Google's new Blogger "interface"

Blech! BLAARG! Whoof!!
Teh Suckages - and it's not even vomit, that would be colorful and have some texture and evoke an aroma - but this is an endlessly, universally, retching case of paper-white vacant dry-heaves.

It is the Deadlands at the end of the Universe. Corpseville. An empty motel off a dead highway filled with dead leaves and dust.

If they keep this up I'm quitting Google and all their stuff forever.

It's bad enough to be forced to use suck-ass Google Docs and Google Sites for some(other) web stuff, but I'd rather switch entirely to Yahoo! than use the new butt-ugly nasty design.

I'd switch calendars and EVERYTHING, and use Yahoo mail too.

Solar shut-down - Solyndra's1,000 job-loss

Listening to KSFO on the radio this morning I heard the news of the closure, an announcement was planned for 9:00AM today:

"I was told by a security guard to get my [stuff] and leave," one employee said. The company employs a little more than 1,000 employees worldwide, according to its website.
An NBC Bay Area photographer on the scene reports security guards are not letting visitors on campus. He says "people are standing around in disbelief." The employees have been given yellow envelopes with instructions on how to get their last checks.

$535Million dollars in low cost Gubb'mint loans (your money) just went up in a purple haze. As one commenter said, "If your business plan requires government subsidies to survive, you are in trouble."
Was Solyndra a threat to GE and the loans were just another golden-parachute to the buy the IP and transfer the technology to a "Green" behemoth, favored by the Administration?
We'll never know.

Govenor Shoots Steel!

NM governor Susana Martinez received perfect scores on recertification for her concealed-carry permit over the weekend in Las Cruces. She scored 100 percent with both .38- and .45-caliber handguns, her staff said.

Wo ist die Hauptbanhof?

Radio is easier to listen-to than to participate-in, especially if you're un-scripted - learned that from a HS buddy who was into doing the late-night college radio thing at the Big Private West Coast University. He wasn't gregarious or outgoing, and just liked the technical aspects and control - and so the late-night part gave him a safety margin. He didn't have to say much - just, "And that was Lead Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven."

UPDATE: (rephrased)
It's like... have you ever tried to talk on the phone with someone who you didn't know well, while speaking a foreign language - and gotten a satisfactory answer you could comprehend? "Entschuldingung mir bitte, wann sol ich mit drei luftbaloonen an den Hauptbanhoff kommen?"
There's no established, nuance-based feedback-loop to quell the jitters, things grind quickly to a halting stop of blank spaces and empty stutters.

Nevermind.

Who the hell are these people?

Maybe it's because I don't get Cable TV or something, but the only "Kardasians" I'm familiar with is a brutal, sociopathic, reptilian-featured, arrogant and paranoid club-faced, ugly-alien type from Star-Trek Now Voyager Deep-Six-Nine - or something.
Where in hell did these other no-talent, brutal, sociopathic, arrogant and paranoid alien bitches come-from? Srsly, from LA or something? Jersey? Who gives a flying poodle-pecker about them?

Ow my foot hurts.

I stood on the ladder wrong or something while taping and texturing over the slider...



UPDATE: Metatarsal Pain - is AAACK! Never had it before so I should be grateful despite the other injuries I have inflicted on myself, but it seems like a bunion - eww! Sheesh. At least it doesn't LOOK like a bunion, they're all knobby and ugly. My foot flexibility is quite good, maybe too good - I can easily pick-up things and grip with my toes. Repeated extensions while working on the ladder hyper-maximized the tendons and ligaments at the first Metatarsal-Phalangeal joint, and it hurts. Nothing broken I think, but no X-rays taken either.

The NPR Sci-Fi 100

I guess I should be glad that our radio apparatchiks have posted this list as an acknowledgement of the place that the literature of Science Fiction has taken and occupied in America, and have not (yet) seen fit to issue this list as a denunciation of the Comintern's displeasure with the genre.

