Clayton Cramer.

Disappointing Discovery

2026-11-06T15:17:36.613-07:00

My plan to machine this adapter from a 6"x6"x1/2" sheet of aluminum ran into some size issues. The 6" chuck cannot hold that big a workpiece. Nor does my mill have enough Y capacity to center and drill the middle of the plate.

Okay, cut it down to 5" x 5" and it should work. My chop saw cannot hold down that size of sheet horizontally to do that cut. Vertically, it has insufficient capacity. I regret giving up bandsaw. At least I have roomto put one in the shop.

I Was Putting Away Emergency Rations in the Garage

2026-11-06T14:09:14.861-07:00

Canned chili and rice and emergency rations followed me in.

I doubt that I have the stomach to dress a deer, especially because Rhonda would adopt it.

As she walked across the lawn, our wolfette pack lost their minds.

My First Multitasking Operating System (Back to the Disco Era, Yeah; Really Groovy)

2026-11-06T14:06:55.181-07:00

This is a slightly refreshed discussion from 2018. I started thinking about MINITS and sleep became impossible.

I have mentioned learning to program on an IBM 1401. This computer processed class scheduling, attendance records, and grades for the entire Santa Monica Unified School District. I used my knowledge and access to get myself moved from one section of German to the other because the girl that I was obsessed with was going to be in that section. Another one of the computer lab rats, Curt, claimed no knowledge of how he had dozens of unexcused absences from P.E. and still received an A.

Anyway, the data processing coordinator for the district somehow rescued a computer pound puppy. It was an odd dual minicomputer system named MINITS (for Miniature Time Sharing System). It used two Interdata minicomputers, a Model 3 and Model 4, sharing a common 32K RAM space. A model 4:

The dials on the left and the push buttons at bottom allowed you to enter data into various memory locations, such as when you needed to put the boot code in to load the OS from the drum. This was a slow process. One friend, Curt, demonstrated his ability to enter the boot sequence accurately with his toes.

I do not know if the Model 15 was an Interdata supported product, or something Cerf's team created. The Model 3 was for control of the teletype terminals and modems. The model 4 did the timesharing processing.

This is a model 33 teletype. It printed and accepted keyboard input at 10 characters per second (we finally managed to find a 30 character per seconds modem and CRT to attach).

Modems were the way you communicated with a remote computer well into the 1980s. (I still remember the thrill of installing a Telebit Trailblazer modem at work and getting 14,400 bits/seconds.) It had an acoustic coupler: two rubber orifices into which the handset fit. The modem (modulator/demodulator) took ASCII electrical bytes, converted them to a variety of interesting sounds and sent them over the phone line. At the far end, another modem converted those sounds back to ASCII bytes. It was, as you might expect, less than perfect. Line noise could garble the characters. This is why teletypes operated in either full duplex or half duplex mode. Full duplex mode: you typed a character. The far end echoed it back so you knew what character it heard. Half duplex: the character you typed appeared immediately.

An early minicomputer editor was called TECO. It was said that TECO commands were hard to distinguish from line noise.

Yes that is a paper tape punch and reader on the left side, which used this stuff:

There are indeed more than 8 rows. One is a parity bit, and the other is some other out of band signaling information that I have forgotten. Slow! I once did a three pass assemble* of the Interdata Model 4 OS from paper tape as my first summer job after graduating. (That was 12 hours of profound boredom, fixing paper tape jams and tears. Why three passes? No hard disk to store intermediate results, like symbol tables)

Anyway back to MINITS. This was one of Vint Cerf's brainchildren. The idea was a relatively cheap timesharing system. We had scads of listings for the operating system, BASIC interpreter, and some of the utilities and games, printed out on a drum printer that was attached to the Univac 1108, that was supposed to be the mainframe to which this would be attached.

A drum printer was one of two mainframe printers of the era. Chain printers, like the IBM 1403:

An early line printer that used type slugs linked together in a chain as its printing mechanism. The chain spun horizontally around a set of hammers. When the desired character was in front of the selected print column, the corresponding hammer hit the paper into the ribbon and onto the character in the chain. Chain and train printers gave way to band printers in the early 1980s.

If this sounds incredibly slow: it was not. An IBM 1403 chain printer:

The original model can print 600 lines of text per minute and can skip blank lines at up to 75 inches per second (190 cm/s), while the model 3 can print at up to 1400 lines per minute. The standard model has 120 print positions. An additional 12 positions are available as an option. A print chain with up to 15 copies of the character set spins horizontally in front of the ribbon and paper. Hammers strike the paper from behind at exactly the right moment to print a character as it goes by. In later models, the print chain is replaced by a print train; print slugs instead of being mounted on a chain are placed in a track.

