GlockSpock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-eAxVs7LCU#t=37  

Was in JCPenny's over the weekend and saw a holiday decoration. It went like this:   Merry Christmas Happy Hanukkah Happy Quanza Feliz Navidad   I just felt that it was ironic that Christmas was on there twice.

      longshot007, if you wish, speed with tnguy. If he'll accept payment from you, then I'll gladly release his magazines for you whenever you can meet up. Whenever I receive a message from tnguy saying he's received payment, I'll consider them yours.

  Actually, I'm all out. Sorry, someone local claimed the last remaining five and I forgot to update this thread. Sorry! If there was enough interest, we could do it again.

  Let it be noted for the epic caliber wars that even the mighty .40 S&W is not a one stop shot.

So, I've taken a bit more of a look over everything. It seems you can gain 15 credits per day (30 searches) and other small daily things. Do 30 searches a day and you'll end up with roughly 450 credits a month (it could be more than that due to the daily things.   There are two different rewards levels: Silver and Gold. You start out at Silver and then gain your way to Gold after earning 750 credits total. Prizes for each level are the same, you just get a "discount" once you are Gold.   Notably, you can receive:   Hulu Plus 1-Month Subscription (450 Silver, 420 Gold) 1 Month Xbox Live Gold Membership (699 Silver, 679 Gold) $5 Groupon Promotional Card (523 Silver, 470 Gold) $3 Amazon Gift Card (340 Silver, 330 Gold) $5 Amazon Gift Card (525 Silver, 475 Gold)   Other various sweepstakes/restaurant cards. So If I do my part daily, I should be able to obtain the Hulu Subscription for free. I'll also have a few credits leftover once I hit "Gold". This isn't obviously that big of a deal, but lets do the math:   365 days in a year*15 credits per day=5,475 credits yearly. 5,475 exchanged for $5 Gift cards=11 gift cards a year, or $55 bucks to Amazon. If you already pay for Hulu, you'll save a bit more. Nobody is going to get rich by doing this, but considering how many searches I do a day all I did was replace my default search engine with Bing. They have really neat wallpapers!

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9778718&rrid=_4b2494ad-380b-005b-d559-0d6cff9c6b6e   It appears that Microsoft Bing has a "rewards program" by which they give you credits for searches. You can then cash those credits in for various goods/services, such as Hulu subscriptions or Amazon credits.   ​Disclaimer: Sure, I know this is helping advertisers keep pretty nifty profile of you, but lets be honest, unless you take steps to prevent this from happening they already are doing a pretty good job of doing so.

So, I've budgeted aside enough money to purchase one of these if I want. However, I find myself contemplating opportunity costs and the like, as usual.   I was actually already very interested in the Nikon scopes before they were recommended. However, I notice that the adjustments are .5 MOA instead of the typical .25 MOA adjustments seen on many other scopes.       Between the two Nikon versions, which is more highly recommended any why? I don't know that much about telescopic scopes. The one with the BDC 150 seems neat, but is that truly something that works well? http://swfa.com/Nikon-P-22-Riflescopes-C4158.aspx   To put it on an XT-22TSR, I suppose I"ll need a scope base. Whatever I do, I want something that should hold zero very well during transport. Anything in particular come to mind regarding this?

I use survey grade GPS equipment rather quite often in my line of work. I am not going to try and portray myself as an expert on anything here, but I believe what the Russians are wishing to setup here in this topic are what we refer to as "base stations". In order to triangulate your position on Earth, theoretical minimum number of satellites you need would be three. Four to six are better, and anything above that you are doing great. However, typically speaking, triangulation based upon the satellites alone ss not 100% accurate. Depending on environmental factors, you'd be looking probably .5' to several feet accuracy based upon GPS satellites alone. Most of the time this is ok, but when you are doing survey work you want it as accurate as possible.   To increase the accuracy, we tie into what we refer in this field as a "base station". It is essentially a GPS unit (typically permanently installed) that constantly talks to the satellites. Without going into a lot of detail, you can connect your GPS unit to the internet (over Wi-Fi or cellular), and then receive "corrections" from the nearest base station. Typically speaking, the closer you are to the base station the more accurate your surveying. Generally, we get somewhere between .05' and .2' at work.   As far as GLONASS not being compatible with "our system", that's not entirely true. The unit I use at work can receive GLONASS signals. GLONASS has it's benefits. I used to use an older Leica unit that did not receive the Russian signals. If I was under heavy tree cover, it was useless. Sometimes (most of the time really) light tree cover would make it useless. The new unit I use (Topcon) is very close to being unaffected by tree cover. Supposedly the GLONASS frequencies penetrate cover better because of the wavelength. We don't use GLONASS much at all because it isn't compatible with the base station we use. However, if we had access to base stations that support GLONASS, I would consider this a good thing.   If I am correct regarding them installing base stations, this will typically just increase the accuracy from a few feet to theoretically half an inch. Personally from a surveying point of view, I'd consider this a good thing to happen. The GLONASS satellites themselves have the capability to direct the right form of weaponry within a few feet of intended target (I believe anyway).    Perhaps there is a huge aspect of this that I am unaware of or do not understand correctly, but considering that Russia has plenty of nukes that can wipeout cities regardless of inch accuracy, I am not going to worry about it. There are plenty, plenty of bigger things to worry about in my opinion.