Even though they compete (and lose!) against it every day with their end-to-end support for the category of Romantic Fiction, each daily epistle of the Left's perfectly saccharine Gallant Boris and his Red Tractor utterly fails against the crusty, reality-based antidote of Goofus, the typical Sci-Fi ne'er-do-well.

I'm doubly blessed to read that a lot of freedom-oriented Libertaneous Gun-blogs have also thoroughly covered this territory, and own it better than the pie-eyed Marxists-Romantics.  Even a sweaty Star-ship bodice-ripper is more interesting and better accounted than the incurious and dull moral fables repetitiously spun out by the rote spiders of the Leftweb.

Comfey Camper, Snuggly Sigs

The Blogospheric reports on Comp-Tac holsters are that they are for the pantsless - so we tried it for the P220's.  Smooth.  More comefy than the Milt Sparks - and the rail-gun sits as well and the non-rail.

A road to the top

Back in 1998...we took a little trip. Two-up all the way on an R-80.

Reproduced here (at a only slightly slower speed) by a similar BMW rider. We beat the tour-leader to the top, and he was pissed.


Next to that was the stunningly mind-blowingly


spectacular rock and sky formations of Val Gardena in the Dolomites....

...Wolkenstein (the big sky-rock there) ... St. Ulrich ... St. Cristina ... Grödner Tal... Some of the most expensive places to live in the world.

And home to arms manufacturers.

Bandwagon Pulp-Jumper!

H/T posted by Jake at, Curses! Foiled Again! - doubleplus via the link Cool Daddy-O's Bear Den (or something).
I used to read a lot more than I do lately...

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin
6. 1984, by George Orwell
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
25. The Stand, by Stephen King
26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman
30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne
38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys
39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange, Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks
68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne
73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore
74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi
75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks
84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan
90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock
91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

I went through a lot of those but it was a long time ago when I was doing a lot of reading. I also read all of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. NPR needs to open up some - there's a lot of guys and gals writing that aren't on that list. Keith Laumer, Brian Aldis, Andre Norton, George R. Stewart. Cordwainer Smith, Clifford D. Simak, jack Vance... and my high-school Hall-Pass buddy, Tad Williams (?). ;-)

Meanwhile, back at the morgue...

Astro-Pulp! Spy-Pulp!

A limited selection (and not in as good condition as I remembered) because I didn't get that into collecting them...
























































And a British cover of Ian Fleming:

A pulpy mess of wordstrewn pages

I had some old pulps that I had collected for the garish and tantalizing covers, and for the writing - because it inspired one to write. Anybody who read one of these plot-thing emotives would instantly recognize that their own ability to craft a story was quite equal to that of the originator of these tomes.
"Ask the Dust" was particularly un-readable in a sub-genre I call Pity-Me-Barbara.  Just really-really bad and sooo hard to read - and I couldn't even finish it. 
I just liked the covers - and decided to Blog instead of becoming a writer.
Until the acid in the paper started to break-down and stink-up the place, then I donated them to Goodwill.
There's a whole sub-set of Science Fiction - three that I kept anyhow. For the covers.


I wish the hell Blogger would let me place these in a table instead of making/forcing them to be linear...

Some Blogversary...

I forgot I was having one - oh well, it was a busy day last Saturday... It was a Friday, August 06, 2004 when I made my first post - about a drink. Da Kine rippin' onolicious Mai-Tai recipe

Maybe it was the Exotica music that triggered it, or tasting the fine examples at Tao Tao's in Sunnyvale: I went on a hunt for the best Mai-tai recipe.
Where the hell is that Demarara?

UPDATE:
For some swell Mai-Tai tunes, check out the Band's brand-new album: Aloha Baby!






Meanwhile today, the basic, fascist, totalitarian impulse behind the Left is showing through more and more often these days as their dependence on other people's money crumbles.
H/T Snowflakes in Hell on the The Volokh Conspiracy: You’d Think Anti-Establishment Filmmakers Would Have a Bit More Interest in Preserving a Strong First Amendment: From twitteridiot Michael Moore:

Pres Obama, show some guts & arrest the CEO of Standard & Poors. These criminals brought down the economy in 2008& now they will do it again

Arrest people? Who's the dictator-lover? Sheesh.

