Flavor 7, Presentation 1

Mike gave me a secret suggestion for improving commercial cake mix. I tried it, and the texture is very good. Problem: it still tastes artificial, even though I substituted butter for vegetable oil. That part is not Mike’s fault, however.

Why does commercial cake mix taste like chemicals? Maybe they’ve managed to stick canola or dried milk or something in there, to make it taste bad. I guess I need to work out a scratch recipe. If “need” is the right word.

I also tried a frosting recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. I would call it “okay.” It needs more salt and maybe more vanilla, and so far, the texture is goopy. Not like real frosting. Maybe it needs to cool.

I decided to fool with this after trying some Misha’s cupcakes. This is a Miami company some lady started a while back. I saw a Misha’s store, and then I saw Misha’s cupcakes in a grocery store, and I started wondering how a cupcake could be so good you would make a special effort to get it. Let’s face it. Cupcakes are generally dry and boring.

Misha’s cupcakes are very good. For one thing, they’re short, so you don’t end up with a mile of cake and a tiny layer of icing. Also, the cake is moist, without that fake taste commercial mixes have. I guess anyone could have done what this lady did, if they had just applied common sense. It makes you wonder why 99% of the cupcakes you see at bakeries are dry and worthless.

I will probably never have another Misha’s cupcake, simply because I don’t care about cupcakes. But if I were a cupcake guy, I’d be there every day.

The sad part of discovering Misha’s cupcakes is that it has made me realize that making a decent cake is hard. The one I just made had some structural failures while I was assembling it, and then I realized I had forgotten the layer of icing that goes in the middle.

Tastes pretty good, if you close your eyes while you eat it.

10mm Looking Better All the Time

Here is some possibly useless news.

1. Midway USA has all sorts of pistol primers. I just got a cascade of product-arrival emails. Stock up, I guess.

2. Charlie Crist has suspended the fishing license requirement for the State of Florida, through the long weekend. Hooray for all concerned.

I may run by the gun shop today to talk about 10mm and an AK47 pistol. My big concern about the AK is that it may be impossible to find a place where I can shoot it. Trail Glades doesn’t allow people to shoot rifles with the stocks folded, and this is essentially the same thing. I better call.

A 10mm Glock looks like a really good defense choice. You can get ammunition that expands to about 1″ in diameter. That’s not bad for a pistol round. And it penetrates way better than a 9mm.

I keep reading up on this stuff. It’s very confusing. Back when I chose my first Glock, in .40 S&W, my understanding was that heavy rounds could work against you, because of conservation of momentum. I won’t go into the physics, but it works like this: the heavier a bullet is, the farther it can penetrate. There is more to it than that, and I am not going to publish distracting wise-guy comments about sectional density. Type them if you want, just for the finger exercise. Comments like that lead to boring comment threads that annoy everyone and don’t shed any light on anything. People who are interested in splitting hairs can always go to Stoppingpower.net.

Anyway, the theory was this: a round that penetrates too far before expanding won’t achieve much. You get a tunnel about the same diameter as the bullet, plus two small entry and exit wounds.

Now I’m reading stuff claiming that you want the deepest penetration possible, because handgun bullets don’t expand reliably, and that tunnel is all you can count on. If the bullet doesn’t expand, you want it to go all the way through the perp, to do as much harm as possible.

I’m also reading that there are 10mm rounds out there that reliably expand to about 1″ in diameter.

Putting all the BS together in a bag and shaking it, I tentatively conclude that 10mm is a very good choice, when you are limited to a sad little pistol instead of a long gun. If it doesn’t expand, you get good penetration, and if it does, you get lots of damage from the expansion. And it should do a nice job penetrating car doors and such.

I know I can shoot this round very well, because I shoot the .50 AE very well. I am not going to faint because of a little recoil. I shot the .50 AE well while the shells were coming back and hitting me in the middle of the forehead hard enough to cause bleeding, so I think I can deal with a gun that has half as much muzzle energy.

If you think you’ve done things at the range that made you feel stupid, wait until you find out you’ve been shooting yourself in the head over and over with spent cartridges. You don’t feel it until you quit shooting, and by then, you’re already bleeding.

I am convinced that worries about bullets exiting perps and hitting babies and Boy Scouts and visiting Popes and so on are the stuff of Internet-forum hysteria, and the FBI, in an internal document, has taken pretty much the same position. The odds of hitting an innocent person with a spent round are incredibly slim, while the odds of being killed by someone who wasn’t hurt badly enough by your wimpy pistol ammunition are very high. And if you shoot at a criminal and kill someone else, guess who gets charged with the crime? The criminal. It’s called felony murder. Look it up. I got confused and called it “capital murder” the other day. Hey, I’m not a criminal lawyer, plus I’m old. I’m sure there are exceptions for negligence and so on, but the solution is simple: don’t be negligent.

Felony murder is wonderful. Criminals can be charged with the murders of the accomplices the cops shoot. I think.

The idea that there is a wonderful bullet out there, which goes into a perp exactly the right distance, does exactly the right things, and stops without hitting your kids seems facially farcical to me. It’s a lot to ask from a mindless piece of metal. I say power up, shoot to kill, and use common sense. One of the cardinal rules of shooting is, “Be sure of your backstop.” I don’t care how nerve-wracking a shooting situation is; you ought to be able to make some minimal effort not to shoot toward a crowded playground or a session of Congress. If you can’t, then the perp has taken that option away, and he, not you, bears the legal responsibility.

I am not giving legal advice here; I’m just blathering on a blog. If it turns out the laws in your state are different, it’s your problem, not mine. I don’t see the “I read it on a blog” defense as highly viable. Even Tim Geithner had a better excuse than that.

The idea that all calibers are equally effective is also silly. Some do more damage than others, and more damage means a better chance of your survival, especially if your shot placement isn’t perfect. If a 10mm is 10% better than a 9mm, it seems like a smart move to me.

