H&R Model 158 Topper .22 Hornet/20 Gauge

I've wanted a rifle in .22 Hornet for a long, long time, and finally picked one up today. It's an old H&R Model 158 Topper single shot. It came with an interchangeable 20 gauge shotgun barrel and a Weaver K-4, 4x scope in Weaver rings. I found it at Seneca Arms (116 Gravel Pike, Green Lane, PA 18054). Along with the rifle I bought two boxes of Winchester Super-X 45 grain JSP cartridges.

The Topper rifles were built on the same action design as the H&R single barrel shotguns, which were produced in the millions. If I remember correctly, though, receivers meant for rifles were made from steel instead of the cast iron used for shotguns. They were intended as simple, low cost working firearms, e.g. for whacking woodchucks tearing up your cow pasture. Harrington & Richardson went belly up in the late 80s/early 90s and was reincarnated as H&R 1871 and New England Firearms. Marlin currently owns both the H&R 1871 and NEF brands, and you can buy newly made guns from them as the "Handi Rifle."

This is my second Weaver scope. My Savage Mark IIGL .22 LR wears a Weaver 4x28mm rimfire scope. The K-4 is intended for centerfire rifles, and as an older one, is all steel. Weavers optics and mounts have never been fancy but they are good glass and hardware.

The .22 Hornet is a neat little cartridge. It was created in the 1920s by a few employees of the US Army's Springfield Armory, including Grosvenor Watkins and Townsend Whelen. They took the black powder .22 Winchester Centerfire round dating from 1885, loaded it with smokeless powder and jacketed bullets. In 1930 Winchester started offering the .22 Hornet as a factory cartridge.

The Hercules powder company developed a new powder to allow 45 grain bullets to reach 2400 feet per second from a Hornet's muzzle. The name of the powder: "2400," and it's still made today by Alliant. From what I've been reading lately, the powder to use for best accuracy in .22 Hornet rifles nowadays is Hogdon's L'il Gun.

Because early rifles used rechambered .22 LR barrels, they had .223" groove diameters instead of the .224" diameter used in most other .22 centerfires. Sometime in the 30s or 40s gunmakers changed to .224" barrels for Hornets.

.22 Hornet rifles are suitable for small game and varmints up to about coyote size. I plan to use it for some target shooting and maybe some varminting. With good loads and assuming the gun shoots well, it should be fine out to about 200 yards.

Shotguns have never been a big interest of mine. I've had a few but the only one I still had up until today was an H&R Topper 12 gauge I got while in high school, and I haven't shot it in years. Before H&R went bankrupt, their quality control went downhill and my 12 bore is an example. When shooting it one time, the barrel lug into which you screw the forearm retaining screw sheared off. So, the forearm is now held on with duct tape. Anyway, while the 20 gauge barrel is good to have on hand -- it has a 3" chamber and modified choke -- I don't expect to use it a lot. However, I am planning to see how well I can shoot Foster slugs out of it. If I can do "minute of deer" out to 50 yards, I may take use it for deer hunting on a friend's property out in Chester County.

Marlin Camp 45 Questions

I received the following email today about the Marlin Camp 45 carbine:

Dave:

My name is Mike H., and I ran across your site while looking for some
info on the Marlin Camp .45. There's one on Gunsamerica.com I'm very
interested, so I wanted to get your feedback on this unusual rifle.

First, what are you going to use it for, home defense, hunting, or just
simple target shooting? Also, what's the range? Finally, besides the sights,
what other mods would you do to it?

Thanks for your help,
Mike

To which I replied:

Hi Mike,

My primary use for my Marlin Camp .45 is plinking.  Secondary uses would  be home defense and teaching new shooters.  Semiautomatic rifles are not  legal for hunting in PA, where I live.  The furthest I've shot it is 50  yards.  It's basically a 100 yard gun.

The only modification I recommend is replacing the stock recoil spring  with a Wolff 21 lb. spring.  Combined with not-properly-tightened  actions crews, the original weak spring can result in a cracked stock.  The OEM spring is only 11 lbs., which may be OK for the Camp 9 but is  way undersprung for .45 ACP.  The Wolf 16 lb. spring works ok in .45,  but the 21 lb. spring almost eliminates recoil, and just about  eliminates lefthanders getting any "gun-schmutz" in their face from out  of the ejection port.

I also suggest picking up a spare bolt buffer from Blackjack Buffers or  Marlin, if they have any left in stock.  I got one from Blackjack.  If  the gun has been shot a lot the original buffer may need replacement.  So far mine hasn't.

My Marlin wears a Bushnell red dot sight using the rings that came with  the sight, mounted on a Weaver base.  The Camp Carbines use the same  scope bases as the Marlin 336 lever actions.

If you need a folding stock for compact storage, Choate Machine and Tool  makes a good one.

Hope this helps. 

Lab day with SMC

Yesterday I spent almost all day in the lab with an engineer from SMC so that he could get a handle on the situation I'm having with the 6752 and 8612 switches. Among other things, he ran Ethereal to capture what's actually going across the wire when we plug into a port on the 6752 and try to use the IP3's automatic room-to-port mapping feature. Hopefully, with the data gleaned from yesterday's session, we'll soon have firmware which will allow us to:

1. Have client isolation on each port of the 6752.
2. Have remote, in-band management of the 6752 and 8612.
3. Allow the IP3 to use SNMP to automatically map rooms to ports on the 6752.

The other thing we're hoping to get is support for increased numbers of VLANs on the 8612s, which are aggregation switches. They currently support a maximum of 256 VLANs per switch, which just isn't sufficient for an aggregation switch; 1000 VLANs would be more like it. Hopefully this can be implemented in software and won't require a beefier processor or more memory on the box.

Snow

We got about a foot of snow after it stopped falling yesterday afternoon. Not too bad but I am very glad I have a two stage snowblower. It's a Troy-Bilt 524, the smallest of their two-stage units.

When buying the snowblower, I could have saved a hundred bucks or so by getting a single-stage unit. But that's penny-wise and pound-foolish IMHO. You really need a snowblower when you've got a foot or more of snow, and the smaller blowers just don't work all that well with that much. They require a lot more effort to clear the accumulation, and since the whole point of buying expensive gas powered machinery is to save musclepower, it just doesn't make much sense to me, at least for SE PA and northwards. Not to sound too smug, but my neighbors with the single stage units had a lot more trouble yesterday than I did.

The roads in my neighborhood this morning were still a bit messy, but the main roads weren't too bad. Surprisingly, though, most area schools are closed today, including Philly, so Judith gets to stay home. I may bail out of work a little early so I can beat the freeze-up on the roads tonight.

Getting Started With Ethernet Cabling

My new article, Getting Started With Ethernet Cabling, is now live over at TechBuilder.org. Aside from GSWEC, check out the "Recipes" there for some good reading interesting to PC system integrators.

Gmail File Space

While looking through the latest issue of Macworld, I ran across a mention of a extension for Firefox called Gmail File Space, or Gspace. It allows you to use your Gmail account to store files through a very convenient, FTP-like interface from within Firefox. Since Gmail is a free service and how it works is subject to change at Google's whim, I don't think I'd use it for either email or file storage for mission critical stuff, but this could sure come in handy.

Here's a screenshot of it on my iBook (I didn't see anything about Gspace being Mac-only, so it should work on other platforms):


Click on the thumbnail to see a larger picture.

FDA Approves Rotavirus Vaccine

The FDA has approved a new vaccine from Merck to protect kids against the rotavirus. Amanda had this last March and it was just awful. The vomiting and diarhea required constant attention and giving her fluids to prevent her from getting dangerously dehydrated. Even then, she lost about 3 lbs. -- and she only weighed about 19 lbs. to start with.

If you have small kids talk to your pediatrician about the vaccine.

SMC Private VLAN Issue

Back in November I thought I had an issue with SMC's private VLAN feature on their 6752 switch licked. When using the feature I was losing in-band IP access to the box. Apparently the fix I thought I had isn't working in production.

I wish that our Ops people hadn't waited 3 months to let me know.

I'm in communication with them and SMC and I hope to have this resolved ASAP, but shit.

Mozilla Updates

I updated Mozilla Thunderbird and Firefox today. I'd downloaded Thunderbird 1.5 a couple of weeks ago but had postponed upgrading until now. So far, it doesn't look like a major change from 1.0.5.

Firefox 1.5.0.1 was released yesterday. It's supposed to fix memory leaks and have speed improvements. I first upgraded FF on my iBook and noticed a significant improvement in page load times. I ran top in a terminal before and after the upgrade, and it looks like the new release uses a bit less memory on the iBook. Sometime later I was using FF on my Dell under XP, and it automatically prompted me to upgrade. That went without incident, as well.

