moving the Windows 7 pagefile to the SSD was just as easy as doing so in Windows XP, and poses no real difficulty in setup. Windows 7 really likes this configuration, and that also comes as no surprise, since Windows 7 uses ReadyBoost for other solid-state media. (I tried ReadyBoost, and saw no performance increases, probably because of the 4Gb memory) This configuration is only about 5 months old, so I will keep an eye on it over time to see how well it holds up over time.

In the meantime, if you can find CF cards, Flash DOM modules, or smaller SSD drives at a good price, I can wholeheartedly recommend this technique. As SSD technology improves, I can hardly wait to see what the future holds in store!

Poe - Hello (The Good Version)

2010-09-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

This jammed when it first came out, and now that I've found it on YouTube, y'all can jam, too!

As promised, vintage iron.

2010-09-12T10:43:00.001-07:00

I told Roberta I'd take pics of our local Gathering of Leviathans. And so it came to pass that my father and nephew accompanied your's truly to the Badger Steam & Gas Show, 2010. Taking center stage was Wendell Kelch's beautifully restored 1917 IHC (International Harvester) Titan 30-60. Two cylinders, 9 3/4" bores, 14" strokes, 30 drawbar HP, 60 pulley HP, 21,000 lbs of drop-dead gorgeous!

A few different angles - note the exposed valve gear at knee height in the cab:

She's a big girl:

I'm still staying busy.

2010-08-15T20:42:00.000-07:00

Freshly bottled - 3 gallons of lemon wine, AKA Murphy's Irish Lemon Elixir and Liver Tonic:

Coming next? Strawberry, and Watermelon's just finished in the primary fermentor...

Good-looking bird!

2010-08-15T19:24:00.000-07:00

Of course, I'm a wee-bit biased, having been a crew dawg on said bird, but hey...

Here's WC-135C Constant Phoenix Tail Number 62-3582, shortly after retrofit from it's previous life as an EC-135C Looking Glass platform:

Morning Commute Haiku

2010-08-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

These come to mind every morning as I hop onto the Interstate enroute to work...

Prius blocks fast lane.
NASCAR number on hatchback?
Drive like you stole it!

Minivan swerving.
Mom flailing at kids in back.
She's on the phone, too.

Vintage Detroit Iron

2010-07-24T18:55:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Baraboo today - no thunderstorms, either! Old-Fashioned Days only comes once a year, so we took advantage of it.

My absolute favorite was this SWEET 1967 Pontiac Bonneville ragtop. (Do want, sorry it ain't a BMW Z3, but oh, well!)

Then there's the 1956 Ford F-100 pickup:

This 1940 Ford Deluxe Coupe was exceptionally choice:

Anybody for a 1951 Dodge Flathead 6 Power Wagon (Military warning stickers still on the dash)?

Another Mopar, in the form of a Dodge Charger:

No classic car show would be complete without a 1967 Camaro SS.

Who wouldn't like a clean Ragtop Oldsmobile 442?

Love the lines on this 1955 Bel-Air 2-Door Hardtop:

And in a concession to Wolfsburg, a nicely-redone 6-volt Swingaxle Bug:

That's definitely a pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon, IMHO...

Noodler's "Dark Matter" Review

2010-07-18T19:20:00.001-07:00

Unless one's been hiding beneath a rock for the last decade or so, there's been a very popular brand of fountain pen ink called "Noodler's" - named for those crazy folks who think they can reach underwater into a riverbank hole and pull out a catfish vs. losing fingers to snapping turtles. Hell of a sport, that!

I've been playing with fountain pens since grade school, and started out with cartridge-loaded Sheaffers, then graduated to the Parker 51 series, etc. I pretty much forgot about fountain pens over the intervening couple of decades until just recently, when I found myself writing multi-page (last one was 15!) reports longhand and just burning through pen refills like there was no tomorrow.

My old Sheaffers and Parkers had long since disappeared, so on a whim, I ordered a Cross ATX medium-nib pen through AAFES, and a quantity of black cartridges. That was all well and good until I realized that Cross ink tended to feather pretty badly, and those cartridges are a bit of a pain to swap out several times a week. So I ordered a Cross converter, and went shopping for ink. As I ordered the Cross converter, my eye caught a svelte little Chinese number called a "Lanbitou 866", with a hooded nib and very slim lines. What the heck, it was a whopping $4.00, I may as well give it a shot!

I knew that refilling fountain pens via piston converters offered a couple advantages, namely quick refills and a cleaning action as the ink is drawn into the pen from the nib end. While I run the risk of getting ink everywhere when refilling from an ink bottle, it's a calculated risk that I feel is manageable.

Reading all the reviews of Noodler's Ink online, I came to the conclusion that I couldn't go wrong with any of their offerings. About the only prerequisites I had for the ink I needed was that it had to be black (medical/legal requirement), and my own personal desire was that it flow nicely without feathering too much on paper. My Cross ATX did feel "scratchy" when using Cross cartridges, so if I ended up with an ink that had lubrication properties, that would be a bonus, too.

Enter Noodler's "Dark Matter". The story as printed inside the box was that a partial bottle of WWII Los Alamos Government ink showed up at Noodler's, with a request from the owner that Noodler's duplicate it as best they could. This they did, and the subsequent offering shows J. Robert Oppenheimer himself on the label, and "Nuke" on the box end to identify this particular formulation. Having retired myself from an agency closely related to Oppenheimer's project, I just couldn't say no.

I filled both the Cross and Lanbitou, and tried the ink on both copy paper and newspaper. The results are actually pretty darned good. The Cross flowed very easily, and did indeed smooth up the feel of the nib across the paper. It feathered a bit on newspaper, but nowhere near as bad as the Cross cartridges did. The Lanbitou was crisp, and while it didn't gush ink like the Cross, it was still very easy to make nice flowing text. The ink dried relatively quickly, so I would imagine it isn't what Noodler's calls "Bulletproof".

From both pens the color was dark, I guess you could call it pitch black. While I'm sure there are darker formulations from Noodler's, I have no qualms writing through this particular bottle of "Dark Matter" in the performance of my duties and while writing everyday missives.

On the left is the copy/printer paper, on the right is newspaper. For those who like Noodler's offerings, I can very easily understand why!

