Reviews of movies, anime, and the occasional TV show mixed with warnings on Blogger spam. Also to be found are musings on whatever I am thinking about - all from the point of view of being left to watch everything from the sidelines of life.
Since it has been a season of everything going wrong that could possibly go wrong at the Boonedocks, I thought I’d post a picture of something finally going right for a change. UPDATED July 24: Problems.
A new scope, the UTG 3-9x32 Compact CQB Bug Buster AO, is my first step into better optics for the 5.56mm/.223 Rem cartridge that I shoot the most. It may be my last step if it holds up over time given the above results.
Update: It didn’t hold up at all. Details after the break…
The problem with having CFS/CFIDS is that you never have enough energy and if you do have any it expends quickly with little rebound. I write “little” because if there was none, you’d be dead. Instead returning energy trickles in at glacial rate. Add in being a type A personality and it becomes a recipe for running one’s self into the ground the moment you have any energy.
This month of July has been a tough one of burning up energy and crashing repeatedly with each crash harder than the prior one. It began with family visiting and being on maximum output through the first week. Somehow I made it through that with only a small lapse into a bronchial infection that cleared up after two days.
I do not know when holidays changed from things to anticipate eagerly to things that strike dread in my heart. It probably was a few years into CFS that the demands of such days became apparent to me. Yes, I stubbornly believed back then that somehow, someway I would get better.
Then there was Labor Day, a federal holiday I always thought was pointless. I’m not a fan of holidays except to mark important events or to honor military service. It also seemed unnecessary with Thanksgiving not to far away and Christmas a mere month later. To me, it was inconsequential and gave it little thought.
So of course this year I completely forgot it was coming despite many announcements about the ward picnic. Postponed plans to go to the range to make some very badly needed zeroing in for a couple of rifles meant that yesterday morning was a must do. Then at noon the picnic would have to be gotten to. Oh hey, a phone call from a friend getting the online gaming group together for steak later that afternoon made things even more complicated.
I really wondered if I would survive Labor Day.
Despite Monday being the toughest day of the week for my health, I felt inspired to head to Winona, MN to get some ammo and maybe a cheapish phone. My eight year old Motorola cordless runs through replacement batteries at a faster clip than it used to, while acting strangely of late. At Amazon, I had wish listed a well reviewed AT&T corded and cordless DECT 6.0 combo, something I had never dreamed existed and perfect for rural life. But the price went up and I was reluctant to pull the trigger.
So it is much to my surprise that I have the AT&T phone charging at the moment in the living room while the corded base keeps watch in my room. It turns out they had a couple in stock at Mills Fleet Farm where I got my cheap Russian .223 ammo! Now I am penniless until my next Social Security check, but I am very relieved to have a working telephone. The extra range of the phone should be very helpful since the Samsung barely worked at the other end of the not very big house.
I have spent some time going back through old review posts and have done some minor editing to improve layout and add needed tags. Tagging is still underway, because I had previously thought of it in a master index way instead of how people actually use tags. If a tag is used to look up other posts, it is off of the post, not the side bar and I finally got that through my thick skull. New genre categories of science fiction, fantasy, comedy, and classics have been introduced to help with that.
One consequence of looking over the older reviews is finding the need to rewrite or update seven of them. In one case, that will require a newer and better DVD, but fortunately that will be under ten dollars to do.
This has been a good week so far and it is Wednesday already so that means the majority of it has been good. It has been awhile since I could say that.
Sunday I got a ride to church and hung out with a young friend of mine and his girlfriend as we got his fancy new Onkyo home theater system to play nice with his new PC. A spare optical cable I had lying around turned out to be key in getting the signal out to the receiver. The Phillip's one he bought at Wal-Mart refused to convey a proper signal, so we decided it was probably defective.
Monday I bought an upgrade to the Cyberlink PowerDVD player that came with my Blu-ray drive since I was liking what it was capable of but wanted more features. PowerDVD 11 Ultra is a very nice upgrade and I am currently playing with its TrueTheater HD upscaling versus the capable ATI Avivo of my videocard. Depending on the video, it seams to do a better job when the content is of lower quality. More testing is needed before I can conclusively say more, but it is promising. It is now my go to video player for all formats.
Sorry, VLC – you have really fallen by the wayside of late.
That cheap optical cable I mentioned before? Well, shockingly it turned out to work with the Razer Barracuda soundcard on my living room multimedia center PC I built with leftover parts a couple of years ago. Dolby Digital Live and DTS Interactive sound fantastic coming out of it, which breathes new life into streaming content from Hulu, YouTube, Crackle, and other places on the Web. All I can surmise is that the Barracuda pumps out more light than the Asus Xonar D1.