DIY Motivational Posters

Go here and with an uploadable image, you can make your own poster in the style of "motivational" posters. For example:


:-)

Brian's new Mac Mini

Those of you who peruse the other Daynotes Gang sites may have seen that Brian Bilbrey got himself a Mac Mini. I sent the following to the Daynotes Backchannel this morning:

Welcome aboard the OS X train, Brian. A steward will be along with the Kool-Aid shortly. :-)

So did you add any options like more RAM or bigger HDD?

I think you'll like it. There are a large number of open source and free (as in beer) apps you can run on OS X. You can install many of these through the Darwin Ports system (http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/) or Fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net/).

Your favorite, Emacs is already installed by default.

I like iTerm (http://iterm.sourceforge.net/) as a Terminal.app replacement. It's more configurable and supports tabs. However, sometimes if I want to SSH into a *NIX box and need use of the function keys (e.g., for Midnight Commander or YaST), I launch X11.app and an Xterm.

Fugu (http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/) is a nice GUI front end to SCP and SFTP.

I use RBrowser Lite (http://www.rbrowser.com/) for FTP. If you license it, it'll handle SCP and SFTP, too.

ZTerm (http://homepage.mac.com/dalverson/zterm/) is a good terminal emulator if you need to console into a router or switch.

Adium (http://www.adiumx.com/) is based on Gaim but uses an Aqua interface. If you don't need the IM protocols is supports, then iChatAV is a very good AIM and Jabber client. IChatAV's voice support is excellent, at least when talking Mac-to-Mac. IM me if you want to try it.

Flip4Mac (http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv.htm) is a plugin that'll let you play .WMV files in Quicktime. MS dropped development of Windows Media Player for Mac (no great loss, it sucked anyway).

If you need a VNC viewer, check out Chicken of the VNC (http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/).

OpenOffice.org works ok on a Mac with X11, or you can try NeoOffice/J. I find the latter even slower than regular OO.o. I confess I generally use MS Office 2004; Office is nicer on the Mac than on Windows IMO and gives me 100% document exchangeability with Windows users at work.

Well, I give up

For whatever reason the G3 in my lab didn't even like Panther, so I gave up. I now have it setup with the original drive running Jaguar as the master IDE disk, and the 20 GB drive scounged from an old Qube3 as a slave. At least now the box has a decent amount of storage.

Trying to get the G3 running BSD over the past few days hasn't been a complete waste. I at least got to learn about the OpenBSD installer and Open Firmware.

Update on the Mac

I decided to get the G3 running by using only the 20 GB drive, partitioned half for OS X and half for OpenBSD. After partitioning it using Disk Utility, I formatted the front half HFS+ and used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the original drive to the new partition.

Unfortunately, the cloned partition wasn't usable. Finder kept crashing on me, so I said to hell with it and got ahold of a set of Panther install CDs. So, I should have a functional OS 10.3 box shortly. After that's running and updated I'll install OpenBSD in the second partition.

Update @ 15:25 -- Now I've got the spinning beatchball o'death. Im starting to wonder if this disk is hosed. Argh!

OpenBSD/macppc

A little while ago I added an old G3 PowerMac to my lab. It's 350MHz box with 768MB RAM, running OS 10.2.8. It's a nice machine, albeit a bit pokey by today's standards. Last week I came up with the idea of adding a second disk and installing FreeBSD on it, so I could run an internal FTP server and apps like Iperf without the overhead of OS X.

I added a 20 GB drive scrounged from an old Cobalt Qube3. It's seutp as a slave on the primary IDE connection.

Unfortunately, FreeBSD refused to install. Doing some googling indicated that the error I saw was someting that what supposed to be fixed in FreeBSD-6, but wasn't. So, I decided to try OpenBSD 3.8 for Mac PPC. I've been wanting to try OpenBSD for a long time anyway.

Setting up the disks in OpenBSD's installer runnign fdisk took me a few tries but I got it figured out. The install went OK after I found an FTP mirror that wasn't already maxed out (OpenBSD doesn't make full ISOs available for download).

At this point I can't get the box to boot into OpenBSD. Much googling has revealed instructions on how to configure Open Firmware to boot a Mac into OpenBSD when you've got only one disk in the machine, but I haven't found anything about booting from a second IDE drive.

I debating whether to wipe the main disk and make the box OpenBSD only, or to wipe the second disk, reformat it HFS+, and just use Iperf and the FTP server from OS X. Suggestions on how to get OpenBSD working in a dual-boot config are welcome.

TheRallyPoint.org

I am pleased to announce the opening of a new Second Amendment/shooting forum, TheRallyPoint.org. From the mission statement:

This forum was created to bring a new spirit to discussion forums. By agreeing to the forum rules when registering, we ask that all members acknowledge that they will become Ambassadors for the cause of advancing responsible firearms ownership, and engaged in debates that educate and add to a stronger and stable society. A part of the mission of this site is to foster, in a non partisan manner, the values of self determination and self reliance that have served America admirably throughout its history.

I'm one of the administrators/moderators. We hope you join us.

Deja Feces...

... or, I think I've seen this crap before.

In my prior position with the corporation that I work for, I survived at least four major reorganizations/layoffs unscathed. Now, my current division is doing the reorg thing and I'm aware of at least four or five people who are being "downsized," although they aren't in my department. We won't know how we're going to come out of the reorg for another couple of weeks. I don't think my job is in jeapordy, but you never know.

In the interim, I posted an ad on Craigslist.org for my sideline consulting work to try and drum up a little more business, and worked on my resume tonight.

Oh, the joys of working in corporate America.

A couple good preparedness deals

Yesterday I received some stuff I ordered from Campmor and Cheaper Than Dirt.

Looking through the Campmor catalog I received last week I saw they had 300 weight fleece throws on sale for $8.95 ea., regularly close to $20. So I ordered a couple of charcoal colored ones along with a Century propane conversion kit for my dual fuel Coleman camp stove. So now it's a tri-fuel stove. The throws are a little small to use as a blanket but would be good for keeping in the car.

CTD sent me a case of MREs, a GI-style poncho and liner (AKA "woobie"), both in MARPAT. Quality of the poncho and woobie seem pretty good. I used the liner for a blanket last night and it's like my GI liner -- not real warm, but better than nothing. I added one of the throws in the middle of the night and was able to sleep comfortably in a 60 degree room.

Alexandra thinks MARPAT is cool, really likes the woobie and wants one of her own. So it looks like I'll be able to wean her away from the girly foo-foo stuff. :-)

Revisiting Fink

This morning I installed Fink on my iBook with the aim of loading several open source apps. I've used Fink previously but ran into several difficulties, but it looks like the developers have greatly improved things.

After installing Fink and updating it, I installed Fink Commander, an easy to use GUI interface to Fink's underlying Debian-type system. Then I loaded nmap, my favorite port scanner and the Gimp open source image editing tool. I'd installed Gimp.app shortly after I got the iBook, but a subsequent OS-X update killed it. It seems to be running OK now. For the simple image editing I do (i.e., mainly resizing or removing red eye), the Gimp works great and runs a lot faster than Photoshop.

The final app I installed through Fink was the protocol analyzer Ethereal. Installation appeared to go OK but I'm getting errors when i try to run it. E.g., I'm seeing "Image not loaded." I did a little googling to find a fix but don't have it working yet. If I do find one I'll post it here.

Cross Platform Network Printing Woes

I've ranted in the past about the piss-poor state of printing setup in Linux. But that's not the only thing with printers that needs to be fixed. Specifically, printing to a printer connected to a Mac from a Windows box, and vice-versa.

Saturday morning I went over to a client's house to setup his new Mac Mini. Wonderful box, the Mac Mini. It's tiny, almost silent, and of course runs Mac OS-X. My client has an HP OfficeJet 6110xi connected to it that he'd like to be able to use from the two other computers on his LAN, both of which run XP Home.

Unfortunately, while I was easily able to setup file sharing so the Macs and PCs could share resources, I couldn't get remote printing to work. No matter what I tried, the print jobs would make it to the Mac's qeue from the XP box, but not actually print.

Yesterday, I tried to get Judith's new iBook to print to the Samsung ML-1710 hooked up to Bagend, which runs XP Professional. No dice. The Mac sees the printer but I don't get any output.

Several months ago I was discussing the sucktastic state of *NIX printing with a fellow Linux geek who's also the senior UNIX architect at a major stock exchange. His advice for *NIX printing is to use an HP JetDirect print server. I'd hoped things would be better with Macs, but apparently there are still issues.

So, I'm looking at getting a print server. In particular, Apple's AirPort Express and AirPort Extreme both include a USB port and print server for Windows and Mac clients. I'd replace the Netgear WAP I'm currently using with the AirPort. Some googling indicates that the Samsung should be compatible with the AirPorts.

So, I'd welcome feedback from any users who've use AirPorts as print servers, especially with (a) Windows clients since I have no doubt it'll work flawlessly with a Mac, and (b) with Samsung USB printers.

Another iBook

Yesterday the School District of Philadelphia issued Judith a spankin' new G4 iBook. It's a 12" model with the 1.33 GHz G4, 512 MB of RAM, and a 60 GB hard drive. I think it just has a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, not a SuperDrive. It does have Bluetooth, however.

