Damn Car Trouble
Last night on the way home from work my engine started to overheat and my radiator began spouting steam. I dropped my car off at the repair shop and got a ride home from Rebecca.
The shop called me at 7:30 AM this morning (WTF?) to tell me the radiator and hoses and thermostat needed to be replaced. Grand total? $812. Argh.
Notes on .223 / 5.56x45mm Ammo
Now that I’m getting an AR-15, I’ll need some 5.56mm/.223 ammo for it. If you’re not particularly familiar with guns, it might surprise you to learn that finding, selecting, and using ammo is much more complicated than one might expect, given that it’s ultimately just some propellant in a can with a bullet on top.
For the AR-15 family of weapons, the US and NATO militaries provide a great source of surplus ammo, but the details get pretty complicated. This post tracks my adventures on this subject, more for my reference than for the consumption of others.
Sources
First, the AR-15.com ammo oracle is a great source of everything one could possibly need to know about AR-15 (that is to say, .223 Remington and 5x56x45mm) ammo. I also benefited from Dave Markovitz’s Thoughts on Selecting .223/5.56MM Ammo.
Summary
There are two main 5.56mm loads used by the US military: M193 and M855. M193 is a lead-core 55gr FMJBT ball bullet, while the M855 is a steel-core 62gr FMJBT ball bullet. SS-109 is the NATO spec for a 62gr FMJBT bullet; M855 stuff is to SS-109 specs, but M855 includes some additional specs that SS-109 does not. So, M855-compliant loads are SS-109-compliant, but SS-109-compliant loads aren’t necessarily M855-compliant. M193 was never adopted by NATO.
M193 vs M855
The 55gr M193 bullet is lighter than M855. M855 is capable of piercing some armor, while M193 is designated only for unarmored targets.
Given the considerable ballistic differences between the two, a gun zeroed for M193 won’t retain its zero when shotting M855. Thus, it’s pretty important to practice using ammo similar to your SHTF(Shit Hits the Fan) ammo, particularly for zeroing.
What I’ll use
M193 stuff is cheaper and easier to find, and more importantly, cheap M193-clone ammo for target practice is easier to find and cheaper than M855 stuff. When looters start wearing class III body armor, I’ll think about M855 loads (or switch to the M1A shooting .308 NATO).
Sources
This ar15.com thread is constantly updated with ammo prices from various sources.
Wolf has some M193 ammo which it turns out is just imported by Wolf, and produced by a Serbian company, Prvi Partizan. It’s cheap, but quality reports on ar15.com have been mixed.
Federal’s XM193 ammo (made by the Lake City plant that provides the US military with official M193) seems to be well-regarded, and is what Dave Markowitz uses as his SHTF load according to his post cited above. It’s expensive, though; Cheaper than Dirt sells it for $7.97 for a box of 20, which comes out to $398.50/1000.
Winchester’s Q3131 also seems well regarded, as is the Q3131A which is made for IMI.
Federal American Eagle 55gr .223 ammo also seems a popular target load.
Wolf also imports Russian, steel-cased .223. My brother and I used it in his Bushmaster AR-15 carbine, and we had all sorts of feeding and extraction problems, not to mention a frightening accumulation of shit within the gun after an extended session. Though some swear by Wolf, and others claim to know a guy who heard that it fouls the chamber and makes the gun explode, killing those within a two mile radius and contributing significantly to global climate change, all while not feeding properly.
I need two types of ammo: SHTF ammo that feeds reliably and fires accurately every time, and practice ammo that feeds rather reliably and may not be as accurate, but costs way less. My tentative SHTF selection is the Federal XM193 stuff, while I’m sampling American Eagle AE223, Winchester Q3131, and the Serbian shit to decide which one gets to be my practice round.
Selection
I ordered from Ammunition to Go 100 rds each of Sellier & Bellot, Federal American Eagle, Winchester Q3131, Federal Lake City XM193, and their 55gr mil surplus reloads. From Sportsman’s Guide I ordered 200 rds of the Wolf-imported Serbian shit. I’ll try them all out and see what works best.
Yay! A New Gun!
It’s official! I ordered a new gun today. I wanted the Polish TDI Underfolder AK-47 from Arms of America, but my FFL transfer guy dragged his feet, and now they’re out of stock. Taking this as a sign, I’ve opted to hold off on the commie guns for the time being, and ordered the Bushmaster Carbon 15 “Model 4″ Carbine
MSRP is $1135, but my guy gets it for $936 including shipping, plus VA sales tax. Should arrive this week sometime.
Platforms like the AR-15 are so customizable, and have such a vigorous after-market, as to render computers and Harleys one-size-fits-all by comparison. Which of the roughly 100 grips should I get? How about optics? Aimpoint, Trijcon, etc? Do I get a Beta C-mag (100 rds in a pan mag roughly the size of a margarine tub)? Lasers? Tac lights? Perhaps I’ll be the first kid on the block w/ pink running lights on my handguard, or a light blue LED on my bolt.
