Month: November 2023

November 30, 2023 – What I Have Learned About Adult Air Guns

November 30, 2023 /

Maybe you get tired of me talking about this, I don’t know. What I have to say is that I have been on an adventure over the last couple of years and have learned a whole lot of things. With Christmas time coming, it is a good time to think about the different options for that firearms enthusiast in your life. As an adult, I never thought that I would get into air guns. I thought that I had grown up and that air guns were for kids that couldn’t be trusted with real firearms. I have grown to appreciate the role that they can play in a shooters life.

First, I can shoot an air rifle at home every day. It takes me an hour to drive to my range, that is also an hour back home. Then there is the gathering up stuff and the put away plus the clean-up which takes another several hours. What I am saying is that going to the range is a significant investment in time.

Then there is the cost. Pellets range from $5 for 300 to $12 for 100 and all over in between. This is analogous to range versus premium ammunition. If I was shooting 22lr, it would be about $16 per 100 but I couldn’t do that at home and I would have cleanup as well. What I am saying is that consistent practice with air rifles is extremely approachable compared to firearms.

Let us not forget that air guns are not firearms by the definition of the law. A couple of weeks ago I purchased a new air rifle. I walked up to the shelf, picked up the box and went straight to the cash register. Store policy required purchasers to be 21 but the cashier didn’t even make me show my ID. There is no hours long waiting for background checks and hoping that somebody didn’t make some critical clerical error denying me my 2nd amendment rights. There is no fee for me wanting to exercise my rights and get my ‘mother may I’ approved.

As far as I know, there has never been a run on pellets or implements. Air guns don’t seem to be popular amongst the firearms crowd, probably because they thought like I did. One hundred dollars can literally buy months worth of shooting. But running to the store to reload is not a gamble and stores that have gone woke still carry pellets like the Kroger stores, variety stores and even Walmart. Have I convinced you yet?

What is there to know? I am still looking for that genie in the bottle but I am going to share some tips now. I have experience with three brands and that is Daisy, Crosman and Gamo. There are other brands out there that are popular but these three seem to be the most prevalent around these parts. I have experience with four variations of delivery. That would be the single pump, multi-pump, break action spring pump and the break action gas pump.

I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, but I don’t like variable pumps. For a first air gun or a rarely used, it would be OK. The pumping gets old, quick. Pumping 12 times takes a lot of effort and time. Fine for one shot but ten is a real pain in the butt. Their primary advantages are that they are the quietest, cheapest and they can shoot BBs and pellets.

I am not even sure if you can buy the single pump rifles new other than the Red Ryder. My first one was a Daisy 840. I didn’t realize that this was an advantage until I had a multi-pump. The primary disadvantage is they are very limited in power, but they have all of the advantages of the multi-pump.

My recommendation if you were only going to own one air gun, own a break barrel. They are faster to load and more powerful. But beware, this comes at a price. They cost significantly more and can be loud enough to require hearing protection. I fired my newest rifle twice inside and it cause my ears to ring the rest of the day. It also has recoil, which I was surprised when it happened.

I should also mention that all of my experience is with the 0.177 caliber. I have stuck with this particular caliber because of caliber commonality amongst all of my rifles for one. The other reason is that the larger calibers start to have enough energy to rival real firearms making them impractical (and unsafe) to shoot at home. The other common caliber is 0.22. If you were doing to do a lot of small game hunting or daily pest elimination, the 22 is a better choice than 177.

Picking an air rifle larger than 0.25″ makes the easy to obtain pellet more like a unicorn. Your best bet is buy them online because I have never seen them in local stores. Then again, you are probably not going to find a rifle in stores of larger caliber either.

Looking at the two break barrels that I own, one is a Crosman and the other is a Gamo. To date, I think that the advantage of the build goes to Crosman. All parts are metal and they are an American company. Everything except the powerplant on the Gamo is plastic. I feel like someday, there is gong to be a tab break off or something rendering this pretty expensive item useless. Time will tell.