You could say that the extra bullet you get by staying at 9mm gives you at least a 10% advantage. But how likely are you to get to the point where you use that bullet? Besides, extra Glock magazines are small and light.

The stuff about expansion and penetration makes me wonder if I’ve underestimated the .50 AE as a defensive round. The big problems with it are the high likelihood of misfeeds, the low magazine capacity, and the distinct possibility that a stray round will enter your garage and kill one of your vehicles. And then there’s that bleeding-forehead thing.

There is no perfect solution, but trying to work it out is too much fun to quit.

Little Plastic Boxes Filling Up

I finally got my ammunition press going. Last night I produced 100 rounds of .38 Super.

Every time I start the press, I find a new way for it to screw up. Last night I had to remove debris from inside the little spring-loaded primer-insertion doodad. It was sticking up about half a millimeter, blocking the primer slide. What a pain. It’s almost as if Hornady worked on finding ways to make this press break down. I guess there is a limit to the R&D a small company can do.

I’m down to two shell plate retainer springs. This is a weird item. They break all the time, so you have to keep spares on hand. Midway sells them for $2 each or…$6.69 for three.

Buy in volume and lose money! What a concept!

Hornady advises people to smooth out the rough edges the spring contacts. Unfortunately, they don’t tell you this until you call them up and ask them why the spring keeps breaking. I don’t know of a good tool for removing a knife edge from a curved slot. Is a deburring tool the right thing? I don’t know. Hornady says to use sandpaper. If I had a tiny ball end mill, I could mount this thing in the rotary table and have at it.

In order to get 100 rounds of .38 Super, I had to run 105 cases through. Five times, the primer system failed, leaving the primer pockets open so powder escaped onto the press. I also had to guide the rounds into the sizing die. That may be a pawl-adjustment issue, but I don’t think so. I think the plate doesn’t grip the brass well enough to align it reliably. Maybe Hornady made the shell pocket too wide. As I recall, the .45 plate and die work much better.

I plan to make as much .38 Super as I can stand to produce. I think I have about 400 bullets left, and maybe 300 cases. Might as well crank it all out now so I don’t have to set the press up more often than necessary.

I may get a Hornady Powder Cop die, to make sure the charges are uniform. Seems like cheap insurance against death and mayhem.

I was upset because my powder measure, which has an expensive pistol micrometer thing on it, was throwing charges that were off by up to 0.2 grains. I started looking for a better powder measure. I read that the Lyman #55 was better, and I considered ordering one. Then I read that the accuracy I was getting was actually about as good as I could hope for without using a trickler, so I decided to forget about it. Now I’d like to do some super-accurate charges and see if it affects my shooting. If it did, I would be the king of the gun range. Then, of course, I would be obligated to lie and say I was reloading the same way everyone else does.

I did some research on 7.62x39mm ammunition last night. I learned something interesting. Most of the cheap Russian hollowpoints don’t expand too well. I have read that they do fall apart and yaw, and that’s good, but expansion is what you hope for when you buy hollowpoints. It turns out two brands expand: Wolf Military Classic and Silver Bear match ammunition. So if you, like me, like cheap Russian ammunition, this may be helpful to you. Now I have to shoot all my second-rate ammunition and make room for the good stuff!

Hornady makes V-Max bullets in this size (for reloading), and they’re supposed to be great, but the bullets alone run like 20 cents each, so the cost is not low.

Increasingly, I am drawn to the idea of getting an AK pistol for the truck. A truck allows for bigger weapons than concealed carry, but it’s not as big and roomy as a house, so there is good reason to look for a short gun. The AK pistol should give much better accuracy in real-world situations than a pistol, plus higher capacity and infinitely better ballistics. And you can even put a laser on it. I mean a real laser, not a dinky red one you can barely see ten feet away.

The more I think about the shortcomings of pistols, the more convinced I am that I should avoid depending on one. They are absolutely pathetic compared to long guns. Not even in the same ball park. I feel like Tom Selleck in Quigley Down Under. “Never had much use for one.” I’m a very good pistol shot and just an okay rifle shot, but an okay rifle shot is still many times more lethal than a world-class pistol shot.

I had another fun tool experience. My Sears Craftsman mechanic’s stool busted. It has two tubes under it which receive the supports for the backrest. One of the tubes popped off. It had been welded in place, but two welds were bad, and the third was mostly imaginary.

I considered calling Sears to see if their tool warranty applied, but their site says it only applies to hand tools. I decided to try to fix it. I got out my little Proxxon grinder and cleaned up the metal, and then I fastened the tube in place as well as possible with magnets. I fired up the welder and either welded or glued the part in place. I was working in a tiny area, and I can’t tell whether I achieved a real weld, but I stuffed lots of melted steel in there, so if it’s not a weld, it’s acting like glue, and that should be good enough. The part turned a little on its axis while I welded, but it’s straight. The little knob that goes into the tube to fasten the backrest in place now goes in at a slight angle, but no one will ever notice. This sure beats paying $80 for a new stool.

I wonder why Lincoln doesn’t make a skinny nozzle for tight places. Maybe they do. I would love to have a tiny TIG or MIG welder that only goes up to 20 gauge steel.

Tools are life. A man with no tools is wretched, indeed.

Time for 9mm to Go?

I wanted to write the third installment in the story of my trip to Washington for the National Day of Prayer, but I’m not feeling it right now. I got my reloading press working last night, I have piles of brass and powder and primers, and I want to crank out some .38 Super ammunition.

Yesterday while giving the birds some out time, I watched one of those reality shows featuring security videos and such. They showed a nutcase shooting up a tow yard office with an AK and a 9mm pistol. Learned a few things.

First of all, outer walls are really bad cover. I knew that already, from people yammering at me about it in comments, but it was really something to see it proven on video.