Drum printers used a series of type slugs mounted on a drum. A print stroke would line up the appropriate slug for each letter (perhaps all the slugs for the entire line to be printed?) and stamp them through a ribbon onto that same distinctive wide fanfold paper used by chain printers:

Because alignment of the type to the line was happening at very high speeds, the letters would often being not exactly centered in the line. You would see characters printed perhaps a few hundredths of an inch off a perfect impression vertically. I suspect this could be adjusted for better output accuracy but the listings we had in binders were all suffering this drunken vertical print alignment.

The MINITS hardware was unique. It had a large magnetic drum that did two things: every few milliseconds as the drive reached its zero track position, it generates an interrupt that told the operating system, "It is time to give another user some time." (Clock generated interrupts? Not sure when these appeared on other minicomputers.) Also when it came time to swap users, the entire user context (the current contents of his BASIC program or whatever else a user was running, which I believe went from X'5800' to X'8000') would be written to the drum. The OS would then load the next user's context and give him execution time.

How much time? The OS had a concept of Terminal Control Block, which specified how many milliseconds he was allowed and the priority of his terminal's task. By adjusting these numbers on the fly, you could annoy the heck out of a remote user. (Imagine typing a key on the teletype and waiting a second or two for the echo to print on the paper.) There was one in the math lab several thousand feet away, and another attached by 110 baud modem at Lincoln Junior High, some miles away. We also borrowed a teletype to take home on weekends, for breaking into ARPAnet; more about that some other day.) When there were problems, either because someone was manipulating the remote user's TCB or because of hardware problems, the long-suffering, but always polite Lincoln math teacher responsible for this learning project, Mr. Winkenhower, would call us to find out why he was not having any luck.

Anyway, I learned a lot about how operating systems worked in 11th and 12th grades. The Control-V key would drop you into a debugger where you could by accident do enormous damage requiring a hard reset, including re-entering the boot sequence through the front panel. The right set of common keystrokes would change RAM in areas that were lethal to the OS. It was needed, however, to fix some problems on occasion so we could not just disable it. A fellow student, Curt, and I wrote a utility in Interdata assembly language and then hand compiled it (we had no assembler program) that would do all the necessary functions but otherwise block access to the debugger.*

I also learned how to redirect the illegal instruction interrupt, which would drop you into the debugger. At some point I decided to be clever and build an illegal instruction driver that would recognize instructions that were part of the Interdata Model 70 instruction set. These were short relative jumps (branch within 256 bytes so the instruction only took two bytes instead of four) and add, subtract, multiply, and divide instructions (limited to I think 8 bit values; AHM (add halfword memory AHM register, value) and it would simulate these perfectly. Then I foolishly started adding these instructions into the OS. It came to a near complete standstill as basic OS functions would keep running through the illegal instruction ISR.

*Computers execute instructions stored in RAM as binary numbers usually expressed in hexadecimal. X'5A' was the Interdata AHM (Add Halfword to Memory) instruction. (I remember because they used many of IBM 360 mnemonics and architecture; 16 general registers all of which except 0 could be index registers; and where X'5A', was a 32 bit add of memory to register on the 360, X'5A' was AHM 16-bit add of memory to register on the Interdata), It not being very easy for most people to remember all the numbers, we generally wrote in assembler language. AHM 5,VALUE would add the 16 bits at symbol VALUE to register 5. The program that converted these easy to remember mnemonics into binary was called an assembler.

Ultimate Jury-Rigging

2026-11-06T14:06:37.564-07:00

I am trying to get my WiFi adapter out of the Faraday cage that is my shop. This gives me 45 Mbps. Unfortunately it is not stable. It uses two USB 3.0 cables end to end. I need some height to get line of sight to my range extender. Unfortunately, antenna masts like we used to use for televisions in the ancient times are hard to find now. Pipe would work but I cannot get an 8' section in my car. Suggestions?

What is That Tool For?

2026-11-05T09:54:05.000-07:00

I found an odd T-handle tool while organizing my shop.

What is that for? I got the 6" Sears 4 jaw chuck out and suddenly it all made sense:

Unfortunately, "6 inch" chuck is the diameter of the body not size of workpiece it can hold. It looks like a 4.25" workpiece would fit.I may have to center drill and tap the 3/4-16 hole for this in the drill press, a far less precise process.

More Evidence That Trump's Failure to Plan for Closure of the Strait Sank Us

2026-11-05T06:24:42.922-07:00

Vance is admitting that the war and rising prices lost us the election. In some logical way, ending Iran's nuclear ambitions should take precedence over short-term financial pain.

