Tag: You’re Doing it Right

Rail Guns Kicking Ass

You know what’s awesome? Making a world record. Know what’s even more awesome? Breaking your own record. Following in the steps of Manowar who broke their own record for loudest concert ever, the Navy has built a rail gun that broke it’s own record for blowing shit up:

Navy scientists set a world record Friday during a test of an electromagnetic railgun, a tractor-trailer sized weapon that sends a 20-pound projectile rocketing through the air at seven times the speed of sound.

The futuristic gun was tested twice at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va., and the first shot generated 33 megajoules of force out of the barrel, a world record for muzzle energy, the scientists said.

HELL YEAH! Think about that for a moment, a gun that propels 20 pounds of projectile to seven times the speed of sound. That’s 7,882 feet per second or 5,374 miles per hour. Roughly translated that equals about FUCKING AWESOME on the awesome scale. The video the Navy put out seriously needs a heavy metal soundtrack put to it.

Of course rail guns are still illegal to use for hunting in Wisconsin.

Stopping Violence Against Women

I often hear people talking about the problem of violence against women and their desire to find a solution. When you mention arming women many of these people will give you a long spewing of bullshit on how that’s not the solution. Well Mr. Addley of Canada gets it:

With regards to Russell Williams, we must all be reminded that none of the women encountered by him had a legal right to self defense of their own persons by reason of a readily available handgun.

Thanks to Wendy Cukier every women in Canada will remain an easy target for violence due to the fact that she will never be able to avail herself of the most effective and efficient force equalizer known today.

For if any of these young women had been able to legally carry a loaded handgun they would have possessed the necessary force to repel any menacing threat that could of come their way.

A .45 caliber handgun turns a 110 lb women into a 310lb behemoth.

I really like that last line. Nothing levels the playing field in a fight like a firearm. You can be the smallest and weakest person on the planet but if you have a firearm on your person you can stand your ground against the largest and strongest person alive. This is because of a simple fact, all people have an allergy to bullet holes.

I often find it ironic that the biggest supporters and participants in the right to carry are men. Woman should be far more gung-ho about carrying firearms as they are very likely to be targets of violent criminals. You can rest assured that a rape will be thwarted if a woman shoots her would-be rapist dead.

And the Award for Biggest Bad Ass of the Year Goes To

Imagine you’re a rancher in Mexico who’s land is coveted by the local drug lords. Now imagine those very thugs came do your ranch and gave you 24 hours to vacate. What would you do? If you answered by saying you’d leave the property then you’re not nearly awesome enough to even continue reading this post. If you answered that you’d setup weapons at your windows and take down as many of those fucks as you could then you’ be Alejo Garza Tamez, a complete and total bad ass:

He defended his home like it was the Alamo.

A 77-year-old rancher gave drug-cartel thugs the fight of their lives when they tried to take possession of his sprawling property in northern Mexico, becoming a folk hero in a region ravaged by violence.

Alejo Garza Tamez turned his humble farmhouse into a fortress for his last stand — lining up his numerous hunting rifles in windows and doorways — after receiving an ultimatum on Nov. 13 from the drug-gang guerrillas to vacate within 24 hours or die.

The lionhearted rancher was ready when two truckloads of heavily armed gang members returned the next morning.

Obviously this was a man not to be fucked with. Hell the only way those thugs were able to finally end the firefight was to lob grenades into his home:

He shot so fast and furiously that the confused cartel assumed there were several people inside. Dropping their assault rifles, the thugs lobbed hand grenades into the ranch house until the shooting stopped.

When the Mexican army finally showed up after the gunfight, they found four dead and two injured gang members piled in a heap outside the shelled, bullet-pocked farmhouse.

Inside, amid a pile of rubble, was the lifeless, bullet-riddled Garza, two weapons at his side.

It’s also nice to see that the Mexican army will eventually show up… after all the shooting has concluded of course. It’s sad to see a man as bad ass as Mr. Tamez go but by God he went down in a blaze of glory. Do not give into evil would be the best phrase here.

Ron Paul Does it Again

Even if you don’t agree with Ron Paul’s stances you have to admit he’s consistent. Yesterday he introduced legislation to deal with the issue of TSA and their groping of anybody and everybody who comes through the airport. His speech was pretty good to boot:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-N5adYM7Kw]

Here is the statement from his website. The actual text of the bill hasn’t been posted online anywhere that I can see yet so I’ll reserve ultimate judgment for later. I will say through that I’m optimistic considering Dr. Paul’s track record.

Android Advantage

Yes I go back and forth on the advantages and disadvantages of Android. You have to give me credit on one thing, I’m not a fan boy.

One of the problems I have with my Evo 4G is the generally buggy nature of the included software. Android 2.2 had a lot of troubles with their media layer that were finally sorted out around the release of 2.2.1. The main problem is HTC hasn’t released an update with the new version of Android yet so audio I’ve left paused for a long time is likely to start from the beginning again when I press the play button. This along with a bug that impairs my phones Exchange syncing capabilities (it can’t properly sync with my work’s calendar most of the time and when the calendar sync fails it refuses to sync e-mail as well) has left me rather agitated with Android.

Thankfully Android is an open source operating system and hence anybody is free to roll their own version. Personally I’m far too lazy to do such a thing so I rely on others. For the last several days I’ve been running Cyanogenmod on my phone and frankly it fixes all the issues I’ve had with my phone.

