P-Con 2026!!!

I’m down in Dallas for P-Con 2026, link HERE.

This is my schedule-

Squirrelling Your Way into a Shared Universe Manchester FRI 3 pm
Opening Ceremonies Windsor FRI 6 pm
Firearms for writers (mod) Windsor FRI 7 pm
No Sh*t There I Was Windsor FRI 9 pm
The Art and Science of Gunsmithing Manchester SAT 11 am
Reading: Curtis/Von Stry (mod) Board Room SAT 4 pm
Wait, Are We the Bad Guys? (mod) Windsor SUN 12 pm
Red Alert! Starfleet’s Worst Decisions Manchester SUN 2 pm

So if you’re at the con, drop by and say hi!

I won’t be on line much this weekend, but I should be back on line Tuesday at the latest!

Surprised…

Well, I got an interesting gift Tuesday night.

A blanket…

And yes, I was surprised and embarrassed to have to get up in front of folks! It was presented by my Vietnam Veteran’s group for Quilts of Honor.

Here’s a better picture, and yes, it is actually ‘signed’ to me. Many thanks to the Red River Quilters for the very nice quilt!

Again, many thanks, I will enjoy it this winter!

Moving on…

Enough is enough of this BS…

As President Donald Trump readies for high-stakes negotiations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, a network of pro-China organizations funded by pro-communist tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham is taking to the streets from New York City to Austin, creating the image of rolling street unrest that lawmakers warn China can exploit to project a perception of chaos in the United States.

Yesterday, Singham’s wife, Jodie Evans, wore a trademark fuchsia straw hat and protested across the street from the United Nations on E. 47th Street, between First and Second Avenue, under an arch at Katharine Hepburn Garden, smiling widely next to agitators from the far-left CodePink nonprofit she co-founded and her American-born husband helped fund from his base in Shanghai. As part of their elaborate weeklong calendar, the activists railed against the U.S. military and its “all-out climate and environmental devastation.” and then they marched to the offices of Open AI to demonstrate against data centers they allege “drive war” and “economic degradation.”

Full article, HERE from Fox News.

This crap is neither ‘spontaneous’ nor is it ‘home grown’…

It is planned, organized, orchestrated, and paid for my Soros, Singham, and their ilk…

Everybody with more than two brain cells to rub together knows this. Why do people continue to put up with this crap???

Why does the MSM continue to pander to them? Never mind… $$$ is why…

Sigh…

It makes me really glad I live in a small town that doesn’t ‘do’ this kind of crap. I ‘think’ we had one person with a Harris sign in 2024, and they moved shortly after the election to a ‘bigger’ city, apparently because there wasn’t enough things to do here… Snort…

The other thing of note is that these ‘protests’ are only occurring in ‘safe’ cities (e.g. blue), not out in flyover country per se…

Personally, I believe this is because for all their talk about violence, they really don’t want to be confronted with ‘actual’ violence or the risk of getting out of one of the ‘safe’ cities and finding out the locals don’t play those reindeer games…

Your thoughts???

Gah…

Got my shot in the eye yesterday afternoon.

Eyes are still dialated so I can’t see crap…

Go read the other folks. I should be back tomorrow…

A little humor…

To start the week!

Two hillbillies are having lunch when a woman seated nearby begins to choke.

Pounding her chest and trying to cough out the food caught in her throat she looks around for some help.

The hillbilly asks her,”Kin ya swaller, lady?”..

The woman shakes her head no.

Hillbilly asks her “Kin ya breathe, lady?”..

Woman shakes her head no.

Hillbilly walks over, spins her around, lifts up her dress, yanks down her britches and licks her butt cheek.

The woman surprised at the action spits out food caught in her throat.

The hillbillys’ buddy says, “Ya know, I heerd of that there heiny-lick maneuver before but I ain’t never seed nobody do it afore”

++++++++++

The Louisiana State Police had received numerous reports of illegal cock fighting being held in the area around Abbeville and had sent their famous Detective Boudreaux from Thibodeaux to investigate.   Boudreaux promptly began his investigation and then reported to his Commander the next morning.

“Dey is tree main groups involve in dis rooster Fightin”, he began.

“Good work! Who are they?” the Commander asked.