Wishes for Fishes, Guns for Funs.

If wishes were fishes and considering my poor fisherman-antics, if I were to have just one wish granted by the Machine Gun Fairy, it would be for the pan-fed Belgian Rattlesnake - a Lewis gun.
I think.
Maybe in the Aero configuration, but I kinda like that big fat-finned barrel device.

(Image semi-courtesy of RJ Militaria )

What wish would the Machinegun Fairy grant for you?

UPDATE: Maybe I should have made a Poll for people to vote, and maybe a separate poll for Submachine-guns vs. Machine-guns...and maybe another separate one by caliber - but still I think a Thompson would win in .45ACP because 9mm would just have a bunch of stylish European choices lined up.

Popcorn

We couldn't get rid of the applied texture with the schedule we had, but we could make it pretty again with paint - for the first time in 30+ years...or rather the Painters could.

Share THIS, sucka!

H/T Borepatch we have the dividing line being drawn.
The old Lefty notions of "class" has been melted-down by the growth of the Leviathan Bureaucratic State. The rioters burning buildings and businesses in Notting Hill are not a part of any "Class" system that dumbass Marx and his sycophants ever envisioned, his "workers of the world" - because they don't work, they take.
And because the .Gov is a babysitter and lollypop machine they have developed no self-restraint or sense of community, and they shit on their own doorstep.  Like an impingement AR they crap where they live, while the .Gov places greater and greater demands on the actual workers to pay for this parasitic class of permanent .Gov-Voters -- and so the ratchet continues.



And that kind of selfish and senseless self-preserving spending is tanking the economy and destroying the future.
 

Super HUMONGOUS Gunblogger RENDEZVOUS VI!

Whoa!!  While the AAA Sandard & Poors is Teh Suck, the Gunblogger Rendezvous SWAG is UPGRADED!!
Get your reservations in pronto (see the title-link) or here's the damn information.
See (through) the fabulous Leupold, shoot the incredible Weatherby, wear the Tactical Woolrich and watch critters cavort on the Big Screeen of the Super-wide 54° camera image angle of the Leupold RCX-1 and RXC-2 Trail Camera System! Awesome swag can be YOURS while rubbing shoulders with the fabulous and historic Gunlawyer Alan Gura, an always impeccably dressed gentleman's Gentleman.

It's INSANE!

It's HUGE!

It's CRAZY!


It's in only

Chevy Volt at COSTCO.  It's not un-attractive but it's not very compelling either.  It looks like it should sound like a V-8 instead of being as quiet as a Hot-Wheels gliding down the track.  It looks GM-heavy and labored, the styling cues are not light and fluffy - but altogether pedestrian.  It reminds me of the late 70's a bit, and you wonder where the diesel version is hiding - perhaps underneath the skin.  Then it would be noisy, but still not like a V-8...

Painting and Re-Painting

After the case went on around all the doors in the hall, there were a lot of nail-holes to fill for the painters - and all the baseboard. We don't want them to waste a lot of time on this part of the prep, so we're doing it.

Now I have the 8-foot gap over the sliding door to mud and texture.

Bent Corners

We got the curve without breaking it by layering it. The first attempt with half-inch MDF snapped in many places. Sawn-down to two 1/4-inch slivers, the pieces snuggled up against each other on the 45-degree corner bevel.




In other news, my tiny little bug-out-bag crank-it-up (& solar) emergency radio is about the size of a Sig P220. The coins are for size-comparison.

Trim

We even finished-out the tops of the skylights, replacing some old ogive-cut crown-molding I had put up twenty years ago...

I'm happy that my wife is pleased.

Hot Wheels!

The orange air-hose to the brad-nailer reminds me of 6th Grade.

UPDATE:
Oh yeh! Loop-it baby! Major Matt Mason would be riding, duct-taped to the orbit vehicle.