Voter are often not logical. High prices are pain right now. A nuke going off in a freighter in an American harbor is a possibility some years from now. That former leftist and present "conservative" Tucker Carlson has been pushing the Israel First explanation of American foreign policy probably played into this effectively. That stopping the nation that calls us the Great Satan is an America First policy may not seem obvious to voters born after 1979.

It does not help that Republican candidates often sounded tone-deaf like 11/4/26 Time:

Hitefield adds that Hyde-Smith had some “gaffes” during the campaign, when she made some remarks about the rising cost of living that some voters felt were dismissive. For instance, when asked about soaring costs, including beef prices, during an interview with WLOX in February, Hyde-Smith applauded the passing of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill and went on to say, “It is on everybody’s mind. It is certainly me at my house. And you know, you have so many proteins to choose from. And all commodities go through peaks and valleys.”

A Depressing Day: This May Be the End of Electoral Reform

2026-11-04T11:06:38.652-07:00

The Babylon Bee a few days ago made fun of Republicans who decided gas prices mattered more than mutilating children. There is doubtless some truth to that. The failure to adequately consider plans for closure of the Strait of Hormuz is perhaps Trump's biggest blunder.

There are signs, however, that the problem is worse than Republican voting.11/3/26 Gateway Pundit:

Pennsylvania resident Jean Franco Urbaez arrived at his polling place in Lower Macungie Township, PA, to vote in person. To his surprise, someone had already voted in person using his identity at 8:11. Urbaez videotaped himself making the discovery until he was told he was not allowed to videotape in the polling place.

This is no surprise. A friend in the Bay Area tells me in 2024, he tracked his mail-in ballot from his mailbox to the election center. To his surprise, he was able to track his wife's mail-in ballot, which was counted the day after the election. She is not a U.S. citizen and has never registered to vote, or voted.

11/3/26 Fox News:

Voting machines in Westchester County, New York, the state's seventh most populous county, are not accepting paper ballots at polling locations throughout the county, the Westchester County Board of Elections said in a statement Tuesday morning.
"The Westchester County Board of Elections (BOE) is aware of an issue involving the paper ballots that is preventing some voting machines from accepting ballots at polling locations throughout the County," the statement read.
The board, in a separate statement issued later in the day, said the issue stemmed from an update to the county's election programming that occurred after initial testing of equipment.

Oh yes, I believe that. As a British friend liked to say, "There are fairies in my garden, too."

A friend of his moved with his wife to West Point, N.Y, where they voted in the 2024 election. Someone voted in their name in the Bay Area, likely not for the same president.

I was really impressed that Newsom won the recall election after COVID. If anyone should have been vulnerable at that point, it was Newsom. My wife thinks all elections are now so corrupted in Blue States that elections no longer matter.

I suspect until the government starts pushing Jews into boxcars for re-education camps (and the rest of us oppressive white people, shortly thereafter)*, this will continue, with the pretense of elections.

*This is where it should end. Quite forcefully.

In Spite of Socialist Victory Yesterday, Markets Are Way Up Today

2026-11-04T09:50:45.616-07:00

I suspect that in spite of DSA power, the Democrats remain fascist and corporations (especially favorite ones) will still do well.

The Babylon Bee joked a few days ago about Republicans deciding that high fuel prices were more important than child genital mutilation and Irsnian nuclear ambitions.

Way More Interesting Than Expected

2026-11-03T18:26:44.288-07:00

James Thacher's Military Journal 75-6 (1823) recounts his contemporaneous and often eye-witness experience of the war. Some of these stories are not new to me or likely you but there are details that are for me:

