Anti-Christian Jeans

Some Swedish brand from a designer who doesn't like organized religion....

http://www.wral.com/money/5732571/detail.html

"They're known as Cheap Monday and have a trendy tight fit and low price. They also have a logo that features a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead."

"Low price"?

They're 44 Euros a piece! That's not cheap, that's a sin.

I get my pants at Walmart for less than $10.

1858 .44 Remington...

And here's one of my Christmas gifts. An 1858 .44 Remington kit.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

You're a good egg, Santa. A right jolly old elf!

I've got a bigger version of that somewhere.... lemme look......

Click...Hiss...Bang!

Wondering why there was such a delay when firing my rifle? I put that out there on Muzzleloadingforum.com and got back some useful advice -- vent hole too small, too much priming in the wrong area of the pan, used the wrong brand of powder.... To learn more, why not go to the forum itself: www.muzzleloadingforum.com. You'll have to register, but that's free. Just go to "The Builder's Bench" forum and scroll down to "Fired my first...."

Have fun.

This week's column....

Click…
Hiss…
BOOM!
Fired my flintlock over the weekend.
I finished up my kit for a Revolutionary War-style, Kentucky rifle a week or so back and had been waiting for a good time and a legal place to fire it.
Last Saturday the stars aligned and I went with our webmaster Chad to his folks’ house to fire my first muzzleloader.
We’ve got video of the whole affair thanks to Chad’s camerawork. Just visit my blog for the link: jderrickstar.blogspot.com.
You’ll get to see me with a gun wearing camo and a Santa hat. I figured the fuzzy, bright toboggan would keep me warm and in the future may help fend off misguided marksmen gunning for deer, rabbits, squirrels – nobody wants to shoot Santa!
And the ratty old Army BDU shirt gives an upper layer with plenty of pockets that you don’t mind getting messy. I understand the black powder these guns burn is actually a very dirty chemical – corrosive, on fire and none to kind to a set of clothes.
I interviewed a Rev. War re-enactor a while back. He wore a shooting smock over his clothes to absorb the soot and scrapes of the range. He also had a floppy hat he’d charred the edge of to replicate the effect of extended firing of the weapon, which involves a small explosion only inches from your face.
This is a pretty old fashioned gun. It’s loaded through the muzzle (hence the term, “muzzleloader”), a slower and more technologically primitive manner of function.
Once you’re dumped a measured load of powder down the barrel you ram home a greased patch and a spherical lead bullet.
It’s a pretty snug fit going in because it needs to be a tight fit coming out again. Although lots of folks have called this new device of mine a musket, it’s actually a rifle – using “rifling,” ridges in the barrel that impart a spin upon the projectile, stabilizing it in flight like a spiraling football.
The bullet of an unrifled, smooth-bored musket doesn’t have to grip such ridges, making loading faster but firing less accurate.
After loading the barrel you ready the priming pan with powder. This ignites after you squeeze the trigger, releasing the spring-loaded stone shard that gives the flintlock its name to strike a piece of steel, casting a shower of sparks into the pan.
The pan goes *poof*, a small explosion goes *flash* through the hole connecting the pan to the main charge in the barrel and the gun goes *bang*.
Instantaneously.
Ideally.
Firing it the first time, aiming at an antifreeze jug filled with water, I heard the click, the hiss… the hiss… umm, wha? BANG.
I missed.
Firing it the second time I knew better what to expect – prepared to stay on target unconventionally long as the flint, pan, powder, hole and charge hold committee on how to do their thing.
I nailed it at 20 feet with .50 caliber worth of lead.
Water splattered everywhere, including my where.
For more on why there was a delay in firing and some possible solutions check out the blog: jderrickstar.blogspot.com.

Chocolate-covered peanut butter balls... a Christmas favorite

Chocolate, peanut butter, powdered sugar…. What’s not to like?
Chocolate-covered peanut butter balls have long been a holiday favorite of mine. First we would get them from a family friend, Darla Hamm. Then, to feed my insatiable appetite for the little treats, my mother got the recipe.
But now I’ve moved to Shelby and am starting my own bachelor kitchen. Neither mom nor Mrs. Hamm is here to cook for me so I’m learning to make my own chocolate-covered peanut butter balls.
The basic concept of chocolate-covered peanut butter balls is very simple. They are balls of peanut butter covered in chocolate. VERY simple.
Making the yummy snacky-poos [YOUR CALL ON WHETHER WE WANNA USE THE WORD SNACKY POO] is only a little more complicated.
Mix together a cup of smooth peanut butter, a teaspoon and a half of vanilla, two sticks of margarine and a cup and a half of powdered sugar. Then add in another cup of peanut butter.
Personally I find an extra half cup of sugar is necessary to keep the peanut butter from being too sticky, but I imagine that may depend some on the type of peanut butter used.
Roll the mix into grape-sized balls. I use the palms of my hands. Plop them on a baking sheet, put a toothpick in the top of each one and place them in a freezer.
While you’re waiting on the peanut butter to harden enough to dip them in melted chocolate, you can start melting the chocolate.
Double boil 12 oz. of chocolate chips and one ounce of paraffin. Using the toothpicks as handles, dip the peanut butter balls into the chocolate and place them back into the freezer to harden. I like using two trays – having one in the freezer while I’m using the other one.
So far I’ve had to melt a second batch of chocolate because I still have batter left after more than a hundred balls. But that’s good since the sweets tend to disappear so readily. Especially in an office.