Muzzle Blasts, Pt. VII

2010-07-18T18:33:00.001-07:00

Kudos to the folks who correctly identified the subject of Muzzle Blasts Pt. VI as a Garand, better known as the U.S. Rifle Caliber .30 M1. It's pretty hard to mistake the profile of the M1 Garand, with the gas system sitting so close to the muzzle, and the gas tube right there out in front for all to see.

Here's a better view of same, doing a wonderful job of sending 168gr MatchKings into nice groups at the rifle range:

For the next unknown muzzle, I give you a rarity, although the origin should be visible when viewed in finer detail:

If we didn't take risks...

2010-07-18T18:10:00.000-07:00

None of us would ever experience the pleasures of things like dandelion wine.

The dogs and I sat in the grass some time ago, clipping dandelions and filling ice cream buckets with the flowers that others would rather douse with a healthy dose of herbicide. Several quarts later, my fingers were stained bright yellow - the same color as the interior of my big polyurethane primary fermenter after just one week. The results, however, are simply outstanding!

Heart-warming commercials are few and far between...

2010-07-12T16:22:00.000-07:00

This one's pretty good:

The latest batch is white wine!

2010-07-04T20:38:00.000-07:00

I just bottled 3 gallons of what I call "Wisconsin White", which was created during the tail end of last winter using Welch's White Grape Juice frozen concentrate and a Premier Cuvee' yeast. There was slightly more than 3 gallons' worth, so I ended up sampling several glasses of the "extra" after bottling was completed. Pretty darned tasty, I must say! Maybe my technique over the last 6 months or so is hitting its stride...

My little girl turns 7 next year!

2010-07-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

Ms. Quinn is still a stunning dog, no questions about it. Here she is, 60lbs of Chow/Spitz chasing me down at full-tilt-boogie as I try to capture her in the camera's shutter:

23" monitors, they are so nice...

2010-07-03T20:36:00.000-07:00

I upgraded a little while ago from a 19" to a 23" monitor, a Hannspree HF237 HDTV version as sold by www.geeks.com for a whopping $149.95 (refurbished w/warranty). I don't know how I languished so long with a 19" monitor, and a 17" monitor nowadays would drive me absolutely bonkers. 1920 x 1080 resolution will definitely light up one's office at night!

The Roaring Silence...

2010-06-29T17:02:00.001-07:00

I'd been keeping an eye on the Supreme Court's proceedings regarding McDonald vs. City of Chicago, which had the potential of either keeping the momentum of 2008's Heller decision, or just plain mucking up things royally for law-abiding U.S. gun owners.

Even though Monday's decision fell in favor of 2nd Amendment supporters by a close 5-4 count, it was good news.

Well, at least for some of us. Those crickets one hears in the background? That's the coverage afforded the McDonald decision by the major news venues, namely CNN, Fox, USA Today, etc.

Go ahead, Google it. It's been well over 24 hours, and you'll have to dig via the Washington Post or L.A. Times to merely find mention of this landmark case.

Scary, that. Makes one wonder if the "Liberal Media" moniker really holds water, don't it?

Brightening up one's workday...

2010-06-27T20:24:00.001-07:00

Thanks to a hectic schedule, I've been writing reports lately, and a lot of them, to boot. I wrote 27 pages just yesterday, as a matter of fact (Day off? What's a day off?) As anybody in the medical business knows, reports get written in black ink - period. There's no blue ink allowed, and no printouts via word processor. As a result, I'd been tearing through gel rollerball pens and refills like nobody's business, when it dawned on me that back in my prep school days I'd discovered fountain pens for report writing.

The idea had some merit, so I ordered a basic Cross ATX model, which arrived in mere days:

Until I get a converter ordered, I'll stick with the black ink cartridges, which I can buy at the local Office Depot quite easily. I'd forgotten how delightful it was to flow through a report using a fine writing instrument. Granted, I didn't buy a Montblanc, but the minimalistic Cross works nicely for my purposes, and adds a touch of class to the various other instruments on my busy desktop.

More fun with fruit!

2010-06-12T19:49:00.000-07:00

We picked 16lbs of strawberries today. There's a family organic farm maybe 5 miles from my house, and if you pick them yourself, they're a whopping $1.50 per pound. The picking season is all of about 2 weeks, so we boogied over there...

The couple pounds above are set aside for cereal, ice cream and shortcake. The rest of the batch have already met their fate. They're cleaned, mushed up, and on their way to becoming 3 gallons of strawberry wine, see below.

That's 3 gallons of strawberry wine just starting life on the left, 3 gallons of dandelion wine settling out in the middle, and 3 gallons of lemon wine still bubbling away in the primary bucket on the right. The 2010 wine season is well underway!

For the fellow on "Top Shot" who couldn't hit the 50 yard target...

2010-06-08T18:12:00.000-07:00

Guys, this is a Springfield M1903A1. It's pretty much the same rifle as the M1903 used on "Top Shot", save for the C-type pistol grip stock, which Uncle Sam in 1928 considered superior to the straight grip stock of the M1903. Many M1903 rifles were actually converted to M1903A1 configuration as they were rebuilt at government arsenals between the wars.

The stock ain't the problem, though. The rear sight, however, is. Lemmee 'splain, okay? M1903, M1903Mk1, M1903A1, and M1903 (Modified) rifles all had the windage-adjustable rear ladder sights that were zeroed for 547 yards, aka 500 meters, when the ladder was down to expose the V-notch. Back in the day, almost all the infantry-length (and even shorter variant) rifles of standing armies had super-long battle zeroes, be they Springfields, Swedish Mausers, Schmidt-Rubins, 98 Mausers, Lee-Enfields, you name it. I won't get into the semantics, but it was part and parcel of military tactical thinking back then to engage at distances somewhere between 300 meters and "volley" range. Some rifles even had separate volley sights mounted on the side, my NoIMkIII SMLE being one prime example.

Now, this is just an observation from watching "Top Shot" the other day - you were probably fighting that 547 yard battle zero. If you were using surplus M2 Ball ammo like I think you were, that means your point of impact would be 7.3 inches HIGH at 50 yards. In other words, you'd have to hold under 7.3 inches to centerpunch the 50 yard bullseye. Going out to 100 yards, it gets even more fun, with nearly 14 inches of hold under required to centerpunch the target at that range.