I did the initial setup for her last night including creating her user account, associating the AirPort with my home WLAN, and running Software Update; it came with 10.4.3 and is now on 10.4.4. Although I had to go through the initial OS-X setup, it was obvious that the School District had imaged it. For example, it had a couple of Terminal.app shortcuts in the Dock, and MS Office 2004 was installed and registered. It also had Firefox installed but I upgraded it to 1.5, since the earlier version had some security issues resolved in the new release. McAfee Virex antivirus for Mac was installed, too. I'd generally regard that as being as useful as tits on a boar, but it'll protect her against Office macro viruses.

Along with the iBook they gave her an STM Sport Laptop Backpack, which seems pretty nice. I like the layout and pocket arrangement better than my REI Big Byte's, although my bag has better padded shoulder straps.

I think she'll enjoy using the iBook a lot more than my old Compaq, especially since that old box suffers from intermittent XP wireless schizophrenia.

More About Legislating GPS On Guns

The following email is reposted with the author's permission:

Hi, Dave.....

>Friday, January 13, 2006

>From the CLUELESS IDIOT Department

>This guy isn't just an antigunner, he is technologically clueless:
>
>Saying gun manufacturers should take steps to track guns, a Boston city
>councilor is proposing that global positioning technology be installed in
>firearms.
>
>Councilor Rob Consalvo wants to put a tracking device into newly
>manufactured guns and have legal gun owners retrofit their firearms so
>owners and police can locate and retrieve stolen guns the same way police
>use a computer chip to locate stolen cars.
>
>
>Just where does Consalvo think you'd be able to fit a GPS unit onto a gun?
>These things aren't the size of postage stamps, you know. Moreover, such
>devices require electricity. I suppose criminals are going to make sure
>that a stolen gun's GPS unit is fully powered.
>How much do you want to bet that if GPS trackers were added to guns, that
>the bad guys won't figure out a way to disable them in less than two minutes?

Assuming he's not a totally clueless idiot (which he may well be), this
would most likely fall under the "if you can't make them outright illegal,
make them so difficult and expensive as to be effectively illegal" train of
thought. 

Similar to what the insurance industry tried to do (somewhat successfully,
even) with "named" sportbikes 15/20 years ago.  The insurance rates on
easily identifiable sportbikes like the Honda Hurricane got so high as to
make the short answer "you can't get insurance for that bike".  If you
can't get insurance, you can't ride, and so....  Et Voila!  The insurance
industry has banned certain motorcycles.  Fortunately, that got fixed
later......

>[....]
>
>At 10:54 AM, Anonymous said…
>
>The technology is already available. It is a small chip that will soon be
>on everything from potato chips to cars. It should be on guns. Not optional
>and retrofitting required.

And this guy is totally overlooking the entire (*impossible*) logistical
problem of getting these thing put on *all* (including criminally-owned)
guns.  If you could find the criminals to put these things on their guns,
don't you think it would be simpler to just arrest the criminals right
there? 

(Reverse the logic -- Look at how Mark Twain used the soot-covered pig in
"The Prince and the Pauper" as a way to mark things....  It's not bad if it
*has* the mark, it's bad if it *doesn't* have the mark.)

And even if you could put these things on all guns, the bad guys would just
disable them immediately anyway.

Here's the best answer to people who want to put any kind of "technology"
on serious firearms:

 http://www.angelfire.com/comics/pinton/gun.html

Ok, I feel better now.   :-) 

Enjoy!

Mitch
--
Mitch Kutzko
Project: http://dast.nlanr.net  |  Personal: http://hobbes.ncsa.uiuc.edu

An Operating System Ready for the Desktop

In the Windows vs. Linux debate we keep hearing that Linux isn't ready for the desktop. Depending upon what you want to do with your PC, this may or may not be the case. For example, you may have applications that you must run, which do not run on Linux. Or, you may want to setup network printing, which remains a bitch and a half on Linux.

The implication of this is that Windows is ready for the desktop. Not necessarily. The main problem running Windows is that while it's generally easy to use, install applications, and setup peripherals -- including printers shared over the LAN -- keeping a Windows box running well and free of viruses, spyware, Trojan horses, and other assorted malware requires a saavy user. But, the vast majority of users are anything but.

This past Saturday I went over to client's house to help get two of the three PCs on his home network squared away. His older daughter's PC was unable to open MS Word or iTunes, and was having intermittent problems accessing his wireless network. It turned out that the box was infected with a Trojan horse which installed mIRC and was phoning home. (I forget which exact Trojan it was, unfortunately.)

After determining what malware was infecting the PC, I got rid of Norton Internet Security, which although up-to-date, hadn't detected it, and replaced it with AVG. AVG detected the infected files and allowed me to delete them. I also installed and ran full scans with Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware, after replacing the stock HOSTS file with the file from MVPS.org.

Another program I loaded was K9 Web Protection, from Blue Coat Systems. This is a content filtering application made freely available (free as in beer) for home use. By default, it has a fairly restrictive filter set which we modified to only block sites determined to be sources of malware or privacy risks. The logging function will enable my client to better monitor what his daughter is doing on the Internet.

Expecting your average, not-computer-saavy user to keep up with antivirus, antispyware, a hosts files, and content filtering, on top of Windows Update, just isn't realistic.

The second PC I had to look at turned out to have a bad video board. It's a Gateway that's about 4 or 5 years old. I've previously replaced the hard disk in the box and now it's had a second hardware failure. I told my client I could replace this video card, but explained to him in my opinion that sinking any more money into the box was more or less equivalent to putting money into a 1989 car.

With the experience of the other PCs on his LAN in mind, and the fact that his kids uses Macs at school, and my suggestion he consider the option, he ordered a loaded Mac Mini to replace the Gateway. His daughters will be able to do their schoolwork just as easily on the Mac as on a PC, yet he won't have to be concerned that the machine will need an endless stream of antivirus and antispyware updates.

Windows advocates are fond of pointing out that Linux is only free if your time isn't worth anything. The same is true of Windows, which is often perceived as free because it comes loaded on the majority of computers. The initial cost for a Mac is higher than for a Wintel box. But the long-term cost can be much less, especially if you have to pay someone like me to come into your house or office and fix the mess that Windows becomes after a short period of use. This level of support is not needed with Macs. The OS's design, based on BSD UNIX, is much more secure and robust. Right now, the operating system that is the most ready for the desktop is Mac OS-X.

Welcome, Langalist Readers

Fred Langa listed this blog in his "They Loaded The Code" section of his email newsletter yesterday and I can tell that my traffic is up. Thanks, Fred, and thanks to all of you who clicked on my URL. Please poke around a bit and I'm sure you'll find something of interest. My choice of topics is somewhat eclectic:

• Computing, including Windows, Mac, and Linux.
• Networking.
• Shooting and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
• General politics and law.
  
• Some personal reflections.

From the CLUELESS IDIOT Department

This guy isn't just an antigunner, he is technologically clueless:

Saying gun manufacturers should take steps to track guns, a Boston city councilor is proposing that global positioning technology be installed in firearms.

Councilor Rob Consalvo wants to put a tracking device into newly manufactured guns and have legal gun owners retrofit their firearms so owners and police can locate and retrieve stolen guns the same way police use a computer chip to locate stolen cars.

Just where does Consalvo think you'd be able to fit a GPS unit onto a gun? These things aren't the size of postage stamps, you know. Moreover, such devices require electricity. I suppose criminals are going to make sure that a stolen gun's GPS unit is fully powered.

How much do you want to bet that if GPS trackers were added to guns, that the bad guys won't figure out a way to disable them in less than two minutes?

I'm surprised Consalvo remembers to breathe if he really thinks this is a good idea.

When The Devil Dances

Yesterday I finished When The Devil Dances, the third book in John Ringo's Posleen War series. (I'd thought that The Watch on The Rhine was next, but I was mistaken.)

Anway, WTDD takes place five years after the Posleen invasion of Earth which happened in Gust Front. All three books are fast moving and exhibit a good sense of humor. For example, there were a couple of references to Army of Darnkness in WTDD. The military aspects of the novels seem to be accurate, which only makes sense as Ringo is a vet of the 82nd Airborne. As a gunnut, I appreciate that for the most part the firearms-related content, of which there's a lot, is generally accurate. There's the occasional blooper, as when Ringo notes that one character's Walther PP is chambered for 7.62mm rounds, when it should say 7.65mm. Close enough for fiction. But one thing I really liked was this little missive from his character Wendy Cummings, given to some new shooters:

The most important thing is that; never, ever point a gun, even an "unloaded" gun, at anything you don't want destroyed. For the purposes of safety, every gun is loaded. Guns aren't evil magic; they're just tools for killing something at a distance. Treat them as useful, but dangerous tools, like a circular saw or a chainsaw, and you'll be fine.

That right there is the essence of firearms safety.

