Truly, though, that was the point of the exercise. Well, not so much to write a crappy novel as to just write one at all. I, like many others, get caught up in whether or not the writing or the plot and whatnot is good enough that we never actually getting around to writing anything.

It’s not the worst thing that I’ve ever read but it’ll never be a classic. So here, for your enjoyment, is my novel.

Tweet this!

Related (maybe) posts:

1. National Novel Writing Month
2. Halfway done, halfway to go
3. So much padding left to do

Hat Tip: Topless Robot

Tweet this!

Related (maybe) posts:

1. Kangaroo and Emu flavored chips
2. When the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing

Darth Vader stood at the edge of large desert, the smoking ruin of his tie fighter sticking out of the dune behind him. He knew that he must cross the desert to get off of this miserable planet but he also knew that he lacked the provisions for such a trip.
Vader had nearly resigned himself to his fate when a great feline sped across the sands and came to a stop next to him.

Seizing upon his luck, Vader asked the beast if it would bear him to the nearest spaceport.

The great feline sat back upon its haunches, gave the request a moments thought, and then shook its enormous head.

“The Dark Side and you are one,” it said, “Surely you would slay if given the chance.”

“Never would I do such a thing,” Vader replied, “for I were to slay you in the heat of the desert, I would surely die.”

The cat cocked its head and considered the logic,” All right, climb up on my back and together we shall ride.”

Grabbing onto its fur, Vader mounted the beast and soon they were naught but an orange blur racing across the sands.

Without warning, the great feline felt a tightening in its throat. Gasping for air it tripped and it fell, sliding into the base of an enormous sand dune. It fought and it sputtered but in the end its struggles were insignificant next to the power of the Force.

As the feline breathed its last, it managed to gasp, “But why? Now you will also surely die.”

Darth Vader merely shrugged his shoulders, “I’m a Dark Lord of the Sith, what did you expect?”

Yes, you’ve probably heard this one before, but it’s in the public domain. Take that Aesop!

Tweet this!

Related (maybe) posts:

1. Excerpt from The Devourer of Flesh and Bone
2. NaNoWriMo Title Cover
3. An opened letter

But seriously, without an official notification from the author, one month, otherwise give them six.

Tweet this!

Related (maybe) posts:

1. Google Voice Widget
2. Happy belated One Month Blogversary!
3. An opened letter

• She was shaving because she was on her way to see her boyfriend
• Her ex-husband was in the car with her
• He was steering
• She was driving (sort of) on a suspended license

At least she wasn’t talking on her cell phone too.

Tweet this!

Related (maybe) posts:

1. Pittsburg Cops accused of brutality
2. Woman kills intruder during 911 call
3. Salvador Rodriquez says he’d rather let someone be raped then be a snitch

Thirty-four minutes later, I was contacted by Bose Service who stated that they had seen my tweet and wanted to help. I figured what the hell. I figured that they were maybe handing out adapters to fix the problem (either for free or a small charge) but no, after a little back and forth I found this out.

So here I am, stuck with a less functional sound dock with my only option being to spend $99 to “fix” it or just buy a new one. Ya, thanks but no thanks.

I would like to add a note that I don’t just a problem with Bose (though I am severely disappointed with their “in ear head phones” that only stay in when you sit perfectly still”) on this but also with Apple. It takes real disdain to hand out licenses to make third party accessories and then fuck them over like that.

In this case, Apple screws over the accessory maker who then screws over their existing customer base. Like they say, shit rolls down hill.

Tweet this!

Related (maybe) posts:

1. I need his job
2. Google Buzz, argle bargle or fooforaw?
3. Droid speed test and other sundries

I’m sure we all remember back in ‘94 when a woman put hot coffee between her legs, spilled it, and burned her hoo ha. For her gross negligence she was (initially) awarded several million dollars.

That, to my vague and hazy recollections, is the day the lawsuit jackpot started. Soon everybody who did something stupid was suing the manufacturer, the seller, and their neighbor in an attempt to make a buck.

Inane warning signs proliferated like weeds. But no, that wasn’t enough, not for William Ogletree.

On December 30, 2009, the dawn of a new era began. Not simply content with finding ways to hurt himself doing idiotic things with mundane items, he is threatening a lawsuit because he forgot his coat and no one bother to have “…collected the coat, kept it in a secure place and held it for a reasonable period of time for the owner to locate it”.

That’s right, folks, he forgot his coat and its someone else’s fault that he didn’t get it back. Apparently the City of Houston, The Westfield Concession Management, Inc, and Continental Airlines are supposed to be his mommy.

Hat Tip: The Smoking Gun

Tweet this!

Related (maybe) posts:

1. GEICO, evil or stupid?
2. The most expensive clerical error in history?
3. Bring forth the whipping boy, he will suffer much for this!

One of the first comments struck me as interesting.

Posted by: fletc3her | 03/4/10 | 4:50 pm |

I think it’s great that the auto industry is starting to improve mileage even in sports cars and muscle cars. But, I do wonder what the actual day to day mileage of one these cars will be. If you push the car to get the advertised 0-60 speed then you are not going to get the advertised mileage. Less powerful cars force the driver to drive efficiently simply by virtue of not having enough horsepower to waste a lot of gas.

