New Mosin-Nagant and Ruger P-90 Range Report

After the girls went down for their afternoon nap I drove over to Surplus City to see if he had anything neat in stock. I looked at a few interesting toys, including a mint-condition HK-94 carbine. It was sweet, but he was asking $2400. Since that's a bit out of my price range I just picked up another Mosin-Nagant.

The rifle I got today is an M1938 carbine made at the Soviet Ishevsk arsenal in 1941, and subsequently arsenal refurbished. The workmanship on the metal, while not outstanding, doesn't have the "gnawed out of steel by beavers" look typical of Mosin-Nagants made from 1942 - 44. As with most M1938s I've seen, it has an M-1944 stock, identifiable by the cutout for the '44's folding bayonet. The stock is laminated wood (a fancy term for plywood) finished with varnish. It's stamped with a square with a diagonal line through it, indicating the rifle was arsenal reworked. The bore is in excellent condition and I didn't see any obvious pitting underneath the bluing on any of the metal. As with every other M1938 I've seen, save one, the muzzle has been counterbored. The action is pretty smooth for a Mosin, although my M1891/30 and Finnish m/39 have better triggers. Not bad for $115 OTD.

The M1938 came without any accessories, so I need to find an appropriate sling. I already have plenty of Soviet 7.62x54R in clips, the M-N combo tool, and a mag pouch or two. Once equipped with a sling, the M1938 would make a dandy gun for bumming around with in the woods. It's light and handy, and points well. It's main drawback is the rather unergonomic safety, and it might be faster to get into action with the safety off and the bolt closed on an empty chamber.

While I couldn't shoot the Mosin tonight I was able to go to the Lower Providence Rod & Gun Club indoor range with my dad, and brought along my Ruger P-90. I picked this up back in June and up until tonight it had 116 rounds of Sellier & Bellot .45 ACP Ball through it without any issues. Earlier this week I received from Midway two more OEM magazines and a Bianchi 5L holster, so I really wanted to put some more rounds through it.

I brought along 3 boxes of .45 230 grain FMJ ammo. One box was Wolf while the others were Federal American Eagle. Incidentally, the Ruger manual specifically states that the gun is made to shoot any factory .45 ACP made with brass, aluminum, or steel cases.

I started off with the Wolf. It fed and ejected flawlessly, but two rounds failed to fire the first time the hammer dropped. Both rounds went off on the second strike. I've shot a fair amount of Wolf ammo previously in .45 ACP, .223, and 7.62x39 and this is the first time I've had any problems. I'll continue to buy it but for practice only, and may get the chance to practice immediate action drills. As with my Springfield M1911, the Wolf ammo shot as accurately as American-made ammo.

The American Eagle ammo was cleaner and less smoky than the Wolf. I had one instance of premature slide lock with it in one of the new mags. My mags are numbered. One time when running magazine #3 the slide locked back after the seventh round, leaving the 8th round sitting on top of the feed lips. I ran several magazine-fulls through the magazine after this malf and had no issues. I'm not sure if it's ammo or mag-related, or just a case of poop happens. With a single possibly gun-related malf in 216 rounds I am comfortable that the Ruger is a gun I can stake my life on.

After 150 rounds, 50 of which were rather dirty Wolf, the Ruger cleaned up in about 10 minutes using only Ballistol. As an experiment, I am using only Ballistol for lubrication and cleaning of the P-90 for the first 500 or so rounds. So far, so good. After about 500 rounds I'll clean the gun with Hoppe's No.9 to see if I can tell any difference in the results.

Dad shot his S&W Model 627 (".357 Mag - Eight Times") and Model 625. The latter, especially, is scary accurate, which mirrors my brother's an my experience with our 625s.

Letters to my politicritters

Today I sent the following letter to Bush, Specter, Santorum and Gerlach:

I am one of your consituents, a long-time registered Republican, and I vote in every election.

I have seen the news reports of policemen and National Guard soldiers disarming law abiding citizens of New Orleans. I AM DISGUSTED AND APPALLED. We have the government, which has failed in its most essential function -- protecting its citizens from thugs -- now disarming them after having left them on their own. This action sets a very dangerous precedent should it be allowed to stand.

The police officers and soldiers in question are violating the civil rights guaranteed to all Americans by the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. Moreover, they appear to be doing so selectively. Private civilian security contractors like those from Blackwater are being allowed to retain their weapons, while homeowners guarding what remains of their property are not. Even in Iraq, our policy has been to allow at least one Kalashnikov rifle per household. NEW ORLEANS IS IN AMERICA. THESE DISARMED PEOPLE ARE BEING THROWN TO THE WOLVES.

This civilian disarmament must stop IMMEDIATELY and those responsible need to be brought to justice. If the Republican-controlled legislature and executive branch can't do something to stop this civilian disarmament, the Republican party will have been shown to be no different from the Democrats, despite all the rhetoric about Republicans favoring individual responsibility vs. Democrat nanny statism.

I am following this situation closely and await your reply.

Feel free to plagiarize it for your own correspondence if you want.

New Orleans Gun Confiscations

The NOPD has begun door-to-door gun confiscations. (Link points to GeekWithA.45.) Let me get this straight:

1. The city government -- including the NOPD -- does next to nothing to prepare for a disaster of Biblical proportions,
2. Due to its incompetence, the NOPD allows thugs to take over the city during the disaster,
3. Thereby failing to perform the government's most essential function, and
4. Now that it has failed to protect its citizens, is disarming them so they are unable to defend themselves.

Not only is the NOLA government guilty of dereliction of duty, it is actively placing its citizens in harm's way. I wonder how many good guys are going to die as the result of this?

Gerber Recon LED Flashlight

REI held their Labor Day sale over the weekend and I wound up buying a Gerber Recon LED flashlight for around half off, about $15; regular price there is $29.95.

The Recon is an interesting little light. It runs off a single AA cell, but what makes it special is the rotating bezel which allows you to select white, blue, red, or green filters. White is for general use, blue for IDing fluids (i.e., blood), red for preserving night vision, and green for map reading. It weighs 2.6 oz. and has a clip for a pocket, or you can attach it to the brim of a cap. I wouldn't want to rely on the clip to secure it to my hat if I was doing anything strenuous, however. The base of the Recon has a hole big enough to put a piece of paracord through for use as a lanyard.

Even with the white lens, the Recon is not very bright. Compared with the single AA cell Gerber tasklight I picked up a couple months ago in a combo pack with one of their Multitools, the Recon is much less powerful. It is useful for small, closeup tasks, but I'd want more light if I was using it to walk around in the dark. In contrast, the task light I've had for awhile (no longer listed by Gerber but is very similar to this one, which is bright enough for navigating around in the dark. I attribute the difference in brightness to the task light's better reflector.

The task light supposedly has a burn time of 100 hours on one AA alkaline cell, while I can't find info on Gerber's page or in the packaging for run time.

One good feature is that the bezel has a flat on it which allows you to line up the red lens over the LED by feel before you turn it on, so you don't inadvertantly hose your night vision.

As with every other Gerber product I've handled or owned, the Recon's quality appears top-notch.

Although its utility is limited by low output, since it's so light the Recon could make a useful companion to a more powerful flashlight.

Ford recalls some pick ups and SUVs

I just found this via Yahoo:

Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday recalled 3.8 million pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles for a cruise control switch suspected of causing engine fires. It is the fifth largest auto industry recall in U.S. history.

Ford said the recall of 1994-2002 model-year vehicles includes the company's hot-selling F-150 pickup truck, Ford Expedition, Lincoln Navigator and Ford Broncos. The company said it would start sending out recall notices to vehicle owners immediately.

Crap, my Expedition is a '97. Looks like it'll be spending some time in the shop.

Comment spam

Damn asshole spammers are starting to spam my comments. I just activated the image verification feature, which'll require you to type a word displayed as an image into a form to verify that a human rather than some spambot is trying to comment.

Sorry 'bout that. Blame the asshole spammers.

Ham radio operators in action down South

From the Wall Street Journal:

With Hurricane Katrina having knocked out nearly all the high-end emergency communications gear, 911 centers, cellphone towers and normal fixed phone lines in its path, ham-radio operators have begun to fill the information vacuum. "Right now, 99.9% of normal communications in the affected region is nonexistent," says David Gore, the man operating the ham radio in the Monroe shelter. "That's where we come in."

So far, so good.

In an age of high-tech, real-time gadgetry, it's the decidedly unsexy ham radio -- whose technology has changed little since World War II -- that is in high demand in ravaged New Orleans and environs. The Red Cross issued a request for about 500 amateur radio operators -- known as "hams" -- for the 260 shelters it is erecting in the area. The American Radio Relay League, a national association of ham-radio operators, has been deluged with requests to find people in the region. The U.S. Coast Guard is looking for hams to help with its relief efforts.

I guess these people haven't seen any newer radios, like my Yaesu VX-5RS. The technology has change a lot, and not just the radios themselves. Aside from them, you now have Internet-linked repeaters like Echolink, IRLP, and eQSO to merge ham radio and VOIP.

Still, technical mistakes aside, it's nice to see ham radio getting some good press.

Lessons learned from the New Orleans Bug Out

There's a good thread going on over at THR about lessons learned from the bug out situation down in New Orleans. I'll repost my contribution regarding emergency communications here:

I haven't seen emergency comms mentioned yet so here's my $0.02...

Charged cell phones along with car chargers, or your regular wall charger + a power inverter for the car. IF you are in an area where they work, a cell phone can let you call relatives/friends outside the danger area.

FRS/GMRS radios. FRS doesn't require a license, while GMRS does (although it's just a fee, no test required, and the license covers your immediate family). Good for short range commo, e.g., between vehicles in a bug out situation. GMRS gives you somewhat longer range, though both require line of sight. FRS/GMRS radios can be picked up cheap at any of the big box stores, from Home Depot to WalMart, to Radio Shack. If you keep an eye out you may be able to find them DIRT CHEAP. E.g., I got a pair of Midland FRS/GMRS last year from MidwayUSA for the whopping sum of $6 + S&H.

