I drove Linda Lou to the Orthopedist yesterday for her checkup, good news! She is now allowed to put a little weight on that foot. Even better, a weel from Monday she goes in for the outpatient surgery to remove all the hardware from inside her leg, the rod(s?), the screws, the Buick 231 V6, all of it. Then, if the bones are still a little wiggly, he will put some external rods on, otherwise, just another of those boots.
I am glad to see this progress as Linda Lou is still riding the "I'm just a poor cripple, wait on me hand and foot" routine for all it's worth. I swear, I'm staying in bed for a month once she's recovered. Maybe three months.
Other than that, not much going on here. I keep seeing stuff I think I ought to write about, only to find that everyone else already has. I'll get into it again, I swear. Until then, is it nap time?
Update: I just remembered, about a month ago I was lamenting the impending demise of Marlin Firearms Company. Well, I was looking at the Rossi catalog online, those are the Brazilian folks who made my clone of the Winchester '92. Anyhow, they are putting out what looks to be a copy of the most popular Marlin, the 336 in .30-30. That carbine competed with the Winchester Model 94 and was, in some ways, a better firearm. With it's solid top and side ejection it is easier to scope, for one thing, and the action is somewhat more resistant to getting crud in it in, say, woods hunting in tough weather. At any rate, the new Rossi lever action sort of helps with the demise of Winchester and the impending demise of Marlin. Too bad for us, though, if we ever really need to make large amounts of war materiel again. Not only do we no longer have the factories, we no longer have many people who can work in factories.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Dead Eye McGurk, Terror Of Tejas
We finally took one of my grandsons, Dean and Stephanie's oldest William, shooting. The first step was letting the boy know exactly what a gun can do, we had three melons of various sorts, a cantaloupe, something else and one of those little personal-sized watermelons. there were shot with my .45 Colt rifle and the .30-06, plus the one shot up with the .22. The .22 impressed the boy, those plain vanilla Remington high speed hollowpoints left quarter sized exit holes in the melon, plus sprayed a good bit of melon out over the grass.
The .45 Colt, shot with a "Ruger Only" load that was a Hornady XTP 250 gr Jacketed Hollowpoint that leaves the 24 inch barrel of my Model '92 clone at near 2000 feet per second blows up a melon nicely. The .30-06 was most impressive of all, though, it hit the melon and sent a spray of melon guts all over, plus some larger chunks falling from the sky well after the BOOM!
We started William, excuse me, Dead Eye, with the .22. This .22 is mine, I bought it back when I was sort of flush, actually I bought a Shilen Match grade bull barrel and a Hogue overmolded stock for a Ruger 10-.22, before I ever had the action. Then I bought a beat-up 10-.22 along with a set of Volquartson action parts, a target hammer, sear, etc. I basically turned a small game and plinking carbine into a target rifle. Then I later turned the original stock and barrel over to Dead Eye's Daddy to cut down to fit him. The ruger has a simple barrel change, the barrel is held on by a V-block and two allen bolts. Since the bull barrel is too heavy and the Hogue stock too long for the seven year old we made the switch, leaving the action modifications in, nobody has ever been hurt by shooting with a good trigger.
Even as light as the stock barrel is, the rifle is still a tad heavy for the boy so he used a rest. He fired close to fifty rounds with the .22 and then, for grins and giggles, fired a few rounds from a S&W Model 60 .38 Special, two inch, some .38 ammo in a Ruger SP101 .357 and, the piece de resistance, the .45 Colt in a Single Action Army clone. All of those, of course, with mild loads, 3.5 grains of Hodgdon's Titegroup behind a 158 grain semiwadcutter in the .38 and .357 and 5.5 grains of Titegroup and a 250 grain flat point round nose in the .45. The boy loved him that .45. He also liked the .38 but not the .357. I'm not sure if it was the bigger grip or the heavier weight. The boy is now watching my heath carefully, in hopes of inheriting my shootin' irons. He's also got a beady eye on his Dad's .30-06.
