Car-Free Month Post-Mortem

[in the CD player: Curve, Doppelganger]

Sorry, folks -- I should know better than to promise that I'll do something involving discretionary time...

So here's the (anxiously awaited!) postmortem of the Car-Free Month (CFM).

Let's start with the good stuff.

Of the 20 available workdays in May, the Missus and I rode to/from work 19 times. That's 95% -- and better than we'd expected! We took a vehicle to work on the 12th due to icy roads in the neighborhood. Of the five Sundays (grocery days) in May, we hauled groceries by human power four times. We drove a vehicle on the 16th because we were on a wicked-tight schedule that day and every second counted. We took a vehicle to the gun club every Saturday (twice on two days) because we were hauling match equipment that would have been impractical (impossible?) by bicycle. On those days, we twice took advantage of access to the vehicle for "side trips" to Home Depot. I took my motorcycle to a meeting on the 4th that was across town and notorious for finishing well after dark. Looking at the mileage:

Bicycle:

Work: 14 miles round trip (R/T) x 19 days x 2 bicycles = 532 miles
Groceries: 2 miles R/T x 4 weekends x 2 bicycles = 16 miles
Country Spin: 30 miles x 2 bicycles = 60 miles

Total = 608 miles

Vehicle:

Meeting: 18 miles R/T x 1 day x 1 vehicle = 18 miles
Work: 14 miles R/T x 1 day x 1 vehicle = 14 miles
Club: 40 miles R/T x 7 days x 1 vehicle = 280 miles
Side trips: 6 miles x 5 days x 1 vehicle = 30 miles
Groceries: 2 miles R/T x 1 day x 1 vehicle = 2 miles

Total = 344 miles

So we put in almost twice the mileage on the bicycles than on the vehicles. Woo-Hoo!!

Commuting to/from work, we mostly stuck to the roads, taking the Front Range Trail for the entire commute only once. When we were both on bicycles -- as opposed to me being on the TerraTrike Tour (TTT) tadpole recumbent -- we tended to return home by way of downtown. It saves almost ten minutes, a acceptable ROI for having to deal with "city traffic" for a mere four blocks. I only took the trike thru downtown once, trying to outrun the rain. The TTT is definitely not at home in that environment!

I alternated between the Cannondale and the TTT, splitting the miles pretty evenly between the two. The Missus has only her road-tired mountain bike so all her miles were put onto it. On Mondays, we always bring to work our week's breakfasts and lunches. For the CFM, we employed the BOB trailer for this task and it handled the 20 meals just fine. Other than 15 minutes spent re-aligning the rear derailleur on the Cannondale, there were no mechanical issues.

The weather was (mostly) cooperative. The morning temps are still pretty nippy in May 'round these parts. More than half the mornings were below 40 and only three were 50 or above. A handful of the afternoon rides home were done in 80+ temps. We got rained on three times: both trips to/from work on one day and an afternoon of heavy dizzle / light rain last week. This isn't bad, especially since the (every afternoon!) 15-minute thunderstorms start in June and run thru August.

Now that I have 200 or so miles on the TerraTrike Tour, I can make some (reasonably) intelligent comments about it.

TTT Cons:

It's just too low to the ground for mingling with congested traffic. I'm OK with it on lightly-vehicled side streets or roads with Lots O'Shoulder but I get the wiggins in heavy traffic. I do plan to do some week-long (+) tours on it at some point so I'll have to be double careful when I pedal thru any towns. The biggest problem I've faced is people backing their cars out of driveways. They simply cannot see me -- and so I'm continuously in condition red when I'm pedaling thru the 'burbs.

You can't "muscle" the trike like you can a bicycle and it's very unforgiving of being stuck in too high a gear. I find myself doing a lot of shifting to keep my pedal cadence "reasonable" (80 RPM, +/-). Stopping at a traffic light while three gears too high is a real experience! Fortunately, in the the worst cases of "duh...", I can just grab the wheels with my hands (wheelchair-style) and get rolling enough to downshift without grinding metal.

The Trike takes steep climbs very slowly. We have an ugly (but short) climb on the way to work and it's One Steep 'Muther. On the Trike, I'm in lowest gear in no time and grinding-out the climb, rookie-style. I'm sure this is a combination of higher weight and higher rolling resistance compared to a bicycle. Since it's hard to "muscle" the Trike up a steep climb, you really do need to keep the gears low and just crawl. After a half-dozen trips on the TTT and returning to the Cannondale, I was quickly reminded how much of a mountain goat the T2000 really is. The Cannondale's climbing speeds were 50% higher than the TTT's on the hard stuff. That said, the TTT is fine on "normal" hills and I didn't feel all that disadvantaged. I spent a good part of the month grumbling about its climbing abilities and not until we did the 30-mile "country ride" did I discover that it can handle eastern Colorado rollers just fine.

The TTT's high-speed stability leaves a bit to be desired. Above 25 MPH, the steering starts to get a little twitchy. I've found I can calm things down considerably by letting the bars free-float in my hands on these high-speed descents. This technique doesn't completely eliminate the "unpredictability" and as speeds increase upwards of 30 MPH, things get .................. interesting.

I used to own a Polaris ATV. It was a lot of fun until I started developing some confidence and mustered the courage to tackle more difficult terrain. One of the things I noticed about the problems I repeatedly found myself getting into was "picking a line". See, I grew up riding dirt bikes -- so picking a line thru a difficult stretch was just that: picking a line. One line. Once I got the ATV, I was faced with finding two lines thru whatever mess I was about to get into. And I invariably found one good line and one bad line. But the second track of tires still had to go somewhere. And usually "somewhere" was trouble.

What does an ATV have to do with this post? Well, the TTT has three lines. Granted I don't ride the TTT off-road but that doesn't mean that street surfaces are perfect. Some of those potholes are downright vicious. So when I'm on the Trike, I spend a lot of time focusing on the road surface because I gotta' get three tires thru whatever mess I'm about to tangle with. More than once I've had to make the split-second decision: which of the three tires am I gonna' run into that pothole. Kinda' distracting sometimes...

This is a minor nitpick but there's no speedometer mount. There's some sort of bracket on the left (front) that tracks with the wheel which I employed to hold the speedo pickup but it's a poor solution. I tried tie-wrapping some small-diameter PVC to the bracket but the solution didn't really take. I was forever plucking the pickup out of the track of the magnet after some major jarring caused the mount to shift. I'm sure if I really, really thought about the problem, the solution would be obvious. I haven't, so it's not. TerraTrike would do well to solve that for its customers. Maybe they have and I just haven't looked hard enough.

One of the things a bicycle rider learns once he crosses the threshold from recreational (bike path) riding to hard-core (obsessive racing) riding is that seat height is very important. I'm surprised how small the window is between my bicycle seat being too high or too low. For me that window is about 1/4" and getting it wrong results in a couple mighty angry knees. In fact, I went thru quite the gyrations to make sure my SPD-equipped mountain bike (and T2000) had the exact same seat height as my Look-equipped Litespeed. The TTT doesn't have "seat height" as a bicyclist might understand. It does, however, have an adjustment to move the cyclist back-n-forth in relation to the pedals. The difficulty of this adjustment is compounded by the fact that the back-rest angle can be changed, which ultimately changes the (effective) "seat height". So there was a lot of trial-n-error getting it right. Ultimately the adjustments are kinda' coarse but, fortunately, I found a spot that worked very nicely.

The trick was staying in that spot. See, the nylon seat is really slippery. For folks that pedal their trikes around in shorts or jeans [hack, spit], it's probably not an issue. But I ride in Spandex (B&PBUI) and sliding around on the TTT's seat was totally screwing with my "seat height". I tweaked a knee on the second ride and it was a couple days before it worked itself out. But I found a rather brilliant solution: anti-slip matting. This is the stuff you can buy to put under throw rugs to keep them from sliding around on tile/wood floors. It also shows up as "bottom liner" in the produce bins at supermarkets. I had some that I'd bought to protect the plastic surfaces of my motorcycle from my saddlebags. The stuff is "perforated" so it breathes (sorta') and it's cheap enough to replace regularly. It keeps me parked in the seat and it works great.