CB radio. No license required. These are still useful, although you do hear a lot of garbage, much of which is not suitable for sensitive ears. I have a portable in my truck with an external magnet-mount whip antenna. It's great for listening to truckers for real-time traffic reports and has kept me out of several jams. Also good for short-range commo. Most CBs are AM, but Single Side Band CBs will give you longer range, although you'll only be able to talk to other SSB CB users.

Ham (Amateur) radio. Here's where it gets good, IMO. I got my ticket last month. Although you need a license, the entry-level Technician class license isn't hard to get, and the info you learn while studying for the exam can be useful. You can get a good handheld (AKA "handie talkie" or "HT") for as little as $100 which will allow you to transmit and receive on the 2M FM band. These are good for commo up to several miles if you have line of sight. I can hit a 2M repeater ~10 miles away from inside my house with my Yaesu VX-5RS. Once I get my General ticket I'll be able to use the HF bands and transmit much longer distances without relying on a repeater.

Hams are currently in action down in the area affected by Katrina. Among other things, they've been able to direct rescue personnel to people stranded by floodwaters.

I don't want to encourage unlicensed use, but in an emergency FCC rules about unlicensed transmission go out the window. You're allowed to use any means of communication to secure aid to preserve human life or property against immediate threats. IMO, the most important part about getting one's ham license is getting familiar with proper operating procedures, which are critical when TSHTF.

Satellite phone is another option, although I have little knowledge of it.

A NOAA weather radio should be in your disaster kit, if one of your other radios doesn't also pick up these channels. In my case, my Midland CB already does, so I don't have a separate unit.

A portable AM/FM radio for listening to local news reports. If it picks up shortwave or the NOAA weather channels, it'll be more versatile. Some also allow you to listen to the audio portion of TV broadcasts. I'm currently shopping for a multi-band AM/FM/SW radio so if anyone has recommendations, I'm all ears.

Don't forget plenty of batteries, chargers, appropriate AC adapters, and a power inverter so you can plug them into the cigarrette lighter in your vehicle.

Free Opera Browser Registration

Opera is celebrating the 10th anniversary of their browser by making free registration codes available for a limited time. Opera is doing this from 12am August 30th to 12am August 31st PDT. Go here to get your free codes.

I'll still rely on Firefox as my main browser, but Opera is nice and I do like to use it sometimes.

I defiled Bagend today

Long-time readers may remember that the new PC I built for myself back last Fall is named Bagend. Heretofore, it's been running SUSE Linux Professional, first v9.0, but soon upgraded to v9.2. Since I picked up my iBook back in December, it's been mostly idle, though.

Today, I defiled it. I backed up all my data to DVD-R, wiped the drive, and installed Windows XP.

{Pauses to let the screams die down.}

I have need of a Windows box, and more importantly, need to be able to print to my Samsung ML-1710 printer over the LAN. I was able to get the printer working OK locally, but never got SUSE configured right to let me print from other local hosts. Printing in Linux still sucks, IMHO, and I don't have the time to dink with it.

The Windows install went pretty smoothly. I couldn't find the driver CDs for my Asus A7N8X-X mobo or Asus/ATI Radeon 9200SE video card. Bagend has a 3Com 3C-905TX NIC in it, so the fact that XP didn't see the onboard nVidia NIC wasn't fatal, nor was XP's inability to see the onboard Realtek AC-97 audio. I downloaded the drivers from Asus' website and got them both working. I'll yank the 3Com card for my parts bin eventually.

The box is running smoothly under Windows. It's pretty fast, with an AMD AlthonXP 2200+, 512 MB of RAM, and an 80 GB hard disk (35 GB for C: with the rest for D:).

So far, I've added a bunch of my regular Windows programs:

• AVG Free Antivirus
• Spybot Search & Destroy
• Lavasoft Ad-Aware PE
• CoreFTP
• Quicktime
• Firefox
• iTunes
• Cygwin
• Irfanview

I'll install OpenOffice.org, a PDF creation tool, and other stuff as time goes on. Since I don't anticipate burning a lot of discs, I'm probably going to use CDBurnerXP Pro for CD and DVD creation.

Excuse me, I need to go wash.

Renovations

We've been getting a lot of work done around the house this Summer. (Yay for real estate appreciation and home equity loans!)

A couple of weeks ago we had the water heater replaced. Water heaters last about 10 years around here due to the incredible amount of lime in the water. Our old one's ability to heat the water had seriously degraded, to the point where we only got lukewarm water from the tap. The other risk you run with an old heater is a flood. I experienced that once when living with my folks and don't want it here. The same day, our plumber also replaced several of the old shutoff valves in the house with new ball valves that make it a lot easier to cut off the water to a faucet.

Last week, we got a new gas fireplace to replace the old, unsafe POS that came with the house. It looks one hell of a lot nicer than the old one, and gives off a lot more heat. A part was missing from the fireplace, and we're still waiting for it. We also need to have an electrician run a 110v line to power the blowers, and I'll need to finish wooden base of our marble-topped hearth. I'm leaning towards boiled linseed oil or tung oil, since we like the natural wood color.

Yesterday and today we got new Certainteed windows all around. The house still had the original, circa 1958 windows. Aside from lacking insulating value, they leaked like sieves and we couldn't open all of them due to problems with the screens. We used a local contractor who's done a ton of work in my neighborhood, including the new gutters and soffets we got last year. What an improvement.

Our living and dining rooms are a construction zone. The original owner had installed a few huge floor-to-ceiling mirrors and decorative beams. The mirrors were both obnoxious and detrimental -- the idiot who installed them blocked air vents. The beams looked OK but the three against the front wall prevented us from installing the windowscreens in the living room (now a moot issue due to the new windows). We wanted them gone anyway, for a cleaner look. The guy doing the living and dining room wanted to wait to finish until the window guys were done, so the new paint doesn't get FUBARed, which is sensible. We're hoping he'll be finished by the end of next week.

The final project and which will probably add the most value to the house is getting our master bathroom completely gutted down to the studs, and everything from the plumbing on up replaced. We're looking at September for this to get done.

It's all costing an assload of money, but we think it'll be worth it. It's greatly improving the livibility of the house, while the windows and fireplace should help to pay for themselves in reduced utility bills. With the way real estate has been going we can't afford a new home in Montgomery County, and we're tied to the area. So, it makes more sense to fluff 'n' buff the old place. We'll be here a long time.

MFJ1720S Antenna

After reading some of the reviews on eHam.net, last week I picked up an MFJ1720S tri-band antenna for my Yaesu VX-5RS. I wanted something that offered better transmission and reception performance than the stock rubber duckie.

The MFJ1720S is 19" long, so it's quarter-wave for 2M and 6M (due to end loading, I guess), and 5/8 wave for 70cm. It can handle up to 10W transmit power; my VX-5RS will Tx at 5W max. It's pretty whippy and I may tie some orange or yellow plastic to the tip to help prevent anyone from poking out an eye.

I got to use the new antenna for the first time Sunday night, when I checked into the 2030 MARC net (I really need to send in my membership app for MARC) on 2M. I asked for a signal report, and net control told me that while there was some background noise, they were able to understand me just fine over the repeater. From my listening point, there was some background white noise, and of course it's easier to setup with this thing than my homebrewed J-Pole.

So far, it works good on 2M but I haven't been able to try it out while talking to anyone on 6M or 70cm.

.30 Carbine Defense Ammunition

The M1 Carbine is one of my favorite rifles. It is, in my opinion, and excellent choice as a defensive carbine for civilians due to its reliability (in USGI form, anyway), nearly nonexistent recoil, light weight, and excellent handling. .30 Carbine FMJ Ball is not a great choice for defense though, because it fails to take advantage of the round's ballistics and penetrates too much. (See for example, some of the testing done in the Box O' Truth.) But a good expanding load turns an M1 Carbine into the ballistic equivalent of a semiauto .357 Magnum rifle, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Yesterday at the Rally Point Shoot, I got the chance to speak with Mike Shovel, Sales Manager for Cor-Bon. I asked him if CB is working on defensive ammo for .30 Carbine. He informed me that they are.

The Cor-Bon .30 Carbine load is being developed around a Barnes X-Bullet (solid copper HP). I've seen the Internet rumors about a PowerBall .30 Carbine but apparently they're going with the Barnes. The final load will probably have a 100 grain bullet going about 1800 - 1900 FPS. What's proving difficult is getting it to feed reliably in the M1, which wasn't designed for anything but Ball. They currently have no estimated time-to-market, but are working on it.

Currently, the three most commonly available expanding loads for .30 Carbine are Remington's 110 grain jacketed soft point, Winchester's 110 grain jacketed hollow/soft point, and Federal's jacketed soft point. Of the three, the Remington performs the best in ballistic gelatin tests with Winchester placing second. The Federal JSPs apparently perform like FMJ Ball.

Jim Cirrillo, formerly of the NYPD's Stakeout Squad, has written in the past that the Winchester load performed very well in actual shootings. He's said that it puts the bad guys down about as fast as anything else.

So far the only soft points I've put through my Underwood M1 have been Magtech 110 grain JSPs. Unortunately, I had several failures to feed with it. The Magtech ammo was clean but seemed a bit underpowered, compared to the RA-52 Ball I subsequently shot.

When I had an Iver Johnson Carbine back in the 1980s, I did some handloading for it using Speer 100 grain half jacket "Plinker" bullets, doing about 1800 - 1900 FPS at the muzzle. They were reliable but less accurate than 110 grain loads, especially at 100 yards.

A correspondent has reported handloading Remington 110 grain JSPs to about 1900 FPS on top of WC820 powder (surplus H110). (I won't post specific powder charges, check a reloading manual and carefully work up to maximum loads!) He's noted that it's reliable, and of course with those number it should provide good terminal ballistics.

