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Felix

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Felix

  1. Little primer on tank maintenance from a former tanker. Battlefield maintenance is surprisingly easy due to the power pack being a self contained unit that can be pulled from the vehicle in a matter of minutes by trained mechanics. We could typically pull and replace a power pack in about an hour if we had to. The whole pack is then sent back to the maintenance depot and repaired there by specialist mechanics. In my day a typical battalion maintenance depot would have one additional power pack available for every 10 in operation with a constant rotation as they are repaired and cycled back into vehicles. Track replacement was similar with so called combat rolls available for operations where an entire track was delivered in roll, so that a tank could literally drive off of a bad or broken track onto a new one. You didn't really drive, you were pulled by an M-88 repair track. Suspension maintenance could and was mostly done by the crews themselves up to and including replacing torsion bars and road wheels. So drive train and suspension work is pretty simple even under bad conditions. We replaced power packs and track in the field all the time and unless conditions were really bad we usually didn't lose more than a couple of hours of operational time doing it. Turret maintenance is a different story, but most of that is electronic or hydraulic in nature. Computers could be replaced and calibrated in a matter of hours, but then required bore sighting and test firing. No biggie and standard stuff for all crews. Hydraulic issues or turret stabilization issues would generally require depot level maintenance but with good PM were pretty rare. Battle damage, of course, is a different animal but a well established maintenance unit can do wonders and can do it fast and not too far in the rear. Also something I haven't seen discussed. The Abrams is a multifuel vehicle. They use JP now but in my day we ran them on diesel. Smoke generators, holla! Pour raw diesel into the exhaust and you can make some serious smoke. I'm not sure how much tuning is required but we were trained that in a pinch you could put just about any fuel in that bitch and she'd run. I'll try to answer questions, but my last model was the M1A1. I saw a demo M1A2 before I got out but they weren't deployed yet.
  2. They're baaaaack! WTF?
  3. I logged on just to comment on that. Happened right in front of the ref. Clearly a dangerous play, he undercut him well after he was in the air and instead they get advantage? That ref should be permanently banned after the game. There is no excuse for that.
  4. Gee that looked really tough from 3 feet away.
  5. It's not his best one for sure. He seemed pretty chill but I suspect that's his general "schmoozing donors" face.
  6. Oh I get it. Let's just say that the conversation involved someone very, very high in Belmont. A guy in a burnt orange suit if you will. I was keeping my poor ass head down just hoping for a future invite.
  7. I don't know anything but I was at the game last night as a guest of a BMD and was privy to a conversation in the Germania club that jibes with what Derka said. I'm no longer optimistic that we'll be able to keep him. As most have said, the over riding factor is what's best for The University. That being said, I trust Del Conte to make the best hire possible and it won't be Terry.
  8. It makes me giggle every time I see a Ramjet masterpiece. I can just picture him sitting there putting on the finishing touches to the primary focus and then sitting back and contemplating the best place to put Bert.
  9. What does the Building Inspections department have to do with fentanyl? You mean cities have different departments that do different things? Fascinating.
  10. Fantastic! I love David Harbour in just about anything. I laughed at so many of the tropes being skewered. Good music too.
  11. Violent Night with David Harbour as disgruntled Santa finding his Christmas spirit during a hostage situation. I laughed a lot.
  12. Tix are gone.
  13. Family shit came up. Senior night.
  14. Cavalry! Holla!
  15. I'll regret this later, I'm sure. Agree with this wholeheartedly. One of the main reasons I moved away from the church (LCMS) was the fundamental silly simplicity of thought. It all boils down to "The Bible is the literal Truth of everything" which is patently ridiculous. Nobody every wants to discuss why Sin is bad. Sin is bad because it leads us from God. An act is not bad on it's face unless it leads us away from God. That still leaves plenty of opportunities to sin without having to make a stupid list and include a bunch of things that EVERYONE does. Our human nature leads us to sin, not because it causes us to do human things, but because we do them in selfish and hurtful ways. I won't even go into the absolute goofiness of having to believe the outlandish shit in the Bible actually happened for it to count. Jonah doesn't have to be an historical event for the story to work. Nor does the flood or any of the other "miracles". Whether any of these things really happened or not doesn't change the moral of the stories. It's easy for me to understand the point of a parable or an allegory without having to make the ridiculous jump to "Bible says it happened so it did." Pretty much anything in the Bible that was oral tradition, should be treated as morality fable. It still works the same way and you don't have to lie to yourself about how it actually happened that way. The idea that God couldn't inspire these stories to point the direction versus actually performing the miracles, diminishes God, it doesn't strengthen him. Then Jesus came along and said this is the New Testament and clarified that God is Love and therefor to come to God you must love one another as God loves us. The sacrifice of the Lamb is a beautiful thing in itself, and you don't need to get bogged down in the minutia of Law and literal ism to understand how to come to God. It's impossible for me to reconcile how two adult human beings in a loving relationship can be a bad thing in that context. Yes, our humanity makes us sinful in the context that God is the perfect embodiment of Love. We fail at being that every day and can only try our best, but to actively judge and ostracize another person for those same failings is insane. Any belief that required me to ignore what I know to be true, and dumb it down to "God gave us this book 2000 years ago and every word is true, and if you don't believe that then you can't come to God" should be offensive to God himself, if he made us in his image. It requires us to reject objective reality for no damned reason at all except someone too stupid to understand what it's really saying says so. More importantly, it actually leads us away from God which is the greatest sin of all.
  16. This old tanker is green with envy. Every tanker dreams of that breakthrough and rolling up on rear echelon troops. Team Spirit 89 in Korea during an attack exercise, my battalion command spotted a weak point with a low draw that was only defended by a small infantry force because the opfor seemed to think tanks couldn't get in and out of the low ground. We could and rolled the whole battalion with a supporting mobile infantry company through there. We came out of nowhere and burst out of a small forest onto a battery of ROK towed artillery that was 5 klicks behind the lines and watching those cannon cockers shit themselves as we shot the shit out of them (MILES gear) was one of my best days in uniform. They pretty much stopped the whole operation at that point and reset for the next day. That was a good after action review session.
  17. Felix

    Top Gun 2

    I got my bullwhip hung in a tree trying to swing and I pulled so hard to get it loose that I turned my back as it came free and went full Django on my own back. Giant welt and the pain brought me to my knees.
  18. 1.82 in so far in Manchaca.
  19. Orange Shirt got some accidental titty.
  20. You guys take Recency Bias to an art form.
  21. I saw it Sunday. I was entertained. Fun ride, great action, funny as hell, and great music. Not Oscar stuff but a nice thrill ride with some LOL moments for sure. Loved all the characters.
  22. Like a dog when you come in his yard.
  23. My cousin was a student manger for Rick that season. He also helped me out with coaching a flag football team. I'll never forget him coming to one of our games and asking him about the team. He just looked at me and said "Kevin Durant is going to blow your mind." Then he described a play in practice on his second day where Augustine threw him an alley oop on a 3 on 1 break that was 3 feet over his head and behind him. He was coming up on the right side of the hoop, caught the ball in his right hand above his head and behind it, pass it to his left hand behind his head and then slammed it home all while in the air. He said they all stood there stunned for a minute and then everyone lost their minds. I was not disappointed with the season and I'll always be a Durant fan. Fuck the haters.
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