Please Stand By: Updated

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Experiencing technical difficulties with the home desktop pc. I’m hoping to pick up the replacement part tonight.

Thank you for your understanding.

—————

Well, that seems to have fixed a very annoying problem. New posts are incoming.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

With this new information

Posted on November 2, 2015 by Phil Kadath

I feel so much better.

Alan Colmes asks the 2016 Presidential Candidate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Gloria La Riva about Bernie Sanders’ brand of Democratic Socialism and to compare his positions with her own. (video @ FOXNews)

A progressive talks to a person who lives in a world with a different colored sky about why people who believe in individual rights and the free market are dumb.

Watch at your own risk of throwing stuff.

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | Leave a comment

Lawsuit Bait

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Phil Kadath

I thought it was established law that government couldn’t do this

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to require gun owners to store their firearms in locked containers or install trigger locks when not using them.

Under the ordinance, handguns will need to be disabled and kept on the owner’s person or within close enough proximity that it is in the owner’s control.

So, it’s either on your hip or disabled.

Yeah, so I guess that Heller didn’t happen and doesn’t apply in CA according to the L.A. City Council.

A violation will be a misdemeanor. Officials say there won’t be patrols checking homes to make sure the law is being obeyed, and they admit it will be difficult to know until after an incident occurs.

They passed an unenforceable law that the people who use guns in crimes won’t obey. And if they do catch a criminal, in their home, with a firearm that is not disabled or locked away, it will be the first charge to be tossed (if it is brought up against them at all).

But no, they don’t want to punish law-abiding citizens at all.

Posted in Evil walks the earth | 3 Comments

A Little While Ago

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Phil Kadath

This happened

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Traded it for this folding carrier I made a few months back.

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In other news, my boss recently opened up 10 hour shifts. I can also work 8 on Saturdays, but no more than 3 consecutive ones.

In case you’re wondering where I’ve been.

This weekend will be my 4th Saturday, which times nicely with the wife and my 14th wedding anniversary on Sunday. We’ll be going on a couple road trips over the weekend.

So, in lieu of actual content, please enjoy some wubwubwub

(the drops are at 1:07 and 3:07)

It was this or Krewella’s Killin It

Posted in Kewel!, Life in the Atomic Age | Leave a comment

Whole Lot of Something

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Phil Kadath

For the past week and a half or so, I’ve been working on the same project at work.

To put it bluntly, it’s huge.

Not in terms of physical size. More in the number of pieces.

If you take 30-20ft long pieces of 3/8in x 6in flat bar and cut them into 4in pieces, you get 1780 plates of 3/8in x 6in x 4in steel. If you stack them neatly on a sturdy pallet, they look like this.

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Next, you torture some poor pair of sods by telling them to deburr these pieces and then each make a jig so they can lay out a punch mark one inch in from the long side and three inches in from the short side. You then tell one of those poor sods to use the stud welder to attach a 3/8in wide x 1-1/2in long “wide head stud” to the plates where that punch mark is at.

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This is a partial bin of approximately 500 of these plates.

You ask the other poor sod to build a jig so that he can tack two pieces of 2ft long #4 reinforcing bar (1/2in diameter) to the plates after the studs get attached.

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Then you get the guy with the rebar cert to weld those on permanently, and when the stud welding sod is done welding studs, you get him to take an air needler to the welds to remove the slag and spatter from the finished piece and stack them on a pallet to be sent off to a galvanizing facility.

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We’re about 1300 into the project. Hopefully we’ll be done by Wednesday or Thursday.

Just in time to start in on the other part of the order. 1410 pieces, of smaller proportions, but with two stud welded pieces of D-bar and only 1 piece of rebar (pics soon).

Apparently, there is a bridge being built in Hawaii, and they need a large quantity of anchors/embeds of two different types.

I bought one of those thick foam floor mats and brought it to work, because after the fifth nine hour day standing in the, relatively, same 3ft x 3ft square either deburring, transfer punching, or tack welding, you will want to remove your feet with an axe so that you will be in less pain.

Posted in Kewel! | 7 Comments

Keeping it hot, late into the night

Posted on October 24, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Functioning solar collection station after sundown? Pppffffttt!

Or, maybe not.