Lastly, there's no way to wear a backpack/Camelbak or messenger bag. This is obvious and I knew it going into this deal -- but I miss having that flexibility. It's not fatal, of course.


TTT Pros:

No review of the TerraTrike would be complete without a discussion of just how comfortable this machine really is. I'm amazed that the Missus and I pedaled a 30-mile loop and nothing -- NOTHING!! -- hurt. Usually, I'm fighting to keep my hands (or balls) from going numb or my seat bones from getting sore. I know what you're thinking: "Dude, your bicycle ergos are all wrong!" That'd be a true statement if I didn't have a huge box full of saddles, seat posts, and head sets -- all remnants of the Fruitless Search for Bicycle Comfort. Sure, some days are better than others and after 100s of combinations-and-permutations, I've gotten really, really close on the bicycles. Just not perfect. But nuthin' wears so little on the body as the TTT. Think of it as a Lay-Z-Boy with pedals. With all I've mentioned above concerning the TTT's cons, the comfort level of this trike trumps all that. Period.

And while I stated that the TTT can't be muscled, don't confuse that with it being sluggish. It's a surprisingly sprightly machine when handled properly (correct gearing, anticipating "obstacles", avoiding unnecessary weight, correct ergos, etc). While it can't come close to the acceleration potential of the Litespeed, the TTT is pretty much on par with the T2000, when the latter is ridden as it was designed. The turning radius is rarely a hindrance and can be ............... abbreviated with brake-steering. I'm sure that regular heavy doses of that could lead to the premature wear of various hard parts but I wouldn't expect a little "brake English" now-n-again to cause many problems.

Another overlooked advantage is what I'll call "foot-free stopping". At first, it's kinda' weird to pull up to a stoplight and not have to put a foot down. You just, well......................., stop. No cleats slipping on oily roads and no fighting to get re-cleated upon starting. Depending on your ride, you can probably lock-in in the garage and unlock when you return two hours later. I once test rode a Piaggio MP3 for a friend that had no motorcycle license. These scooters -- like the TTT -- have two wheels up front and one in the rear. The MP3 has a complicated (to me) front end suspension system that allows the scooter to be leaned thru a curve. However, it also has a "suspension locking" feature that locks the tilting hardware at speeds below (something like) 5 MPH, which means the rider can stop at a light w/o putting a foot down. This allows Miss DMA (Dainty Management Assistant) to wear her high heels to work and not have to get them mucky at a stoplight. I always thought it was a silly feature but riding the TTT has changed my mind. So, to Piaggio, I apologize. Well done!!

There's one more indirect advantage to the TTT: bar ends shifters. The TTT comes with them and they're The Tool For The Job. I'm pretty much a Luddite when it comes to mechanical doo-hickeys but I'd long-ago grown quite fond of the Shimano STI shifter/brake setup that came with the Litespeed. When I completed the cross-country trip in 1998, I thought it might be cool to have the T2000's (perfectly reliable) bar-ends replaced with an STI system. So I did and it was. For about a week. For the next 12 years I regretted that decision. After the first half-dozen rides on the TTT, I said, "That's it, dammit -- the T2000 gets its bar-ends back!" I dug out the old parts and cashed-in on a local bike shop's pre-season tune-up special to get them re-installed. And I couldn't be happier! (Part of me -- the Luddite part of me -- briefly considered having down-tube shifters installed but that's a bit too retro for even TCM...)


So that's pretty much the summary. I had a great time riding thru May and look forward to falling back on those good habits in the future. The Missus was uncertain about not only the CFM but the 30-miler as well. But she dug deep and completed both with grace and aplomb. She now has the confidence and the fitness base to go father and faster. Hell, there may even be a bike trip in our future!! Who knows??

So thanx for checking back. Sorry it look so long...

TCM


[Editor's note: The other day, the hardware engineering manager -- the Missus' boss and fellow cyclist -- asked me where he might find some old-style thumb shifters. Not the early RapidFire-style shifters, but older than that even. The only place I figger'ed might have them was Rivendell. (And I was right...) Which reminded me that I always thought that Rivendell's moustache handlebar was really cool and would work well on a commuter bike. So I spent the next 1/2-hour or so employing Google-fu to find pictures of the moustache bars installed on various bikes. Unfortunately, during my net wanderings, I stumbled across this and this:

O. M. G.

I'm sorry folks but that is quite possibly the most attractive bicycle TCM has ever laid eyes upon. ("Sorry, Litespeed, my dear, I'm not taking it back...") It's a Rivendell "Sam Hillborne" and I suspect it's wearing custom paint and fenders. That bike right there would make me wish I had my driver's license revoked and a 40-mile R/T commute to work!! That's one damned fine lookin' ride, sir, and I am terminally jealous...]

Too clever by half

A meme running around Facebook these days, about violence against women:

While you SCREAM at your woman, there's a guy who wants to whisper in her ear . . .

and so forth.

Two thoughts on that:

• There are surely women who provoke their men into batshit-unhinged anger, and who are not meanwhile stealing smiles from other men. There are women who piss off every man they encounter. I can name names.
  
• "There is a man wishing to make love to her" is not the kind of stuff to be telling a man who is prone to abuse in relationships. Guys who get jealous easily should not be made, err, jealous.

I am not making light of domestic violence. But if eloquent feminists want to draw attention to it and get women and men to post something on their Walls condemning domestic violence, this is not the message.

Isn't it enough to say that men who intimidate the women who are close to them deserve to be beaten nearly to death and abandoned along some Godforsaken logging rut? Hell, isn't it enough to say that anybody who abuses anybody joined to him or her in an intimate relationship needs to cut it out?

Update: on some consideration, this passage is not directed at guys to try to get them to stop abusing women. This message is directed at women. Is it encouraging women to abandon abusive relationships---"c'mon, girl, you can do better"?

Which rules violated? Rather, how many?

Shooters regularly pass opinions on negligent discharges they hear about in the media. Which of Cooper's Four Rules of firearm safety were violated in such-and-such event? This is no Monday-morning quarterbacking, it's a reminder to gun owners of their responsibilities and the risks they face.

Now that Uncle Radley has drawn widespread attention to the militarization of police, and the excessive use of dynamic entries, by the now-famous video, perhaps it's time for these entries to receive similar scrutiny against a set of rules that allow us to judge (yes, judge: to sit in judgment of, to criticize, to pass opinion on) the actions of police officers.

The acts of police must face scrutiny just as the acts of mayors, presidents, senators, or representatives. They act on our behalf. To those who complain that mere civilians cannot presume to judge the actions of SWAT officers because have not walked in their boots, I call bullshit. If we cannot evaluate the actions of those who claim to serve us, we cannot determine whether they are serving us at all, and we cannot determine whether they are breaking laws themselves. The role of servant and served would be reversed.

To judge their actions, we need a standard. It was Say Uncle or James Rummel (I can't remember) who pointed me to Sir Robert Peel's (or Mayne's) principles of policing.

So, gentle readers: which principles of police conduct were violated in the Columbia raid? For the moment let's convene on Peel's version of the principles.

Note: whether the dad was a dope-dealing scumbag is not relevant. Don't address it. The rules aren't about him.

another use for advanced airships

I didn't bother to follow the link on Instapundit this evening about "cellphones for Cuba." My imagination, though, suggested that sending piles of discarded functioning mobile phones to Cuba to encourage freedom wouldn't help the cause if Raoul kept his thumbs tightly on the mobile phone carriers. Florida is a bit too far to give good bars to those phones.

But if Hermanos al Rescate commissioned an airship with cellular equipment aboard, using tight directional antennae---gain---and kept that ship in the air for days at a time, constantly moving but keeping those beams trained on the island, the phones might work in spite of Raoul's jammers.

But I think another country needs internet bandwidth out to the rest of the world a hell of a lot worse than Cuba.