Perhaps less interesting, I also ran 50 rounds of Wolf .30 Carbine through my Underwood M1 yesterday. It functioned fine, although this is obviously a very limited test. I've generally had good results with Wolf in .223, 7.62x39, and .45 ACP, so I wanted to check out a potentially good practice load in .30 Carbine. I'll put another couple hundred rounds of Wolf through the M1 before I sink any money into a case, though. I did have one stovepipe with the gun later, but it was RA-52 Ball that came from a sealed can I bought from Ammonman a couple of years ago. Go figure.

The Rally Point Shoot August 20, 2005

Yesterday I went to The Rally Point Shoot held at Water & Wings in East Greenville, PA. Total turnout was about 50 people, including several new shooters. Kudos go out to the organizers, Jamie, Geoff, and all the other folks who helped out, for putting together a well-organized, safe event.

First, a couple shots of the 50 yard range:





A few of the neat guns seen (yes, the first one is an M-60 machinegun):









And finally, the group pic. The gent in the yellow shirt on the far left is Jamie, the primary organizer. I'm all the way on the right, kneeling in a boonie hat, and holding my Lithgow Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk.III*, compleat with bayonet.



Feinstein, Schumer, et al. can go FOAD.

Edit: Argh! So much for using Yahoo Photos for picture hosting. I uploaded them to building-tux.com so they should be visible for everyone now.

SUSE 9.3 Initial Impressions

I loaded SUSE 9.3 onto my test Dell D600 this morning. This is a dual-boot box, with Windows XP Pro on one partition, and SUSE on the other half of the drive, divided roughly in half between / and /home. Rather than doing an "upgrade," which based on prior experience takes a long time, I did a clean install.

As with previous SUSE installs, YaST handled things pretty easily, although I had to tweak the video settings a bit to get anything more than 640x480. Also, sound isn't working yet, although I had the same problem with 9.2 and never got around to fixing it.

One thing I noticed almost immediately is that 9.3 is more responsive than 9.2. KDE 3.4.0 Level b is noticeably snappier than previous versions that I've worked with. Also, the Adobe Acrobat browser plugin is much, much faster inside Firefox than I've seen on any other computer.

SUSE 9.3 isn't without its faults, however. I've noticed that changes to network settings made in YaST sometimes need a reboot, when they are something that should take effect after reloading the network config. E.g., changing IP or DNS settings. And, as mentioned above, sound isn't yet working and video while acceptable, isn't yet optimal.

That said, SUSE 9.3 is definitely worth a gander if you're in need of a desktop Linux distributions.

Back in the office

I'm back from my trip to NY.

Aside from general catch-up, this afternoon I grabbed all five ISOs for SUSE 9.3 from Opensuse.org. Historically, SUSE has been available for download only as an FTP install, or as a live CD/DVD. Novell recently changed that and appears to be moving to a Red Hat/Fedora Core development model for SUSE Professional. Although the first beta of SUSE 10 is up, I'm not interested in beta software now.

I plan to upgrade the SUSE 9.2 install on my test Dell D600 at work, which is a dual boot machine also running XP Pro. A coworked is planning to setup an XP desktop box in our lab as another dual boot machine. And Bagend, my neglected-of-late homebrewed Athlon box will get updated as well.

I'm hoping that SUSE 9.3 fixes two major bugs that I encountered with 9.2, to wit:

• On both the D600 and Bagend, I'm unable to run any of the Mozilla apps (Mozilla, Firebird, or Thunderbird) within KDE. They all segfault if launched in KDE, but work ok under Windowmaker or if I run a them from an X session exported to my iBook.
• On the D600, K3B consistently crashes if I try to burn an ISO image to CD (which is why I'm burning the SUSE 9.3 ISOs using Nero Burning ROM on Windows XP).

I'll follow up with my impressions of the new OS after I've taken it for a spin.

Finished with the VOD testing

It looks like I've completing testing the video on demand testing after finishing testing our third transport media yesterday. Now I need to finish my formal writeup and arrange for the gear to be shipped to another department for its testing.

I am glad to no longer have this hanging over my head, that's for sure.

Side note: I'm heading up to NY to visit a terminally ill relative so I won't be posting for a couple of days.

My first Ham contact

Last night I made my first ham contact. But first, a discussion about antennas.

As I previously posted, for my first radio I picked up a Yaesu VX-5RS handy talkie ("HT"). As with most other HTs, it came with a "rubber ducky" antenna. Rubber duckies are good for compactness but not much else. They don't work well if you don't have direct line of sight to the other party to your radio conversation.

One way to improve the situation is to use a J-Pole antenna. They can be constructed cheaply from 300 Ohm twin-lead TV antenna wire. So, over the weekend I picked up a 50 foot lenght of the stuff, along with a 10 foot RG58 coaxial cable terminated with BNC connectors on both ends.

The problem I ran into when making the J-Pole was that I kept breaking one wire or another when trying to strip off a length of it. After several tries and many cusswords, I decided to look around the house and see what other kind of wire I had that I could use. Then I remembered I had a bunch of Romex 3 conductor electrical wire, as used in AC house wiring. I had a scrap piece that was about the right length. Bingo!

The Romex conductors are solid copper, rather than the stranded conductors found in twin-lead. Also, they are a much heavier gauge. After I stripped off the outer sheath, I used the two insulated wires, setting aside the uninsulated wire used for a ground. I was then easily able to strip a couple of inches off the end of each wire. I bent about a quarter inch at each end and soldered them together after placing them in a vice.

Then I cut one BNC connector off the piece of coax, stripped it so a length of the center conductor was exposed, and twisted the braided shield into a wire. The center conductor got soldered to the white piece of Romex, while I soldered the braid to the black piece.

I cut the black piece to the same length as shown in the linked diagram, you don't need the piece above the cut. The white piece was cut to 54". To keep the two wires separated, I took some wood pegs I had on hand and used them as spacers, holding them in place with electrical tape. The soldered joints were also taped.

Finally, I made a loop with a plastic cable tie and taped it to the end of the J-Pole, so the whole thing can be hung up.

I'll admit, it looks like a Bubba job, but as I found out, it works pretty darn well.

I took my new antenna and the radio into the den and looked around for something to hang it on. Nothing, so I went back into my shop and got a 4 foot plastic level, which I jammed vertically in between the cushions on my sofa, and hung the J-Pole on it using a tie wrap. Bubba indeed!

Connecting the coax to my radio in lieu of the rubber ducky, I tuned to around 145 Mhz and started scanning. I quickly came upon the Wednesday night WB3JOE MARC net on 145.130 MHz. After RTFMing, I setup the Yaesu to connect to the repeater and join the net.

It should be noted that the repeater is located in Paoli, about 15 miles away from me in Plymouth Meeting. So, it seems to me that the antenna works pretty well considering (a) the distance I am from the repeater, (b) the fact that I was inside at ground level, and (c) the low power -- 5W -- I was transmitting. It should work even better outside with the antenna elevated more.

The net had participants from as far away as Lancaster, PA and Avalon, NJ, although I'm not sure if they were connecting via linked repeaters or directly. Net control was handled by Ian, KB3JAH. Everyone was very welcoming to this newbie and I'm looking forward to future nets.

Got my ham ticket today

Damn that was fast. I checked the FCC's ULS database online today and the "paperwork" (in quotes because it was submitted electronically) for my no-code Technician's license was processed. I now have my call letters and can start transmitting.

w00t!

Fun with ifconfig on Mac OS-X

One of the UNIX utilities I use all the time on OS-X is ifconfig, the command line program for configuring your computer's network interfaces. Since I often have a terminal window open, I find it faster to use ifconfig to find out my IP address than to open the System Preferences > Network utility. If you run ifconfig in a terminal without any arguments, you get output that looks like this:

Dave-Markowitzs-Computer:~ davemarkowitz$ ifconfig
lo0: flags=8049 mtu 16384
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
gif0: flags=8010 mtu 1280
stf0: flags=0<> mtu 1280
en0: flags=8863 mtu 1500
inet 10.25.10.51 netmask 0xfffffc00 broadcast 10.25.11.255
ether 00:0d:93:70:ed:44
media: autoselect (100baseTX ) status: active
supported media: none autoselect 10baseT/UTP 10baseT/UTP 10baseT/UTP 100baseTX 100baseTX 100baseTX
en1: flags=8863 mtu 1500
ether 00:11:24:26:23:5f
media: autoselect () status: inactive
supported media: autoselect
fw0: flags=8863 mtu 2030
lladdr 00:0d:93:ff:fe:70:ed:44
media: autoselect status: inactive
supported media: autoselect

If you just want to find out your IP, pipe the output to grep, like so:

Dave-Markowitzs-Computer:~ davemarkowitz$ ifconfig | grep inet
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
inet 10.25.10.51 netmask 0xfffffc00 broadcast 10.25.11.255

As you can see, it's a lot easier to sort out your IP address with grep.

Something I've been using a bit lately in the lab when testing equipment on one physical network which has two logical networks running on it, is to use IP aliasing. With IP aliasing you can use ifconfig to assign your network interface a second IP, simultaneous address.

For example, as you can see from the above example, my Ethernet port currently is assigned the IP address 10.25.10.51. If I need to also be on the 192.168.0.x network, I can add an address in that subnet, like so:

Dave-Markowitzs-Computer:~ davemarkowitz$ sudo ifconfig en0 alias 192.168.0.20 255.255.255.0
Password:
Dave-Markowitzs-Computer:~ davemarkowitz$ ifconfig | grep inet
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
inet 10.25.10.51 netmask 0xfffffc00 broadcast 10.25.11.255
inet 192.168.0.20 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 255.255.255.0

Notice that you need to prefix the ifconfig command with sudo, because ifconfig needs to run with administrative privileges. When you get the password prompt, enter your user password, not the root password. (Sudo implementations on other OSes may differ. E.g., on SUSE Linux you'd need to enter the root password.)

Finally, to remove an incorrect or unneeded IP alias, do this:

Dave-Markowitzs-Computer:~ davemarkowitz$ sudo ifconfig en0 -alias 192.168.0.20

More information about how to use ifconfig can be found by reading its man page ("man ifconfig").