October. By some gentlemen from head quarters, near New York, we are amused with an account of a singular machine, invented by a Mr. D. Bushnell of Connecticut, for the purpose of destroying the British shipping by explosion. This novel machine was so ingeniously constructed, that, on examination, Major General Putnam was decidedly of opinion that its operations might be attended with the desired suc- cess ; accordingly he encouraged the inventor, and resolved to be himself a spectator of the experiment on the British shipping in New York harbor. Mr. Bushnell gave to his machine the name of American Turtle or Torpedo. It was constructed on the principles of submarine navigation, and on trial it has been ascertained that it might be rowed horizontally, at any given depth under water, and the adventurer, concealed within, might rise or sink, as occasion re- quires. A magazine of powder was attached to it in such a manner as to be screwed into the bottom of the ship ; and being now disengaged from the ma- chine the operator retires in safety, leaving the in- ternal clock work in motion ; and at the distance of half an hour, or an hour, the striking of a gun lock communicates fire to the powder, and the explosion takes place. It was determined to make the experi ment with this machine in the night, on the ship Eagle, of sixty four guns, on board of which admiral Lord Howe commanded. General Putnam placed himself on the wharf to witness the result. Mr. Bushnell had instructed his brother in the management of the Torpedo with perfect dexterity ; but being taken sick a sergeant of a Connecticut regiment was selected for the business, who, for want of time, could not be properly instructed. He however. succeeded so far as to arrive in safety with his apparatus under the bottom of the ship, when the screw, designed to perforate the copper sheathing, unfortunately struck against an iron plate, near the rudder, which, with the strong current and want of skill in the operator, frustrated the enterprize ; and, as day light had begun to appear, the sergeant abandoned his magazine, and returned in the Torpedo to the shore. In less than half an hour a terrible explosion from the magazine took place, and threw into the air a prodigious column of water, resembling a great water spout, attended with a report like thunder. General Putnam, and others who waited with great anxiety for the result, were exceedingly amused with the astonishment and alarm which this secret explo-sion occasioned on board of the ship. This failure, it is confidently asserted, is not to be attributed to any defect in the principles of this wonderful machine ; as it is allowed to be admirably calculated to execute destruction among the shipping.

The explanation that I have read in the past is that the failure to get an adequate bite into the copper bottom meant that turning the screw just spun the submarine. This makes more sense.

I Hope This Was Intentionally Unclear

2026-11-02T14:45:39.854-07:00

Headline from 11/2/26 BBC News:

Man caught in car with £14k of drugs as a lamb ate chips in the back seat avoids jail

The good news: the lamb was not handcuffed or mug shotted.

It is still a fetching picture of the lamb in the back seat

Natural Tunnel State Park

2026-11-01T17:50:44.426-07:00

Just over the border in Virginia. Railroad runs through a natural tunnel exposed by collapse of sinkhole at both ends. Really big sinkhole, like 300 foot cliffs.

The train still runs daily delivering coal to Eastman Chemical. The guide said it was for hydrocarbon extraction.

The trail down to the tunnel is somewhat demanding but there is a chairlift to the bottom.

Upgrading Broken Focuser

2026-10-31T05:46:19.455-06:00

I think I mentioned that a couple telescope parts did not survive the move undamaged. One of them was the refractor's focuser. I bent the damaged parts back into what looked to be the original shapes, but the focuser is rough and it binds. before the move, I had considered replacing the focuser with a dual-speed focuser. These have two knobs; one is the coarse focus typical on telescopes; the other turns at 1/10th speed, allowing very fine focus changes. So I ordered the GSO 2" Linear Bearing Crayford Focuser (made in Taiwan). It is an gorgeous piece of machining:

The only downside is that the flange is 112.5mm OD and the refractor's tube is 125mm ID. So, I need to make an adapter. To quote the opening sequence from The Six-Millionaire Dollar Man:

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology.

At least, I do. I have a 6" 4-jaw chuck. No, Sherline lathes do not normally go this large. In the past, I have made riser blocks for the headstock and tool holder to allow turning big stuff.

1. I will start with a 6" x 6" aluminum square.

2. Drill and tap a 3/4"-16 center hole. (This is the Sherline headstock spindle size as well as the size of the rotating table adapter.)

3. Remove 6" chuck.

4. Rotate workpiece onto headstock spindle.

5. Turn workpiece to 124.8mm OD.

6. Make riser block for the tilting table on which rotating table will sit. (I need the clearance to rotate this large of a workpiece.)

7. Tilting table to 90 degrees.

8. Put workpiece on rotating table adapter.

9. Turn workpiece 120 degrees at a time.

10. Center drill each hole.

11. Repeat for two more holes.

12. Replace center drill with twist drill for a through hole deep enough to get through the 112.8mm layer.

13. Return workpiece to 6" chuck on headstock spindle.

14. Use cutting tool to cut 105mm hole.

15. Use boring bore to enlarge center hole to 112.7mm.

More Reasons Why Voting Democrat Would Be Really Foolish

2026-10-31T05:15:09.990-06:00

10/26/26 Real Clear Investigations:

