"Atlas Shrugged"..... Coming Soon to a Country Near You!!

I first read this giant of a novel by Ayn Rand back in the early 70's in college. I totally enjoyed it back then, and thought it a great epic of the struggle of free men against a socialist-fascist-collectivist world.
Superb, in-depth character development, twists and turns everywhere, multiple plot lines running, and romance and intrigue sprinkled throughout. It was written in the early 50's, so some of the writing might seem strange to younger people, and there's no whiz-bang technology, but nevertheless, truly great writing, but pure fiction, right?
WRONG!
I started re-reading it a couple of weeks ago, and I'm STUNNED at how relevant it is to today's blatant power grab by the currently elected "President" and his crony-commie buddies in Congress.
I don't have the time or skill to give either a "Cliffs Notes" version, or a full review here, so I won't. It's also ELEVEN-HUNDRED PAGES LONG, so it's not light reading, but if you're a reader like me, once you get going, you won't want to put it down.
Head on over to the Wikipedia for a good background check, but be sure you read ALL the subsections, or you'll miss some subtle but important things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_shrugged

And as further proof of how this novel relates to current times, check out "Directive 10-289".
http://radio.weblogs.com/0104693/stories/2002/11/17/directive10289.html
Really scary stuff, and it looks like it may come to pass.

And in reading further, I found this gem on the normally left-leaning Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need

Scroll to the bottom and look at the very last entry in "See Also".
It's a hoot!

Now this is interesting.....In case you didn't go to Wikipedia before today, let me tell you the last entry of the "See Also" section was.........BARACK OBAMA!
It's not there anymore! I guess maybe the word got out about it, and they couldn't stand the light of day shining on their beloved Messiah.

"President"? NOT MINE!

Ok, I don't often go on a rant here, but this has me really steamed. I heard a replay on Mike Church this morning of "President" Obama giving his speech in England. I was stunned at the comments this moron made. This empty-headed, marxist-socialist, Godless EVIL man made comments unbefitting of the office of the President of the United States. He has no respect for the countless dead who gave their lives defending the very FREEDOM that enabled this doofus to get elected.
Yes, the United States has a very high standard of living, but guess what? We worked hard for it! We took an empty continent and built the greatest, strongest country in the world from scratch. We built railroads and factories. We built dams and power plants. We feed a good portion of the world, and we saved Europe's sorry ass TWICE this century. We built and flew the first practical aircraft, and sent men to the Moon. We researched and perfected modern pharmacology, and invented the technology that makes CT and MRI scans possible. We had the greates auto industry in the world, and while most of Europe was puttering around in 75 cubic-inch econoboxes, we had V8-powered family sedans that let us effortlessly cross the continent we tamed. Yes, times have changed, and being more energy efficient is a good thing. I'm an Engineer by trade and training, and efficiency is always good, but this "Crap-and-Trade" plan he's proposing is pure vomit. More socialism from the latest in "Dear Leaders", and it's going to doom us.
But then never having had a REAL job in his life, I guess he woundn't understand the rewards that hard work brings.

Squeezable BACON!

Yum-Yum!
From our friends at Think Geek!
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/squeez-bacon.html?cpg=93H

It's April?.....ALREADY??

Yow....we're ONE-THIRD of the way through the year.
Oh, well....hope the remainder is tolerable!
Happy April Fool's Day everybody!
Wonder what's going to be happening at work tomorrow......

Awwww.....RATS!!!

Grrrrrrr.....I threw in the towel yesterday on getting my Kenwood TM-D710 mounted in my Jeep Grand Cherokee. The last straw was when the backseat bottom cushion wouldn't fit back in. I thought I had this all measured correctly, and that there'd be room enough between the bottom of the seat cushion and the radio. Nope. So I took the mounting screws out of the bracket, and let the radio sit all the way down inside the bracket. Nope again. So then I pulled the bracket completely out, trimmed the under seat carpet and padding, and let the radio sit on the floor pan directly. Nope, still about 1/4" too tall, and I really didn't want to squish the radio between the floorpan and cushion bottom.
This came after spending about two hours fishing the power, microphone, and control head cables under the carpet, and up through the rear of the console so I could run them where they needed to be at the front of the console. Oh, did I mention it took about an hour to REMOVE the console? Then I realized I'd forgotten to run the speaker leads along with the other cables! I decided to just let them hang out from under the seat for now, and get the seat back in so I can go pick up my girlfriend and her buddies from the airport next week.
That's when I found the "Interference Fit" problem between the radio and the seat cushion.
I really started to lose it, and decided to call "Game OVER" before I let it get to me any further.
Out it all came, and the console and rear seat cushion went back in. I still have the radio and GPS antennas installed, and the cables for those are readily reachable. When time comes that I *need* a radio for mobile use, I'm going to just let the radio sit on the floor behind the driver's seat. I'll connect the antenna to the main body of the radio, the GPS cable to the adapter box I made, and run the power, microphone, and control head cables up front.
Maybe at some time in the future I'll look into how much of the plastic under seat frame I'd have to cut away to make it fit nicely, but not this weekend!

YAAAAWN!

Doing some PC work tonight. Since I built the PC I use for audio/video recording and editing a couple of years ago, technology has some pretty big strides, so I'm upgrading it. Going from an AMD Opteron 185 @2.6GHz on an "EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra" motherboard to an Intel Core 2 Duo @3.0Ghz. on a "GIGABYTE GA-X48-DS5" motherboard.
The Intel processors perform video encoding MUCH faster than the AMD's, and the newer motherboard has a faster memory bus, so encoding HD video should take about half the time it does now.
I'll also be going to a different video card, as the one I bought is killer for gaming, but is NOT on the "approved" list to use with my Matrox RT.X2 video capture card, and the software squawks when I run it.
I'll take the "old" parts, put them in a new case that came today (Lian Li all aluminum!), and have a pretty speedy machine to sell to a friend.
Back to work......