The tow yard was in a place called Lake City. I can’t find a Lake City Towing in Florida, using the web. There’s one in Wisconsin. If it’s the one in Florida, the walls are probably concrete. In any case, the rounds went through with no problem, nailing a lady in the rear end.

They had some kind of clear barrier between the office and the waiting area, and I guess it blocked bullets. But the wall below it was worthless. They probably didn’t think about reinforcing it when they added the plastic barrier. And the nut was able to shoot through the little hole where they passed papers and money back and forth.

If this character had been a good shot, he would have killed several people.

When the cops came, one pretty much emptied a pistol into him, but he kept making trouble until an employee came out and shot him some more. The shooter still lived to be jailed.

I’ve seen more than one video like this. Some criminal forces the cops to shoot, and it takes seconds or minutes for him to go down, even with multiple hits. During that time, the criminal can kill.

It makes me wonder if 9mm is a good idea. I like my Glock because it’s portable, super-accurate, and reliable, and it holds 11 rounds. But will it save me in a pinch?

I carry nice Cor-Bon ammunition, which is supposed to cause all sorts of damage inside perps, even in 9mm. If you can make someone bleed internally to a degree that it causes them to lose consciousness, you can put them down in a hurry. That’s the theory. But does it work? I feel like I ought to go hog-hunting and find out.

I have considered carrying a 1911, in either .38 Super or .45. The .38 Super is nearly as deadly as .357 Magnum, and the .45 is also excellent. But a big 1911 is a little showy for church, and the rest of the time, it’s just plain heavy. Maybe a compact Glock in .45 is where I need to be. Or the dreaded and disrespected .40, which is definitely better than the 9mm and has a similar capacity. I wonder if Glock does 10mm. That would be just about perfect. People moan about the recoil and controllability, but I have not had any problems handling high-recoil pistols.

Should I keep a shotgun in the truck? A short gun loaded with 00 buckshot would be much better than a pistol, if I got caught in one of Miami’s famous traffic-accident altercations.

An AK pistol would be hard to beat. Cheap and effective. Short, legal barrel. Lots of rounds. And if you lose it to a thief, you won’t lie awake weeping.

I’m also rethinking my ideas on pistol-grip shotguns. I have read that they’re impossible to control, but if you check out Youtube, you’ll see people firing them with very good accuracy, for short-range purposes. A reasonably talented shooter should be able to hit a perp reliably at fifty feet or less, over and over, unless the videos are rigged. With a shotgun, you don’t necessarily have to put the center of the pattern in a vital place. The pellets will go in different directions in the body, so presumably, you can expect probability to be on your side. If nine pellets enter and separate, one or two are likely to hit something important. At least you would think so. And the entry wound should be huge and bloody compared to the entry would made by a pistol round, which tends to make a little tear that closes up on its own.

Pistols are easier to control in theory, but that doesn’t seem to pan out in actual encounters caught on video. I can shoot a man in the eye at 7 yards, over and over, IF he’s not moving and the light is good. In a problem situation, I’ll be shooting 6″ groups, at best. With a shotgun, that might open up to 12″, but again, you have more lead, bigger wounds, and more trajectories, so aren’t you still way ahead?

So maybe a pistol-grip shotgun is a good thing to have in a vehicle. It’s compact, it’s lethal, it’s as accurate in practice as a pistol…what’s not to love? The Box o’ Truth says 00 will penetrate cars, so it sounds like it ought to go through any cover you are likely to have to worry about on the street.

I need to take the Saiga to a range and shoot it without using the buttstock so I can find out. If it works, forget pistols.

I have to get over the idea that pistols are okay for self-defense. They’re a whole lot better than nothing, but most pistol shots miss, and the ballistics are generally pathetic. I have to make myself think of pistols as what they are: something to keep me alive until I can get to a long gun (paraphrasing Col. Jeff Cooper).

How About That Amazing German Engineering?

I hate it when something bad happens, which I could not predict. But then I also hate it when something bad happens that I should have seen coming, because then I kick myself for months for not preventing it. So I don’t know which is worse.

Today I was straightening up the garage so I can actually use it. I was sucking swarf off my workbench, which held the chargers for my impact driver and Bosch hammer drill. I picked up the impact driver charger to vacuum under it, and it touched the Bosch charger, and there was a flash and a popping sound. Afterward, the Bosch charger didn’t work.

This one is new to me. I have no idea why letting one battery charger touch another will cause an explosion.

I am a little tired of silly things going wrong. I decided to march in the house, go on the web, and order a new charger. I didn’t need the aggravation of trying to fix the old one.

But then I looked at all my tools. Sitting there, all lonely and whatever.

I cleared some space and got out a Philips screwdriver, from my stainless rolling chest/cart combination. I moved my magnifying fluorescent lamp over the workbench. I took the stupid charger apart and checked it out.

Here’s something amusing. It has a fuse on the circuit board…which is soldered in place.

I know times are hard, but the logic evades me. I would rather have Bosch spend an extra four cents on a fuse holder and pass the cost on to me.

I put my variable-heat Weller soldering station on the bench and turned it on. I opened up my blister-packaged soldering tool set. I removed the fuse.

I looked for new fuses. I had 4-amp and 2-amp fuses. Why? Search me. This kind of crap just accumulates. I needed 5 amps. Because I have a physics degree, I am just barely savvy enough to know that I can get 6 amps by paralleling a 4 and a 2. That’s pretty close to 5. So I knew I could fix this thing reasonably well without leaving the garage.

I felt tremendous satisfaction. It’s wonderful to be able to DO something with all this junk once in a while.

I obtained a 5-amp fuse anyway, and I’m going to solder it in there whichever way I can. It will not look cute, but then, no one will ever see it. With any luck, the fuse was the only thing damaged, and I’ll be in the clear. If not…INTERNET.

And I’ll be able to say I tried.

Join In

Evangelist Judah Smith spoke at my church last week. Today he has a prayer request, via Twitter:

Hey everybody could REALLY use your prayers right now for Dad- he has a mtg at Mayo Clinic today @2pm- we need great favor! Thnk u!