I'm enjoying the Human-Posleen War series a lot. Between it and Eric Flint's 1632, I've been devouring scifi like I haven't done since before I started my first term of law school. So, tonight I'll be ordering Hell's Faire, the next Ringo book, 1633, and The Watch on The Rhine.

Google Earth for Mac

w00t! Google Earth is now available for Mac. The system requirements, per Google, are:

Minimum System Configuration

• OS: Windows 2000, XP, or Mac OS X (10.4)
• CPU: 600MHz
• Free Hard Disk Space: 400 MB
• System RAM: 128 MB
• Video RAM: 16 MB
• Screen Resolution: 1024x768, 32-bit color
• Internet: 128 Kbps ("broadband")
• For better performance: Recommended Configuration

Which in this day and age aren't unreasonable, especially when you consider the heavy duty graphics Google Earth throws on your screen.

I previously installed Google Earth on Bagend, my Althon box at home, and this morning installed it on my 1.2 GHz G4 iBook with 768 MB of RAM, connected to a cable modem. It ran fine, with Thunderbird, Firefox, and Adium running in the background.

Aside from the general WOW! factor initial impression that Google Earth generates, it has some very practical uses. E.g., you can use it for getting directions. I plan to use it to work out routes and possible destinations in case I need to evacuate due to a disaster, man-made or natural.

New Macs

There were several interesting announcements at this morning's Macworld keynote speech by Steve Jobs, but the one of most interest to me is the new MacBook Pro (sounds rather Scottish, doesn't it?). The new professionally-oriented Mac laptop starts at $1999 with a 15.4" screen, 1.67 GHz Intel Core Duo CPU, 512 MB of RAM, a 128 MB ATI Radeon video adapter, and 80 GB 5400 RPM hard disk. Sounds pretty damn sweet to me. A 1.83 GHz version is also available with a 256 MB video adapter.

Too bad I can't afford one. Even if I did have the extra money for one, I'd wait awhile to let Apple work out the inevitable bugs resulting from switching to a new platform.

The new Intel based Macs, including the Intel iMacs, start shipping next month.

Another week gone by

Please pardon the lack of posting. I'll try to do more frequent updates.

As mentioned in my last post, I downloaded John Ringo's Gust Front from the Baen Free Library. Like A Hymn Before Battle, it's very good military scifi. The series clearly owes a great deal to Heinlein's Starship Troopers, mainly with the powered battle armor. This is not a bad thing.

Yesterday while out doing errands I checked out the local Borders and Barnes & Noble to see if I could pick up a hard copy of The Watch on the Rhine, but struck out. I think I'll place an order for it and one or two more books in the series from Amazon.

Friday I received an order of some new AR-15 magazines and some spare parts from DSG Arms, down in Texas. This is the second time I've ordered from DSG and both were good experiences. The magazines are the GI-type 30 rounders, but have a black Teflon coating, rather than the GI moly coat. The black color better matches the rest of my AR-15A3 than the GI gray, but more importantly, the Teflon finish is supposed to be more durable than the moly.

The spare parts kit is an ArmaLite M15 Field Repair Kit, which I augmented with a couple each extractor O-rings, firing pin retaining pins, and extractor pins. I.e., little parts that would be easy to lose and without which the rifle won't function.

Last week's eBlast from MidwayUSA pointed me to their sale on Rifle Basix sears, on sale for $15 off. I have two on order, one for my Savage Mark IIGL and 93GL. I like both rifles a lot, as they are accurate and well made. Unfortunately they ship with terrible triggers. The Rifle Basix replacement sears should allow me to lower the trigger pulls down into the 2 lb. range which will enahnce practical accuracy. Reports when I get 'em.

Baen Free Library

Many of my readers no doubt already know about Baen's Free Library, but I'll put in a plug for it anyway. Baen Books, publisher of many fine works of scifi, has seen fit to make available for free download many of their titles. You can choose HTML, RTF, or MS Reader formats. So far I'm favoring RTF and reading the books in Word 2004 on my iBook.

Last night I finished John Ringo's A Hymn Before Battle. It's military scifi based on the premises that an invasion by the alien Posleen is coming in about 5 years. Earth is warned by friendly aliens who are also under attack by the Posleen. The story is reminiscent of both Alan Dean Foster's "A Call To Arms" series, with a bit of RAH's Starship Troopers thrown in.

I downloaded the sequel, Gust Front, which I'll be starting later today. Once I finish that I plan to buy the next book in the series.

Hats off to Baen for doing this.

Vacation and range report

I've been on vacation since last Friday. I'll be going back to work next Tuesday. It's a nice break.

Last weekend we went up to New York state to visit with one of my cousins and his family. He has two daughters -- 6 and 10 -- and my girls got to spend a couple days with them. This is only third time they've met and they get along really well, so we're hoping that they'll be able to come down to PA during Spring Break.

The weather was nice today, upper 40s and sunny, and Judith told me to go shooting. Who am I to argue? I went up to Wicen's with my Century R1a1 FAL and Savage Mark IIGL.

This was the first time I'd had the R1A1 out. You may recall that I had to send it back to Century because the hole in the receiver through which the gas piston passes was off postition, causing the piston to bind. Well, they did in fact fix it. I ran 50 rounds of Australian surplus 7.62 NATO through the rifle, from three different mags, and it ran perfectly with the gas system set to "4." (I didn't even try other settings.) I only shot out to 50 yards, where it was grouping in a bit under 2". Most FALs will shoot into about 4" at 100 yards so I'm fine with the accuracy.

This is my second FAL. The first was a Century L1A1 which I grew to dislike, largely due to the unbelievably loud muzzle brake. Rather than a brake, the new rifle has an American made copy of the Belgian short combo flash suppressor/grenade launcher. Even sans brake, recoil was not bad at all for a rifle shooting 7.62 NATO, and the muzzle blast was not obnoxious.

One thing I noticed upon getting the rifle home was that the Aussie ammo is clean. There were no unburnt powder granules in the bore. I don't think I've ever seen such clean ammo before. I have maybe 80 rounds of it left. Unfortunately, the supply of this seems to have dried up and I'll have to stock up on other 7.62 NATO, likely more of the South African in 140 round battle packs.

I put about 100 rounds through the Savage. This was the first time I'd shot it since rescoping it with my Weaver 4x28mm scope in high rings, which are necessary for the bolt to clear the ocular bell. The ammo I was shooting was CCI .22 LR Subsonic Hollow Point. It's very quiet and accurate stuff. When the crappy Savage trigger didn't cause me to yank the shot, I was able to put them all into well under an inch at 50 yards from a rest. Since my Ruger 10/22 also likes this CCI ammo I am going to place an order from Natchezz for at least 1000 rounds of it.

However, like my 10/22 needed a Power Custom hammer to improve the trigger pull, the Mark IIGL needs an aftermarket replacement trigger. Rifle Basix makes one for the Savage rimfire rifles that should bring the pull down to a couple of pounds with no creep. I will probably order one each for the Mark IIGL and my 93GL in .22 Magnum. (Incidentally, I've already tried a Savage home trigger job I found online. It improved the stock trigger but not enough.)

Why all the fuss about trigger pull? It's very simple. It is extremely difficult to shoot a gun accurately if the trigger pull is heavy, gritty, or too long. The effort expended to get the gun to fire has the side effect of disturbing your aim. This is why target rifles and pistols often have trigger pulls measured in ounces, not pounds. I'm not looking to get a pull that low, but something in the 3 to 3.5 lb range with minimal creep would go a long way to allowing me to extract the last bit of intrisic accuracy from these rifles.

A final observation, this time about optics. The Mark IIGL wears a Weaver 4x28mm rimfire scope. My 10/22 sports a Nikon ProStaff 4x32mm rimfire scope. Having now used both at the range, the Nikon is definitely the better piece of glass. It is brighter and the optics are a bit more clear. The price for each of these scopes is right around the $110 - $120 range, depending upon where you get it. So, while in the past I've recommended the Weaver to folks looking for a good .22 scope, from now on I'm going to recommend the Nikon.

Springfield XD in .45 ACP

{Tip of the hat to Mad Ogre.}
Springfield Armory is now listing the XD pistol in .45 ACP. Me likey. A friend has one in 9mm that I've fired and I'll take one over a Glock any day. The grip fits my hand much better. I haven't bought one though becuase up to now they've only been available in 9mmP, .40 S&W, and .45 GAP. I already have a Browning High Power for when I want to shoot 9mm; the only other 9mm I have any desire for is a Ruger P-89. And I have no need for a .40 or .45 GAP. But in .45 ACP, well, that's a horse of a different color. It'll be interesting to see when they actually hit the shelves.

70th Anniversary of the DC-3

Tomorrow is the 70th Anniversary of the first flight of the Douglas DC-3.

Seventy years ago, one of aviation's best-known and most-loved airplanes was born. On Dec. 17, 1935, the DC-3 made its first flight.