The downside is I lose the ability to use 4G (which I rarely use due to it being a power hog) and HDMI out (which I’ve never used and don’t even have a cable for). Those features will most likely come in a future release so I’m not worried and keep a backup of my old ROM for instances where I need those features. What I like is the fact the features I use on a more daily basis (Last.fm, Pandora, and Exchange synchronization) all work perfectly now.

When people say Android is open this is what they mean. Of course you need to have a NAND unlocked phone in order to install a different ROM so you’re likely limited to more popular phones (as those are the ones hackers work on rooting and unlocking NAND on). Even with that restriction in place the fact of the matter is if you don’t like your current ROM you can swap it out on a lot of phones.

A Failure of Understanding

Quite a while ago a socialist news site did an article entitled Top 10 Jobs in Libertarian Paradise. It was the usual socialist stream of bullshit that proclaimed doom and gloom should big government ever go away. I mostly ignored it as it was over-the-top stupid but then I saw the very well done counter-article on The UK Libertarian (I’m pleasantly surprised they still have libertarians in the UK).

The main problem with people who’ve grown up with large government is they are completely unable to imagine a world that works without said government. Anybody with some knowledge of history knows that countries can survive and prosper without a large government. If you’re in the first group I highly advise you to read the linked UK Libertarian article and learn how those of us on the other side of politics think.

Comcast Business Service

I do a lot of bitching on this site but rarely am I able to give out compliments. Consider this post one of those rare changes. For those of you unaware the connection I have at my apartment is Comcast Business. I did this for several reasons include the desire to have a static IP address and the only other options being Comcast Residential (which his horrible from what I’ve heard) or Qwest (which is also horrible from what I’ve heard).

Yesterday afternoon my Internet connection died (I know it was in the afternoon because that’s when my VPN tunnel exited and I couldn’t reestablish it). When I got home I did the usual dance of rebooting the router and such which lead to no change. So I decided to call Comcast for the first time. The support line for their Residential and Business services are completely separate from what I can tell as it took me less than five minutes to talk to a living human being (who had no accent I might add).

Mind you this is around 6:30 at night. The support agent had me redo my dance of rebooting the router which I did just to humor him at this point (frankly it takes less time than arguing that it’s a pointless gesture as I’ve already tried it). Once the router rebooted the support agent was still unable to see it so he wrote up a trouble ticket and dispatched a field agent. Around 8:00 p.m. the field agent showed up, came up to my apartment, checked the line, and found there was no signal. At this point we went down to the electrical closet where we learned somebody had disconnected my line (again, this is the third time somebody mucking about in there has disconnected my service). Once it was reconnected I was good to go.

I have to say Comcast’s Residential service may suck major donkey balls but their Business service is pretty bad ass. I can get a support agent there 24/7 instead of having to take off of work and wait three hours for somebody to show up. Anyways I’m a happy customer at this point.

Three Gun Competition

Yesterday I partook in my first three gun competition. For my maiden voyage I accompanies a friend and a group of his friends down to Holmen, Wisconsin. First I must say the competition was a ton of fun. I shot heavy metal using my Glock 21SF, Springfield M1A SOCOM 16, and my friends bright yellow Remington 870.

The pistol potions gave me little trouble thanks to USPSA. Shotgun portions provided me some trouble as reloading an 870, like most shotguns, is tedious. I feel I did so-so on the rifle portions except for the last stage where a combination of a really fat front sight, small targets at 90 yards, and my lack of ability to shoot caused me some headaches. Most of the people there agree the stages were all design by a sadist but honestly I found them to be incredibly fun. It was certainly a challenge and I can’t wait for the next one. I’ve only found one downside to three gun and that is the price; it’s going to cost me a lot of money in the future.

I also learned a couple of lessons. First make sure you don’t place your body anywhere near those clay pigeon throwers activated by falling steel plates. If the plate falls and hits you in the shoulder it’s going to suck really hard for the rest of the day. The second lesson is the fact that the laws of thermodynamics haven’t changed so grabbing the top rail on the SOCOM after shooting a lot of rounds is going to lead to a burning sensation in your hand. Finally I learned that continuing to shoot a 7.62x51mm battle rifle when your shoulder is already very sore is not a sound tactical choice.

Reddit Shoot

As I continue to live up here int he Twin Cities area I keep acquiring new people to hand out with. There is a sub-reddit called /r/twincitiessocial. We have beer meet ups ever Friday and it’s what you’d expect from an event populated mostly by Internet nerds such as myself. This weekend we decided to do something different in the form of a group shoot at a friend’s house. This shoot consisted of several first time shooters including a few people from other countries (Canada, which really isn’t a country but our secret 51st state, and India namely).

We had enough Mosin Nagant rifles there to arm a small malnutrition communist army. Beyond Mosins there was a various assortment of firepower include my M1A SOCOM 16, a couple of AR-15s, a couple of 1911s, a few Glocks, some Kahrs, and a partridge in a pear tree… which was shot down by the Mossberg 500.

The shoot went very well and I think we created some new shooters out of the event. The only hitch in the day was when a super mutant showed up. Thankfully the Canadian guy knew his V.A.T.S. system and scored a direct shot to the eyes for some critical damage:

V.A.T.S.