I normally don’t post identical writings here and at Greenbaggins, but this issue seemed to call for an exception:

I once participated in a discussion in which someone cast aspersions on a historic Reformed father over some things he supposedly said. I don’t know if the figure ever said those things or not. I simply replied that even if the individual had said those things, I hoped that someone didn’t write about my favorite sins 400 years from now. Worse yet, that someone would put them on YouTube for the world to see!

Having commanded several large units, I know all too well that a leader can’t possibly know everything that everyone does in his/her organization. A good leader sets their expectations, trusts their people to perform accordingly, and holds them accountable for their actions and performance. One key to good leadership is to correct mistakes in a just and appropriate manner when they happen and mentor those involved to do better in the future. I suspected that this might be the case with the ceremony in the video which sparked the discussion here. I wrote to TE Keller last night respectfully asking for clarification. I received his reply today and post it unedited and in its entirety here:

Dear Bob,

Thanks for your note about the video of our May, 2009, service in which a deaconess was being commissioned.  Having watched it myself, I can understand your concern! But I can also assure you that this is not our practice, and that it was only one of our newer ministers making a mistake.

We do not ordain our deaconesses nor do we ask our congregation to obey and submit to them. The minister in the video is newer on our staff and he accidentally read the deacons’ questions from the BCO and did not use the different questions we commonly use for deaconesses.  Others who go to Redeemer can attest that this is not our practice, and it will not be in the future. The minister in the video apologized when he realized what he had done.

The best way to understand what happened is to consider the case of another of our ministers who recently inadvertently baptized a number of infants without asking their parents any of the questions. In charity onlookers assumed this was a mistake, and no one assumed that either the minister or Redeemer was in violation of the Book of Church Order. I spoke to this minister yesterday and he was grateful that no one had put his mistake on You Tube!

I must say I was surprised that the person who filmed the service and the person who posted and re-posted the video clip did not first do the courteous and charitable thing, namely, to ask simply, “Is this what it looks like on the surface, or is there a good explanation?” If they had done so, as texts like Proverbs 17:9; 18:17; 25:8-10 urge, they would have saved you (and others) both time and concern.

I hope this response helps. By the way-you can share this letter with anyone else that expresses concern.

Tim Keller

I have had a number of interactions with TE Keller, sometimes holding opposing positions, and have always been impressed with Tim’s grace and integrity. The conduct of the ceremony in the video was a serious mistake which was taken seriously and corrected appropriately. The young TE involved could probably benefit from our prayers.

As most folks here know, I strongly disagree with the commissioning of women as deaconesses. I’ve actively and vigorously opposed it in the blogosphere and on the floor of the PCA General Assembly for the last several years. However, the appropriate place to make a stand is in the courts of the church – sessions, presbyteries, and the General Assembly – debating applicable overtures, not on YouTube.

The editors of the excellent Aquila Report desired to expand beyond news and events into commentaries and columns. They asked a number of folks from varying Reformed backgrounds to contribute, including your humble blogger. I agreed to write two commentaries/columns a month and they assigned me the first and third Fridays of the month.

My first commentary appeared this past Friday, titled Changing Guards or Changing Standards. In it, I take issue with an article written earlier this year in ByFaith Online. Times are interesting in the Presbyterian Church in America these days. I’ve been active both on the Internet and in some forums with many of the issues. Some are bound to find their way into my commentaries.

OTOH, I have no clear vision for the columns. My current plan is simply write about whatever is on my mind that may be of more general interest. Looking some of my brothers’ and sister’s writings, the topical range is quite wide.

I’ll try to post here whenever I have an article up on The Aquila Report, but may not be all that timely with the notice. I highly recommend The Aquila Report for all those interesting in current and pertinent news from around the Reformed Faith community…especially on the first and third Fridays of the month.

OK, I’m officially an idiot. The problem that I related in my previous post did not turn out to be a problem with the Epson drivers. The answer turned out to be trivial, but events conspired against my finding it initially.

At the end of installing the PIPS drivers from Avasys, the installer suggests that you to run the setup script. When you run the script, it asks you for the port to which the printer is connected. Since the printer is USB, I accepted the default of /dev/usb/lp0. The script then creates /etc/ekpdrc with the configuration information.

/dev/usb/lp0 USED to be correct because my Brother HL-5240 used to be on the parallel port. However, I changed it over to USB a while back for a number of reasons. The Brother now sits on /dev/usb/lp0. Instant conflict with the settings I specified for the Epson PIPS driver.