It was the plane that changed the way the world flew. The DC-3 made commercial air travel popular and airline profits possible. Its commercial and military service over seven decades has made it an aviation legend.

The importance of the DC-3 cannot be understated. As noted in the quote, it's the airplane that made airline service a viable business model. During World War II it was the main transport aircraft for the US and British Empire. The official US Army name was the C-47 Skytrain while the Brits called it the Dakota. The most common nickname, though, was Gooney Bird. It was used to ferry troops and supplies all over the world. It was used to tow assault gliders and to drop paratroops. It served on in US military use until the 60s, and hundreds of Gooney Birds, mostly C-47s made during The War, are still being flown today in commercial service. Can you imagine a 1940s-vintage truck being used to haul freight today? Talk about over-engineered!

I've been an aviation buff since I was a kid and one airplace I still want a ride in is a DC-3.

Computers suck

Computers suck.

I've spent most of the past two days speed testing a new cable modem/gateway on our lab network. Basically all I'm doing is transferring files from a laptop to and from an FTP server and recording the results. Since we use three kinds of CMTSes (Cisco, Arris, and Motorola), I need to test against each one using several tests:

• DHCP client with SPI enabled.
• DHCP client with SPI disabled.
• Static IP with SPI enabled.
• Static IP with SPI disabled.

Each of the permutations has to be run with the modems provisioned for 18 Mbps down/3 Mbps up, and 30 Mbps down/10 Mbps up (the latter to simulate an uncapped modem, since our provisioning system doesn't allow truly wide open configs).

What's been frustrating has been very inconsistent results. We're using my Apple G4 iBook, my test Dell D600 running XP, and my coworker's identical Dell. We're also using my D600 booted into SUSE 9.3.

My coworker's Dell allows me to get a much higher speed than my Dell running XP or my iBook. But if I boot my D600 in Linux my results are similar to his running XP.

We're also experiencing intermittent flakiness with the CLI FTP clients we've been using but only when connecting to the FTP server through the new gateway. Sometimes we're unable to get a directory listing. We've been using the standard XP CLI FTP client, ftp under Cygwin, ncftp under Cygwin, ftp on my iBook, and finally ftp under SUSE.

It's enough to make me want to grab a hammer.

Thumbs up for Gigaparts

Today I received my third order from Gigaparts, the Comet GP-3 antenna and 100 feet of coax terminated with PL-259s on both ends. I ordered Monday, received a prompt email notification, recieved email confirmation Tuesday from UPS, and got the two packages today. Shipping was via regular UPS Ground, so that's damn quick. This pretty much mirros my two prior orders, so I can feel comfortable recommending them for ham radio supplies. (They also sell 'puters, but have never ordered from them before.)

Comet GP-3

I went and ordered a Comet GP-3 2M/70cm antenna, along with a Cable X-Perts coaxial feed line from Gigaparts. The plan to to mount it on top of my house on a 10 foot mast, which I'll either attach to one of the plumbing vents protruding through the roof, or my chimney. I can pick up the mast and mounting hardware locally. It's being shipped UPS Ground so I don't expect it before the end of next week.

This should really improve the performance of my Yaesu FT-7800 at home.

Snow day, sorta

We received our first significant snowfall overnight, about 6" in Plymouth Meeting. (I'll pause while more northerly or western readers finish laughing.) Most area schools are closed today. OK, well, by 0730 I hadn't received a voicemail indicating the office was closed so I headed out to work. I decided that dealing with SEPTA wouldn't be any fun so I drove in.

As usual, in AWD the Expedition handled the snow and ice with aplomb. I'm not one of those ID10Ts who thinks that a 4x4 allows you to zip along over snow as if I was on dry pavement. I kept it slow and maintained good following distance and made it into town without any serious difficulty.

Naturally when I arrived I found a voicemail waiting for my from my boss who had decided to bail for the day and hoped that I did the same. {sigh} The office is pretty empty and I don't want to be driving when the wet roads freeze up, so I'm going to head out at noon, which will give me time to crank up the snowblower for the first time this winter and clear off my driveway and sidewalks.

Need a base antenna

There's no way around it: For best Tx and Rx with my FT-7800R, I'll need to put an antenna on the roof, on at least a short mast. I've gone through numerous reviews at eHam.net and the Comet GP-3 dual band is looking good.

I figure that I can clamp the Comet to a piece of EMT conduit used as a mast, then in turn attach the conduit to one of the plumbing vent pipes sticking up through my roof. The coaxial feed to the antenna will then go down the side of my house cable-tied to a downspout, and through a hole into my office. The coax run will probably be about 40 - 50 feet.

I would be interested in hearing from any readers having experience with the GP-3, or who can suggest another alternative 2M/70cm base antenna that sells for $100 or less. Insights into lightning protection are also welcome.

Pearl Harbor Day

Never forget.

Rimfire scopes

Over on THR someone asked about "A1 Optics" rifle scopes for mounting on a Ruger 10/22. I've never heard of this brand so replied with the following information:

I never heard of A1 Optics so can't opine on them.

Weaver makes a 4x28mm rimfire scope and Nikon a 4x32mm rimfire scope that can be had online for about $110. I have one of each, the Weaver is on a Savage Mark IIGL and the Nikon is on a 10/22. I actually got the Nikon as a factory refurbished unit from Natchez Shooters Supply for $70. I highly recommend either of these over cheaper .22 scopes.

Both have excellent optics but the Nikon gathers a bit more light with the larger objective lens. As rimfire scopes, they have the parallax adjusted for 50 or 75 yards, instead of 100 yards as you'll find with a scope intended for use on a centerfire.

Cheap scopes aren't worth your time. They have poor optics and don't hold up well over time. E.g., my Marlin Camp .45 ate a BSA red dot (that I got for free). You don't have to spend a ton of money for a decent scope, but don't go cheap, either.

VMWare Player

I'm posting this from Ubuntu Linux running inside the beta VMWare Player. The Player is more-or-less a stripped-down version of VMWare Workstation that allows you to run virtual machines created on the full version of VMWare. The Player is free, like Microsoft's Word or PowerPoint Viewers.

Along with the VMWare Player, I downloaded the Browser Appliance virtual machine, which is a preconfigured install of Ubuntu that boots you into a Gnome desktop running Firefox. It's pretty slick, IMO.

This is my first time playing with Ubuntu but so far my impression is favorable. I didn't need to futz around with anything to get the fonts looking good and networking just worked. Here's what it looks like:




I have this all running on my test laptop at work, a Dell Latitute D600 with a 1GB of RAM and a 1.8 GHz Pentium M CPU. It seems to be running well.

Well this sucks

I got onto the MARC Sunday net, but just barely. Even at 10W output the other members had a hard time hearing me. I could hear them clear as day, and before the MARC net, I was able to pick up another net off a repeater in Perkasie, which is even further away. So I don't think anything is wrong with my antenna setup.

Weird.

More mail server stuff

The Book of Postfix arrived Thursday and I started reading it on the train Friday. So far, so good. It's well-written and easy to understand. Going by the table of contents, it appears to gather into one place most of what I need for putting together a single domain mail server with antivirus and antispam filtering. The proof will be in the pudding, of course.

My test environment is going to be CentOS 4.2 in a VMWare virtual machine. I decided to try out CentOS because as an unencumbered version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, there should be no shortage of documentation on how to get things done. While I haven't run Red Hat myself in quite awhile, it is the most prevalent Linux distro in the US.

So far all I've done is the install, setting the hostname, and changing the default MTA from sendmail to Postfix. I'll get around to configuring Postfix, dovecot (IMAP and POP), ClamAV, and Spamassassin later this week.

December already?

It's hard to believe it's December already.

Yesterday we had a birthday party for Alexandra -- she turns three on Tuesday. The party was nice and today both she and Amanda ran around half the day wearing some princess costumes she got. My little girls are playing dress up already. Oy.

Friday night I tried getting on the MARC 'net with my new FT-7800R but they had problems hearing me. It looks like I had the radio misprogrammed to talk to the repeaters, and I was transmitting on the output freq. I'm still learning both the radio and the programming software. I reprogrammed the radio tonight and hopefully I'll have better luck.

I did figure out a new, hopefully decent, antenna setup. Since my office is located on one of the front corners of the house next to the driveway, I cracked the window and placed my magnet-mount mobile antenna on the roof of Judith's car, then ran the coax inside. This gets the antenna away from nearby objects which can detune it, and gives it a proper RF ground. We'll see in a little while how it works.

United Way Rant

It's that time of year when many large employers try to get their employees to donate to charities through the United Way. Aside from some degree of altruism, there is of course the PR aspect of this as well.

What happens is that employees get inundated with requests from management brass cajoling them to donate. "Even $5 would make a difference. Be a team player." Etc., etc. In reality, what the company is looking for is a certain percentage of its employees to participate, so that for PR purposes it can say, "Seventy percent of BigAssCorp's employees donated to the United Way. Aren't we good people?"