Doughboys knew that. My fellow Camp Perry shooters knew that. Many of us "cheated" and used the 1903's bottom peep aperture found in the ladder when flipped up to the vertical. The bottom peep is zeroed for 100 yards, which makes things a heck of a lot easier than using the 547 yard V-notch. Just sayin'...

Of course, were it up to me, I'd have used the 2.25x power scope as issued on my M1903A4 Remington sniper, itself based on the peep-sighted M1903A3 Remington (Springfield) rifle, but that's just me.

I love vintage airplanes!

2010-06-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this completely restored 1950s-vintage USAF T-34A trainer, courtesy of yesterday's Reedsburg Fly-In/Drive-In Rotary Club Breakfast. The owner upgraded the powerplant, hence the 3-bladed paddle up front. My dad's getting ready to see if the keys are still in it...

When the tornado sirens go off...

2010-06-05T13:44:00.001-07:00

I stick my nose outside to see what the all the commotion is about. I mean, isn't that what everybody else does, too?

Turns out, the sirens weren't blowing just for the hell of it.

From my patio door, Woohoo!:

Memorial Day, 2010

2010-05-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

Home network simplicity...

2010-05-23T14:39:00.001-07:00

Nothing is ever easy around my house. Note the empty area next to the living room - that's the bathroom, another area for potential expansion!

Muzzle Blasts, Pt. VI

2010-05-23T13:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I did Muzzle Blasts, especially because I recently spent a week's worth of vacation in Southern California, amongst other things. Regardless, those who guessed "Swedish Mauser" for Muzzle Blasts V were correct. Here's the 1908 Carl Gustav M96 Swedish Mauser in its entirety, second from the bottom:

Note that the previous Muzzle Blasts specimens are racked and stacked in tight formation with the venerable Swede!

Our next specimen should be fairly easy for folks to identify:

LA Mayor wants to boycott Arizona, Arizona responds...

2010-05-19T11:52:00.000-07:00

Touche', Arizona!

See Arizona's pointed response to LA Mayor Villaraigosa:

Response to the LA Boycott by AZ Corp Commissioner

Windows 7 initial impressions...

2010-05-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

After about a week of Windows 7 Professional (32-bit), I can safely say it will remain installed on one of my removable hard drive cassettes. So far, all of my apps and utilities that were running under Windows XP Pro are also running just fine under Win7 Pro. Adobe CS3 Master Collection, MS Office 2007, Quark Express Passport, they're all good. That had been a major concern of mine, seeing how the horror stories of Windows Vista made me loathe to move to that operating system, let alone the follow-on.

The install itself was considerably quicker than even XP Pro, and save for the Radeon HD4670 video and Canon LiDE scanner drivers, everything was discovered and configured correctly. That included my Hauppage TV/FM tuner card. Win7 Pro immediately started up the Windows Media Center setup and requested ZIP Code info, at which point it figured out my local cable provider. Then it downloaded the TV listings, and within minutes I was watching TV on the 23" monitor. Pretty neat!

I find Win7 Pro to be a glossier package than Win XP Pro, and although I've throttled back some of the animation and glitz, I've left Aero alone for now. I'm bummed that Win7 Pro will only use 3.25Gb of the 3.5Gb memory inside my IBM, but that's about par for the course, especially since the video card is a 1Gb resource hog to begin with.

Programs seem to run just as fast as, if not a little quicker than, they did under Win XP Pro. Games like Wolfenstein 2009 and BioShock scoot along very well, so if there are additional overhead requirements for Win7 with respect to hardware and code, I'm not seeing it. I do notice that at idle the Windows Task Manager Performance view shows between 800Mb and 1.0Gb memory being used, so the operating system does require more of that resource.

All in all, my trepidations have been diminished. My legacy hardware runs just fine under the latest iteration of Windows, and although I'll keep the XP Pro hard drive cassette running every now and then, I'll be ready when Microsoft drops support for the latter.

Dandelion Wine!

2010-05-03T18:29:00.000-07:00

6 quarts of freshly-picked dandelions have become the start of 3 gallons of dandelion wine. This should be interesting...

I'm starting to convince myself that if it ain't nailed down, ferment it!

Muzzle Blasts, Pt. V

2010-04-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

The mystery muzzle in Muzzle Blasts Pt. IV was a bit out of the ordinary. Many folks have seen or even own a K-31 Schmidt-Rubin, and they've become quite popular over the last decade as they arrived on the Cruffler scene at very reasonable prices. Less common, however, are the rifles that preceded the popular K-31 straight-pull Swiss rifle. The rifle in Muzzle Blasts Pt. IV is one of those, namely, an Infanterie-Gewehr Model 1911 Rifle, full-length (and boy do I mean FULL-LENGTH):

As long as the rifle is, it actually handles quite well offhand. The straight-pull bolt cycles like greased lightning, although I hope never to need strong extraction camming to remove a stubborn fired round. This particular S-R 1911 dates to 1913 by virtue of its 352xxx serial number, with a Pensioner's "P" mark stamped on the receiver. The muzzle protector is original to the rifle, which is neat - but looking at the 45-degree crown, I understand why the Swiss felt the need for such protection. There was no paperwork under the buttplate, which was one of the first things I looked for upon obtaining the rifle. Bummer, but the gorgeous metalwork and French Walnut make up for the lack of trinkets from the previous owner. Well, that and how much fun it is to shoot on range day!

For the next Name That Muzzle, I give you the Schmidt-Rubin's stablemate in the Gewehr98 collection of boomsticks:

I've taken the liberty to leave a little accessory attached to the muzzle to perhaps assist readers in identifying said rifle...

Grub fit for a king...

2010-04-18T19:17:00.000-07:00

Wild-caught salmon fillets were on sale at Copp's yesterday, so who was I to say no?

A little bit of butter, some lemon pepper, and off to the hot grill it went:

It took about a half-hour on the Holland Grill, but with some long-grain wild rice on the side and one of my neighbor's homemade Amber Ales, I felt like absolute royalty tonight!

Bon Appetit', y'all!

