The Vent and Rant Thread

[Katsunami]

Must... not... strangle... dad...

Well, after 30 years, my dad wanted to pick up and old hobby again: air rifle shooting. As I have a lot of experience taking tack-sharp pictures, out of hand, using 400-500mm lenses, I thought it'd be fun to go along. I thought, keeping a rifle aimed and pulling the trigger won't be that different to pointing a camera and pushing the shutter button.

You know what? I was right. It isn't. Techniques to keep a camera steady for taking long telephoto shots and the ones to shoot a rifle are essentially the same.

So, for about two weeks, I've read and re-read everything I could find about airguns and scopes, on forums and sites such as PyramydAir.com. Eventually, I decided on an air gun, and a scope; a 3-9x for my dad, and 3-12x for me (as he found the 3-12 too big).

This weekend, I've zero'd one of the rifles (which is making sure that it actually shoots at the point the crosshair marks; at the distance at which the zeroing was done). It turns out that the rifle/scope-combo is too heavy for my dad to use. I can accept that. So the other rifle will be sent back and swapped for a (much) lighter version.

However, he keeps bugging me about the fact that this first rifle didn't have any iron sights on the barrel. It doesn't need to; it's designed to be fitted with a scope.

"A scope is too difficult to use."
"I had iron sights on the barrel 30 years ago."
"A scope can never be as precise as iron sights."

Well, dad... you have a son who never seriously shot an air rifle before, who only has two weeks of theoretical knowledge, and who has an eyesight of up to 33% in his right eye, and 7% in his left eye, *when wearing glasses*.

Mentioned son (= me) is now able, after an hour of practice on day one, to hit a 1x2 inch (2,5x5cm) target at 20 yards (18m) 80% of the time, shooting out of hand.

Although he knows I can't even SEE the target clearly without a scope, and he has to squint to do so, he still keeps pestering me about wanting to shoot using iron sights because they are 'more precise in the long run.'

Fine, dad. The next rifle will have iron sights. Please zero it yourself, because I can't see the target I use for that. (I used a dime / 1 eurocent-sized circle, which is about 17mm, printed on thick paper, and shot using a rifle support). As a matter of fact dad, you can't see that target with your naked eye either, from 20 yards away.

After you're done zeroing in, we'll have a little competition. See who wins, iron sights or a 12x scope. My photography past of shooting tack-sharp pictures using 500mm+ lenses out of hand, and the result of the practice session of today, should give you a hunch...

Probably he'll be headstrong and zero the rifle using a 10x10 inch target or something, and then wondering why he misses any targets smaller than that. Fortunately, the backstop is something like 1x1 yards (a huge 1 inch thick wooden board), and behind that is the barn wall.

Parents. They can't even believe shit when you show them the facts. A more than half-blind guy, shooting 1x2 inch targets at 20 yards apparently isn't proof enough to show the merits of using a rifle scope... even then, they always know better.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Manhattan is an island. Many, many people live outside it but work in it, and drive in.
Dennis

There and San Francisco are the only places in the US that rent and median single family home prices are higher than they are here in Paradise. What do we have it common? Water on at least three sides, that's what. But at least you have bridges, the furthest I can drive without seeing the same thing again is 100 miles. But it is kind of handy; keep the water on the left and the mountains on the left and you can't get lost.

[wodin]

Hitch, have you though about taking a page from utility company's, and bank's (among others') playbooks and charging a small "administrative" fee from accounts that are open but inactive. Before long any unused credits get whittled away to nothing.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wodin

There and San Francisco are the only places in the US that rent and median single family home prices are higher than they are here in Paradise. What do we have it common? Water on at least three sides, that's what. But at least you have bridges, the furthest I can drive without seeing the same thing again is 100 miles. But it is kind of handy; keep the water on the left and the mountains on the left and you can't get lost.

The scarce resource in Manhattan is land, so prices in the stratosphere are no surprise. (And the market is distorted by rent control and rent stabilization regulations first enacted during WWII and only beginning to go away.) A building across the street from me got torn down and replaced by a luxury condo. Prices for units started at $2.5 million. It's partially occupied.

Manhattan has bridges and tunnels, and enormous traffic through them. An old friend proposed an enormous hoax, where the notion was you blew the bridges and tunnels, shut down all electronic communications, then put on a multi-billion PR campaign to convince the world it didn't really exist and never had. If you don't live here or spend time visiting, it will sound unlikely if just described.
______
Dennis

[wodin]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The scarce resource in Manhattan is land, so prices in the stratosphere are no surprise...
______
Dennis

My 5400 sf lot assesses at $450K without the house, Zillow estimates the total value at $700K. That for an average fifty year old house on a postage stamp sized lot in a middle class neighborhood.

So yes, the scarce resource is land.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by wodin

Hitch, have you though about taking a page from utility company's, and bank's (among others') playbooks and charging a small "administrative" fee from accounts that are open but inactive. Before long any unused credits get whittled away to nothing.