Don’t know what’s happening, but people don’t go to the Mayo Clinic over trifles.

I Cannot Have Problems

More interesting stuff is happening.

Last night at church, I worked as an armorbearer. When I do this, I carry a two-way radio with an earpiece and microphone. You know those curly plastic things Secret Service guys wear in movies? That’s what I’m talking about. The correct name for the earpiece rig is “surveillance kit.”

At the end of the service, I tried to pull the earpiece out of my ear, and the tube came loose, leaving the end of the kit deep inside my skull somewhere. Whoopee.

Ran into a friend hosting a prayer group in the back of the church, and I told the group what had happened, and I suggested they pray I manage to get the thing out of my ear. I was laughing, but I was not kidding. You can’t expect anything to go well if you don’t prepare in prayer.

At home, before attacking the earpiece, I prayed about it, and I said I was determined to see this annoying event turn out to be a blessing. I thanked God that it had happened. I always do that when I have a setback. To understand why, read Corrie ten Boom’s book, The Hiding Place. Her sister made her thank God for a flea infestation in the concentration camp barracks in which they were incarcerated. Later, it turned out the inmates were able to get away with a lot of things in the barracks, because the fleas kept the guards out.

I found some tweezers with fairly wide tips, and I went to work, accomplishing nothing whatsoever. It’s amazing how hard it is to find something inside your ear with tweezers. It’s not like the location is a mystery. Still, I could not grab the earpiece, and half the time, I missed it completely.

I eventually gave up and went to bed. I figured I’d go to the ER or my doctor in the morning and give everyone a good laugh.

I woke up after 2:00 a.m. The earpiece was starting to cause some pain. I decided to try removing it again, and I preceded the effort with more prayer. I was more determined this time. God has been fantastic about responding to my faith lately, so I was sure I could get the earpiece out, if I didn’t waiver or give up.

I could not find the tweezers, and I was annoyed because I couldn’t find any of my other pairs. I was afraid the wide tips on the first pair were not right for the job. I prayed for help finding them anyway, and I kept exerting my faith. I went to every room where I had taken them earlier in the night, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. Finally, I decided to go to the garage and try needlenose pliers. When I went to get them, I found the wide tweezers on my workbench, and resting on the top of an electrical box, a pair of tweezers with narrow tips and serrated tips for better gripping.

I took the narrow tweezers and went to work. Nothing seemed to go right. I missed the earpiece over and over. I kept yanking hairs out of my ear canal. But I stuck with it, praying the whole time. I would put the tweezers in, establish contact, close them, and pull. Finally, on one pull, I felt the earpiece move. That meant it was possible to grab it.

I kept working at it, and in a few minutes, I got a good grip, and the entire earpiece came out. I felt like I had delivered a baby from the side of my head.

I don’t know if you understand how unlikely this seemed at the time, from the natural viewpoint. During most of the process, I didn’t really know how the earpiece was shaped or whether it was possible to grab it. You would have to have an unfamiliar object stuck deep in your ear to understand.

I took a look at the earpiece. It had a narrow hole in the tube side, which had been facing out when it had been in my ear. There was no way the wide tweezers could get in that hole, and it was necessary to get one tweezer tip in the hole to get a grip on the earpiece. If I hadn’t misplaced them and then had to hunt them down in the garage, I would never have found the narrow tweezers, which turned out to be the only tool which could solve my problem.

Classic God move.

I started thanking God, very sincerely. It’s not hard to be sincere at a moment like that. I was extremely grateful for the relief. And I started thanking God for all the other rotten things in my life. Why not? It’s a good thing to do.

I spent a little time in prayer about some stubborn problems. I prayed about some things I needed, and I prayed about my sister’s difficulties. I felt a powerful flow of faith going through me. I could tell problems were being solved. Things were happening.

This, I believe, was the blessing that came from the annoying accident. The ear thing was unimportant, and the inconvenience was minor, but the powerful prayer I experienced later was a very big deal.

I have another praise report. Remember the guy whose car I squashed? At the time, I told him the accident would turn out to be a big blessing for both of us. I asked him if he needed prayer for anything, and he told me he had midterm tests coming up. Some kind of career program he’s involved in. I told him I’d get on it, and I did.

Last night, I saw him. He told me there were five guys in his group, and he was the only one who passed the tests. How about that? Today he’s doing something or other regarding this project, and I am still backing him up in prayer.

Walking by faith will lead you to victory, but it also leads you into battle. Bad things are going to happen. When you choose to serve God, you are very literally entering a battlefield, and you are attracting the attention of a large army of enemies. It’s not imaginary. It’s not insignificant. As soon as you start to pose a threat to the enemy, you will draw fire. That’s just how it is. You can’t expect to be protected from all adversity. Instead, you can expect every adversity to turn out to be a benefit. God will see to it, if you don’t give up on him. Psalm 32 says, “I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Either he’s there, or he’s not. If he is, he will return to you eventually and turn your manure into strawberries.

The big difference between believers and nonbelievers is that the misfortunes of nonbelievers are just misfortunes. Sometimes they turn out well, but very often, they do not. If you stick with God, he will always bring you out on top in the end.

I am better off today than I would be, had the earpiece not gotten lodged in my ear.

To some people–myself included–the story will seem silly, but if I had had to get professional help, it would have taken hours and cost a lot of money. I’m very glad it didn’t come to that.

Sorry I don’t have anything more dramatic to report, but I think that, too, is a blessing. And anyway, divine intervention is divine intervention, regardless of the scale.

If You Can’t Breathe, You Can’t do Woodworking

I have to do dust collection. I will never be able to use my woodworking tools without it.

I was waiting for a nice Delta collector to go back on the American Express Rewards shopping list, but the danged thing is still not available. Maybe I should have jumped on it when I had the chance.

