Sigh…

I do like to cook on occasion, and I’m not above freely stealing recipes other bloggers have posted, like Brigid back in the day, Miguel, and others…

Miguel posted a recipe for a Tortilla Española. I had all the stuff, and it’s a weekend, so why not!

Well, I used his recipe, and the recipe is GREAT! However, my execution left a ‘bit’ to be desired… Sigh…

I kinda approximated the amounts by looking at the amounts he had in the pictures, and ‘might’ have had a little too much filling! I ended up having to use 8 eggs to cover it all.

OBTW, they use Frittata pans for a reason. I didn’t have any, so tried to use two frying pans. Which WOULD have worked, had one not stuck… LOL
Damn, what a mess! At least half of it looked kinda like it was supposed to… 🙂
But it was damn good anyway!

Range time…

102 on the range today…

Just a ‘tad’ warm! Did a little old school, and some ‘new’ school…

A little over 100 rounds, and it truly sucks when your hands are sweaty and the sweat is running into your eyes. I did pretty well at 5, 7, and 10 yards until the last mag, when I dropped four rounds. I was regripping and trying to blink the sweat away, but it obviously didn’t work real well… Sigh…

And that SAA at 10 yards was ‘interesting’ to shoot offhand as sweaty as it was, but I did keep them on target! 🙂

Not something I’d recommend, but I wanted to see what/if I could handle the heat and shoot successfully (there is no cover at the range). Much like winter shooting, it’s an ‘acquired’ taste, mostly salty… sigh..

And Jim Jim got his bi-annual post up, HERE! 🙂

Finally, PA gets it’s act together…

Military fakers in Pennsylvania may want to consider a change of station. The state has passed stolen valor legislation that will make impersonating a service member or veteran, or wearing unearned military decorations, a third-degree misdemeanor if it’s done “with intent to obtain money, property or other benefit,” the legislation states. The
law goes into effect in late August. “This legislation is incredibly important because
Pennsylvania has the fourth-largest veteran population in the country,” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said, “and it is our duty to be certain that benefits for those veterans are
available to those who have earned them.”

Third-degree misdemeanors in Pennsylvania can result in jail time of up to a year and a fine of up to $2,000. The law expands upon the federal statute, which provides for a fine and up to a year behind bars for wearing unearned military decorations such as the Medal of Honor, Purple Heart or Combat Action Badge, with the intent to receive some
tangible benefit.

That law went into effect in 2013, a year after the Supreme Court struck down existing federal stolen valor legislation on free-speech grounds. That 2005 law did not include language limiting punishment to those seeking or obtaining financial benefit; in a case involving a California man who lied about receiving the Medal of Honor, the court
held that “falsity alone does not bring speech outside First Amendment protection” and ruled the law unconstitutional.

Many states have passed stolen valor legislation in the wake of that ruling. Just in 2015, for instance:
• A Massachusetts law with similar provisions to the Pennsylvania law gives fakers up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
• A New Jersey law mandated a minimum $1,000 fine for impersonating a service member or wearing unearned medals, and attempting to benefit from the ruse. The money goes into a scholarship fund for military dependents.
• A Texas law upped the stolen valor penalty in that state from a maximum $500 fine to a $2,000 max fine and up to 180 days in jail.

h/t Mikey

TBT…

It’s cars…

Back when you could actually tell them apart…

And VERY few of them had AC. I can remember going for ‘Sunday’ drives as a kid, and first learned about the 2 55 AC there… And it was actually in a 53 Bel Air like the one pictured… Sigh…

Drive-ins are mostly a thing of the past, but they used to be VERY popular with teens and parents with kids, usually NOT on the same night…LOL There has been many a baby ‘conceived’ in a drive-in. And the best car to take to a drive-in was an early 70s Caddy. Seven in the seats and four in the trunk (not that I was ever involved in something like that)! And it cost something like three dollars a car… The one below is from the late 50s in South Bend, IN.

And you hung one of these in the window and cranked it up… Tinny, lousy sound, but who cared! 🙂

Sigh… I miss the cars, I miss the fun we had, and I know we can’t go back, but damn…

Posted in TBT

Reviews, a bleg…

The is a bleg for all of us poor, bottom of the list authors, that live and die by reviews… If you’re an indie writer, publishing via Amazon like I am, 50 reviews and 100 reviews are the two keystones for getting ‘better’ pushes from Amazon for our novels.