Incidentally, I've replaced Apple's default Terminal.app with iTerm. It's open source and more configurable than Terminal.app, and most important to me, offers tabbed console windows. I highly recommend it.

Passed the Ham test

I passed the no-code Technician's amateur radio license exam yesterday morning. ASSuming that my forms don't get lost in the mail, I should have my call letters by the end of the week.

The exam wasn't very difficult; 35 multiple choice questions. It probably took me less than 10 minutes to finish the test. I used three things for studying:

1. "Now You're Talking!" published by the American Radio Relay League.
2. "Amateur Radio No-Code Technician License Examination Study Guide and Workbook," by Bruce Spratling, W8BBS. (PDF document.)
3. The free online tests at QRZ.com.

If you're interested in taking the Tech exam, my suggestion is to read through Now You're Talking!, and review all the questions at the end of each section. Then go through the PDF. Finally, take as many of the QRZ.com tests as you have time for.

I've found some good websites about ham radio, too:

1. eHam.net has a very nice equipment and vendor review section, plus forums.
2. Hamforum.com
3. ar-jedi from AR15.com has a real nice portable setup.

Amazon Associate Program

This morning I signed up for the Amazon.com Associate program. With how long I've been on the 'net I should've done this a long time ago. I'm good at procrastinating, though.

The first item I'll link to as a recommendation is the Keystone USA-19HS USB-DB9 serial adapter. I have an Inland USB-serial adapter but it's apparently not Mac OS-compatible. I wanted something so I could use my iBook to access the console port on network elements. So, after some googling, I found the Keyspan unit, ordered it from Amazon, and it came yesterday. It requires a driver to be installed but doing so is very simple. For a console program I'm trying ZTerm. So far, so good.

Back in the lab

Today I'm back in the lab over in Moorestown to resume my streaming video testing.

When I left here on Friday I had five MPEG-2 streams running through our Blonder-Tongue MegaPort Gateway. When I came in they were all dead. I was able to login to the MPG and everything looked OK, but when I tried to start a stream it died within a couple of minutes. So, I rebooted the MPG and tried again. This time the video stayed up for a few minutes then tanked. I'm not yet sure if the problem is with the BT or the nCube server. Either way, I don't think trying to stream video over the BTs is going to be a vialbe solution, with the low number of simultaneous streams it can handle.

Wireless site visit

Yesterday I had to swing by the golf club where I installed a wifi hotspot back in the Spring. One of the guys there was concerned about low signal levels and wanted to ensure that it would be working OK for a conference being held there this Thursday.

I got there yesterday afternoon and fired up my iBook. I saw that the signal levels were fine, just as good as when I replaced the SMC WAPs with Netgears. We simultaneously checked with another employee's Dell laptop sporting a Linksys Wireless-G card. Afterwards, I doublechecked with my Dell with its Netgear Wireless-G card.

Being able to check with three different computers eliminated the possibility that a bad NIC would skew results. It also served to demonstrate that radio reception is dependent not only upon how strong a signal is being transmitted, but by how good the receiving antenna is.

As I've previously noticed, my iBook has a very good antenna built-in for the Airport Extreme card. The Netgear and Linksys PCMCIA adapters in the two Dells, however, don't have as much gain, and therefore have inferior reception.

One can buy wireless cards with high gain antennas for PCs. If you find yourself using hotspots but handicapped with poor reception, you might look around and see what's available with a high gain antenna. (I don't have any recommendations, unfortunately.)

The Rally Point - Saturday 8/20/05

As seen on TFL:

Pennsylvania- The Rally Point- Saturday August 20th

Place: Water and Wings gun club.
9173 Janes Lane
East Greenville, PA 18041
215-679-6633

Range : 50yd pistol range and 100-500yd rifle range.

Time: 9am-5pm

Admission fee: $20 admission $5 for food


www.JSHolsters.com
www.Amback.com Your American Backyard

We have several things in the works and some interesting guests that may be attending. As of now the schedule is this:

10am-12pm, Utah CCW class.
http://www.packing.org/state/index.jsp/utah
Currently, there are twenty-five states that honor the Utah non-resident
concealed carry permit. The closest states for PA are OH, DE & VA. The
course runs two hours and includes range time. The normal course fee is
$50 but for the shoot we will discount the course for the price of
admission (course fee will be $25). If you are interested in the
course, please reserve a spot as we will need to prepare course packets
prior to the event.

1:45pm
Group photo

2pm-3:30pm
Glock Owners Workshop.
Bring your Glock. During the 90 min course we will demonstrate detailed
disassembly/reassembly. We will also discuss routine maintenance (what
little there actually is) as well as resources for Glock parts on the
Internet.

We will also have a table with our holster line and JSHolsters, LLC logo
wear. For those who attend the shoot, we will offer a 15% discount on
holsters ordered through our online store for 30 days after the event.
Those who stop by our table will have a chance to enter a drawing for
free holsters and logo wear, as well as certificates for training
courses we offer.

We will also have NRA Pistol Instructors present to offer gratis
instruction for first-time shooters. New shooters are welcome.

All responsible firearms owners are welcome!

Please be accomodating to others that attend. Everyone will get range time and please share your toys!

People from all the popular gun boards will be attending.

Seeya there!!

Keep an eye out for future updates and check out www.firearms.org for more info. Please introduce yourself when you come out.

Jamie Young
aka Soda Pop

Swedish Mora Knives

Recently I've seen on a couple of mailing lists and forums very favorable comments about the Mora knives made in Sweden. They are supposed to be good quality knives, but very inexpensive -- under $20 each. I decided I wanted to try one out, and so on Sunday night I surfed over to eKnifeworks and tried to order this one. As I tried to complete the checkout I got an error in my browser. I tried one more time and got the same database error, so I didn't think the transaction went through, especially since I never received a confirmation email. (But see below.)

Apparently striking out at eKnifeworks, I pointed my browser at Ragweed Forge, where I ordered a Mora #780 from Ragnar's Swedish Knife Catalog. Ragnar's ordering system is a secure web form, not really a shopping cart. Still, I received an email confirmation of my order within a half hour.

The #780 arrived in the mail yesterday. The haft is made of textured plastic and is comfortable for me. The carbon steel blade was lightly oiled and quite sharp, as a bare spot on my right arm will attest. :-)

Surprisingly, the Swedish Army Knife ("SWAK") from eKnifeworks arrived today. Apparently, my order did go through. I'm not upset, though, because (a) between the two knives I spent only about $30, and (b) it gives me the chance to compare a couple different model from the Frost's Mora line.

Unlike the #780, the SWAK has a stainless blade, and the plastic handle and scabbard are OD green instead of black. Aside from color, the hafts and scabbards of both knives are identical. The scabbards hold the knives pretty securely, certainly secure enough for around the home or farm. I might want something with a strap if I was carrying them in the woods, though.

While the #780 came very sharp, the SWAK came scary sharp. Like new razor sharp.

The knives are light enough that they'd make good neck knives. The blades are fairly thin, which combined with the acute grind makes them good slicers. They are pointy enough to stab with, although they certainly aren't daggers.

Today was trash day so I tested both knives a little after I got home from work. I had a couple of large cardboard boxes that needed to be cut up so they'd fit in a garbage can. The cardboard was pretty heavy and on one box was doubled up, so it made a good test medium. I normally use a Stanley utility knive with the snap-off blade for boxcutting but took the opportunity to try out the Moras.

Both knives sliced through the cardboard well, but cutting the boxes was noticeably easier with the SWAK. After the box was taken care of, I whittled an inch-thick gumwood stick into a fuzzstick, as if I wanted to start a campfire, then contiued all the way through to make a stake. I did this twice, once with each knife. Afterwards, both knives could still shave hair off my arm, although they were noticeably duller than before I started. The stainless blade on the SWAK, being harder, retained its edge better than the carbon steel blade on the #780.

After I get the chance to get both knives dull I'll post about how easy (or hard) they are to sharpen.

My initial impressions of both knives are very favorable. Each came very sharp, ready to use out of the box. Combined with what appears to be good steel and a very good price, they make good knives to have around the house or truck, and I'd feel very comfortable stepping out into the woods with either one on my belt.

Yaesu VX-5RS

I mentioned last week that I decided to get my Ham license. My copy of Now You're Talking arrived the other day and I've started studying. Obviously, the ticket isn't much use without a radio, so I did a fair bit of research at various ham sites online, including reading product reviews at eHam.net.

Several factors were considered when looking at radios:

• Transmit frequency bands
• Receive frequency bands
• Tx and Rx audio quality
• Ease of use
• Ruggedness
• Reputation for quality
• Price

I decided to pick up a Yaesu VX-5RS from Universal Radio, who has a good reputation from what I've read online. The VX-5R has actually been discontinued but it'll still come with a warranty, and received very high user ratings. I wanted a portable unit so I can use it at home, in my truck, or out in the woods. I also wanted something that can transmit on at least two bands; this radio does three. Finally, the cost is reasonable.

Along with the radio I ordered a DC power adapter for use in my truck, and an adapter to allow me to connect an antenna with a BNC connector to the unit's SMA connector. I also ordered a small, fold-up pocket reference for the radio's features.

Today I got an email with the UPS tracking number. Hopefully, I'll get the radio next week and can at least start to listen on the Rx bands, even if I can't transmit for awhile.

Streaming video system

Reader Al S. requested some details on the streaming video system that I'm testing. I'll have to be very general. The system consists of several parts:

• A *NIXish server running a custom app which provides the end users with a portal that they can order videos.
• A managed 10/100 switch with a Gig-E uplink.
• A server running a *NIX-like OS with a ton of RAID-5 disk space, on which the videos are stored and streamed from. This box has a 10/100 port for management and a Gig-E port through which the videos are streamed.
• Set top boxes which connect to the TV, and which also have an Ethernet port, where the videos are received. The STBs convert the MPEG-2 video streams from IP data to something TV-compatible.
  