A Tower of Molten Salt Will Deliver Solar Power After Sunset

Crescent Dunes, due to come on line by the end of this year, uses over 17,000 mirrors to focus sunlight on a heat receiver atop a 165-meter-high tower—a layout resembling California’s massive Ivanpah solar power tower. However, while Ivanpah’s receiver heats steam and pipes it directly to turbine generators, SolarReserve’s heats a molten mixture of nitrate salts that can be stored in insulated tanks and withdrawn on demand to run the plant’s steam generators and turbine when electricity is most valuable. Smith expects that NV Energy, the Las Vegas–based utility contracted to buy Crescent Dunes’ output, will want it mostly during the utility’s unusually late demand peak, which the Vegas Strip’s nightlife routinely stretches toward midnight.

Mark Mehos, thermal systems group manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), says molten salt towers akin to SolarReserve’s are “the next-generation technology” for solar thermal power. Plants without storage may never be able to compete with PV, says Mehos. And while molten salt storage is often added to trough-style plants, which use hectares of parabolic mirrors to heat synthetic oil flowing through pipes suspended above them, salt towers are cheaper and more efficient, he says.

Eliminating the heat exchange between oil and salts trims energy storage losses from about 7 percent to just 2 percent. The tower also heats its molten salt to 566 °C, whereas oil-based plants top out at 400 °C. That temperature boost squeezes 5 to 6 percent more power from the plant’s steam turbines and enables a tank of salt to hold two to three times as much energy. The temperature advantage could grow: In September, ­SolarReserve won a US $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a ceramic receiver that can withstand 732 °C.

OK, engineers. Have at it.

Will this work?

Posted in Color me confused | 5 Comments

It’s good to be in the majority

Posted on October 22, 2015 by Phil Kadath

People are recognizing that they are their own best chance of staying safe.

A majority of Americans, 56%, believe that if more Americans carried concealed weapons after passing a criminal background check and training course, the country would be safer.

Most states have some sort of permitting process allowing the carrying of concealed weapons, but the requirements and procedures to carry weapons vary significantly by state. The Gallup question did not get into detail on specific requirements other than mentioning that the person with the concealed weapon would have to pass a criminal background check and training course.

I’m not really happy about the background check and training course requirements, but on the whole, it is a good sign.

The leftists can’t figure it out.

Among key subgroups, Democrats and those with postgraduate education are least likely to believe that more concealed weapons would make the U.S. safer. Republicans and gun owners are most likely to say it would make the nation safer. Younger Americans are more likely to choose the “safer” option than those aged 30 and above.

They read this paragraph and blame the lack of “free” government sponsored cradle-to-grave education for the results.

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel | Leave a comment

Stupid Gets What Stupid Deserves

Posted on October 20, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Last week I posted about a woman who thought her concealed carry permit gave her the power to shoot at shoplifters as they were leaving the scene.

She was wrong.

Woman who opened fire at fleeing shoplifters in Home Depot parking lot is charged and faces losing her concealed-carry license

Leave stopping property crimes not involving your property to store security and Batman.

Posted in Dare To Be Stupid | Leave a comment

Part of a complete breakfast

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Alaska

For those of a certain age, these are pretty funny. Catch them before the lawyers take them down.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Giving the People What They Want

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Phil Kadath

Even if those people are not actually even able to legally vote for you.

Former MD Governor Martin O’Malley has heard the demands of illegal immigrants, and hopes they help him find a way to put him into the Oval Office.

If you want to know what pro-immigrant voters are looking for in a presidential candidate, read former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s 8-page immigration plan. It reads a laundry list of immigrant activist demands, and goes far beyond the comparatively timid pledges of O’Malley’s democratic primary rivals, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Healthcare for undocumented immigrants, an overhaul of the U.S. Border Patrol, enshrining sanctuary cities, erasure of punitive immigration laws, and an end to Obama’s Priority Enforcement Program.

That advocacy has won O’Malley the praise of leading voices in the Latino community, including Hispanic Chamber of Commerce CEO Javier Palomarez, who sounded off on the immigration to to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Thursday.

Just because you take down a list of demands from a group and put them, verbatim, into a policy proposal, does not mean that you are good at making policy. It means you are good at pandering.

Posted in The Left is Never Right | Leave a comment