If you’ve read any of my books, the short story, or the novella, and left a review, I greatly appreciate it. If you haven’t and don’t mind taking 5 minutes, I’d appreciate an honest review.

The ones I’m shortest on are the Rimworld short, Rimworld- Into the Green, and The Morning the Earth Shook. All of those are below 50 reviews. HERE is a link to my author page which has all my books.

In other news, it looks like I’m not the only one getting those ‘lovely’ one star reviews. Both LB Johnson, and JD Kinman also got nailed on the 21st of July by an ‘undisclosed’ reviewer. JD put up an excellent post on the book of face, HERE, if you’re interested. While we, as authors, are cautioned to ‘never’ read the reviews (for good reasons, mainly our sanity, or what little of it is left), there ARE times when you get something like these that is just totally frustrating, even more so, when they are not verified purchasers, and ‘anonymous’. They fact that all three of us are christians and conservatives may or may not have played a part… Who knows…

Kicking the soap box back in the corner…

In the GOOD news category, if you want a paperback copy of The Lawdog Files, just click the cover below to go directly to it! 🙂

It’s officially out!!! 🙂 And yes, Lawdog is hyperventilating again…LOL

Dammit…

I truly hate it when crap that I’ve written about happens (again)…

This is part of a chapter from The Grey Man- Partners.

After dinner and catching up, Clay and the old man were enjoying a piece of pie and a cup of coffee, when Trooper Wilson walked in, along with Sergeant Michaels. They took the table next to them and quickly ordered, then Wilson turned, “Captain, it’s good to see you up and about. I hear you are back on duty.”

      “Michelle, Mike. Yep, back on full duty and playing catch up. Y’all been busy?”

      Wilson shrugged and Michaels laughed, “It’s early yet, Captain. You know how Fridays can get around here. It’ll either be feast or famine. I’m kinda hoping for famine.”

      Wilson chimed in, “Hey Sarge, you only have to follow-up the paperwork. Us grunts are out here doing the work. And famine would be nice. I’ve been getting writer’s cramp lately with all the tickets we’ve been writing.”

      Clay and the old man both chuckled, and Clay asked, ‘Michelle, what are you doing up here? You usually run ten, not twenty.”

      Michelle smiled, “Catering to my boss,” pointing to Michaels, “He’s going off and I’ve got an hour before I actually go on. So I’m sucking up.”

      Mike Michaels spit coffee laughing at that, and started a retort when a panting disheveled truck driver came running over, “Officer, there’s something in the parking lot you gotta see. I think there’s a problem.”

      All four of them jumped up and followed the driver, catching bits and pieces of what he was saying, “IDC trucks… Hand… Ain’t movin’…”

      Coming around the last row of trucks, they looked up and sure enough, there was a hand sticking out of the vent door at the top of one of the IDC truck’s trailer.

That chapter was based on the 2003 incident that took nineteen lives, and I hoped that incident had put an end to that crap, but yesterday it happened AGAIN! This time in San Antonio, link HERE.

I cannot fathom how desperate people must be to pay the $5-7000 to be smuggled across the border then stuffed in a semi-trailer. What is absolutely worse, is the coyotes who do this crap, not caring whether those people live or die, since they’ve gotten their money up front.

I can only offer up prayers for those who died (again), the LEOs and fire rescue that had to work that scene, and hope that some of the survivors are willing to drop a dime on the coyotes who killed those people. As far as I’m concerned, this is one of those cases where the Biblical eye for an eye would be appropriate. Lock the coyotes in a same kind of trailer, for the same length of time, in the same temperatures. If they survive, they go to prison. If not, too bad, so sad.

If we had a real border, and real enforcement, these people would still be alive, probably still in Mexico, but alive. I find it ironic that all the media focus is on the truck driver, NOT the coyotes who perpetrated this horror…

Have we become so inured to these kinds of death that they don’t even move us? Or is it the fact that they aren’t anyone we know? Or is it because no one wants to speak up, knowing the SJWs and their ilk will somehow blame US for this?

Snerk…

These came over the transom from the mil-email string…

Rev beat me to it on Friday, HERE, but I still don’t have anything better to offer… sigh

WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU CROSS A JOKE WITH A RHETORICAL QUESTION???

Some of these are good, some of them are GREAT!