I didn’t catch it earlier because the Epson wasn’t powered on, and lp0 was the only active device in /dev/usb/.  Tonight for other reasons, I happened to be in /etc and noticed the ekpdrc file. I viewed it just for grins and noticed the port assignment. I went to /dev/usb and saw lp0. Then I remembered that the printer wasn’t powered up, so I turned it on. Magically, lp1 showed up in /dev/usb. Bingo, the light bulb went on! I manually edited /etc/ekpdrc to change lp0 to lp1, restarted the system, and all works perfectly.

In the end, this was definitely a problem caused by the keyboard actuator.

In this previous post, I covered how to regain daily notifications for non-security updates in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty. I don’t know if that will work in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic because the associated setting value is an integer in Karmic, not a boolean. For Karmic, I decided to use the GUI and the Gnome Configuration Editor utility which I describe in this post.

To be clear, Ubuntu notifies you daily of security updates by default, but only weekly of non-security updates like application upgrades. I like to be up-to-date as much as possible, so would like daily notifications of all updates. With Configuration Editor, this is easy. Launch the editor through Applications -> System Tools -> Configuration Editor (assuming that you installed it as described in this post). Click on Edit -> Find…, then type “update” in the search box (w/o the quotes) and click OK. This will be the result:

Notice that I highlighted /apps/update-notifier in the search results at the bottom, and also regular_auto_launch_interval key name. The explanation box under the name section then describes the key and its settings. According to that description, I should set the key to ‘0′ to get immediate notifications. So, double-click on the key to get this dialog:

Simply change the ‘7′ to ‘0′, click OK and you’re done! You will now receive daily notifications of all updates, not just security updates.

I spend a good bit of time in my home office, and I like to listen to music while doing stuff. I listen to different types of music, so having a variety available is ideal. Since I have decent speakers with a subwoofer for my computer and a reliable broadband connection, Internet radio fits the bill perfectly.

I’ve tried a number of programs and stations over the years. In my old Windows XP days, I used Screamer Radio. It’s small, fast, and will run from a USB stick. I sometimes listen to it while working on others’ machines. In Ubuntu, I usually use either Rythmbox or VLC Player.

I have come to settle on Sky.FM as my Internet radio source. They have a wide variety of stations and a reliable connection. I’ve been listening to their free stations for quite a while, putting up with the occasional commercials. I had copied links to the stations I used the most into Rythmbox under the radio section. While Rythmbox sounds OK, VLC sounds much better. However, Rythmbox kept all my links nicely organized in the radio function.

I recently noticed that Sky.FM had a 2-day free trial on their Premium service. It was over a weekend, so I decided to give it a shot. The normal service sounded OK, so I was skeptical that the premium service could sound any better. That skepticism was misplaced. Premium sounds great. I was hooked.

The only problem was the when I cut and pasted the links to the Premium playlists, Rythmbox couldn’t play them. VLC had no problem with them, even when I downloaded my entire set of playlists from my custom page. VLC 0.9.x would not display the changing song titles on the premium service, at least on my setup. This required further work.

The solution turned out to be quite simple. Open a steam in VLC by clicking on the media type of your choice. When asked what program to use to play it, choose VLC. If it isn’t in the list, navigate the file system in the dialog to /usr/bin/vlc. This will open the stream in VLC:

Now select Tools -> Codec Information (or Media Information, your choice):

Note that I picked the 96 kbps mp3 format for this example. Also note the address in the Location box. That’s the address that you want to paste into Rythmbox. I added my favorites this way to Rythmbox one at a time.

But I found that in Karmic, this is no longer necessary. VLC 1.0.2 under Karmic will display the song titles as they change and also if you hover the mouse pointer over the icon in the system tray. Since I can also download all my favorites in one shot into VLC (won’t work in Rythmbox), so as long as I don’t close VLC I always have my music at my beck and call. So unless you have an unnatural attachment to Rythmbox and prefer your music slightly muted, you can get the great sound of VLC plus the song titles on the premium service.

One additional hint for both Rythmbox and VLC. If you left-click on their icons in the system tray, the player window will collapse into the icon while continuing to play. I developed the habit of always keeping a player loaded in the system tray and ready to play at a click. Very handy, and doesn’t make a dent in my 8 GB of RAM.

BTW, the best mp3 coding on the free service is 96 bps as you saw above in the screenshot. The best from the premium service is 256 kbps:

Even at this rate, it doesn’t begin tax my 20 Gbps FIOS connection:

But I normally listen to the 64 kbps aacplus stream, which sounds about the same for less bandwidth.

