Friday, January 31, 2003
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Dave Asks: What is this?
That is a M-2 .50 caliber machine gun with a blank firing attachment mounted on a M113 family personnel carrier, probably rolling around Ft. Irwin, CA.
The M-2 is blow-back operated: it's mechanism depends on the backwards force of the bullet being ejected from the barrel. Since a blank is just a small powder charge, it doesn't have the same force as the full powder charge and bullet, so the blank firing attachment covers up enough of the barrel muzzle for the blank to produce the force to operate the mechanism. It is separate from the barrel because the barrel of the M-2 moves backward (hence, "blow-back operated"). It also includes a metal piece that goes into the feed tray of the weapon, which prevents real bullets from entering the weapon, a real disaster if you have that BFA mounted.
The operation of the M-2 is similar to how pistols operate, only on a much larger scale. What is remarkable about the M-2 is that is is a highly accurate weapon, despite it's barrel moving around quite a bit. I think it is probably the largest blow-back operated automatic weapon in existence or in common usage. Some other large weapons, such as the main gun of tanks or howitzers, also use blow-back force. However, the mechanism of cannon typically is confined to shock absorption and breech opening (and the breech ejects the spent cartridge or base case). They are not truly automatic in that people load the next round in them, or are automatic on an electro-mechanical basis, in that the blow-back force does not also load the round, but a mechanical contraption powered in some other way loads the next round.
For the vehicle ID, I was confused at first by the soldier with the binoculars on the left. He is actually sitting on top of the vehicle and the metal in front of him is the characteristic upwards facing engine exhaust of the 113. The vented circular object in the center foreground is the horn.
To the far right of the picture frame, you will notice two upright and curved at the top tubes of silver metal. This is part of the cage of the "whoopie light," a signal light mounted to vehicles while using MILES gear, a militarized version of laser tag. On the M-2, just above the base of the barrel, you can kind of see the laser, which is a little metal box mounted on top of the weapon, that shoots each time it feels the shock of a blank being fired.
Since this is commonly used at large scale war games at the National Training Center (NTC) at Ft. Irwin, and the mountains in the background seem characteristic of the mountains and valleys Mojave desert there, I figured that this was taken at the NTC. The soldier to the right is wearing a CVC helmet, (Combat Vehicle Crewman helmet) and the soldier to the left is wearing a standard kevlar helmet.
In my former unit they could be mortar guys or mechanics. I think they are mechanics because they look a little bit messy (sleeves rolled up, on the guy to the left, neither he nor the track commander to the right is wearing a BDU top, despite obviously in an action pose for a picture. The binoculars look to be of an older variety, which opens up the possibility that they are cavalry scouts or mechanized infantry, since it would be before the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was fielded. An additional possibility is that they are national guard, in which the messiness and dumb looking action pose would fit as well.
It Shipped!
Update:
Scan Activity | Date/Time | Comments |
Left FedEx RampC.K.S. INTL AIRPORT TW | 01/31/2003 20:52 | � |
Package statusC.K.S. INTL AIRPORT TW | 01/31/2003 00:05 | � |
Arrived at FedEx RampTA YUAN HSIANG TW | 01/30/2003 16:28 | � |
Left FedEx Origin LocationTAOYUAN CITY TW | 01/30/2003 12:37 | � |
Pickup statusTAOYUAN CITY TW | 01/30/2003 12:21 | �Package received after FedEx cutoff time |
http://www.williamchu.com/movies/officeLinebacker.mov
I finally found that link for this thingy
thank you MR Serpa,
however everything worked fine on the cd you passed on to me except the f.c.p.
and I am glad the printer is working out for you.
I am currently playing around with Carls Sd9.
He is letting us take it with us on our trip to palm springs, (joshua tree while we are there)
and then tampa bay.
There are a couple of aerial shot we are doing for the Hotels.
Cant wait nothing makes me puke more than helicopter rides.
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
that dali lamma chap must feel like a total asshole for saying that peace was the only way to have peace. he obviously wasn't raised by a former head of the CIA. peace without war, HA! what a nut. what does he know about peace?
go george! all us uneducated masses are behind you! all the way!
d.
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
but todd, ryan and i had a blast until the power in the office blew up.
yeah, i was a little worried, but everything turned out just fine. it had to happen as soon as we had all of our ducks in a row, didn't it.
i spent some time this weekend putting together a little book of images i made at the japanese gardens in portland, which i was able to print thanks to taggart. next time i see him, he gets a little book. lucky guy.
and there's a moral to this post :: give me something i want and i will be nice to you. other wise, take your chances.
