Marko seems to have the worst luck with people plagarizing his writing. I’d have mixed feelings about it, personally.  On the one hand, I’d be awfully pissy that someone is taking credit for my writing. On the other hand, someone apparently thought my writing was good enough to pilfer. Marko makes money off writing, though, so not at least offering attribution is pretty low.
Month: January 2009
New Server Ordered
I have ordered a new server to run the blog, and a few other things I also run on the side. The new machine will also be rather small. It’s a 1.6GHz Intel Atom based machine with 2GB RAM, a 7200RPM 500GB SATA hard disk and DVD-ROM. The little provisional server I’m on right now isn’t quite quick enough to handle my traffic peaks, but hopefully we’ll get past that. The cool thing about the new machine is it cost me about $250 bucks to put together, and consumes power like a laptop.
With luck, the new server will arrive tomorrow, and be ready for operation by Wednesday.
One-Gun a Month in New Jersey
The Philadelphia Inquirer is running a puff piece on it today, with Bryan Miller’s big mug plastered all over it. We’re also back to that “personal privilege” thing again:
“What we’re talking about here is some sort of balance . . . between the privilege of a tiny minority of handgun owners in the state and the common good of public safety,” Miller said. “We’re talking about a light burden, if any.”
Sorry Bryan. Heller is over, and we won. It’s not a privilege anymore. That means the burden is now on you to justify restricting my constitutional right. If you can provide any evidence at all that one-gun-a-month works, I’d be happy to listen, but the evience seems to suggest it has no effect on crime, just like every other gun control law. Governor Corzine also asks the wrong question:
“How many guns does somebody need to purchase in a month?” Corzine asked.
I don’t have to justify anything to you, Governor. Your job is not to treat all citizens as criminals because some people are irresponsible. The solution is to put violent people in prison, rather than to turn the society at large into a prison. This proposal does the latter.
Predictions for New York
Jacob links to some nasty predictions for New York Gun owners, including serious restrictions on the use of lead ammunition. It would be one thing if there were reasonable alternatives, but there isn’t.  At least not yet.
Importance of Cleaning
JR reminds everyone of the importance of cleaning your rifle after firing corrosively primed ammunition.  I can personally attest to this. I bought some corrosive 5.45×39 before I realized it was corrosive.  I found out the hard way. Didn’t take long either.  Fortunatly, no lasting damage, but yeah — corrosive ammo is nasty stuff if you don’t clean.
Physics Lesson
Joe Huffman offers a lesson in exterior ballistics.
Screwed Again
I take the Pennsylvania Turnpike to work and back every day. Tomorrow, I will begin paying the Ed Rendell Approved higher rate for turnpike tolls so Philadelphia can continue to grossly mismanage its public transit system. Previously, I paid $1.25 each way, which comes out to $2.50 a day, or 625 dollars a year. Now I will be paying $1.56 each way, or $3.12 a day, which comes out to $780 dollars a year. That doesn’t cover non-communiting use of the Turnpike system either.
Thanks Ed Rendell, I really appreciate the $155 dollar a year tax increase. Meanwhile, people who don’t have to drive on the Turkpike, get to drive on roads my income and sales tax dollars pay for.
Buying TD’s FAL
I’ve decided I should make at least one purchase during this panic gun buying season, so I decided to throw down some benjamins and buy TD’s FAL. Blue Book of Gun Values says the gun is worth $700, but today everything has an Obama Panic Premium (we’ll call it OPP for short) attached to it, so that must be taken into consideration. But there is one issue.
TD lives in Michigan, and I live in Pennsylvania, which means it’s time to play the “Reasonable Gun Laws” game. Since TD and I live in different states, we can’t just handle this through a private sale, even though we can both legally posses the rifle in our respective states. Asked a local FFL about doing the transfer, and got this answer:
We fax or mail our FFL directly to the seller’s dealer and he/she ships the firearm/s with a copy of his/her FFL. That is the only way we do out of state transfers. It costs $50.00 plus tax plus $10.00 for the instant check, totaling $63.00.
So that’s $63 bucks on my side, and another batch of money on TD’s side to pay for the FFL transfer at his end. Legally speaking, TD can ship direct to my FFL, since non-licensees are permitted to ship through common carrier (though not U.S. Mail if it’s a handgun) to an FFL in any state. But it’s hard to find an FFL that’s willing to deal with a non-licensee who’s out of state. Obviously, I’m not paying anyone $63 bucks to receive a package and do 10 minutes of paperwork. I know another FFL who does them for 32 bucks, so I might try him.
Imagine how hard it’s going to be to find a reasonable deal on transfers when selling a gun to a friend requires it? Prices in Pennsylvania are already high for transfers, because in this state, there are no private sales of handguns. If they ban all private sales for all guns, you can expect dealers to jack prices on handling transfers, since it eats into their business. This is the world the Brady Campaign wants to bring us all, folks.
More Lawsuits Against National Park Rule
Looks like the National Association of Park Rangers is also going to file suit to keep the new rule from going into effect. I have to admit, I’m little miffed at the Bush Administration for not getting this rule change done sooner. I think the strategy of our opponents is to run the clock out, until they can deal with an administration who won’t fight that hard for the change. If it can get thrown out on a legal technicality, then that’s it. There will be no time or desire to rework a different rule. If the rule change gets reversed, Bush will still have taken media heat for the rule, but we won’t have gotten it. No one will be happy, except perhaps the Brady Campaign.
New Server, Sorta
I’ve moved the blog to a new server. If any of you were noticing an outage, that is why. Unfortunately, it’s actually not as fast as our previous server, which sucks, but if I’m going to replace it, I’ll need to the blog running on something else so I’m not having to deal with a lot of downtime for the blog while I get the new digs up and running. If you want to see what I’m running on, take a look here. Makarov provided for scale:
It’s a pretty old box. 1.2GHz Celeron, 256MB PC100 RAM, old laptop hard drive, running Ubuntu 8.10 Server. My eventual goal is to have a server that can handle a full on, no-holds, Instalanche. This little guy isn’t up to the task, at least not without a gig or so more RAM. In the past, links from Instapundit have melted my box, so I’m going to provision a new box that can handle Glenn’s traffic. So enjoy running on this small box for a bit, folks. Hopefully it won’t be too painfully slow.