Iran. The airships could run up and down the Iraqi border, and over the Persian Gulf coasts. Sadly the beams would not reach Tehran.

Seems that we should be dropping HF radios into the country so the horror stories can get out and the dissidents can coordinate.

The Car-Free Month

It's The Cabinet Man again. Long time no post.

We gun nuts are so often accused of being mono-topic drolls, incapable of interests outside of rolling naked in piles freshly reloaded ammunition. But just like most folks, we actually enjoy other pursuits at times. For me, well, I'm a bicycle freak. I yoosta be a USCF flunky and had grand aspirations for racing the RAAM. I once competed in the Eagleman (Half-)Ironman Triathlon as the bicycle leg of a team. My greatest bragging rights, though, lie in my completion of the 4400-mile TransAm Trail that runs from Virginia to Oregon. I rode that solo -- and unsupported -- in 1998. While my ambitions are far tamer than they were a decade ago, I still enjoy throwing a leg over the top tube and grinding out the miles.

(And I'm not the only bicycling gun-nut. Tam and Xavier are two more examples...)

So the Missus and I are gonna' try this whole bicycle-to-work (-grocery store, -gun shop, -porn outlet) for a month. In May.

Why?

Fair question. It'd be easy to say that we're tree-hugging Earth First'ers that want to save the planet and be a good example to Gaia-loving bipeds everywhere. Or that we like making Arab oil shieks pissy! But that'd be 180-proof blatherskype. (Well, maybe there's some truth to that last one...)

In all honesty, we just like riding our bicycles. And we have a couple of them:









(Yes, that's a titanium Litespeed you're drooling over, blessings and praises be upon it...)

I recently picked up the TerraTrike Tour (TTT) tadpole recumbent for me:



and a BOB trailer off Craig's List for the Missus:



(I have an old Rev 1.0 BOB for myself. The Missus doesn't wanna' haul all the groceries...)

So with all that, we wanna' ride!

We plan to use this car-free month as a springboard for developing better ride-to-____ habits. Just as importantly, we're hoping the commitment will result in more pedal time and less waistline. I need to shed about three stones and the last time I decisively lost tonnage was when I was riding religiously for 10+ hours a week. (20+ hours, actually, but we gotta' start some where...)

I'll probably split my time between the TTT and my beloved Cannondale T2000, the latter being my trusty TransAm steed. The TTT is a blast to ride and the very definition of comfortable. It's an imperfect solution, though. It's so low to the ground that I get the wiggins in heavy traffic. It climbs a bit slower than my two-wheelers but the Missus likes that since I don't drop her on the hills. She'll be riding her GT mountain bike that we've fitted with road tires. We'll both be towing the BOBs on grocery day.

There will be some exceptions to "riding everywhere". We have obligations to our local gun club that can't be fulfilled by bicycle. Hauling hundreds of pounds of steel plates under human power is entirely out of the question. As is the 240-mile round trip to The Property. The Missus isn't keen on riding to the base of the Manitou Incline for our weekly summiting, so that's probably an exception as well. But everything else is fair game: work, groceries, dentist and Sportsman's Warehouse.

I'll try to keep the posts coming on our progress and failures. At least once a week. Check back early and often!

TCM

No, Mister President,

if you are shopping for a new Supreme Court justice,



Not that Napolitano, but this one.



He's already a judge, if that's important to you. Not particularly important to me, because I believe that already being a judge would disincline one from making waves among other judges. Sorry, that's what the Supreme Court is supposed to do, in a way: point out other judges' errors, even the errors of prior Supreme Court justices. Slaughter Slaughterhouse, anyone?

That's probably why Andrew here so excites as an already-Judge. He's willing to call bullsh on other judges, rather than go along and allow their errors to perpetuate.

Gun pr0n dreamy dreams

First, I always wanted one of these, more than I lusted for a SPAS 12, say.
The High Standard 10B, a bullpup shotgun. I'm borrowing this photo from a Gunbroker auction, sorry if that offends.

If I were a lunatic independently-wealthy tinkering gunsmith, I'd apply the 10B treatment to a newer semi-auto, and extend that tubular magazine right out to the muzzle. Then I'd package the treatment as a kit for the hobbyist to mount on his own. I don't know enough about modern selfloading shotguns to pick the right one. Bleg?

Meanwhile, on the AR front:

With everybody except me offering a gas-piston AR clone design, the criticisms of the gas piston versus direct gas impingement are emerging, and the most cogent I've heard is this: the direct impingement system applies force exactly along the axis of the bore, breechbolt, and bolt carrier. All are in balance.

A piston offsets that force above the bore axis, causing the bolt carrier to tilt and shave away the soft aluminum of the AR's receiver pieces. A full-auto pistonized AR will grind itself to swarf in one firefight. AKs, in comparison, have rails that guide the bolt carrier and bolt in the needed direction; the offset force harms nothing.

If I were a lunatic independently-wealthy tinkering gunsmith, I'd solve that problem by integrating a steel supporting rail in the roof of the upper receiver. It would take the place of the cocking piece, and probably still function as one. The face of the bolt carrier that takes the force of the gas piston (no longer a "key") would be shaped to ride in that rail, and would not come down out of that rail unless the rail itself were extracted from the upper. The rail would have ample room for lubrication and for the accumulation of chum for the happy soldier to clean away. The bolt carrier would then have little or no surface on it to bear against the inside of the upper receiver---the rail handles all of that. No damage to aluminum receiver.

Whether this configuration would continue to use the existing buffer spring, buffer and buffer tube assembly is still undecided. Maybe the bolt carrier can be carved up to make room for recoil springs that fit within the upper receiver, like on the para FAL?

TENUE CORRECTE EXIGEE

A Yank wearing a NASCAR T-shirt, jeans, and a ballcap should not be surprised to receive poor service in a restaurant that caters to Eurotrash.

You're gonna wait so long for your dessert that you'll have to go to the maitre d' to remind the establishment that you ordered it.

Just sayin'.

Oh, socialism, where is thy sting?

To paraphrase Dr Henry Jones, it wasn't until my oldest kid reached the age of 13 that they became interesting.

So over Easter dinner Firstborn, Mlle Sklodovska, Barbaloot and I compared the concepts of nationalism, Nazism (national socialism), and fascism.

There is no sting to equating ObamaCare (probably better called Reid/PelosiCare) with socialism. The word 'socialism' does not invoke the outrage, the indignation, that it once did when I was a boy.

Libertarians: don't bother. It won't get you traction with anyone whose help you'd welcome. You are surrounded by people who hope to start collecting wealth redistribution, via Social Security, sooner than you'll pay off your current car loan. The only outrage they will exhibit is if Sosh Scurty is depleted before they get theirs; by then it will be too late. Cries of 'socialism' today won't motivate them.

Besides, it isn't quite true. ObamaCare (SoetoroCare?) is not socialism, it's fascism.

Something the reader will have to look up. Next up, regulatory capture.

the matriarchy is oppressing me again (some (more) editing)

This in a comment at drhelen's, on a now famous post about how controlling pornography is an attempt to control men's sexuality.

It takes TWO people for a marriage to work. You will only get out whatever effort you put in.

Let me ask, "huh?" If you get out what you put in, regardless of what the other person of the two of you put in, what is the point of having the other person?

If it takes two people for a marriage to work (and assuming a he and a she in it), he will definitely not get out whatever he put in it, he will get out only what she put in. In the long run, she will not invest more than he does, nor he more than she did; but VB didn't say that. Would have been helpful if VB had.

What would it take, from the standpoint of a talented aphorist, to get these two proverbs to work together, in describing the effort to keep a marriage?

FWIW, drhelen and many of her commenters are conjecturing that the author of the article under scrutiny is a feminist harridan who froze her poor hubby out. That has a ring of truth to it, in a way that cuts very close to my own experience from 25 or so years ago.

Dr Anonymous, the article's author, seems to have taken an easy way to dismiss a serious problem, that He was addicted to Porn!, just as easy for drhelen's commenters to reply that Dr Anonymous was Frigid.