Monday, January 27, 2003
i hear that dairy products can really help your body to produce more muccus. eat lots of cheese and butter. if you do i'm sure your face will swell full of that thick yellow stuff. i used to hock it up and use it for glue. it's better than wheat paste!
gouda really makes that stuff thick and chunky. you should also try and put alot of butter on everything you eat! it tastes great on steak!
killy,
i wish we could have spent more time playing this weekend. you were like a little brown rambo durring our game we played. it was fun to watch you run amok, killing everything in sight. remember when the enemy hand grenade blew your face off? that was so cool. i got to see the whole thing. awsome. really.
d.
Sunday, January 26, 2003
i reall can't remember exactly what we played, but i do remember that paul's computer isn't very ghost recon friendly. and here i thought that playing on paul's ultra fast super computer was going to really speed things up. well, so much for that...
the breakfast the next morning (afternoon) hit the spot: a monster breakfast burrito with xtra cheese and salsa. oh man, i could eat one of those things every weekend for breakfast and NEVER get tired of 'em.
i did manage to get in a co-op mission game in with dave at carl's place. that was fun; although, i wish i could have stayed longer. i abandoned them to visit holly before i headed back to houston.
holly is as busy/frustrated/awesome as she's ever been. she's flying all over the place with tosca these days, living out of cool hotels and partying when she's not assisting.
got back into houston around 10:30 or so. took my time coming back home. i imagined what it would be like to live around everyone again. i really miss having everyone around.
he's actually fine now (knock on wood) and should sleep soundly tonight. being that this is his first fever, the doc wants to check him out anyway. more than likely it wasn't even the weather in chicago, but the fact that he's teething that gave him the fever. maybe. carol's isn't really a bug either, but a normal allergic reaction to cats.
normally, i'm the first (and only) one in the household to get sick. I can't remember the last time that carol has been sick.
their trip to chicago was fun, so i hear. adolfo iv did fine on the plane (both ways) and everyone around him fell in love with him. his aunts, uncles, and cousins in chicago had a blast with him; although, i hear that he's afraid of his cousin thalia.
Saturday, January 25, 2003
or actually
i am very rarely sick with anything more than an itchy eye
but now i am down for the count
and i am out
chicago does this to me
killy
i'm sorry
i hope i don't make you sick
i think it's more the dry air than anything else
backing up my usual fluid head
into a solid hunk of congealed muccus
i can picture it there
it's probably no bigger than a walnut
but it's stuck up there
in my little muccus cavity
nowhere to go
and doesn't want to get out anyway
sticky and doughlike
kind of like cookie dough
but i really don't know
maybe it's this headache
never had one so big
at least that i can remember
can't wait to come home
my husband will take care of me
and thankfully
the baby looks fine
it's just mommy this time
Friday, January 24, 2003
Thursday, January 23, 2003
http://www.burkestudios.com/
make no mistake, most of my friends are with me. maybe not my french or german buddies, but the new guys are on my team. so all you east side euro hommies lock and load, cuz we are gonna put it down and around and clean up A town. word.
we are gonna plow thru yall like corn fields with our hot steel.
peace.
d.
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
a weekend (or at least a REALLY late night) of gaming should be great therapy. Speaking of gaming, I finished the third mission of the Desert Siege campaign. I played it for five days before i made any headway on it. The next mission is the 'protect the convoy mission. I tried it a couple of times tonight and got eaten up. Well, there's always this weekend.
Well, it seems that Ryan, Todd and I are going to duke it out with Taggart and Dave and anyone else they can persuade to take their side. I wonder if chuck would throw his hat in the ring?
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Monday, January 20, 2003
also, if we game over on todd's side of town, does that mean taht i WON'T have to bring the imac? does paul's computer constitute an 'xtra' computer? that would be nice, but i don't have any problems with bringing my computer along for the ride.
anyway, wherever we end up i'm sure it'll be a good time.
