Ghost and the Machines

I'm back working the 2-10pm shift. After first shift leaves at 3pm, I'm the only person around. There are people in other departments, but it's not like I have any contact with them.

Around 6pm, most of the lights automatically turn out. Though my area stays lighted, I often end up having to walk through the dark to get where I need to be.

I have survived two layoffs now, one of which was last week. Over the past year, we have lost around one-fourth of our workforce.

Our plating department has been outsourced. The equipment is gone. There used to be a department-wide basin to catch spills--that has been filled in with concrete. It's just a big empty room.

Back in the day, there used to be around 650 people working here. Now, the bosses claim we have around 200. However, word out on the floor is that we have only 170.

Just ten years ago, when I started, there were 56 people on second-shift alone. Now there are six.

It's a big plant at night, and as I move through its acres of idle machinery I feel like a ghost.

Cheers

I mixed together Guinness and Fosters. I don't know what you'd call it.

Anyway, Happy New Year.

Live Blogging Midnight Mass

(No, they didn't show him getting knocked down. It wasn't until the end of the mass that they even mentioned it. I myself didn't even know it happened until the end. So, don't expect this post to be about that.)


I'm not Catholic, but I still like to watch the midnight mass from St. Peter's every Christmas. It's really something else. However, I don't think they've started filming it in high-def yet. Oh, well.

I wonder how one gets into the choir for this? It must be a serious audition.

Is the basilica used every week? For that matter, are any of the great cathedrals still used? I did visit Notre Dame de Paris once, and there did seem to be people praying there. However, I would think you'd need a huge congregation to keep something like that open. Although I presume the Catholic Church would supply the money to keep them in good repair, one would feel ridiculous worshiping in a warehouse-sized church unless the congregation was similarly impressive. (I seem to remember that Chartres Cathedral seats 10,000.)

I'm guessing the Pope knows three languages. I know he's German, so he obviously knows that, and he did the mass in Italian (I think). However, the Bible he read from looked to be one of those handwritten ones done by the monks. So, I'm guessing he has to know Latin as well.

Also, the ATM's in the Vatican are in Latin. Yeah, I'm sure they have other languages available, but not knowing Latin would obviously be a handicap for anyone at a high level in the Catholic Church.

Perhaps Latin serves as a universal language for the church? As always, they did have a lot of different countries represented at the mass.

He said some interesting things, about the shepherds vs. the three wise men. First, that the shepherds were sort of on-watch for something like the birth of Jesus--while most people aren't. Also, they arrived much earlier than the three wise men. Though this was due to physical proximity, the pope mentioned that the closeness of the shepherds was more than physical, that their closeness was also a metaphor for their being closer to God.

Interesting...

Mike Royko Veteran's Column

This is my favorite Veteran's Day column. The columnist Mike Royko wrote it in 1993.
I agree with it wholeheartedly.





I just phoned six friends and asked them what they will be doing on Monday.

They all said the same thing: working.

Me, too.

There is something else we share. We are all military veterans.

And there is a third thing we have in common. We are not employees of the federal government, state government, county government, municipal government, the Postal Service, the courts, banks, or S & Ls, and we dont teach school.

If we did, we would be among the many millions of people who will spend Monday goofing off.

Which is why it is about time Congress revised the ridiculous terms of Veterans Day as a national holiday.

The purpose of Veterans Day is to honor all veterans.

So how does this country honor them?

By letting the veterans, the majority of whom work in the private sector, spend the day at their jobs so they can pay taxes that permit millions of non-veterans to get paid for doing nothing.

As my friend Harry put it:

"First I went through basic training. Then infantry school. Then I got on a crowded, stinking troop ship that took 23 days to get from San Francisco to Japan. We went through a storm that had 90 percent of the guys on the ship throwing up for a week.

"Then I rode a beat-up transport plane from Japan to Korea, and it almost went down in the drink. I think the pilot was drunk.

"When I got to Korea, I was lucky. The war ended seven months after I got there, and I didnt kill anybody and nobody killed me.

"But it was still a miserable experience. Then when my tour was over, I got on another troop ship and it took 21 stinking days to cross the Pacific.
"When I got home on leave, one of the older guys at the neighborhood bar he was a World War II vet told me I was a ----head because we didnt win, we only got a tie.

"So now on Veterans Day I get up in the morning and go down to the office and work.

"You know what my nephew does? He sleeps in. Thats because he works for the state.

"And do you know what he did during the Vietnam War? He ducked the draft by getting a job teaching at an inner-city school.

"Now, is that a raw deal or what?"

Of course thats a raw deal. So I propose that the members of Congress revise Veterans Day to provide the following:

- All veterans and only veterans should have the day off from work. It doesnt matter if they were combat heroes or stateside clerk-typists.
Anybody who went through basic training and was awakened before dawn by a red-neck drill sergeant who bellowed: "Drop your whatsis and grab your socks and fall out on the road," is entitled.

- Those veterans who wish to march in parades, make speeches or listen to speeches can do so. But for those who dont, all local gambling laws should be suspended for the day to permit vets to gather in taverns, pull a couple of tables together and spend the day playing poker, blackjack, craps, drinking and telling lewd lies about lewd experiences with lewd women. All bar prices should be rolled back to enlisted mens club prices, Officers can pay the going rate, the stiffs.

- All anti-smoking laws will be suspended for Veterans Day. The same hold for all misdemeanor laws pertaining to disorderly conduct, non-felonious brawling, leering, gawking and any other gross and disgusting public behavior that does not harm another individual.

