General Discussion 6

[jeriddian]

Well, to carry over from the last thread. ZoneAlarm is a full featured antiviral suite.

[NinjaNaco]

• Dragon, traitor disrupt Huntsclan celebration of Aztec culture
• Sobieski, hussars attack vacationing Turks in Austria
• Cheerleader, sidekick harass Bueno Nacho executive, cause property damage
• Dishonored prince, religious fundamentalists stage coup, thwart Phoenix King's population control outreach program

okay......

1: ADJL
2: Uh......assassination of Archduke Ferdinand beginning WWI?
3. KP, natch
4. ????? didn't catch that one...

#2 refers to Polish king John III Sobieski leading a charge of winged hussars that broke the Turkish lines at the 1683 Battle of Vienna, thus ending the Turks' seige of said city and ending any chances of further Ottoman expansion into Europe.
#4, on the other hand, refers to Avatar: The Last Airbender, more specifically the series finale when Fire Lord Ozai (who's declared himself the "Phoenix King," having named his daughter Azula the Fire Lord) tried to use Sozin's Comet to wipe out the people of the Earth Kingdom (officially under Fire Nation controlly, but they developed a nasty habit of rebelling). Meanwhile, Zuko challenges his sister Azula to an Agni Kai (a duel between firebenders) for the Fire Nation's crown and eventually wins (or rather, Azula loses.)

[Rob]

Well, I'm slowly working on getting ready for my Los Angeles vacation. I have to start packing up... although, by this time last year (just over two weeks to go), I was almost completely packed up already.

My sister's family is actually going on vacation this next week, while the boys have the week off for Easter break. They're going to Maryland to visit my brother-in-law's mother, and they'll be taking a few day-trips into D.C. The Smithsonian is definitely on their agenda, although at last check my sister was deciding between the zoo and the Treasury for one of their stops.

And, our customer contact at work is also going on vacation next week. So, things are going to be pretty quiet for me personally for a while...

[jeriddian]

Sounds like fun, Rob. Have a good trip.

Just in case, for those of you that were on the site late last night, you may have run into a short period of time where the site was inaccessible. Search engines would turn up nothing. I think there was a glitch at the server site that made it unavailable for a period of time. I don't think it was a maintainence issue as we weren't informed of anything like that. In any case, the outage was short lived, and everything is back up and running now.

[TransWarpDrive]

Sounds like fun, Rob. Have a good trip.

Just in case, for those of you that were on the site late last night, you may have run into a short period of time where the site was inaccessible. Search engines would turn up nothing. I think there was a glitch at the server site that made it unavailable for a period of time. I don't think it was a maintenance issue as we weren't informed of anything like that. In any case, the outage was short lived, and everything is back up and running now.

That explains why I couldn't log on after last night's KP episode. I was wondering about that....
Anyway, thanks for filling us in, jeriddian!

[lunchmeat]

Yesterday, for the first time in 200 years, pirates seized an American flagged merchant vessel. The crew managed to overcome the pirates and regain control of the ship. This is fortunate, since the US Navy, whose strength diminished to half it's former size during the procurement holiday of the 1990s, is spread too thin to properly cover the threat area.

[jeriddian]

Actually, I think it's pretty interesting that of all the vessels captured by the Somali pirates recently, this is the first American flagged vessel they've attempted, and the only one where the crew successfully took it back from them. Of course, the pirates are still holding the captain hostage, so it's not a complete victory at this point.

[TransWarpDrive]

Actually, I think it's pretty interesting that of all the vessels captured by the Somali pirates recently, this is the first American flagged vessel they've attempted, and the only one where the crew successfully took it back from them. Of course, the pirates are still holding the captain hostage, so it's not a complete victory at this point.

Yeah, I was reading about that today. I just checked CNN's website, and as of a little over 3 hours ago, the destroyer USS Bainbridge had arrived to assist the hijacked freighter and her crew. No word yet as to whether they've secured the release of her captain, though.

[jeriddian]

On another note, Cloud23465 has transcribed "Dimension Twist", and I have now loaded that episode into the Main Page Archives. Only five more transcripts left to do, although at some point, we may get into rewrites to improve some of the ones we have.

[Fireand'chutes77]

On the way back from visiting a cousin today, my dad and I stopped into a Gander Mountain superstore just off the interstate.

...Wow.

That is a store. Two levels, all festooned with wilderness paraphernalia and themes, a giant 12-ft-tall fish tank working waterfall, restaurant, boats on stilts...

My dad and I made this big loop around the upstairs, through the camping section, to the fish tank, to hunting clothes (I'm looking for some BDU pants to match my jacket; guess I'll try a surplus store), to, finally - surprise, surprise - the gun section.

Yow. They had rifles covering the wall behind the counter, and in glass cases that made up the counter, at least 100 handguns (semiautomatics and revolvers) and two pump-action shotguns. I had never been this close a handgun before - standing near a police officer doesn't count. As I described in "OLS" (more on that below), it was certainly a sobering experience to see all that metal. They had the Desert Eagle and the Smith & Wesson 500 revolver, which are as ridiculously, stupidly big as you'd expect them to be.

Peering through the glass, I scanned the rows for one gun in particular - and found it: The Smith & Wesson Sigma firearm I'd given Kim in OLS. It's strange, seeing in person the thing you've written so much about. As I was taking mental notes about the gun, I started chatting with a very nice, very knowledgeable sales clerk. He let my dad and I hold the Sigma and a Colt M1911 and explained their history and miscellanea.

Looks like I'll have some OLS rewriting to do. The Sigma has no safety (), which is sure to freak Kim out. I was agahst too, until the proprieter explained that the trigger pull was significant for the 1st round, mostly preventing accidental discharge, and if one practiced safe gun handling techniques - that is, treated a gun with a safety and without one, a gun with no magazine and one topped off, with the same caution and respect, then there should be little problem.

The Sigma also does not have a manually-cockable hammer - depriving me of my "Dirty Harry" moment at the end of OLS. I can't decide whether to say screw it and leave it in there as artistic license, since most of my readers probably wouldn't know or care, or rework the scene....

Question: What does manually pulling the slide back do? (I've never fired a pistol.) When is it necessary to pull it back? When you load a new magazine, in order to get the first bullet in the hole? I thought the trigger pull automatically did that... If there's already a bullet in the chamber, would pulling back the slide simply eject a live round?

As I predicted, the Sigma's composite body is certainly lighter than, say, the M1911. This would make it easier for somebody like Kim to carry, but the lower mass would mean increased recoil.

Fast fact: the clerk told us he has two pistols and a shotgun - used mostly for target practice and protecting his dog. Apparantly, there are a lot of coyotes and bears out where he lives, and he needs to protect his dog when she goes out to the bathroom at night. I'd never considered that as a potential use for firearms...