The truth is somewhere in between, I would guess, and really hinges on how well Dr Anonymous and Porn Addicted Husband communicated before she took on Frigid properties and he took on porn addict properties. It could have been averted.

Waste of ethics.

'Clause' for the day rather than 'quote' for the day. Sorry, that's the best I can muster.

What exactly would constitute a "waste of ethics"? In that ethics is self-approval in what one does not do, "waste of ethics" represents an exertion, an effort, an application of energy, to avoid doing what one's philosophy tells one not to do because the consequences (if discovered) are, um, existential. If your lapse is discovered, your reputation is forfeit. However, if you apply this effort and gain no return, is the effort wasted?

In short, can one look back on the effort one exerted to be ethical and deem it a failure or loss? Can one waste ethics?

My confusion elicits this post.

I happened upon that clause by following this chain: Bacchus to Susie Bright to a commenter at Susie Bright.

Warning: Joan Jett is involved. Don't tell Berke Breathed.

NRA Board of Directors 2010

This year I followed the recommendations of that there Snowflake guy.

With one exception. I voted for Bob Barr instead of Matt Blunt. In retrospect maybe I should have kept Gov Blunt because he led the reforms that made it lawful for me to CCW on my last trip to his State.

Oh well. I'll make up for that mild error by throwing some money to GOA.

Add Missouri

to the list of States where I have lawfully carried concealed.

So which is it?

On the one hand, it's going to be terrible, your son will have a violent alcoholic daddy, your wife will no longer recognize her ruined, spent and joyless man. Sackcloth and ashes:

There is unemployment, . . . and there is unemployment—chronic, all-consuming. The former is a necessary lubricant in any engine of economic growth. The latter is a pestilence that slowly eats away at people, families, and, if it spreads widely enough, the fabric of society. Indeed, history suggests that it is perhaps society’s most noxious ill.

On the other hand, we just didn't have enough confidence in what really works, we took our eyes off the ball, and we listened to the hucksters, disbelievers and naysayers, and we need to just buck up and smile:

When equity prices were falling in 2007 or 2008, the first time the market closed 10.0001 percent below its previous high, they were putting brightly colored banner headlines on television announcing the official onset of a bear market. But this didn't happen on the way up.

I'm confused.

Though as I read to the end of the gloomier article, the policy prescriptions therein have the ring of untruth. Gotta finish the cheerier article and come back.

how things have changed

I had to rent a car this week. In the compact lines, the only makes Alamo offered were Hyundai and Kia.

Back in the salad days of salarymanhood, they were always Buicks and Pontiacs. Earlier, they were Hertz Thunderbirds. Those days I stuck with one rental agency all the time, and usually rented mid-size then, but I still don't recall seeing Oriental imports on their lots at all in the late Nineties or early Aughts. Now they have crowded Murcan makes out the lowest rungs of the rental fleets as well as some prized places in luxury classes.

Not that I'm complaining, the compact handles competently if a little stiffly, and my favoritest-ever car was a Golf. Rental agencies surely have access to the numbers about durability, cost of ownership, and (ahem) brand loyalty. They wouldn't be renting Korean cars if it didn't make sense, and there were too many of them for it to be an experiment.

When did this happen, and where was I looking instead?

Actually I like Dan's better

Dan Hurwitz in Liberty, April 2007, p14:

What if Iraq were to model its new government not on the representative democracy of the United States, nor the parliamentary democracy of Great Britain, but rather the direct democracy of Switzerland? ... both are composed of fiercely independent, culturally diverse local communities......

The Swiss system is probably the most democratic on earth. It consists of a federal government and 26 semi-independent cantons (or states). The federal government — more properly called a confederation — provides a political umbrella guaranteeing individual rights, safeguarding property, and overseeing functions that are inherently national in scope, such as defense, public works, freedom of movement, and economic matters.

Your humble narrator, 4 years beforehand:

Don't try to build or rebuild a democratically governed Iraq. We should, instead, partition The Country Formerly Known as Iraq along those ethnic lines again. While the country is still reeling from its violent recovery from Saddam Hussein, we have the opportunity to draw some wide chalk lines on the map, to shove these people back into ethnic/religious cantons.

My submission was a lot weaker on the freedom of movement stuff and a bit more hawkish overall.

Quote from yesterday

In a free society, it is hard for 'good' people to do 'good,' but that is a small price to pay for making it hard for 'evil' people to do 'evil,' especially since one man's good is another's evil.

Milton Friedman

Layers of fact checkers

Boston Globe, in a story about the wardrobe choices of Senator Brown, R-MA:

Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in today's "g" section about Senator-elect Scott Brown's barn jacket incorrectly implies that author Naomi Wolf advised Al Gore on his clothing choices during his 2000 presidential bid. Wolf consulted on women's policy issues for the Gore campaign.

Jessica Simpson mistakenly complementing the US Secretary of the Interior:

"I was introduced to the Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, I said, 'I really like what you've done with the place.' I had no idea that she was a member of the Cabinet, not an interior decorator!"

the junkman prevails

My outfit was spring-cleaning not long ago, and a TrippLite PR40 was destined for the heap.

It's a 40-ampere DC power supply. Well, it was, but it wouldn't supply any DC recently, and it was part of a suite of electronics that had been forklift-upgraded anyway. The proponent of the forklift upgrade didn't ask for it to be turned in.

Your humble narrator chose to snag it instead of letting it go to the heap, because I need a supply for other amateur radio gear that comes along.

This supply had no output voltage at all. I opened it and took the regulated DC off of the final board. Bingo, 22VDC. The crowbar circuit on the final board was shorting the output to ground, as designed.

TrippLite does not offer schematic diagrams for its products. It offered to take this PR40 back and offer me a sweet deal on a refurbished PR40. Total with shipping (this units weighs about 30 pounds) would have been around $200.

I asked around on qrz.com and was told that, likely, there are 4 NPN power transistors in parallel that clamp raw dc down to 13.8VDC, and one of them is smoked. If I wanted to go the incremental route, first change the IC that was applying the bias to those 4 transistors. For comparable power supplies, like an Astron, there's an IC just to do that. The TrippLite does not use that part, but 3 of the 4 opamps on a quad IC instead.

The quad opamp came for about $10 shipped. That didn't do it, replacing the power transistors would come next. I parked this project in the man cave.

The project came back around on the lost-cause rotation, so I sought out a good price on 2N3771 in TO3 cans on eBay. Somebody took my Make An Offer offer, 4 of them plus shipping for under $10.

I put them in tonight. With their outputs still away from the final board, dammit the output voltage was still 22V.

I touched up the joints on the opamp pins and tried again. Still nope. As I started to pack the tools away, it occurred to me that the IC on the final board might not be able to bias the transistors to cut the raw dc down to the desired 13.8V, if the outputs of the transistors are not coupled to the final board.

With the regulator outputs connected to the final board, the output voltage settled at 13.86 or so VDC.

I assembled the supply as far back to factory as possible, and found that I needed a new way to insulate the output post from the cabinet. The original supply used a stack of plastic washers, which disintegrated as I disassembled the supply the first time.

I improvised a pair of insulators from scrap lexan, one inside and one outside the cabinet, with a dab of silicone caulk to keep the red post centered in its hole through the cabinet.

I'll go back inside in a few days and put a rubber O-ring around the red post to better center it in the hole so it doesn't short out.

So now we have a 40A regulated DC supply for about $20. And we also can hook on to the raw DC in this supply for DC of higher voltage than the pickup truck would provide, the next time there's some anodizing to do.

Strip the Supremes of 'their' clerks

Lawprof goodness:

The simplest solution would be to strip the Justices of all their clerks. We think such a step is unnecessarily radical. Instead, we propose that Congress reassign the clerks (perhaps in reduced numbers) to the staff of the Court’s Librarian. The Librarian would choose and supervise the clerks, who would not be permitted to draft legal opinions. . . our intent is not to punish the Court or its members, but to encourage the Court to operate more like a judicial body and less like an academic faculty cum super-legislature.