It all sounds awesome! Well worth the price of admission.

This story does not have a happy ending. I have not been able to get the Epson PIPS drivers to work on Karmic. [UPDATE: Fixed it! Link at the end of this post.] I’ll make this short. I tried lots of solutions, pored over the web for help, found nothing. I did eventually get the PIPS drivers to install, but they don’t work. The stock Gutenprint driver works fine with the CX7800, but doesn’t produce the high quality photos of the PIPS driver.

Here’s how I got the PIPS driver to install.

I downloaded the latest driver for my Epson Stylus CX7800 printer from Avasys. To convert the rpm package to a deb in the terminal, you need to install alien:

sudo aptitude install alien

Then you can convert the driver package:

sudo alien -c -d pips-scx7700-cups-2.6.3-1.i386.rpm

The -c converts the scripts in the package, which is very important. The -d specifies a .deb output file. When alien finishes, it produces a message like:

pips-scx7700-cups_2.6.3-2_i386.deb generated

But it will not install because it depends on three libraries that aren’t in Karmic or its repositories: libgtk1.2, libgtk1.2-common, and libglib1.2ldbl. In cases like this, one can often install the required libraries from older version repositories. In this case, I went to Jaunty’s repositories since PIPS worked fine in Jaunty, downloaded all three and installed them. To work correctly, they must be installed in this order: libglib1.2ldbl, libgtk1.2-common, libgtk1.2. That prevents dependency issues between them and then they will install fine.

Once the dependent libraries are installed, you can install the PIPS driver. Because it’s a 32-bit package and I’m running 64-bit Karmic, I had to use force-architecture. You can leave that part out if you’re running a 32-bit installation. The installation command is:

sudo dpkg -i –force-architecture pips-scx7700-cups_2.6.3-2_i386.deb

That will now “successfully” install the PIPS driver. You can then install your printer as I describe in this post. However, whenever I try to print to the PIPS printer, the job ends up being routed to my other USB printer and things go downhill from there.

I wrote a post on Avasys’ forum seeking help. If I get anything useful, I’ll post it back here. If anyone has any more ideas, I’d love to hear them.

UPDATE: Solved! It was not a driver issue per se. See this post.

When I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic from 9.04 Jaunty, it appeared that the upgrade process preserved all my settings. However, I’ve found several that were changed for unknown reasons.

First, I found that my screen kept blanking after about 5 minutes of idle time. So, I sent into System -> Preferences -> Power Management. I worked my way through all the settings numerous times, but they didn’t make any difference in this behavior. Hmmm.

After a while of this nonsense, I remembered one other possibility. I went to System -> Preferences -> Screensaver:

I had alway used the screensaver to put up a blank screen after 1 hour. The Karmic upgrade set the timer to 5 minutes! I have no idea why Karmic changed that setting, but it’s fixed now.

Also, I had networked my printers through my desktop for the laptop to use. This all worked swimmingly in Jaunty. It stopped working after the upgrade to Karmic. I checked the printer properties under System -> Administration -> Printing and sure enough, Karmic had “unshared” them. So, I right-clicked on the appropriate printers and rechecked Shared:

But that didn’t fix the issue. Digging further in the Printers dialog menu, I clicked on Server -> Settings in the upper left. Sure enough, Karmic had reset the server not to share any printers on my network. So, I checked the “Publish shared printers connected to this system” box which Karmic’s upgrade had cleared:

After that, all worked fine.

It’s hard to understand why Karmic changed these particular settings, but the changes caught me off guard. Hopefully this will save someone else some time.

I posted here about my upgrade, here about getting my Epson scanner to work, and here about losing the shutdown confirmation timer. In this post, I’ll cover getting Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to reset the x-server.

Prior to Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, holding down Ctrl-Alt-Backspace simultaneously instantly closed the current session and reset the X server. This was incredibly useful when changing or upgrading video drivers, or when needing a quick logout after changing groups and permissions. But, the developers said that some folks wanted it changed because they hit this sequence by accidentally or unintentionally and lost their work. What???? How do you hold three keys down simultaneously by accident?

Anyway, recovering the capability required editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf manually as I documented here. In Karmic, it’s a bit easier. Simply go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard. Click on the Layouts tab:

Next, click on the Layout Options… button:

About 1/2 way down the page, click on the arrow next to “Key sequenct to kill the X server” as shown above. Then simply click in the checkbox to show a check there as in the screenshot. Click on Close and you’re done. That’s it – functionality restored!