  Dude, if the Zombies tear your arms off....all you're gonna want is lots and lots of warm beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I'd prefer to meet local to avoid shipping fees. If someone in the Cleveland/Chattanooga area wouldn't mind letting me meetup with them to sharpen a ZT 350 (I think) for me, that'd be great. It's pretty bad right now. It is a buddy's. He gave it to someone for them to sharpen and it came back a butter knife. How, I'll never understand.   I'd sharpen it but don't want to put the time into the S30v steel right now.

I just purchased this one about 2 weeks ago and love it:   GW-6900   I paid roughly $85 for it brand new. I will say that it came fully charged. I got it to sync with the tower within minutes and it has not missed a sync a single night since I've got it. It shows "RCVD" in the lower right for each time it synced that morning. If I look at it at 12:01 AM then it does not show RCVD because it typcially syncs around 1:00 AM. I keep mine in "powersave" mode. That turns off the face with it does not see light for a while. If you push a button or bring it into the light, the face turns back on. It just saves a bit of juice but the alarm, sync, etc all continue to work. It's kinda like turning the monitor to your computer off. So far I love mine and it has been my favorite watch I have ever owned. The only thing that would disappoint me is if it does not live up to the hype of 10-20 year battery life or its durability.   I too bought it because I like the idea of long term use without service. However, they do use rechargeable batteries so eventually the battery will go bad. Some people might experience it in 5 years, others might get lucky and go 20+ years. The consensus on the watch forums is if you keep the battery near tipped off it will last longer. If you throw the watch in a drawer for since months and let it die down, that's supposed to be bad for the life of the battery.   I like it. However, for longer "serviceless" use, I think a quality mechanical watch would do well. But it would theoretically become less accurate without servicing. I think that's right. I use TGO more than I do the watch forums;)   As far as pricing, I'd say that's about right for a used one if it works and is cosmetically alright.   EDIT: Ha! Upon checking my Amazon, it was exactly two weeks ago that I purchased it.   EDIT: Exact same watch, "reverse" style:   EDIT: I almost bought this one because it looks awesome. But then I decided I was paying ~$40 extra just for looks.   Very satisfied with what I purchased.  

  I disagree with this. I use the cheapest HDMI cables that I can find. It's almost as bad a debate as "Mac vs Windows" or "Ford vs Chevy", but personally I don't see paying more than $2-$3 for an HDMI cable.

I received something in the mail regarding this a day or two ago. It'd be worth if if it meant they would stop sending so much crap in the mail regarding renewals and stuff each year. It comes with a fairly nice looking jacket.

Yeah me too. I like the bolt gun listed above bit I do miss my 10/22 and want to get one again sometime. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have a Marlin XT-22 TSR. I am hoping to put a scope on it to be able to shoot paper at 100 yards to see what it can do. I'm looking for something that is high quality and will last. I suppose somewhere between $100 to $300 is the budget, with $200 being the sweet spot. I'm looking for a magnified scope.   I haven't been able to shoot this rifle much because of .22lr availability, but so far I like it. It seems to be very accurate and I want to take it out to 100-200 yards.

They've got some good specials going on right now.   500 Extra MB Free   Install and login to their mobile app and you get an extra 5GB free.   Also, some cloud service providers are more secure than others. Dropbox, for example, uses the same encryption key for all files. Dropbox can decrypt your data if someone wants/needs to. However, there are some cloud providers that allow your computer to generate keys (a public and private key). They private key is typically encrypted by your password. Essentially, they cannot decrypt your data because they don't know and don't store your password. It's a bit more complex than that, but that's the general idea. It does come down to trust at some point though. I use Dropbox for some stuff. Some stuff I use SpiderOak or Tresorit for. SpiderOak is the same idea as Tresorit, but SpiderOak has given me some serious data corruption problems recently. I say give Tresorit a try/test. I think they have a while to go, but they are off to a nice start and are currently offering $25,000 to anyone that can break into their system and decrypt user data.   EDIT: Here is their "whitepaper": https://tresorit.com/tresoritwhitepaper.pdf

