The Wandering Minstrel

Several months back (a year maybe?) my digital keyboard gave up the ghost. I have been thinking about a replacement, so I went on-line and ordered this one. It’s a Yamaha PSR E413 61-key synthesizer. It got very good reviews and was priced around $270 USD including shipping and accessories. Plus, it’s way more sophisticated than the 15 year old keyboard that crapped out.

I started playing piano when I was five years old and I have almost always had a piano or organ, so I sort of missed having one around. I’m looking forward to learning all the features of this nice new shiny rig when it shows up in a week or so.

I know this doesn’t relate to the gun and classics oriented discussion normally seen here, but it does have a built in gunshot sound effect. Does that count?

Clickable image.

You can get a chocolate gun at Chocolate Weapons dot com. You can even get it gift wrapped in camouflage.

But wait! There’s More! Chocolate ammunition, chocolate hand grenades and more. Pretty cool website.

From reading their website information, this was initially a joke until they test marketed some colleagues who were also shooters. The idea caught on.

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They have a funny tag-line “The Ultimate Near Death (by Chocolate) Experience.”

Over the weekend, we unpacked and assembled the new BBQ Grillware (Lowe’s house brand) outdoor grill. The Better Half and I brought the partially assembled grill home in a roughly 2×2x3 foot cardboard carton. It weighed in at 92 pounds, so it required both of us to lift it into and out of the SUV tailgate and then into the house.

Clickable image - the assembled unit (photo taken today during burn-in)

I found the illustrated, step-by-step assembly instructions to be mostly clear and only a time or two I found myself re-reading a step and consulting the illustration again to clearly understand the action. The first stage of assembly was to build the cart. When that was complete, both of us had to lift the partially assembled grill box and cover unit into the cart - one person may have been able to do this, but having two people made it a more elegant process. After tightening up all the screws, hooking up the gas and electric igniter wires and installing the burner baffles and grills, it was ready for the gas leak test.

I made up a couple of ounces of soapy water and brushed a copious amount over each gas connection point. I opened the propane valve and watched for a minute or two to see if any soap bubbles appeared around the connections. I saw none, so the connections seem OK.

According to BarbecueLovers.com, the easiest way to burn-in your new grill is to just heat it up (~400 degrees) and let ‘er cook for ~30-45 minutes. This will burn all the solvents and impurities off of the heating elements, grill, etc. Let it cool down a bit, wipe things down to remove any lingering residue and you should be good to go. I took care of that today.

As I mentioned in the first article, we went the “cheap” route, paying around $200 for the setup - grill, tank and first four gallons of propane. Everything seems to be well-made and after the assembly, the rig is sturdy and everything worked the first time we tried it - burners, igniters and the works. I’m not yet ready to rate all aspects of the new grill, since we’ve never actually cooked anything on it yet. After the weekend, it will have a couple of beef tenderloin steaks to its credit - I’ll have a report on the food then.

I was looking for a miniature gun and this image of a gun-shaped computer mouse came up in the search results. I thought it was kind of funny.

I found what I was looking for, though, in a site called mouseguns.com. There, you can find a link to a catalog of diminutive weapons. The guns are listed with details as to their attributes:

• Lethality
• Volume
• Manufacturer
• Model
• Caliber
• Capacity
• Type
• Action
• Length
• Height
• Width
• Weight

According to the website, “Lethality” is derived from capacity and power:

Lethality = log (capacity) * power

I had not seen a lethality index before, but I found it very intriguing. A table on the page lists ammunition power from 1 for .22 short to 14 for 12 gauge. I attempted to work up lethality for a couple of our favorite guns, but ran into problems when I tried the above equation and got different results. I could get into the same order of magnitude by substituting natural log (initially assumed log base 10) but the results are still off.

Example: The listing for a Glock 26 lethality is 32.26; when using natural log, I calculate 21.58. The capacity is 11 rounds (10+1) and the power listed in the table for 9mm is 9.

Ln(11) = 2.397 * 9 = 21.58

The error between my calculation and that listed is off by about 30 percent. I may try and email the author of the table to see where I’m going wrong (or where he did). I’ll post any findings if and when I get feedback.

I saw an abstract of a study that listed body armor threat level for various firearms, but was not interested in paying to see it. Has anyone else seen a firearms lethality index?

At any rate, I would be inclined to change “Lethality Index” to “Self Defense Potential Index” when it comes to scoring firearms with regard to caliber and capacity. I would also score the projectile type (HP vs. ball, shot vs. slug).

A couple of weekends ago, I barbecued a rib roast on the outdoor grill. I made the mistake of walking away from the grill while it was cooking. The unusually thick fat cap began dripping into the coals and a fire within the grill flared up. By the time I got there to put out the fire, the meat was fairly well seared. I managed to salvage the roast, but the aged burner-under-briquette BBQ (had it since 2002) was toast.

I managed to milk a few extra years out of the old rig before incinerating it. It already suffered from rust, the piezoelectric igniter was shot and the grill was in poor shape for the last couple of BBQ seasons. It was pretty decrepit and should have been replaced already.

The Better Half and I went to Lowe’s today and bought their house brand BBQ Grillware 3-burner grill. We figure it only has to last a couple of years, so we went cheap. When we leave Kalifornistan, we’ll just donate it to the Salvation Army and write it off.

BBQ Grillware model GGPL-2100DW

Grill Width (Inches) - 52.4
Grill Depth (Inches) - 23.0
Grill Height (Inches) - 46.0
Porcelain coated cast iron grate
141 sq. in. warming rack
28 1/2 Lb. burger capacity
Porcelain coated lid
624 sq. in. cooking surface
Electronic ignition
Liquid propane fuel system
5-gallon tank capacity standard
3 stainless burners plus side burner

As a senior, I normally avoid foods that raise the old blood pressure or line the blood vessels with plaque. One day a week, however, I indulge in a breakfast that contains two actual chicken eggs topped with shredded cheddar cheese. Despite the departure from the diet regimen one day a week, the medical lab work we periodically get always comes back within limits.

Clickable Image: Several High Caliber methods of preparing eggs.