introducing Anduril

Anduril
is a Remington Model 600 Mohawk, in .308 Winchester.


It wears a black-and-white laminate stock from an outfit in Los Angeles, an aluminum trigger guard from the former Numrich, a Burris ScoutScope base, and Burris two-and-three-quarter X ScoutScope. The mount looks a tad high for a gen-yoo-wine Scout Scope.

We're still looking for three Millett ball-bearing type sling swivel sockets, and then we'll fit the sling.

Maybe this week, I can find out how this thing shoots . . .

Overnight outing

We sneaked away last night to a campground I've been meaning to stay at since I found it last October, while looking for a place to shoot with a bud from Colo Spgs.

It's in Pike National Forest, West of Woodland Park, North of US 24, on the way to Tarryall Reservoir. Try 13SDP 68628 18183.

Happy Meadows Campground consists of about 10 campsites nestled in a sort of hogsback, right along the Middle Fork of the South Platte River. Most campers come there to fish, and half of the sites are right on the banks of the Platte. Slip through some tall grass and step into the water.

Here's Middlechild and Firstborn on the banks:



At least two of the campers there had hummingbird feeders out, right on the picnic tables, and hummingbirds were veering in and out, availing themselves of the feast.

I did not realize how fearless hummingbirds are. I almost had to pick one out of my eye at breakfast this morning. Nor did I realize how loud they are; they woke us up this morning with a chatter like that of crickets.

What does it take?
Go read Publicola's post on what constitutes the last straw. What would yours be?

Fuz's books:
Just finished for the third time:


Getting Firstborn excited about this one, which I will begin to read to her this summer:


Just added this to my Amazon wish list (sorry, this feature will not be shared with blog readers):

Rumor mill
. . . has it that USAF, envious of the Marines' waycool camouflage pattern, is pursuing its own unique camouflage uniform. The pattern was described as the Vietnam-era tiger stripe, weaving the "urban" colors blue, gray, and tan, mimicking the concrete, dirt, and buildings of airbases.

Sounds cool, but, uh, guys? Can you angle the chest pockets on the jacket, like on the MARPATs? And attach the cuffs inside out like theirs too---the cuff buttons hang up on camouflage netting.

And for Pete's sake, let's convert to a pin-on subdued enlisted chevron---just one, on the flap of the jacket covering the placket buttons, at the level of the chest pocket flaps. Or provide a flap to carry the subdued cloth chevron from the GoreTex parka, like on the CADPATs. Officers would continue to wear rank insignia as on the current uniform.

Speaking of the jacket front button flap, since we all carry pens tucked in there anyway, why not just widen it a bit and put a pen pocket inside there?

One last thing: leave oversize pen slots or big buttonholes in the pocket flaps for the big bellows pockets on the trouser legs. When you put an LMR in the pocket, you need a handy way for the antenna to stick out. Better yet, put a sturdy belt loop in the pocket, attached to the leg sideways, to clip the LMR on to. Otherwise, the LMR flops around in the pocket.

Another last thing: attach the seat pockets on the outside of the trousers. Ask why, if you must.

Yet one more last thing: follow the Marines and convert to a single, quality, brown suede safety-toed boot. Single, as in, the same boot for temperate or desert climates.

Greatest hits
This blog continues to get hits from Erosblog's mention of a post that discussed the romantic possibilities of a weekend away from the kids.
Second, searches for St. Pauli Girl costumes. Close third for the same post, but searching for girls on trampolines.
Note, these are the most frequently recurring search terms, not the biggest-hitting referrals. We can claim only two Instalanches, one kicked my way by James Rummel after he read my comments at Scott Chaffin's, and the other shamelessly self-promoted.

Don't forget your harpoon
So says a tornado safety sign at Fort Leonard Wood's TDY quarters:

Post Siren will sound continuously when danger is imminent! Siren is long whaling sound.

