Sick Ill

...Started with one title, considered the minds of the lads on the #gunbloggerconspiracy IRC channel and changed it...

Conan the Objectivist has been hacking, coughing and sneezing around the shop since Monday and it appears his virus's mission was successful: I've got it, too. Raw throat, bit of a temperature, sinus unhappiness, oh yay.

On top of the knee issues, it does not make for a fun time and I have caught myself on the verge of making bone-headed mistakes three times now. I do believe I had better call in sick -- not to avoid sharing, it's too late for that (thanks, buddy. No, not really) -- but because it is pretty easy to spend more than a day's pay by cutting one wrong wire. That wouldn't be good.

Piggie flu or just a cold? Dunno. Hoping for the latter!

Speaking Of H. Beam Piper: Michael Z. Williamson

MZW has had a new book out for awhile now, Contact With Chaos. Written under trying conditions, it is set in the universe of Freehold and The Weapon and is as good as any of his SF to date.

What it reminds me of, far more than his earlier works (though you can see it even there) is H. Beam Piper, especially when Piper was looking more closely at character -- yarns like the Little Fuzzy novels. Plus we get a little more insight into the dynamics of Freehold society, one of the more complex takes on what a free society might look like.

If you like Heinlein and Piper, give Mad Mike a try. The boy can write.

(How To Buy: go to Tam's blog and click on the Amazon link at her site).

It Might Even Get Me To Travel

...Custom solar-powered steamer trunk: WANT.

That is all.

Good News/Bad News

Good News: Ed Rasimus[1]and Gary Graham[2] are more than just decorative, they've got a considerable clue.

Bad News: Ed's got a posting with links addressing the Executive's attempted strong-arming of Chrysler creditors. When it comes to government bullying, Ayn Rand was a starry-eyed optimist, as innocent as Dorothy Gale.


...And people wonder why I list my politics as "anarchist." Theodore Roosevelt's "bully pulpit" leads all too directly to bullying in the more commonly-used sense of the word. Hand a man -- any man -- a cudgel the size of the Presidency and he's going to use it. Ditto Congresscritters and so on all the way down to dogcatchers and metermaids. The only way to even begin to contain it is to push back just as hard as you can. And at that, I believe it may only be a delaying action.

Machiavelli (and H. Beam Piper) probably had it right: individual freedom is a temporary state between one form of coercive rule and another. That's no reason to not try making it last as long as possible.
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1. Of course, there is a rather large body of preexisting evidence that Ed's not just another handsome guy in an airplane. Ahem.
2. I always found him appealing in Alien Nation reruns and thanks to Chris Muir, I've learned he's not the usual Hollywood whiner, either. Color me fangirl.

Like Hawley-Smooting Yourself, Only Uglier

(I expect any day to see that title as a spam header). Gee, let's see -- the economy is in the tank and the unemployment rate is increasing, what to do, what to do....?

If you're Obama administration, the answer is, "Whack the big corporations good and hard! Tax 'em even more than they already are and make being a U. S. corporation a liability!" Clever.

Where Smoot-Hawley was ostensibly protectionist and hurt U.S. exports indirectly, by inciting retaliatory tariff increases by other nations, the proposal from the White House bypasses that folderol by simply attacking U. S. firms that do business overseas. That'll show 'em! --Show 'em the desirability of incorporating elsewhere, that is.

When government -- any government! -- drives the economy, we're on the bus to failure. It is all the more galling in that every time this sort of thing happens (and it happens all the time), we handed them the keys.

Will this one be a debatable footnote, a catastrophe or a mere fizzle on the news cycle? I don't know. The assumptions behind it, though, they're corrosive; if they don't eat through in this instance, they'll do so somewhere else. Count on it.

Monday, Monday...

...Except it's more like Tuesday for me: worked yesterday, filling in for a tekkie on vacation. Worked late, too, which means a hasty turnaround today and meant last night, I reached my target heart rate: it was such a beautiful afternoon, I rode my scooter to work and thus rode back home after midnight. From downtown.

It is a very great incentive to using your mirrors and keeping your eyes moving; this city never quite sleeps but in the wee small hours of a Monday, it's pretty somnolent. Weather was still nice, the least edge of a chill and scarcely a breeze.

With sleep cometh dreams and in a city hovering on the very edge of sleep, some of the dreams are anything but dreamy -- approaching 38th St. on Meridian (a major intersection). I noticed a car parked at a funny angle in a lot just off the street, headlights and interior lights on and movement in front of it. Car trouble? A wreck? A car-jacking?

Um, no. My first clue was the flash of metallic silver hotpants: either a very drunk partygirl or a lady of leasable virtue, dancing in front of the headlights and waving at passing traffic. I was a little ahead of a car in the lane between me and the scene and as we approached and she realized neither of us was in her target demographic -- the driver next to me being a gal deeply involved with her cellphone -- she abruptly sat back down on the hood.

You'd think IMPD might notice that sort of thing. Interestingly, though I see a lot of police cars during the day, none were in evidence along my entire midnight commute. Luck of the draw or a change in patrol patterns? I don't know. In the days of IPD, I saw about as many in the middle of the night as in the middle of the day; with most of the city asleep, that might not have been the most rational allocation of manpower.

