"Surviving Technology" by Bruce Vaughn, NR5Q

One of the things I like best about reading my "Electric Radio" magazine are the columns by Bruce Vaughn, NR5Q. Bruce grew up in Springdale, Arkansas, a child of The Depression. His stories tell of his childhood, and the friends that got him interested in Amateur Radio, on through his service in the Army Air Corps, and his civilian life after the war when he opened "Bruce's Radio Shop". He covers the Golden Days of radio, the appearance of Television, and all the interesting people and characters he met dealing with the public. And he's also a Master Hombrew Artist. His radios are truly works of art, with performance to match.
I'd always thought it would be really cool if all his columns were printed in a dedicate book, and now it's come to pass.
The book is 224 pages, and is available from "Electric Radio" for the bargain price of $24.95.
I've never met, or corresponded with, Bruce, but from reading his columns, I feel as if I've known him for a long time.
If you enjoy reading about "Olde Tyme Radio", and like seeing the craftsmanship that goes into the sets he builds, get a copy of this book. You'll love it!

Any Cold Remedies?

Been kinda out of it the last few days. My wife had a cold early last week, and it clobbered me Thursday. Stayed home from work Friday, missed my radio club meeting (*I* was supposed to be the speaker), and _barely_ made it up to the SoCal Linux Expo today.
Barely ate any dinner, 'cuz nothing tastes good, or tastes at all.
Major case of the "Blah-Yukkies", which I think is a new disease I just invented.
Guess I'll take some NyQuil, have some chicken soup and crackers, and hit they hay....

Marlin 60 At Home!

And my lovely wife has pronounced it both "cute" and "beautiful".
I probably won't get to shoot it until next weekend, as I have a full plate this weekend.
Friday night I'm giving a presentation on "DSP For Dummies" at my radio club meeting, and Saturday I'm headed to the Southern California Linux Exposition.
Sunday I'm cleaning my handguns, as one of my wife's best friends wants to go shooting at the range next weekend. She grew up shooting rifles, but has never fired a handgun ( ! ).
And yes, I'll give them both a drill on The Four Rules!
I see FedEx has delivered an accessory I ordered for the Marlin, a speed loader for 22LR tube magazine rifles.
I'll do a mini-review on the rifle and the Spee-D-Loader after I've had a chance to try them.

PC and Homeowner Madness Weekend!

Well, I got a new PC built for a friend, and did some major upgrades to the box I use for Audio/Video editing. That one got a new Core 2 Extreme Quad CPU, and an upgrade to Windows 7 Professional. I also swapped out the two DVD burners I had in the, as they were both IDE interfaces. The new ones are SATA-III interfaces, and in place of one of the DVD burners, I plugged in a shiny new Blu-Ray burner, along with the specialized software for that. I did a clean install after I formatted the drive, as I've never tried to use an "upgrade" version of Windows. I then upgraded all my Adobe software to CS 5.5, and installed the latest software for my Matrox RT.X2 Professional video capture device.
What makes it "Professional" compared to a "Consumer" video capture device? Well, for one thing, it can record 1080i via a component video input, or 1080p through the IEEE-1394 "Firewire" port. And secondly, it plugs into a PCI Express slot on the motherboard where most consumer-grade video capture device connect to the PC with USB.
I'll have to open one of my archived Adobe Premiere Pro projects and run it through the newly rebuilt system to see how it performs. I'm not sure if the video quality will be any "better", but I'm sure it will do the transcoding to DVD format much faster.
In the meantime, the wife and I went to Lowe's to (finally!) get the two doors I was going to replace over my Christmas break. The new exterior door for the garage is sitting in the garage, but the storm door we bought to replace the screen door that disintegrated is another matter! I not only measured twice (THREE times, actually, and wrote it all down after I had the wife check my measurements) and cut once, and it just will NOT fit the opening.
BUMMER MAJOR!
The height is damn near perfect after a bit of trimming, planing, and sanding, but the width is about 3/4" TOO SMALL. So, I'm going to have to take off the "hinge rails" where it hangs on the left side of the door frame, and shim them out a little less than 3/8", and add the same amount to the right side of the frame before I screw the matching "latch rail" to the door frame.
It's funny, but all the reviews on the Lowe's website raved about how easy it was to hang an adjust this door. The fastest time was 1.5 hours, and the longest was 2.5 hours.
I spent FOUR hours on it, didn't get it installed, and used up most of my "colorful" vocabulary while fighting with it.
Oh, well....at least I know how to correct it, so back to the Home Improvement center tomorrow to try and find some suitable wood strips to make shim strips out of.
Hope you all have a good week!