Guest bloggers at VC.

There's a parallel here with Members of Congress voting on laws they haven't read: judges deciding cases on the bases of research they haven't read, and expressing their decisions through rulings they didn't even write.

We often get our cause and effect reversed

Gallup today:

PRINCETON, NJ -- In the wake of Republican Scott Brown's victory in Tuesday's U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts, the majority of Americans (55%) favor Congress' putting the brakes on its current healthcare reform efforts

No, I think Gallup has it backwards, even exactly backwards. Because Americans disfavor current health care legislation, a Republican running against it won the U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts.

"In the wake of" is a sloppy way to write of cause and effect anyway. It implies sudden displacement rather than the steadily accumulating boilover that actually took place.

Quote for the day

Courtesy Radley Balko:

If only the media had as much contempt for lying, thieving, corrupt politicians as they do for sports stars who use steroids.

Some things are ageless

A reader at Instapundit notes:

I can’t think of any other transportation device, and very few machines of any kind, that can still function as a profit making business tool nearly 80 years after they were designed.

Emphasis mine. John Moses Browning's M1911 is still out there, profitably if you will. But it wasn't designed by committee.

The humble can opener really needs updating to the XXI Century.

More relevant than ever

Miles O'Brien:

. . . maybe we should just get it over with and fly like the fat, old French guys I see strolling around this little cute Caribbean town: in Speedos and plastic sandals.

What with Captain Underpants and a quote for today, I recall a post from the very earliest days of WUTT!

Those who would trade liberty for frequent traveler miles . . .

My prognostication failed in one respect: I figured travelers would be confined to their seats for the last 30 minutes of the flight, rather than 60.

The background check fee of $75 sounds a little outdated too.

Repeal the 17th

How many embarrassed Montanans would call their State legislature today to demand Max Baucus's resignation?

How many folks in Nebraska would like to recall Ben Nelson?

Well, they can't.

Just a thought.

homemade agitation videos against Obamacare

I'm contemplating borrowing the digital camcorder from work, and finding a few lab coats and doc-smocks, and hacking together a few low budget youtube commercials against Obamacare.

The pwogwessives did it to undermine GWB against Kerry, didn't they?

C'mon kids, get out your Flip camcorders and get crackin'!

there is life after the US Senate

Kimball via Instapundit:

"Nelson is a pathetic pawn in this game. He’s history and I hope he has plans for a new day job. He’ll need ‘em."

Actually, his prospects are rather bright for a lobbying job in DC, or a regulatory or Executive job in, er, . . . DC. He has shown his future clients that he knows how to hold out for a better deal. He also knows that the Tea Parties have a tough time converging on DC a) during a snowstorm and b) the last weekend before Christmas.

What Mr Kimball should be hoping for, in addition to an end to Nelson's career in the Senate, is that Nelson doesn't file amended tax returns for the last umpty-ump years.

Our only hope of limiting that man's future influence on or service in the Federal Government now lies in catching his fingers in the till, someway, somehow. He needs to be Daschled, good and hard and right the hell now.

Home parkerizing

Bettie Jean got the home parkerizing treatment. The parts kit from Sarco had some parts in need of a refinishing. Trigger guard and housing in particular. Before:



Brownell's Zinc Phosphate was the source, though I read of some hardcore DIY people who will cook their own from concrete etch solution and steel wool. I wanted zinc because of the gray appearance. Most of the rest of Bettie Jean's furniture is done in zinc already, and in good shape.

I cooked the parts in the parkerizing bath in a Pyrex casserole from the Goodwill store, heated on a Coleman camp stove. After 15 minutes of immersion, I rinsed the part off with hot water from a 30-cup coffeemaker (damned handy item) then shot it with WD40 while it was still hot. After that, I wiped off then blew off with compressed air all the WD40 I could, and bathed the part in vegetable oil.

After:





Next up, the gas cylinder and rearmost of the op rod.

Cops and non-lethal weapons

If you object to the use of non-lethal weapons by police (as I do) then pop over to this post at Volokh.

The post examines legislative presumptions about the right to use force, lethal or nonlethal, in self defense, it isn't really about stun-guns in use by cops per se; I do want to see EV take that topic on, though, and if enough knowledgable commenters show up he might take the hint.

Kimchi

A fresh batch of kim chi is slowly fermenting in the fridge, waiting for the garden boxes to be turned over for the winter. The glass jar will move out there when the zucchini is pulled out and the winds blow cold.

Meanwhile, a teaspoonful of the brine of this kimchi is a nice addition to a martini, in lieu of the olives and their brine. That is, if you are into that sort of thing.

One full head of napa cabbage starts it off. Sterilize the gallon glass jar you found at WalMart. Two tablespoons of kosher salt are scattered among the fresh, rinsed and chopped cabbage, with its heart pared out. A gallon ziploc bag of sterile water is laid on top of the cabbage after its outside has been sterilized, and sterile water added around that bag so all the cabbage is submerged.

Two days later, lift out the ziploc bag, and set it aside on a clean surface. Drain the cabbage through a strainer, saving much of the brine, letting the last cup or so of brine fall back into the jar.

Then add finely minced red Fresno peppers, garlic, ginger root, and (for me) shaved carrot. Bring the cabbage back in, and mix, then cover again with the bag. Add only enough brine back to cover all the vegetables again. Refrigerate again.

Let her rip.

inverted V dipole

I'm hacking one, from CPVC, aluminum electric fence line, and .080-inch string trimmer line. Strung from two trees on the ranchito, in a roughly North-South orientation.
The angle of the vee is about 135 degrees.

It's not as high as I'd like, only about 3 feet above the ridgeline of the house, but that makes it easier to reach until it's tuned and I've wound a balun for the feedline.

My MFJ207 says it shows 3-plus-to-1 VSWR at 14.285 MHz, and bottoms out at 1.1:1 or so at 15.75 MHz. The balun goes on next, and a longer permanent feedline, and some more hardware so the CPVC feedpoint comes off without untying trimmer line. Then get that pup about 10 feet higher up, which involves ladder work on the trees.

I'll tune this better to 20-meters by reducing the angle (the guy points for the poles stay where they are, while the feedpoint rises) then later by cutting length off the two poles.

Let's see how this stands up against Wyoming's wind. Twas a bit breezy today and feedpoint was relatively stable.

Gets me to wondering

Dave Hardy notes that this week will be interesting for Supreme Court handling of cases that bear on the RKBA.

Thursday, the Ninth Circuit rehears Nordyke en banc. The following Tuesday, the Supremes vote on whether they'll grant cert to the Chicago cases.

Is not the Nordyke rehearing public, therefore covered by the media? I wonder whether the Supremes will, discreetly, read transcripts of the Nordyke hearing, and would Nordyke, in turn, influence any Justices to hear or not hear the Chicago cases? Nordyke, after all, contains in dicta an argument that the Second is incorporated upon the States.

Have we been in similar circumstances before, where a Circuit is hearing (or rehearing) a case that bears very directly on another case for which the Supreme Court is weighing cert?

"Interesting times" indeed. Civil rights era? Abolition of slavery? Hell, even abortion?

Rather concise

David Bernstein, at the ever-relevant VC:

The Supreme Court, institutionally, does not like to be exposed on controversial issues without any support from the political branches. The most ideological Justices (e.g., Thomas) may not care, but the swing voters do.

That kinda cinches it.

Update: Ilya Somin weighs in.

The most ideologically committed justices (e.g. - Thomas) might be willing to take the risk. But the moderates won't.

Then what's the purpose again of lifetime appointment and all the other bennies that come with the Supreme Court appointment?

Dude, where's my independent judiciary?

Tongue in cheek

SteveF, tongue firmly in cheek at DailyPundit:

As any manager or politician can tell you, you’re not important unless you tell other people what to do. Scientists, engineers, mechanics, and other people who work with their hands are all interchangeable.

God, it feels that way.