I checked out dust collectors on Craigslist yesterday. I can get a giant Dustkop industrial cyclone for a mere $250. Unfortunately, it takes up an area about the size of a kitchen table and has a 3-phase, 3-horsepower motor.

Maybe my failure to acquire the Delta machine is a blessing in disguise. In fact, I’m sure it is, because ALL of my problems are blessings in disguise. Disguises. Whatever.

I’m considering making my own dust collector. Wood Magazine sells plans. For the cost of a small Delta, I can have a cyclone which should satisfy my needs for all eternity. I just have to grit my teeth and build it. One nice thing about it: it would be strong enough to put in a corner, with long hoses or ducts. A smaller machine might have to be rolled from tool to tool, so it would be in the way.

I want to fire up the table saw and make bed covers for my mill, but I am not willing to tolerate a big dust cleanup job. Trying to suck sawdust out of the crevices on two motorcycles gets tiresome.

Today I’m trying to get the garage in order. I need to get the new rotary table and chuck working so I can put them away. When I put a dial indicator on the side of the chuck and turn the table, the radial variation is barely measurable, but when I chuck a cutter in the jaws, I get higher numbers. I was getting something like 0.017″, which horrified me. Then I moved the chuck jaws over one slot and tried again. This time, the total measured variation is about 0.0045″. If I understand runout correctly, the runout is half of that, which is acceptable. But I can’t help wondering what would happen if I took the jaws out and moved them again. And there are twelve possible ways to combine the chuck, adapter plate, and table, so this could turn out to be a long job.

I just learned that you can induce runout by tightening a chuck using only one socket. I refer to the sockets in which the chuck key fits. Can you believe that? I have to go back, tighten the chuck using all three sockets, and start over.

I guess I should look for a 4-jaw chuck. I probably should have gotten one to begin with, but I suppose optimism overwhelmed my common sense. A 4-jaw chuck can be adjusted to overcome runout, although it may have other problems if it’s cheap.

I hate to do this to my male readers, but I just learned about a pretty cool tool. You will want it, I assume. It’s called the Ridgid Jobmax. It’s a battery-powered handle which accepts things like a drill, an impact driver, an oscillating tool, and an autohammer. Popular Mechanics says it outperforms individual tools made by other companies. Get one of these with the impact driver and oscillating tool, and you would be king of the jobsite. If you also had five batteries. That’s the hitch. It would be a neat thing to have around the house, if you had limited space and a limited budget.

Ridgid makes good stuff.

I better get back to the garage and resume rearranging piles.

A Lean Year Can be a Blessing

I had a funny moment this morning.

On Tuesdays, my dad and I have breakfast together at a local restaurant. We have been doing this for years. Today when we walked in and chose a table, a lad–total stranger–stopped me and said she had to tell me something.

This is Miami. You can imagine my thoughts. “Process server.” “Hare Krishna.” “Angry liberal who doesn’t like my NRA T-shirts.”

She said, “You look so HANDSOME since you’ve lost weight!”

I didn’t know what to say! She said she had noticed the change over the last few months. I had no memory of seeing her before today.

I thanked her, and we sat down to eat. My dad was happy about it. Anything good that happens to me reflects on him, as far as he’s concerned.

Why is this a big deal? Because it’s an answer to prayer. I want my father to accept Jesus and be baptized with the Holy Spirit, but he hates Christianity, so I pray for God to show him that I am more blessed than he is, so he’ll want what I have, and so he’ll get it through faith and obedience.

My dad has a real problem with food. When we go to this restaurant, sometimes he moves us from one booth to another because he needs extra room. Since August, he has seen me lose weight without effort, and today, he got a very loud reminder, in a place where he has to face the temptation that causes his problem.

That was pretty cool.

It was one of those things that are so weird, they have to originate in the supernatural.

As for her taste in men and her eyesight, well, we have to make allowances.

The weight loss itself was supernatural. God did it all. I am really sick of people trying to tell me I did it. It actually makes me angry sometimes. Sometimes people have an offensive insistence on “debunking” miracles. If God works miracles for people they know, it poses a threat, because it means God is real, and they need to change their lives and draw closer to him. It’s easier to put the credit where it does not belong. “An earthquake parted the Red Sea.” “Evolution proves God exists.” You know the mindset.

When you try to give me the credit for this, you are encouraging me to steal from God. That is not helpful to me, no matter how grateful you think I should be for the praise. I could not have done this, and I do not want to fall into the trap of thinking I blessed myself. I know you mean well, but so did Peter, when he objected to the crucifixion. And you know what Jesus said in reply.

Speaking of the supernatural, I saw something interesting on Sid Roth’s show yesterday. The show is called It’s Supernatural, and it always features Christians who have experienced supernatural manifestations. Sometimes I’m very suspicious of these people, but I liked the folks he interviewed yesterday. Their names are Ken and Jeanne Harrington.

They talked about the supernatural things God had done in their lives, and if I understood them correctly, they tied all of it to obeying certain Biblical principles, such as humility and honesty.

They made a good impression on me, and I can tell you why. They’re not sharp, oily, polished people. They seem very nice, but they are extremely ordinary. They’re not highly educated. They don’t have a bunch of cribbed preacher jokes to sling at the camera. They dress normally. No chin beards or hair gel or funny suits in colors heterosexual Caucasian men ordinarily shun. And they don’t push an overpriced seminar or a set of pricey tapes, as far as I know. They host “workshops,” and they have a book called Shift!, and I think that’s about it.

I enjoyed listening to them, because they reminded me that while transformation through the Holy Spirit is the most powerful thing in a Christian’s life, the earthly approach matters, too. You can’t just sit around praying in tongues all day. You have to read the Bible, and you have to try to change. The Holy Spirit guides you and gives you the power to succeed at this, but you have to act. Sometimes I underemphasize the importance of earthly tools.