As far as I have recorded, I have not been able to get the published velocity on any rifle pellet combination. What I can say is that the faster the advertised velocity a rifle can achieve, the louder it will be. Since air guns are not firearms, they are not governed by the same laws. Therefore, many have integrated silencers which do not seem to have any impact on the noise that the powerplant generates. I think that they actually make more noise than my 22lr rifles which seems bizarre to me. I can fire those all day and not feel the effect of noise but the break barrel rifles hurt my ears.

The pump rifles can vary in construction. I have several that actually have tubes rather than rifled barrels. This definitely impacts the accuracy with pellets. I have proven that the number of pumps effects accuracy of BBs in rifled barrels but it seems to have no effect with pellets. This is because there is very little velocity change between between six and 12 pumps, only about 10%. So, consider the purpose of what you are going to do.

End Your Programming Routine: My newest rifle is a super magnum. It has a magazine to fire up to 10 shots at an advertised velocity of 1600 fps. It definitely pushes pellets faster than my spring powered rifle but I am not really happy with how loud it is. I wanted a silenced version because I thought my first rifle was too loud. This is why I am looking for that genie in the bottle. I have a recommendation at this point, but I don’t have any personal experience with it so I will withhold any further information. Email me and I will let you know which one I would choose.

November 29, 2023 – My Newest Woodworking Project

November 29, 2023 /

I haven’t even brought this up, but I have quietly working on another sofa table. My wife wanted to steal the one I made for my office the minute I brought it into the house. I promised that I would make her one and I finally got around to it. It had to come after the summer projects but we are now into the shop time of year.

As a very infrequent woodworker, I am lucky if I get one project done let alone the chance to duplicate a project I have already done once. This was an opportunity to really see if the reason it took so long to build the first one was my problem or it was really that difficult. I knew the answer, but I still wanted to see how fast I could do it. This picture was two weeks after I had drawn up the plans.

As it stands in this picture, this is about 20 hours of work. This includes drawing the design out on graph paper and picking out the boards from the stack. So, it is definitely my problem. I find myself falling into the trap that I don’t have time to do this or that and so things drag on months and months. When I am most productive, I say to myself either ‘I have to get this done today’ or ‘I have thirty minutes, how far can I go?’.

Back when we lived in South Carolina, my wife wanted a mantel built by Christmas. It was about 4AM Christmas day that I finished. I really don’t recommend that kind of effort unless this is your career or have nothing better to do in life but other’s having deadlines is also a good way to not end up flaking out on a project either.

I did have some help on this one that I didn’t have before. I used the taper jig that I built for the first table and I have about the same height of legs. Instead of chiseling out the mortises by hand, I just cut them with the router this time. The first time, I wanted desperately to prove to myself that I had the knowledge to do fine woodworking. This time, I took the pragmatic approach that I had nothing to prove and that was a much faster way to do things. Practicing is a sure way to do things much faster than the first time.

I almost used pocket screws instead of mortise and tenon joinery. That would have knocked at least four hours off of my time. I didn’t think the joinery was actually necessary but I thought that the practice would be good for me. I also think in the end, it made a better final product. By better I mean that the joinery was more likely to stand the test of time then screws. Everyone that has ever had Ikea furniture knows that the first move is when things start to go south in the durability department.

At first my wife was wanting different legs and I thought that I was going to get an opportunity to buy a wood lathe. As much as I would have loved to add that to my tool collection and skills, I convinced her that duplicating the shaker style legs I used on my first table was the fastest way to get this project done. I have other things in the queue besides this table, not to mention my long anticipated wine cellar.

End Your Programming Routine: My Toolbox Fallacy is real. ‘I can’t do this, until I do/get that’. Sometimes I figure out that I bought stain in a color that I already have or I already have the sandpaper. Then I figure out that the thing I was using as my excuse to not do something was there all along and I really had no reason not to work on projects. I am happy with the results and I feel even better that I learned things that really helped me with this table. On to the next project.

November 28, 2023 – Didn’t Even Know That This Was a Problem

November 28, 2023 /

I was pretty diligent when I went to add my new wireless card to my old Windows computer. I saw that it needed a USB connection to the motherboard to make the Bluetooth work. I checked it before I ordered it. I also educated myself as to all the different types of PCIe slots and if I had the right ones.