Friday, January 17, 2003
This is the color of my sissy french toilet paper
yeah, it's cold here too. even eleo put her heater on. i've got 17 rolls of film to process tonight. might not be around till around 10 or so. i'm going to pick up some supplies, process & contact, then coming home.
todd: if you are coming into town let me know when.
adolph: what are your plans?
tag is in town too, but only till sunday? or is it sat night? don't remember. we had dinner last night at niko's with adolfo iv. he was cuter than ever when he spilled liz's lemonade all over the table. his reach is long.
cold cold cold cold cold.
i really should have had my heater fixed.
i was downtown yesterday, near 4th street, so i swung by the place that used to be ruta maya's. it is now the halcyon lounge. i guess the revolution isn't cool anymore.
on the plus side, they let you smoke indoors, a feature damn near impossible to find in austin these days.
i just read killy's earlier post about how i'll recode the layout. am i so predictable?
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Other Obsessions:
I used a MacWorld half off anything coupon I found on DealMac to pick up a Nostromo N50 GamePad. They didn't have any stock of the Nostromo N30 Game Mouse (you got to love a mouse touted as having a "rugged, aggressive feel") when I bought the game pad, so I will make due with my optical PocketMouse Pro.
Once the N50 comes in, I am going to work on my Ghost Recon skilz. I wonder if it will work w/ Illustrator/Photoshop/Fireworks. If it did, I would probably use a real mouse more than the trackpad since both hands would be off the keyboard.
It should be here tomorrow. Hmmm, I should find and download the driver...
finally got the printer up on the network. it prints like a champ now, but not if i try printing a pdf or an eps. don't know what's up. something tells me it has something to do with indesign. hmmm....
not even uhaul's site is THAT orange. how about this nice green? huh? like green?
green indeed.
everyone know its oranges for apples.
haven't been drawing much lately. not to happy about it.
speaking of drawings and whatnot, if we are going to do this, we might as well do it right.
check out verve. they have real cheap, reliable hosting with PHP, Perl, and all sorts of stuff like that. 200Mb for $10 a month, cheap, and plenty of space for lots of files.
what's wrong with orange? now we look like we're sponsored by uhaul.
so last night i dreamt that i was murdered. i was hit on the back of the head in a dark room and then stabbed in the back multiple times in the back. the person sat on my back and seemed to be holding knives, or whatever he was sticking in me, actually in my back. he was stabbing me but not taking the stabbing device out of me. so whenever i would writhe in pain (i actually felt pain) it would hurt worse...it was really terrible and extremely graphic. my blood pooled around my face; all i could do was weakly kick my left leg. i would lift it and then it would fall to the ground again. i was saying carol's name, but it came out funny. the person was sitting on my back saying really awful things to me. and all i could do was just lie there and die.
i could almost understand having this dream after having watched a good scary movie, but that just wasn't the case. weird. now i have a headache and a really unpleasant vision in my head.
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
i think you should call every hour, at least. i mean, what if (heaven forbid) something bad happened to it?
i remember, one long ago file nite, a young adolph wearing the outer case to his little beige mac, peering out the diskette slot, and wondering aloud what it had seen in its short life.
the file. sheeeesh.....
I wonder if I should call about it every day. Maybe I should try and forget that somewhere across the Pacific little metal, plasic, glass, and silicon parts are being put together. I imagine that I can see the lower aluminum hull on an assembly line, the motherboard being set in it with little zipps and whirrs of electric screwdrivers...
By the way, to get words to wrap around images with this theme, you need to place the image and wrapping text within a set of <p> tags.
d.
Earlier in the day, i took on the second mission on ghost recon. it was the ethiopian factory that paul, dave, chuck, and i had so much trouble with the first time we played. i didn't finish the battle, but i did make my way into the factory and destroy the bomb squad. then, thinking i had the entire place secure, i moved too quickly and was chopped up. it was ugly...no screenshots.
and all of you are my chicklets
why am i the only girl on this blah blah blogger
this is for colin
butt is very tender and juicy
it is best served roasted with any dressing you like
as it pairs well with different flavors
as a meal
it should be served with crispy vegetables
to provide interesting texture to keep your diners involved
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
yeah, killy gets top billing. but i made adolph an admin as a token of good will. maybe i'll make todd an admin too. once the page finally gets posted he'll prolly be so 'frustrated with the shitty layout' he'll code up a new template like he's always wanted to anyway.
meanwhile, adolph will dazzle us with his semantic flash skills.
houston is becoming mild again this week. it won't be until thursday that the temperatures drop again and perhaps, more rain. but till then, the clouds are disappearing and the sun is coming back, which means that i can take the baby for a walk without having to bundle him up silly.
i'm heading to kimberly's right after work today to process some film. hopefully, there isn't so much. i like the money, but i like my time much better.
here's one: