Cat found

Came back from frantically checking everywhere I could after work, and wandering around the whole neighborhood, to have the little twerp waiting by the back door. Coaxed him over with treats, and he's safely back inside and happy to be there.

We now resume our halfassed "blogging" as regularly scheduled.

Lost Cat

I actually had time and motivation for writing things, and probably would have pounded out another couple posts (including the Metro Weapons) this weekend, and then my cat managed to get out a window and, being the fuzzy little dipshit that he is, get lost. Spent all weekend trying to hunt him down to no avail. Apparently there are 2-3 other essentially identical black cats that wander the neighborhood.

I miss the little twerp, wish me luck at finding him. Hopefully he finds his way home, or to someone that can bring him home.

Gunsmithery

I've got several gun designs I want to play around with when I have my workshop set up. The simplest is a slam tube/guerrilla shotgun, improved with an ejection mechanism and a shell side-saddle. Tube-in-tube simplicity, that can be fired as fast as you can single-load a pump shotgun. The next is an intermediate carbine that brings Uzi level simplicity to 5.56. It'll trade accuracy for simplicity and ease of manufacture, but it'll also make things like the AK look needlessly complicated for doing the same thing.

But the first, real project I have, full complexity and capability? Going to pretty much be a pistol(?) carbine version of the Moon Marines SMG. .30 carbine, mp5 style collapsible stock, feeds off M1 Carbine mags out of the grip. Having an S2k, I can attest to just how handy a carbine with the magazine in the stock is, but I want one that hits with some oomph, because nobody makes carbines in 10mm auto or other such magical calibers that I"d never be able to find to feed to the gun anyway.

Probably be a while before I've moved on to somewhere that I have a proper garage to turn into a workshop, but you'll be seeing progress when things get started.

Rust

Took my S2k apart a while back to reverse engineer parts out of it for the company I did a bit of that for. It never made it back together, just never had the time or motivation to do so. Went to put it together, and found a worrying amount of rust. Thankfully it was all very much surface rust, and a bit of Tri-Care and some elbow grease cleaned it all right off.

Now to remember how to put this thing back together, I took it ALL the way apart, instead of just partway like you do for normal cleaning.

Sci-Fi Friday; THE MOON MARINES

"Next time, on the harrowing adventures of... THE MOON MARINE! The Mars Men are invading, and only the Moon Marine stands between them and conquest? Will our hero prevail? And what of the machinations of the Moonanites?! Find out next time, on, THE MOON MARINE"

There's a business on the way up to the family cabin in the north woods of Wisconsin, called Moon Marine. It screamed ~30s pulp radio drama to me, and I was looking for things to draw at the time (was riding in the car).

If I run the raygun gothic/dieselpunk space campaign I want to at some point, this is pretty much going to be the party's standard armor and armament. 

I picture that space SMG as being chambered in something like a .30 carbine optimized for shorter barrels, or something similar. Great big capacity per magazine (Enlistment poster, actual Moon Marines will have pouches and packs and such), power just shy of intermediate caliber, probably with AP rounds standard because space. Possibly also tracers, because futuristicy.

Tech Tuesday; short but medtech edition

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/shock-and-kill-approach-cures-mice-hiv-world-first

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/%E2%80%9Csurprising%E2%80%9D-oral-vaccine-stops-hiv-monkeys

So, progress on curing the incurable. That's rather handy. Of course, with all the terrible and corrupt that is Africa, getting it where it's needed most will remain an issue, but having a cure/treatment is still a plus over "Welp, sucks to be you"


That's pretty much all I found in the past week. Still, handy stuff.

Got made today

No, not in the mafia sense, what kind of dipshit would I be to talk about that?

No, I got made as a concealed carrier. To be fair, I wasn't trying particularly hard. Was working the axe/knife throwing booth at the Highland Games, and a gentleman waiting at the front of the line glances over
"You could use a bit looser shirt on the right side, you're printing quite a bit"
I just replied with the fact that I mostly cover it up as a courtesy (at the Highland games, half the people there have swords/knives/axes/etc strapped all over anyway, so nobody so much as batted an eye), and figure that at 6'3", 200 lbs of primarily muscle, with a flat top, anyone paying attention enough to notice printing would probably guess I'd be the type to carry anyway.
He chuckled and mentioned that he could stand to lose a few pounds to free up fabric on the sides for the same reason.