Idea 272, or Visualize Seething Rage

Idea 272, or Visualize Seething Rage Since driving a few tollroads during this summer trip, I am reminded of the costs of collecting tolls. The Federal income tax, in comparison, seems very cheap to collect, because the Feds themselves don't collect it, they make employers collect it for them. The Feds don't want to do it themselves and they're worried that private collection agencies would be heavyhanded. Employers are stuck with the job. Taxpayers aren't excited about someone else collecting from them either. They like the Christmas-y feeling of getting their overpayment rebated to them, which can only happen with a system that withholds during the year. They won't be sold on the notion of making out the check for the whole tax year's amount unless they see the real opportunity cost of payroll withholding---they need to see a little Christmas every paycheck. And they won't get agitated about high tax levels unless they not merely understand the opportunity cost, but feel it like the proverbial boot in the face. In short, popular support for a drastic reduction (do not use the term "reform") in Federal income taxes will not materialize unless we can convert at least some employer withholding into employee investment. Let's transpose the little-pain-every-paycheck with the Santy-Claus-in-April, into a little Christmas every paycheck and the big pain in April. We can show the opportunity cost, in real dollars and cents, using commercial, off-the-shelf systems available now, and we can make it politically palatable to practically all of the stakeholders by aiming it at lower-income brackets first. Because women are more prevalent in the lower-income brackets, or so I am told, the remainder of this post refers to the taxpayer in the feminine gender. End employer withholding, by replacing it with employer withholding, er, with a twist. Instead of the Federal income tax withheld, the exact same amount is directed to an employer-administered savings account, much like a 401(k). Surely many good vehicles are available to receive these monies, with the understanding that they will be cashed out on a known date; the problem will be choosing vehicles where the monies will be out of the reach of tampering and won't crash during the tax year. The employee owns the dividends and income this money generates, tax-free now and forever, as it waits for April. The employee also gets periodic spreadsheets showing the dividends and income that the money makes, and the taxes she paid in prior tax years. At income tax return time, the employee gets one check, which she must write from that account, payable to Uncle Sugar for whatever amount the 1040 says. It's like a Christmas Club, but the gift is for Uncle Sugar. This is important: the check must be written in longhand. Mechanically printed checks and electronic transfers are prohibited. I want to see the salty stains of sweat and tears on that paper check from the effort of writing out the date, then Pay to the Order Of, the amount in digits, the amount in words, watching those dollars going away, away. Not because I'm a brutal prick, but because this program must brew seething rage to be successful at its long-term goal. If she owes less tax than she saved, she keeps the difference. Roll it into a Roth or waste it. If she didn't have enough withheld, she has dividends and interest to soften the blow. Maybe she owes more than that. Pay closer attention next tax year, which is already in progress. And remember: "seething rage." Who'd you write that check out to? To make the proposal easier to slide past a reluctant Congress, the program has to be narrowly aimed at a small group to start. Let's say that only taxpayers whose total tax (line 40) was less than three thousand dollars for each of the last three tax years can escape employer withholding and join the Anti-Christmas Club. It's for the Children! The real "fat cats," so to speak, have already escaped withholding the hard way: they're making quarterly payments to the IRS so this program doesn't benefit them. By Democrat Party logic, proponents of this withholding-escape plan can claim it would help single mothers and their kids because it wouldn't benefit "the rich." Gradually ratchet this threshold figure upward, by indexing it against the Federal minimum wage and first-class postage. Every time the bastards increase either one, multiply the increase by one hundred and add that increase to the threshold (minimum wage increases by a buck, the threshold goes up by one hundred bucks). OK, seriously, I'd rather index the threshold against the local cost of living or median income. Rising tide lifting all boats, and all that. Sweeten the deal for the employers, since we're still saddling them with compliance costs. I'm not sure how to do this, do please visit the comment box below if you have a suggestion. Maybe, every employee enrolled in the Anti-Christmas Club is counted as a member of the 401(k) for the purpose of admitting "highly compensated employees." Most companies seem to struggle for the low-end participants so they can include more high-end ones. Throw them a bone. April is the cruelest month As an added benefit, this proposal gives many more taxpayers the perverse incentive to wait until the very last minute to file their returns, further congesting the IRS and Postal Service. Since the money never really leaves her until she writes that painful check (visualize seething rage), it doesn't matter whether she owes or not---she'll sit on the bucks and let them earn until the last possible moment. "I've got the owner of Motorola aboard this bus!" Many stocks take a price dip in April because enough of their holders have to sell something to cover their tax liability. Wouldn't it be cool if single moms, with their 1040's made out to the cent, go cruising for stock bargains at about that time? Editor's note: I choose not to number this idea "666"---an Anti-Christmas Club plan, anti-Christ, number of the Beast, six six six, get it? It just wouldn't have worked.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been at least ten weeks since my last Carnival.
I have a post in this week's Carnival of the Vanities, hosted at Single Southern Guy.

