Tow Rig Tech

1000 Miles on one S&B Tank of Fuel - Tow Rig Tech
Busted Knuckle Films
Pickup trucks have become much more capable in last 50 years. When I lived on the farm we had a Ford F-150 that had a carrying capacity of 500 pounds. You put three people in the cab and you are full up. Now we've got pickup trucks hauling goose neck trailers carrying backhoes. Apparently we also have pickup trucks doing long distance hauling now.

You wouldn't think that putting a bigger fuel tank in a pickup truck would be such a big deal, I mean they've got all that room underneath the bed. The only thing down there is the driveshaft and the exhaust pipe. Well, there is also the frame, and the frame is what makes it difficult. The frame is the structure that ties everything together. If you were the defense department you could undoubtedly build unibody trucks that could haul a ten ton trailer and have room for a hundred gallon gas tank, but out here in the civilian world where cost matters, it's quicker, easier and cheaper to build a truck using a frame. Squeezing a big gas tank in between the stuff that's already under the bed is a bit of a trick. Evidently there is a big enough demand for this kind of thing the S&B went to the trouble to master the trick.

Black List

1973 Colt AR-15 SP1 rifle

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms launched an initiative last year aimed at providing information to Second Amendment-loving Americans. The goal was to provide a comprehensive list of companies and/or CEOs who back gun control initiatives and legislation or have anti-firearm corporate policies in place. - Townhall

I'm looking over this list and I realize that all these companies are supporting the dream of a Disney-fied world where nothing bad ever happens. A fantasyland if you will. For a large portion of America, nothing bad ever does happen so it's an easy and pleasant thing to imagine. Well, as long as you don't look too close, but we won't get into that. People who buy into this fantasy certainly don't.

Some of the leaders may actually believe in their fantasy, but I suspect many of them are only on the anti-gun bandwagon because that's what their frivolous customers want, or they are listening to marketing people who are telling them that. 

Fortunately we have the NRA. Too bad the NRA is having internal squabbles. They have been the mainstay against the fight against gun control since forever. They are the ones who organize the letter writing campaigns that inundate Congressmen whenever a gun control bill comes up for a vote. I believe the NRA has even organized campaigns to unseat particular gun control advocates from their seat in Congress.

If the NRA got their house in order, they might be able to bring some of these splinter organizations back under the NRA umbrella, which could make them an even more potent force.

Via Knuckledraggin My Life Away

Black List

The Cat in the Hat - Dr. Seuss

The Daily Wire has a story about some nitwits trying to cancel Dr. Seuss. Normally I skip over stories like this because I think it's a fad and it won't be too long before the pendulum reaches its peak and then the backswing will begin and it will go through these idiots like a bowling ball through ten-pins, but this time I wanted to know just who these idiots are. I've been wading deeper into the swamp and some names just keep popping up. I'm not very good with names, and usually I don't care, it's usually some government stooly spouting nonsense. 

But now I'm starting to get irritated, there seems to be a problem with this country and maybe there is something I can do. I am not going to solve the problem, oh, I probably could if given the opportunity, but I lack the political skills / patience to deal with strangers. I can transact business at a store and even exchange civil comments with people. But I only really talk to my friends and my family. You meet someone and you spend time in close association with them and you get to know them a bit and sometimes you click, you have the same outlook and the same interests and you understand each other. And sometimes you don't. Sometimes the other person is fine from a civil standpoint, but your interests diverge, and you drift apart. And sometimes the other person has a different idea of what civil discourse is. If it gets bad enough you may find him offensive or even, god forbid, irritating, and we all know what an irritation will do to a person if it hangs around too long.

So, back to where I was a paragraph ago. I am not going to solve the problem, but maybe I can help. Well, the first thing an engineer does when confronted with a problem is to gather data, and I'm thinking I need a list of people so I can keep track of who's being an idiot and who's a running dog and who's dressed up as a hero.

Now it occurs to me every politician probably has such a list. Most of the local ones I expect keep it in their head. Once you get to the level where you start waging professional campaigns, such a list would go into a spreadsheet. Shoot now that I think about it, there are probably professional software packages for political campaigns. Of course there are.

Okay, but all their lists are private as far as I know, and I'm not sure I would want to start with somebody else's list. No telling what kind of useless information is in there. Oh, it's valuable to somebody, I'm sure, but I'm pretty sure it would be a distraction for me. A professional campaigner would keep it all, of course, you never know when some tidbit of information can give you a microscopic advantage over your opponent, or even one of your associates. 