They talked about the importance of avoiding attempts to justify yourself, even when you’re wronged. When you have a conflict, you are very likely to be wrong to some extent, even if the other person is almost completely at fault. Instead of insisting that person take all the blame, you should take responsibility for your part in the mess and apologize.

That makes sense, because Christianity is about growth. If you insist you’re right, and you believe it, you will not try to improve yourself. You will cut off the flow of growth. You can’t grow without admitting the need to grow. This is a lesson I am trying to implement in my own life, and I am not doing a great job.

So much of evil has to do with holding onto unprofitable things. Covetousness is an example. To covet is to set your heart on something. When you set your heart on something, you exalt yourself. You’re saying you know what the future should hold. You can’t walk by faith, if that’s your attitude. If you read the Bible, you’ll see story after story of people receiving the unexpected from God. They hoped for certain things, and God gave them different things, and it turned out God was right. This is the essence of Christian living. You can’t live this way if you covet. When you covet, Satan tells your flesh you need a certain thing, and your flesh tells your mind, and in the end, Satan rules your mind through the flesh. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. God is supposed to rule your mind, and your mind is supposed to rule your flesh.

When you covet, you refuse to grow. You’re like a kid who never learns to eat solid food, because he insists on continuing to breast-feed.

I think addiction is the most powerful expression of this principle. An addict refuses to move forward. He is so in love with the pleasures of the past, he will not try to free himself from them in order to make room for the greater pleasures God has planned for the future. If you know an addict, you know what I mean. They’re obsessed with the past. Blame. Offenses. Other people’s sins. Anything that excuses the refusal to grow. We’re supposed to move forward constantly, without letting anything get a grip on us and hold us back. Addicts never grow past the ages at which their addictions start. They remain immature, like teenagers, all of their lives.

We are told not to love this life. The reason is that the next life is better, and we have to let go of this one to get it. By worrying too much about success and pleasure in this life, we treat it the way an addict treats drugs. We become addicted to it. We covet it.

I might buy that book. I suspect that some of Sid Roth’s guests are con artists, but I don’t see how the Harringtons can do me any harm.

They mentioned something interesting. We have had many revivals which have failed. We have seen miraculous manifestations of God’s power in revivals that failed. God will let us perform miracles sometimes, even when we are not walking in his will. They said the emphasis on character was missing.

As Paul taught, the spiritual gifts, without the fruit (righteousness derived supernaturally from the Holy Spirit) can actually be liabilities. It’s a good thing to keep in mind, especially if God has started allowing you to use his power. The charismatic churches have had a lot of problems caused by allowing the flesh to use the spiritual gifts. I don’t have to name famous pentecostal preachers who have disgraced their offices; we all know who they are.

Carbide is the Bomb

I found the AC adapter and lithium battery for my camcorder. I therefore present THIS:

I machined something successfully! This is a pivotal moment in American history!

Wonder What it Will be Like When I Turn 99

I am wiped out. Again.

On Saturdays, my church has a thing called Rhythms Lounge. The kids take over the cafe. They recite their own poetry, sing, and play music. Some of them are very talented. “ALL of them,” my pastor would probably say, if he were reading this.

I help out with food. I was not expecting to cook yesterday, but Christian rapper Dre Marshall showed up in Miami and decided to grace us with an appearance, so I got a frantic call at 10 a.m.

By three, I was at church, and by 7:00, we had twenty pounds of baked ziti, six dozen garlic rolls, and 72 brownies. I could not attend the 6:00 service because the cooking and shopping took so long. I’m getting very efficient. I started cooking at four, and putting all that junk together in three hours–alone–is not easy.

At 8:30 today, I was at the volunteer prayer meeting in the cafe, putting my surveillance kit in my ear and making sure my Glock was concealed correctly. I worked as an armorbearer for two services, and then I attended the third. When you work, it’s not considered attendance.

They had me roaming around, which is a good assignment. You get lots of exercise, it’s not boring, and if you sneak into the cafe for a snack, no one knows.

The Assemblies of God had some kind of big function today at 6 p.m., and our pastor suggested we show up in support, but my dad invited me to lunch, and by the time I got back and took a few minutes to rest, it was about 5:50.

I drove to Hallandale on Saturday morning for my usual 8:00 a.m. prayer group meeting. There were some screwups, so only two of us made it. Anyway, I have been on the go since about 7:20 a.m. yesterday. I am ready to become one with the mattress.

Today Pastor Rich talked about Pentecost. This is what Christians call Shavuot, which actually started last Tuesday. “Pentecost” comes from the Greek language, and it means “fiftieth.” Shavuot commemorates the day on which God gave the law to Moses. Pentecost is the day on which God wrote the law on the hearts of Christians by allowing the Holy Spirit to fall on them in the Upper Room in Jerusalem.

Shavuot is also the festival of the first fruits; Jews used to bring the first fruits of their labor to the Temple. Sheep and wheat and so on. When I was living on a kibbutz, they brought out fruit and young livestock.

Pastor Rich discussed Pentecost as a day of restoration. He talked of five blessings we should expect in return for our faith, obedience, and offerings. First, we should expect to be relieved of debt. Second, we should expect God to restore and save our families. Third, God will reveal himself to us in a new way. Fourth, there will be a redistribution of wealth (but not the kind Obama wants). Fifth, we will have power over weakness.

I don’t know exactly where this doctrine comes from. We were given scriptural support for it, but I’ve never seen it taught before. Maybe it’s an Assemblies of God thing.

I was fascinated by the sermon, because “fifty” has been very important in my life lately. I wrote about it a while back.

I “happened” to go to a Messianic synagogue on the first day of my fiftieth year, and they were singing about the Jubilee. That word describes the Biblical fiftieth year, or the “year of God’s favor,” as described in the Isaiah passage Jesus read to announce the beginning of his ministry. The Messianics sang about it, and the rabbi taught about it, and in an offhand remark he referred to Yeshua (Jesus) as “our jubilee,” and he even mentioned the Isaiah passage, in a seemingly unrelated part of the service. Now my pastor is singing the same tune, more or less.