When I did the second one for the Linux machine, I wasn’t quite so diligent. I new that computer was newer and I knew that I hadn’t added any cards to it at this point, So, I went on the assumption that if I had all the space I needed on the old one, the newer one would be just fine. Well that wasn’t the case.

I did have three PCIe ports but all of my USB connections were taken. At first, I just disconnected the front ports to make sure that the wireless card was working, but it bothered me so I started looking. I discovered that there is a way to share these motherboard connections. See the video below.

Now, everything is right in the world. Since I was looking for this video to share here, I also discovered that there are devices that can add more motherboard ports if necessary. That is also good.

The one thing that wasn’t quite right was that my Linux computer already had an imbedded wireless card. I ran the right commands (I think) to check if that was the case. I got no return on validating a wireless card which is why I ordered it in the first place. However, when I installed the new card, it enabled the imbedded card. I had read that wireless driver installation can be tricky on Linux and I guess this is what I ultimately encountered.

Don’t get me wrong, I am glad that the plug and play worked. But, I kind of wish that I had known that there was already an imbedded wireless card. I don’t think it had Bluetooth capability which is what justified me keeping the card installed. I may have deprioritized it.

When I spoke about my network configuration a few weeks ago, I stated that everything that can be wired is wired. That is still true. I want wireless capability on my Linux machine as a test tool. I want to know if I can connect wired but not wirelessly or on Linux versus Windows versus iOS. Adding the additional Bluetooth connectivity seemed like an inexpensive luxury at $20.

Since I have been slow playing the Software Defined Radio scanner experiment, I heard somewhere that I needed two different radio receivers to make the thing work. The problem is that I am running out of USB connections outside of the computer. So, I have been looking at USB expansion cards. They do exist and they are pretty inexpensive. Believe it or not, they don’t require and USB connection to the motherboard, just a PCIe slot. So no worries there.

End Your Programming Routine: This is why I love techno junk. I would never spend $400 on a new, super duper graphics card but I would spend $20 for an enhancement. The fact that I can get 2nd or 3rd generation technology for a song makes a big difference on me wading deeper into the fray. Like I stated before, I have been out of the hardware game for a long time, it is nice to know that things work much smoother than they used to.

November 27, 2023 – In Plain Sight

November 27, 2023 /

This is a story about living my whole life with a narrative without realizing or knowing the truth. There is nothing inherently bad or evil, just simply people that want to be who they want without judgement or disagreement. I won’t say that everyone involved wasn’t hurt or didn’t know the actual truth, but I think circumstantially, it is understandable.

November 24, 2023 – Anthem, Part 10-12

November 24, 2023 /

As I announced in the podcast Monday, I am no longer going to have an introductory post for my Friday reviews maybe I should do away with the conclusion post as well. Not today however. I am going to keep it this way for now, It is just that the last three chapters are only about 20 short pages.

We now that Equality 7-2521 and Liberty 5-3000 have found an empty, yet inhabitable house in the middle of the woods. As a result of reading different books they decide to rename themselves “Prometheus” and “Gaea”. Furthermore, they go through more self-exploration and hatch a plan go back to the city and bring their friends back to the woods and start life over.

Those familiar with Rand would definitely identify the concepts in Part 12. It sounded like a carbon copy of the values espoused in Atlas Shrugged. Man should live for themselves, fight for what they have, collectivism is evil, etc. You know that I buy into all those things and I respect Rand for being so upfront with this as well. In fact, good on her for being consistent and deliberate in her beliefs.

The only thing that I really don’t necessarily agree with is the the last couple of sentences. (Spoiler Alert) “The word which can never die on this earth, for the heart of it, and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: Ego”. This is Prometheus’ belief as the key to humanity and happiness. I don’t agree with Rand on this.

Of course, I have had my own struggles with happiness but if I could have it my way it would be the ability to pursue your passion. I suppose that it may be whether you take the Freud position or the first definition. I cannot say. 1) The self, especially as distinct from the world and other selves. 2) In Psychoanalysis, the division of the psyche that is conscious, most immediately controls thought and behavior and is most in touch with external reality.