What bullshit. It's a way for companies to boost their public reputations by guilt-tripping their employees into participating. I'll have no truck with it.

Aside from the fact that I contribute to charity on my own, there's also the factor that because the United Way distributes funds to so many different charities, that at least one of them is bound to support something I oppose. And while a donator can specify which end recipient is to get his money, the list is so long that searching for the best designated recipient is an exercise in frustration.

I donate to charity and it's none of my employer's business to know when, how much, and to whom I donate. I am not a public corporation with books open to anyone who's interested in looking at them.

The political aspect of this whole thing stinks. Employees who don't contribute are stigmatized, for declining to participate in what should be a wholly voluntary activity. In some companies failure to participate can adversely affect opportunities for advancement or getting good projects.

This is a perfect example of how good intentions -- get people to engage in philanthropy -- get morphed into an oppressive tool.

Damn this pisses me off.

Yaesu FT-7800R

My little Yaesu VX-5RS handie talkie radio is nice but I've noticed that because it's QRP (only 5W), lately I'm having problems hitting the local repeater from my house. I can recieve fine, but there seems to be enough atmospheric interference to prevent me from being heard. I think it's a seasonal thing. Even when I was able to hit the repeater reliably, people who I spoke to indicated that my signal was a bit weak.

Since a major source of my interest in my ham radio is emergency communications, this situation needed to be rectified. So, today I ordered a Yaesu FT-7800R mobile 2M/70cm rig from Gigaparts. (I previously ordered from them with good results.) With the new rig I'll be able to transmit at up to 50W on 2M and 40W on 70cm, and should have no problem hitting the local repeaters from home. (I bet 10W should suffice to let me get to the MARC repeater in Paoli.) It should also work well for mobile operating in my truck.

I was seriously considering getting an FT-8800, so that I'd get cross-band repeat capability, but that would've added about $100 that I didn't want to spend to the bill. The relative simplicity of operation of the FT-7800 is a bonus, too, as I continue to get my feet wet in ham radio.

Because the FT-7800 uses 13.8V DC power, I needed something to power it with at home (transceivers typically don't come with an AC adapter). So, I ordered a Yaesu 25W power supply as well. In the future I may add a gel cell battery for extended field or emergency ops.

The other accessory I ordered to go along with the new radio is the ADMS programming software and cable, so that I don't need to punch all the frequencies, offsets, and PL tones in by hand, which would be a massive PITA.

A good day busting caps

We had one of our semi-annual scheutzenfests over at my friend Nick's place today.

I brought my Marlin Camp .45, Ruger 10/22, CZ-52, and Browning High Power, which I wound up not shooting. This was the first time I shot the Marlin since installing a 21 lb. Wolff recoil spring. I'd put a 16 lb. spring in it after I bought it last year, but back in August I shot GeekWithA.45's Camp .45 with the heavier spring and was sold. The gun functions reliably, the already mild recoil is reduced even more, and less gunk blows back in my face from the ejection port. This was also the first time I shot the Camp .45 with the Bushnell red dot sight mounted. The zero will need some fine tuning, which will have to wait until I get it to a real range.

The Ruger ran great with CCI Subsonic HP .22 LRs. These loads are very quiet and I'd mainly bought them for my Savage Mark-II bolt action, but I'm pleased that they work well in the semiauto Ruger. This was the first chance I've had to shoot it with the Nikon 4x32mm scope I picked up a few months ago, and with the Butler Creek Hot Lips 25 round magazine. Both worked well. The nikon scope has nice optics, and I'll have to pick up a couple more of the mags. They are really fun when plinking.

We put about 30 rounds of Yugoslavian surplus 7.62x25 through the CZ-52. Muzzle blast and noise were on par with the CCI Blazer .357 Magnums my friend Rusty was shooting in his S&W Model 19. I made sure to run a few wet patches through the bore before we packed up, because the Yugo ammo has corrosive primers. After getting home I cleaned it well with Ballistol and will double check it tomorrow.

My friend Frank brought along a couple neat toys that I got to shoot: a Vepr-K AK in 7.62x39 and a Berretta Storm CX-4 Storm carbine in 9mm Parabellum. The Vepr is really nice, right up there with my Arsenal, Inc. milled Bulgarian AK. It's even heavier than the milled gun, though, between the RPK-type stamped receiver and the furniture. There is no comparison between a high-end AK like a Vepr or an Arsenal, and one of the cheap Romanian or Egyptian rifles. The latter may shoot and function OK, but the former actually look and feel nice while doing it.

I didn't like the Storm. They are certainly very cool looking (hence their use on the new Battlestar Galactica TV show), but it has one of the worst out of the box triggers I've ever felt. The trigger pull is heavy, long, and I noticed some trigger slap. Pistol caliber carbines -- like my Marlin -- can be really fun to shoot, but that trigger killed it for me. I'll probably get a 9mm carbine at some point, but it'll either be a used Marlin Camp 9, or a Ruger PC-9, probably the latter, because I also want to pick up a Ruger P-89 and they use the same mags.

R1A1 back

The Big Brown Truck arrived this afternoon and dropped off my R1A1 back from Century, along with the 500 rounds of 9mm that I ordered on Saturday from Natchez. (It's a good thing the office closed early, since I had to sign for the rifle.)

Upon opening the box, I was pleasantly surprised to see the cheap blue sleeve that I'd sent the rifle off to Century in had been returned. I didn't really care if I got it back since it's almost disposable, but it's nice to see that they were paying attention. When I took the rifle out of the box I saw an orange chamber flag sticking out of the ejection port, and after verifying myself that the gun was empty, I removed the gas plug.

The first time I removed the gas plug, a week or so ago, the gas piston stayed stuck in the gas tube due to binding. Today it popped right out, as it should. When I broke open the rifle, removed the bolt carrier and bolt, and receiver cover, what Century had done to fix the binding was obvious. The hole through which the piston hits the bolt carrier had been reamed out. With the gas piston spring removed the piston now drops freely through the receiver. It's a little sticky pushing it back forwards, but as I understand it, this is normal when the gas piston spring isn't in the gun.

Judging by the carbon deposits on the piston, it appears that Century test fired the rifle before shipping it back to me. So, I'm cautiously optimistic that it's fixed. I may shoot it this weekend and see.

The Book of Postfix

I just ordered a copy of The Book of Postfix: State-of-the-Art Message Transport from Amazon. In my search for a relatively easy way to implement a Linux or FreeBSD email server, one thing keeps rearing its head. Namely, something like the Qmail Toaster seems dependent upon a relatively small group of developers. I want to get away from that and use a more widely adopted system, in search of a longer useful life. To do that I'll probably need to dig a bit deeper than I would otherwise have to, were I going with a canned package.

Combining Postfix with ClamAV and Spam Assassin should allow me to create a solid, supportable system with good performance.

Once I've had a chance to look over the book I'll post a brief review.

WebMail extension for Thunderbird

Last night while looking for something else, I ran across the WebMail extension for Mozilla Thunderbird. It allows you to fetch mail from otherwise POP-disabled webmail accounts, e.g., Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail. Basically, it creates a POP-to-HTTP proxy which allows you to access webmail as if it was a POP3 account.

I installed the WebMail extension and Yahoo! plugin on Bagend and gave it a try. It worked fine. This is in contrast to Yahoo POPs, which I tried awhile ago and couldn't get it to work.

WebMail is a nice example of how Thunderbird can be extended to better serve your needs.

Several Updates to The Shooters' Bar (SM)

I made several updates to The Shooters' Bar (SM), my free online list of pro-RKBA attorneys. Most of the additions today were under Washington.

If you a pro gun rights attorney and want to reach out to other pro-RKBA people, no matter what your area of practice is, send me a request to be added to the list, using the same format as shown on TSB. It won't cost you anything.

Langalist

You may have noticed a new banner down on the right side of the page. It links to Fred Langa's Langalist, which I've been getting for a couple of years now. It's a good source of technical tips for keeping your Windows boxen running smoothly. Fred Langa publishes both free and for-pay enhanced versions of the list, and I highly recommend subscribing. I've gleaned several tips from the list which have helped me with my own machines and clients' PCs.

Ammo Day

I almost forgot, today is Ammo Day -- the national ammo BUYcott. Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, I was able to participate by ordering 500 rounds of CCI Blazer Brass 9mm 115 grain FMJ from Natchez Shooters Supply.

Go order some ammo.

Silly Internet Quiz Results

(Tip o' the hat to Geek With a .45.)

Which soldier type are you?


Which soldier type are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

Hooah!

What action here are you?


Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com

Yes!

Busy week

I took off Monday after Judith took Alexandra to the E.R. early that morning. Alexandra appears to have a case of bronchitis but it's much better now, since she went on Zithromax. This is the first time in two years she's had to go on any meds.