Idea number 43, or Thank you for flying Redneck Express
Indulge me in a daydream.

Commercial airline travel was never that pleasant when I did it often. Flying with wife, three children, and their assorted stuff makes it far less so. Now that airport security has been improved from an expensive sham (rent-a-cops) into an extremely expensive sham (Federal law enforcement officers); airline passengers are now accorded the same customer courtesies as felony suspects, and complaining about it only aggravates the treatment; the metal detectors have been cranked up so high the staples left behind from my splenectomy routinely trigger them, and now they kinda tingle; and my United miles are exhausted and my Red Carpet Club membership has expired---we simply won't fly the family on airlines any more.

So when the time came for us to make our trek back East, we packed ourselves like the Beverly Hillbillies into our van and drove.

When night fell, we ramped off the Interstate, looked for a vacant room and took it. In the morning,we took continental breakfast (if offered) then refueled and repeated.

Kids are exhausted and fighting one another, and have listened to the same Hank the Cowdog audio book for the fifth time. Barbaloot can get 3 good hours behind the wheel at one stretch, I can get about 5. AM radio coverage in flyover country is remarkably sparse. Police radar coverage, however, is quite thorough. Gasoline was affordable but that's not a sure bet either. If a petroleum-eating strain of monkeypox rears its viral, er, head, we're screwed.

I want better choice as a transportation consumer. I am not alone, I cannot be. There's a market segment in the void between long-haul Winnebago-istas and 30-day-in-advance Priceline airfare, going utterly unserved. We'll pay more for the speed and convenience but not to the point we'll pop for commercial airfare and/or the humiliations and fine print that come with it. We'd like the opportunity cost to fall somewhere in the middle too, between the twelve hours parking lot to parking lot for flying, to the n days of a cross-country drive.

Now why can't some smart-ass MBA:

• commission a tilt-rotor airship, capable of ferrying about 30 passenger vans at an airspeed of 180 kph,
  
• schedule service from various Interstate truck-stop outposts, such as Limon, Colorado, to others, such as Warrenton, Virginia. A mixture of express and multiple-stop routes would be fine.
  
• price it somewhere between the net costs of driving, feeding, and lodging a family of five for four days on the one hand, and five hub-to-spoke airfares and the rental car on the other. Charge by weight: we'll bring the sedan instead, or pack lighter.
  

The business case for FedEx was probably more complex than this.

It is not really my idea. A German firm plans to fly huge airships for freight, in those areas poorly served by rail, or for those cargoes that don't fit on rail or truck. Figure, a service like this would be faster than rail (well, duh) and truck. Rail hasn't been courting ex-air travelers with lower fares either.

Kilo for kilo, most of the airship business would be freight, but some space would still be available for passenger cars and their passengers, just to maximize revenue for each flight.

Perpetual whiners over the dearth of mass transit can rejoice that a new form of it is available; the car is optional and the service would take Segways, bicycles and even llamas. Tell all your perpetual mass-transit whiner friends to buy stock in the company, or shut the hell up.

This service would not operate from existing airports, which are Nationalized and wrapped in counter-terror anality. Instead, airship service would have to be staged from the towns that today are little more than truck stops. Airship terminals as proposed here would look like big ferry queues with truck scales, a convenience store, a liquor store, and no need for TSA screeners. The large cities and the commercial airlines don't want this kind of traffic near them anyway.

So the elevator story goes like this:

Log in to get a fare quote, and either confirm a space or get on standby. Then pull up, weigh in, pay up, drive aboard. The guys in the blue coveralls will chain your car to the deck. We don't give a fiddler's damn if you brought your pocket knife aboard. You didn't? Here, have one of mine.

Take a nap in your own car. Reheat Firstborn's hot cocoa in the microwave upstairs. Barbaloot can get out her knitting basket, complete with TSA-verboten lethal crochet hooks. Didja know cell phones work just fine at 10,000 feet? WiFi is an extra five bucks.

