10/3/2012

John's the best.  I'll just leave it at that and let y'all wonder.    [ John is wondering too... - SM ]  So, I had to help some dude from Tiny and Flaccid hook up his laptops in the Viewing Gallery just a little while ago.  He’s here to talk to people about Excel spreadsheets.  He might be talking to them about other programs but he showed me what he was going to show them about Excel… and I must grudgingly admit it is pretty damned cool.  Did you know that Excel will talk to you?  Yeah, it will read highlighted cells to you.  You have to add the feature to your “ribbon tool bar” or some such shit, but once it is there you highlight a cell, or group of cells, click the button, and it reads them to you.  I went in and had it read my list of weapons, 922r compliance lists, my life so far, and a bunch of other spreadsheets.  I had to laugh when it called an AK-47 an “Alaska forty seven” and my 1911 a “one thousand nine hundred eleven.”  It did get 9mm right but I have no idea what it was trying to say when it came across “Taurus.”  Not.  Even.  Close.  It managed to mangle “Izhmash” only slightly, as Juan might expect, but it at least was recognizable.  “AUTOCOMP” was read letter for letter, but that didn’t really surprise me much.  All in all, it is a pretty neat function… almost totally useless, but neat.  HOLY CRAP!  Word does it too!  I just added it to the ribbon tool bar thingy here as well!  She just read everything I wrote today.  Oh, this is going to be fun.  I want to go back and have it read that sea shanty from 9/19/2008, International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  Yarr.  Ok, that wasn’t as impressive as I'd hoped.  Well, I've got to pee and hold some lady’s hand in the Grand Canyon room.  I'll see about coming back to y'all after lunch.  Well, I'm back but I'm not sure just how much more I've got to say.  I'm in a bit of a quandary about Saturday.  My old college buddy Navajo will be in town.  Emily and Rob will be hosting him, as usual, and they have suggested a bunch of us meet up at Redneck Heaven for lunch.  I know I'll be able to hang with them in the afternoon and evening, but I'd have to cut the shop short if I'm going to make it to lunch.  Also, Pat texted me earlier asking if we were going to the shop and I replied that we were.  I'm guessing he’s planning to head that way at some point as well.  I guess I'll skip lunch with Nav and them and do a regular shop day with John and Pat.  Ok, that was easy.  No more quandary… well, no more shop quandary… well, no more scheduling conflict with the shop on Saturday quandary.  I still have many a quandary with regards to many other things… but that is neither here nor there.  I've been reading a little more on them intergoogles about my new shotgun and the possibility of putting a Mossberg 500 stock on it.  Some wag said he has done it but it requires some trimming to make it fit.  I ain't skeert.  Now I just need to decide between the top-folder, side-folder, or M-4 style “collapsible” stock.  I don’t like side-folders so that one is moist likely out.  I've got M-4 style stocks on the Saiga 12 and the Saiga 7.62x39 so that would be acceptable.  Thing is, I really like the top-folder.  I'll probably wind up with another M-4 style stock since they are considerably cheaper though.  Well, there is a top-folder I kind of like which is cheap enough, but… well, I don’t really have a “but” for that.  The one I really like is around a hundred bucks.  I really don’t need to drop a Franklin on a stock which may not fit.  Of course I really shouldn’t drop a couple saw bucks on a stock which may not fit either, but if you’re going to start using logic I'm not going to be able to continue arguing with you.  Yeah, if I do decide to buy one, which we all know I will, I'll probably get whatever Bloodbath & Beyond has on the shelf.  And I think I might have just decided that an M-4 stock is the way to go to keep all my stuff similar.  I suppose I otter go get the M-4 style stock for the SKS as well, while I'm at it.  Thing is, I can't visualize the SKS with the M-4 stock.  All the pictures on them intergooglewebs look all whopper-jawed… catty-whompus even.  No, if I'm going to re-replace the stock on the SKS, I'm going to put another Dragunov style stock on there.  See, I bought this gun because it had a Dragunov stock on it but that one was old and ratty and didn’t fit worth a shit.  I bought a Monte Carlo stock and like it… except that the grip is a bit odd.  Well, we won't be doing it anytime soon so the point is moo.  Hey!  I just got a text from Rob telling me that Nav is coming to town this weekend!  I said I was just blogging about it and he asked, more or less, for this site’s address.  Well Rob, if you are reading this, welcome to my blog.  You’ve got a bunch of years to catch up on.  I don’t recommend it.  Well, I guess that is about all I have for y'all today.  Perhaps, if you’re lucky, I'll talk again tomorrow.  Yeah Rob, I AM that self-important in here.