I handled fixing the scanner issues in my previous post. There are a number of minor “paper cuts” that drive me crazy in Karmic. Here’s another solution.

I hate the silly countdown timer that first appeared in Jaunty. Jaunty had an easy solution by simply right clicking on your user name, then click on Preferences, then clear the checkbox next to “Show confirmation dialog…” or some such wording. Not so in Karmic, where the closeout applet is pithed. Sheesh.

To eliminate the confirmation dialog in Karmic, type this in a terminal window:

gconftool-2 -s ‘/apps/indicator-session/suppress_logout_restart_shutdown’
–type bool true

Fixed. But…there’s a GUI front-end to gconftool and gconftool-2. It isn’t pretty, but it does work. It’s called Configuration Editor. You can find it in Synaptic or in the new Karmic Ubuntu Software Center. I haven’t played with the new software center yet, so let’s give it a trial run. Go to Applications -> Ubuntu Software Center, they type “configuration e” in the Search box on the upper right:

Configuration Editor shows up highlighted. The white check in the green circle over its icon means that it’s installed. In your case it probably won’t be. Clicking on the blue arrow on the right of the highlight brings up a description of the package:

Cool. The “Install” button appears rather than “Remove” if the application is not yet installed.

I had to hunt a bit to find the Gnome Indicator Applet Session settings, but I found them under Apps -> indicator-session (so, what exactly does it indicate about the session?):

Just put the check in the box as I did, and no more annoying shutdown/logout/restart confirmation dialog with timer. There’s a whole lot more in Configuration Editor, but tread lightly.

Posts are pending on the Epson Photo Image Print System drivers, re-establishing your network printers, and the annoying 5-minute screensaver setting.

I wrote about my upgrade from Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty to 9.10 Karmic in this post. Overall, it was painless. But, with any operating system upgrades there tend to be some small issues. I’ll concentrate on the scanner in this post.

The scanner in my Epson Stylus CX7800 rarely makes it across on OS changes. This time proved no different. I discussed the general recovery procedure in this post and this one. I decided to search the web for new information and found several approaches to the issue. The most straightforward was a PPA repository maintained by DoctorMO. While written for a previous version of Ubuntu, it included both iscan and iscan plugins, the latter in 64-bit. I gave this approach a shot, and it worked…almost.

After setting up the repository and installing the drivers, sane-find-scanner found the Epson:

found USB scanner (vendor=0×04b8 [EPSON], product=0×081f [USB2.0 MFP(Hi-Speed)]) at libusb:002:002

However, “scanimage -L” did not find the scanner unless executed with admin privileges as “sudo scanimage -L”:

device `epkowa:usb:002:002′ is a Epson Stylus CX7700/CX7800 flatbed scanner

The problem lay in the fact that the user doesn’t have write permissions to the device. Changing the device permissions provides a quick approach that would work until the next restart. Using the address that sane-find-scanner provided, usb/002/002 in this case:

sudo chmod 666 /dev/bus/usb/002/002

That works, but only temporarily. The old fix would be to add the affected user to the scanner permission group as I described in this post. The problem is that the developers eliminated the scanner group in karmic, as I found out in this developer discussion 2/3 of the way down the page. There’s a good discussion of the issues that the maintainer of iscan joined, but it boiled down to the scanner group again. Poo. What now?

I returned to Avasys and discovered that they had updated iscan drivers available. I downloaded and installed the new iscan drivers from Avasys. That got karmic to recognize the scanner, which now works perfectly. Mission accomplished!

When I started to upgrade from Ubuntu Jaunty to Karmic 9.10 last week, the day after the initial release, the download estimate was 6 hours. Ouch. I decided to wait until the servers weren’t quite so hammered and aborted the update.

Last night during the abysmal Eagles/Cowboys game, I decided to try updating again. This time the download estimate was 6 minutes. That was acceptable. The download and installation proceeded quickly thanks to my 20 Gbps broadband connection and 3.3 GHz Core 2 Quad CPU.

As usual, I was asked several times whether I wanted to keep old configuration files or overwrite them. Two involved my scanner setup and one my network setup. I elected to have the new config files overwrite the old ones. It has been my experience that it’s wisest to go with new config files and then modify them if necessary.