Muzzle Blasts, Pt. IV

2010-04-11T17:41:00.000-07:00

Folks are indeed pretty darned sharp around these parts! The subject of the previous Muzzle Blasts teaser is indeed a No5Mk1 Lee-Enfield Jungle Carbine. The one in my inventory as pictured is a 1944-dated BSA Shirley (M47C) specimen, imported into the U.S. during the last decade from a cache of said carbines found in Malaysia. They sold out rather quickly, by the way.

I solved the fabled "wandering zero" problem with this example by free-floating the barrel and glass-bedding the action plus first inch of the barrel into the forestock. Make no mistakes, shooting full-patch MKVII ball ammo will really remind you that you're firing a lightweight carbine, but 123-150gr handloads in the same .303 British brass are a real delight in this particular Lee-Enfield variant. This is one of the few mil-surp firearms that I have no qualms carrying into the Wisconsin whitetail woods each fall - lightweight, quick-handling, fast reloads, and decent power. What's not to like?

Now, for the next "Name That Muzzle", I give you this seriously abbreviated image, with some extra hardware thrown in for good measure:

Spring is in the air!

2010-04-11T17:37:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist. The tomatoes looked so good, as did the fresh basil leaves, and the mozzarella balls...

A little olive oil, some minced garlic, and I felt like a king for a while. Bon Appetit'!

Facts I'll Bet You Didn't Know!

2010-04-08T17:49:00.000-07:00

Probably Too Much Information, but here goes (click for full resolution version):

WRT54G and Tomato Firmware, a New Chapter...

2010-03-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

Readers will recall that I was running an ancient Linksys WRT54G v1.0 router with the excellent Tomato firmware to move all the data packets into and around the home network here at Casa de' G-98. I'd modified the router a smidgen by installing heatsinks on the internal ICs, adding a squirrel-cage fan, and placing a Linksys WSB-24 downstream to boost the 802.11g signal strength a smidgen. It worked flawlessly, and logged 430+ days of continuous use before I recently unplugged it.

Why, then, did I unplug it? Charter Cable performed a free upgrade from 20/2 to 25/3 service earlier this month, and I wasn't seeing anywhere near that kind of throughput on the LAN side of my network. I was lucky to see maybe 15/500k on a good day even before the free Charter upgrade, which left me scratching my head for answers. I attributed a lot of the slowdown to heavy usage of Charter Cable in my residential neighborhood, but I figured I could still see decent speeds in off-peak hours. Such was not to be the case, and I considered downgrading to Charter's 10Mbps service if I wasn't going to realize the speeds they promised. Then I received an email from Charter, telling me I needed a new DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem, please authorize their shipment of the modem to my household to better take advantage of the speed upgrade!

Well, of course I was all over that like white on rice. The new Ubee modem arrived, I installed it, and then went through the steps of having Charter provision it through their website. Once it was flashing all the lights in a happy pattern, I ran a speed test. Better, but not great. I saw 18/2, sometimes peaking at 20/2.5, but nowhere near the 25/3 advertised. Hmm...

Drilling through all the myriad posts over at http://www.linksysinfo.org/ led me to believe I was simply asking too much of the 125Mhz processor and lesser memory capacity of my early-model WRT54G v1.0. Comparisons of WAN-to-LAN speeds of all the home routers showed that the Linksys WRT54G-TM was the one I wanted, with more memory and a faster 200Mhz Broadcom CPU. I bit the bullet, bought one already flashed for Tomato 1.27 on eBay, and waited for it to arrive. Once in my hot little hands, I installed heatsinks on all the ICs that looked like they could benefit from additional passive cooling, placed the router in my basement comm rack, and let fly.

Voila'! 25/3 speeds now came up in the speed tests, although prime time network usage in my residential neighborhood can still put a crimp on that. Overclocking the WRT54G-TM to 225Mhz let the speed tests spike closer to 30/3, so for now I'll hold at that vs. overclocking to 250Mhz. (The router does feel noticeably warm to the touch at 225Mhz) My trusty WRT-54G v1.0 is still around, but it's getting transferred to my sister's home network to run on their Charter 5Mbps service, where it won't have problems compared to what I was asking it to do. In the meantime, here's what the Comm Rack looks like now, I fully expect to see another 430 or more days of uninterrupted service from the "new" router:

And the whole thing still looks pretty cool with the lights turned off, too!

Muzzle Blasts, Pt. III

2010-03-28T17:06:00.000-07:00

The last rifle I posted was a difficult one to figure out, and one reason is that folks don't see many of them in this day and age compared to other milsurp firearms. I don't have really concrete numbers, but I'd wager there were no more than a few thousand 6.5x53R Mannlicher Model 1895 Dutch Cavalry Carbines imported into these United States over the last century or so. I haven't even seen more than a couple of the full-length M95 rifles during my travels, and find myself fortunate to own a similar M95 Artillery Carbine as a mate to the Cavalry Carbine pictured below. Of note, this is NOT the same carbine as the Model 1895 Steyr-Mannlicher rifle in 8x50R, which was a straight-pull design. The Dutch Mannlicher was a rimmed 6.5mm turnbolt creation which also saw service in Romania.

The cavalry carbines are unique in that the box magazine and stock have asymmetrical wood on the left (horse) side of the gun, with the exposed box magazine on the right side conspicuously sans wood protection. I suppose that was a modification for the sake of the horse and scabbard, but few sources explain the rationale now. Mine has a date of 1896 on the receiver, and sees non-combat service on range day, since I scored both carbines, dozens of en-bloc Mannlicher clips, and several hundred rounds of reloadable brass when I bought the guns about 15 years ago. Reloading for the 6.5x53R round is straightforward, and the gun likes 155gr roundnose projectiles in front of a powder charge very similar to the later 6.5x54 Mannlicher-Shonauer, which it predates by all of a year or so...

For this next chapter of Name That Muzzle, I give you this out-of-focus teaser (still learning to use the Nikon DSLR, sorry):

If you're gonna make wine...

2010-03-28T16:46:00.001-07:00

You'd best have a place to put it all. This is a piddly little 180-bottle wine rack. It has 92 bottles of wine that I've made since last fall, which is but a fraction of my total output. (The remainder has been distributed to family and friends) Looks like I have some work to do to fill it completely, but we're getting there, slowly but surely...

Next up, 3 gallons of Bernie's Best Blush...