- It will be a treasonable offense for any spouse or live-in girlfriend (or boyfriend, if it applies) to utter the dreaded words: "What time will you be home tonight?"

- Anyone caught posing as a veteran will be required to eat a triple portion of chipped beef on toast, with Spam on the side, and spend the day watching a chaplain present a color-slide presentation on the horrors of VD.

- Regardless of how high his office, no politician who had the opportunity to serve in the military, but didnt, will be allowed to make a patriotic speech, appear on TV, or poke his nose out of his office for the entire day.

Any politician who defies this ban will be required to spend 12 hours wearing headphones and listening to tapes of President Clinton explaining his deferments.

Now, deal the cards and pass the tequila.

- Mike Royko
__________________

The Least Interesting Man in the World

XKCD



Lately, I've started feeling like I'm the above guy. I guess that's what I get for doing nothing more on the weekends than watching football and drinking beer. (Though I am proud that I managed to look up how to do the (img) tag to get the above comic to materialize.)

Regardless, my fear of doing nothing with my weekend motivated me to finish up some reloading I'd been meaning to do.





My reloading bench. Yeah, I got one, even though I live in an apartment. (Being single isn't always a bad thing.)

The thing on the left with the crank is my case-cutter. I put a paper towel under it to catch brass cuttings. (The brass is from a few weeks ago, when I resized and cut-to-length some 30-'06 cases.)

I took this pic when I had just started charging some .38 Special cases. You can see them arrayed in the green "reloading block". I also have some .357 Magnum cases prepped and ready to be charged, but I didn't get to them today.






My press is an RCBS "rock chucker". It's a "D-type" press, meaning it's closed on the front. (The frame looks like a "D".) This is opposed to a "C-type" press, which would be open on the near side to facilitate loading.

It's not particularly difficult to slide in the ammo from the side, so I'm not sure why anyone would get a "C-type" press. D-types like mine are much stronger; mine can handle everything up through .50 BMG. (That's the ammo that goes into one of those 50caliber machine guns that the military uses. You see them on the top of humvees and such.) So, it has no problem reloading my comparatively-dinky 38 Special cases.






This is a close-up of my Lee Auto Disk Powder Measure. It's screwed into the top of my charging-die. The charging-die has a small, moving cylinder inside it. On the upstroke, that cylinder engages and gently bells-out the case mouth, allowing a bullet to be seated on the next operation. On this operation though, the cylinder also accomplishes a second task: moving that black disk from the left over to the right. When that happenes, one of the measuring chambers on that disk will align over the drop-tube on the right, dropping a measured amount of powder.

On the downstroke, the disk moves to the left again, allowing powder from the hopper to refill the chosen chamber. This time, I used the .57cc chamber. This is one step up from the .53cc chamber I usually use. I did this because my .38 Special ammo has always been a little weak.





This is my Lee Safety Powder Scale. The amount of pressure generated by gunpowder is determined by its weight, not by its volume. That's why it's important to check the weight of any powder charge. I usually check just five out of every fifty rounds; as this is a new load I checked fifteen rounds. The heaviest measured 4.7 grains, the lightest, 4.4. This is only a slight increase from my last loading of this round, which had powder weights ranging from 4.5 - 4.0. Also, this loading seems more consistant; I'm thinking a larger cavity just fills better.

(Fun facts: a "grain" is a measurement of weight. It is 1/7,000th of a pound. So, a tenth of a grain is 1/70,000 of a pound. Very tiny weights, indeed.)

As usual, I'm using Hercules Unique gunpowder for this load. I'm just using slightly more of it (approx. .3 grains). According to the load data, 4.9 grains is a good load, so even now I should be a little light. (The max is 5.3 grains.)




Before putting on the bullets, it's a good practice to always check for double-loads....





Next, is putting on the bullets. Here you see my press with the bullet-seating die screwed in. (The dies come in sets, according to caliber.)




The bullet is just sitting on top. Notice the case's slightly belled mouth. This is from the previous operation, and is necessary to allow the bullet to be pressed in.




As I pushed up, the die not only pushed in the bullet, but folded over the case into the bullet's "cannelure" (groove). This is known as "crimping". It's necessary, to keep the bullet from simply falling out again. Here, the round is down, and complete.





I like to check each and every crimp. This gives me one final opportunity to spot a split case.



I used 158 grain cast-lead bullets. Here, you can see how far into the case they go. The blue stuff is lubricant.

These cost about one-fifth as much as jacketed bullets. I always use them for low-velocity rounds, such as .38 Special.

So, that's about it, for now.

Framed!

My apartment now resembles a doctor's office.

Football, etc.

Well, I was going to post on USF's win over Cincinnati...but they lost. (Oh, well. I don't think they've ever won against the Bearcats. Those guys looked huge.)

I have to say though, when I was watching that overhyped game, I discovered that I'm not totally on-board with all the attention paid to college football. Is it really right that the majority of college athletes are ignored, while all the attention focuses on football (and sometimes basketball)?

What does it do to the athletes, when they are either watched not at all...or watched by over 60,000 fans? And what does it do to a college freshman, when he is on ESPN?

Several times during last night's game, the ESPN announcers talked about the "pressure" facing B.J. Daniels, USF's freshman quarterback. They seemed to not realize it's just a football game.

As a reaction to how his work was regarded, Alfred Hitchock supposedly once said, "It's only a movie." There seems to be no such sense of proportion facing football.

It's only a football game.