Video from shooting flintlock....

Here's a low res video from shooting the flintlock with Chad on Saturday....

http://www.shelbystar.com/video/December/flintlocklowres.wmv

Enjoy!

Shot my flintlock rifle today....

Bagged me a jug of anti-freeze! I went over to Chad's folks' house to shoot my kit-built rifle for the first time today. We set up some water-filled targets and fired off some .50 caliber lead. When I hit it, the jug split open and water flew everywhere, spraying me 15, 20 feet back. Pretty fun.

And here's Chad, our webmaster... he shot some video of the whole event -- we'll get it online soon.

Ice day

When I got to The Star Thursday morning we had power.
But we quickly lost it, necessitating some pretty crafty improvisations to get the paper out for Friday – getting the pieces in place to bring everything together. My hunk of it all was being a techie for the morning.
Without power we can’t run our press. But we have a sister paper in Gastonia with a generator. We moved Skip and our copy desk to Gastonia to lay out the pages with the material the rest of the newsroom sent them. Chad headed to Gastonia where he had the functioning computer and necessary programs to keep our website updated.
Back in Shelby, Jennie, Alan Jenkins and Joy were coordinating our efforts. Our writers could report with only their pencils and pads, and our photographers could take pictures with their battery-powered cameras, but getting their material into the paper required computers, electricity and the internet.
The photo department regularly winds up in tight spots where we’re scrambling to get an internet connection on deadline after a basketball game in Winston-Salem… trying to get power to cell phone in hurricane-ravaged Mississippi… and so we’ve got some equipment and tricks that can help out.
Ordinarily, we’ve got high speed internet at The Star.
But with the power out that’s dead.
We’ve got wireless internet.
Dead too.
The fancy phone system that could be hooked up with a dial up connection?
Dead.
We’ve got a little gizmo that’s supposed to let your computer talk to the internet through your cell phone.
And every time I need it it won’t work.
Fun, eh?
But then Jeff remembered that our fax system is on old-fashioned low-tech phone lines, a system I could hook into my trusty AOL account.
Just like we did in Laurel.
I love it when the old, 1800’s-tech telephone lines come through in the pinch after our fancy modernity has flopped. Having a family member working for a phone company, we honestly take a little pride in that.
And Jeff remembering how our phone system was organized saved a lot of hassle and really shows the value of long term experience.
He came in from shooting and was able to hook in with another dial-up system. At that point we could get a couple computers on the Internet. That’s wasn’t ideal, but folks could do their work on their new, battery-powered laptops, burn the files onto CD’s and then we could use the internet-connected computers to send the stuff t Gastonia.
But laptop batteries didn’t work as long as we did.
Being prepared to charge cameras, phones, computers and other gadgets far from wall outlets, the photo department had these neat little converters: you can plug one end into a car’s cigarette lighter and the other end has outlets that can power everything from a scanner to a small refrigerator.
I ducked out to my running car for a while to charge up my laptop, but as we got more computers working and were burning more power we needed a better option.
So Jeff and I ran extension cords from the building outdoors to our running cars, plugged in converters and computers and we were in business. It was a pretty ugly snarl of power cables, converters and idling cars, but it worked.
At one point we had two laptops and a cell phone running off my Camry.
Once we had our jury-rigged system up and running things were flowing and I have no idea who all did what. But I am sure it was a crazy, chaotic and successful team effort – employees checking on each other to be sure they were okay, folks bringing in food, we had people spending the night at the office….
Nobody could have done everything alone and all the piece had to come together very precisely to make it all happen.
And all this on a very, very short deadline – for photo it was noon.

A couple more flower photos....