2010-03-28T16:36:00.000-07:00

Which makes 15 bottles as seen below. This was something to keep all my glassware busy during the "off" season, and it worked just fine. The neat thing is, this blush started life as Welch's frozen grape juice concentrate - 2 cans dark Concord, 6 cans white grape, water, sugar, tannin, acid blend, pectin enzyme, and Montrachet yeast. Save for the lack of serious sediment, it behaved exactly like other wines I've done before during the fermentation and clearing process. It finished as semi-sweet, with just a hint of Concord fruitiness. Now I'm really tempted to try a white wine from frozen concentrate.

Raspberry Wine!

2010-03-27T19:52:00.000-07:00

It's all bottled and ready to go. I used 5lbs of raspberries per gallon, with the berries provided by my folks from their farm in my Wisconsin hometown. After filling the 24 bottles, I had about 1/2 bottle left over, so I "sampled" the remainder tonight. Mmmm-good!

For my dear friend in Northern California...

2010-03-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

Whom I understand is not in the best of health these days. Richard "Dirty Dick" Bancroft is a mentor to me, and taught me much in the way of blades and John Moses Browning, amongst other things. Many a night we would sit up and solve the world's problems, while he ground a knife blank from ATS-34 or 154-CM, or milled a flat top on a 1911's slide in preparation for a Bo-Mar cut. I am still in awe, and cherish my meager collection of his handiwork, be they blades:

Or things of the 1911 persuasion, like a 3.5" Caspian Officer's ACP w/Kart barrel, tapered cone lockup, and his own design Bancroft sights:

A 5" Norinco 1911A1 w/ Kart barrel, Bo-Mar sights, Videcki lockwork, etc:

If you happen upon a knife, 1911 variant, or S&W revolver with a D/D rollmark, you've got something that should be kept very close for you and your subsequent generations to cherish.

Muzzle Blasts, Pt. II

2010-03-21T13:23:00.000-07:00

Kudos to all who guessed the make of the rifle from last week's episode of Name That Muzzle! I've got some sharp readers, it was indeed a SMLE, more precisely a NoIMkIII* produced at RSAF Enfield in 1917, with plenty of history I'm sure between then and when I acquired it in 1999. Here's the complete rifle image, taken on the first day the snow melted here in our part of Wisconsin:

Here's the next installment. This one might be a bit more difficult, but I'm sure someone will get it right. I've left considerably more than just the muzzle in the picture to help out:

Name that muzzle!

2010-03-14T14:55:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about a little game I can do on this blog, in which I take an image of a rifle's muzzle, and folks can hazard guesses as to the make of the entire rifle. Since I have oodles of rifles to do this with, it can become a regular feature. As I take them out of their respective safes to clean and oil them on a regular basis, I'll just take a snapshot and let fly. So, without further ado, here's Mystery Muzzle #1:

To assist and put today's Mystery Muzzle into further perspective:

The fog, it was thick!

2010-03-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

Warmer temperatures are great for melting all the snow, but they also bring the clouds really close to the ground at times. Note the car headlights looming towards me as I try to silhouette the trees against the streetlight:

My "new" Nikon DSLR is teaching me how to take pictures. I've got a steep learning curve ahead of me...

My new garden tractor?

2010-03-14T14:26:00.000-07:00

Spring is in the air, and I saw a really big Deere. (It was filling up at the local gas station...)

My wife says it's probably too big for our back yard, so I'll have to stick with the Bolens tractor for now. Bummer.

A gorgeous AR-15 variant!

2010-03-08T09:07:00.000-08:00

I've had this pre-'94 Olympic Arms lower sitting in the safe for about 11 years, and wanted to build it up into something unique. Thanks to the folks at www.ar15woodstocks.com I now have an idea what it'll look like!

A tragic collision has happened!

2010-02-27T22:05:00.000-08:00

And it's funny as hell! Metallica, meet Journey:

Tomato Firmware - 421 days on a Linksys WRT54G

2010-02-21T12:52:00.000-08:00

This is just a short check-up on the whole Tomato Firmware and Linksys WRT54G relationship. To date, we've had 421 days of non-stop operation on Tomato v1.19 Firmware. That's 421 days without rebooting, without loss of network connectivity, without loss of Vonage VoIP phone, etc.

That's pretty darned good.

The physical configuration of the system has remained pretty much the same as it's been for the last couple of years. The router is buried under all the other peripherals, but it keeps chugging along:

Not too shabby, in the general scheme of things!

Nothing's sacred.

2010-02-21T12:44:00.000-08:00

A while back, I created an additional Gmail account so I could make use of the Gmail Drive software. This allows one to create a virtual drive using the 6Gb space allocated for Gmail accounts. That's pretty handy, and I used it quite frequently for nothing but online storage and retrieval of files between computers at different physical locations.

The funny thing? I NEVER used it for email. Never. Not once.

So on a whim today, I actually went out to that particular Gmail account to clean up files I had stashed there earlier, and to see what's happened over the months.

There were 916 spam emails.

I kid you not. This account has never sent an outbound email, and yet there they were. I've never even given out the email address to anybody, and it's packed to the gills with spam. Technology's wonderful, ain't it?

80's Flashback, revisited...

2010-02-10T18:39:00.001-08:00

I have this album on vinyl somewhere in that big stack under the turntable.

Wang Chung - Dance Hall Days:

There now. The 80's weren't so bad after all, were they?

Pumpkin-Raisin Wine!

2010-01-31T18:49:00.000-08:00

6 gallons of pumpkin-raisin bottled today. That made 32 bottles of varying capacities, freeing up my 6-gallon carboy for another batch of something later on. I also have 3 gallons of a blush made from 8 cans of Welch's frozen grape juice concentrate bubbling away, and 3 gallons of Wild Grape Eiswein ready to bottle. 2010 will be a busy year if I intend to hit that 200 gallon/year family limit imposed by the BATF...

Apple announces the iPad!

2010-01-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

I'll take one with the extra absorbent wings, please.

Those are great for first aid kits or when the hemorrhoids really flare up.

Oh, it's not one of those?

You mean it's just an Apple Newton v2.0?

No thanks.

Hoar Frost!

2010-01-24T15:55:00.001-08:00

Yeah, that's what it's called. When fog condenses onto stuff that's below freezing in surface temperature, you get some really interesting frost formations. What's bad for airplanes is somewhat striking on ground-based objects.