The U.S. has been running a real-time experiment on two approaches to criminal justice: the Biden-era emphasis on social justice versus the Trump administration’s embrace of traditional law and order. The results are now in.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported this morning that felony violent crime fell 25% in 2025. Rape declined 13%, robbery fell 27%, and aggravated assault dropped 31%. Property crime fell 19%. Except for rape, these are the largest one-year reductions recorded since data collection began 53 years ago.
The reductions followed substantial increases during the previous four years, when felony violent crime rose 59% and violent crime, including misdemeanor simple assault, increased 42%....
Murder also declined sharply last year. The U.S. recorded about 4.1 murders per 100,000 people in 2025, a record low, down from roughly 5.1 per 100,000 in 2024. The murder rate has continued to drop. If preliminary FBI data showing an additional 18.4% decline during the first seven months of 2026 hold for the full year, the murder rate would fall to approximately 3.36 per 100,000.
“We are witnessing a historic plunge in crime to levels never seen before in the United States,” Professor Carl Moody, a crime researcher at the College of William & Mary, told RealClearInvestigations. “As a result, we are all safer in our communities than we ever have been. We should all thank our law enforcement professionals.”
These declines go far beyond normal cyclical fluctuations in crime. The murder rate has fallen to record lows. Crime also shows a clear pattern over time. Felony violent crime declined during Trump’s first term, surged under Biden, and is now plunging during Trump’s second term. The pandemic can’t explain Biden’s increase: Felony violent crime rose 59% from 2021 to 2024, including a 4% increase in 2024.

Tick-b-Gone

2026-10-31T04:56:40.989-06:00

Permethrin is an insecticide. Treat clothes with it and insects do not survive.

How to Treat Clothing With Permethrin

The most important thing to remember when spraying your clothing with permethrin is that you must follow the instructions on the product label. If you don’t, you could be violating federal law, Conlon says. (Because permethrin is a pesticide, the Environmental Protection Agency regulates its use.)

It’s also important to follow the instructions on the label to ensure you’re using the pesticide as safely as possible, says Michael Hansen, PhD, a senior scientist at Consumer Reports. “It’s an endocrine-disrupting compound," he says. That means “if it gets into your system, there can be effects on the hormonal system."

The CDC notes that permethrin and related chemical compounds can cause serious health problems in people exposed to high doses. “You don’t want to be inhaling it or getting it directly on your skin," Hansen says. Hansen also says that some recent studies suggest permethrin and other synthetic pyrethoids may be linked to adverse effects at lower doses, too.

If you follow the directions on the label, however, the dose of permethrin you receive by wearing treated clothing is considered safe, even for pregnant women. (Higher concentrations of permethrin are used in medications for treating both head lice and scabies.)

Permethrin Safety Tips

Spray only your clothing. We said it before, but it’s worth repeating: Permethrin spray is only for your clothes and gear. Don’t apply it to your skin. And when treating clothes, stick to outerwear. The Environmental Protection Agency says that you shouldn’t treat underwear with permethrin.

Spray while the clothes are off your body. Hang them on hangers outside, and spray them down while they hang. Don’t apply permethrin to your clothes while you’re wearing them, and don’t apply permethrin indoors, where you could risk inhaling it.

Never spray around cats. Keep your feline friends away from the area while you’re treating your clothes because permethrin is highly toxic to cats. According to Sawyer, which makes permethrin products, treated clothing is not dangerous to cats once it has dried.

Spray enough, but not too much. Mather says he often sees people making the mistake of giving their clothes a quick spritz of permethrin, even while wearing the clothing. But it takes a slightly heavier hand for full protection. Mather says you should spray enough for your clothes to become damp (they should look a little darker in color) and not spray the clothing you’re wearing. You don’t need to drench them—to where they’ll drip if you wring them out—but they do need a thorough coat.

The product labels can help give you a good idea of how much to use. For example, the label on Sawyer’s permethrin aerosol spray says that a 4.5-ounce bottle will treat a shirt, a pair of pants, and a pair of socks.

Let the clothes dry completely. Before you wear them, they should be totally dry. That should take a few hours, depending on the humidity of the day.

Re-treat when necessary. Manufacturers of pretreated clothing say their products are still effective after many washes. But the clothes you treat yourself need to be re-treated much more often. Sawyer says you need to re-treat after six weeks or six washings, for example. Even clothes or gear you don’t wash need re-treating; Mather says he sprays his own and his family’s shoes monthly.

Cleaning Supplies

2026-10-29T12:27:33.000-06:00

We disposed of all the gun cleaning chemicals (CLP, Hoppes #9, Stainless Steel Lube) before we moved. It also appears that the rest (Gun Snakes, bore brushes, half my bore patches) went with the liquids. I needed to start over today, which simplifies my collection. Two gun snakes, a collection of bore brushes to go with the cleaning rods that escaped the purge, Hoppes #9, and CLP. I may need to order stainless steel lube.

I went shooting at lunch time at Shooter's Source, an indoor pistol range and gun store in Kingsport. Nice range.