After rebooting, all the major stuff work fine–no major issues. The proprietary nVidia video drivers came up without issue, compiz-fusion loaded with my normal settings, and all but one of my panel applets appeared as usual. The sensor applet complained that the updated version used a different configuration format, so it loaded its defaults. I simply had to deselect the sensors that I didn’t want. That was it. The underlying lmsensors still worked perfectly. Very nice job by the Ubuntu developers.

As usual, although the Epson Sylus CX7800 printer worked fine, the scanner didn’t. The excellent Epson Photo Image Print System (PIPS) drivers were also gone, with key dependencies broken. I’ll write a separate post on this saga, hopefully with the resolutions.

Moneydance loaded right up without issue, and VMWare Workstation’s update script worked as advertised. The upgrade brought Flash and Java up to date, including in Firefox. Very slick.

Ubuntu changed the way the system detects your hardware. hal is gone, replaced by udev. That changes many of the service commands we’ve grown used to over the years. I’m still working on learning those. Some underlying libraries updated, breaking third-part drivers like the Epson PIPS ones. The price of progress.

Karmic may load a little faster, but it certainly shuts down more quickly. The opening graphics are shadowy and brown as always. Other than that, the upgrade preserved my setup so I don’t see the backgrounds. I still haven’t figured out how to turn off the stupid countdown timer for logout, shutdown and reset. It was easy in Jaunty, but it’s different in Karmic of course.

Overall, this was a very smooth upgrade. I have the scanner working as I’ll describe in another post, but not the PIPS driver yet. I only need the PIPS drivers for printing quality photos, so other than that, I’m fully functional. Pretty painless upgrade.

I believe that I’ve watched my last episode of Stargate Universe. I had high hopes for the series. I lived and breathed for the original Stargate SG-1. I have the DVDs for every season. The SG-1 DVD movies The Ark of Truth and Continuum were outstanding.

I followed up with watching every episode of Stargate Atlantis. I thought that Atlantis was more uneven than SG-1, but that it matured pretty well. I think that its ratings would have increased had it been extended for another season.  I don’t own any of the DVDs, though. It didn’t rise quite to that level.

No one can say that I’m not a Stargate fan or that I didn’t hope for Stargate Universe to succeed.

Universe has shown itself to be a very different and disturbing production. I summarized it for a friend as soft porn wrapped in a weak science fiction shell. Sex scenes and partially or unclothed bodies populate every episode, especially people actively involved in sex. What’s up with that?

One reason that I loved SG-1 and liked Atlantis is that they featured compelling characters in interesting adventures that engaged adult minds and yet kids could generally watch them without complication. They were family fare. Universe is R-rated in the upper zone of R. It’s absurd and unnecessary.

That Universe has a flat story and one-dimensional characters doesn’t improve its standing. Maybe they think that the gratuitous sex makes up for the unimaginative writing and transparent acting. It doesn’t, and I’m very disappointed in the SyFy team for even offering it up.

Stargate Universe is to the Stargate franchise what Deep Space 9 was to the Star Trek genre – the beginning of the end. It saddens me greatly to say this: If you’re looking for engaging adventure, characters about whom you care, and quality family TV time, forget about Stargate Universe.

Here’s a great article from ZDNet that relates how 8 out of 10 malware exploits bypass Windows 7’s UAC. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who read my previous blog post on the UAC. I offered that only two settings in the UAC had any meaning: Never notify and Always notify. Anything in between, like the default setting, only provide a false sense of security. Only “Always notify” offers any significant security. I wrote that about the beta version, but it appears to remain true in the final release, even though Microsoft claimed that they would fix the issues as I noted in this post. And don’t forget that you’re paying dearly for the privilege of testing these vulnerabilities in the real world.

Ubuntu anyone?

I’m not a huge fan of laptops, be we needed another computer in the house and a laptop best fit the requirements. Dell has been offering a few desktops and laptops with Linux installed, and I wanted to encourage that effort. So, I ordered a Dell Inspiron 1545.

But not stock of course. I upgraded the CPU to an Intel Core 2 Duo T6400, the memory to 3 GB, and the battery to a 6-cell. Still, the price came in at just $599 loaded with Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04.  Sweet. Not a performance setup, but very crisp performance for common uses.

In addition to Ubuntu Linux, Dell pre-installed the driver for their wireless card, a DVD player, and the OpenOffice.org office suite. It arrived completely ready for business.

There was trouble in paradise, though. I had an initial problem connecting with the wireless. After trying everything except replacing the Dell driver, I called Dell support who were very helpful. They had me remove the access panel and reset the wireless card in its slot, but to no avail. They promptly sent me a box to ship the laptop to Texas for repair at no charge.  The repair took just over a week including the shipping back and forth. Dell apparently replaced the Main Logic Board (MLB), and that did the trick.