Wodin:

No, but you know what? That's brilliant.

Thanks much!

Hitch

[Hitch]

Yowza, my machine got brand new 3TB RAIDS! Awesome!

OMG, it's time for my nightly backup...of those 3TB RAIDS.

Spoiler:

I want Tardis drives, man. Lots can go IN, but when you back it up, it makes some weird whoop-whoop sounds, and arrives cheerfully completed. :-)

(Before you guys "help," yes, of course, the nightlies are incremental, data only. But still...I didn't get those for s**ts and giggles, thar's a lotta data on them thar drives...)

Hitch

[Glorfindel]

you should make an incremental backup
(just saw that on the forums somewhere...hmm)

[Rumpelteazer]

A couple of years ago I got a prepaid credit card from, what now is, Skrill. It work fine but at one point the Dutch company 3v Cash came out with a credit card you could top up at the store (up until then they only offered a virtual credit card) and I cancelled my Skrill card and switched.

Last week I suddenly got a new Skrill card, followed by an email yesterday with the message that if I didn't use it before X of March they would deduct €1 from my account for inactivity. I never requested a new card, so I went to cancel my card. It's not a good way to get customers back IMHO.

The only up side is that the, now cancelled, credit card will get handy for smooshing ink into a just re-inked pad or spreading gesso or modelling paste on a project.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Glorfindel

you should make an incremental backup
(just saw that on the forums somewhere...hmm)

Glorfindel:

That's what we do. 3 days of incrementals, followed by a "full." (Not really full. The program/software drive isn't backed up, nor is Dropbox.) I mentioned this inside the parenthetical paragraph?

Yes, it's a little excessive. After all, we are running RAIDS, plus all data is in Dropboxes, which are themselves backups, effectively; plus we save copies of client files on Amazon S-3. Everything has massively redundant backups. Bea in mind, it's not just my data. Despite the fact that there's no agreement that we'll keep our working files, etc., upon completion, all my clients expect me to have that stuff.

Hell, for that matter, I've had clients come back to me 4 years later, seeking their original WORD file. Seriously. Can't make this stuff up.

Hitch

[Glorfindel]

Hitch: sorry, that was me trying to be funny after reading your spoiler

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Glorfindel:

That's what we do. 3 days of incrementals, followed by a "full." (Not really full. The program/software drive isn't backed up, nor is Dropbox.) I mentioned this inside the parenthetical paragraph?

Yes, it's a little excessive. After all, we are running RAIDS, plus all data is in Dropboxes, which are themselves backups, effectively; plus we save copies of client files on Amazon S-3. Everything has massively redundant backups. Bea in mind, it's not just my data. Despite the fact that there's no agreement that we'll keep our working files, etc., upon completion, all my clients expect me to have that stuff.

Hell, for that matter, I've had clients come back to me 4 years later, seeking their original WORD file. Seriously. Can't make this stuff up.

Hitch

I have the original word files from every book I've ever written. Including the ones that were done on PCWrite. Gawd knows how I'd ever actually READ them. But that's 27 years of book files.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Including the ones that were done on PCWrite.

...

PC-Write was a computer word processor and was one of the first three widely popular software products sold via the marketing method that became known as shareware.[1] It was originally written by Bob Wallace in early 1983.[2]

Thanks. I now feel sooo young again

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Glorfindel:

That's what we do. 3 days of incrementals, followed by a "full." (Not really full. The program/software drive isn't backed up, nor is Dropbox.) I mentioned this inside the parenthetical paragraph?

Yes, it's a little excessive. After all, we are running RAIDS, plus all data is in Dropboxes, which are themselves backups, effectively; plus we save copies of client files on Amazon S-3. Everything has massively redundant backups. Bear in mind, it's not just my data. Despite the fact that there's no agreement that we'll keep our working files, etc., upon completion, all my clients expect me to have that stuff.

Hell, for that matter, I've had clients come back to me 4 years later, seeking their original WORD file. Seriously. Can't make this stuff up.

Hitch

Nope, not excessive at all. (Note: my job is backup!) I'm fretting about re-using tapes that are >3 years old, even though I've saved quarterly tapes from that same bunch. I'm just re-using the months in between the quarter-saves. And fretting about doing so, even though we don't PROMISE that much history, and even though I have the quarterly tapes! And even though the data is presumably still present on the tapes I'm saving TODAY. How many people want a file that was deleted 4 years ago, and didn't exist long enough to be on a quarterly tape??

But I like to keep lots of backups!

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

...
Thanks. I now feel sooo young again

I used it starting in 1986. I used it in "Wordstar Mode" where it mimicked the keystrokes of one of the other two popular word processing programs of the time, Wordstar. Without costing Wordstar $$. I still use many of the same key combinations (Ctrl-K-this, Ctrl-K-that, CtrlQ-this, etc.)

Text editing, however, is done entirely using my preferred Vi clone - gVim.