I'm in the midst of testing the system against our in-room Internet access product we sell to hotels. We need to see how both the video and Internet systems work when large amounts of IP video are sent across our existing setups.

We got everything racked and configured on Wednesday over in Moorestown. Yesterday, I started testing the system against our SMC Ethernet switches. I made good progress but it was slow going. I want to have an STB connected to each port on the SMC, but before I can start a video stream, I need to flash the firmware in the STB. This uses TFTP, gettng the new firmware from the portal server, and takes about 15 minutes per box for it to download and apply the firmware, then reboot. This is taking longer than I'd hoped.

I'd planned to return today to finish the SMC part of my eval, but Judith came down with some kind of respiratory infection so I had to stay home with the kids, who aren't in daycare during the summer. I'll go back Monday.

Still here

Yup, I'm still here. I've been busy at and after work for the last week.

My biggest headache this week has been making arrangements to have a big pile of streaming video gear sent over to Moorestown so that I can do interoperability testing with our hospitality Internet access product. I'd hoped to do the testing here in Philly, but the rack of video equipment draws about 15 amps when powered up, and our lab's AC power is maxed out.

Outside of work, something I've been looking at for awhile is getting my ham license. Although I don't know a lot about radio, it's always been somewhat interesting to me. Besides, I don't have enough expensive geeky hobbies. :-) So, today I ordered a copy of Now You're Talking from Amazon, and should get it next week. This seems to be the most popular book for ham newbies. I'm going to get my no-code Technician's Class license first, and go for a General Class if I really get into it.

As a side benefit, the RF knowledge gained from getting my ham license may be beneficial in dealing with CATV RF issues at work.

AR-15 & Hakko Scope Range Report

Last month I mounted a Hakko 4x21mm scope to the carry handle of my Colt AR-15A3. Today I was able to sneak out for an hour and a half to the range to try it for the first time.

My results were a bit frustrating. I got to the range only an hour and a half before closing time so I didn't really have enough time to troubleshoot why I couldn't get the windage correct. I placed my target at 50 yards, and with a center hold on a 100 yard smallbore target, my group was about 3" low near the left edge of the paper.

I think that out of frustration I cranked it over to the right too much and now my groups are off the right edge of the paper. I decided that until I can get to the range again with a larger target backer, I'd just be wasting ammo to continue trying to zero the scope. So, I took it off and shot the rest of the afternoon with irons.

Although the carry handle scope is mounted rather high, I can get a consistent weld on the stock using my chin, rather than my cheek.

I had better luck with the Wolff spring I put into one of my 20 round Colt mags. I have three old Colt magazines, the style with the aluminum followers. The springs in them seem a bit weak, so I got a 3-pack of Wolff extra power mag springs. I replaced one and was concerned that because it differed somewhat from the GI springs that function wouldn't be 100%. But based on today's outing it seems OK.

The Colt digested ~90-100 rounds today; 40 rounds of Federal/LC XM-193 Ball, the remainder Ultramax .223 Remington 55 grain FMJBT reloads. The XM-193 is noticeably hotter than the Ultramax, but the rifle functioned perfectly with both loads.

Islamists strike again

In case you've been living under a rock, a series of bombings -- almost certainly perpetrated by Muslim extremists -- swept through London this morning. As of 1500 EST, the death toll is at least 30, with hundreds more wounded. The terrorists might want to ponder the following:

It was not part of their blood, It came to them very late
With long arrears to make good, When the English began to hate.

They were not easily moved, They were icy-willing to wait
Till every count should be proved, Ere the English began to hate.

Their voices were even and low, Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show, When the English began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd, It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud, When the English began to hate.

It was not suddenly bred, It will not switftly abate,
Through the chill years ahead, When Time shall count from the date
That the English began to hate.

- Rudyard Kipling, The Beginnings, 1914.

Happy Birthday Amanda!

Amanda turns one year old today. Happy birthday little girl!

Busy, busy

I've been otherwise preoccupied and haven't had much time for blogging lately. Let's see, I've been ...

• getting caught up with miscellaneous stuff after being out in L.A. last week
• playing with my kids
• meeting with a few different vendors at work to discuss ongoing projects
• starting new projects at work

Tomorrow I'll be heading up to New York State to help my aunt move some of my grandmother's belongings. Grandma just moved into a new assisted care facility and her stuff needs to be out of her old place. So, blogging will continue to be light.

SCOTUS Justice O'Connor Retiring

Moderate conservative Sandra Day O'Connor is retiring from her post as a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. It'll be interesting to see who Bush appoints to replace her, and if the Republicans will grow a pair and push her replacement's nomination through the Senate against the inevitable Democrat stonewalling.

I nominate Judge Alexander Kozinski of the 9th Circuit to fill O'Connor's seat. I've read selections from a couple of his opinions and they impressed me as very erudite. Hopefully, we won't end up with another David Souter.

It's already started

(Tip of the hat to Mad Ogre.)

FREEPORT - With Thursday's Supreme Court decision, Freeport (TX) officials instructed attorneys to begin preparing legal documents to seize three pieces of waterfront property along the Old Brazos River from two seafood companies for construction of an $8 million private boat marina.

Linky.

The more I think about the SCOTUS decision in Kelo v. New London, the more steamed I get. By allowing a municipality to condemn unneglected private property so that it can be transferred to another private entity for the benefit of the state, the court has taken a step towards a kind of national socialism. Not Nazism as practiced in German 1933 - 1945, but an alliance of governmental and corporate interests with individual civil rights -- such as they are allowed to exist -- made subservient to the state and its corporate partners.

Unless something is done by the executive or legislative branches of the Fedgov, I see things turning ugly. Very ugly.

Michigan addition to The Shooter's Bar(SM)

I added Jim Simmons of MI to The Shooter's Bar(SM) this morning.

Is it time yet?

SCOTUS has been on a roll, lately. Recently, we had the Raich decision, in which the Court took the line of “reasoning” from the egregious Wickard v. Filburn, and ruled that Congress may regulate the use of home-grown marijuana under the Interstate Commerce Clause. The Interstate Commerce Clause. What. The. Fuck.

Now, the Court has gone and put some more White Out on the Fifth Amendment. In Kelo v. New London, it ruled that a municipality may exercise the power of eminent domain in the event that it decides that, basically, because it can get more tax revenue from a commercial property than a residential property, it wants to take away your house and let a developer turn it into an office complex. Property rights? Hah!

And of course, even before Raich, SCOTUS ruled that the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Act is not an unconstitutional infringement upon our free speech rights protected by the First Amendment.

Are they trying to make it Claire Wolfe time?

Coming Home

HITEC wrapped Thursday. Yesterday and today were slow, and I got to wander the show floor some more and talk to a couple of other exhibitors. I spoke with a couple who may be able to help out with issues I’m working on, such as centralized content filtering systems and alternative ways to bring an Ethernet connection to a hotel room without CAT5 cabling.

After the exhibits closed at 1500, I packed all my stuff in a box and gave it to the guy in charge of packing up out booth. I asked him to ship it back to me via Fedex 2nd day air. I then headed off to LAX to turn in my rental car, get dinner, and wait for my flight at 2215 (ugh).

Note to the TSA asshats at LAX: You people are fucking morons. When I got off the Avis shuttle there was a 100 yard long line outside the terminal. I ASSumed this was the line to check in. Wrong. Rather, it was the line to go through security. I didn’t find this out until I was inside, where there was a sign indicating that you were in the line to go through security. So, I figured out where the check-in line was (since I had to check a bag), got through that, then got back in the security line. How hard is it to put up a goddamn sign to tell people what the line was for????

I supposed I should be grateful I didn’t get picked out for the anal probe search. It’s probably because with my beard I look Semitic, and Lord knows, only blued-eyed blonde Norwegian grandmas hijack airplanes.

One good thing: I got an aisle seat instead of the middle seat I originally had.

Of course, they had to then go and issue me a boarding pass telling me to go to gate 8, then change it to gate 12 without announcing it for hours and I wound up finding out on my own.

It was depressing to have to queue up like a good little subject, take my laptop out of my bag, take off my shoes, and go through the metal detector. It’s bullshit that I can’t take a pocketknife or my Gerber Multiplier in my carry-on bag anymore. Never mind the fact that with the example of 9/11 in memory, should some towelhead try to hijack a plane with a knife he’d get beaten into a bloody pulp by the rest of the passengers. No, we are better off as unarmed sheep. Then, of course, there’s the papiern, bitte, routine. All that’s missing are the jackboots and leather coats, because God help you if you complain. The days when I’d fly somewhere for a vacation are long gone.

After finally getting through security, I went into a bookstore and picked up Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky, which I’ve somehow not read yet, then had dinner at a Gordon Biersch (sp?) mini-brew pub in a food court. Their Blonde Boch beer is very good.

After downing my beer I made my way to the gate from which my flight departed, and camped out. The only Internet access in LAX’s Terminal 1 is either via kiosks ot a Boingo hotspot. Since I’m not going to shell out $9.95 for Boingo, this will be posted Friday or Saturday. (Note to LAX: Ft. Lauderdale airport offers free wifi. Yet another reason I’d rather go to Florida for warm weather than the People’s Republic of Kalifornia.)

Edit: Well, damn. It took me only a few minutes to get my bag once back in Philly. It usually takes almost an hour.

Thoughts on L.A.

(Warning, pent up blogging about to be unleashed.)

I am not real impressed with Los Angeles. It’s too big and spread out, there are tons of homeless people wandering around, and the traffic is as bad as New York City or Washington, DC. On top of that, the town rolls up the sidewalk early.

The L.A. Convention Center is nice, but whoever designed the parking garage was on crack. There’s a lot of wasted spaced.

Parking in L.A. seems reasonably priced, but I’m used to Philly, which is on the expensive side. Gas is more expensive in L.A., though. Jersey has worse drivers.

LAX is huge, bigger than Philadelphia Intl. I got my bags in about 20 minutes when I flew into LAX, which is definitely better than PHL (when flying into PHL I count myself fortunate if I get my bag in less than an hour). The signs for getting to the rental car return could be better. I got mixed up and had to drive around a bit until I got where I needed to be, so it’s good thing I got to the airport with too much time to kill.

