Somehow I knew I'd be the one to start this. This is me from a couple years ago in front of the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, West by-God Virginia.
Did you know that you can just buy police-issue handcuffs? I bought these mostly so I can learn to escape from them. I also bought a set of lockpicks (one can just buy those too, apparantly) and some other similar items, but the rest hasn't arrived yet.
Testing out a new scanner with some randomly-pulled 30-year-old 35mm negatives: Good ol' Mort. Scanner does up to 12000 dpi! The photos came out at something like 17k pixels high from the negative. Mary's eyes filled my 24" monitor set at 1920 pixels wide!
I just learned about those kinds of scanners over the holidays. I plan to buy one in the very near future.
Some really old negatives! ^The first pic features my Uberti replica SAA in .45 Colt. It's very accurate in that it puts the bullets into a nice tight group - but nowhere near point of aim . With its old fashion fixed sights, if you aim for the bullseye, you usually hit the upper lefthand bracket holding the target to the track. Lower pic is a Rossi Coach Gun - a 12 gauge 3" magnum with 20" barrels. Very light. I fired a 3" magnum shell in it once. Once. The gun dealer told me "It kills on one end and maims on the other." No kidding. Great for posing with, robbing trains, and shooting burglars through two or three walls. Useless for skeet. Sold it eventually.
Why it was a bad idea for cowboys to fight at night. You got blind, and the other guy can see right where you are! 35 grains of black powder behind a .44 caliber ball, coming out of an 1847 Colt Walker reproduction.
Clancy watches the storm begin yesterday afternoon. The drift on my patio. Yeah. And the path I had to chop thru it to get firewood.
My shotgun works pretty much the same way. Luckily it's only single-barrel. If it wasn't, knowing me, I would have tried firing two 3" slugs at once, and I'm also pretty sure the recoil would have taken my arm off. Anyway, rogue's tools! I opted for the jackknife-style lockpicks because they're every bit as functional as regular lockpicks, much easier to carry, and only slightly more inconvenient to use. Since I acquired them, I have learned that padlocks are nothing more than security theater. Cheap padlocks I can open more easily with the picks than with the key. Master Locks were a bit more difficult. I tried three different ones, and none of them took longer than a minute for me to open. Although, considering it only takes a few seconds to remove a padlock with bolt cutters, making the locking mechanism difficult to pick is kind of pointless. The ring has a slot on the inside that holds a handcuff shim with a serrated edge for cutting through zip-ties, rope, and other restraints. I hang out with a lot of people who are into BDSM and one cannot be too careful. Nothing I have said in this thread is an admission to having committed any crime, nor an admission to any intent to commit any crimes, and should not be interpreted as such. It is legal for me to possess and carry these items where I live.
Amazing. Never had snow like that here. Outside of ski resorts the worst snow I saw was ironically in DC in 2003. They shut down all transport at 9 pm and we had to walk half way across the city in the middle of the night. Ended up having a snowball fight outside the White House - and we were the only ones there (well, save for the guards at the WH gate entrance). It was surreal, especially being an Englishman with the added novelty factor.
England has the latitude but that Atlantic Conveyor keeps the temps too stable. If you guys had a few more taller mountains you'd have a lot more snow. Goodness Africa and Hawaii have snow on their tallest peaks. But if that Atlantic Conveyor ever stops you and pretty much all of Western Europe will be knee/ass deep in snow on a regular basis.
Our mountains do have snow. Scotland and the North often has a lot of snow. It's London that doesn't.
So it isn't that far to "play in the snow" if you want to - a few hours or so? That's not bad, but you don't have the hassle of dealing with too much snow in the most populated areas.
Top pic: My commute to work Friday morning. Bottom pic: My commute home Friday evening. But at least I got to be at work all day in between, including a mandatory lunchtime meeting.
Some more interesting stuff I found going thru those 30-year-old negatives: Hiding out from the posse - this was taken in an old root cellar we found on Mom & Dad's upstate NY property. My gorgeous wife at her sister's (first) wedding: Our first fluffy pet, helping me with my Donald Trump impression: Good ol' Mort, guarding his Frizbee: Guests in the garage attic:
3" of heavy, wet, stick-to-everything snow falling hard in the morning. Sunny and warm and dried off the roads by evening. I have no idea where the traffic jam came from - I think it was just extra heavy volume.
I'm taking a ceramics class this semester because #laziness, and this happened: I call this piece The Dungeon Master's Goblet (the D&D Kind, Not the BDSM Kind). It hasn't been in the kiln yet so I haven't glazed it and the colors will probably look different once finished. No, I will not make you one. Make one yourself or pay someone who is actually competent at ceramics to make one. Later I plan on making a companion goblet with chains and leather straps attached to it. It'll be called The Dungeon Master's Goblet (the BDSM Kind this time).
My grandchild's first pro fight! She won every round up to this point, but she took a perfect shot to the jaw and went down like the Titanic.
So, I log in to my school e-mail account and there's a message in there asking if I'm free this weekend. I didn't recognize the last name of the person who sent it, and I could think of three people it could have been that had the same first name. One I was hoping it was, another who I wouldn't be as excited about but it would still be kind of cool, and a third that I would fear for my safety if it was her. It could have also been someone else entirely. I Googled her name hoping to find out who she was, exactly. Turns out it was the one I was hoping it was. It also turns out she's a model, which I didn't know before now. I've known too many models to be impressed, but I do still find it interesting. Then I came across this picture. She's the blonde: JACKPOT!!! She hasn't actually indicated any kind of romantic or sexual interest in me that I've picked up on, but still, jackpot. I'm just happy that I know this person.