As a mere sprout reading my Dad's Popular Mechanics, I recall the fullpage ad, black and white, grainy and gritty, of clenched hands dramatically lit on perfect black background: "the future belongs to those who are willing to get their hands dirty."

I described this ad, and its sentiment, to a salaryman manager type in my salaryman days. He smirked at me as if I had been wearing a clip-on tie. I never liked that guy anyway.

Instead of telling my sons that they should know how to change oil, sharpen a knife, keep a backhoe from falling into the hole dug with it, or turn an animal he shot into a stack of meat wrapped for the freezer, should I tell them they must master telling other men to do these things for them?

Had to cut somewhere

Unread newsmagazines have been piling up in Chez Fûz since before this weblog was even born. I used to board a plane for somewhere almost weekly, thus having an uninterrupted block of 3+ hours twice a week to plow through my favorites. Those days are over.

Also, with the intertubes commonly available in the lodgings of choice these days, there's more incentive to read what's interesting online.

The weblog didn't help either: I have a hell of a lot more to say, on the basis of what I read, and far more of a means to say it, compared to October of 2001.

The sainted Spousal Unit has noticed and reminds me frequently. She is limiting where she allows the unread magazines to pile up, and threatens to pitch them. Sorry, that's not acceptable. I keep all of them, they are boxed in my basement.

But I had to cut somewhere. Reason, American Rifleman, American Spectator, Liberty, and Wired (links on the right). The scrip to Liberty lapsed about two years ago, and I miss it.

Reason gets the cover-to-cover treatment and always satisfies. American Rifleman gets a quick browse (who else is making a 1911 clone, or an AR clone, this month?) then into the packing box.

In AmSpec, I'll skip an article if not captivated two or three paragraphs in, and I haven't read Ben Stein bitching about his spoiled son for at least three years. Still I won't give it up.

Wired began arriving at my home very shortly after Condé Nast picked it up. They excited, they stimulated. They had the quirky sense of humor, they had weird typography and novel graphics. But they seem to have gotten completely into the tank for The Won, settling into the warm KoolAid quickly but painstakingly without splashing (ooooo, what will he do without a Blackberry?). It should have been obvious from how they front-cover adored Ahhnold the Governator. Praising some Microsoft executive as a visionary for suggesting that Office will become a subscription-basis application suite? I'll be visionary for letting my subscription to Wired lapse.

Besides, Wired is the absolute worst for packaging and advertising. My first duty upon handling a magazine is removing the blow-ins, glue-ins, and bind-ins, and Wired took the longest.

It's not the money, y'all. I'll probably replace Wired with a renewed scrip to Liberty, if they're still in business (and order the back issues I've missed), and the monthly journal for the American Radio Relay League. It will cost me every bit as much casheesh as Wired won't be getting from me any more.

What Wired content I need I will follow as a link posted by somebody else. I read more Wired that way than on paper today anyway.

It was a hard choice. Too bad.

new player

The cheap little 8GB ChiPod disgusts. After the file names started looking like Old English runes, and the files themselves elicited "Format error!" after six or eight deletions and reloads, I've given up on it. Now it won't even boot up.

And taken up a new player. Cowon, whoever they are, offer the iAudio M5, packing a 20GB hard drive, and all the codecs that my beloved iRiver i120 used to, even Ogg.



There are yet more similarities between the M5 and the i120, but two very nice differences: it is about 2/3 the weight of the i120, and about a sixth the price, unadjusted for inflation.

There's a stack of them for $57 each in the BX at Andersen AFB. I'll wager this ride is discontinued. I would very much like to find the remote and the dock for it, but don't want to spend as much for them as I did for the player itself.

another fine vendor

All of Bill Quick's SHTF ruminations remind me of Honeyville Grain. Into the blogroll with them!

If I had a Mormon bishop's store nearer to me, I'd be shopping there to stock up on certain items before H1N1 hits. But I don't, and Honeyville fills the void.

Honeyville packs some very good staple foods in well-sized packages. When the shipping is considered, the prices are good, I think. We've ordered nothing larger than 5# cans, but we may be about to. The Big Brown Truck is happy to drop it off.

Whole grains, TVP, freeze-dried fruits, dehydrated dairy and egg products. Go browse. I found them while searching for bulk red wheat.

in context, not a bad price

7.62mm NATO ball ammo for under a dollar a round. Reloadable.

Not a bad price considering, well, a bloody shortage. Ctrl-F down the page for "Igman."

I'd a liked to die

Have a looky.

a new Iwanna

Something else to add to the list of things I lust for.

A Crankandstein grain mill. Just the guts, I'll build the rest. It can be chucked into an electric drill. But I'd really want a flywheel hand crank. SHTF y'know.

Where next?

The TEA Parties are delightfully morphing into an agile protest machine. Two developments in particular.

One, they are organizing to appear in response to key legislation---Obamacare in particular---on key dates.

Two, they are appearing as counterprotestors to spoil the protests of opposing groups.

This shows agility. But both of these developments are still reactive, and as the general said, we need to recover the Initiative. It's great to have the shorter OODA loop than your opponent, but we need to take the fight to him. He wins who chooses where and when to fight.

The TEA Party I've attended so far is organized consciously and deliberately with the goal of restoring Federalism, and they strive to defer any other goals, alliances, or identifications that could detract from that one.

So where next? The next likely Federal holiday that will release us proletarians from our yokes long enough to appear on the Capitol steps is, er, Labor Day? Well, I guess that could work. Veterans' Day? That's too long.

I think Obamacare still presents a fat target. If Congress truly has deferred any further work on nationalizing medical care until after the August recess, at best that means Obamacare sponsors and lobbyists will be redoubling their efforts through that recess to get a New Improved Obamacare proposal ready for the first hour of the first day Congress is back.

That leaves TEA Partiers only that long to turn their momentum into Initiative, using Federalism as the frame of reference because that's what TEA Parties do (at least the TEA Party apparatus here in Cheyenne).

Well then, what is the Federalism nexus for nationalized medical care? The straightforward Tenth Amendment argument isn't enough: "They can't be allowed to move all of us into a single-payer system because the Constitution doesn't assign them that power!!!" I can hear the crickets already, especially with an electorate that put Obama in power. Even if disapproval of Obama is at its most plangent, arguing to do nothing, or to let the Federal government do nothing, rings flat and hollow.

So perhaps this: we can agree with President Obama that the current trend in medical care costs is untenable. Sure. But we can also argue, taking the initiative and taking the streets, that everything about the current system that makes it untenable can be traced back to the government, at some level.

Take away the Obamacare argument that the free market is failing in health care. We don't have a free market in health care, and we haven't since World Ware II.

Take away the Obamacare argument that CEOs get Cadillac plans while the working blokes get laid off and have no plans. Corporate income taxes made both ends of that stick possible, by connecting medical care to employment.

And so forth.

The signs won't be easy to write, but that can be trusted to all of us dollar-a-day working blokes who have to shoulder the payment otherwise. We've done the sign-making very well so far. The TEA Party movement just needs to call in the signs and the loudspeakers, and find a place and time for the lawnchairs.

Meanwhile, we need to cover a few flanks. What other legislative or executive fronts will President Obama open up to improve his chances on medical care? Back to cap-and-trade? Another stimulus?

You are entitled to be angry

I'm the bastard who bids on all that stuff on eBay with at least 5 days to go in the auction.

Sure, I'd buy the item for $19.99 if the remaining 5 days, 19 hours and 43 minutes pass with no other bids for a $600 weather station. You would too. But some other bastard will notice, and because he has no job and no life, he'll hang out, watching and waiting, and snipe it. Or he'll steal hours and internet bandwidth from his employer to do it.

So I feel obligated to bid, just to pump the price up earlier and summon karmic justice for the sniper's employer. Call it amusement, call it sour grapes, call it pissing in the well.

Seriously, I would respect eBay a lot more if they adopted gunbroker's 15-minute rule.