Tuesday my father and I had lunch with a friend from out neighboring county in Houston at the Crossroads Cafe and caught up on politics. I also encountered an amazing hashbrown omelet that was not only huge but had everything wrapped in the hashbrowns. I am still digesting it a day later.
Today we ate at the same place when we met with our State Representative, Greg Davids. It is going to be a strange election year for many reasons, but redistricting due to the census makes it weirder than usual. We do not know for sure where the districts will be until the courts rule on them. Hopefully, they will be more logical than the last court imposed ones from 2000. Odds are that I will be in the same district as Greg, but the state senate is another question. I will hate to lose Jeremy Miller as my senator if it goes the way I suspect, but that’s life.
Now for something more sobering. I have to agree with Glenn Reynolds last sentence. These are fast becoming perilous times when you cannot trust the election process anymore.
Over in Belgium a mass shooting took place that got next to no attention here in the States. So far it appears the shooter being a drug dealer about to go to prison again is the motivation, despite his Moroccan origins. The fact he was not a practicing Muslim indicates it wasn’t sudden jihad syndrome, but why did he have grenades and 9500 gun parts? It makes me suspect he dealt illegal weapons on the side to other drug dealers and criminals. Even the craziest of gun nuts do not have that many parts lying around.
In my opinion, Europe is slowing losing control to criminals due to their pervasive statism and gun control laws. Look how well those laws worked with a convict having possession of that kind of arsenal. There is always a way for criminals to arm themselves – always.
My prayers go out to those wounded and the loved ones of those killed.
That is the question. For some reason I was unable to sleep at all last night and my resulting mood is conveyed by the word.
I eventually did get some sleep from 7:30 AM to Noon, but am at a loss to explain why I could not sleep before.
Perhaps it was handling a C93 Sporter 5.56mm at a store last night. I do have an H&K clone fever of some kind and a sub $600 rifle that is a fixer upper is tempting. But by the time corrections would be made, it would be in the range of the PTR-91 I covet so much.
Gharrr! Garr? GAAHRR?!
However it is spelled, I need to stop saying it or the cats will think I am a pirate.
I should get that Summer Wars review written and posted before I forget what the film was about…
Oh and today is day one of H2O2 therapy since the stuff finally arrived. We will see if there is anything to it.
Gambling is alluring to most people and has gotten more popular than ever with high stakes poker shows on cable television and casinos sprouting up all over the place. But the biggest mecca for gambling isn’t Los Vegas. It is Wall Street.
Watching the markets claw their way to positive gains today, I’m struck by how addictive behaviors make their presence felt in even what should be the most sober of locations. There is no good economic news and only vague hopes of another stimulus or some such reassurance from the Fed. Speculation has lost what rationality it had at some point in the past and I’ll leave that to someone to pinpoint.
It eerily reminds me of partying before a disaster hits. Or in this case, during the opening stages of one.
Ah, well. One can’t live life without taking a few chances. I’ve made a few gambles in life that didn’t pay off, though for the most part they weren’t financial ones. My latest to go awry is an attempt to make my pistol accurate.
The Ruger P94 I have had since the late 90’s has never been accurate. At best, I could throw bullets with the same results. But through trial and much error, the problem has been narrowed down to sights that hit at least 6 inches too low.
I’d hoped adding Hogue grips would help. Today I finally got to test the modified pistol out with them. They did help in the horizontal, oddly. But the sights are still horrible. Even making a triangle with the dots only elevated shots to three inches low. Lining up the dots is supposed to be dead on at 7 yards but doing that took me completely off the paper 7 out of 10 shots.
Now I’m debating selling or trading in the gun and getting a different used pistol. With my friend’s Springfield XDM, I wasn’t just on paper on the first try but shot a nice fist sized group about two inches low. So my trigger technique does need work but it isn’t 6” plus bad.
I also broke the plastic head of my small crafting hammer while trying to remove the rear sights during an experiment to see if I could change them out myself. Insult to injury or injury to insult?
So $20 down the drain on the grips. It would be another $130 to get new adjustable sights and pay a gunsmith to put them on. I’m not enthused.
One thing I’ve noticed about when I get overtired is the tendency toward malapropos when speaking or writing. It is very irritating to realize that the wrong word was used well after the fact. So when I logged in today and saw that I’d titled the last post “Chicken Scratches” I was not amused.
When I wrote that title, in my head was the imagery of what my notes and print writing looks like. Those of us who print too quickly can be accused of putting “chicken tracks” on paper. How “scratches” got in there I do not know.
Now for some more randomness as I willfully go off topic.