The terminal in LAX is busy, crowded and loud.

Good thing: L.A. has some very hot women, but then so does Philly.

Did I mention L.A. traffic sucks?

HITEC Update

HITEC is going well. We attracted a ton of visitors to our booth yesterday, although today was slower. Since we had fewer visitors I had more of a chance to wander the show floor, talk to other exhibitors, and pick up some schwag. The most useful freebie I got was a Tripplite 3-prong outlet ground tester. I had one of these when I was still in the field, but since I turned in my toolkit when I transferred downtown, I haven't gotten around to buying a replacement. Now, I don't need to.

One problem we've run into is that the wifi hotspot I setup keeps going up and down. The problem is interference from the other 40 or so vendors' hotspots, and basically there's nothing I can do about it. There's a finite number of channels we can use and nobody is coordinating who's using what, so all the WAPs are contending for the same frequencies. Most visitors to our booth are more interested in our video-on-demand product, so it's not a big deal. I did recommend, however, that at future shows we run a CAT5e drop to the laptop "hotspots" to avoid wireless issues entirely.

I got a chance this morning to check out a relatively new commercial-grade powerline Ethernet solution, which could potentially replace our Ethernet-over-coax in some deployments. We're going to arrange for a demo unit, so I'll get a chance to kick the tires on it.

The one thing that's annoying the hell out of me this trip is that the Sheraton Downtown LA does not have high speed access in all the rooms, despite what we were told. They have wifi in about 20% of the rooms and the lobby. The remainder of the rooms only have dialup; my room is in the 80% without wifi. To an Internet addict like myself that's like depriving a junkie of his fix.

The show wraps up tomorrow. I'm flying home tomorrow night on the redeye, and Friday is Judith's and my wedding anniversary, so I doubt I'll be able to post any updates for a couple of days.

Made it to California

After a slightly delayed takeoff I made it to Los Angeles intact, navigated my way through L.A. traffic, and checked in at the Sheraton on South Hope Street. It seems like a nice hotel but the only high speed Internet access is a hotspot in the lobby. What a PITA.

Tomorrow I'll head over to the convention center to set up my hotspot. In the interim, local time is about 10 to 9:00 PM, but I'm still on Philly time, so it feels like it's almost midnight. So, I'm going to cut this short and get some sleep.

Blogging will be light/non-existent this weekend

Today I'm heading up to the Bronx to see my grandmother, who's in the hospital after having a heart attack earlier this week. The last update I got last night was that her doctors are going to attempt bypass surgery on Tuesday. She's 90 and her health has been going downhill for the last three or four years, so I'm not really optimistic.

Assuming nothing bad happens in the next 24 hours, I'm flying out to L.A for HITEC tomorrow afternoon. I plan to spend the morning with Judith and the girls, since I'll be gone until Friday.

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac

I really wanted to like NeoOffice/J, the Mac OS-X native port of OpenOffice.org. As long as I didn't need to exchange documents with MS Office users, it works OK. However, I haven't been using it that long and already I've run into issues with file corruption when saving a word processing file in .doc format. On top of that both versions of the open source office suite are dog slow. So, I went ahead and loaded MS Office 2004 on the iBook.

Office for Mac gives me excellent compatibility with Windows Office users and runs a lot faster on my hardware. Office for Mac is generally nicer than Office for Windows, actually, in appearance and feel.

I also configured Entourage to talk to my employer's Exchange (barf) server, so I'm not confined to webmail when on my Apple. Entourage has a nice feel to it, and my first impression of some of the features, like Projects, is favorable, but it does have a major bug. Specifically, it's almost guaranteed to corrupt your calendar. So, I disabled calendar sync. Fortunately, Microsoft is planning to release a big service pack later this Summer which should fix this issue, as well as enhance functionality of the addressbook, e.g., let you search through an Exchange server's Global Address List. ASSuming the SP works as promised I may be able to migrate completely to the iBook and keep my Dell D600 in my desk drawer.

Going to California

My employer is sending me out to Los Angeles next week to attend HITEC, a trade show for the hospitality industry. I'll be setting up a wifi hotspot in our booth and be there to field questions regarding our full-blown hospitality solution. I'm flying out Sunday afternoon and taking the redeye home Thursday night.

Since I'm setting up only a hotspot, all I'm planning to unbox are an IP3 Netaccess box, and a Netgear WAP. We normally use SMC WAPs, but due to the issues I've previously discussed here, I'm using a Netgear ME103 802.11b box.

The sales group is supplying two laptops which will be in our booth and connected to the hotspot. Since it'll be me who gets to fix them if something goes tits up, I spent some time this morning burning some CDs:

• My PC Toolkit, containing a variety of Win32 apps and utilities
• A System Rescue CD
• A Knoppix 3.9 CD

I also backed up to CD all the show-related docs I may need, along with documentation and firmware for the IP3 and Netgear. Finally, I plan to bring an XP Pro disc and a few blank CD-Rs with me, just in case.

Aside from the network hardware, I also packed several Ethernet patch cords, a surge suppressor, and a Netgear FVS318 router in the box which will I'll ship out tomorrow. Coming with me in my luggage will be my Gerber Multiplier and Victorinox Cyber Tool 41. (Dumbass bullshit TSA rules that I have to stow these in luggage. Only four years ago and they would've been with me in my carried-on laptop bag.)

I'll be working the booth for about 2.5 hours each day, so I'll have some time to kill. Time to look up what's to do in L.A. if you're not into the celebrity scene. I figure I'll check out the Labrea Tar Pits, since when I was a kid I wanted to be a paleontologist, and I may as well check out Fry's while I'm out there.

Enough play, back to work

Since I got to play yesterday, today I had to work around the house.

My electrician friend came over and installed an attic fan for me. While he was here and we were on the roof, I cleaned the gutters on one side of the house and trimmed back some branches that we overhanging the roof. I'm hoping this will keep the gutter on the right side of the house from getting clogged as quickly.

Afterwards, we went over to my folks where he fixed a recessed lighting fixture in their den. It's probably as old as the house, and the socket burned out. It isn't the kind of socket you can normally find at Lowe's but we found something close, and he was able to get it working again.

Range report

Yesterday I went up to Water & Wings and met a bunch of the guys from The High Road, The Firing Line, Battlerifles.com, and AR15.com.

I brought my Bulgarian AK, M1891/30 Mosin-Nagant, Marlin Camp .45, Ruger P90, and Bulgarian Makarov (which I wound up not shooting). The AK and Mosin worked great, as expected. I was popping clay birds offhand at 50 yards with the Mosin, shooting 1961-vintage Soviet surplus 7.62x54R light ball. This stuff is corrosively primed and some of the filthiest-burning stuff I've ever fired. But, it was cheap and I don't mind a little cleaning. I made sure to run a couple of patches wet with Windex through the bore to flush out the corrosive primer salts, then followed with a couple of patches wet with Hoppe's No.9. I let it soak for a few hours and when I finished up cleaning last night, didn't have to do much.

The Mojo rear sight which I installed on the AK is a major improvement over the regular open notch rear sight, and as a bonus, I didn't even need to adjust it to sight it in. My AK will probably get another red dot sight, but the Mojo unit gives me a good rear sight that won't break or need batteries. Highly recommended.

I ran into a couple of problems with the Marlin. I tried a Chip McCormick 10 rounder and it gave me some failures to feed. This mag has caused problems with the gun in the past, so I'll reserve it for my Springfield M1911, which seems to like it. Then, after about 10 shots through the gun, the cheap POS BSA red dot sight went tango uniform. I was shooting at clay birds placed on the 50 yard berm when I noticed that my rounds were impacting about three feet higher than where I was aiming and where I called the shots. I'd had the gun out before with the red dot and ran about 100 rounds through it, so it looks like the life span of the $30 BSA special is about 110 rounds of .45 ACP. I don't really care, because I got the sight for free, but it was a hassle. So, last night after getting home I mounted the Bushnell red dot sight formerly on my AR-180B onto the Marlin. That should hold up better.

One of the highlights of yesterday was meeting and getting to chew the fat with TheGeekWithA.45. He let me run a magazine through his Camp .45, which he'd fitted with a 21# Wolff mainspring, as described here. My gun has a 16# spring, but I'm going to order the 21# unit. It reduces the already mild recoil to almost nil, as as Geek said, no more "gunschmutz" in my face.

The other highlight for me was getting to try my new Ruger P90 for the first time. I am extremely pleased with it. It's accurate and ran 116 rounds of Sellier & Bellot .45 ACP ball without a hitch. The Ruger seems to soak up recoil better than my Springfield, although it's probably a little lighter. My hand was less fatigued after shooting the Ruger than it is when shooting the 1911. Once I run a couple more boxes of ammo through it the P90 will probably become my house gun.

I can think of few better ways to spend a Saturday than in the company of a bunch of gunnies.

Bourbon

I try to have one drink a day for my cardiovascular health. It seems to work well for my grandfather who's 88 years young and it gives me an excuse to have a snort. Generally, I'll have either a beer or bourbon on the rocks with a splash of water.

I've become something of a bourbon snob in the past couple of years. I used to prefer Jim Beam but awhile ago a friend introduced me to Knob Creek. What a difference! It's not just the alcohol content -- you can have 180 proof rotgut -- it's the smoothness. For example, good bourbons are aged longer and as a result, are smoother. After having Knob Creek for the first time I started trying different kinds of bourbon.

My top four so far are:

1. Knob Creek (aged 8 years, 90 proof). Two things about Knob Creek made an immediate impression on me. First is the texture. It's almost syrupy. Second, it has a nice, smoky undertone from the casks in which it's aged.

2. Labrot & Graham Woodford Reserve (aged 8 years, 80 proof). Woodford Reserve is a bit milder than Knob Creek and maybe a bit smoother, with a full taste. I rate it a close second.