Yesterday and today I was over in Mt. Laurel, NJ, attending training on BelAir's wireless mesh networking equipment. This is some really neat gear, using a combination of 802.11a for backhaul, plus 802.11b/g for client access. The units can have multiple SSIDs, which in turn can be matched to different VLANs. I'll be back in the office tomorrow.

I've also been doing some experimenting with FreeBSD 6 and Qmail, setting up a "Mail Toaster" inside a VMWare virtual machine. This is for my private client with the SUSE/CommuniGate Pro mail server. I've been looking into replacing this combination since upgrading and maintaining it has become a royal pain in the ass. E.g., updating ClamAV's engine has become impractical due to dependency hell. Also, it's running SUSE 9, for which support is being dropped next month.

While FreeBSD of course rocks, and the Mail Toaster is rather neat, I don't think it's the right replacement for this client. If it was an entirely new setup I might go with it, but from what I've seen, migrating their existing hardware is going to take too long, due to the necessity of downloading and compiling from source the toaster bits.

What I may do is upgrade the box in steps. First, get them on OpenSUSE 10, then look at moving from CommuniGate Pro to Postfix + Qpopper (since they insist on using POP3 instead of IMAP.) We'll see.

Cracked Iver Johnson .30 Carbine Bolt

I got this email today:

"I had an IJ Carbine in the early-mid '80s. I had to send it back to the factory because the bolt was too soft, and the locking lugs began to peen. It's my understanding that many IJ Carbines had soft parts."

This is a quote from your 17 Sept 2004 post on "THR". I am emailing you because I need some advice.

I bought two former Missouri police dept Iver Johnson Enforcer pistols. I haven't put too many rounds through them, but on one, the bolt cracked. Upon further inspection, I saw some of the peening you described. I could buy a replacement IJ carbine bolt from Numrich, but was their rifle bolt different from their pistol bolt? I'd be better off with a GI or M-1 GI type M-1 carbine bolt, of course (no soft metal in the GI bolts) but upon inspection, the IJ design for my Enforcer was different. Simpler, easier to clean, but different than the GI design.

How did you resolve your soft bolt problem?

And my reply:

I had purchased an extended warranty from the store where I bought my IJ Carbine, so when I noticed the locking lugs starting to peen, I took it back to the store, who shipped it back to IJ. I got it back with a new bolt. Unfortunately, IJ went out of business awhile ago.

What I'd do in your case is to replace the bolt with a USGI M1 or M2 Carbine bolt. I'd prefer the later round style over the earlier flat bolts. The round bolts are stronger, and have more mass. I would not buy an IJ bolt from Numrich, since there's a good chance you'd end up with the cracked bolt problem again.

No matter which bolt you get, I suggest having a gunsmith familiar with M1 Carbines check the headspace. I wouldn't count on it being a drop-in part.

Of the M1 Carbine clones made for the US civilian market after World War II, the Plainfields and Iver Johnson (after they bought Plainfield) were generally the best. Quality deteriorated towards the end of production in 80s, however, as demonstrated with my IJ Carbine, and the two Enforcers mentioned above.

Universal Carbines were generally not too good, and in fact are not true clones. While the Plainfields and IJs will take USGI parts, Universals won't.

More recently IAI made some Carbines down in Texas, but has since gone out of business. From what I've read, they had a lot of problems. The only current manufacturer of M1 Carbines is Auto Ordnance, which is owned by Kahr. I've heard mixed reports about the Kahrbines (pardon the pun) but IMO, they'd be worth a shot (groan) if you are in the market for an M1. I find it neat that the AO Carbines are being produced in WW2 format, i.e., without the bayonet lug and with the "L"-type flip rear sight.

I sure like my original Underwood M1, though. :-)

"WiFi Scoop"

This is neat. Some students down in New Zealand combined USB WiFi adapters and Chinese cooking implements to greatly extend the range of WiFi networks. Huh? Just check out the link.

More network fun

Saturday I went back to my client and did more work on their new webserver. Specifically, I added the SCSI interface card so that I could then hook up their Dell automatic tape loader. Since the special application they are going to run isn't installed yet I (the vendor will be coming tomorrow) the only test backup I could do was of the C:\ drive. I'll check the results on my next site visit.

The other thing I had to do was some troubleshooting of the owner's Thunderbird installation. I wound up removing 1.0.6 and loading 1.0.7, at which point I thought everything was working OK. However, she called me today and told me about some continuing issues. Something is really borked on her system and it looks like I'll have to return and eradicate every trace of Tbird, then reinstall. The other thing that leads me to believe the there's an underlying Windows problem is that all of a sudden her PC isn't seeing the network share where her Quickbooks data gets backed up to. I just love XP Home in a networked office environment. :-|

Sony sued over its DRM malware

They sure had it coming.

Suit targets Sony BMG anti-piracy technology

By Reuters

Story last modified Thu Nov 10 05:18:00 PST 2005

LOS ANGELES--Record company Sony BMG Music Entertainment has been targeted in a class-action lawsuit in California by consumers claiming their computers have been harmed by anti-piracy software on some Sony BMG CDs.

The claim states that Sony BMG's failed to disclose the true nature of the digital rights management system it uses on its CDs and thousands of computer users have unknowingly infected their computers, according to court documents.

The suit, filed Nov. 1 in Los Angeles Superior Court asks the court to stop Sony BMG from selling additional CDs protected by the anti-piracy software and seeks monetary damages for California consumers who purchased them.

A spokesman for Sony BMG declined to comment.

Full story here.

Google Desktop

One of my favorite features in Mac OS-X Tiger is Spotlight, Apple's killer desktop search tool. It blows away the Find feature in Windows for usability and speed. Earlier this year, Google introduced Google Desktop, which offers similar functionality for Windows users.

After installing Google Desktop, it offers you the opportunity to configure it. You can set it to integrate with your Taskbar, as a floating searchbox, or as a sidebar. I have GD installed on Bagend and my Dell at work, and am currently using it as a sidebar. In the sidebar I have subwindows for Email, News, Web Clips, Scratch Pad, Maps, Quickv View, local weather, and a Todo list.

Following configuration, GD needs some time to index your hard disk. It does this when your PC is idle, so you won't see a performance hit due to GD running in the background.

One advantage of GD over Spotlight is that it will search and index Thunderbird email, even IMAP folders. Spotlight will do this for Mail.app, but not Thunderbird. GD can also be setup to index a Gmail account. GD will also index your Outlook email, whether it's on an Exchange server and cached locally, or in a .PST file, and adds a plugin for searching from within Outlook. I find this very valuable because Outlook's built-in search is weak, in my opinion.

As with most other things from Google, Desktop is free. Based on my use of it the past couple of days, I definitely recommend it for Windows users with a lot of data.

Armed Citizens and Rioters

In reply to RBT's comments about possible American reaction to French-style rioting, Jerry Pournelle wrote:

Mr. Thompson may find himself facing BATF and Federal Marshals. It is likely that the federal authority will support the rioters, who will only be demanding their rights. ...

... And to jail anyone who defends himself, as a number of Korean shopkeepers found during the last riots here.

I have the greatest respect for Dr. Pournelle, but have to agree with Bob on this issues. In my opinion, the reaction Jerry envisages is more likely in the "Blue" liberal enclaves (IOW, the big cities and states like MA, NJ, NY, MD, CA, or IL). I don't see it happening in the "Red" areas.

After Katrina, a Federal court issued a restraining order in New Orleans to stop the NOPD from disarming civilians who were guarding their own property. While it is apalling that such an order would ever be issued by the chief of police, we do have here a recent example of where the Feds actually came to the defense of citizens' Second Amendment rights against local officals.

For what it's worth, I live in a subdivision in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA. I am aware of at least three other well-armed homes on my block within a stone's throw of my house. I have reason to believe that if rioters/looters were to threaten my neighborhood, the amount of firepower they'd meet would give people like Feinstein and Schumer the vapors.

Perhaps mass riots could take hold in urban areas in the US. It's happened before. I can see the politicians who run large cities like Philly trying to disarm their subjects citizens. But neither mass riots nor disarming civilians will fly in the "Red" areas.

Edited to add the following...

Dr. Pournelle replied:

What about Waco, Texas?

The political climate has changed. Waco was what, 1993? That was during the heyday of the most antigun administration in US history. While W's administration is hardly made up of Second Amendment absolutists, it isn't as actively antigun rights as the Clinton administration.

We are now at a point where a majority of states have "shall-issue" carry permit laws, when the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 was allowed to sunset, and a law restricting abusive lawsuits against gun manufacturers was just signed into law by Bush.

There may be isolated incidents of ATF disarming Americans in the wake of French style rioting, but I don't think the current political climate will support widespread civilian disarmament.

RMAed the R1A1

Before I go hacking on the R1A1 FAL I want to give Century Arms the chance to fix it. So, this morning I called them up and got an RMA number, then shipped it out (I'm off today). They should get it Wednesday and hopefully will be able to turn it around fairly quickly.

