This is a catch-all for random and undifferentiated thoughts that didn’t make it into my previous NRAAM reports. I’ll put in a jump, since this is running long…
Archive for the ‘Geek’ Category
Random notes toward an after action report: Dallas.
Tuesday, May 8th, 2018Day one notes.
Friday, May 4th, 2018Never do a LINUX distro upgrade while on the road.
The NRA convention is huge: 15 acres. Tulsa is 11, for comparison. We were afraid we wouldn’t be able to see everything: it takes two days to get through Tulsa, and much of that is at a dead run.
But we spent the early part of the morning with Karl of KR Training, who only had a few hours for the show. And we saw quite a bit of it, albeit at a dead run again. But we’ve also got time to go back to the stuff we didn’t get a chance to consider thoughtfully, and we did do slower browsing of a significant part of the show this afternoon. While NRA is bigger than Tulsa, it is also much less densely packed, which makes things easier. We even have time to hit some of the seminars.
Most interesting thing I saw today: My Case Builder. You go on their website. They have a tool that allows you to layout your own custom foam insert. You can use their predefined shapes (about 1200, they claim) or you can use another tool to “trace” an item and input dimensions. Once you’re done, they’ll custom cut a foam insert either for a new case (which you can purchase through them) or an existing case you already have of any brand.
Seen much, much less than I expected: scout rifle scopes. Leopold had none in their display. I did see two Leopold scout scopes, but they had no model markings on them and they were both attached to scout rifles at the Savage and Steyr booths. Vortex had one that looks promising.
Purchased: a spring kit from Apex Tactical for a J-frame. $20 plus whatever it will cost me to have a smith put it in.
Noted: Robert K. Brown was selling autographed copies of his biography, I Am Soldier of Fortune: Dancing with Devils, which I was previously unaware of. May have to go back and pick one up.
Today I learned…
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2018Obit watch: March 21, 2018.
Wednesday, March 21st, 2018Nelda Wells Spears, former Travis County tax assessor-collector. I remember having to write checks to her, back in the pre-Internet days…
Earl Cooley, prominent Austin SF fan, influential early BBS guy, and a personal friend.
The Mad Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight. They haven’t released a name yet, but even if they did, I wouldn’t give him the publicity.
Oh, why not?
Wednesday, March 14th, 2018Happy #PiDay! pic.twitter.com/vNSNgGZzgI
— CIA (@CIA) March 14, 2018
Obit watch: March 14, 2018.
Wednesday, March 14th, 2018I don’t feel like I need to say much more than that, but I like this quote:
Accidentally like a machine.
Thursday, February 15th, 2018By way of the Hacker News Twitter:
A list of things that were not intended to be “Turing Complete”, but are.
(For the non-initiated, “Turing Completeness” sort of explained here.)
Nostalgia is (kind of) a moron…
Thursday, February 8th, 2018Back when I was a small child, I loved “Emergency“.
Now that I’m an adult, and have the chance to work from home some days, I can watch the show on one of those retro TV networks. And you know…I hate to admit this…and maybe it is just the episodes I’ve caught…but it’s not as good as I remember it.
There are two episodes that I recall, but haven’t seen come round yet: one where Dr. Brackett and the paramedics have to do emergency field surgery on a guy who fired a grenade round into his gut, and another where the paramedics may have to do a field amputation to rescue a man trapped by a building collapse. (I don’t remember if they actually took the guy’s leg off or not.)
What brings this to mind? About six months ago, Collin County (where Plano is) realized they had a problem: there’s a lot of construction going on, and with that, a lot of potential for workers to become badly trapped by construction accidents. Collin County firefighters worked with a local hospital (Medical City Plano, also a Level 1 trauma center) to develop something called the “pre-hospital amputation team” in case it was ever needed.
Last week, it was.
Firefighters called Gamber on their way to the accident scene. He summoned trauma surgeon Al West, who arrived by helicopter 41 minutes after the accident.
He carried a black plastic toolbox that held everything he would need to free Palma: a saw, scissors, clamps, dressings. This was the first time in his 20 years operating on trauma patients that he wouldn’t have a sterile operating room.
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The guy’s still in critical condition, but expected to live. The doctors say there’s about a 75% chance he’ll be able to walk normally with a prosthetic leg. Here’s his GoFundMe, if you feel like kicking in a few bucks for the family.
Hattip: SwiftOnSecurity.
Imagine how many systems and procedures that work to mitigate or completely avert tragedy which you take for granted. That you have no possible awareness of. Intention iterated over decades, by people whose only aspiration is to do a better job. They who rarely get hagiographies.
— SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity) February 8, 2018
Obit watch: February 8, 2018.
Thursday, February 8th, 2018I haven’t found a good mainstream source for this yet, but John Perry Barlow, former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, passed away yesterday.
EFF. Mike Godwin’s Twitter feed has a lot of good tributes.
Edited to add 2/9: NYT obit.
Ken is the man that we all need.
Wednesday, January 24th, 2018Ken White is my new favorite person in the world.
At least, for the rest of the day today.
(Subject line hattip. Yes, I realize it’s about a vastly different Ken in a vastly different context, but I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to reference one of Kate’s more obscure but still rocking songs.)
Cray Cray.
Thursday, January 18th, 2018When I was younger, I desperately wanted a desktop Cray.
Moore’s Law and all that (stuff), but this really brings home how much things have changed in (mumble mumble) years:
The CRAY-1 was rated at 160 MIPS (and 5.5 tons) – The Raspberry Pi -C is 2441 MIPS and 42 gms (ie 15 x a CRAY-1 in integer compute speed, and 130,000 times lighter) – A super-duper computer. Erlang was developed on a VAX 11/750 (0.8 MIPS) (3000 times slower than a RP) https://t.co/vM9kqBs3ag
— Joe Armstrong (@joeerl) January 17, 2018
Obit watch: January 8, 2018.
Monday, January 8th, 2018A roundup of obits from the past couple of days:
John Young, Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle astronaut. NASA.
Jerry Van Dyke, noted television actor (“My Mother the Car”).
Peggy Cummins. She’s mostly forgotten now – she stopped acting in the 1960s – but she was the female lead opposite John Dall in the famous 1950 noir film “Gun Crazy”.
Start with a badass, end with a badass: Ulrich Wegener, founder of the German Border Protection Group 9 (aka Grenzschutzgruppe 9):
One of his first accomplishments: Lufthansa Flight 181.
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Briefly held by American troops as a prisoner of war, he returned home, to what became East Germany, to finish his schooling.
Caught handing out leaflets critical of the Communist government, he was jailed for 18 months. Upon his release in 1952, he fled to West Berlin, where he went on to join the police.
(I haven’t found a source I consider completely trustworthy for this, but there are reports that Colonel (at the time) Wegener also participated with the Israeli Sayeret Matkal in the raid on Entebbe.)