-Just ate a frozen apple. Hardcore.
-My battery had an alkaline problem, so it went to AA meetings.
-I’m giving up spray deodorants at the end of the year. Roll on 2018.
-I threw an Asian man down a flight of stairs. It was Wong on so many levels.
-Bought a litre of White Out yesterday. Huge mistake.
-Herb gardeners who work extra get thyme and a half.
-I’ve started a business building yachts in my attic. Sails are going through the roof.
-Last night, I kept dreaming that I had written Lord of the Rings. The wife said I’d been Tolkien in my sleep
-I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.
-I’m reading a book about anti-gravity. It’s impossible to put down.
-I tried to catch some fog today but I mist.
-Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
-I bought a dog from my local blacksmith. When I got it home it made a bolt for the door.
-The future, the present and the past walked into a bar. Things got a little tense.
-Last night I went to a comedy and philosophy convention. Laughed more than I thought.
-Did you hear about the Italian chef with a terminal illness? He pastaway.
-Just watched a wildlife documentary on beavers. Best dam program I’ve seen in a long time.
-My dad died when we couldn’t remember his blood type. As he died, he kept insisting for us to “be positive” but it’s hard without him.
-Jokes about German sausage are the Wurst.
-I saw an ad for burial plots, and thought to myself this is the last thing I need.
-I was trying to explain puns to my kleptomaniac friend today, but she kept taking things literally.
-A courtroom artist was arrested today for an unknown reason… details are sketchy.
-I stole a rabbit today. Then I had to make a run for it.
-I found a rock yesterday which measured 1760 yards in length. Must be some kind of milestone.
-A woman told me she recognised me from the vegetarian club, but I’d never met herbivore.
-I have a few jokes about unemployed people but it doesn’t matter none of them work.
-I told my friend she drew her eyebrows too high. She seemed surprised.
-I can’t believe I got fired from the calendar factory. All I did was take a day off.
-What does a clock do when it’s hungry? It goes back four seconds.
-eBay is so useless. I tried to look up lighters and all they had was 13,749 matches.
-My wife told me I was a fool to build a car out of spaghetti. You should have seen the look on her face when I drove pasta.
-My first job was working in an orange juice factory but I got canned, couldn’t concentrate.
-Just watched a documentary on how ships are kept together. Riveting.
-Thieves had broken into my house and stolen everything except my soap, shower gel, towels and deodorant. Dirty Bastards.
-I used to have a problem where I couldn’t stop naming classic American sitcoms, but I’m over it now. Happy Days.
-Did you hear about these new reversible jackets? I’m excited to see how they turn out.
-My wife’s working in a bowling alley. Ten pin? No, permanent.
-I was addicted to the hokey pokey… but thankfully, I turned myself around.
-I thought my wife was joking when she said she’d leave me if I didn’t stop singing ‘I’m A Believer’. Then I saw her face.
-I’m emotionally constipated. I haven’t given a shit in days.
-How do you approach an angry Welsh cheese? Caerphilly.
-My math teacher called me average. How mean!
-Jokes about opticians just get cornea and cornea.
-I’ve just written a song about tortillas… actually, it’s more of a rap.
-A steak pun is a rare medium well done.
-Just burned 2,000 calories. That’s the last time I leave brownies in the oven while I nap.
-I was walking the dogs the other day when all of a sudden they vanished into thin air. Not sure where they went, but I’ve got some leads.
-If anything is possible, is it possible for something to be impossible?
-Did you know that owls can’t breed in the rain? It’s too wet to woo.
-If a short psychic broke out of jail, then you’d have a small medium at large.
-When my wife told me I had to stop impersonating a flamingo, I decided to put my foot down.
-What’s the difference between a poorly dressed man on a bicycle and a nicely dressed man on a tricycle? A tire.
-Dad: I’ve just been diagnosed with Tom Jones syndrome. Mum: Is it common? Dad: It’s not unusual.
-Accidentally fell asleep smoking an e-cigarette and when I woke up my whole house was on the internet.
-Police just caught a man stealing 50 helium balloons. They had to let him go.
-I find it very offensive when people get easily offended.
-I used to be addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but I turned myself around. And that’s what it’s all about.
-My computer’s got Miley Virus. It has stopped twerking.
-If you want a job in the moisturiser industry, the best advice I can give is to apply daily.
-Why does Donald Trump take Xanax? For Hispanic attacks.