The Jeep's antenna:

Wild grapes and plums in my back yard:

Pine boughs loaded down:

Pan back to see the frost on the pines, larger scale:

Raspberry wine

2010-01-24T15:47:00.000-08:00

I had a few pounds of fresh raspberries from my folks' farm that I'd frozen last year for use later on. I needed the freezer space, and had a couple empty 1 gallon carboys sitting idle, so why not?

Mush 'em up and scoop 'em into the carboy:

Add sugar, water, yeast, etc. - then wait for the magic to happen!

They're sitting next to a couple gallons made from fresh McIntosh apples that I made into applesauce. Those in turn are sitting next to 6 gallons of pumpkin-raisin wine, almost ready to bottle and distribute:

The 2010 wine season is in full swing!

Majestic Birds

2010-01-16T18:22:00.001-08:00

We spent today with my folks at the family farm, delivering wine and tech support for a cranky Linksys router. Upon arrival, we were startled to see some rather large raptors winging their way overhead. Apparently, with the removal of the dams on the Baraboo River, fish have been able to move more easily up the river. The bald eagle population has taken notice of this, and to date, about 85 of the majestic birds have taken up stations where the fast-moving water of the Baraboo River prevents ice from forming. (The river drops nearly 40 feet in elevation from behind my parents' farm to the Circus World Museum just a couple miles downstream)

We drove along the river towards Portage to get a better idea of the invasion, and we saw several of these big birds, both juveniles and adults, making the best of the fishing. One juvenile was down on the icy banks working over a gizzard shad he had just caught, when a fox rushed him - ostensibly to steal the catch. Suffice it to say, the young eagle simply took to the air with his meal, leaving the fox with nothing for his efforts but an eagle-generated breeze. Impressive, and I'm going back with my "serious" camera next weekend to get more pics.

The $19.00 Kershaw

2010-01-14T19:50:00.001-08:00

Last November, REI ran a special sale on Kershaw Storm II knives, marked down to an attractive $19.00 each.

I'm normally a Benchmade kind of guy, but I simply couldn't resist at the price listed. I use my pocket folding knives (usually a Benchmade Eclipse) every day at work, home, and afield, so I was intrigued by the Ken Onion design enough to buy a couple of them.

It's been about two months now, and I've thoroughly abused the one pictured below, with little sign of it giving up any time soon. It's definitely heavier than my Benchmade, and although I had misgivings about the stainless alloy, the 3.5" blade has held its edge quite well, even when ripping through cardboard packaging, etc.

Save for my little CRKT KISS serrated folder, I shy away from liner lock and frame lock knives. This Kershaw Storm II may have changed my prejudices against the design - it's pretty darned solid, once you get over the stigma of having your thumb in the path of the folding blade as you move the lock aside.

All in all, a darned good knife for the price. I just wish I had purchased a few more...

Smashing Pumpkins break...

2010-01-12T20:14:00.000-08:00

Ever drive home with just you and several hundred watts making you forget about your day at work?

Today was one of those days for me.

What better than Billy Corgan and crew with "Everlasting Gaze"?

Yeah.

It

Just

Plain

Kicks

Ass.

Irish Nachos!

2010-01-10T21:38:00.000-08:00

It was hovering around zero degrees today, and once I got inside from letting the dogs run around outside, it was time to warm up. I fired up our Emerilware/T-Fal deep fryer so that the peanut oil would level off at a nice 350 degrees, then went to work.

1. Slice potatoes w/skin into rounds, similar to cottage fries.

2. Deep-fry potatoes until crispy.

3. Place in skillet with sliced jalapenos and shredded Colby/Jack cheese, then bake in 350 degree oven until gooey.

Voila'! After a bit in the oven, you have Irish Nachos! Enjoy! (I know we did...)

If you can't win the argument, just threaten to punch 'em in the face!

2010-01-10T12:28:00.000-08:00

So as I follow the threads posted by Tam and Roberta, we discover Douchebaggery at its finest. Thanks to Mr. Weerdbeard's investigative technique, we also discover that the "pleasant" fellow in question also has ambitions for public office:

How Deep the Rabbit Hole?

More info and a nice poster regarding this particular character, here:

Rob Russell is staying classy!

You're one hell of a guy, "Rob". I'm a conservative, and would also be more than happy to give you my address. Hell, I'll even give you the first few swings, free of charge. That rumor about me being retired career military with a wall full of combat decorations? It's just a rumor. I'm a pussycat, really.

Wood and steel, revisited

2009-12-21T10:33:00.000-08:00

Tam sparked my intrigue with her Flat Black People Poppers posting. I've got a few of those squirreled away in the gun safes, but it does the heart good to see something in walnut and steel every now and again.

So, for Tam and all the others who can apppreciate such things, here's my restored Remington Model 1903A4 sniper, looking like it did the day it was handed to a GI during WWII or Korea. While overshadowed by the M1C and M1D Garand sniper rifles, it still did yeoman duty for its day:

First Blush!

2009-12-10T20:02:00.001-08:00

The 2009 Baraboo Blush concord grape wine is now bottled. Here's the First Blush:

Behind it are the 2009 batches of Elderberry and Plum wines, bottled but awaiting labels.

Yes, they taste even better than they look!

Just a little snow...

2009-12-10T19:44:00.000-08:00

Not a record, but we received upwards of 14" of the fluffy white stuff in less than 24 hours. I stayed home from work (They never opened, regardless) and hacked away at clearing the driveway and making a path through the back yard for the dogs. However, I ran out of steam when the county came through and plowed a huge berm right into my driveway's approach. I could swear the county snowplow driver had a big grin on his face as he buried us within mere minutes of us digging ourselves out earlier. So I refilled the tractor's gas tank, plopped #2 Son on the seat, gave him some rudimentary training, and let him take care of the problem. That's our mailbox I was in the process of digging out when my wife handed me the camera. The twin-cylinder Briggs, wheel weights, tire chains, and hydrostat on the Bolens all worked admirably in taming not only our driveway, but the two neighbors' properties, also.

I then went inside, drew a hot bath to take care of the frostbite I'd foolishly ignored during the day, and rehydrated with warm spiced cider. I'm still sore from shoveling and dealing with the frostbite on my legs, knees, nose, and ears. Vitamin M (Motrin) is the order of the day.