While off in the big medium small city, I ran across a gun shop that was unknown to me. Curious to see what they have, one of the first things beheld upon entering is afflicting me with a bad case of the wants. It is a new DPMS Panther Oracle in .308/7.62 caliber. Think of an M-4 but with a much bigger punch.
For some time, I’ve wanted a .308 semi-auto to fill a true multirole capability. Something that can take deer or larger game down but also be something useful if the world decides to end while I wasn’t watching. But most of all, after getting an Enfield SMLE I fell in love with shooting bigger rounds. Which is not what I expected at all.
One thing saving me from getting too covetous of the rifle is the short barrel. I want something longer for hunting purposes, though I concede that my shaky hands probably render the extra range useless. It is also why I need the ability to put a second round downrange ASAP when I miss. Sigh.
Back to reality.
When I got up, I could have sworn it was Wednesday, the hardest day of the week to spell.
It is going to be blazingly hot and humid, so I’ll be working on reviews for the blog. Fractale Episode 7 will most likely be finished today, while Citizen Kane is on hold until I watch the documentary on Disc 2. Then I’ll get on the half a year delayed TRON: Legacy review. At least I’ll be able to include screen captures now.
After being frustrated with my Ruger P94 being inaccurate, I’m going to tinker with it a bit. Hogue finger groove grips are on their way, but I suspect the sights are off since I’ve seen reports of the exact same problems I’m having. Currently, I have to place the front sight dot on top of the rear dots in a pyramid layout to hit anywhere near what I’m aiming for. While there are aftermarket adjustable sights for the pistol, the goal is the cheapest out to fix the problem.
The deer ticks are out in force this year. I’ve pulled at least twenty off of our white cat, Snooky. She is also shedding at a rate I’ve never seen a cat do before. Of course, I would have to be wearing an old black T-shirt today.
I’ve rejoined Netflix after two years of absence. With the current focus by the company being on streaming, to get DVD’s mailed added two dollars to the subscription. We only have a 1MB connection at the moment, so streaming looked like a poor option. But being adventurous, I tried the streaming on a variety of movies to gauge performance. The chief target is the low resolution of our old pre-digital television set.
First was an animated movie, Batman: Under the Red Hood. I watched it on my PC and Netflix defaults to 720P in its attempts to stream. Blocky to extremely blocky. Yep, time to check out the TV performance. It was entertaining, but nothing special and soon forgotten.
For a modern effects laden movie, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was selected. Slightly better than VHS levels of quality were obtained, but with blocking becoming readily apparent during the more complex scenes. Good movie, by the way – that surprised me.
Godzilla Raids Again, the second movie featuring the radioactive reptile, was chosen to represent older black and white films. Performance was good enough, even if the movie was awful. I assume this was the cut from the United States as it had all the monster scenes sped up to look like cat fights.
UHF was a test of a relatively normal movie (technically; it is insane otherwise). Performance was okay with occasional blocking. Still a lot of fun after all these years.
Finally, Brigham Young (1940). An old school classic Daryl Zanuck production, it did just fine. The movie itself was surprisingly good, if filled with historical inaccuracies and being very Hollywood. The sub focus on the United Order made it feel like a National Recovery Act film, but the acting was top notch and the script well done. I may review this in depth in the future.
Final analysis:
Streaming to the PC is terrible at 1MB.
Streaming to the TV is much better.
Modern effects extravaganza’s and anything with really complicated imagery is going to perform poorly.
B&W movies of yesteryear work great.
Netflix streaming has better potential, but Hulu’s is superior for a lower speed connection.
We’ll be primarily using the DVD through mail option.
While I’d love to have a faster connection, it isn’t financially viable at the time. I think 2MB would be adequate to the old TV set, but 3MB would be needed to the PC.
Not talking about politics, but about the Taurus Judge handgun. The idea of creating a short revolver that fired .410 shells for self defense sounded appealing when I first read about it, but the initial testing results I found on the Internet were not impressive. To be effective, you needed to fire .45 long Colt out of it, not the shells and that kind of removed the reason for the firearm’s existence. But it is a popular firearm and has branched out into carbine form lately. Now specialty shells are being made for it and I’d hoped it would live up to its potential.
So Box of Truth revisited the Judge recently for further testing with a 3” barrel and the new rounds. You can check out the results for yourself. Me, I wasn’t impressed. Maybe there is no potential to live up to after all. For that size of a hand cannon, there should be more penetration.
I’ll stick to my .40 S&W Ruger P94, even if it need some work on its sights.
… Is a society that will collapse. That appears to be the case in the United Kingdom as the disarmed populace and police officers were in no position to stop their latest spree killer.
