The NRA on the New Orleans Gun Grab

Disaster Can’t Destroy Gun Rights

Monday, September 12, 2005

National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre slammed New Orleans authorities Monday for seizing legal firearms from lawful residents.

"What we’ve seen in Louisiana - the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of disaster - is exactly the kind of situation where the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves, " LaPierre said.

"When law enforcement isn’t available, Americans turn to the one right that protects all the others - the right to keep and bear arms," LaPierre said. "This attempt to repeal the Second Amendment should be condemned."

The New York Times reported last Thursday that no civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to have guns, quoting the superintendent of police that "only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons."

A Louisiana state statute allows the chief law enforcement officer to "regulate possession" of firearms during declared emergencies. "But regulate doesn’t mean confiscate," said Chris W. Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist.

"Authorities are using that statute to do what the looters and criminals could not: disarm the law-abiding citizens of New Orleans trying to protect their homes and families," Cox said.

"The NRA will not stand idly by while guns are confiscated from law-abiding people who’re trying to defend themselves," he said.

"We’re exploring every legal option available to protect the rights of lawful people in New Orleans," Cox said, "and we’re taking steps to overturn such laws in every state where they exist."

"Local authorities in New Orleans are turning nature’s assault on human life into man’s assault on human rights," LaPierre said. "Four million NRA members intend to stop this unconstitutional power grab."

Source.

I hope this means that the NRA intends to sue the living shit out of those responsible.

Comeuppance

This farmer's neighbors are going to be kicking themselves next year the first time the wind blows the wrong way:

Complaints kill shooting range, pigs coming now

Sunday, September 11, 2005
By Brian David, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

On the first day of August, Tom Belsterling saw his skeet-shooting business blown right out of the sky.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined that day to hear his appeal of a May 2003 decision by the New Sewickley zoning hearing board. The board had ruled Belsterling's skeet range illegal, and the decision had been upheld at every level of county and state court.

On the first day of September, lacking the ability to make further appeals, Belsterling went for a lack of appeal instead: He bought some pigs.

If he can't fill the air with buckshot and clay, he'll fill it with an odor. And neighbors who had angered him with their blunt objections to the noise of shotguns cannot complain; pig farming is absolutely allowed under the township's zoning ordinance.

"It's an agricultural activity, so go to it, I guess," said Dennis Goehring, chairman of the New Sewickley supervisors.

{Smirk}

NOLA Confiscations Summed Up

Click here.

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.