Flowers :)

Looking through the photos I’ve taken over the past year I see I’ve taken some good ones of flowers. And given the wintry mix currently predicted they might cheer things up a bit.
This one I took on Green River Cove Road near Saluda, NC. I’ve got more on my blog: jderrickstar.blogspot.com.
There’s some pretty good trout fishing down on the river and you can always find someone tubing, kayaking… doing something photogenic. The road itself is a lot of fun – crooked as a politician under investigation and narrow as said public servant’s outlook on the world.
I was driving along it one day and saw this little creek leaping out of the mountainside, flowing under the road and gushing out into the river. There were little yellow flowers growing along a rocky outcropping overlooking them.
I was able to work my way though the bushes and brambles to get out onto the little cliff, maybe ten feet above the culvert the water was flowing through.
It’s the sort of fall that wouldn’t kill you unless you hit your head and drowned, but would certainly ruin your day and probably break something.
The flowers weren’t all that big, but I was able to get very, very close to them to give them the impression of size. And a slow shutter speed gives the water the impression of motion.
The NC Sierra Club was asking their writers for their favorite nature hangouts, what you could do there, what sort of animals are present… for Green River Cove Road I keep coming up with “there are all sorts of animals. I’ve nearly hit deer, turkey….”
After my “granola: made from hippies” submission maybe I just ought to sit that one out.

The American Longrifle

The American longrifle, sometimes called the Pennsylvania rifle for where much of its development took place, generally called the Kentucky rifle for the frontier where it received so much use, is a unique product of the American colonies.

One of the first things you notice is that the weapon is very, very long. This can be a pain. Try finding a carry case for a weapon of this size. Try finding a cleaning rod. It's not easy. I had to drive to Concord.

But there are reasons for the very long barrel. The longer the barrel, the more accurate it is to aim. Instead of a short pistol where every twitch can throw off it off the mark by yards, a very long rifle is more stable physically and geometrically.

Also, black powder is actually not all that powerful as explosives go. So to take
Advantage of every bit of power in the charge you use a longer barrel to give the explosion’s gasses a greater opportunity to act on the round.

I’ve read that at about 42 inches is the break even point between the longer barrel getting more power from the charge and the bullet running into too much friction. That’s a 3 ½ foot gun barrel!

And the colonial riflemen often preferred a relatively small but well-powered ball to a heavier, slower projectile from a less efficient weapon. On the frontier where supplies were not always easy to come by, a gun that could kill the same number of deer using less lead and powder was a plus.

For more, check out: http://www.americanlongrifles.com/, www.airbum.com/NeatShtpix/LongRifle.html and http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/.

This is my rifle....

I just finished up my flintlock rifle kit... can't wait for a good day and a chance to fire it....

Go Army! Beat Navy!

If a man runs through his backyard in his underwear, but nobody's there to see him because it's during a hurricane, does it count?

I think the trees are out to get me.
Specifically, I think they’re out for my car. They feel they’ve been cheated for too long and they want blood.
Just last week a limb fell out of a tree behind my apartment and dented my car. A tree threw a stick at me Wednesday while I was taking out the garbage.
They’re angry because my car keeps cheating them, getting past them, squeezing under, around and through them.
Last year I woke up one morning around 5 a.m. during one of the hurricanes that came through the Southeast week after week after week. I figured I probably ought to be listening to the scanner to see if there was any breaking news.
But the scanner was in my car in the backyard, and it was raining outside, and I didn’t want to get my clothes wet, but I wasn’t wearing my clothes at 5 a.m. and it was still dark out anyways….
So I lay in bed listening to the scanner whisper sweet nothings into my ear.
Ain’t photojournalism romantic?
A call went out about a tree in the road on N.C. 150, something like 100 yards up from Buffalo Creek. I figured I was already having such a splendid morning, why not make it even better by taking pictures in the rain.
So I got in my car, having put on some clothes, and drove out towards Waco.
After passing the creek I started counting off the distance. I’ve done a fair deal of running, hiking and assorted other stupid human tricks that make you painfully aware just how far 100 yards is.
I’ll guess a football player can tell you down to the millimeter. It’s a game of inches.
A mile or so later I still hadn’t found the tree in the road so I figured it had already been cleaned up and I started looking for a place to turn around.
That’s when I hit the tree.
Actually, I just grazed its fluffy end, and that’s what has the trees ticked at my car – we keep getting away.
So I pulled over, got out my camera, and started taking pictures of other people hitting the tree.
Now I carry flares in my car.
But seriously, as winter approaches and driving conditions grow occasionally somewhat tricky, the NC DOT has some driving tips for snow and ice:
One trick about driving in wintry conditions is not to drive. Stay home. I live close enough to the office to walk if I need to.
If you have to drive, be sure you have a feel for the road and slow down. Way down, chop it in half or more on snow and slow to a crawl on ice, according to the DOT. Give yourself more time and space to stop, turn and accelerate, and keep an eye out for particularly nasty patches.
And remember. You may be driving a big fancy 4x4 SUV that has two more drive wheels than my Camry. But we’ve all got the same number of brakes, so take it easy.
I’ll put some more of the DOT’s advice on my blog, jderrickstar.blogspot.com.