At some point this unwillingness to defend their people has to be considered madness, one would think. Bird was armed with a .22 rifle and a shotgun, but was able to kill as many people as the Fort Hood shooter who had a semi-automatic pistol. With a mostly unarmed police force, the Brits failed to stop a murderer when they couldn’t shoot back. Governments exist to protect their people from harm and instill order of some kind; that is the most basic tenet of governance.
This makes me grateful to life in a country that has the right to bear arms and hasn’t forgotten that deadly force is needed to stop such murderers. Well, at least for the moment.
A bill has been proposed in New York state to limit police officer to shooting to wound arms and legs. Anyone who has fired a pistol knows it isn’t like the movies and that they aren’t that precise. Police officers aren’t going to be in range conditions being able to take their shots slowly and methodically without any incoming lead. Simply put, there is no way “shoot to wound” can be done!
We are living in an era of dangerous stupidity.
The Large Hadron Collider finally did something noteworthy by colliding two protons together. Shockingly, a black hole did not develop. I’m just glad to see the thing finally running!
Closer to home, there has been no snow in March for the first time on record. While I’m enjoying the warmer than usual daytime temps, the lack of precipitation has me concerned. We can only coast off the water from the snow melts for so long before it becomes an issue.
Things are tenser than usual between North Korea and South Korea after the sinking of a Southern navy vessel. With 46 crew unaccounted for, the emotions are running high. Probably a mine, but I doubt it was an old one. More than likely the Norks are testing what they can get away with. With a weak U.S. president, the little dictators are running wild.
On the home front, I’m needing to get more ammo for my Savage .17HM2 to zero it in. We want to plant a garden and there are large amount of rabbits around here. Never have dressed and cooked a critter before, so I plan to kill two lepus with one stone by protecting the garden.
The .17HM2 is a necked down .22LR round with high velocity and frangibility. Shooting flat to 100 yards it disintegrates when it hits something which makes it a safer round to use than the venerable .22LR. It is a scope only kind of round and I need to get experience with scopes (being an iron sight kind of guy).
This is great news and an amusing headline.
My own title looks like nonsense to anyone who isn’t into guns, I suspect. For those who don’t know what it means, there have been complaints about the reliability of the M-4, the current derivative of the venerable M-16 assault rifle. Most of the complaints have to do with the way the action works, being a direct gas system.
For the layman, direct gas systems take the expanding propellant gases from each round fired to push the bolt back and load another round. Direct is what it sounds like; the gases go straight back into the receiver. That means a lot of gunpowder fouling of the receiver which is the most important part of the weapon. The more fouling the easier it is to jam in the middle of a firefight.
A piston system siphons off the expanding gases into a separate chamber where they push a piston that in turn moves a rod that transfers the energy to the bolt. That keeps the bulk of gunpowder residue up in the piston area where there are fewer moving parts. With a cleaner receiver there are far fewer jams, as the article shows.
There are complaints that short piston equipped M-16/AR-15 rifles are front heavy and the M-4 was designed to be light and compact. But a weapon that is more reliable while keeping all the other good traits is worth the trade off, I think. If I had the money, I’d get a piston AR-15 rather than the classic design. But I like front heavy rifles and heavy rifles period.
This modification is something I’d hoped the Army would do years ago.
One has to love the ability to type “misc.” instead of miscellaneous(which is only correctly spelled here due to Windows Live Writer’s spellchecker). It is such a useful term too – it covers everything!
Yes, I’m making an excuse to post random unconnected links to stories interesting me today:
Read about stocks jumping to new highs on Yahoo and once reading the reasons for it felt vindicated in thinking the “recovery” is all about banks and the political class – not the peons. They love the dollar collapsing; such wonderful patriots they are. They also love blowing bubbles and we are going to see more pop with this irresponsible behavior. People invested in stocks don’t care about anything but reaping a quick profit and that cannot bring about any long term improvement.
Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell and the end of Communism in Europe had begun. Lech Walesa played a critical role in this and the former leader of Solidarity says some interesting things in an interview with Spiegal Online. His warning to the politicians is one that should be heeded.
At PajamasTV, Bob Owens has a nice rant only a gun nut will appreciate – so of course I enjoyed it a great deal. It has to do with the “cop killer” label put on the FN Five-seveN (oy, the marketing gimmick) 5.7mm pistol in the reports on the Fort Hood shootings. This is a pistol I would love to own as I’m a fan of velocity over mass, but Owens’ arguments are sound and I have a heavier caliber pistol for the same reasons. I’m grateful Hasan fell for the hype, things could have been far worse.
People scoff at computer virus threats while disregarding the legitimate threat. Frankly, the chance that your PC could be given a virus that downloads child pornography is frightening. So if anyone reading this doesn’t have a firewall and antivirus program on their PC, please install one pronto! Being framed for something as depraved as this should be motive enough to add some security.
