Didja ever think...

...ya mighta got snookererd?

Yet I am filled with optimism that this is the right choice for the Noveske.
Happy New Year's to you all!

Christmas Eve Rat-Reindeer

Some kinda super sleigh-ride I'm sure, wonder what's under the hood. Sounded pretty wonderful, like 250-Sugarplums dancing in a small-block liner.

Early Midway Christmas

Some things (besides socks and underwear) arrived under the tree already... UPDATE: Duh, what it it? The Paul Howe designed CSAT (Combat Shooting and Tactics) Combat sight, from XS Sights - designed to eliminate (or compensate-for) holdover at close ranges.
Now I just gotta figure out how to adapt it to the Troy flip-up rear.

That wheel on the side? I've never been able to move it (never had to actually). To move the windage I have to use the allen-wrench from the other side.

Oh great, I probably got the wrong one since they now make a special one for the Troy folding back-up sight. But how do I get the damn thing apart - looking for an exploded diagram...

Short, Cold, and Dark

Today is the just about time for the Winter Solstice - but not without some drama, a display of The Big Nothingness - the earth's shadow will fall across and eclipse the full moon. Has not happened in a looong time and will not happen again for a looong time.
Except with the rain and clouds and bitter cold probably nobody will actually see it except some astronomers and the telescope-types. I have a 'scope but use it mainly for spotting little holes in targets downrange, but as a skyward turned 'scope it was surprisingly effective at discerning the rings of Saturn when such was well poised and close by last time, back in December 2002.
Thankfully the days will begin to lengthen, and the real Global Warming trend will begin its annual cycle again.
UPDATE: Aw hell,I'm a blogger and I shoot pictures - with my spotting scope... You could see it happening pretty good when the clouds parted. PHOTOS ADDED.
And then it got all dark.
Pictures taken with a Sony DCS-V3 pressed against the magnification element of a 70mm Meopta Hermes-1 spotting scope at 20x - Click to Embiggify.

Shooting with the infra-red enabled it was bright even when it was dark, but too un-focused. And then the clouds swamped us.

Pretty interesting event in natural-history last night.

Rain & Tannenbaum

It's a tropical upwelling of wetness that steamed-in overnight and we're currently in the drench-state.
UPDATE: Man this gray on gray is doing a serious slacker-job on my effervescent endorphins, they are depleted to the point I can hardly even shop on Midway or at Brownells...

So the tree is up and there's a Tiki ornament atop the highest spire, with some socks and underwear beneath the boughs.

UPDATE: The French Underground chick on a Triumph and the Navy frogman:
As always, click to Embigulate.

The Super Gunblogger Hadron Accelerator is Now

First Bluesun, then Kurt P, then Hsoi, - this is the right sequence, right?

Maybe it needs a picture.

Global Blognostics & каспийский монстр

I get hit for searches on, "каспийский монстр" - the translation from Russian of which is, Caspian Monster. How cool is that?
Someone in Hilo, Hawaii (one of my favorite places) goes to Mad Ogre, then jumps to my page.
And someone in Thailand gets all ข้อความแจ้งการเปลี่ยนเส้นทาง, "message redirection" - and goes to my Colt barrels post.
Meanwhile someone in Hyderabad, where I was thirty-four years ago this month, liked this little picture of the rain...


I really need to review my Blog-roll and make sure the links are all good. Since my computer tanked and is finally back up again, there's administrative crap to do - plus the weather is sucky and I haven't been out at the range punching holes in distant paper - my bad.

Refrigerator Batteries

The bottom of my 'Fridge door has a special shelf. Doesn't everybody keep their spare batteries in the 'fridge? Couldn't put much else in there except hot-sauce bottles.

Ebisu Fly Rod

This one is for John at Improved Clinch. 

First let me first state that this is normally a gun-blog, and my fishing credentials are simply non-existent - but old-stuff, whether it's gun or some other mechanical art, arouses in me a singular passion and joy.