We've created a monster! As always, click on the pictures to embiggen them. I'm hoping Dean's Dad will send me some of the pictures he took so I'll have some of him with the .22.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Bacon And Beans
Start with a three pound package of Wright's Bacon Ends And Pieces. Take a sharp knife and cut the package in half, wrap and freeze one half. Spray some Pam on the bottom of a big skillet or the big pot you soaked the beans in and then dried, fry the bacon. Pour the bacon grease over the dogs' kibble, they love that. There are other ways to get bacon, including buying sliced bacon but, trust me, go to Wally World and try the Wrights, it's simply amazing how much meat, as opposed to fat, is in one of those boxes. Anyway, after frying up and draining the bacon, add two pounds of soaked beans, the bean of your choice. This works with (so far) Pinto beans, Navy beans, Lima, both small and large, Great Northern, Split Pea, Black beans, Kidney and Red Beans. I'm sure there are lots of others. Today, for no particular reason, I'm doing Great Northern Beans. Actually, there is a reason, because I can!
After frying and draining the bacon, add the beans and hot water along with an onion or two, some bay leaf and garlic, lots of garlic. The rule of thumb is add garlic until you're sure you have too much, then add more. After all, with all those vampires out there, oh sorry, those are congresscritters. Eh, same thing. Garlic and onion are especially important if one plans on visiting Washington, Dc in the summer, Harry Reid has a very sensitive nose.
I'm not persactly sure why but my Momma always added some carrot to white beans, except Lima Beans. At any rate, I always add the carrots, too. I do not want to meet my Momma in the afterlife and deserve that backhand she had, quicker'n a striking snake!
Always soak the beans longer than you think you need to and make sure they're well cooked, it will eliminate, or at least lessen, the clouds of rank gas. Oooh, speaking of beans, I finally looked up Haricot Beans on the Intertoobz. Turns out this is just some foreign word for navy Beans. I have casually wondered about that since I first read All Quiet On The Western Front, some fifty+ years ago. In the book the protagonists stole a big pot of Haricot Beans and ham and snuck it back to their squad. It was about the only funny part of that book. Anyhow, if you don't want to use bacon (and what is wrong with you?) ham works almost as well, there is just no grease for the dogs' kibble.
I have been waiting for my son in law to E-mail the pictures from last Saturday's shooting expedition, we took William shooting for the first time. The boy is seven. I had his dad saw two one inch pieces off the original stock of my little Ruger 10/.22 and we put that and the stock barrel back on it. The stock barrel does not shoot near as well as the $300.00 Shilen target barrel, imagine that. Anyhow, if I ever get those pictures I'll post a full report. William, being as small as he is, I thought sure he worldn't want to shoot the .38 and .357 small frame revolvers, nor my Colt Single Action Army clones in .45 Colt. Shows what I know. That boy just loved that Colt Clone and the little S&W Mod 60 five shooter .38. He didn't like the Ruger SP101 .357, though, the grip was a bit too big for his little hands. Naturally, I did not use any heavy kicking loads in those revolvers, there will be time for that when he's in his mid teens.
Seems it ought to be time to eat but the beans aren't done yet.
After frying and draining the bacon, add the beans and hot water along with an onion or two, some bay leaf and garlic, lots of garlic. The rule of thumb is add garlic until you're sure you have too much, then add more. After all, with all those vampires out there, oh sorry, those are congresscritters. Eh, same thing. Garlic and onion are especially important if one plans on visiting Washington, Dc in the summer, Harry Reid has a very sensitive nose.
I'm not persactly sure why but my Momma always added some carrot to white beans, except Lima Beans. At any rate, I always add the carrots, too. I do not want to meet my Momma in the afterlife and deserve that backhand she had, quicker'n a striking snake!
Always soak the beans longer than you think you need to and make sure they're well cooked, it will eliminate, or at least lessen, the clouds of rank gas. Oooh, speaking of beans, I finally looked up Haricot Beans on the Intertoobz. Turns out this is just some foreign word for navy Beans. I have casually wondered about that since I first read All Quiet On The Western Front, some fifty+ years ago. In the book the protagonists stole a big pot of Haricot Beans and ham and snuck it back to their squad. It was about the only funny part of that book. Anyhow, if you don't want to use bacon (and what is wrong with you?) ham works almost as well, there is just no grease for the dogs' kibble.
I have been waiting for my son in law to E-mail the pictures from last Saturday's shooting expedition, we took William shooting for the first time. The boy is seven. I had his dad saw two one inch pieces off the original stock of my little Ruger 10/.22 and we put that and the stock barrel back on it. The stock barrel does not shoot near as well as the $300.00 Shilen target barrel, imagine that. Anyhow, if I ever get those pictures I'll post a full report. William, being as small as he is, I thought sure he worldn't want to shoot the .38 and .357 small frame revolvers, nor my Colt Single Action Army clones in .45 Colt. Shows what I know. That boy just loved that Colt Clone and the little S&W Mod 60 five shooter .38. He didn't like the Ruger SP101 .357, though, the grip was a bit too big for his little hands. Naturally, I did not use any heavy kicking loads in those revolvers, there will be time for that when he's in his mid teens.
Seems it ought to be time to eat but the beans aren't done yet.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Bugz And Gas!
Between sitting around drooling on myself from the pills and working my fingers to the bone taking care of Linda Lou and the dog critters I have been trying to figure out what the heck the pencil neck in chief means by this new nuclear posture.
The old one was simple, use WMDs on the United States or her closest allies and risk the full fury of her armed forces, up to and including the biggest thermonuclear weapons in our inventory. And, because we have pledged not to use biowar and chemwar our military doctrine has been a bug= a gas= the Bomb.
Here is my problem with this new "posture", which looks a lot like groveling from here. Gearing up to build nukes is very expensive and hard to keep secret. I'm pretty sure if the nutcases running Iran had put the resources they've sunk into trying to make the Bomb and the delivery systems, their economy would be flush and their people happier.
Chemical and Biowar, on the other hand, are cheap. Any country with a medical research program can, instead, make bioweapons. After all, if one is set up to study germs and virus, one can make them. As a matter of fact, to study them one nearly always makes them.
Chemical weapons are even cheaper. A High School Chemical class has all the equipment needed to make enough Chlorine Gas to kill the heart of a city. For the cost of just one main battle tank a country could make up the lab to send bioweapons throughout the USA and her allies. Nor does one even need those fancy fake shaving cream cans from that Tom Clancy novel. There are several highly contagious diseases for which few of us are immunized. Plague, for instance. Round up a couple of hundred would be suicide bombers only instead of filling their BVDs with explosives and taping the wicks to their weenies, shoot them up with the bug de jour and send them to the USA, Europe, Australia, etc. No bombs, no skulking about the reservoirs, just ride the subways and buses during rush hour until too sick to get out of bed, then die. Even if they end up going to the hospital instead of dropping dead during rush hour, they've done their damage, everyone they've been close to is now spreading those same bugs.
Suppose your part of the HateAmerica club is short on Jihadis willing to kill themselves? No worry, simply get a hundred kilos or so of uncut Heroin. make the first cut some Plague or Anthrax, maybe some Smallpox and slip it in, a couple kilos at a time into the already established pipelines. America's and Europe's junkies will do the rest.
Now the reasons that folks like the Castro brothers or Qaddafi or any number of other bad guys have not done something like this already have nothing to do with their well known Christian charity but fear, raw, naked fear. The Mad Mullahs of Iran have no problem sending others to their deaths, they, however, cling to life. They all have held off simply because they all knew that a chemical is a bug is a nuke. They do not know that anymore.
A conventional response to a biowar attack is manpower intensive. The manpower might be short if, say, the 3rd Infantry Division and First Armored riddled with Plague. Yet at least some of our Missile Subs are at sea, ready to turn a foe's home into a radioactive desert. Our jughead in Chief has removed that possibility. Funny, my children do not live at the Jihadi's ultimate ground zero, his do. So does he. Idiot.