Blogger Weirdness

Hmm....can't seem to reply to comments posted here.
Restarted Firefox, rebooted PC, blah, blah, blah.....
Wonder if they changed something in the template I'm using, and broke it?

Ahhhh....Life Is Good.....

My darling wife is in the kitchen baking some cookies (why does cookie dough taste so good?), I'm building a new PC for a friend, the dogs are snoozing at the foot of the couch, and The Military Channel is on gently in the background.
Hope you all have a pleasant weekend!

Dead People Voting In New Hampshire

Gee..."Chicago Politics" is expanding!

Full Story over at "Godfather Politics".

1911-2011 100 years of History in Ten Minutes

Interesting....

"System D", The Market Of The Future?

Very interesting article in "Wired" magazine this month about the world-wide, off-the-books, underground economy.
And I don't mean just the knock-off things like CD's and software.
Go here to read it.

New Sights For My Remington 870

Although I'm not sure I like them.....
First, I had to take off my Side-Saddle, and if there's ONE thing they really drilled into us during Tactical Shotgun I & II, it's that you GOTTA keep the thing FED!
Shotguns have a devastating amount of power and speed, but they go through ammo like nobody's business. Even though I wore cargo pants during the drills, and had my pockets stuffed full of shells, there were still times I needed the extra six shells the Side-Saddle provided. And it was a good place to keep slugs so that when we did the "Select-A-Slug" drills, they were right there, separate from the other ammo I had on me.
The rail device I added is a UTG "M87 Shotgun Tactical Mount", and it's made very well. It's notched along the top of the rail, supposedly so you can use your existing front sight, but I think at any distance beyond across-the-room, it would throw your aim point off. I'll try it at the range with the sight removed to see if I'm right.
And it sticks up far enough that I can look under it, and use the flat on top of the receiver, and the front bead sight, just like I'm used to using.
The first sight I put on it was a another UTG product, their SCP-DS3039W Red/Green Dot sight. I'm not sure if this is a "proper" sight for a shotgun, as it seems to have a more restricted field-of-view, but it was a good price, about $50.
The next sight I put on it was an "NcStar D4B 4 Reticle Reflex Sight" that I got on eBay for about $50.
This is more to my liking, as it's more "open", and I think target acquisition would be faster.
The problem as I see it now is that BOTH of these sights stick up really far compared to using the flat on the receiver and the front bead sight, and when I bring the gun to my shoulder and get a good plant on it, I've got to really look up to use them.
I won't know how badly this messes up the way I've been trained to use the gun, and I hope I can relearn sighting it properly, as I think almost anything is better than the "sights" the 870 comes with!
If I don't like / can't adjust to using these, I'll pull them off, drill and tap the top of the receiver, and get some ghost ring sights for it.
And yes, that poor guy *is* rusty! I had no idea it had that much surface rust on it until I looked at the flash pictures.
I'm embarrassed that I let it get that bad. I guess that what happens when I keep it in the bedroom, and the window is open at night.
Guess I'll get to learn about rebluing "Real Soon Now"!

New Toy On Order.....

Well, the last time my son and I went to the rifle range, we met a very interesting guy. He was at the position next to us, and was shooting a beautiful M1 Garand. I asked him where he got it, and it turns out it was one of the CMP "Select Grade" rifles. It was originally made in 1940, but had been completely Arsenal Refurbished, with all select grade parts, new wood, and looked like it just came out-of-the-box.
It was beautiful!
I told him I was interesting in getting into the CMP program, and he gave me a bunch of flyers, explained the entire program to me, and then told me about the Appleseed Project.
Since they go through so much ammo during the two day program, he said they strongly encourage people to use a 22, although you can use a different rifle if you have one.
Since this is basic training, I figured I go with a low-recoil 22 auto-loader, and hopefully "unlearn" any bad habits I may have picked up over the years. I've had a LOT of pistol training over the last 5 years or so, but getting proper rifle training is something I just haven't done....YET!
So, I ordered a little Marlin 60, which should be here in a few days. It'll be delivered to the indoor range I buy all my guns through, so even though I have to wait the 10-day period, I can at least fondle it a bit, and shoot it if I want.