I have not shot my Government Model in several years. It has a 4 1/2 pound trigger, which more than compensates for the intrinsic slop of the 1911's intentional slide to frame tolerances. At 7 yards, firing one round a second, is good enough for most shots center of mass.

The Walther works great. Again, one shot per second puts all the shots in the center of mass. 'The inadequate gun you carry is better than the major caliber you do not carry because of weight or bulkiness "

I have not fired or cleaned the Government Model in several years and I found myself saying, "How does this reassemble?" The Browning Hi-Power is different in several ways. It took a while but I finally figured it out.

My First Ever Tick

2026-10-27T07:54:10.623-06:00

I was drifting off to sleep last night and I felt something odd on my belly. A little itchy lump like a small scab except it would not scratch off. Yes, a tick. We put in a plastic bag. From the pictures, it appeared to be a deer tick and a rash was beginning to bulls eye around it, so we ran off the an ER about 10:30. There was no waiting get in. They confirmed it was a deer tick. The doctor said Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever are pretty rare here from ticks (he has never seen either) but to be sure, I was given two doxycyclines and a tetanus shot. He used some lidocaine and a scalpel to remove the head which was still in my flesh. I had taken all my evening medications just before getting into bed so I was on the edge of sleep the entire time.

Put Together Both Reflectors Today

2026-10-26T16:43:53.521-06:00

It was also the day of discovery for broken parts, fortunately none optical. The amount of force involved in the moving truck guillotine our dining room table. It is no surprise other parts experienced unreasonable forces.

The upper cage of Big Bertha has a diagonal mirror assembly that reflects the light from the primary mirror into the eyepiece focuser. There are four screws at the top of the cage. Three are collimation screws for making very subtle adjustments of diagonal mirror position. Like half a turn of a 32 threads per inch screw (.031" per turn). There is also a center screw that positions the whole diagonal mirror holder fore and after in the tube. This has an adjustment knurled nut. The screw was bent about 60 degrees. One I extracted it from the diagonal holder, I put it in the vise wrapped.in rubber and clamped it in two axes until straight again. To my surprise, it all worked perfectly.

At the stern, there were several weights to improve balance, held in a 1/4-20 thumbscrew which was hideously bent. If i had another of these unusually long brass thumbscrews, i would have just replaced it. It is a weird size and i picked brass to avoid chewing up thr aluminum mirror cell into which yhis screws.This time I both straightened it rethreaded it by first two axis squeezing in a vise wrapped in rubber sheeting, then holding it by the thumb end in the vise and turning a steel hex nut down its length until any thread discrepancies were turned out. (I thought i took a picture of this. )

Another disappointment was that the 5" refractor got banged hard enough through all the foam rubber for the diagonal and focus knob to get shoved into the tailpiece (thr human end of the tube) so hard that the thumb locking screw that prevents the diagonal from falling out was so hopelessly bent that the focus knobs would not move the focus tube out. When I tried to usei pliers to unscrew the locking screw it broke off where it turned into the focuse tube. Oh no

The tailpiece is held in the tube by three machine screws. I removed them expecting that the broken locking screw could be removed with a screw extractor, which I hate to use. To my pleasure, just enough of the thread body was proud of the tube to get my fingernails on and unscrew it. Now the focuser tube comes out. The hideously expensive and clever Ukrainian chromatic aberration corrector was not damaged; it cost more than the rest of the refractor and made it equivalent in optical quality to some that cost $3000

Problem solved, right? No. The rack and pinion assembly was also beaten up. Once I opened it, the shaft on which the pinion gear sits was bent as was the metal plate that holds the pinion gear at the right tension to the rack.

Back to the vise to straighten the shaft and bend the metal plate back to the original shape. It looks right but it does not turn as smooth as it should.

I had thought a while back of replacing the focuser with a dual speed focuser. These have different speeds on the ends of the shaft and are really nice for getting very sharp focus. Instead I replaced one of the focus knobs with one I turned in aluminum twice the diameter. This almost the same result because you can make very tiny movements of that bigger knob to get almost the same result.

I guess i now have a reason to do that upgrade. The GSO dual focus tailpiece has a 112.5mm outer diameter flange. The interior tube diameter is 125mm. I just need to turn a piece 112.6mm ID and 124.9mm OD to adapt it.

The final fun of the day was putting the 8" mirror back in its tube. This is hard for several reasons.

1. The cell is perhaps 1/8" smaller diameter than the tube ID. If you are not exactly square going in. It will get stuck.

2.The holes into which the machine screws turn that hold the cell in the tube are not easy to find once the cell is approximately the right position.

3. When I drilled these holes in the 1990s, I had no terribly precise way to get holes exactly 120 degrees apart. I used a tape measure and I am very close. You still need to remember not to tighten down any screws until all are started.