Perhaps this is my irrational exuberance talking, but I’d rather spend the same money on 10 stock guns than 1 tricked-out monstrosity, particularly when there are so many different guns I want.
Up next I’m strongly considering the Sig P229 DAK in .40 S&W. I’ve resolved to get my CCW this year, and I just don’t like the feel of my Kahr PM9 for carry; it’s actually too small. Then again, the M1A is quite striking, and the Yugo under-folders at AIMSurprlus are very hot…
You begin to see my problem.
What Firearm Fits Me Best?
What firearm fits me best? The answer won’t surprise anyone who knows me:
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You scored as Assault Rifle. You are soldier. Or you want to be a soldier. Or you just love military-type firearms. You need assault rifle. M16 or AK-47 will do good.
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What Firearm Fits You Best?
created with QuizFarm.com
The assault rifle pictured looks like a G3 or FAL or Galil or some other fruity European model. When it comes to assault rifles, I recognize two choices: American and Soviet.
Move apocryph.org to DreamHost
If you’re reading this, I’ve successfully transferred apocryph.org to DreamHost from CI Host. I pay about one fourth of what CI Host was charging me, and I get sysadmins who know their ass from a hole in the ground (note to CI Host: your security and DNS guys are utter fuckwits).
The move was a breeze. I used rsync -avx [src] celatrix.com:[destpath] to copy over my gallery and drupal folders (including 26GB of Gallery photos). I had a little trouble getting Gallery and Drupal running, but only due to my own stupid mistakes. I did have to download and build a statically-linked version of ffmpeg for Gallery, since DreamHost doesn’t include it in their standard server build, but it was a non-event. mysqldump was a no-brainer; I moved my Gallery and Drupal databases in a couple minutes.
I do wish DreamHost’s DNS was a bit better; I want webmail.apocryph.org to redirect to the Google Apps for Domains URL for my apocryph.org webmail, but they hard-code webmail to alias to their own web mail offering, with no ability to turn it off. Other than that, I’ve had no complains so far.
It’s really nice to have 400GB of breathing room; I can’t believe it’s so cheap. I keep waiting for the catch, but I’ve not found it yet.
UPDATE : OK, the honeymoon didn’t last too long. apocryph.org was down all day yesterday, due to the following litany of problems:
- First, the server hosting apocryph.org went down inexplicably. I opened a support ticket, and got this response:
Hey there Adam,
I took a look at your site, and it looks like it’s back up. It looks like the server your site’s on was having issues earlier, and ended up needing a complete reboot about 20 minutes ago. It could have been an abusive user, or a high load on the server. I’m assuming one of our admins
resolved it. I’ll keep an eye on it to see if I can stop this from happening again. If you have any more question, please let me know, and I’ll see what I can do to help.That’s awesome. How often is that going to happen, in the middle of the day, on a weekday?
- Second, the aliases I setup to serve the
gallery2anddrupalcontent, which take ten minutes to apply according to the DreamHost control panel, took hours. Here’s the support reply (note: the first attempt at describing this problem was misunderstood as a question about theAliasdirective inhttpd.conf):
Hello,
Its possible that the server was slow to update the apache instance and thus it took longer to take effect,usually it takes about an hour or so. Sorry for my misunderstanding of your initial email. I am glad to hear its working for you. If there is anything else I can help with let me know.
So, it usually takes an hour, despite the panel saying ten minutes, and it in fact took multiple hours? What’s going on over there?
- Third, the subdirectory remapping thing has a huge caveat:
Note also that PHP scripts in remapped sub-directories – within your own home directory – can only run with the server’s default PHP version, which is presently PHP 4.4.2. Software that requires PHP 5 cannot run in a remapped directory.
Um..lame!
So, while I’m not ready to claim the refund yet, I no longer deify DreamHost, and if these shitty experiences continue, I may have to beg CI Host to take me back.
Yahoo Pipes
Today I played briefly with Yahoo! Pipes. I whipped up a pipe for NoVA house listings < $500k, which combines a craigslist search feed and a feed from forsalebyowner.com. It seems to work ok, though I wish the real estate industry would get with the program and stop hiding their almost-worthless listings behind registration requirements and kludgy email alerts regimes.
OMFG How Is This Possible
Currently I pay $588/yr ($50/mo) for 1U colo services with CI Host. The box I have in their colo facility has 250GB of storage, and a handful of VMs running apocryph.org and a few other things. It hosts my expansive image gallery, a few databases, etc.
I’m starting to run out of space on this machine, and need a better solution. I could keep my machine at CI Host, but it would cost me $200 to ship it back here for an HDD upgrade, then back out again, plus a few hundred dollars for new drives. So, I starting looking around, and found the unbelievably good deal at Dreamhost.
For $19.95/mo (prepaid one year in advance, with 97-day refund policy), I get 400GB of storage (no, that’s not a typo, 0.4TB), and it increases by a GB or two every week, just like GMail storage. I also get 4096GB of monthly transfer bandwidth (yes, 4.0TB), which also increases each month. With a promo code I found in the forums, I saved $97 off the first year of service, so I paid $142.40 (as in, < $12/mo) for nearly twice the storage I currently have, for 1/4th of what I’m currently paying.
