I pryed it from an Ivan's cold dead fingers...

My friend mentioned that his friend was in the market for a rifle. A gun show was chosen and I was invited to go. I had three "holes" in my collection that I deemed worthy of filling. A bolt action in a useful caliber (.308 equivalent +), a .22lr for plinking, or a PF-9 for pockets.

Thanksgiving happened and I saw an exquisite M1917 Enfield with family history. I started leaning toward the bolt action. I figured that something WWII era would be ideal. American/British was out of the question due to price, so I was looking for a K-31, Mauser k98k, or Mosin-Nagant variant.

I acquired a Soviet M-44 Mosin Nagant. It was made in 1946 at the Izhevsk plant.
This is it when I got it home.

I wanted to show all of the cosmoline on it, but it did not come out in the pictures. The bottom of the barrel was positively goopy. I'll substitute two pictures of the bolt.




The action is actually quite cool, except that the safety SUCKS. To quote Arthur's Hall (Michael Z. Williams):

It does, in fact, have a safety, but it's quite hard to engage. But this is not a complaint
one would ever voice in the Red Army. Your officer would reply, "Safety? Safety? Is gun! Meant to kill! No warrior should know he has safety on gun, because he should be killing enemies of homeland! Safety make loud click to aid enemy in locating warriors! No safety!" while pounding his fist on the table.

And the Mosin can kill enemies of homeland. The muzzle blast will vaporize green growth within a few feet of the muzzle, and even if you miss, the enemy will be reduced to shouting "WHAT?" to communicate. You'll need a recoil pad or shooting jacket. Ordinarily, this might be considered unmanly, but this rifle has a short stock for using while wearing several layers of wool for a Russian winter. It is acceptable to wear padding to fire a Mosin.

The ball of flame is real and can readily be seen in youtube videos. I will writeup the comparison in recoil between 12 gauge slugs and this round/gun combo. I bet the shotgun still wins.

I took it apart. Better instructions that I could make here. The only thing I did not take out was the extractor from the bolt head, the bayonent lug, the front sight, and the rear sight assembly. I could not get the pins out of the rear sight assembly. The extractor really shouldn't be removed, the front sight is designed to stay in (it is staked), and the bayonet lug is also staked.


And cleaned all of the metal parts with mineral spirits. I could clean the nooks easily, but I had trouble with the crannies. I discovered one of the greatest cleaning tools known to man. The toothbrush. I could get all of the crannies. After the parts dried, I gave them a good dose of CLP (gun oil). The toothbrush again saved the day, as I could get the oil everywhere that I wanted it.

There was no rust except a small amount on the recoil bolt. I checked my firing pin protrusion after I reassembled the bolt. I used the "tape" method of headspacing (bolt closed on round, round + 1, round + 2, but not round + 3 pieces of scotch tape). I recommend using a gun smith to check headspace.

After the long cleaning session, here it is ready to load and fire:I'll try and post a range report when I figure out how accurate this thing is.

Our minds perception

I was sitting down after a grueling day of holiday shopping and looked up at a design on the side of the starbucks counter.

I am going to show you the shape first, as I wasn't that close to it.
At first I thought it was a dog thing?


But turns out it was a dove.

And the Original.




The orientation might be off from how it was on the wood.

Weird how our minds work.

remote execution

So I am working on this project where the code runs in a virtual machine using python. To make some of the code faster, we could pass it "outside" of the VM and let it run natively.

I was just musing and asked, can you get an object that is a python closure. Then, we could serialize the object, send it out, and execute it on the outside?

I doubt its possible, but its interesting.

A quick look at google suggests that you can not pickle a closure. (Assuming that you dont want to follow Greenspun's 10th Rule expanded to include python)
LAME.
Heh, I can't imagine writing the code to pickle something like a closure.

gah, I have been infected! is there no cure?

Bonus

Emptying my photos, I found these gems:

Purrito

Snake!

note to self

dress pants are very thin and not compatible with 32 degree weather and a 45 mph wind.

Scooter electrical problems

So I bought that charger for the scooter. It worked great.

I go outside. Turn key. Turn master cut off switch to on. Nothing.

Open up battery compartment. Everything looks good. Look underneath and remember two wires that were not connected to each other or anything else (they are terminated with those metal circular plates with a hole in it). I pull out the battery holder piece, and there they are. One seems to go from the battery post to... nowhere? The other from the bowels of the machine to ... nowhere.

Using my engineering instinct, I boldly connected the two parts going nowhere. Hey, the colors matched. Nothing.

Turned on the switches and touched the two ends ... spark and lights coming on!

Off switches, off to find a bolt and a nut. I found a bolt with a wingnut . The bolt had a square part of the shaft so that it would not turn when inserted into a square hole. I did not have a square hole, but I did have duct tape. So I made a duct tape spacer, put on the two wire ends, and another duct tape spacer for good measure.

Everything worked great after I got it re-assembled. My fuel gauge wasn't acting weird and my lights flash now.

Uneventful ride to work. The new idle is so quiet, I had to rev the engine at stop lights to prove that it was still on.

Scooter tweaking

I noticed that my turn signal light was solid today on the way to work. When I got to work, I found out that no light bulbs are out. I think I either have a bad flasher or a discharged battery. I lean toward the battery being the problem and I am going to try and buy a charger for the battery tonight.

Since I was looking at the scooter, I wanted to figure out how to change my idle setting. I could see this little screw, but it was tucked away in a fairly hard to get to location.


I got a screw driver bit and put it in a small socket. I turned the screw with that, and promptly dropped the screw driver bit. I couldn't find it. I shook the moped. I leaned it. I used a big powerful magnet. Nothing.

I finally decided to take off the seat. My sockets weren't deep enough, so I couldn't get it off. I decided, well, at least I can check out the battery. I opened up a compartment in the seat looking for it. I did not find the battery, instead, I found this:



My little idle adjustment screw! Outside I went and made it run at much lower rpm's at idle, it still starts, so I didn't bring it down too low. For some context, here is a zoomed out picture.



Since the battery wasn't where I thought it was, I looked around a bit more.


there it is!