He says that less powerful cars force the driver to be more efficient because it simply does not have the power. Apparently he believes that an increase in horsepower necessitates a drop in fuel economy. It is true that they tend to be highly correlated but vehicle performance is more complicated than that.

For a brief primer, horsepower is a measurement  of work with work being force expended over a distance. The next big engine measurement is torque. Torque is a measure of instantaneous force and typically refers to a twisting action, in the case of an internal combustion engine, the crankshaft acting upon the input shaft of the transmission.

Torque is then multiplied through the gears in the transmission (or divided in the case of an overdriven gear). It is then multiplied one last time in the rear differential before being divided by the wheels (think of them as really big gears).

The power output of the engine varies with engine speed, torque reaching its peak before horsepower. When these peaks are reached varies from engine to engine but it is the gear multiplication that picks up the slack at low engine speeds.

The reason that this is important is that the engine is most efficient when it is producing the most power. This is why mileage in the “city” is always worse than “highway”, you are constantly running the vehicle through the lower and less efficient RPMs. An excellent example is watching the black smoke on a diesel from a stop. Diesels are very inefficient at low RPMs and the momentary black smoke is cause by a lot of unburnt fuel. Physics also comes into play, with regards friction and momentum (it takes a lot of energy to move a vehicle from a stop than it is to just keep going).

This brings me back to my earlier point about “forcing efficiency”. Smaller displacement engines (four cylinder and even smaller six cylinder) have very high power peaks four, five, and even six thousand RPMs. The little power that the engine does produce does not actually come into play for a long time. As stated earlier, this is overcome through the use of aggressive gearing. This has the dual purpose of multiplying torque and spinning up the engine faster.

The interesting thing about this, is that the smaller engine (in a similar weight and shaped vehicle) is working harder than a larger engine would. It uses less fuel simply by virtue of having a smaller displacement.

This comes back the Mustang mentioned in the beginning of this post. It (and the new Camero) are part of a new breed of small displacement, high power engines. While this is not a new trend (think of when the Mustang dropped the 5.0 for the 4.7). it has been accelerating due to rising fuel costs.

This extra power, gives you the ability to motivate the vehicle with less effort (fuel) which is why you are now seeing amazing performance in vehicles with mileage ratings once associated with compact cars.

Tweet this!

Related (maybe) posts:

1. Charging Electric Vehicles, or Won’t someone think of the power grid!
2. A rolling stone

The first is The Count teaching that pansy ass vampire from Twilight what it means to be a vampire.

The second is a seemingly inane video of someone invading a classroom dressed as a chicken. At least is is until the professor stands all he can stands and he can’t stands no more. Hilarity ensues.

Tweet this!

Related (maybe) posts:

1. Must Post!
2. One of these things is not like the other
3. Evildoers in bars beware!

First, while poking around the internet for this, I discovered that there is some variation in terminology. For our purposes, a muzzle break is (either built in or added to the barrel) porting that direct some of the projectiles gases upwards and/ or backwards in order to control muzzle climb.

A compensator is a weight added to the end of the barrel to reduce muzzle climb.

Now my personal opinion on compensators is that they are a bad idea. Support for this is that it is very difficult to find pictures of them. While the extra weight does reduce muzzle climb, it also increases the weight of the barrel which forces the barrel down when you are aiming. Training could get around this to a certain degree but eventually hand fatigue would get the better of you. In my opinion, there is only one person can pull one off.

Springfield XD40 with ported barrel

Colt 1911 compared to S&W 500

As for muzzle breaks, it depends. For pistols, they are purely for competition. The fact that you are having searing hot gases escaping from your barrel in your general direction is a bad idea if you ever except to have to fire it when it is not pointed straight ahead and at arms length. Muzzle breaks also radically increase the perceived noise of the weapon. This is due to the the explosion of the round being partially redirected towards the shooter. Finally, the foot or so of flame that erupts from the muzzle break wreaks (worse) havoc on your night vision, makes you a wonderful target, and, if indoors, can set the ceiling on fire (a bad thing). There are of course exceptions to this.

There are a few pistols that fire a powerful enough round that a muzzle break is required. The Smith and Wesson Model 500 which fire the massive .500 Magnum round (I have the urge to use the word shell) is an excellent example of this.

So far I have just discussed pistols, rifles make more liberal use of muzzle breaks because they typically fire much more powerful rounds than pistols. My personal favorite example of this is the M82 sniper rifle. This behemoth fires the .50 BMG anti-materiel round. This round is capable of reaching out and touching someone at a distance of 2.5 clicks.

Needs a muzzle break

Muzzle breaks on rifles suffer from the same drawbacks as those found on pistols, such as added noise and increased visibility and catching the overhanging foliage on fire. Of course in the case of such large caliber rifles, a muzzle brake is a necessity to control the muzzle climb. Notice in the video how the escaping gases are directed backwards and noticeably push the shooter backwards.

So what’s the take away from all this? Compensators are useless since a muzzle break serves the same function but does not cause barrel drop and hand fatigue. Muzzle breaks are only for pistols if they are meant for competition or fire such massive rounds that the recoil would otherwise be unmanageable.

Tweet this!

Related (maybe) posts:

1. British soldiers also complaining about 5.56mm NATO
2. Woman kills intruder during 911 call