Triple-A highly recommends the view of the Missouri River from the passenger lounge.

The restrooms are forward of the lounge. There's no place to take a leak over the side, don't even try it.

Set a foot on the flight deck or mess with the engines, and you'll be croaked by Lester over there with the twelve-gauge. Ask him if he gives a damn about your pocket knife. To him, "air marshall" is some kind of sneaker.

Leave your luggage in the car. If it gets lost, it's your own damn fault.

Enjoy your flight, you and your car will be in Ashland, Kentucky, in twelve hours. Thanks for choosing RedEx.

Hell, I'd even blow a day waiting for a standby slot or an alternate route, just to get us within a four-hour drive of our destination and save us two days of driving. Ashland's canceled by a storm? OK, uh, there's space on Beckley, West Virginia, loading in two hours. Or you could dash down to Pueblo and catch the six-forty-five to Charlottesville. Great. We'll take the Beckley.

If you were in my shoes, what would you pay for this service? If you were on the chamber of commerce for a town with a rail head and fair-to-middlin' highway access, what would you do to entice an airship terminal to move in?

If you're the transportation minister in a country emerging from decades of central planning and you need to extend infrastructure to your rural markets right now, would you plow (more) government money into an international airport, or offer tax and regulatory incentives for freight airships?

If you manufacture aircraft, and you were not awarded the contract for the latest fighter, your military helicopter is under a cloud, and jumbo jet orders are down, would you bid on a STOL heavy-lift airship?

I rest my case, and return you to your normally scheduled blogging.

I'll give you two Fr Buerhle's for an Alphonse Gampp
My wife's aunt passed awayvery suddenly last December. She was a spinster, who lived with my inlaws throughout my wife's life. Since we could not break away then for the funeral, Barbaloot insisted that we trek back East for vacation, to help round up the aunt's possessions.

The aunt was a packrat. Her room is not being organized, it is being excavated. One box Barbaloot emptied last night consisted entirely of mass cards, probably one for every funeral the aunt had ever attended during her adult life. We sorted through them only to save those of relatives, including members of Catholic religious orders: at least two Jesuit priests and two nuns.

One card dated to 1934, printed in German. We're talking collectibles here.

Mother-in-law burst out laughing when I compared them to baseball cards.

I'd turn out the lights but due to a javascript error I can't publish the link to hit the switch
Everyone on my blogroll is bailing out of Blog[star]Spot. I may be the last guy left. Eeeesh.

Not false, just misleading
It's the kind of thing that sneaks up on me, slowly emerging in my consciousness.

The white-on-blue road signs posted along interstate highways, indicating which services are available at the next exit, use a fork and a knife resting on a plate to show that food is ahead.

Very rarely is that food served on a plate; more rarely still is it eaten with a fork and knife.

It's like how synthetic flavors have asserted themselves on our tastebuds---there's an artificial blueberry flavor, for example, that anyone can identify as "blueberry" even though real blueberries, with which the taster is perfectly familiar, are a completely different taste, also known as "blueberry." Perhaps a "blueberry one" and "blueberry two" or "blueberry (synthetic) and "blueberry (actual)."

Things I learned on the television the other day
Regis Philbin is the Green Wiggle.

Life sciences lesson
Firstborn is becoming familiar with the plants and animals of the Eastern US. I've shown her plantain, burdock, tulip poplar, and sumac. She already recognizes poison ivy, creeping charlie, prickly lettuce, and lamb's quarters.

We are also visiting land that has enough wet spots that she hears peepers at night, and we can see lightning bugs. She saw one hit the windshield a few nights back.

Update on the notebook
The Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform now bears 3 OS's, namely Lycoris, Win98, and Win2k.
Interestingly, when Lycoris is running, any USB device that I jack in causes the CD-ROM to rename to the manufacturer of whatever USB I plug in. The Samsung CD-ROM player becomes a Fujitsu when the digital camera is inserted, or an IOMega when the CD-RW is inserted.
And it stays that way until KDE is restarted.

Annoying.

Happy blogiversary to me
Sorry for the light posting of late. I fear that I've been dropped from some blogrolls, and that stings, but that is the nature of the beast. If I'm not producing enough to keep the hits coming, I am just taking up space.

