Happy New Paint!

Vacuuming stirs up dust begetting dust-boogers, the carpet cleaner spits and sucks and the reservoir gets mung-dirty. Kelly-Moore was closed so we drove to Home Despot and I randomly picked a cool beigeish-green semi-mint, I'm tired of the warm tones of Malibu - and we got tarps and some orangepeel spray texture.

For the New Year there's some new office furniture coming, and so there are many little holes and dings to be spackled. The ancient worn-out shambles of a mid-century average dresser was taken to the garage for dismantling into its component wood bits, politely stacked flat to avoid taking a lot of space in the dumpster. The weight of the axe assisted in rending it to smithereens. There's a new dresser on the way too. This is our Christmas presents to us, including for the first time ever, bedside tables instead of two pewter Hon file cabinets... Yay! It's a little work but it'll be great, NEW - and give added storage to my reloading bench that is overflowing capacity. Then I have to tackle the closet...

And I've been thinking of building an Upper for a birthday present in a few weeks. Hmmm - maybe I should just buy one in .50 Beowulf - that would be appropriate...

UPDATE: Whoops!! Dammit Wintergreen Bright-smile Mint was NOT what I had in mind... It would look nice if I was a two or three-year old in a crib, but no - not now. Nooooo!

Too damn bright. Light has everything to do with color appearance, and we get a strong southern light through the one window that brightens the far wall dramatically. We had to re-tape and re-paint. I went to Kelly-Moore and got something different, more adult, it's called "Head for the Beach." (KM 396565-2) How appropriate.

We support....

The Right to arm Bears!


And the rest of our Troops.

Merry Fishdrinkmas!

Happy Holidays, but be safe out there.

Christmastime Musings

The weather's not bad, clear and cold mostly with more rain forecast which is normal and...Wintertime Spacemonsters on the prowl.

Perusing the bountiful postings of gunbloggers among Teh Web, I came across Tam's delightful picture of a well encased and ensonced raygun wielding spaceman carrying what appears to be a

Goliathon 83, whilst defending a lovely bikini-clad Moonwoman against a wiggly and snagglefaced adversary - or perhaps a Ron Paul supporter.

I'm more of an old-school Colonial Imperialist, and even had a Topee like the one Old Whiskers here is wearing - never quite had a GF like that though...
Defense of the Empire being readily accepted as necessary for the maintenance of a Free State, the right of the Colonials to bear Ray-Arms shall not be infringed, especially as Moon-monsters abound.

What immediately drew my attention were the grips of the spaceman's weapons which recalled to mind the fabulously archaic Swiss 1882/29 Ordnance Revolver. For some reason I'd really like one, to go with my old '44 Swiss K-31 rifle. They're about the same price (as the rayguns anyhow) and they saw military use for quite some time - in fact as late as '44 they were still in service.
Don't know who would have carried one, possibly not the usual Swiss soldat, but being Swiss I'm sure they're super-accurate and were used in competition. I wonder about the puissance of the caliber, Cartridges of the World lists it as about the same the 32 S&W Long - very accurate and with worldwide acceptance as a target cartridge.
Oh well, I probably won't do it but its fun to think about.

UPDATE: fubar'd links fixed - checkout the ray-guns.

Gun-Free Killing Zones

There's been a lot of talk and questioning lately, of the value of places where the unarmed and defenseless are subject to the whims of the insane. Among these gun-free killing zones are Schools and Universities, Churches and Librairies, the City of Washington DC - and Shopping-malls.
But all across America there are even more gun-free tracts, huge swaths of land where self-defense carry is prohibited that dwarf all the schools and malls - and these are lands run by the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Last Friday Idaho Senator Mike Crapo sent a letter signed by 47 other Senators to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, requesting that prohibitions against law-abiding citizens from transporting and carrying firearms on such public lands be removed.
For the full list of signatories look here.
It's a start.

All Quiet on tne Western Front

Not much goin' on here, nothin' to see, move along-move along.

And really, I hope you-all get lotsa fun stuff for Christmas.

Weather Unimproved

Windy and cold, not much to speak of. Bleh, I have a bit of a toothache emenating from the recent crown.