3. Elijah Craig 12 year old (aged 12 years, ?? proof). I saw this on the shelf at the liquor store and felt I needed to give a 12 year old bourbon a try. It was very, very smooth and the taste wasn't as full as WR or KC. I don't remember the proof.

4. Baker's (aged 7 years, 107 proof). It's not as smooth as one through three, has a pretty good taste, and makes Knob Creek seem weak. Honestly, it's a bit much, although I have most of a bottle left and I'm not going to complain about finishing it.

Other's I've tried include Rebel Yell, which was pretty good although it's been several years, and Maker's Mark. I don't really care for the latter. Compared with other bourbons the taste seems "off" to my palate. Basil Hayden's (aged 8 years, 80 proof) was good, but I don't remember anything specific. Jim Beam Black (aged ?? years, ?? proof). For a mass market bourbon this is pretty good stuff. Judith picked up a bottle for me last year since she knew I was out of booze at the time. Not up to the small batch bourbons like one through four, but not bad. It gets bonus points for coming in a cool tin, which I now use to hold my spare change.

The next time I'm down in Maryland I want to sample some Henry McKenna, which comes in big pottery jugs. When my dad used to shoot at the Marriottsville Muzzleloader matches in the 70s, one of the prizes was a jug. The tradition was that the winner would have the first sip and then the jug would get passed around until coming back to him, and he'd get the last sip. (This was done after all the shooting was finished!) Dad says it's good stuff and my parents have an empty jug as a knick-knack in their family room.

What's going to trip up the GOP?

Kim duToit asks what we think the Republicans will do to shoot themselves in the foot during the next two years. I posted the following reply in his comments:

The biggest problem I see for the GOP transcends the different issues and can be summed up in one word: complacency. Karl Rove, et al., are watching the Democrats' orgy of self-destruction (e.g., moonbat ranting from Dean and Hitlery) and instead of offering a real viable alternative plan, are doing mostly nothing. When they do actually do something, it’s crap like expanding the PATRIOT Act or kow-towing to Vicente Fox.

How is the GOP working to slim the Fedgov? How is the GOP working to secure our borders? How is the GOP working to get past the gridlock in the Senate and get some more judges confirmed?

Just WTF is the GOP doing???

Updates to The Shooters' Bar

I've made several updates to The Shooters' Bar (SM) tonight.

In doing so, I first tried out using NVU. Blecch. This program has promised but really needs some work. A couple problems I encountered include the unavailability of the "Font color" option and when I selected a block of text and tried to change it to "Body text," nothing happenned.

I wound up downloading Mozilla 1.7.8 onto the iBook and using Composer. It worked like a champ.

BitDefender Antivirus Trial Wrap Up

I've finished my 30-day BitDefender trial. In summary: I like it, but I won't be buying it because for my own use it isn't worth it. Were I setting up a corporate email server on Linux or *BSD for a client with Windows machines, I'd probably recommend it. There was a very noticeable decline in the amount of spam and viruses making it into my Inbox. That Said, since I mainly check email from my Mac, guarding against Windows viruses isn't a big deal, except for the time they take to delete.

Actually, I'm seriously considering going back to POP3 for building-tux.com anyway, using Pair's email server. Pair is in the process of upgrading their antivirus and antispam filtering, and I'm looking at taking advantage of them. Running my own server has been educational but at this point I don't really need it at home. I'm still pondering whether I want to do this.

Hmm...

Some thoughts on Apple's switch to Intel

Most of my readers are probably already aware by now that Steve Jobs announced on Monday that Apple will be switching from IBM's PowerPC CPUs to Intel x86 CPUs. Naturally, such a major architecture change has spawned a lot of Internet speculation, now it's my turn. :-)

In opinion, those who are looking forward to installing Mac OS onto a run of the mill PC clone are going to be disappointed. Jobs didn't say that Apple is going to transform the Mac into another PC. And just because Macs are now going to have Intel CPUs doesn't mean that the rest of their architecture will be PC-compatible.

There's a lot more to a PC than just an x86 processor. You have the North-bridge and South-bridge chipsets on the motherboard, plus all the associated circuitry for floppy drives (remember them?), USB ports, expansion slots, etc. I'd be surprised if Apple just goes ahead and adopts a PC-type motherboard.

Rather, I expect that in conjunction with the new CPU family we'll see a new Mac motherboard designed by Apple, one which won't be based on an open standard. The closed nature of Apple's hardware is a strength in one sense. The seamless fit between hardware and software on the Mac platform is possible because you have one entity in control of both. Naturally, the downside of this unitary control is a much smaller universe of software available for the platform.

Switching gears, the main reason for this switch almost certainly can be described in one word: laptops. Apple's top of the line PPC chip is the G5. Aside from IBM being unable to get the G5 to reach 3 GHz -- even with water cooling -- there are no G5 laptops. The G4 has been the top end for PowerBooks and iBooks. Laptops now outsell desktop computers, and if Apple couldn't get its flagship processor in a portable package, that's a marketing and PR problem of major proportions, regardless of the fact that 99% of users can get along just fine for now with a G4 laptop. But in computerland you always need to be able to bring out the New/Improved/Bigger/Faster product, or you're seen as lagging in the marketplace.

Looking to the future, as a recent Mac convert I'm hoping that the apps I've adopted will be made available for Mac/x86. Since those apps are largely open source -- Firefox, Thunderbird, NeoOffice/J, etc. -- I may be able to compile them from source myself should their respective developers not make pre-compiled binaries available.

The switch to x86 also brings with it the possibility of porting WINE to Mac OS. Aside from allowing existing Mac users to run Windows software, a properly-done MacWINE would ease the transition from Windows to Mac, much as it can for new Linux users. Unlike VirtualPC, which is a full blown hardware emulator which enables you to install Windows as an application under Mac OS, WINE Is Not an Emulator. It's a reverse-engineered implementation of the Windows APIs. Since it doesn't have to emulate hardware in software, performance should potentially be much better.

In any event, the next few years should be very interesting for us Mac users.

Hell has officially frozen over

The rumors were true. Starting next year, Apple will be shipping Macs running Intel processors, and PowerPCs will be phased out by 2007.

MacNN has the report live from WWDC.

Holy crap!

Careful with that rack, Eugene

This morning I had an engineer for a video-over-IP-on-demand system we're looking at in our data center. He was to setup and demo the system. However, when we opened the equipment rack that the system came in, we were unpleasantly surprised. The front of the server mounted inside was missing the faceplate, the rack itself was bent in a few places, and the storage array's motherboard was half slid out the back of its chassis. Whoever shipped the thing either dropped it off the back of the truck, let something big hit it, or let the whole thing roll around in the back of the truck during transit. We documented the damage with a digital camera and the vendor will definitely be filing a claim with the shipper.

Despite the mess, it looks like the system will be usable. However, because they were a bit unclear on what we wanted to look at, they didn't ship a complete system as would be installed in a production deployment. So, he's returning tomorrow with some additional gear, and I'll get familiarized with it.

The system is based on a lot of open source software -- Linux, MySQL, Apache, Tomcat, and get this: Plan 9. That is sure something I'd never thought I'd encounter on the job.

Hotspots, yard sales, new toys, and parties

Friday I took the two Netgear WAPs out to our hotspot customer and replaced the SMCs we had onsite. Instant improvement -- not only could I get any of the wireless Windows clients online, but I noticed that the Netgears give better coverage. I'm not sure if they have a higher output or if the antennas are better, but I could see both WAPs in Netstumbler from either end of the building. In contrast, the signals from the SMCs would drop around the middle of the building. I so hope that I've finally put this one to bed.

Yesterday Judith and I had a yard sale, mostly to get rid of baby stuff and toys that the girls don't play with. We did pretty good: we sold one of our strollers, a travel swing, another less-portable swing, and some toys. We still have most of the clothes, so they got packed away in the crawlspace. Sometime in the Fall we'll join in a multi-family yard sale and hopefully unload some more stuff.

To publicize our yard sale, I placed an add for three days in our local paper, put up some signs, and placed an add on the Philly subsite of Craigslist.org. A woman who bought $30 of stuff said she saw the Cragislist ad, so it was definitely worthwhile. I'll definitely be using Craigslist again.

After the girls went to sleep for their afternoon nap, I put my AR-180B in a gun sock and went off to do some trading at Surplus City. I'd decided I was tired with it being so finicky as to the mags it likes, and I do have two other, reliable autoloaders in 5.56mm. Surplus City was willing to give me $400 for it so I fondled a few possible acquisitions: used Glock 20 (10MM) and Glock 21 (.45 ACP) and a CZ-83 in 9x18mm. I do like the big Glocks (better than the smaller Glocks, actually), and do have a hankering for a 10mm, but didn't feel like adding another caliber to the stable for now. The CZ-83 felt really nice and I can see picking one up in the future. I also looked at but didn't consider an FN FiveSeVen (5.7mm), due to the price of both the gun and ammo. I wound up getting a blued Ruger P90 in .45 ACP.

It took me a number of years to warm up to Ruger's centerfire autos. They have all the grace of a brick. However, they are generally dead nuts reliable, and in the case of those that my dad owns, quite accurate. I got to compare the P90 side by side with one of the new Ruger P345s, but the latter didn't fit my hand as well, and more importantly, feels too light for a gun in .45 ACP, IMHO. I could've bought a P90 in stainless steel but I like the look of blued steel better.

I'm going to do a little experiment with the Ruger. I normally use FP-10 or automatic transmission fluid as gun oil, and normally clean with Hoppe's No.9 powder solvent. I figure I'll put 500 rounds through the P90 while using only Ballistol to clean and lube the piece. FP-10, ATF, and Hoppe's are great products. But I'm always interested in alternatives, and I've heard very nice things about Ballistol from some end users, and it's less toxic than Hoppe's No.9.

Finally, we wrapped up the weekend by going to a 3rd birthday party for the daughter of the couple which introduced Judith and I.