Dazzle paint…

Haven’t done one of these in a while, but I went down a rathole doing some research, so you get a post with pictures… LOL

Determining the range, size, heading, and speed of a ship at sea, before radar was invented depended on visual sightings, or radio signal direction finding.  In WWI, when they started shooting at each other at longer ranges, sound ranging of artillery shots (with an early version of sonar, was added to RDF, but they depended on visual sightings to confirm their accuracy, so navies began experimenting with camouflage designs intended to misdirect observers.

The U.S. Navy Bureau of Construction and Repair began testing ship camouflage, colloquially referred to as “dazzle paint,” during World War I.  The technique relied on reducing the contrast of the ship when viewed from the surface or the air from its surroundings as well as the contrast of one section of the ship from another.

The effect was intended to cause observers to misjudge the course, speed, and size of the ship.  The designs included a moderate range of colors (hues), though post-war experiments would demonstrate that brightness contrasts were more important than color varieties.

Each side of the ship was painted with a different design, to add more confusion…

Port side-

Starboard side, SAME ship… with inserts for the upper works.These next three are all starboard sides of different size/types of ships. The first is a ‘smaller’ cargo ship.Starboard side, fuel/oil tanker. 

Starboard side, large bulk carrier.And the Brits were also doing the same thing…

Ultimately, this was OBE with the advent of radar, but it is still an interesting use of trompe l’oeil. And it wasn’t limited to just merchant ships. Warships in WWI, especially the Brits, also used the technique to confuse their opponents.

Tangentially related…

To yesterday’s post on concealed carry…

VCDL, Virginia Citizen’s Defense League, has a petition up at the White House site for national reciprocity…

This is DEFINITELY one I’m in favor of! You can go to this link and support it! Right now it has a little over 5000 of the needed 100,000 signatures.

http://vcdl.org/Sign-The-White-House-Petition or the direct link to the petition is HERE.

And the verbiage-

Mr. President, you have said many times that you would sign a national concealed carry reciprocity bill. Please urge Congress to pass H.R. 38 as soon as possible!

H.R. 38 will allow America’s 17 million concealed handgun permit holders to carry in every state in the Union as they go about their lives. As the recent shooting in Alexandria shows, crime and terrorism have no borders. Neither should self-defense!

No other group is as law-abiding as concealed handgun permit holders, regardless of which state they are from.

Currently over 20 states, such as Virginia, North Carolina, and Arizona, already honor permits from all other states, without issue. H.R. 38 will simply make such recognition uniform across the nation and will save many innocent American lives!

Depending on what state one is from, or whether they have a Utah or Florida non-resident CCW permit, one can currently get about 37 states worth of reciprocity. But it would be nice, especially for those of us that have family or business in the Blue States to actually be able to protect ourselves in those locations…

I’m reminded of when MD was fighting against shall issue, and DC had just had the Heller decision go against them. The contrast between the number of homicides by gun between VA-DC-MD was startling, to put it mildly. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but VA was under 2/100000, MD was around 3-4/100000, and DC was over 5/100000!

The WAPO actually interviewed sumdood, armed robber, one each, who stated he would NOT try to rob people in VA, because he might get shot!

Sigh…

 

No surprise here…

Concealed carry permits top sixteen million!

The more interesting fact, the two fastest growing groups are…

Females and Blacks!

Full article, HERE.

The left/MSM keep saying there will be blood in the streets, so we should be ankle deep by now…

BUT, concealed handgun permit holders are extremely law abiding, the analysis shows. The percent of permit holders who are charged or convicted of a felony has fallen: In 2015 it was 0.0123; in 2016 the percent was 0.0092 percent.

Those numbers, just like the numbers of defensive gun uses each year are NEVER in any of the Left/MSM reports…

In other news, Florida has their act together with respect to the veterans and active duty folks!

Florida has fast-tracked concealed-weapons licenses to 82,000 military members and honorably discharged veterans since terror-related shootings at a pair of military installations in Tennessee two years ago. State Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, who along with Gov. Rick Scott helped expedite the permitting process as part of the state’s reaction to the shootings in Chattanooga, Tenn., made an appearance Tuesday to discuss the effort, which has played a part in Florida’s increased number of people allowed to carry concealed firearms… Since Putnam first won statewide office in 2010, the number of concealed-weapons licenses has soared from about 800,000 to more than 1.78 million. Putnam’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services issues the licenses. The tens of thousands of active-duty military members and veterans getting expedited permits has come as the state has seen “heavy” demand for concealed-weapons licenses, Putnam said…

Now if the bases would allow carry… sigh