This is always a pain to do but Rhonda has the patience to help me do these hard tasks.

The day was not over. Big Berrha is a half-Surrier truss Dobsonian. There is an upper csge with eyepiece and diagonal and a lower cage holding thr mirror. They are held at the right distance by 6 1" diameter aluminum poles forming three triangles for light stiffness. Unless you are eight feet tall, putting the upper cage on top of those poles is difficult especially poo especially because those six poles look like you are wrestling a confused insect.

Rhonda has much better spatial reasoning than me so she figured out that it made more sense to put the upper cage on the poles and lower the poles into their lower cage receivers.

Big Bertha is reassembled; she collimated more easily than I expected. Tomorrow i will collimate the 8". I am hoping the concrete pad where the telescopes will roll in front of the shop will be done setting by Wednesday.

This is Actually More Serious Than the Joke Below Suggests

2026-10-26T06:09:29.329-06:00

10/26/26 Guardian:

The unintended actions flagged by Anthropic included a model submitting a fake tip about an unsolved murder to the Philadelphia police department. The US state department also revealed this month that Anthropic model had filed 19 visa applications in August.

So did Claude also request naturalization for its agents? Or does birthright citizenship apply to clankers, too?

Some Days at the Office Are Better Than Others

2026-10-26T05:23:21.761-06:00

I am doing rebuttals of expert declarations again. One of the declarations make a claim about the absence of firearms in U.S. military hospitals in the Framing Era. This is not intrinsically absurd but the expert claims to have read James Thacher's Military Journal and found evidence contradicting her claim. It is 600 pages. I need to read it myself rather than rely on AI to characterize its contents.

Requiring a historian to read a contemporaneous, often eye-witness account of the American Revolution is rather like being paid to taste test every pizza joint in your town.

This Could Be a Full-Time Job, Tracking Medicaid/Medicare Fraud

2026-10-22T14:07:06.531-06:00

9/11/26 Department of Justice:

A Brooklyn woman was sentenced yesterday to 76 months in prison in connection with her leadership of a vast $64 million Medicaid fraud and illegal kickback scheme at her two social adult daycare centers and home health care company. The defendant was also ordered to pay over $56 million in restitution and to forfeit $5 million in fraud proceeds, including two properties, cash, and gold jewelry seized during a search of her home, as pictured below.

Again: if you stole $10 million and left the country, you could live like a king and leave that $10 million to your kids. Likely Uncle Sam would either never catch you, or not be able to get you. The greed is what sinks these idiots.

Here for more news reports than you can read.

How Many Different Categories of Medicaid/Medicare Fraud Are There?

2026-10-22T14:00:57.825-06:00

10/21/26 Gothamist:

Two operators of a social adult daycare center on Staten Island have been arrested on charges they defrauded Medicaid out of more than $500,000, including billing for services to people who were dead, the Staten Island district attorney announced Wednesday.

Mother-and-daughter team Yangsim Oum and Juyoung Choe, the Staten Island Social Adult Day Care Center's owner and program director, allegedly billed Medicaid for providing services to people who didn’t show up — including some who were deceased or were out of the country at the time, Richmond County DA Michael McMahon said.

The pair could face up to 15 years in prison on more than 400 counts of healthcare fraud and falsifying business records, according to an indictment shared with Gothamist.

Social adult daycare centers across New York City are at the center of a sweeping fraud investigation by local, state and federal agencies. These centers provide activities and meals to seniors with cognitive impairments or disabilities and bill Medicaid based on daily attendance at their programs.

The arrests took place Tuesday as nearly a dozen other centers in Brooklyn and Queens were raided in actions that Gov. Kathy Hochul said were part of ongoing investigations into suspected Medicaid fraud. Interviews were conducted at 20 centers under investigation and another 80 received letters, according to the state Department of Health.

A Billion Here, A Billion There, After While It Adds Up to Trillions

2026-10-22T13:44:52.406-06:00

10/22/26 New York Post:

Feds busted Los Angeles medical fraudsters accused of stealing $2 billion Thursday, cuffing white-collar thieves for unneeded surgeries, hunting the homeless for rehabs and billing the government for phony hospice care.
Department of Justice officials charged 15 defendants in all, including medical professionals, for making fraudulent claims to government and private health care programs – including $1.6 billion sham rehab case, the largest of its type ever.
The California Post was there as Federal SWAT teams sought their suspects in a series of predawn raids, targeting high-class criminals such as Dr. Hany Malek, 61, an allegedly armed-and-dangerous chiropractor accused of keeping an arsenal in his $2 million Tarzana mansion.
“Come out with your hands up,” called an FBI agent in the huge, gun-toting team of camouflaged officers who encircled Malek’s massive suburban home with a swarm of armed vehicles.
Agents cut Malek’s security gate and placed ladders against his tall fences, training guns on his home. Three flash-bang grenades exploded and sirens were activated.
After a few moments, the FBI brought their man down in handcuffs and placed in him an armored truck.