I am also not willing to move from Blogger, despite several entreaties to do so. It's not an option, for one technical reason: I don't know the tech and haven't the time to learn it. As I travel (as now) Blogger is accessible to me practically anywhere, whether I am traveling with the Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform or working from a morale desktop in a God-forsaken downrange location. I don't think other blogging platforms allow this. So I stay at Blogger for the time being, or I take WUTT dark.
Tomorrow will be the first blogiversary of Weck Up To Thees!
Thanks for the hits, the links, that strange cameraderie. And keep coming to visit, even if it isn't as often as it used to be.

we're still just ahead of the replacement level of 2.1 live redneck births per breeding pair
In the contest of Wal-Mart versus Target, we do drop more dollars at Target than at Wal-Mart. They are within a few hundred meters of each other, neither is harder to get to than the other, both are right on our way to I-25.

But please allow your humble narrator to point out that Target's sporting goods section has Pilates accessories.
Wal-Mart's sporting goods sections stock Mini-14's. Target may be hipper, trendier, neater, and all that, but they can also be too "city mouse" for me---they can give me the same cloying sensation that accompanies an Old Navy commercial.

The Wal-Marts that feature "dingy aisles loaded with cast-offs and marked down boxes of cereal" (say, Dell Range Boulevard in Cheyenne, Wyoming), usually redeem themselves by including an aisle of reloading equipment, right down to blister-packed replacement decapping pins for RCBS dies.

Alas, Castle Rock's 24/7 Wal-Mart supercenter has no dingy aisles (Firstborn likes to coo over the live lobster tank). Instead of a reloading section, it has an expanded golf aisle. As best I can determine, the customers still have all of their teeth, normal or better-than-average body fat indexes (visualize trophy wives driving Escalades and Hummers), and no domestic violence convictions (one terrible incident in the parking lot, however). In short, a redneck level waaaay below the national average.

The clerk in Sporting Goods there today replied instantly, "no reloading", so quickly in fact that

• it was clear he knew what "reloading" was
  
• he knew whether any Wal-Mart anywhere would stock reloading merchandise
  
• this Wal-Mart, serving the Douglas County demographic, would rather stock velvet Elvis paintings, or Nine Inch Nails CDs, than reloading merchandise, and
  
• I should have known better than to ask.
  

So no RCBS decapping pins for Fuz today, grumble grumble.

When it came time to load up Linux for the new Clandestine Media Access Platform, to what reseller was Fuz referred by Lycoris? Wal-Mart.

I know that some fellow bloggers refuse to give Wal-Mart business because they import heavily from the People's Republic of China. Point well taken. Just remember that they sell Linux-equipped PCs too. Give them some credit---though they may be selling products of slave labor, they are also, in a sense, selling handcuff keys.

And the pissants who militate against the esthetics of Wal-Marts (excepting blogrolled comixho, of course) are often the same busybodies who form homeowners' associations, and whine over the decline of quote small private downtown shops unquote while kvetching over a recycled paper cup of something syrupy at Starbuck's. If they give a rat's ass about workers' rights, it will not be those of the Chinese who chafe in the PRC's collar.

honey-dews
Update on the Clandestine Media Access Platform: Lycoris runs the CD-ROM and the floppy just fine. The CD's must be ISO-9660 formatted, though, it reads no CD-R's left open by DirectCD, or burnt with a UDF reader on them. Unless there's a downloadable Linux widget for that somewhere . . .

Boy child can load and run his Putt-Putt games on the Mac clone without supervision, including smudged fingerprints on the CDs, and dropping the CD to the concrete floor when he switches from Putt-Putt to Pajama Sam. He has destroyed two games in the last two weeks. On the up-side, he can click through Save the Zoo in about 15 minutes.

Oh by the way, S.22 doesn't do a damn thing about
. . . identity theft other than to limit who can have or sell Social Security numbers, and specify harsher penalties. No reform of tying this number o' th' Beast to one's credit in the first place, which makes it so potent a weapon against its assignee (I hesitate to use the term "owner" or "bearer"). No pilot program to compel the military to return to a DoD-issued service number for all routine admin actions.