Hakko 4x21mm scope first impressions

A couple of weeks ago I ordered a Hakko 4x21mm scope for my Colt AR-15A3 from Personalsecurityzone.com. Although it's a flat-top, I decided on the carry handle-mount Hakko because for now I don't want to shell out more money for a BUIS. The scope came today. After S&H from NV to PA, the total cost came out to about $166.

Basically, this scope is the current production version of the old Colt 4x carry handle mount scope. IIRC, Hakko was Colt's OEM.

The Hakko came wrapped in a thin layer of foam packed in a cardboard box, along with a very generic instruction flyer, lens caps, and a lens cleaning cloth. After putzing with it for a minute or two I figured out how to mount it on my Colt.

The optics seem to be quite clear and the duplex reticle should allow precise aiming within the rifle's usable range. For a 21mm scope, it seems to have pretty good light gathering properties. After mounting it on my carbine I aimed at my kids' sandtable in the backyard. The sandtable was much more visible through the scope than through the irons. This was at about 8:45 PM, dusk.

I will post a follow up report after I get it to the range, which should be a week from Saturday.

Tomfoolery on the PA Gun Violence Commission?

Rather than going into details, check out GeekWithA.45's post on the matter. I posted a comment there with my idea for torpedoing this should it get introduced in Harrisburg.

More wireless aggravation

I spent all day yesterday in our lab testing new firmware on an SMC2555W-AG and two Netgear WG302 WAPs. (Our customer with the hotspot is still having problems.)

I found that the latest firmware for the SMC -- not available on their website, BTW -- does not fix the problems with Windows PCs inability to obtain an IP address after associating with the WAP. As before, my iBook works fine. So, I'll need to touch base with SMC on this.

With that behind me I decied to upgrade and configure two Netgear WG302s we had, with the intention of replacing the onsite SMC WAPs. The first unit ugraded and worked without any issues. I then spent about 2.5 hours trying to get online using the second box, which I know is from the same production run since the serial number is only off by three. I was able to associate with it but not get an IP on either of the two Windows PCs I have in the lab, nor with my iBook. I could access the WAP over the wireless interface and the Ethernet port, but only if a laptop was connected physically to it. If the WAP and a laptop were connected to the SMC8013 gateway, I couldn't even ping it, although the WAP showed up in the SMC's ARP table. I tried rebooting and factory defaulting the WAP and the gateway. No dice. I tried different LAN ports on the gateway, different Ethernet cables, straight-through and crossover cables. Nothing.

Finally, today I plugged the WG302 into a different gateway and it worked fine. (Insert long string of extremely foul expletives here.) The problem wasn't with the WAP after all, it was with the SMC gateway. I'm going to do some more testing this afternoon to ensure that it's stable, but I plan to go onsite tomorrow to swap in the Netgears and pull the SMC WAPs.

Oh hell

I took the Expedition up to the shop this morning and an hour or two later the mechanic called me. The number 4 cylinder wasn't firing on time, which certainly explains why the Big Green Truck (as Alexandra calls it) was running roughly.

He gave me two options: They could hook it up to a "Moto Vac," which is supposed to clean all the accumulated carbon out of the system and which would cost about $150, and which might fix it. Or, he could replace all the spark plugs and wires, which it's about time to do anyway, since it's a '97 and has almost 84,000 miles on it. I told him to do the plugs and wires. I just wish it wasn't going to be around $500.

Memorial Day Weekend Wrap Up

It's been a nice long weekend. I took off last Thursday and Friday, so it was like a mini-vacation.

Last Thursday I went back up to Wicen's with my AK and AR-15. On my drive up and on my return, I got to see the US Navy's Blue Angels practicing for the airshow held 5/27 - 5/29 at Willow Grove NAS. F/A-18s are cool!

Anyway, the weather was crummy Thursday so I had the range pretty much to myself. I put another 100 rounds of Wolf 7.62x39 through the AK without a hitch. I also ran 55 rounds of Federal XM-193 through the AR-15 using the same 20 round NHTMG mag that didn't work in my AR-180B. It works fine in the AR-15, so I've concluded that my AR-180B probably needs a trip back to ArmaLite. Or, maybe I'll trade it off towards something less finicky.

Friday the 27th was my birthday. I hit the ripe old age of 37. The weather was nice and I took Alexandra to Sesame Place. She enjoyed herself, but was a bit freaked out by the people dressed up in the Elmo, Zoe, and Baby Bear suits. Hopefully by next year she'll be able to get into it more.

Not much doing on Saturday. I wanted to barbecue, but the weather didn't cooperate.

Yesterday we got together with the guys who've I've been friends with since high school, or longer. Now we're all married with kids. We all gather a few times each year to swap updates and bag on each other about the weight we're gaining or the hair we're losing.

Unfortunately, on the way over to my friend's house the "Check Engine" light on my Expedition came on and the truck started running roughly. I turned around and we moved everything over to Judith's car to go on over. I looked in the owner's manual today and the C.E. light means that something related to the truck's emissions controls needs servicing. I'm going to drop it off at the corner service station tomorrow morning.

Today, I got up early and took care of the kids while Judith slept in a bit. Afterwards, I went out to REI and Barnes & Noble, but came home empty-handed. Following that I played around with fire in my backyard, as described in my previous post. We wrapped up the day over at my parents' for dinner.

Finally, let's not forget the real reason for Memorial Day. It's not about barbecues and farting around. It's to remember those who gave their lives in defense of our way of life, our very freedom to barbecue and fart around.

Review of Coghlan's Emergency Tinder & Fire Kit

I posted of review of this along with pics on AR15.com. Linky.

Is encryption software evidence of criminal intent?

Apparently, a Minnesota appeals court thinks so.

As with a lot of hard cases, the defendant in this case isn't especially sympathetic -- he's someone convicted of a child pornography charge. That said, let's step back for a second, especially in light of the fact that

The court didn't say that police had unearthed any encrypted files or how it would view the use of standard software like OS X's FileVault.

In other words, the the mere presence of encryption software -- in this instance PGP -- on a defendant's computer can be evidence of criminal intent. Wow.

As Declan McCullagh mentioned, Mac OS X includes "FileVault," an encryption utility. Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP allow you to encrypt files. Various Linux distributions, such as SUSE, support CryptoFS. And of course there is a plethora of third-party encryption utilities like PGP and GNUPG. Now a court has said that having any one of these programs loaded on your computer can be used as evidence against you in a court of law.

How does this square with the Fourth Amendment right to be "secure in [one's] ... papers, and effects .." Or the Fifth Amendment's proscription against being compelled to bearing witness against oneself?

This court's line of reasoning can easily lead elsewhere. I wonder what other items the court might look at as evidence of intent. It's not too much of a stretch to see it used as another way to undermine the Second Amendment.

As Jerry Pournelle has commented, "But we were born free."

AR-180B & Bulgarian AK Range Report

SWMBO let me out of the house today so I got to hit the range.

Instead of the range that I've been going to for about the past 10 years, I went to Wicen's Farm, near Doylestown, PA.

I was favorably impressed with Wicen's. The range is wide, with over a dozen well-constructed benchrests. On the right side is a 25 yard pistol range (although you can shoot rifles there, too), while most of it is a 100 yard range. Target frames are portable and there are markers set at 25, 50, 75, and 100 yards, so it can accommodate a variety of shooters. Price is $10 per day ($5 for kids under 12). The only restriction to put a slight damper on my fun was the ban on rapid fire with semiauto rifles. I gather that this is part of a deal with the township and is due to noise. I can live with that.

Anyway, I took my ArmaLite AR-180B and my Arsenal, Inc. SLR-101SG Bulgarian AK. I wanted to test my Bubba brass deflector on the AR-180B and sight in the Bushnell red dot I mounted on it awhile ago.

The Bushnell sight worked well and was no trouble to get sighted in. More importantly, the Bubba brass deflector worked! This is an unsightly lump I epoxied to the receiver abaft the ejection port. I made it from a rubber stopper and now, instead of pelting my face with ejected empties, they fall in a pattern a few feet to my right. I'll need to add a metal face to the deflector so that the rubber doesn't wear away, but now the concept is proven.

Unfortunately, the rifle is still finicky with respect to magazines. I first used a new NHTMG (same as OKay or Colt) 20 round mag. I had a couple failures to lock back on an empty mag, but worse, got a few bolt-over-base failures to feed on the last round in the mag. I then switched to a new 30 round USGI mag. Again, at first it worked fine but I then had a bolt-over-base FTF. This is damn annoying and frankly, is starting to sour me on the gun.

I put 60 rounds of Federal XM-193 Ball through the gun total, in 5 round strings.

Next up was the Bulgarian AK. I bought this last Fall but this is the first time I've had it to the range. This gun is by far the nicest AK I've ever shot, the others being a couple of pre-ban Chinese Norincos, a Romanian SAR-1, and a Hesse/Izhmash Russian AK-103 clone. Fit and finish is on par with or better than the Robinson Arms Veprs. Aside from the high quality workmanship, the milled receiver gives the gun a very solid feel.

I put 100 rounds of Wolf JHP through it without any feeding or ejection issues. During the first 20 or 30 rounds I did have two failures of the trigger to properly reset, which I'm guessing are due to a burr that needed to be worked out. After those two bobbles, it worked perfectly with either the OEM 5 round polymer mag, or a 20 round Hungarian AMD-65 mag (the 20s are my favorite AK mags). I'll consider the rifle truly "AK-reliable" after another 100 rounds without any problems.

The SLR-101 wears a fishgill style muzzle brake. It's hard to judge how effective it is without another rifle without the brake to compare it with side-by-side, but it ~seems~ to work. Recoil felt about the same as my old AK-103, which has an AK-74 type brake.

Weather permitting, I'm planning to hit the range again Thursday, since I'm taking a vacation day.

Defensive Gun Usage Counter Widget for Tiger

Courtesy of Stephen Wenger, I just found out about the Gun Self Defense Widget for Mac OS-X Tiger's Dashboard. It gives tells you roughly how many defensive gun uses there have been in the US since January 1st, drawing from Gary Kleck's work.

Neat!