The last fish I caught was a baitfish Aku on a boat out of Kauai. It was an itty-bitty thing maybe ten inches long, caught by a golden giant-monster Pen International XXX rod-and-reel combo that would be fit for catching whales and The Kraken. My assumed job on a fishing boat is to reliably insure that someone else does catch something - sorta like my job at a company is to insure that within a few years it goes tits-up. My history is impeccable.

Prior to that, the last time I even fished was back in 2000, after a painful 90-mile boot/foot interaction while dirt-riding in Idaho. I just needed a break from riding for a day, and enjoyed hopping around on rocks by a cool mountain stream - I caught nothing. The last time before that when I went fishing was when I was about twelve years old, on a family camping trip up in the Sierras - and I caught nothing. The only fish I have actually caught, prior to the 2008 Kauai Aku, was a 12-inch bass when I was eight, fishing with my Grandpa at Anderson Dam. I loved my Grandpa very much and miss him still... So any fish-related activity or motto for which I may be a poster-boy is, "That's why it's called Fishing, not Catching." I've never actually even been fly-fishing.

But still, the aesthetics are inspiring, and I found this at a local charity rummage. It came in a kind of roll-up "rod-sock" and appears unused.


The rig has three tips, and is in five pieces. Two tips are for fly fishing (one is a spare in case the other breaks or is lost - I'm guessing) and another stouter piece is for Spin casting.


The fly combo had a mid-piece to extend the length of the pole to about 9-fee long, while the stouter spin-piece simply goes onto the base-section to make that set-up about five-feet long.


The wrappings are simply exquisite and undamaged.



The handle goes both ways. Pull out the button on one end and flip it around for the spin-casting setup.


Ebisu is the Japanese god of fishing - a pretty big deal there as they eat a lot of fish. My smattering of research indicates it's of post-war Japanese manufacture and that these were sold to servicemen who were stationed there, and later sometimes sold under the Sears Craftsman label here in the US.
Normally it comes in a long, slender wooden box with some bits and pieces of tackle (hooks and weights, probably a fly). I just think it's awesome cool, so I bought a little Mosquito fly-reel and now I need to take some string-throwing lessons or something...

Batteries Are Not Forever

The batteries on the big Mag-Light dimmed and gave out after considerable use spent peering into the dark corners of the magic computer-box and I went to replace them from the stash in the 'Fridge.
I was a bit surprised when the big fella didn't light right up again and fiddled with the bulb - then took a closer look.

These suckers are from the 'frigerator BEFORE we owned this 'fridge! They are from before the Twin Towers fell - and before TSA groping and the Mohammed cartoons. Before Theo Van Gogh got killed by a mad Muslim murderer. Before Europe became a cesspit of self-indulgent weenies - no wait, they've always been like that...
So I put in some fresh ones dated just April 2008. Yay Costco and capitalism!

Julian Assange: Poet, Espionagiére, Soy Bomb!

H/T Michael Totten: When Idiots get degrees

From the Apocrypha of IQ.org

The truth is not found on the page,

but is a wayward sprite

that bursts forth from the readers mind

for reasons of its own.

For I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...

I once thought that the Truth was a set

comprised of all the things that were true,

and the big truth could be obtained by taking

all its component propositions and

evaluating them until nothing remained.

I would approach my rhetorical battles

as a logical reductionist, tearing down, atomizing, proving, 

disproving, discarding falsehoods and reassembling 

truths until the Truth was pure, golden and unarguable.

One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small...

But then, when truth matters most,

when truth is the agent of freedom,

I stood before Justice and with truth, lost freedom.

...

Yet just as we feel all hope is lost

and we sink back into the miasma,

back to the shadow world of ghosts and gods,

a miracle arises; everywhere

before the direction of self interest is known,

people yearn to see where its compass points

and then they hunger for truth with passion

and beauty and insight.

 

He loves me. He loves me not. Here then is the truth to set them free.

Soy Bomb

WTF?  And this guy is an international man-of-mystery?? Gimme a break.