Sometimes they really do fall under "good riddance".

I'm not a huge fan of capital punishment. Not because I don't think that there are people in this world that simply need killin' but because I don't trust the same organization that can't bat a thousand in delivering the mail to consistently kill the right people.

On the other hand, when there's no doubt that they got the right guy...? I find myself remarkably un-squeamish.
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Upsides, downsides...

The Olympus OM-PC (OM-40 overseas) was a consumer-grade camera released by Olympus in the mid-'80s. I lusted after them at the time partly for their styling and partly for the fact that they were extremely reasonably priced for a relatively feature-laden SLR.

When I picked one up recently for $25, I enjoyed tossing the little camera in my camera bag and taking the odd photograph around town...

Until the mirror stuck up after a snapshot. I gave the camera a light tap to see if it would jiggle the mirror loose, but it wasn't 'til I removed the lens that the mirror (or rather its holder) returned to the lower position, spitting out the half-silvered mirror out the front of the camera and onto the office floor.

Bummer.

On the one hand, I could try to get the camera fixed, or, heck, since I'd only had it a couple weeks, maybe KEH would do something for me... On the other hand, it's a scuffed-up thirty-year old consumer-grade camera that cost the princely sum of $25* and is hardly worth the hassle to fix; it's not like we're talking about a Leica rangefinder here. I think I'll just put a body cap on it and shelve it in the attic.

*Adjusted back to 1985 dollars, that's hardly lunch money.

It's a funny ol' universe...

Neat-o! A picture of a thing the camera didn't actually see...

I was once working on an SF short story where entangled photons* were used for FTL communications. Actually, it was about eavesdropping, but I nerded out so hard on the radio that the story itself got completely lost.

*Actually, I think it was electrons; it's hard to be positive. I mean "certain". Ba-dum. I'm groggy.
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It occurs to me...

...that I have had twelve hours of sleep in the past 72, with the four-hour block last night being the longest undisturbed stretch.

In other words, we are experiencing technical difficulties with the ice cream machine. Please stand by.
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Bangity.

In the February 2015 issue of Shooting Illustrated, some blogger wrote a review of the Ruger 9E bargain-priced SR9 variant. You should go buy the magazine because that would be awesome of you.
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Day Out...

Oh, the weather outside was frightful...

But the company inside was delightful. 

This evening's ice storm really blows,

I think I'd prefer plain old snow.

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Oddly specific...

I dreamed I went out to eat lunch at a little sushi restaurant in Hallstatt, Austria. It was on the third floor and the menu items only cost half as much if you ate on the side of the restaurant that faced the hillside rather than out over the lake. Since I was going to be reading anyway, I went for the cheaper vittles without the view.

The maguro otoro was excellent.
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It's strange in here.

Earwormed by an old Burger King jingle sung thusly: "Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce Jabba's gonna Boba Fett us." It's weird in my head.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) January 10, 2015

Snow

Not a lot of it, but what's there is not in any danger of melting anytime soon.

Out and About

Five degrees fondly Fahrenheit.

Sometime the other night, Indianapolis kicked off its blanket of clouds and let all the heat out. It's bleepin' cold out there now. Tourette's Syndrome cold. So cold that the first word you involuntarily blurt when you step outside into the twenty-five mph breeze would have to be bleeped out on network TV.

Still carrying the little Nikon Coolpix S6500 around with me. In summer I put it in the "document pocket" of my gun burkha, and in winter it goes in the left coat pocket with my phone and garage door opener. (Right pocket is for gloves and car keys.)

Yesterday at Fresh Market I took a misstep and hip-checked the corner of the checkout counter, driving the camera and phone into my hip hard enough to leave a bruise on me and a rather noticeable dent in the camera's case right over the "COOLPIX" label. It still works. I'm impressed with the thing even more now.
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Thread I have never ever seen on a firearms forum...

"Hi, everybody! Well, with the news stories that have been on lately, my boyfriend has decided that he wants to start CCWing. He's been resistant to the idea before, so I didn't try to force him, but now that he wants to carry, I realize I have no idea what would be a good gun for a man. You married ladies, what kind of gun is popular with the fellas in your life?"

 Because that would sound fricking retarded.
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I liked him better when he was just screaming.

“I stopped calling these people Muslim terrorists,” Dean said on Morning Joe.

They now wish to be known as "Terrorists of Faith". Or perhaps "The Artists Formerly Known As Muslim Terrorists" and now just "الأحمق".
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Let it not be too soon.

"Eventually, the sports car could become confined to a small niche of passionate fans, revving their engines and testing their speed on dedicated circuits.

It is up to the top automakers around the world together with tech leaders to produce autonomous, driverless cars for public use, and the day they enter general use is coming soon.

...

The war on speeding in developed countries; changes in consumer interests, with a new generation more focused on electronic gadgets; and more eco-friendly thinking also pose obstacles for performance sports car fans."

*glances at calendar* Only a couple decades left to go, thank heavens. It's almost enough to make one want to take up smoking again just to hurry things along.
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He's not here for the hunting.

Hoosier State Senator Jim Merritt liked watching his bill to restrict the sale of Tannerite die in committee last year so much that he submitted it again.

Meanwhile, in committee:

"I don't know of any significant personal injuries that have occurred in its use," said Sen. Brent Steele, R-Bedford, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Someone's going to have to convince me that this Tannerite is a problem in the state of Indiana and there's a need for regulation."