I’ll be transitioning all my properties over to my dreamhost account between now and May, when my CI Host contract is up for renewal, at which point I will enjoy no small bit of satisfaction in telling those incompetent fuckwits to get lost (though I’ll still have to pay $100 to get my box back).
If you sign up with them, use promo code ADAMSENTME; you’ll get the max possible discount, and I won’t get anything other than the satisfaction of knowing I’m spreading the wealth.
WTF is happening to Virginia?
The VCDL list just called my attention to the Virginia House of Delegates HB 2943, which passed out of committee and is headed for a floor vote. I’ll let it speak for itself:
Gives a law-enforcement officer the choice of issuing a summons and releasing the person or arresting him for Class 1 and 2 misdemeanors. Under current law the law-enforcement officer must release the person on a summons for most Class 1 and 2 misdemeanors unless the person fails to stop the unlawful act or indicates that he will not appear as directed in the summons. The bill also requires the officer to arrest the person if he fails to stop the unlawful act; currently arrest is discretionary.
Now, I know what you’re thinking; if a misdemeanor becomes an arresting offense, what distinguishes a misdemeanor from a felony? A fair question, to which the offending Delegates haven’t a satisfactory answer.
I don’t know what’s happening to VA. It was (and, for now, still is) a beacon of relative liberty relative to the collectivist left-leaning governments of Maryland and DC. But lately it’s been passing tax hikes, launching transportation spending boondoggles, and eroding individual freedoms. It doesn’t help that we lost George Allen, a mostly useless but also mostly harmless Republican senator, for Jim Webb, a mostly useless but also somewhat harmful Democrat.
Where does a conservative libertarian have to go to escape the multitude of meddlesome bureaucrats and benevolent tyrants?
An RFC for libertarian conservative ideology?
I just read an article on TCS by Arnold Kling, in which he admires the somewhat ad-hoc governance structures responsible for forming and maintaining the standards upon which the Internet runs, and attempts to use a similar approach to converge upon an ideological standard for libertarian conservatives, with which to facilitate advocacy and rebut the standard ‘you hate [protected group here]‘ rhetoric which passes for discourse from the militant left.
I don’t normally write about politics, principally because this blog is a venue for me to write to my distant future self (who is not interested in my political insights of the day), but since Kling invoked the RFCs, I feel this one is fair game.
While I certainly agree with the bulk of the ideological principles outlined in his first draft, I don’t think this is an effort that can be taken seriously, nor do I think the model of Internet governance is a good one.
First, a ‘conservative libertarian’, to my mind, is a small-government social and economic conservative, with a libertarian’s wariness of government meddling. Though I suspect most conservative libertarians agree on major principles, even within this specialized subgroup there is bound to be significant disagreement, which leads to the ‘herding cats’ problem that plagues so many attempts at libertarian activism.
Second, and more significant, I think Kling fails to consider the substantial differences between technology interoperability standards and ideological consensus. IETF standards tend to evolve in a more ad-hoc way than do, say, IEEE standards, which to my mind is part of their success. However, the objective of the IETFs standards is to ensure interoperable functionality among disparate systems interconnected via the Internet; thus, otherwise-unpleasant compromises in furtherance of this objective are more appealing.
For example, during the 80′s and 90′s, the prevailing wisdom in the networking community seemed to be on what could be characterized as the Big Government approach to standards, a la OSI, X.400, and X.500. These tended to be elaborate specifications devised by rooms of corporate and academic heavyweights while on retreat in an exotic locale, and much removed from the realities of the ad-hoc decentralized computing movement.
TCP/IP and the protocols that followed broke that paradigm, and ultimately won the standards war, because they worked. No matter how convinced you may have been that the proper way to implement a network protocol was an exhaustive, highly-abstracted, very complicated protocol, and however much you had personally vested in the losing standard, at the end of the day the protocol with the most widespread implementation and strongest market position won.
Ideological standards, on the other hand, do not benefit from this economic incentive. The fact that more and more of my fellow conservative libertarians are supporting gun control or a minimum wage or whatever does carry any persuasive weight against my position, save for the human tendency to move with the herd.
There is not some point of ideological critical mass beyond which it’s not practical for me to say “Dammit, your ideology is wrong and mine is right”. By contrast, there came a point at which the most ardent OSI or X.400 devotee had to choose between usable, interconnected technology based on the “wrong” protocol, or disconnected and obsolete technology based on the “right” protocol.
The alternative to ideological standardization, verticalization of ideological debates (yes, I am considering an MBA in armchair bullshitting), seems better aligned with the ideological diversity within even a fairly similar group. For example, rather than choosing between the ‘gun control and top-down ecological conservation’ standard or the ‘gun rights and laissez-fair ecological conservation’ standard, one can choose to support the NRA or the VPC, the Sierra Club or the CEI.
This ended up being a much longer, denser, loquacious post than I intended. Bottom line: ideologies and technology standards are very different; what works to develop and refine one won’t work for the other.