Tomato and Linksys WRT54G - 303 days and counting!

2009-10-25T20:18:00.000-07:00

I've stayed with Tomato v1.19 on my older Linksys WRT54G v1.0 router, but so far, no problems. The router is on a 400VA UPS, so as long as the power doesn't drop for longer than the UPS can feed the little router, I have no doubt it can go another 300+ days or longer!

The colors of fall...

2009-10-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

The maple trees in my neighborhood are absolutely vibrant this time of year:

Beauty is where you find it, IMHO.

Concord moved to secondary fermentation...

2009-10-18T22:18:00.000-07:00

About a week ago, I took those 20 pounds of Concord grapes from my dad's farm and reduced them to approximately 2 gallons of juice and pulp. That then got put into a 6-gallon primary fermenter with pectic enzyme, tannin, yeast nutrients, sugar, water, and yeast.

Today, that young Concord wine got racked into the 6-gallon secondary carboy and topped up with a little water to prevent oxidation. It's sitting next to a 3-gallon batch of Wild Grape wine that's also a week old. Note the blush color of the Concord!

Now if I can just quit "sampling" the stuff this winter before bottling it...

I want a Chapman Stick!

2009-10-16T18:17:00.001-07:00

But I also want to be able to play using both hemispheres of my brain at the same time, which one needs to do when both the melody guitar and bass guitar are situated on the same instrument. I've got about 30 year of regular guitar playing under my belt, but I am truly blown away by what folks do with this invention. The video below is Greg Howard and his band, playing "Still Water", with Greg on the 12-string Chapman Stick. More Chapman Stick videos later...

Staying busy!

2009-10-01T21:39:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I started a couple more batches of autumn wine. On the left, those are two 1-gallon batches of plum wine, and on the right, that's one 2-gallon batch of elderberry wine. The little airlock thingies started burping CO2 within just a few minutes of me getting the batches into the primary fermenting jugs!

Almost done, but I still have 5 gallons of fresh Concord grape wine to make next...

Fall is in the air!

2009-09-29T17:32:00.000-07:00

And happily bubbling away in the basement. No, really. Last Sunday we picked about 20lbs of wild grapes from the fenceline in my back yard:

Sorted and rinsed to remove bugs, green grapes, wrinkled grapes, and all other nasty bits:

The fun part - mashing the wild grapes for juice and pulp, leaving the seeds and skins behind. What a mess!

Throw the juice, 12lbs of sugar, one Campden sulfite tablet, and the balance of water into the primary fermenter, and give it a good stir. Note the gorgeous purple color of my wooden stirring spoon!

The next morning, the yeast got thrown in there, the lid was attached, and the airlock installed. It began burping almost immediately as the yeast chowed down on the sweet stuff and reproduced at a prodigious rate. Now when the must gets stirred twice a day, I cannot feel any undissolved sugar in the bottom of the fermenter - so they must be doing their job. The bouquet released into the air when I open the lid to stir the batch? Absolutely unbelievable!

Next up, 20lbs of fresh Concord grapes from my dad's farm. I've already mashed them, and the liquid looks like it'll make something closer to a blush than a red. That's fine, I'm willing to give it a try, too. I also have fresh elderberries and plums ready for their turn in the fermenters...

The coolant - it got cloudy!

2009-09-23T18:08:00.001-07:00

Note to self: WalMart distilled water ain't exactly the cleanest stuff in the world.

I had a bacterial or algae bloom in my computer's cooling circuit, and it got progressively worse over the course of a couple weeks. The reservoir looked like a kitchen sink full of dish soap suds as the coolant foamed and actually pressurized the tank.

Not good.

A quick Google of the topic, and it appears I've gotten a biological mess in the system. So it all got drained, and a diluted vinegar/Walgreen's distilled water flush was performed, followed by a pure distilled water rinse. I saw no sludge visible in either the reservoir, hoses, or CPU water blocks, so hopefully I got rid of most of the stuff.

Of course, that meant that my $14.00/700ml Koolance blue coolant was gone for good, and it would take a few days for another bottle or two to show up via the brown UPS truck. So I grabbed the big container of Prestone DexCool and another bottle of Walgreen's distilled water to make a 50/50 batch of automotive antifreeze. Into the reservoir it went, and I power-cycled the system until it was burped adequately.

To my relief, there's no more foaming, and opening the fill plug in the reservoir no longer results in an audible pressure relief. Temperatures are just fine, even with the thicker solution. It definitely looks different with the orange/red stuff running through the hoses and reservoir, especially with the blue LEDs back-lighting the tank. Call it a lesson learned, but I used my remaining jugs of WalMart distilled product to water my tomato plants.

Koolance says to change out coolant once a year. I made it all of a whopping three months, but I also bought a used system, so there's no telling how long it had been running without a change. I'll definitely pay closer attention now.

Cash for Clunkers - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

2009-09-23T17:54:00.000-07:00

From the back lot of my local GM dealer, I give you examples of what people traded in under the tax-assisted fiasco known as Cash for Clunkers. There are some damned nice vehicles, with plenty of life left in them. I approached one dealer, and he said they're all allotted to the local scrapyard, they won't entertain cash purchases from people like me. I've read that the Federal Government spent 8 dollars for every dollar of "clunker" they got off the highways. Wouldn't it have been better just to give the automakers the money directly?

I was seriously interested in buying the pewter 2001 or newer Chevy S-10 Blazer. It was clean enough to eat off of, and the interior was pristine:

Note the two very nice full-size Dodge pickups. A closer inspection revealed that they were in great condition, too. As I walked the lot, looking at the "Clunker" verbage written in crayon on the windshields, I shook my head in disbelief. Really - look at this late model Ford Explorer:

How about some more nice Chevy S-10 Blazers, along with the two aforementioned Dodge pickups?

Anybody for a nice Jeep Cherokee or another S-10 Blazer?

Makes me just plain sick, it does.

September 11th, 2001

2009-09-12T12:21:00.001-07:00

I refrained from posting yesterday because I felt it more somber to reflect in silence.

On September 11th, 2001, yours truly was on leave, getting ready to take advantage of a 15-year retirement option offered by the Air Force for select career fields.