Worse than stealing billions from people who really needed treatment:

Malek is accused of working with Dr. Harold Tabaie, 78, of Anaheim, a cardiothoracic surgeon, of stealing $134 million in fraudulently billed to Medicare claims for unnecessary atherectomy procedures that resulted in injury to patients.
Authorities say Malek posed as a medical doctor and diagnosed patients with arterial disease, recommending that they receive the invasive procedure in which a bladed catheter is used to clear plaque from arteries.
Tabaie then performed the procedures on patients who did not actually have disease, executing repeat atherectomies on some who he previously treated unsuccessfully with the procedure, prosecutors say.

Wow! Remember, if you or someone you know was planning to vote Democrat next month because you are pissed off about gas prices, this is probably a bigger financial burden.

There's a Really Committal Answer: "To My knowledge"

2026-10-22T13:37:52.051-06:00

10/22/26 Fox News:

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., denied Wednesday that she married her former husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, to commit immigration fraud and pushed back against claims that they are related.
But when asked if there's any familial relation with her ex-husband, Omar admitted, "Not to my knowledge."

I would hope she would have some knowledge of this. For me, Christmas and Thanksgiving gatherings, birthday parties, and parental wedding anniversary parties usually did a pretty good job of telling me which of these boys and girls were siblings.

It Is Always Nice to See Democrats Supporting Capitalist Entrepreneurship

2026-10-22T13:32:57.744-06:00

10/22/26 NBC News:

NORFOLK, Va. — Federal authorities on Thursday charged a prominent Virginia Democrat with racketeering and a money laundering conspiracy as part of an alleged public corruption case involving a cannabis business she co-owns.
Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump who is one of the most powerful Democrats in the state, surrendered to authorities Thursday. She was also charged with conspiracy to distribute marijuana. A half dozen others, including Lucas’ daughters, were also in custody and charged in the alleged scheme.
The investigation into the 82-year-old Lucas predates the Trump administration, NBC News previously reported. But the Justice Department’s move, just 12 days before a midterm election, is unusual, as federal authorities have typically avoided taking overt investigative steps against political figures so close to an election. Lucas is not up for re-election this year but has ties to prominent Democrats who are on the ballot....
The indictment alleges that members of the conspiracy “used various business entities” to “disguise the proceeds of illegal marijuana distribution,” and that Lucas “used her political position in the Virginia state senate to insulate” the enterprise “from criminal scrutiny, to further the goal of wealth accumulation.”
In one intercepted phone call in February 2026 with an alleged co-conspirator who has not been indicted, Lucas allegedly said that this was their “last chance at generational wealth,” adding “I’ve gotten too old to not be greedy.”
Lucas has been a proponent of marijuana legalization in Virginia. The state now allows for possession of marijuana for adults over 21, but recreational marijuana sales remain unlawful.
That is set to change; this summer, the governor and state legislators announced an agreement to allow the licensed retail sale of marijuana beginning July 1, 2027.

Greed is ugly when it involves invention and new technologies but so pretty when the greed is setting up a generation for mental illness.

Switchblades as Protected Arms

2026-10-22T13:26:28.766-06:00

Knife Rights v. Blanche (5th Cir. 2026):

This case presents a Second Amendment challenge to the Federal Switchblade Act (FSA)’s restrictions on switchblade knives. Applying the framework articulated in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, we hold that the FSA is unconstitutional. We determine that switchblade knives qualify as “Arms” and are covered by the “plain text” of the Second Amendment. Because the regulation implicates the amendment, the government bears the burden of establishing that the FSA comports with well-established principles of the Second Amendment and its regulatory tradition. The government fails to meet its burden. Specifically, the FSA’s restrictions on the introduction, manufacture, transportation, and distribution of switchblades fail step two’s “how” analysis. The plaintiffs, however, fail to satisfy the stringent requirements for mounting a facial challenge to § 1243.

Accordingly, we conclude that this regulation violates the Second Amendment. We REVERSE the district court’s grant of the government’s motion to dismiss as to the § 1242 claim. We AFFIRM the district court’s dismissal of the § 1243 claim, and we REMAND for further proceedings.

Are any of you upset enough about gas prices that you are willing to vote for mutilating children and restrictive gun laws?