Looks like US Citizen of Traction Control is in my neck of the woods looking for some full auto fun. It’s not often that we get bloggers in the area, since not too many people are eager to partake in W.C. Fields Second Prize. The first prize was one week in Philadelphia. The Second Prize was two.
Category: Blogs
Now With Uninterruptible Power
Decided to spring for a small UPS unit for the server here. Mostly so I can keep my Internet up during brief power outages. It’s a Cyberpower CP1500 1500VA/900W UPS, and it’ll run at current load, which is about 6-10%, for about an hour with no power. This should make the blog a lot more reliable too. I’ll be pulling the plug out later tonight and seeing how things hold  up. For now I’m configuring the daemon in the Linux server to shut it down gracefully if the battery runs too low.
UPDATE: Running off UPS power as this is updated. Have a few glitches still to work out with making sure it e-mails me to tell me power is out.
UPDATE: Worked out all the glitches. Seems to be working nicely now. You can tell it’s a cheap UPS since any power supply if feeds while on battery hums like a large flying insect. I don’t have an oscilloscope to look at the output from the inverter, but I’m betting it’s ugly.
Handgun Hourly Blog Moving
We’re Back
Sorry about the outage folks, but we were without power for 14 hours due to the blizzard yesterday. As soon as the wind kicked up, it was pretty much over. I had to get creative to keep the house and pipes from freezing up overnight:
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Fortunately I have a backup sump pump that’s powered by a car battery, so I hooked that up to an old inverter I had laying about and punched its output into the junction box for the furnace. The furnace is gas, so you really only need power for the controller, the circulator pump, the flu check, zone valves, and gas valve. Fortunately all those seemed to come in under the 125W rating of the inverter.
Of course, we did manage to keep the most important piece of equipment in the house functioning as well:
Fortunately for me this piece of critical equipment requires only a CO2 bottle to operate. Sadly I can’t keep the blog going through a 14 hour power outage, so I apologize for the downtime. All this is making me think about a generator, but I know if I get one we won’t lose power for more than 20 minutes for the next 5 years.
Ice Building Up on Power Lines
Snowpocalypse II is hitting us as we speak, and we’ve had freezing rain for a bit here, and it’s starting to build up on power lines, and the FiOS lines. If the blog goes out for a bit, you’ll know why.
Proper Spelling of my Pseudonym
In the name of Johann Sebastian Bach, from which I derived my pseudonym, will people please learn the correct spelling of my name. I don’t know if Sebastion is a proper spelling in any language. I can at least accept Sebastard and maybe even Sebasturd (two insults combined into one, what’s not to like?), if you want to go there. But please, for the love of the Brandenburg Concertos, there’s no o in Sebastian!
All Quiet on the Western Front
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but there’s not a whole lot going on in the gun rights world right now. We don’t really have any major legislation advancing, either pro-or-anti, at least in my areas of focus. The media is too busy talking about other things to editorialize on guns, and I think the Brady folks might be busy polishing up their resumes, after the Obama failing grade story got, as best I can tell, fairly minimal press coverage, and not a peep from the White house. I’ve heard nary a peep out of Brady, despite a few opportunities for them to push their issue. On the pro side, Congress is tied up on other issues, we’re all waiting for the next big things to happen in the McDonald case, and other than that, not much else.
I should be pretty happy it’s quiet, considering I’m busy as hell with work and putting in 70 hour weeks in an attempt to take our company in a new direction, and hopefully give it a new lease on life. But it’s deeply unsatisfying to know that blog quality suffers through lack of things to talk about. Generally speaking, the way I blog is to take stories I get through Google alerts, tips, or through reading other blogs, and aggregate them in open tabs in a browser. I keep them sorted according to how interesting they are. When I have time, bang out a bunch of posts, either published immediately or timed for publishing, depending on the time sensitivity. Often times my second or third tier material is stale by the time I get around to it. Lately, I’ve been going through even those, and still not much else out there. So it’s a good time, if you have anything that might be interesting, to send it along.
Volokh Readers on Netflix?
I noticed that InAlienable is due for release tomorrow, so I immediately added it to our queue and bumped it up to the top. We have a disc they will receive tomorrow, so it would work out perfectly…
Except there must be a lot of Volokh Conspiracy readers on Netflix. That’s got to be why InAlienable went from available tomorrow to “Short Wait.” :)
Upgraded
Snowflakes in Hell just got an Internet upgrade. It’s been about four years since I signed up for FiOS Internet, and my connection was 15 megabits down and 2 megabits up. I noticed when I posted pics of my Webley Mark IV, it was getting pretty pokey when enough folks were downloading. I also noticed Verizon didn’t even sell my package anymore, so I quickly realized I might be able to get an upgrade without paying anything. Typically you have to ask, as Verizon will be happy to sell you slow service for yesterday’s price.
Calls to Verizon are aways rough, because I have an unusual account. When you call, they ask for a telephone number to cross reference account info. I have Verizon FiOS for Small Business, because I need a static IP so you all know where to find me. My phone number is a standard residential POTS line. Invariably they ask for your phone number to determine your account, which always sends me to residential service, who quickly realize they only have a phone account for me, and transfer me to business support, who then look at my phone number and say “Oh, this is residential service, let me transfer you back.” Â A back and forth twice, finally being able to say “No, no.. it’s a residential phone line, but I do have a Small Business FiOS account!” Finally I get to talk to someone, but someone who ends up being very nice and helpful.
Turns out I can upgrade to 20 megabits down and 5 up for the same price, but for ten dollars more a month I can do a whopping 25 megabits down and 15 up. Hell yeah, I’ll take that. Apparently I can also save money bundling my phone and TV service with my Small Business Account, which I couldn’t do before. I’m going to look into doing that. To make a long story short, Snowflakes in Hell now has over 7 times the upload bandwidth it used to, and I’m hardly paying any extra for it.
It’s High Time
Since there aren’t too many bloggers that cover New Jersey politics from a Second Amendment angle, I decided it was high time I added a category specifically for New Jersey. Nothing happens in this issue in a vacuum, and we’ve had more than a few examples of New Jersey based activists crossing the river to push for gun control in Pennsylvania. Bitter and I keep a close eye on what happens in New Jersey, and are in regular communication with leaders in the issue over there. I feel confident we can provide good coverage for New Jersey gun owners.