Quick! Off the top-of-your-head…

Name any one facet of your life that the government (State, Local, Federal) does not interfere with in one way or another.

I’ve been thinking on it all weekend, and can’t come up with a single one.

And no, Church isn’t one. It is perhaps one of the lightest regulated, but there is meddling there too…

Question:

Is a beer a character device or a block device?

Discuss. Not too heatedly…

Fair ye well!

Tonight, I drank what was probably my last ever bottle of Young’s Oatmeal Stout. Young’s Ram Brewery had a good run, from 1581 – 2006. Now, they’ve closed the doors. According to the Young’s website:

Traditional draught beer was produced on the site of the Young’s Brewery from 1581 – 2006.

In 2006 Young’s combined its brewing operations with Charles Wells, Bedford to create a major new national force in the brewing industry. This ensures that Young’s remains a vertically integrated brewery producing our own beers for our own pubs.

I know that I always look for tasty, hand-crafted ales from traditional, vertically integrated breweries.

The last Oatmeal Stout was paired with a two-inch-thick pork chop and okra, squash, and tomatoes.

Young’s Ram Brewery has fallen. No more “Old Nick.” No more “Double Chocolate Stout.” No more “Waggle Dance.”

We now raise our collective glass to the hope that Fuller’s Chiswick Brewery survives!

Some observations on Java

For the last week, I’ve gotten a bit of a crash course in Java. Java, at this point, is more than ten years old, but I’ve avoided it for as long as I could.

All that I can say is, FINALLY!!! We now have a programming language that makes it harder to find all of the required dependencies than C does!

All I was trying to do was to recompile a few classes! There are no makefiles. There are no hints or clues as to where to look. I found myself doing things like this, far too often:

for i in `find . -name *.jar -print`  do    export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:${i}done

javac blah.java

I try to stay away from this sort of brute force compilation because too much can go wrong (multiple, incompatible versions of the same .jar comes immediately to mind). In this case, I was lucky. I eventually got everything to compile, but I was still angry after it did.

Range Report

I made it back out to Swan Creek shooting range today, for the first time since it re-opened after duck season.

I brought my Kimber .45 just to keep in practice, but the real reason I wanted to go out there was for some high-powered rifle plinking. I brought out my old Russian Mosin Nagant Model 1944 Carbine and my Swiss Model 1939 Carbine.

From a ballistics standpoint, this is how the two types of cartridges I shot compare to the gold-standard .30-06 Springfield:

Cartridge	Projectile Diameter	Projectile Weight	Muzzle Velocity
.30-06 Springfield	.308	150gr	2740 f/s
7.26 x 54 Rimmed Russian	.308	147gr	2660 f/s
7.5 x 55 Swiss	.308	174gr	2560 f/s

For all practical purposes, these cartridges are close enough to be called “the same.” The Swiss starts 180 f/s slower than the standard .30-06, but the projectile weighs 24 grains more.

Now, I really don’t care about group size or how accurate the rifle is, because they are all accurate enough. I was firing at what-ever happened to be at the end of the range when I showed up… This turned out to be a 3′ x 4′ election sign.

There were a few people shooting next to me, and I didn’t notice it, but they weren’t wearing ear plugs. The appeared to be shooting a pair of .243s. First up was the Mosin. The Mosin Nagant M44 is the most interesting high powered rifle on the market today. The reason I say so, is that the rifle costs $70 from Aim Surplus and 880 rounds of surplus ammunition will cost you about the same from the same place.

I loaded up five rounds of Hungarian surplus ammo from a stripper clip. This ammunition came in a big green can that had the numbers 2/76 stenciled on top. This indicates that the can was packed in February of 1976, 31 years ago… The month I was born! Normally, we are happy when our firearms go bang every time we press their triggers. The Mosin does not. It goes BOOM! every time you press the trigger. The noise is loud. The muzzle blast is impressive. The guys next to me nearly soiled their underpants. After expending my five rounds, I offered them ear plugs. They must have not been there long, because the bench I was shooting from had 7.62 x 54R empties all around it when I got there. Someone else knows about these!

I ended up letting three people shoot a five-round stripper-clip each. This was fine, as the rounds are so cheap, and I wanted to shoot up all 50 rounds that I brought out there. There were smiles all around. Everyone said that it shot milder than they expected. We all know that recoil is %90 mental, so I won’t say too much about it other than the Swiss recoil is lighter.

A few observations:

• The copper-washed Regan-era Polish surplus 7.62 x 54R rounds are rubbish. They dirty up the bore, they cause bolt-sticking, and they don’t feed worth beans from the stripper-clips. I don’t have to worry about this, because I shot all of my remaining supply of these, and I won’t be buying more.
• The sliver-tip with grey lacquered case 1970’s Hungarian surplus rounds seem to be much better than the Polish ones. They feed well from the stripper clips. They also don’t seem to bind the bolt handle when the rifle heats up. This is good because I have about 790 rounds left.
• The M44 is an ugly rifle, but it is so cheap to shoot that I must remember to buy several more in case mine breaks. Every properly outfitted household should have at least two Mosin Nagants of some description.
• The M44 is lively. People seem to like the boom, and will line up to have a go with it. I would feel comfortable hunting just about any game in North America with if, if I had to.
• It freaks people out when you operate the bolt without taking the butt of the rifle out of your shoulder. People were amazed when I did this with the Swiss K31, and even more shocked when I did the same with the Russian. Remember, the best reason to use a bolt-action is that you don’t have to wait around for gas to cycle the action.
• The K31 is slightly lighter than the M44. It also has a six-round capacity, instead of five. It is also much better made than the Russian. You can get 180gr bullets from Winchester for the M44, but given the choice between the two, I’d choose the Swiss.
• Wolff sells 203gr cartridges in 7.62 x 54R. I won’t use them in Mosin Nagants. They were originally made for heavy machine guns, and may be a little too much for these old things.
• ALLsurplus 7.62 x 54R ammunition uses corrosive primers. This isn’t a big deal if you take care of it quickly. While you are still at the range, squirt a patch with Windex, and run it through the bore a few times. Repeat. Then repeat twice with your normal cleaning solvent instead of the Windex. Then make sure you wipe the bolt face and muzzle with Windex and solvent the same way.
• Every properly outfitted household should have a couple of Swiss K31s as well. They are just as powerful, and have a bigger “neat” factor than any Mosin Nagant. The Swiss make a good rifle, but it isn’t nearly as cheap to shoot, at around $0.50 per round… the Nagant comes in at around $0.08 per round.