So, no, I need to create my own list. I tried starting one the other day using a spreadsheet, but it's very tedious and time consuming. You need the first and last name, separated, their office and title, if any, political affiliation ranked from -10 to +10, the URL where they are mentioned and a few words about the issue at hand. So, what I want is a program that will scan a web page and pick out all the information, let me add a few words and then store it away. You know, something you can pull up with a right click. Don't turn it loose on the web whatever you do. You'll end up with terabytes of data that you won't be able to use.

Okay, another pie-in-the-sky project, and we know how those go. Right now I am up to my ears in remodeling the new house. Maybe we finish it this year. I hope.

Via Knuckledraggin My Life Away

Neighborly Dream

Black Van

I am walking over to the neighbor's to pick up my mail. The young woman who is staying there is standing out front talking to an older woman. The older woman abruptly turns and walks over to her black van that is parked in the driveway. It was backed in so all she has to do to leave is drive forward, which she starts to do, but then she make a right turn and drives across the lawn, and then the lawn of the next house before she finally drives out onto the street. The young woman and I are struck dumb standing there, watching her drive away. Now the older woman is parked in the driveway of the house across the street and she has gotten out her weed eater. Busy gal.

Meanwhile I pickup half a dozen big boxes of mail. I load them on a flatbed utility trailer (like you would tow behind a car) and push it back to my house. As I round the corner going into the driveway (because I am not a neanderthal that drives across lawns) I find I have cut the corner too close and the inside wheel is trying to climb a short dirt wall. I back off and take a more generous approach.

Can you hear me now?

How a Cartel Built Their Own Cell Phone Network
Half as Interesting

Mexico is an interesting place. The drug cartels rival the government in power and in some places have taken over the government's functions. Drug dealer's communication skills have improved dramatically from the cross keypad codes used on payphones in Baltimore in The Wire.

The Totally Awesome Zetas have appeared here before.

Perry Mason

Perry Mason: Official Trailer | HBO
HBO

This 2020 version of Perry Mason bears no resemblance to the original. In case you don't know, Perry Mason as a character has been kicking around since 1933. I know him from the popular TV (television) show that ran from 1957 to 1966. Those shows are available on YouTube.

Perry Mason Opening & Closing Theme
Danny Linden

In this current show Perry is a PI (Private Investigator), not an attorney like in the books and TV shows. Why the big change? I suspect it's because the writers had a good story and they needed a name for their lead character and picked Perry Mason because they liked the TV show. I dunno. They seem completely unrelated.

Regardless, it's a good show. It's set in 1931 in Los Angles. One of the first settings is the Angels Flight inclined railway that showed up in a Bosch episode. It's a very complicated show with all kinds of emotional entanglements. Some of those are what you expect in a crime show, but some are not. 

We have a bit of history in Tatiana Maslany as Sister Alice McKeegan, a stand in for the real Aimee Semple McPherson, an evangelical preacher who pioneered the use of radio to reach a broader audience.

The Hollywood Reporter has a review.

HBO 8 Episodes, 1 Hour each

Update March 2021 corrected the number of episodes because everybody has a different screen layout.

Network Security

Our Digital Electronic World

Bruce Schneier has a post up today about the current abysmal state of computer security. He recommends more government to alleviate the problem. I doubt more government will fix the problem. It might make some improvements, but the cost for those improvements will be disportionately high.

What we need is a network protocol that would securely identify the machine you are communicating with. I liken it to the way we make phone calls. You dial a number and you are connected to another phone and another person. But is that person the one you want to talk to? You call your girlfriend Elsa and a deep, gruff voice answers 'Elsa here' and immediately you are going to suspect that that is not your girlfriend on the other end of the wire. Even if the voice is passable, any number of comments made during your conversation may indicate that you are not talking to the person you think you are.

This might be the problem all these network certificates are trying to address. However, that seems to be kind of haphazard. I've had security warnings popup on sites that I think should be up to date on the latest security stuff, but I've also seen them on obscure sites that no one but I ever visit.

Even if you can be sure of who you are talking to, there is no telling if they are still loyal or whether they have been corrupted by the dark lord and are simply faking their affection for you so they can steal all your secrets.

So, yeah, security is a problem and maybe a little government intervention is in order, because you can be sure that the dark lords who run the corporations that make our life easy (or are ruining the country, depending on the kind of glasses you are wearing) don't care a whit about anything but making money. A little carrot and stick action might be appropriate.

Acronym of the moment: SaaS - Software as a Service