The old one was simple, use WMDs on the United States or her closest allies and risk the full fury of her armed forces, up to and including the biggest thermonuclear weapons in our inventory. And, because we have pledged not to use biowar and chemwar our military doctrine has been a bug= a gas= the Bomb.
Here is my problem with this new "posture", which looks a lot like groveling from here. Gearing up to build nukes is very expensive and hard to keep secret. I'm pretty sure if the nutcases running Iran had put the resources they've sunk into trying to make the Bomb and the delivery systems, their economy would be flush and their people happier.
Chemical and Biowar, on the other hand, are cheap. Any country with a medical research program can, instead, make bioweapons. After all, if one is set up to study germs and virus, one can make them. As a matter of fact, to study them one nearly always makes them.
Chemical weapons are even cheaper. A High School Chemical class has all the equipment needed to make enough Chlorine Gas to kill the heart of a city. For the cost of just one main battle tank a country could make up the lab to send bioweapons throughout the USA and her allies. Nor does one even need those fancy fake shaving cream cans from that Tom Clancy novel. There are several highly contagious diseases for which few of us are immunized. Plague, for instance. Round up a couple of hundred would be suicide bombers only instead of filling their BVDs with explosives and taping the wicks to their weenies, shoot them up with the bug de jour and send them to the USA, Europe, Australia, etc. No bombs, no skulking about the reservoirs, just ride the subways and buses during rush hour until too sick to get out of bed, then die. Even if they end up going to the hospital instead of dropping dead during rush hour, they've done their damage, everyone they've been close to is now spreading those same bugs.
Suppose your part of the HateAmerica club is short on Jihadis willing to kill themselves? No worry, simply get a hundred kilos or so of uncut Heroin. make the first cut some Plague or Anthrax, maybe some Smallpox and slip it in, a couple kilos at a time into the already established pipelines. America's and Europe's junkies will do the rest.
Now the reasons that folks like the Castro brothers or Qaddafi or any number of other bad guys have not done something like this already have nothing to do with their well known Christian charity but fear, raw, naked fear. The Mad Mullahs of Iran have no problem sending others to their deaths, they, however, cling to life. They all have held off simply because they all knew that a chemical is a bug is a nuke. They do not know that anymore.
A conventional response to a biowar attack is manpower intensive. The manpower might be short if, say, the 3rd Infantry Division and First Armored riddled with Plague. Yet at least some of our Missile Subs are at sea, ready to turn a foe's home into a radioactive desert. Our jughead in Chief has removed that possibility. Funny, my children do not live at the Jihadi's ultimate ground zero, his do. So does he. Idiot.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Quiet Time
I just noticed that I haven't posted anything since my birthday, March 28. I hurt my back getting Linda Lou up that too short, too steep ramp the day she came home from the hospital. When I finally got to the back doc he gave me pills that have really made me slow, stupid and sleepy. Add that Linda Lou has taken full advantage of being a pore helpless cripple and is doing her best to work my fingers to the bone...
I should post a picture of my bony fingers. Anyhow, I will eventually get back into the swing of things. Right now, instead of reading blogs and writing I am watching old reruns of Law and Order SVU and Major Case as well as NCIS. These pills make the stupidity of what Hollywood thinks cops do look almost okay. I have not, however, fallen so far as to watch wrestling, that's something.
Anyhow, I should eventually get far enough along in my physical therapy that I can discard these pills. Until then, well, I miss you.
I should post a picture of my bony fingers. Anyhow, I will eventually get back into the swing of things. Right now, instead of reading blogs and writing I am watching old reruns of Law and Order SVU and Major Case as well as NCIS. These pills make the stupidity of what Hollywood thinks cops do look almost okay. I have not, however, fallen so far as to watch wrestling, that's something.
Anyhow, I should eventually get far enough along in my physical therapy that I can discard these pills. Until then, well, I miss you.
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