I think this is the year of my restoration. God keeps hammering this theme. I don’t know why it should be true, but he won’t let it drop, so there must be something to it.

God seems to be promoting me in the background. Other people are getting attention and honor, but weird things keep happening to me, and I keep getting revelation. None of it gets much notice from the people around me. I don’t know where I’m going to end up, but I think God is going to move me into an important position of service, while sidestepping the man-ordered paths promotion usually takes.

I can’t figure it out, but I know God likes to remind us that man is not the one who bestows favor. When he wanted to change the world, he didn’t work through the High Priest, and he hasn’t worked wonders or explained his mysteries through Popes. He picks people from the periphery of the faithful, probably for the same reason he made Abraham refuse gifts: when he raises people up, he doesn’t want others to say man did it. Maybe the point is to avoid rewarding human pride.

If we could use our little minds to choose the prophets and the savior and so on, it would be a lot like the building of the Tower of Babel, which was supposed to allow man to control his own destiny. We were never intended to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps. We are intended to walk by faith, and as long as you think you don’t need God to help you achieve your goals, you will do what you want instead of what he wants. Humility is essential to walking by faith, and if we achieve too much using our base tools, humility will elude us.

Today at lunch, I got an opportunity to explain the Pentecost/Shavuot/Babel parallels to my dad. How about that? These metaphorical similarities are among the strongest evidence that Jesus is who he said he was, and that the baptism of the Holy Spirit (including the gifts of tongues) is real; these seeming coincidences could not have been planned or faked. This is the kind of stuff that makes an impact on intelligent people who resist the faith. I’m so grateful that God gave me the chance to present it.

Father’s Day “happens” to be coming up right away. Wouldn’t it be funny if it gave my dad an excuse to visit the church?

According to Jesus, in Sheol, Abraham told a rich man that if his brothers didn’t believe Moses and the prophets, they would not listen to a man raised from the dead, and that is absolutely true. Like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we can explain anything away, if we don’t want to believe it. People who should know better make up shallow, specious arguments “debunking” Christianity. But there are a lot of people who haven’t heard about Moses and the prophets or the endless list of Old Testament evidence which proves Jesus is the Messiah. Today I got a chance to present some of this material to someone who needed to hear it.

Ultimately, the Holy Spirit, and not evidence, convinces people to believe. If evidence would do the trick, every person who has heard the evidence would be a Christian. Supernatural blindness and human stubbornness outweigh mere evidence. But for those who are susceptible to the call, evidence is a great help.

To get back to the notion of “fiftieth,” I think Shavuot is very much like the Jubilee. Jesus was crucified, and fifty days passed, and suddenly, the Spirit fell on 120 believers. They became the first fruits of his harvest. They became the beginning of creation’s restoration; its jubilee. Sometimes the Bible uses years and days almost interchangably, as when God sentenced the Hebrews to wander in the desert one year for every day during which the spies investigated the land of Canaan. Maybe Pentecost and the Jubilee are reflections of each other; the same idea, expressed in different ways.

In the year of Jubilee, slaves were given their freedom, and people who had sold their birthrights got them back. After Jesus came, people who were slaves to Satan were freed, and they received the birthright Adam and Eve sold for a piece of fruit: eternal life. These things are not coincidence. On Pentecost, the believers in the Upper Room received the power that would eventually grow to liberate the world. Eternal life is wonderful, but the Holy Spirit gives us power to use here and now, to rip this world back out of Satan’s hands. That’s a completely different blessing. For two thousand years, it has been hindered, but it seems to have resumed growing into its fullness. The war is heating up, and God is arming us with Holy Spirit power.

I see this year as my Shavuot. I hope it’s not just my imagination. So far, things are looking good. If “first fruit” status has spread to me, it will spread to others, and eventually, we will be a huge and powerful force before which Satan will find himself utterly inadequate.

Saved Fifty Bucks!

I had some fun yesterday. I managed to modify my Hornady Lock-N-Load shell plates to fit the new EZ-Ject kit I put on my press.

This involved cutting a slot underneath each plate, going all the way around the bottom. The EZ-Ject base has a nub sticking up from it, and the nub fits into the slot. As the plate turns, the nub enters the shell pocket and pushes the shell out. You need a slot about 1/4″ wide and 0.060″ deep to make it work. The newer shell plates come with the slot, and Hornady will fix shell plates for ten bucks each, but I was determined to do the job on my milling machine.

A while back, I put my enormous rotary table on the mill and mounted a shell plate in it. I tried to cut the slot with a 3/8″ HSS cutter, but the hard shell plate just giggled when the cutter hit it. Enco put carbide cutters on sale, so I got a couple of 1/4″ jobs. Yesterday I stuck one in the collet and gave the shell plate another try. It was like cutting through wax. It wasn’t even necessary to take multiple passes. Not for depth, anyway. I had to move the plate over 0.010″ and run the cutter around it again to make the slot slightly wider than 1/4″, but the depth worked fine on the first try.

I have two shell plates that work now. I can fix the rest in about half an hour. I love it when machining works.

Carbide is really something. The difference between the utter FAIL of the HSS and the ease and speed of the carbide is incredible.

If you have Hornady shell plates, I highly recommend you not do this. I did it because I’m crazy, and it’s very easy when you have the right cutter, but for sane people, it’s simpler to spend ten bucks and get it over with.

I’ll try to take photos of the next plate as I machine it.

Get Good Medical Care While it Still Exists

My friend Linda, who works for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, is going in for surgery to correct a narrowing in her spine. It causes problems with her legs. Please pray for healing and safety.

Thought I Felt a Bump

I’m having a fun day.

I had an accident in the church parking lot after the revival. It was after eleven, and I was dying to get home. I saw a car parked next to my truck, and I looked at it as I passed, and then I got in the truck, turned the wheel, and ran my tire into the car’s left front corner. I was exhausted, I guess. I can’t explain it any other way.

