Humor…

It’s been a lousy week weather wise, news wise, etc…

So… a little humor for your Friday!

Bloopers from Young Frankenstein…

And some ‘simple’ explanations of ‘isms’…

SOCIALISM:
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbor.

COMMUNISM:
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM:
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM:
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM:
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away.

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND (VENTURE) CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.

The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.

The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release.

The public then buys your bull.

SURREALISM:
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow has dropped dead.

A GREEK CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You borrow lots of euros to build barns, milking sheds, hay stores, feed sheds, dairies, cold stores, abattoir, cheese unit and packing sheds.
You still only have two cows.

A FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called a Cowkimona and market it worldwide.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows
But you don’t know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A SWISS CORPORATION:
You have 5000 cows.
None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them, you claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION:
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the shit out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least you are now a Democracy.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
They are unhappy and would rather live in Australia.

Stubborn…

One of my oak trees in the front yard STILL has four leaves on it…

And this is after 24 hours of up to 50+kts of wind! I’m impressed! Those suckers just WILL NOT fall!

And we ‘think’ this is New Mexico blowing by…

West Texas came through an hour or so ago, and we thought we smelled oil, e.g. the Permian Basin. Thankfully, it’s stopped raining (for now). The bar ditches are full, and the water was lapping the outside lanes of the highway this morning. And to make things even MORE interesting, one, and only one side, of the crossing bars were down. Made for an interesting ‘dance’ getting over the railroad tracks, with people actually taking turns! Gotta love country drivers, they know courteous!

Grumble…

Updating software/firmware is enough of a PITA to make one want to skip it, and THAT assumes the basic program updates itself automatically…

What truly sucks is when the software doesn’t update, and will connect to the hardware, but won’t find the required firmware updates after you’ve screwed with it for 20 minutes…

So…

You have to try to upgrade the software, which, as it turns out, doesn’t upgrade if it is more than one generation out of date. Which means you have to uninstall it… And that’s a 20 minute drill.

You go find the update and reload the software… another 15-20 minutes down the drain. You plug the hardware in and the software doesn’t recognize it… And find out you need a @#@%# driver update. Another half your while Windoze searches and searches.

And it FINALLY installs, only to tell you it won’t work unless you do a total reboot of the system. Another 5 minutes.

So you reboot, and it takes another 10 minutes to actually update the driver! Now it’s start the software again, wait for it to realize there is a new driver, connect the hardware and… It finally connects.

And five minutes later is done… Sigh.

And the muse is gibbering in the corner. Maybe tomorrow I’ll actually get some writing done.

Rut Roh…

Weather is hitting us hard. Rain/thunder/lighting…

Intermittent power surges, so no post this morning. Go read the folks on the sidebar.

And this is Obi this morning…

Sigh…

PSA

S&W 15-22 issue!

Smith & Wesson Corp. announced today that the Company has identified two M&P15-22 firearms from recent production on which the breech face counter bore depth was not within manufacturing specification. In those firearms, the lack of depth may allow the bolt, upon closing, to crush the rim of the case, causing the round to fire, cycling the bolt, and potentially resulting in multiple discharges without depressing the trigger.

The safety alert applies to all M&P15-22 firearms manufactured before February 1, 2019. We believe these are isolated incidents, however, any unintended discharge of a firearm has the potential to cause injury. Therefore, out of an abundance of caution, we are asking all consumers of all M&P15-22 firearms manufactured before February 1, 2019 to immediately inspect their firearms for this condition.

Full article HERE, at ammoland.com.

h/t Ricky S.

Here we go again…

The Dems are going after the 2nd Amendment again, this time using doctors (again).

Democrats in the U.S. House are likely to approve spending $50 million in taxpayer funds for public health research on gun violence. While that may sound like a good idea at first glance, it really wouldn’t do anything to reduce gun violence in our country.

Full article, HERE.

And in other news, the ENTIRE Finnish government resigned Friday!

