TBT…

Posted on by September 4, 2019

And some more pics from the wayback machine, courtesy of one of my shipmates from back in the day…

Diego Garcia and our ‘fine’ quarters on the beach… Better known as ‘Splinterville’…

And a couple from Utapao. First was Pia’s down by the flight line. Good ‘ham’ sandwiches and in walking distance, if somebody had taken off with the crew van.

And Raja’s Tailor Shop. Finest suits for $25, and Singha beer while you wait! Actually the suits were pretty good material, but the thread SUCKED! I knew one guy who sent his suit to the laundry to have it dry cleaned after we got back off deployment, and it disintegrated! It cost him about $100 to have it resewn! The next deployment, everybody took GOOD thread and specified that only THAT thread be used for their suits. Then they lasted about a year. The usual problem then was we’d all put on weight, since we were back stateside, and not running around like scaled apes… sigh…

And they were always good for a free beer, especially if it was a day or so before payday, and you were broke. But ONLY ONE free beer a trip. 🙂

Oh, and he had a ‘cousin’ in the jewelry business, “Good honest Baht chain, guarantee 22 carat gold”, and another ‘cousin’ in the furniture business. BUFEs, basket chairs, etc.

Truly a different world!

 

 

 

 

Posted in TBT

YGTBSM…

Posted on by September 3, 2019

It’s NOT just the crazies in Austin…

A vegan woman sued her neighbors for barbecuing in their backyard: ‘It’s deliberate’

Full article, HERE.

Now I’ve been to Perth, and it is the equivalent of the wild west. They are separated from the rest of Australia by the outback, and are a pretty independent bunch. And MOST of them are meat/fish eaters. And yes, they do a LOT of BBQs, especially the military folks.

h/t Gerry

And then there’s this…

Connected things are wonderful until they fail on you.

Apparently there are a lot of Tesla owners that don’t bother to carry keys, etc, but rely on their phones to ‘unlock’ their car… Oopsie…. Full article, HERE.

Yet everyone wants ‘smart houses’? Really? So the blue screen of death will mean NOTHING in your house will work?

Really? Sigh… I don’t want ANY electronic/smart controls in my house.

Range time…

Posted on by September 2, 2019

With suppressor video even!

Been a while since I’ve done a gun post, so here we go. The clip is as follows:

1st clip- 175gr M118LR through suppressor

2nd clip- 168gr subsonic through suppressor

3rd clip- 168gr subsonic NO suppressor

4th clip- 175gr M118LR NO suppressor

5th clip- AR-10 Carbine, 175gr IMI Match ammo, no suppressor

There is some audio clipping due to the iPhone camera/microphone. I did not have a calibrated mic there, so no dB levels are given.

And here’s the target and specifics-

The subsonic had a drop of 10 inches at 100 yards to my ‘normal’ zero. Hence the ‘high’ hold. There was also a much more pronounced wind effect. The 175gr was moved around a bit by the wind, but no worse than an inch in any direction.

Thanks to friends for the spotting and filming. Now I can go ‘mortar’ the subsonics into a target, if it holds still and there is no wind… LOL

Burp…

Posted on by September 1, 2019

I’m SO full…

Thanks to Jonathan, THREE stuffed pork roasts! And Mac and Cheese, and Green Beans.

The dinner group expands and contracts without rhyme or reason, and tonight we had two ‘extra’ guests. John Van Stry came over from Sherman, and Jesse Barrett came down from OKC. Good food, good conversations, and a demonstration of the ‘proper’ way to murder somebody with a knife…

Of course we ‘had’ to do that outside, so the kids didn’t see it, but the neighbors did… LOL

Authors, you can live with us, and you can’t shoot us either… And there REALLY needs to be a check box on search engines, for I AM AN AUTHOR DOING RESEARCH… Sigh…

Speaking of research, six hours today, got three sentences written and a couple of stray notes…

I hope each and every one enjoys Labor Day, and those working get double time for it!

Take a moment to remember those who can’t take the day off. The military, LEOs, Medics, and Fire/rescue.

 

Ah… Fall…

Posted on by August 31, 2019

Well, it’s SUPPOSED to be in the air… It IS football season.

Sigh…

I enjoy watching college football, although it seems at times almost like JV for the pros. I’m about to the point I’d rather watch it with the sound off, that way I don’t have to listen to the blathering of the ‘announcers’, and I use that term loosely. Especially when they start ‘pronouncing’, “Well, Coach ‘should’ have run this play in that situation, rather than what he did, yada, yada, yada.” I almost want to yell at the screen, if you’re so damn good, why are you sitting where you are, rather than BEING a coach? Grrr…

And the other thing is the ‘pronouncements’ about how ‘critical’ this game is… It’s the first freaking week of the schedule! Damn! Give the kids a break, already!