The trip was uneventful from there on; even Broad Ripple settles down once Sunday's been tucked in.

"Art" Like A Slap In The Face

Updated: 9 April 2010 to replace dead link to Nuvo article. The 'Net is forever; our arty paper, less than a year.

The delightful Paul Cret-designed Central Library in downtown Indianapolis, despite having had the stacks gutted right out of it and now serving as an entry hall to the swooping modernist aberration where the books (and other, newer, more common media) are now found, nevertheless retains a great deal of its neoclassical charm. Of course the intellects who dreamed up the glittering money sink that now hovers ominously behind it, sinking slowly into hollowly echoing void of its underground garages, could not allow such simple beauty to stand unchallenged.

Two large pedestals on either side of the grand entrance had stood empty since the building was completed in 1917; they were supposed to have held sculpture in keeping with the nature of the building but funding ran out and with Hoosier practicality, they have remained unoccupied, perhaps challenging visitors to dream what might occupy that space.

No more. Thanks to a review in Nuvo, I've discovered there's a nightmare there now. (Have a look by clicking here or on the images in the article). Of course the reviewer is all aflutter. Comments are presently running about 50/50 -- and that's in a very alt/artsy paper. Sheesh.

May BlogMeet: FIRST ANNIVERSARY

Yes, it's true: we have been at the BlogMeet biz for nearly a year. Our First Annual is this month!

Present plans are a bit up in the air, it being 500-Mile-Race* month and all. The Brew Pub may be full up. On the other hand, the Speedway itself tends to draw folk to it as long as the gates are open.

UPDATE: In order to dodge the race and other festivities, let's have the BlogMeet 17 May. This is the same weekend as the NRA convention but perhaps we can get Breda or another of the Midwestern attendees to give us a quick telephone report!

On the other other hand...Locally Grown Gardens has pulled pork barbecue, salmon, asparagus, coleslaw, home made bread, pies, ice cream and I dunno what all else, and that's even before we get 'round to the produce that is their mainstay; they have a few tables and there's a pocket park a short walk up the Monon Trail. We could all hang out, talk and enjoy first-rate eats from a rilly rilly kewl, unpretentious small biz run by a top chef! Whattaya think?

Poster to follow.
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* Something to do with automobiles and a huge oval on the West Side. I always thought it was a zeppelin aerodrome but nooooo.

Road Trip!

Huge grocery store, food from all over the planet, nearly a thousand kinds of hot sauce, an entire aisle of olives? Located not-so-far-away, a bit north of Cininnati in exotic Ohio? Jungle Jim's International Market: we're so goin' there sometime this Spring or Summer.

I wonder how close it is to the WLW site at Mason?

Flaming Robot Legs

What more need be said?

Found at Picture is Unrelated.

Quick Eats: Cajun Fried Rice

The Lazy Girl Gunblogger Dinner!

You'll need a wok or frying pan, a half-dozen slices of bacon (peppered or applewood smoked preferred), 2 or 3 eggs and a bag of Uncle Ben's Ready Rice, Cajun Style (this is the rice-in-a-bag that's nuke & eat, except we're not doing it that way). Plus some chopped chives, green onions or leeks and whatever else looks good.

Start by frying the bacon til it is golden-crisp (I added a very tiny amount of crushed red pepper flakes), then setting it aside to drain. Leave the bacon grease in the pan; you can vary the amount to suit yourself but you'll want a little more than you think. Now dump the rice in and fry it up -- you'll want high heat and it will go pretty fast, 2-3 minutes ought to do it. Push the rice to the sides of the pan, crack the eggs into the center, and scramble them, stirring constantly (I use a chopstick or bamboo skewer, which works well). Add the chives (or whatever -- the leeks or green onions, you might want to add to the rice before you scramble the eggs), crumble the bacon back in, season to taste and enjoy!

Had it tonight. I think adding a dollop of Worcestershire Sauce to the eggs might've improved it but it was pretty good already. Hot, quick and tasty!

Good Morning

My day dawned bright and early - well, at least early -- after two days of mounting frustration (indeed, at times it seemed as though frustration was mounting me and not in a good way).

Yesterday afternoon, three days of work on one of the Stardrive power amplifiers finally resulted in what so far appears to be success, when I installed the last "floating" power supply we had aboard ship. What it "floats" on is the 36,000 Volt power supply rail, to which all the lesser phantsmajector voltages are referenced: 3 kV for the ion pump, a few hundred Volts to bias the grid and a mere five to seven volts (at some hundred Amperes!) just to light the tube up. It passed all the preliminary tests, so we slapped both high voltage and RF drive to it and whattaya know, there was both output and a distinct lack of overload conditions, a condition that persisted through the end of my shift.

Called Drive Control this morn, still a little asleep, and the DQ op on duty responded with a smile in his voice, "All three finals are clean and green!"

First time I've heard that news in a good long while. Let's hope it lasts us 'til the upcoming refit -- word is there's something Way Better TM in the works!