Sorry, Chucklef^ck, you have it exactly backwards

"If you walk down the street in New York ... you can have the solace of knowing that if someone has a gun on them they've gone through a rigorous police background check. After this bill, you can have no such comfort," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday.

No, Senator Chuckie, you really should have said, "If you walk down the street in New York ... you can have the solace of knowing that if someone has a gun on them they are either a hardened career criminal, or a dozy celebrity who has paid off a City official."

You bastard. Not that you spend a lot of time 'walking down the street in New York' instead of riding a limo in DC. If only you had to live, work, and move about in the same helplessness you force on your own constituents.

about the kit

Bill Quick is floating the idea of amateur radio gear for post-apocalyptic San Francisco.

This is what we have in Chez Fûz, geared towards mobile QRP.



Yaesu FT817ND, a 2.5/5 W transceiver that runs every band from 160m to 70cm, except 1.25m and Weather.

A Buddistick HF antenna that I'm still figuring out.

An LDG Z100 autotuner that I'm hacking various other antennae for.

A couple sealed lead-acid batteries that will keep the 817 running for a couple of days between charges.

It's cool for me, Bill will probably want something else.

Cowboy TEA Party pics

I'd say there were 300 people in Cheyenne today in front of the Capitol.

Many of the Usual Suspects attended.



Revolutionary War Veterans' Association

HR 1207, Audit the Fed

Harley Riders



The Tyranny Response Teams are still around.

Several Gadsden flags



The was a speaker for Oathkeepers. Another speaker is a regular morning talk host here, Dave Chaffin.

In all, this TEA Party had a core message and kept hammering on it: the lack of meaningful Tenth Amendment protection. Kudos to the organizers, Cowboy TEA Party. Lisa Ray has been out in front with this effort, especially on the air.

Downside: there are some folks circulating a petition to form a Tea Party, as in political party. I think that's a mistake. The TEA Party organizers take pains to point out that the organizers of the political party are not connected to the TEA Party, and they're pissed about it.

I saw little of the mainstream media at this event. There were certainly some pros with heavy cameras, but I didn't see any credentials or brands on them. No TV coverage I could see, and this market has at least one station with an ENG vehicle up to the task. Their front webpage shows zip about the TEA Party.

Surely he considers himself an educated man

. . . but an error such as this annoys me:

"not even one black firefighter could have been promoted based on the results of the original exam"

The damnable serial past participle. Could he not have recast that sentence?

"could have been promoted on the basis of the results of": clumsy, I'll admit, with daisy-chained prepositions.

"could have been promoted on the results of": is ecoomical and leaves little doubt of the meaning.

It's vexing. Soon enough this construction will be accepted usage.

I'm goin'

Cowboy Tea Party

Reward builders rather than traders

" . . . we need to scrap shareholder value theory entirely. When it expires, so will stock-based compensation, and in due course, we will get back to rewarding builders more than traders."

" . . . executive compensation should have no component of stock-based compensation at all. Compensation should be based entirely on real-market measures such as revenues, profits, and return on book equity."

Undermining staying power: The role of unhelpful management theories

Eulogy for an old friend

We first met in August, 24 years ago. I was fresh and optimistic; it was stoic and business-like. Yet we needed each other. $202.56 was a princely sum at the time, with me being a starving student and all. But school -- real school this time -- started in a couple weeks and I needed reliability that three generations of Texas Instruments hadn't given me. As I'm wont to do in the case of an expensive decision, I hemmed-n-hawed, made a few phone calls asking for advice, and, finally, capitulated to what I knew was the right decision. On August 16th, 1985, a shiny-new Hewlett Packard 41CV Scientific Calculator came home with me.





If memory serves, most, if not all, HP calculators of that era used Reverse Polish Notation. RPN was touted as being more efficient for the entry of long, complex formulas, especially when intermediate results where necessary elsewhere in the equation. Back in my Salad Days, though, I hadn't a clue how that would be helpful. I also didn't have a clue how to do RPN. Having been brought up using algebraic calculators, it was more than a few days before the lightbulb came on. That's because what had to happen first was to develop an understanding of what a "stack" was. Upon diving into the user's manual, I learned that the 41CV had a stack that was four entries deep. Huh?? Further research was in order.

Turns out a stack was an "automatic" way to store succesive data entries. Unlike many new terms I would become familiar with, "stack" was actually rather descriptive. Think of it as a spring-loaded cafeteria plate storage unit. As plates are added to the stack, the spring "automatically" reacts to the additional weight, dropping down a bit and keeping the new plates (roughly) at the same level as the previous plates. When a plate is removed from the top, the spring, now slightly less burdened, pushes the remaining plates upward for the next person to remove. In technical terms, this is known as a LIFO structure: last-in, first-out. It's embarrassing to say, but it took a while for this concept to sink in as it related to a calculator. But it did. And when it did, understanding RPN came quickly thereafter.

And it was beautiful!

I quickly became an RPN junkie. An RPN elitist. An RPN whore. And the 41CV was my enabler. To this day, I find algebraic calculators to be clumsy and, excuse me for saying so, proletarian. But the RPN wasn't the only thing contributing to my bigotry. The 41CV had it all, it seemed. Tactile keys. 100 memory locations. A (semi-)intuitive programming language. A plug-in module that contained programs for curve fitting, root finding, and basic matrix manipulations. And it was built like a Merkava tank. Unlike the disappointing TI-55s of my past, this thing Got It Done. Again and again and again. I was in calculator heaven! Newer and shinier HPs came along with their fancy graphics and overkill 32K memory, but I wasn't tempted in the slightest. Being the Luddite that I am, I figured that if the 41CV couldn't do, it probably wasn't worth doing.

We stuck together like glue. Tucked safely in its own ALICE pack pocket, the CV was dragged from class to class and braved year-round motorcycle commuting, exposed to the gamut of Maryland weather conditions. Rarely did a day go by that world-changing calculations didn't take place. From the mundane square-root-of-two, to the multi-term Practical Operational Amplifier formula, we did it all. Complex variable manipulations, crude Runge-Kutta-based projectile trajectories, multi-joint truss stress matrices, and countless "final numerical results" for everything from simple integrals to PID controllers to mind-boggling State Space systems. For five years of undergraduate electrical engineering classes, two years of half-hearted -- and incomplete -- graduate degree studies, and nearly 20 years of paid, on-the-job work, it stayed with me, a trustworthy, reliable assistant.

But about a year ago, things started to change in the CV. Unexplained shut-downs in mid-equation. Refusal to turn on. Intermittent lock-ups. One time I extracted the CV from its case and it was hot. And I mean hot! I had used it about an hour earlier and had shut it off faithfully as I'd done thousands of times before. But it wouldn't turn on. In a panic, I pulled the battery pack and let things cool for a bit. I cleaned up the (already clean) battery contacts, reinserted the pack, and it resurrected itself. But that moment was a turning point, for it was never the same afterwards. Reliability was sketchy. Battery life dropped to nil. New batteries that had easily lasted a year or more before were now lasting but two weeks. Finally, fresh batteries weren't enough. We crunched our last numbers together sometime back in November. I'm sure it was a simple muzzle energy calculation; I wish I could remember exactly. Since then, it's been sitting in the top drawer of my desk, looking no different than any other time in its life. But it is dead. If calculators have souls, I hope the CV's has gone to a place worthy of its contributions. It certainly earned it.

I recently replaced the CV with a newer HP calculator: a 35s.



So far, it's been fine. The keypad layout is different but my fingers are learning to trace the new patterns on their own. The keys have the familiar tactile feel and it is, needless to say, RPN. I'll begrudgingly admit that I like the two-line display. I helps me remember what's in the second spot on the the stack, aka, the Y-register. The temporary memory structure is (strangely) alpha-based, not numeric-based like the CV. Additional memory is available thru indirect addressing, which I'll have to experiment with. But it lacks the reassuring heft of the 41CV and the jury's still out on the pixelated display.