I am getting all kinds of curmudgeonly lately in my reviews. I like Prometheus’ spirit here but have you considered how difficult it is to persuade brainwashed people to take a leap of faith that is 180 degrees of their whole lives. Just like his naivete with the light bulb, to think he is going to march into the lion’s den and covert a bunch of his friends unscathed seems pretty far out.

I think another flag is the house itself. I am pretty sure whatever conflict that occurred was well before the lives of Gaea and Prometheus. Time and weather is not kind to structures and material goods. There is reference to cloth that disintegrated but most things were perfectly serviceable.

I have a thing for this, but have you seen picture of the Sarajevo Olympic grounds from the 1980s? There are trees growing through the venues. Granted the characters are only twenty at most, but I think it is fantasy to think that they are going to find perfectly preserved shelters and live happily ever after. I think it would be more like the tunnels from earlier in the book minus the active electrical power.

So, I am already bordering on next weeks analysis of the book overall. It’s hard to believe that given all of the superstition and primitive technology, that there would be any risk of the former state coming after them or even find them let alone defeat or subjugate them.

End Your Programming Routine: There is a quote that I like from Jack Spirko. “Never attribute to malice that can be explained by incompetence”. I will let you noodle that out but it basically puts a dagger in a lot of conspiracy theories. I am not saying that the candlemakers are bumbling idiots, but they may not be the scholars that they proport.

November 23, 2023 – Happy Thanksgiving

November 23, 2023 /

No opinions, BS or anything else today. There is something to be thankful for. I wish everyone a wonderful holiday. This one by far exceeds Christmas for me and I am enjoying what it is all about: cooking, eating and enjoying the fruits of you labor all year.

Despite the fact that most of my daily’s are queued in advance, you don’t need to be spending your holiday reading this. I will be back tomorrow with more Anthem by Ayn Rand.

November 22, 2023 – Let Us Give Thanks

November 22, 2023 /

I will not have much to say tomorrow. In fact, it is only a post wishing you Happy Thanksgiving. I don’t think that it is right to not acknowledge the things that happened over the last year. Part of humility needs say thanks to the good things in life. I want to do that today.

  1. Adults that mentor and volunteer their time. I have so many examples of this year. It is humbling that others would take interest in my kids and provide a leg up. Mr. Moore the middle school teacher who stepped in as the adult for this year’s Chess In the Park. Mr. Mosier who worked with my son to achieve his Life Scout rank (currently the highest in the troop) so that he would be in good position to obtain Eagle rank when he gets back from Taiwan next year. The many Rotarians to make exchange possible for my kids this year. Ms. Graham that donated airfare funds to allow my son’s FBLA trip to Atlanta this year. The list goes on to teachers and counselors and doctors.
  2. It has been quite a year on the career front. My former co-workers were so kind when I announced that I was leaving my job in August. I got emails and thanks and even job offers. It is nice to know that integrity and honesty is valued and recognized even if I had to leave to hear it. I have really tried hard to deliver my opinion more tactfully even when I thought that things were going in the wrong direction. Truth is not always welcome, how it is delivered matters. I hope that I am making strides to improve that.
  3. Parenting has been really hard on my marital relationship. I do mean really hard. Other that our agreement on the expected outcome, nothing is smooth or easy. We don’t agree on our approaches and I certainly don’t agree that I should have to defend my actions when I have the best intent. That never give up attitude is a double edged sword and my wife doesn’t give up on us either. I am thankful that she keeps fighting for us because I don’t know that I would.
  4. I am thankful that people cared enough for us to help pull off my re-proposal. My niece Jasmine was the mastermind and to be honest, without her it probably wouldn’t have happened. She coordinated with my nephew on how to spring the event and worked with a designer on making the moment special. A romantic deficient could have never pulled off such a special moment alone.
  5. I was listening to a podcast recently that was titled “Learn to Love Where you Live”. Talk about first world problems… With all the chaos in Gaza and so many other parts of the world, how can it possibly matter whether we have a local Starbucks? For all of the things I wish were different, I am thankful for relative stability and prosperity compared to what it could be.
  6. I don’t want to sound cliche but I am thankful for redemption and salvation. It takes the pressure off of guilt. As long as I continue to do my part in trying and asking for forgiveness, life should take care of itself. There is nothing more to worry about when eternity is handled.

