Dumber Than Usual

 Spam call listed as South Africa.  Why would anyone believe than an American company would call from South Africa about charges to your AT&T account?

A New Category of Failure

I was reading a student paper.  Not plagiarism.  Not using ChatGPT.   It was scrambled writing with almost no capitalized proper nouns, which is something that most students get at least occasionally correct. Then I saw the word "period."  It appears the student used Word's Dictate feature and did not re-read it before submission.

I have read several excellent papers this semester but several that tell me we will be a Third World nation very soon.

The Last Episode of Twilight Zone Season 5

"The Witchin' Pool" is a warning of what the 1960s was going to bequeath to our generation and the one before ours.  A upper class couple are suffering a marriage collapse.  The children  go through a Twilight Zone swimming pool bottom that leads to an idyllic Huckleberry Finn sort of community.  

It is all such a perfect metaphor of how divorcing parents put themselves first.  "The kids will do okay."

You can imagine how it ends.  The children go back to the paradise when Mom and Dad cannot stop fighting.  This was first broadcast in 1964.

Things That Make You Feel Good

Buying pants at Wal-Mart and seeing that sizing says Slim fit.

Okay, I know that there has been size inflation but it still feels good.

Today's Conundrum

The Bushnell 3x9-40mm BDC scope is past its prime.  When attempting to adjust elevation at the range, my instructor discovered that turning the adjustment screw clockwise lowered the point of aim. So did counterclockwise.  Nonetheless using the BDC allowed me to hit silhouette targets at 200, 300, 400, and 500 yards with consistency.  Good enough for government work, although not in the same sense we meant when I worked at JPL.

Bushnell has a 30 year warranty on their scopes.  I tried to find out if this number on the bottom of the scope 71-6302 meant that it was still in warranty.  Send it in and we will tell you.  If not, they send it back with a coupon for a discount on a new Bushnell. Under warranty, they either repair it or replace it with something comparable.

This scope works well enough for anything for which I might need it.  If I send it in, it may be away for many weeks.  If it is out of warranty, fine, I can sight in a new okay Chinese-made scope likely to last about as long.  If not, I will likely get an decently working scope in need of sighting in again.

 Should I just buy a Philippines-made Vortex and ship this Bushnell off for possible warranty repair?  Maybe sell the replacement on eBay?

The Brilliant Design of the AR-15

I worked with a car mechanic turned computer operator* (back when that was a job) who told me once that there were about a dozen ways to put Chevy small block V8 together.  Some worked better than others but they still worked.  Jaguar engines were another matter; there was one way to do it.  Other ways do not work.

I just cleaned my Eagle Arms EA-15 (now rebranded as Armalite) for the first time in perhaps 20 years.  No, I did not fire it that whole time either.  While reassembling the bolt, I remembered what a beautiful design this is.  You have to remember the sequence for pulling the cotter pin to release the firing pin so you can rotate the extractor assembly to release the cam bolt, but if you remember that much, it is hard to screw up reassembling everything.

*This guy was the second most colorful person with whom I have ever worked.  As I post memoirs here I will recount some of the stories that made him so interesting in a charmingly dishonest way.  I am sure he is dead by now unless he came up with some amazing whopper that caused both St. Peter and Satan to refuse him admittance.

What If They Sent Him to Prison The First Two Times?

 4/30/23 Fox News:

A manhunt continued Sunday afternoon, more than 24 hours after Francisco Oropesa, 38, allegedly shot five of his neighbors in their home, including an 8-year-old boy in Cleveland, Texas. 

Oropesa is in the country illegally and has been deported previously, an ICE source told Fox News Digital. He has re-entered the U.S. illegally "multiple" times and ICE last encountered him in 2016, the source said.