I don't know yet if the 35s has a soul or not. I don't feel especially enamored with it like I did the day I first brought home the 41CV, and every day thereafter. The 35s is perfectly functional and I suppose it will serve me well. But I doubt very seriously that the challenges we face in the future will bring us together in the same way the past did with the CV41 and me. Perhaps it's not so much the thing itself as it is the shared experiences.

I miss you my old friend. RIP...

The Cabinet Man

Haaaaaiiiiil to power and to glory's way

What should come up on the shuffle of my ChiPod this morning at PT but Gentle Giant's album, The Power and The Glory?

Quite appropriate for our Hopey Changey President, I think.

A Clinton appointee is now a right-wing extremist?

Judge Gould writes in Nordyke v King, quoted here:

. . . the right to bear arms is a protection against the possibility that even our own government could degenerate into tyranny, and though this may seem unlikely, this possibility should be guarded against with individual diligence.

Careful, Your Honor, you're now on Secretary Napolitano's radar.

My BAG Day Score

I'm ashamed to admit that I've missed every Buy-A-Gun (BAG) Day since its inception. I've never been one to wait around to buy something to commemorate a particular event. But that's not true this year! (Sorta'...) Even if it was an "semi-unintentional" BAG buy -- and I had to sell a gun to get it -- I will assume still earn a BAG point. (And besides, even if I did sell a gun to get this one, somebody else enjoyed his BAG Day, too!)

I present to you a Smith and Wesson Model 18, circa 1980.





The revolver came with horribly mismatched target grips and while they were aesthetically pleasing (when viewed from only one side by someone with a short visual memory), they didn't really fit the hand very well. So I bolted on the Hogue rubber grips to match my 625 and 325 and all is good.

The back-story is that I'd been looking for a Model 63 on Gunbroker for going on a year. A few NIBs had gotten past me when I was short on funds and that ratcheted up the frustration factor. Then for a good two months, no 63s of note appeared for sale. An apparent drought.

Then while logging my daily read over at Tam's site, I was informed of something I'd never heard of: a Model 18 Combat Masterpiece. Really? A K-frame 22? Really? How had this gone unnoticed by me all these years? I admit that part of my lusting for a Model 63 was because of its stainless steel construction................, but a K-frame 22?

Oh, I had to have one. Off to Gunbroker.

I lost out on a nicely priced 98% Model 18 when the seller ignored my inquiries and another more daring buyer hit the "Buy Now" button. (The seller had two pictures in the ad and one was obviously not of a Model 18.) I went to the LGS and inquired about the "Classic" reissue of the Model 18 that S&W has out. $900 and indeterminate back-order duration. Unacceptable.

So back to Gunbroker. There was quite a disparity in "going price" for the listed Model 18s. Some of the rode hard and put away wet models were going for ~$450 but I just didn't like what I was seeing.* A few models were advertised as NIB or 100% -- and built before I was born -- but they were in the $1000+ range. I know that vintage Smiths are currently overpriced being sold at what the market will bear and I didn't want to contribute (too much) to that trend. One Model 18 stood out as being in 98% condition and (relatively) reasonably priced. I agonized over it for about 12 hours and did the "Buy Now" thingy.

One week later, I had it in hand. I took it to the range the same day to test it out. Unfortunately, the tornado force winds we'd been having for the better part of a week didn't give me as many warm-fuzzies about the data as I'd have liked. All things considered, though, it did well at 25 yards and at first blush, appears nearly as accurate as my Mark II 22/45, which up to this point has been the standard bearer for 22 handgun accuracy in my meager collection thereof. But until I can get out there under "normal conditions", I won't know its true accuracy.

So my old Mini-14 has a new home and I'm the happy owner of yet another Smith, one that I didn't even know about three weeks ago.

Ciao!


* Gunbroker should have a mandatory photography tutorial for its sellers. If nothing else, people, Google "macro lens" fercrissakes and learn how to use one. Lighting, too. I'm by no means an expert photographer but I can get a useful and informative gun pic out of my measly 4M-pixel Canon. I'm jealous of folks like Tam that have decent-sized gun shows locally. They can see/fondle first hand the goodies that are up for sale and not have to rely on someone else's (sub-)amateur photography skills. Why Colorado gun shows are an insult to the genre, I'll never know...

quote for the day

"I tend to get angry, dealing with deadbeats, but you know, that’s where a lot of the money is. Why I love America a whole damn lot - tons of money is just tied up with morons."

Scott Chaffin

Add Florida

to the list of States where I've CCW'd.

As close as I've ever come to batshit unhinged in public

I once had a company car. I was given a list of eligible models and a max price, and told to pick one and get the office manager to order it for me. Had to be domestic, had to be 4-door with good interior trim and a sound system. It would be used to take my customers out for entertainment.

It was delivered about two weeks later, and it came with a fuel card. I didn't pay for the gas to put in it either.

When I was briefed on how it was to be used, and how I was to report its value on my income tax returns, it was clear that corporate tax laws made the whole racket possible. I took customers out to lunch in it perhaps twice.

That racket came rushing back to me this morning, painfully and frighteningly. I seriously was screaming at the radio in my dash, slogging along Pershing Boulevard on my way to work.

This is why: NPR ran the story of GM's car perk program.

Some mewling would-be saint mewled, "we don't get fwee caws. We don't get fwee gas. Why should they get fwee cawws and fwee gas?"

I was shocked by how forcefully and spontaneously the rage leapt from me. Drivers in the lanes beside me turned and looked.

"Bawney Fwank gets a fwee caww. He gets a fucking dwivewww. He pwobabwy even gets a secuwwity detaiww. AND SPEAKEWWW PEWWOSI DEMANDS A FUCKING GUWWWFSTWEEAM!!! FWOM MY AIWWWW FOWWWCE!!!"

Congress made this. Congress made it possible. And I am more angry about it than I would have admitted 12 hours ago.

This snip from this post at Volokh Conspiracy reminds me:

There is no need to romanticize Clinton. Government growth was constrained on his watch in part because his worst instincts were checked by a Republican Congress, and he in turn checked theirs. As a general rule, divided government leads to limited government.

President Obama appears to me not so much an evil man who smooth-talked his way into "the most powerful office in the world", rather as a convenient patsy shoved into the job by the real evildoers elated to have him at their disposal. (Yes, I mean Congress.)

Mind you, if you look at Barack Obama the law professor, Barack Obama the community organizer, or Barack Obama the Illinois legislator, I concede he looked pretty evil. But today he is merely a conduit for someone else's evil. They pull the strings. He twitches.

I don't particularly miss Bill Clinton's presidency. But I adored the bowel-voiding hysteria of 1994 when the Democrat majority in Congress vanished overnight, and I got a few good chuckles from the divided government that followed.

Given that President Obama seems unable to tie his shoes without some wisp of approval or direction from his handlers in Congress, what sort of President would he be, and over what sort of America (and American economy) would he preside, if 2010 swept his present handlers out of power?

Congress has been the problem all along. If we want to solve the problem, it's not the Presidency we should seek to influence. We need to change the way things are done in Congress.

Evidence, if you demanded it . . .

. . . that the recipient of 12 years of government schooling, plus a 4-year baccalaureate degree qualifying one for law school, plus law school itself, can still be embarrassingly illiterate:

I’m am [sic] Mr. (x)’s lawyer. This case is currently on appeal. You are not the prosecutor, the judge or a forensic expert. You have noted contacting several people who are potential witnesses in the case and who will be called as witnesses later on in an evidentiary hearing. As a lawyer you should no [sic] that you have no business talking to witnesses when you are not a party to this case. Cease immediately or I will file an ethics complaint with your state bar.... You are a memeber [sic] of the general public you have no right to be demanding that this child’s autopsy or medical records be turned over to you. Again you are neither the DA or the JUdge [sic] in this case.

The [sic]'s are not mine. Found at Volokh Conspiracy.

This is the output of someone practicing law. Would you want this attorney representing you?

Sadly, this attorney is responsible for the defense of someone who was convicted with the help of 'evidence' generated by a charlatan regularly targeted by Radley Balko, whom I admire.