A Day At The Range

Just got home from the second part of "Tactical Pistol I". We mostly concentrated on using cover and movement, and LOTS of drills on clearing malfunctions. Always well worth spending time training, and even though I had the course a couple of years ago, I picked up some tips, and was told by both instructors that I've improved tremendously since I took my first tentative steps at serious training. Mostly, I don't get flustered if something goes not-to-plan, and just keep my wits about me and finish the drill. 8 out of the ten in class were very good, and the other two guys were beginners, but they improved a whole big bunch since last week.
I'm going to take "Tactical Shotgun I" in a couple of weeks, another course I had about 18 months ago. Since I don't take my 870 to the range very much, it'll be a really good refresher for me. The important things I learned before were proper aiming, and how to keep the thing running. Too many people have the impression that a 12 gauge shotgun sends an "Atomic Cone-Of-Death" at anything it's pointed at, and that's just not true. A shotgun has to be AIMED just as much as any other firearm, and at close ranges the pattern doesn't spread out nearly as much as most people think.
It also has a voracious appetite for shells, and learning how to reload it under stress is very important. Even with a magazine extension, you basically have a "Five Shooter" or "Six Shooter", and there's no speedloader or magazine to swap out in a hurry. Nope, you gotta stuff those shells in one-at-a-time, and learning how to do it efficiently is vitally important.

Our civil liberties are being threatened - Opinion

This is from the community college my son attends.
Seems like a few of our young people "get it"!

Our civil liberties are being threatened - Opinion

Got My Plating Kit!

WHOO-HOO! My "Brush Plating" kit came today. If you're not familiar with it, "Brush Plating" is a process used for plating small areas with the metal of your choice. They use a "wand" made of the metal you want to plate with, a "sock" over the wand to hold the plating solution, a bottle of plating solution, and a small power supply. You connect one end of the power supply to the work piece, and the other end to the wand. You slip the wand into the sock (yeah, sounds kinky!), dip it into the plating solution, and wipe it on the work piece. If everything goes well, and the workpiece is scrupulously clean, you'll wind up with a real electroplated coating of metal on your workpiece.
Why am I doing this? Well, when R.L. Drake Company originally made my equipment, they used a copper-plated steel chassis for improved electrical conductivity. It looks really cool, too! After the chassis were plated, they were coated with a clear lacquer to protect the copper, and then silk-screened with various component designators. Over time, the lacquer would break down exposing the copper, and it would tarnish badly. If it got damaged by moisture, the steel underneath would rust, leaving unsightly globs of rust. Like most Drake's of this age, mine has some nasty spots on the chassis that I want to restore. Short of stripping it down to a bare chassis, a LOT of work, and having it "properly" replated, I started looking for ways to "spot plate" small areas. I remembered reading about Brush Plating years ago, and Google to the rescue! So now I have to get out my Dremel, remove the corroded spots, nickel "strike" plate the bare steel, and then put the layer of copper on. After that, I'll coat it with clear lacquer again, and hopefully it will look much nicer than it does now.
Heathkit used to do the same thing before aluminum chassis became popular, and on their "Big Iron" radios, they also copper-plated the cabinet before painting them. "QST" magazine had an article a couple of years ago about a Ham who restored a Heathkit DX-100 transmitter. After try to clean the chassis with everything still connected to it, he finally bit the bullet, stripped it down to the bare metal, and sent it out to be plated. It looked beautiful, but it would probably take me a year to strip this one down that far and do what he did.
No thanks!
Anywhoo....if you're interested in "Brush Plating", go to the Caswell Plating website and check it out. They can supply kits for almost any metal you might want to plate.
http://www.caswellplating.com/

And if you're interested in what my Drake gear looks like, you can go here for a virtual tour.
Look under "DRAKE 4 line" in the left column, and select the "4-B line".
http://www.dproducts.be/DRAKE_MUSEUM/

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

To start, I'm half Irish on my Mom's side, and half Polish on my Dad's side. Potatoes were a religion in my family! Every year on this day, my Mom would make up a big pot of corned beef, cabbage, and lots of potatoes. I never ate the cabbage (I hate the stuff!), but always chowed down on the corned beef. The best part was she made enough to make sandwiches for the rest of the week, and to this day, I drool over the thought of a corned beef on rye, with a dab of mustard.
So Happy Saint Patrick's day, everyone, and go easy on the green beer!

Well, it's ONE way to get a response!

I know this has been around 'forever', but it made me chuckle, so I thought I'd share it with anyone who stops by.

HOW TO CALL THE POLICE
WHEN YOU'RE OLD
AND DON'T MOVE FAST ANYMORE.



George Phillips , an elderly man, from Meridian, Mississippi, was going up to bed, when his wife told him that he'd left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.

He phoned the police, who asked "Is someone in your house?"

He said "No, but some people are breaking into my garden shed and stealing from me."

Then the police dispatcher said "All patrols are busy. You should lock your doors and an officer will be along when one is available."

George said, "Okay."

He hung up the phone and counted to 30.

Then he phoned the police again.


"Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people stealing things from my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now because I just shot them." and he hung up.


Within five minutes, six Police Cars, a SWAT Team, a Helicopter, two Fire Trucks, a Paramedic, and an Ambulance showed up at the Phillips' residence, and caught the burglars red-handed.

One of the Policemen said to George, "I thought you said that you'd shot them!"

George said, "I thought you said there was nobody available!"