I've been playing around with Tresorit. It's a pretty good alternative to Dropbox. Read up on it, supposedly they have no access to your files due to the fact they are encrypted with your private key on your own computer before being uploaded. Less featured, but looks promising. Give them a try: http://tresorit.com/download.html Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

20 miles eh?   http://tinyurl.com/kkaykm

Oh good. My first reaction that someone was copying your product almost exactly. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It's just a flesh wound! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh, and I don't want to hijack this thread, at least until he gets it fixed. Then we can talk about Linux all we want! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I used to use Linux exclusively in high school. I tried many distros, Ubuntu being the primary one but also OpenSuse, Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome), Gentoo (not for beginners, I'll explain below), and probably more than I cannot think of right now.   In a Nutshell, you can run different different desktop environments on the same installation. The two major ones are Gnome and KDE, but you do have other more minor ones too. They look different. They have different features. Some are built more for optimization and efficiency, some have a lot of bloated stuff you don't need but it's there. Some are as minimalist as possible.   Gentoo was interesting because you had to compile pretty much everything from scratch. With instructions, an installation goes pretty much like this. From a CD you install a very small "starter package". It's just enough to get you a CLI when booted from, roughly 50MB or so (may be different now). From then on, you compile from source code "Gentoo", the drivers for your specific hardware and only your specific hardware. It takes about 1-2 days for a full Gentoo installation because your computer is compiling from scratch everything. The end result is a very lean OS that only has the drivers and modules for the hardware you have. That would result in a very efficient installation that takes full advantage of your hardware but is not bogged down from having all kinds of stuff in there that you cannot use or wouldn't use. It was really neat and a fun experience, but I ended up leaving it after a few days because it was a pain to get something to work. If you realized you installed the wrong drivers for your sound card, you had to get and recompile a few things (much quicker than the original setup, but still took time).   I would say, in today's tech world, I'd try a distro with KDE instead of Gnome. Or if you try Gnome, go with one that does not use the "Unity" interface. In my opinion, it's crap. Maybe it's just different. KDE has really became nice in the past few years.   In the end, I switched from Linux to OS X because OS X has more commercial software for media and office productivity. I miss Linux though for many reasons. I have many times been tempted to sell my rMBP and purchase a high end laptop and just install Linux on it. I'd probably net $100-$300 and get back to my roots. Overall, I despise everything that is Windows. The only thing, in my opinion, that they have going for them is the office suite. It is the standard. Numbers and Pages on a Mac are usable, but (maybe just because I learned on Excel and Word) and infinitely more usable in my opinion.   Linux recently has stolen some of the gaming crowd due to Steam pushing a Linux version. It was not around with I had my massive homebuilt machine. If it was I would have installed it and probably kept it. I got tired of Windows 7 on the gaming machine so I sold the machine. One of the Linux distros + Steam would be a killer combination in my opinion, as long as there were a few games that you liked that had applicable Linux versions.   It is easy to try most any Linux distro, simply download an .ISO, burn it to a disk (or flash it to a USB drive), and boot into a "live" mode. From there you can use it or install it. If you use it, it does not write anything to your hard disk (unless you manually do say by saving a file, etc). You won't accidentally do so though.   For the most part, Mac OS X offers much of what Linux has to offer (but in a less open and diverse package). I just get nostalgic thinking about Linux though sometimes.

Free fix:   http://www.ubuntu.com   Or if you want to spend money:   http://alturl.com/vk9uj

   In my above post I stated that I am open to the possibility of 6000 years and 4.6B years. I am open to it being 6000 years because we may discover new science in the future that reveals a great flaw in many of the ways we figure things now. I am open to 4.6B years because most all of modern science agrees on that figure. When I woke up this morning, it didn't matter which figure I clung to as I got out of bed with my wife and started putting my pants on. I am in no hurry to decide for myself how old this place is, in the end it doesn't matter to me.    Am I waiting to wakeup and seeing on the news headlines that the Earth is 6000 years old due to a fatal flaw in the calculations of everything? No. I wouldn't bet anything on that happening. Is the likelihood that the Earth is roughly 4.6B years old? According to many things, a few of which I mentioned above, that answer is yes. Do I have the confidence to say 100% with no room for error that the Earth is either 6000 years old or 4.6B years old? Not with 100% certainty.