Anyhow, it’s football season, support your local teams at all levels, and if your kids are playing or in the band, or pep squad, get out there and yell for them! They appreciate it, win, lose, or draw. And being active in school tends to keep the kids off the street and out of trouble, which isn’t a bad way to go.

Oh, and one comment on the Iranian missile that blew up…

1) Murphy’s Law speaks Farsi too.
2) Mossad
3) MI-6
4) Polish Intelligence
5) CIA.
YMMV… 🙂

 

Worth watching…

Posted on by August 30, 2019

There IS light at the end of the tunnel…

The power of love and the human spirit.

‘Interesting’ happenings…

Posted on by August 28, 2019

This came across the transom and via various email strings…

The Campbell award is no more. First, the winner this year did this…

Author Jeannette Ng labeled the late sci-fi author John W. Campbell as a “fascist” during her acceptance speech after winning the award bearing his name at the 2019 Hugo Awards ceremony.

Article, HERE.

And less than a week later, we have this…

As we move into Analog’s 90th anniversary year, our goal is to keep the award as vital and distinguished as ever, so after much consideration, we have decided to change the award’s name to The Astounding Award for Best New Writer.

Full article, HERE.

And in doing some digging around, I found that there is more than one Campbell award!  HERE.  I’ve got to say I honestly never knew KU had a center for the study of science fiction. Learn something new every day!

And speaking of judges, Wiley’s cartoon for today is just TOO perfect not to share. Mr. Wiley nails it, as usual!

 

Book Promo…

Posted on by August 27, 2019

Peter Grant’s third in the Ames series is out, Gold on the Hoof

As always, click the cover for the link!

The blurb-

The Comanche and Kiowa are painting for war in the Texas Panhandle. The US Army is preparing to stop them – but it needs horses to do so. Lots of horses. Walt Ames knows where to find them, and breeding stock for his horse ranch, too. All he has to do is ride down to Mexico, buy them, and bring them back safely. That’s easier said than done.

He and his men will have to cover more than two thousand brutally hard miles, and deal with Indian raiders, Comanchero renegades, bandidos, and would-be horse thieves… not to mention a certain Irish-Mexican redheaded beauty who can make him forget everything else in the emerald glow of her eyes. Walt’s going to need every ounce of his grit and determination, plenty of firepower, and a lot of luck if he’s to convert the gold in his pockets to gold on the hoof.

I had the pleasure of beta reading this one, and truly enjoyed it. I think you will too, if you like good westerns!!!

Social credit world???

Posted on by August 26, 2019

China has gone whole hog into the social credit scheme. The question is, are the US tech companies following suit here?

Or as the government itself says, “Keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful.”

Silicon Valley says: “Hold my soy latte.”

Full article, HERE. From PJ Media… and another HERE.

Now we know there are ‘algorithms’ that ban people on FB, Twitter, Instagram, and other chat channels. Michael Williamson and Larry Correia are two who have been nailed, among many others by FB, and often have no idea what it was that got them kicked. A couple of notable gun bloggers have also had their sites taken down by Blogger (owned by Google)…

And if you put a link on FB that takes people off site, those posts get throttled (this is verified, including some testing that I’ve done informally, where it literally takes three days in some cases for people to see those posts in their feeds, if they ever do).

Ironically, it ‘seems’ that most of the banning, shadow banning, etc. that is occuring is against conservative voices. Just like the Wiki dust up last month trying to remove conservative authors, this crap is ever expanding. I didn’t know AirB&B could ban you for life, but then I don’t use them. Nor did I know Uber drivers can rate you as a passenger, and get you banned from their service, again for life, without any recourse on your behalf.

A lot of the banning, limiting of voices appears to be more prevalent on mobile devices, especially those running the Android apps.

Are we now to the point that anything we say on line can be used against us? It sure as hell sounds like it. And from what I’m seeing from these articles and some security stuff that I follow, there really is no recourse.

Marta, over at VictoryGirls Blog has a slightly different take on it, HERE.

In either case, definitely food for thought… Dammit… I don’t WANT interesting times again.

The Grey Man- Down South…

Posted on by August 25, 2019

It’s alive!!!

Y’all have been bugging me for John Cronin’s backstory, so you get this…

Click the cover for the link.

The blurb-

After too much action, too much peace gets on a man’s nerves. John Cronin’s back from Vietnam and bored, when Billy Moore suggests he check out the brand new Drug Enforcement Agency. He’d expected paperwork and meetings; he got on-the-job training in South America with stakeouts gone wrong and ambushes exploding into firefights. 

This isn’t Cronin’s first rodeo, and now he’s taking the fight to the cartels, from the laboratories hidden deep in the highland jungles to the enforcers in the cities and secure compounds!

And as always, many thanks to the alpha and beta readers, Steph for the editing, and Miggy for correcting my lousy Spanish! All errors are mine.

And Tina did a super job on the cover, including making up the Joker!!!

As always, HONEST reviews are appreciated!