Within days of the events of 11 Sep 01, Stop Loss was implemented, and stayed into effect until fairly late in 2002. By the time Stop Loss was lifted, I was well into my 16th year of service, and it then made more sense to go for the full 20 years or more - the job offers at that time could just wait.

To say that 11 Sep 01 changed people's lives is an understatement. My career plans, as well as the remainder of my military career afterwards, took a drastic turn. We as a people, and as a nation, may never again live a pre-9/11 existence. That's either good or bad, depending on your point of view.

Regardless, we shall not forget.

I'm so jealous!

2009-08-12T19:56:00.000-07:00

A gentleman at The Firing Line recently inherited a 1932-vintage Smith & Wesson .44 Hand Ejector Third Model Target (Model of 1926), caliber .44 S&W Special. Save for the omni-present cylinder drag line, it's in immaculate condition. More here:

Inherited S&W Link

Damn.

Some guys get all the luck.

Oshkosh 2009!

2009-08-09T16:02:00.000-07:00

12 hours is never enough when taking in all the sights at the annual EAA Airventure, but at least I can share a few favorites.

Beechcraft Staggerwing, always near and dear to my heart:

How about a WWII Westland Lysander, as seen from under the tail of a DeHavilland Caribou and behind an A-10 Warthog?

Spitfire, anybody?

Lest folks think I'm biased against rotary-wing aircraft, here's a shot of my favorite helicopter, the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane, as used by Erickson in the water-bombing role:

More pics later...

No tornadoes or hail tonight...

2009-07-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness! However, we were treated to an awesome display of mammatus clouds mixed with a gorgeous sunset. The last time I saw such cloud formations, we had been pelted with golfball-sized hail, so we were quite glad they dissipated soon after I took the photos.

Butt Paste!

2009-06-27T19:55:00.001-07:00

Ok, I'm not one to usually make endorsements, but sometimes the human creature suffers from some awful afflictions. While I'm glad I'm not beset upon by the same malady this guy acquired, I've had a little problem that was just plain bugging me.

Since the weather's been so nice, I've been riding my new aluminum, full-suspension, disc-braked mountain bike hither and yon, plus pushing the mower around the estate, walking two dogs at regular intervals, and generally doing all I can do to forget that the winter doldrums are but a few months away again.

Unfortunately, I forgot about the chafing that can occur down there, especially as the heat and humidity of the season sets in.

Ouch. There's really no delicate way to say it, other than "ouch".

So I'm digging through the medicine cabinet, looking for Desenex, Lotrimin, anything.

No luck, but by Gawd, there is a sample packet of something called Doc Boudreaux's Butt Paste sitting there, with a cartoon of a baby sporting a goofy look on his face. What the heck - I may as well give it a try.

Holy Cow! It cleared up within 24 hours! I mean cleared up, with nothing to show a prior problem.

The results spiked my curiosity, and I start Googling for other mentions of Butt Paste and non-baby applications. It turns out major league baseball and football teams are buying the stuff in one pound tubs, it's just that good.

Something tells me that if my buddy Eddie used Boudreaux's Butt Paste, he wouldn't look so anguished.

Best Budweiser commercial, ever!

2009-06-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

Not safe for either broadcast television, or one's work computer, but I'm still laughing!

I saw Roberta's rotary phone...

2009-06-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

It does my heart good to know they're still being used.

This is the one on my computer desk, and it's obnoxious as hell when it rings:

Back in my previous, pre-retirement life, it served a different purpose. When it rang, it meant that those of us lucky to be on alert duty had best boogie to the 8-engined jet - posthaste!

Now when it rings, it usually means I'm supposed to pick up something at the store for my wife, etc. That Western Electric ringer, btw, drives the dogs absolutely bonkers!

The traffic lights turn blue tomorrow...

2009-06-13T21:36:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe not the traffic lights, but my office is emitting a lot of blue light right about now.

That's actually a good thing, because the little offspring of Big Blue just got finished, and it's working rather well - considerably better than my expectations.

Lest we forget, I replaced these humongous copper/steel heatsinks and plastic wind tunnel shroud:

With these waterblocks, in an effort to reduce CPU temperatures and the noise associated with the fans trying to maintain temperatures below 140 degrees Fahrenheit:

Once everything was installed, and the system filled, burped, and leak-tested, it was time to go live with the show. I started 4 concurrent examples of "Toast" to get all 4 processors running at 100% utilization, making it as hot as I could possibly get it, and let it run in that configuration for another 12 hours:

The results? CPU temperatures never rose above 38 degrees Celsius the entire time. Considering I had been over 58 degrees Celsius prior to the water cooling upgrade, that's pretty darned spiffy!

Xeon #1's temperature, as displayed by the system's control panel:

In fact, the hottest component measured by the 3 temperature probes attached to the Exos system is the motherboard's air-cooled Northbridge chip, which reports around 41-42 degrees Celsius via Probe #3. Probes #1 and #2 are attached to each Xeon CPU, and they appear to be quite happy living in their new, cooler environment.

I'll call it a success, for now. There are some questions that remain to be answered over time, however, before I commit to calling it an unqualified success.

1. Does the special blue coolant (Which smells a lot like antifreeze) actually prevent galvanic corrosion between the aluminum radiator and copper waterblocks?

2. Do I change that pretty blue coolant at yearly intervals as the manual states, or sooner?

3. Do those tiny millimeter-size bubbles circulating at high speed in the tubing ever really go away?

4. Will the gurgling in the reservoir diminish over time?

5. How often do I blow the dust out of the radiator?

6. If an Exos 2.0 can dissipate 750 watts of heat, does that mean it would behoove me to eventually migrate to an Exos 2.5 with 1000 watt capability to drop Monolith's temps even lower?

7. Should I add Northbridge and video card water cooling? Adding more waterblocks to the current loop will only raise CPU temps...

I'm sure there are more concerns, but for now, the system's working pretty well. It doesn't look too shabby, either. Here it is all buttoned up, sitting on the rack with its CI Design SCSI hard drive tower, keeping my 1948 Tucker company. Note the 41 degree Northbridge temperature, and the Datum/Symmetricom programmable time system master clock for the entire home network:

Now I have 4 other identical workstations scattered about the house to modify accordingly. The fun never ends!