Guns, Cars, and Tech

Author: wizardpc

  • Gun Porn: “I’ll NEVER own a Smith & Wesson!” Edition

    I wasn’t really “in” to guns until well after college. The AWB went in to effect when I was 14. But I very vividly remember vowing to never, ever, buy a Smith because of this.

    So my first gun was a Ruger instead.

  • I lol’d


    That’s some creativity right there.

  • I’ve been predicting this for years

    Starting about 3 years ago, I started saying that we were very close (5 years or less) to having cell phones so powerful that they will be able to replace laptops and desktops.

    The scenario would be that you’d sit down at your desk and plop your phone on a cradle. That cradle would be attached to a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals…much like laptop docks today.

    That day is here.

    It’ll still be a few years before this becomes widespread–and a few years after that before Apple revolutionizes the industry by finally adopting it–but this is a great first step.

    It’s going to be 18 months before I can get a new phone, but I’ll be willing to bet that by then most phones will have this capability.

  • Meanwhile in Texas

    According to Sec. 46.035 of the Texas Penal Code, it’s illegal for someone with a concealed carry license to carry in a church.

    A North Texas congregation is reeling after an attacker rammed a car into a church wall, chased the pastor, and beat him to death with an electric guitar.

    Well, at least it wasn’t a gun, right?

    ETA: Reuben points out that I didn’t read far enough down in the Texas Penal Code. Church Carry has been allowed since 2007.

  • Gone and done it

    Last week I ordered the same scope that Linoge used to make rifleman. Should be here tomorrow.

    It’ll be Spring before I can even think about doing another Appleseed, and hopefully the rumors about having one less than a mile from my house are true–that’ll make it a lot easier for me.

    I’d still rather use a 10/22 than the M&P15-22, but I don’t see myself buying another rifle anytime soon (I’m still waiting on the ATF for my 762 Phantom suppressor and York Arms to get back to me about my .300blk upper). The M&P15-22 was purchased as a trainer clone of my Rock River AR and I’d like to keep it that way.

    But that’s the great thing about ARs: it doesn’t take much to switch the rifle’s purpose.

  • Deal Alert: Hosting

    HostGator is 40% off today for all plans.

    I moved from self-hosted on an error-prone hamster-powered nettop to Hostgator back in January. Couldn’t be happier. I’ve got the “Baby Croc” package and host about a million domains. Kidding, of course, but that’s what it feels like sometimes.

    Please note that if you sign up using that link, I do make a commission.

  • My tenuous connection to Steve Jobs

    As I’ve mentioned before, I listen to audio books while running or walking the dog. I’m currently listening to Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. I’m no fan of Apple or Jobs (Wozniak is another thing entirely), but I feel it’s important to understand one of the most influential minds marketers of the last 200 years.

    He was a hypocrite and a sociopath, but there’s no denying he changed the world.

    Anyway, today they covered the brief involvement of Ron Wayne in Apple Computer. The short story is that Ron went into a partnership with the Steves, but FREAKED OUT when Jobs started going around borrowing tons of money. Eleven days after forming Apple, he sold his shares back to the Steves for $2300.

    In 2010, his shares would have been worth $2.4 Billion.

    Which brings me to my tenuous connection to Steve Jobs. In 1998, I worked in a video rental store. The assistant manager was a woman in her early- to mid-twenties, if I recall correctly. The iMac had just been released, and another coworker and I were talking about it. This woman piped up and told us that her estranged father had briefly been involved in Apple, and was “basically the laughing stock of the computer world” for selling out because he was afraid of going bankrupt again.

    I have no idea if her claim is true (Ron Wayne is gay, and I can’t find anything online to indicate he has children), but she wasn’t they type of person who I would have expected to know Wanye’s story in such detail.

    So, two degrees of separation between me and Steve Jobs.

  • Bleg: Printer/Scanner

    The Brother laser printer I bought 12 years ago no longer works. Well, that’s not entirely accurate.

    The Brother laser printer I bought 12 years ago doesn’t have drivers that work with anything after Windows XP, and I no longer have any machines running Windows XP.

    This presents me with an opportunity. You see, I discovered this site about real-world disaster preparedness sometime in 2006, and I’m a big fan of the idea that you should scan everything. Data space is cheap, so why not?

    Well, this leads to rather large piles of documents to be scanned. For a while, I had a flat-bed scanner–but that was tedious and it, too, is no longer supported.

    What I want is a sort of scaled-down version of this. We have those at work, and they’re awesome. I want something that is network-enabled (wired or wireless, I don’t care either way), and has duplex scanning and printing, with a document feeder for the scanner, and costs less than a 10/22. I thought this guy would work for me, but then I started reading the reviews for it.

    My use case is that I’d drop the giant stack of papers my insurance company sends me* in the document feeder, hit a button, and a PDF magically appears on my server. That’s why the duplex scanning bit is important: I get lots of double-sided documents I need to scan.

    So, anybody got one?

    *I get these things electronically when possible, but even then it’s a pain to go to 37 different websites to get all the documents that regularly come to my physical mailbox.

  • How does “non-flammable gasoline” work?

    That’s what Extra Fuel claims to be. For emergencies.

    And by “emergency” they mean “your failure to plan or pay any attention whatsoever to the fuel gauge.”

    My Jeep requires 100% gasoline, so I have to actually plan out my fuel trips. That means I get nervous when I dip below 1/4 tank. I guess this stuff would be useful for things like boats and ATVs, but it seems to me the union of people who run out of gas regularly and people who buy this stuff is pretty small.

    Via LifeHacker

  • Small update on the HTPC build

    Motherboard issues have been resolved, but not in anything resembling a good outcome.

    I bought an ASUS P8Z77-V LE instead. Because I had already attached the heatsink to the processor, I had to wait until I got this kit from Arctic Silver in the mail before I could swap out the boards.

    Swapped everything out, and VOILA! I have a bootable system.

    Unfortunately, it appears that the hard drive that precipitated this new server build is exhibiting the same behavior. Namely, I can see it in BIOS, and it boots to the “Repair Windows” thingy, but then isn’t recognized as a bootable device. I can access the data if I connect it to the external enclosure I bought, so my next thought is a format /MBR.

    If that doesn’t work, then I’ll need to get an SSD.