Finland’s entire government resigned Friday after the governing coalition failed to agree on the welfare state reform, just one month before elections were due to be held.

The reform tried to reorganize the welfare state amid an aging population and cut public spending by $3.4 billion in the next 10 years – an ambitious aim that many parties have tried and failed to achieve in the past.

Full article, HERE. AND they are ending their Universal Basic Income plan this year too… Unaffordable, and apparently the data coming back doesn’t support the goals they thought they would achieve (And they can’t afford it, OPM and all that).

I’m in the throes of editing, so go read the folks on the sidebar, or get out and do something if the weather is nice where you are!

Random stuff…

First up, an excellent article at Ammo.com

Prior to 1968, most adults in the United States could purchase a firearm without state interference. Guns were available in local retail stores, as well as mail-order catalogs, and as long as you hadn’t been convicted of a felony and you had the funds, there weren’t any questions asked.

Full article, HERE.

And there is an article, sadly behind a WSJ paywall, that indicates Trump may release the rates hospitals negotiate with insurance companies… THAT could put the cat among the pigeons!!!

And just for fun…

And asking for a friend…

h/t DR.

 

Ratholes…

Are the bane of a writer…

If it isn’t a research rathole, it’s a question that prompts another thousand words, or a what if that causes a rethink of an entire chapter. Or the muse gets a wild hair…

Simple search for separating cows and calves let to over four hours of reading and I now know more than I want about the different options, weight loss/gain metrics, and potential long range issues with calves. And it’s going to be about three sentences in the book… sigh.

And reading historical monographs from the west is both enlightening and time consuming. You make notes, add questions as to how things get done, and hope to hell the muse can make something out of that mess later!

Rimworld- JACE is back out to readers after the additional 6K words answering the questions/comebacks from the first round of readers, so it’s gone from a ‘long’ short story to a ‘short’ novella.

There is always a question in a short story as to when to stop it, and how much ‘backstory’ you can shove in. Obviously, I didn’t do enough… Or I did too much…

And we’re doing an actual formal book signing this weekend at the local library, so I’ve got to prep for that, find enough copies of books, and hope to hell the weather is good and folks actually show up with money in their pockets.

Speaking of book signings, many thanks to Larry Correia for mentioning me when he was in OKC in February. That got me a 20 sales bump, which may not seem like much, but for us starving writers, that’s a BIG help!

Read three different folks work as either an alpha or beta reader in the last two weeks, and hopefully gave them some good feedback. The way I look at it, it’s the least I can do for the help readers give me. And I DO give honest feedback.

Speaking of which, I consider the reader’s feedback/criticism as a major contributor to my limited success. I don’t take it personal, I look at it as helping me to craft a better story, and the nice thing is that different folks catch different things. The ‘fun’ part is making one fix, then having to go figure out if THAT fix impacts other parts of the story.

Hopefully, Rimworld- JACE will go to press late this month or early next month. It will only be on Kindle, due to being a novella.

 

Dayum…

It’s NOT supposed to be this #$*_(@ cold! Not in March…

14 night before last, ‘high’ of 29 yesterday, and a low of 17 last night…

Y’all can go ahead and laugh, but even the dog didn’t want to go out unless he HAD to… And those were the quickest #1 and #2s he’s ever done…

And it’s supposed to be 72 by Friday. It’s no wonder everybody is sicker than a dog around here… sigh…

Baby Steps…

The Dragon capsule successfully docked autonomously with the ISS over the weekend. NASA astronauts have been working with Space X to make sure the system works, and will be as safe as possible.

So we ‘may’ be back in the business of actually being able to launch and recover our own astronauts.

Of note, it was FULLY autonomous, the arm wasn’t needed, and it had 400 lbs of cargo aboard too. Multiply configurable, it can hold up to seven astronauts, or some mix of astronauts and cargo, and comes with an optional ‘trunk’ that holds additional cargo.

There is a possibility the first manned launch will be later this year, and the bonus is that these capsules will be reusable!