My truck had a flat tire, a scratch, and a gouged-up rim. The car…ouch. No bumper. Two headlights gone. One fender mashed beyond hope.

While I was in the parking lot, at the edge of the ghetto, struggling to change a tire in the dark, two of my friends came out and helped. One of them refused to let me tighten the lug nuts, which was a real job. Very nice of him to do it for me. I was about to drop.

I was so tired, I forgot I was carrying, and I took off my flannel shirt. I guess I looked pretty weird out there, wallowing around on the pavement with a Glock on my hip.

It turned out the car belonged to another security guy. Being a big Christian, he was all worried about me and my problems. He didn’t want me to get a ticket or have insurance aggravation. We decided to handle it ourselves. Today I had to go to a body shop in Opa-Locka to hand over a 50% deposit on the work.

It wasn’t all that much. I was surprised.

I felt really bad for him. I told him to make sure he went to a place that would do a good job. He went to three places, trying to get a good price, but I told him not to worry about that, because I wanted it done right.

It turned out there were a couple of things I could do for him. He’s having midterm exams, and he said he had had “bad luck” all month. Someone borrowed his scooter and didn’t bring it back. So I’m putting in time, praying for him. And I found something else I could do for him. I had something lying around which he can use.

When the accident happened, I told him not to worry, because it was going to turn out to be a blessing for both of us. I was sure of it. God was not going to let us leave a 3-day revival, where we worked long hours without pay, only to be punished for it. Something good will come of it. I’m not worried at all.

I got a tour of Opa-Locka today. What a weird area. There are a lot of big lots up there. It’s surprising. There are homes that should be very nice, but because of the area, they’re not exactly in demand.

The body guy is named Conroy. I found the shop where he works, and I gave him the check and got a receipt. He tried to help me with my wheel. He got in the truck, and he took me to a few places, but nobody had the right wheel. Says he’s from Jamaica. I invited him to come to church this Sunday, and he may show up.

He gave me an estimate on fixing the bad paint and the new scratch on my truck. If he does a good job on the car, I may let him do it. I also need some Moto Guzzi side covers painted, and he says he can do that.

I ended up driving to Hub Cap Heaven, near the county line. The road was under repair, so I had to wait in a long line of cars. No wheel, naturally. But they’ll call me if they find one.

Came home and tried to get my new chuck working so I could put it on my new rotary table. The gears were balking. I emailed the seller, and he said it was probably dried oil. I knew that wasn’t true, but I opened it up one more time to make sure there was nothing I could fix, and while I was opening the jaws, the chuck balked, and it twisted out of my hand and tore up my left thumb. It is surprising how well a 90° edge can cut, when it hasn’t been deburred.

Pouring hydrogen peroxide under the big loose bloody flap of skin was most enjoyable. I hope I get to do that more often in the future. I got it bandaged up and went back to work. When I tightened up the bolts holding the pinions in place, the chuck started working. Thank God.

I put the chuck on the rotab and tried to dial it in on the mill table, but the silly thing doesn’t want to move on the rotab. I don’t know if it sits in a recess or what. I don’t feel like taking it apart to see. My 8″ chuck moved around fine when I hit it with a deadblow hammer, but this one doesn’t want to go anywhere. I abandoned it. Now I’m thinking about ice cream.

I wish I had some super glue so I could try to glue my thumb back together. Sometimes that works.

This is the hidden price for a Chinese bargain.

On the religious front, things are going great. This morning, as usual, I woke up and started praying in the Spirit, but now there is a melody to it. This happened to me a couple of weeks ago, and now it’s back. So I was actually singing in the Spirit, although I was praying silently. This is much better than plain old prayer. It adds a dimension of musical worship.

Robert Morris suggests people sing to God when they spend time in private prayer. It’s a good idea, but it’s not that engaging. It’s very different when the song is part of prayer.

Naturally, I am all freaked out. Again.

It’s like I said. The revival took existing believers to a new level. It’s no joke.

The garlic rolls came out great, although I was too lazy to get real garlic. I used powder, which was still very good. I melted provolone over two rolls. Really sick. Here are photos:

I think this is a fantastic idea. If I added another cheese with more flavor, these would kill. They could be an optional dish at church, with little side containers of pizza sauce and pesto.

Here’s hoping I make it to bedtime with no more lacerations.

Garlic Rolls for the Lazy

Here’s how to make incredible garlic rolls with ten minutes of work. This is how I make them at church.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups high-gluten (or bread) flour
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup water

Put the flour, salt, and sugar in a food processor with the basic blade. Mix briefly. Add water and mix again. Don’t add all the water at once. Add most of it and then continue dribbling it in until you get a single glob of dough which is a little sticky but not too sticky to handle.

Let the dough sit in the food processor for at least five minutes. Some cooks would probably suggest 20.

Add the yeast and blend until it’s mixed in. Roll the dough out into a circle about seven inches wide. Use flour to keep it from sticking to the pin and rolling surface.

Cut the dough into twelve equal-sized pieces. Tie each piece in a simple knot. If you want to make the rolls better (a little more work), make a 12″ circle so you can double the slices before tying them in knots.

Roll the knots in cheap olive oil and set them in a nonstick pan which can take high heat. Cover the pan with foil or plastic and let the rolls double in size.

Bake at 550° for 8 minutes. Check. If they look done, take them out. If not, give them more time.

Put about half a cup of garlic cloves in a blender or miniature food processor. Add oil to cover them. Add salt to taste. Grind them to a paste. Adjust the oil amount to your liking. Mix in flaked or fresh parsley.

Pour this stuff over the rolls and toss them. If you want, you can nuke it before adding the parsley, but it works fine raw.

That’s it.

If you add the yeast at the same time as the other ingredients, the rolls won’t be as good.

I have a sick thought. What if I melted provolone over a couple of these?