That completes my list for the year but I have one more thing to say. As I write this, my maternal grandmother is dying. I don’t really feel much about it to be honest. It is a complicated situation. Not so much for me but for her.

My grandparents divorced in the late 1960s. The kids were nearly grown. My uncle graduated, my mom and sister were in high school and the youngest was in grade school. My grandfather was a devout Catholic and it took 40 years before he forgave himself for the divorce, it crushed him. But, my grandmother was a lesbian.

Because of the era, it drove her into seclusion and isolation. We have always had a cordial and pleasant relationship but it has always been at arms length. I suspect that she has carried shame and regret her whole life. In this modern era, her and her partner haven’t married. As far as I remember they have ‘separate’ bedrooms and I don’t even want to go any farther.

My grandmother worked for the school district at least long enough to get a retirement. Her partner worked for the US Forest Service. They have been retired almost as long as I can remember. Certainly, I was living as a ward of my parents when they moved three hours away. That made routine visits extremely infrequent. I think that they lived at the Oregon Coast for twenty years before moving closer. By that point, we (the kids) had moved on in life. We have a grandmother that we rarely see and don’t know.

My grandfather wanted to know us. This is why he paid us to spend time with him ‘working’. I wouldn’t trade that time for anything because it had such an influence, it made me who I am. My grandmother I suspect struggled with her own regret and demons. She has stories, no doubt about it. I know from my mom that there is some mystery and intrigue. She is a Gamble a generation removed from Proctor & Gamble but I don’t know the schism.

This relates to being thankful because I am thankful that people can be more accepted for who they are. Her partner was never married and has always been exceptionally nice. I wish that my grandmother had embraced who she was and who she is. She might have led herself astray trying to be ‘normal’, but that isn’t a reason to never have a relationship. Honestly, I hope this is peace.

End Your Programming Routine: Thankfulness is a habit that I should practice more frequently. The antithesis of thankfulness is pride. Pride sparks fear which prevents us from being more open. Fear keeps us from developing and fostering relationships and puts us at distance from people that we care about. I see that and identify with it, don’t be me. I am who I am; I am also a product of biology and experience. Let us learn from this and strive to do better.

November 21, 2023 – Review: Kitchens of the Great Midwest

November 21, 2023 /

Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal is the November selection of the Left Coast Culinary Book Club. I have to say that I didn’t have high hopes for this book but it ended better than I had expected. The reason that I say that is because one of Stradal other works, The Lager Queens of New York was a book read by my wife’s other book club that also reads romance books with shirtless firemen and lumberjacks.

The story is a bit disjointed and it took most of the book to weave together. Each chapter has a culinary experience loosely happening with or around the main character Eva Thorvald. Some chapters she is the focus while others she just makes an appearance. I don’t think I have ever read a book that had the main character portrayed in this style.

Ultimately, this is a rags to riches story. Eva suffers personal tragedy and social trauma throughout her young life. As the chapters progress, so does her age and the book covers roughly 25 years in just over 300 pages. Many of the supporting characters vary from gritty to psychotic and the all the while Eva keeps on moving forward.

I was listening to a podcast recently about the structure of SEAL training. What the former instructor was saying was that the premise was pretty simple. It wasn’t necessarily what they testing but how. They wanted to wash out people that were going to give up when the circumstances were not fair. He said many people could handle the physical part, it was the seemingly ruthless and unwarranted punishment that they couldn’t take. I think that it is fair to say that Eva Thorvald is a SEAL of the culinary world.

The story was interesting because it wasn’t a feelgood one. There were self-absorbed, idiot chefs as well a characters getting addicted to pain pills. I found myself asking ‘what is going to be this fool’s malady’? Fortunately, we only had to put up with the bad characters for a chapter. The good ones seemed to make cameo appearances throughout the book.

My overall opinion of this book is really clouded by one thing and that was the over the top extravagance of Eva’s career and life as the book moves on. Honestly, I think that this book would have been better and more believable if they would have toned down her success a little. I will give an example, Eva hosted a dinner where all the diners had to repel down a cliff to get to the table.