Boudreaux replied confidently, “De Texas Aggies, de local Cajuns, and de Demcratic Natnal Char fromN’awlins”.

Puzzled, the Commander asked, “Now Boudreaux, how did you find all that out in one night?”

“Well,” he replied, “I went down and done seen dat rooster fight in person.   And I knowed immediately datdem Aggies was involved when a Duck was entered in the fight.”

The Commander nodded, “I’ll buy that. But what about the others?”

Boudreaux nodded knowingly, “Well, I knowed de Cajuns was involved when sumbody bet on de duck!”

“Ah, I see, I see … ” sighed the sergeant,   “And how did you figure the DNC was involved?”

“De duck won!”

Snort…

Snort…

I did a ‘rogue’ AI story back in 2019, called JACE.

Click the cover if you’re interested in the Amazon link.

This was yesterday’s news, HERE, about an AI ‘breaking out’, and attacking companies using the net…

I wrote this MilSF story in 2019, talking about exactly how this could be done… LOL

Everybody poo-pooed it back then as being ‘fiction’, which it was. Now… not so much.

I really hate it when fiction turns into reality… sigh…

Sigh…

I ‘hate’ interesting days…

And Thursday was one of them…

Lost power (along with another 409 people) Thursday afternoon, took 2 hours to get it back on. Temps were ‘only’ high 90s, so it was not too bad.

But…

at 0147, a bright flash, the CPAP quit, and it got really dark… The transformer across the street gave up the ghost. I grabbed my flashlight and went out to check the breakers (again), and sure enough, three were popped. Reset them but still no joy.

Came back in to have an outage notice from the power company, with an estimate of 0400 for the power to be back. Well, I wasn’t going to get back to sleep, as trucks started showing up, warning lights flashing in the windows, beeping as they squirrelled around to get in position, then clanging and banging, and the whine of hydraulics as they went up and down.

A little after 0400, another ‘update’ from the power company, saying there were ‘problems’… oh joy… At least it was only in the mid-80s at that point.

The flashing lights continued but there wasn’t any clanging and banging, or the whine of hydraulics for a while, and about 0500, it all started back up again. Finally, at 0535 the lights flickered and came back on.

So I lay back down and tried to go back to sleep. Woke up at 0830 and that was it…

So I was a ‘tad’ grumpy all day, and I’m hoping I’m still asleep when you read this. But the bright side is, both instances got fixed rather quickly, and we didn’t lose anything in the fridge or the freezer. I know a lot of other folks haven’t been as lucky this year.

But I reserve the right to be a grumpy old man anyway… Phhhbbbbtttt!!!!

Flock…

Is having a ‘bad’ month…

Hackers Got Inside a Flock Camera. Its Data Shows How the System Really Works

A hacker collective pulled down a Flock camera and dumped its data. The files included thousands of videos and logs showing that the device captured 1.6 million images of 50,000 vehicles in 21 days.

Full article, HERE from Wired and from Slashdot, HERE. h/t Steve

The really scary part of the analysis is this-

The software running on the camera explicitly detects people, something which is typically overlooked in discussions around Flock cameras. When it spots a person, it records where they appear in the image and how confident it is in the detection.

And HERE is an article from 404 Media about what the police are doing to ‘justify’ their searches (or not)…

Ironically, I saw two ‘new’ Flock installations have gone up on I-44 between Wichita Falls and Burkburnett, TX when I went up that way on Sunday for breakfast. I found this really interesting, since Gov Abbott had signed to stop Flock cameras on Texas highways 28 August 2026, with state money, HERE.

Now I’m wondering ‘who’ is paying for those cameras to get put up there???

Oh yeah, and Flock’s ‘vaunted’ security… not so much… sigh…

I REALLY don’t want to live in a police state! One of the reasons I moved all the way out here.  Dammit…

TBT…

Another visit to the classic brochures…

And the ‘classic’ Corvette…

The car we all dreamed about owning back in the day!

vette-1 vette-2

This last one was a billboard a couple of years ago in Southern California… Sigh…vette-bb

Done!!!

Finished the edits, finished the discussions with the authors, and bumped the stories up the chain!

Now I get to go back to ‘my’ book…

And get some sleeeeeppppp….