It's good to want things, Mr. Merritt. It builds character.
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Oh, Jesus, not this again...

Once upon a time I worked in a gun store whose owner had invented a rather colorful Vietnam-era military past for himself. It's called "stolen valor" now, but back then it was still just plain bullsh!t. One of his favorite topics on which to hold forth was how awful the M-16 was, and how, when his unit had switched to the new rifle from the old M-14, he threatened to kill his sergeant and so he was allowed to keep his M-14. I managed to refrain from pointing out that when the Army switched from the 14 to the 16, he was too young to lift either one and, as a consequence, was barely old enough to have been drafted to help pack boxes for the inactivation of Tan Son Nhut.

Every time an AR-15 came in the shop, we'd get an earful about how he wanted to kill Eugene Stoner (who was three years in the grave already) and about all the times his unit had been ambushed and wiped out almost to a man and he had to (and I quote, here) "turn over the bodies of his boys and each and every one of them had a broken-open M-16 with a cleaning rod jammed down the barrel!" The travails of the XM16E1 as reported to the Ichord Subcommittee have taken deep root in American gun nut culture indeed when even semiliterate Bubbas can repeat them as though they were first-person happenings.

Let us leave him to wrestle with the demons of other people's flashbacks and fast-forward to the present, in which a retired general who was a leftenant of cannon cockers back in the late Southeast Asian Unpleasantness tells us in a piece in Atlantic magazine:

At 3 o’clock in the morning, the enemy struck. They were armed with the amazingly reliable and rugged Soviet AK‑47, and after climbing up our hill for hours dragging their guns through the mud, they had no problems unleashing devastating automatic fire. Not so my men. To this day, I am haunted by the sight of three of my dead soldiers lying atop rifles broken open in a frantic attempt to clear jams.

This is alleged to have occurred during the Battle of Hamburger Hill in 1969, and we will treat the general's reminiscences as fact since, unlike my former boss, he was at least verifiably there.

The article meanders on with a paean to gas pistons and a dapper, Atlantic-audience-friendly restating of the "sh!ts where it eats" shibboleth of the He-Man AR Haters Club. All this is stated in such a way that indicates that while the general has a superficial knowledge of how various guns work, similar to the layman's "well, the gas goes in the tank and then the pistons go up and down and turn the wheels" knowledge of automotive mechanics, he doesn't actually like them very much.

His talking points are dismantled (and possible ulterior motives examined) in far more splendid detail than anything I could equal over at WeaponsMan in a two-parter: Here and Here.

Meanwhile, Ballistic Radio just finished up some recent gun testing...



I'll close with a quote from friend Justin O. on FaceBook:

"I find it amusing that when it comes to describing the M4/M16 in a military story, the media has nothing but awful accusations to sling about how these rifles are anemic jammomatics.

But as soon as a civilian picks up an AR15, they're described as military-derived rifles capable of allowing their user to rack up an astonishing body count with no training or knowledge."

Ain't that the truth?

This one, too...

#CharlieHebdo pic.twitter.com/15O4YC2KWg
— Ruben L. Oppenheimer (@RLOppenheimer) January 7, 2015

Outstanding.

Can't sleep tonight, thoughts with my French cartooning colleagues, their families and loved ones #CharlieHebdo pic.twitter.com/LqIMRCHPgK
— David Pope (@davpope) January 7, 2015

Those dang guns went and killed someone again.

#illridewithyou (Just not in the passenger seat, because it's all shot up.) pic.twitter.com/Gt4uraNl1Q
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) January 7, 2015

Random Musing...

It's amazing the number of people who don't seem to realize that the internet is connected to real life. Where's the first place a prosecutor goes looking for evidence these days? The Facebook page of the accused, that's where.

Despite the protests of Sumdood Dindoonuffin that he was just turning his life around, there'll be pictures on his timeline (which is set to "Public") of him sitting at a table in a skeezy kitchen, busting a pose with a pair of gats behind a couple stacks of bills and the very baggies of dope that are currently residing in the evidence locker.

Car.

That first roll of Ilford through the Leica included a lot of pictures of random crap as I'm having to get the hang of working the clutch pedal and shift lever all over again. The roll is mostly full of stuff like several exposures of the various illuminated beer signs on the walls at Twenty Tap and assorted Christmas decorations in the neighborhood.

I did, however, enjoy taking the above 4x6 print and affixing it in an old photo album next to a picture of the '75 Ford Granada I was driving back in 1991. I'd taken that photo, also using Ilford XP2, with my Canon AE-1 Program almost a decade before the Subaru in these pictures was made. I should get those old negatives scanned...

Another similarity between the Forester and the Granada for me is that both were "emergency cars".

RX: "What's an 'emergency car'?"

Me: "Well, that's when you weren't really planning on buying a car, but you need wheels right now because your current ride went tango uniform for whatever reason, so you run out and buy a car you may not really want, but it's the car you can afford right then because it's an emergency."

RX: "I think all my cars have been emergency cars by that definition."

Out of the fifteen cars I've owned over the years, only three really count as Emergency Cars. In addition to the aforementioned Granada and Forester, my other emergency car was a truly awful Dodge Aries. While I've grown to like the Forester and grudgingly developed a love-to-hate-it relationship with the Granada, my K-Car experience was a nearly unmitigated disaster.
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