The below picture is fairly unremarkable and late in posting, except for the fact that this is the first evidence of "cleaning" - at least of the black.
Still too many Sevens, but finally no Sixes or Fives...

Pearl Harbor

Thanks Vets, thanks Norman...

Socialist Scientism's 5-Year Planned Production Quota

I have to lift this nearly in its entirety from Climate Skeptic because it shows just how far the Eurocrats and Socialists in the IPCC will go to coerce opinion and how they conduct themselves.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Brief Window into How the IPCC Does Science

I thought I had blogged on this topic of seal level measurement previously, but after reading this from Q&O and looking back, I see that I never posted anything.

As a brief background:

Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner has been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for some 35 years. He was interviewed by Gregory Murphy on June 6 for EIR.

Climate scientists are notoriously touchy about non-climate folks "meddling" in their profession, but they have no such qualms when they venture off into statistics or geology or even astrophysics without much knowledge of what they are doing. This story is telling, as told by Dr. Mörner:

Another way of looking at what is going on is the tide gauge. Tide gauging is very complicated, because it gives different answers for wherever you are in the world. But we have to rely on geology when we interpret it. So, for example, those people in the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], choose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they choose the record of one, which gives 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. Every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area. It's the compaction of sediment; it is the only record which you shouldn't use. And if that figure is correct, then Holland would not be subsiding, it would be uplifting.

And that is just ridiculous. Not even ignorance could be responsible for a thing like that. So tide gauges, you have to treat very, very carefully. Now, back to satellite altimetry, which shows the water, not just the coasts, but in the whole of the ocean. And you measure it by satellite. From 1992 to 2002, [the graph of the sea level] was a straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely no trend whatsoever. We could see those spikes: a very rapid rise, but then in half a year, they fall back again. But absolutely no trend, and to have a sea-level rise, you need a trend.

Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their [IPCC's] publications, in their website, was a straight line—suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn't look so nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but they hadn't recorded anything. It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a “correction factor,” which they took from the tide gauge. So it was not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow —I said you have introduced factors from outside; it's not a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don't say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend!

That is terrible! As a matter of fact, it is a falsification of the data set. Why? Because they know the answer. And there you come to the point: They “know” the answer; the rest of us, we are searching for the answer. Because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modeling, not from observations. The observations don't find it!

Rain

It rained today, so those who admired the sunny (apparently) pictures from the weekend can gleefully cheer. Up north it rained like crazy with overflowing rivers and helicopters out to rescue the lost and forlorn - but it's the freakin' Pacific Northwest and it always rains like hell up there. What did they think was gonna happen in Winter, that Global Warming would intervene and send them to a Hawaiian oasis paradise?
Down here some asshole rammed intro another and keeld 'em, and there was a giant delay on the Bay Bridge. But down in the South Bay it was just ugly, wet, and gray...

35° Degrees Fahrenheit

It was cool this morning, 35° - then it cleared out and brightened up, then some weather tried to get in and the wind came up and things got cold again.

I shot a miserable 67 offhand that killed my score, but I stuck around. I've heard that some guys take-off - I guess they figure there's no point in further shooting once they blow a stage, but that kind of behavior doesn't usually happen with the guys in my club. I shot on target #3 in the first relay with the regulars. We had enough new shooters for their own relay, so we lead - and then in the second stage we helped coach the new guys and did the target changes and scoring - that's how it's supposed to work, everybody chips-in.

Did sweetly with a 96-4X in rapid-seated (best yet), and then worked up a pretty good rapid-prone with an 85-1X - not my best but second-best. Finally in slow-prone I clicked up windage right two and up one, and settled in on tying up my best-yet slow prone score with another 182 - and then beat it with 4X's! Small improvements in little increments. Finished with 430-9X.
There's the score that went missing after the lightweight bullets came apart with the fast twist - those nine X's "and twelve 3's," as my wife laughingly called it.
I got my 9-X's back. But that lousy offhand - if I had got them in as I did at the last Match I would have made Expert, but its getting close...I can taste it.
Drove home and together we went out to La Fiesta for a Mexican lunch. The Casa Noble Añejo is killer in a Margarita, probably shouldn't do that (mix it in a Margarita), but what the hell, it's yummy.