Assuming all is well when I get it back, I'm looking into a couple of customizations. First, I'll probably replace the R1 gas plug with the grenade launcher sight with a standard metric gas plug. The R1 gas plug is a big PITA to remove for cleaning.

Second, the Century plastic STG-58 style handguards look cool and feel good in my hand, but look like they'll heat up after shooting a couple of magazines. Over on the Fal Files, I've seen several good comments about Tapco's T-48 style handguard, and may spring for one, along with their SAW style grip. I'm debating whether to go for the whole set -- handguard, grip, and SAW style buttstock -- since it's about $100. But one of the guys on the FAL Files pointed out that the SAW style butt has a larger buttplate than other FAL stocks, which spreads recoil out over a larger area. If I go for the whole set I may get it in OD.

I'll post a follow up when I get the rifle back.

Sony's malicious software

You may have heard by now that at least some of Sony's recent audio CDs contain a "rootkit," which can lead to your PC being compromised if you use it to listen to one of their discs.

In his brief Wednesday post, fellow Daynotes Gang member Rick Hellewell addressed the Sony rootkit issue. He gives a good overview of the problem along with some links to follow. Rick defines the problem thusly:

Here's the problem: if the root kit is installed, then any other process similarly named will be invisible to the user or system administrator. Great opportunity for the virus/worm writers. Or the "Rats" (the guys that install keystroke loggers via virus/worm/"drive-by attack" to gather your bank login keystrokes.

Go follow the links from Rick and get yourself edumacated.

This is especially egregious corporate behavior. Malware -- including spyware, viruses, worms, and rootkits -- is one of the major causes of system instability. It appears that it is very diffcult to get rid of the Sony rootkit without reformatting you hard drive and reinstalling Windows and your apps.

Sony has a legitimate interest in protecting its intellectual property rights. This doesn't give them the right to violate your property rights to your system by using underhanded tactics to get you to install malware on your PC. I would love to see Sony and the company which wrote the rootkit get the shit sued out of them. It would seem to me that Sony is setting itself up for liability for trespass to chattel, unfair trade practices, and possibly worse, depending on actual damages.

I can tell you that I sure as hell won't be putting any CDs from Sony in my computers, and the odds of my buying anything from them ever again (I have a Sony digital camera and camcorder) are basically zero.

FAL problems

It figures. I discovered last night that the gas piston on my Century R1A1 FAL is binding in the hole at the front of the receiver. Based on responses gleaned from posts to AR15.com, THR, and the FAL Files, one of two things is likely the case: 1) the barrel is improperly-timed, i.e., either over- or under-torqued, of 2) the hole in the receiver is off-center. I submitted the following ticket to Century today:

I purchased a new Century R1A1 FAL a couple of weeks ago from Surplus City in Feasterville, PA. I purchased the rifle new, and have not shot it yet.

While doing an initial checkover of the gun last night, I removed the gas plug for the first time and discovered that the gas piston does not move freely through the hole in the front of the receiver. The piston binds in the receiver. When I removed the gas plug, the piston remained in the rifle instead of springing forward. To remove the piston, I had to push it forward, towards the muzzle, using a Lyman gunsmith's punch. I am unable to replace the gas plug with the piston in place, without jamming it back in and binding the piston in the receiver hole.

Based on some research, it looks like the barrel timing is slightly over- or under-torqued or the hole in the receiver through which the piston passes to contact the bolt carrier is off-center. I do not have the tools or expertise to fix the problem myself.

Will Century fix this problem under warranty? If so, please send me shipping instructions.

If Century pushed back I'll look into reaming the hole, but I'd rather have them fix it. Updates as I get 'em.

SMC switch issue finally resolved

Several months ago I started working with an SMC6752AL2 managed Ethernet switch. Our hospitality team has an upcoming installation with Ethernet in each of the rooms of a very large hotel. One of the requirements we have for any installation is that a host on one port cannot be allowed to see traffic from a host on another port.

SMC includes a "private VLAN" feature in their managed switches which provdes the host-to-host security we want. However, I discovered when I first tried implementing it that the private VLAN feature also cuts off any remote IP connectivity to the switch. With the private VLAN enabled on VLAN2, I couldn't connect via telnet, ssh, or http to VLAN1 for management.

After going back and forth with SMC's engineers for a couple of months, trying umpteen different configs, we determined that having the management and host VLANs separate just flat out won't work. Since the management IP is on a different logical subnet than the IPs that will be handed out to client hosts via DHCP, we decided to ignore VLAN1, make VLAN2 a private VLAN, and assign the management IP to VLAN2 with an ACL allowing IP connections from only the LAN's default gateway.

That's where we ran into another snag. Something was causing the connections to the switch that went through the gateway to time out. If I had my laptop configured with the gateway's IP and connected directly to the uplink port of the switch I could get in, although the time to setup a telnet or http session was s l o w.

Today, SMC sent me some new opcode for the switch. I tftped to the box, rebooted, and FINALLY, I was able to remotely manage the switch. Now I can move on to other things.

What a relief!

Echolink conference

Yesterday I mentioned that I picked up a webcam with a built-in mic on Sunday for use with various IM and ham-related VOIP programs. Last night I participated in my first Echolink conference.

In a nutshell, Echolink is one way to extend the reach of VHF ham radios by connecting them to the Internet. Much ham activity on VHF (e.g., the 2M band) is via local repeaters. Repeater typically receive on one frequency then retransmit on another. I try to get on a MARC net at least once a week.

However, even though a repeater can greatly extend the usable range of VHF communications, VHF cannot compete with the HF bands for true long range commo. Unless, of course, you throw the Internet into the mix.

There are several systems which connect VHF repeaters to the Internet to allow world-wide communication using low power handy talkies, including IRLP, eQSO, Yaesu's WIRES, and Echolink. The access Echolink, even from a PC, requires you to hold a valid amateur radio license. eQSO on the other hand, does permit non-licensed operators to participate in "rooms" with no radio link.

The official Echolink software is for Windows, but there are Macintosh and Linux clients as well. There are two basic ways to access Echolink.

First, if there's an Echolink-capable repeater in your area you can connect to it with your radio, dial up another Echolink node, and talk to people on that node, who may be on a radio or a computer.

The second way to is to use the Echolink client and a computer with a sound card, speakers, and a mic to connect to a node. This is what I did last night.

The organizer of last night's conference scheduled the time and the node, and participants logged in. We had a couple who connected via radio, others used their PCs, while the organizer himself didn't have a mic on his PC, so he used a radio to connect to a repeater while simultaneously logged on at his PC, so he could read text messages and see who was in the conference.

I was impressed with the overall audio quality. Everyone was quite clear, better than some other VOIP programs I've tried AAMOF. The guys connected via radio did breakup sometimes, but those using their PCs and a mic were crystal clear.

Since this was the first time for most of us, last night was largely devoted to figuring the whole system out. Future conferences with this group will probably have a topic list for each meeting.

Firefox 1.5 RC1

The more adventurous among you may be interested in trying out the first release candidate for Firefox 1.5. I loaded it on my iBook this morning and so far haven't run into any major problems. It did break the "downloadthemall" and Bookmarks Sync extensions, so unless I go back to 1.0.7, I'll have to wait until they're updated. Likewise, it broke a Mac-only theme I was using (I disremember the name), so it dumped me back with the default theme. So, I installed the Aquatint theme, which looks nice and makes Firefox look more like a regular OS-X app.

I noticed that the Preferences box is a bit more Mac-like than in previous releases. Also, the delete key now serves as a "Back" button, a feature I've always liked on the Windows ports of Firefox, Mozilla, and Netscape. For some reason this has been absent from prior Mac (and Linux) builds, without a way to implement it.

Logitech webcam

On Sunday I picked up a Logitech QuickCam Communicate STX for use on Bagend with various IM programs as well as ham-related VOIP systems like Echolink and eQSO. Installation was pretty straightforward, although it seemed to hang the box during the initial audio calibration. I've seen this on another XP machine with Logitech's software.

Last night after my Echolink account was validated I connected to the test server, which plays back to you anything you say to it. I had to adjust placement of the webcam so that the built-in mic was able to pickup my voice, but aside from that didn't have to tweak it at all. I'm planning to participate in a 'net tonight with some of the Arfcom SF guys, so we'll see (or hear) how well it works for real.

Partial server install

This morning I made a site visit to one of my clients. They are going to start using Ideal Planroom for their customers and so needed a new server installed. They got a nice Dell Poweredge dual 3.0 GHz Xeon box with a bunch of SCSI disk space. I'd been expecting to setup all the hardware today, but the tape autoloader and equipment cabinet, including the rackmount keyboard and LCD monitor, haven't arrived yet.

In the meantime, after doing my regular maintenance on their file and mail servers, we got the new Dell out of the box and temporarily hooked it up to their LAN so I could verify its hardware configuration and complete the initial Windows 2003 Server config, including installation of IIS.

The tape autoloader and cabinet are supposed to arrive Monday. Assuming they do come in, I'll go back in a week to finish the installation.