Maybe I am just a fuddy duddy but this sounds like cheesy, Mission Impossible stuff. I realize that most people don’t buy into that, but it definitely kind of soured the book for me. I am already kind of on the fence with haute cuisine the ostentatious descriptions but add James Bond to it and it is too much.

I think that you will like this book if you like food and fantasy. I don’t mean the Game of Thrones kind but more like the Cinderella kind. It’s hard to tell if Eva is a exotic beauty or a sasquatch by the different character’s descriptions. I will say that after all of the heartache, it is nice to know that perseverance and humility is rewarded, even if it is unbelievable.

End Your Programming Routine: It’s nice to step away from cookbooks and ‘chef-y’ memoirs, even if they are not necessarily my cup of tea. I am willing to give Stradal another chance because of his approach to stories. I can’t say that I knew where this story was going based on the disjointedness of the book. I didn’t hate it, I just didn’t like it.

November 17, 2023 – Anthem, Part 7-9

November 17, 2023 /

These three chapters are the heart of the book. I suppose it is serendipitous that I chose to break the book up in this way. So, let’s get into it.

Chapter seven begins with Equality 7-2521 marching into the World Counsel of Scholars with his lightbulb. It went exactly how I expected that it would. In fear for his life, Equality escapes the city into the forest where he is sure no one will ever come after him. After surviving the night, he understands that he will never be able to return. The next day, who shows up in the woods out of the blue but the Golden One. Apparently, she has pretty good tracking ability.

It is pretty easy pickings to figure out what to talk about with this session. It is the sunk cost fallacy and the Council of Scholars. First of all, to be in the conversation you have to be part of the group. “A Street Sweeper! A Street Sweeper walking in upon the World Counsel of Scholars! It is not to be believed! It is against all the rules and all the laws!”. The first level of security is only having conversations with those initiated and approved.

There is now a closed feedback loop for any ideas. Once Equality connected the lightbulb, now there was sheer terror in the room. For some unknown reason, the light scared the scholars. But, then the next tool that is used is the power play. “How dare you think that your mind held greater wisdom than the mind of your brothers? And if the Councils had decreed that you should be a Street Sweeper, how dared you think that you could be of greater use to men than sweeping the street?”

Oh, but why? “Then it would bring ruin to the Department of Candles. The candle is a great boon to mankind, as approved by all men. Therefore it cannot be destroyed by the whim of one man.” So, this is the real problem. I don’t know if they were shocked that someone found something that they were not supposed to or that they were scared of the technology, both are possible.

How many times have we seen something surpassed by better technology? Using the automobile, it is clear that the 2023 version is highly superior (in most aspects) to the 1963 version. I can state this empirically because looking at studies, the average age of a vehicle on the road is 12 years old. In 1963, vehicles were lucky to make it to 100,000 miles. In fact, some vehicles in the 1970s were lucky to survive more than a handful of years.

On the other hand, how many times have we seen government prevent innovation by doing things for our own good. Let us just use the minimum square footage building requirement. This is strictly to protect tax base. Look at old houses that are one bedroom and one bathroom. The way this is effecting innovation is that it is not rewarding good design. It is also wastes resources via utilities, heating, cooling and lighting unused space. I don’t think that we suffer from houses that are too small, we suffer from poorly designed houses. If there is limitless space, there is no incentive to build better structures from an ergonomics standpoint.

Finally, there are forces in the industrial military complex that desperately want to replace the A-10. But, then there are greater forces that do not see the need. Why replace something that does the job effectively. This is the final insight, money of course. If something perpetually did the job and did it well, it negatively impacts someone’s ability to profit on the change. But then again, there is always the opposite perspective of someone supporting the status quo.

End Your Programming Routine: I am resisting the urge to jump ahead since I have already finished the book at this point. But, I am controlling myself. I don’t really understand the fear of the woods outside of the city. I don’t rationalize how they travel or even have a network of other cities if they are so contained to the space. But, I guess those are questions that won’t get answered. For now, I will settle on fighting the status quo head to head is bound to be nearly impossible.