The Ubuntu-powered Inspiron boots quickly and shuts down even faster. It takes a while to complete an 802.11g connection, but it does so consistently. The driver is a native 32-bit Linux one, so doesn’t require workarounds or patches. The 15.6″ widescreen is bright and the colors true. I’m not a fan of touchpads, but it works as advertised. The laptop is a bit heavy, but then it will rarely leave the house so that doesn’t matter much.

Another nice characteristic of Linux involves networking. We’re wireless for the most part (WPA2/AES, MAC filtering, etc., for security), and Linux makes networking the printers simple. My desktop doubles as the print server, enabling CUPS to share the printers on the network with just a mouse click. Just right click on the printer under System -> Administration -> Printing, then select Share. That’s it. As long as my desktop is powered up, which is always is, the laptop can print from anywhere in the house with no wires. Very nice.

My family represents the typical computer user – they don’t care about the details, they just want it to work. They are operating system agnostic. email? Check. Word processing? Check. Printing from the living room? Check. The Dell Inspiron running Ubuntu 9.04 with Thunderbird for email and OpenOffice.org Writer for word processing fits their needs perfectly. Firefox secured with the appropriate extensions keeps browsing risks under control. And the price fits my criterion – free!

The Dell Inspiron 1545 with Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 works great, does everything we need, and works great. Big thumbs up!

Exhortation for the Lord’s Day, October 18, 2009.

Sermon text: Dan 4:28-37
OT text: Isa 45:1-7
NT text: Rom 8:26-35

God has the stick. What does that mean in the context of God’s providence? Any pilots in the room? The phrase comes from flying. When flying a multiple pilot aircraft, especially with the pilots sitting in tandem cockpits behind each other, positive transfer of that aircraft’s control from one pilot to the other is very important. As you can imagine, somebody must be controlling the aircraft – flying it – at all times. So, when transferring control, the pilot flying the plane says to the other pilot, “you have the aircraft/stick (control stick).” The other pilot must respond, “Roger, I have the stick/aircraft.” Now that second pilot is in control and everyone has acknowledged that. As an instructor, I didn’t always have the luxury of such a smooth conversation. If I felt like my ability to return home to my loving wife at the end of the flight was in jeopardy, I’d quickly take control of the aircraft with the words, “I have the stick/aircraft.” Woe be to he that does not instantly relinquish the stick upon hearing those words.

So clearly in the context of Creation, God has the stick. He is in control–sovereignly, absolutely and eternally. If you think that God is your copilot, you’re in the wrong seat.

Today I’d like to talk briefly about the general nature of providence, how God providentially intercedes, and the ultimate expression of God’s providence.

A collection of four key security add-ons has been bundled on a page here. It includes NoScript, Ad Block+, Better Privacy, and WOT (Web of Trust). I use all these and can vouch for their quality. I recommend these four extensions to help keep your surfing safe.

I finally was able to get to the range today to fire the new AR-15 I built. I discussed it construction in this post, and the optic in this one.

I had trouble finding appropriate ballistic tables. Most assume that one will sight in at 100 yards. Great idea, but one has to drive a long way here in NoVA to find that long of a shooting range. The longest one locally is the NRA HQ Range. I love that range. It’s computerized so you can easily send your target to the same distance repeatedly after changing targets with just one button push. The facility is well-ventilated and one can shoot pistol or centerfire rifle up to .460 Weatherby Magnum there. The staff is very friendly and helpful. The only problem is that they are usually carrying a waiting list. Today the range opened at 1000, I got there at about 1002, and there was already a short waiting list.

I should also mention that I lubed the AR-15 with Gunzilla again the night before shooting. I decided to stick with Gunzilla because parts lubed with it virtually repel carbon. That seemed like a good idea on a direct-gas impingement carbines like AR-15s. For ammo, I went with Silver State 115 gr. OTM (Open Tip Match). I didn’t build this as a match carbine (no match trigger, short barrel, etc.), but the medium-weight barrel should have match-grade accuracy and I like to hit where I aim.

Bottom line on the carbine: SWEET! It shot like a dream. It took about 20 rounds to sight in because the Aimpoint T-1 Micro seemed to be defaulted way low and to the right. Part of that could be because of the higher LaRue mount, which placed the Micro at the perfect height for a comfortable cheek weld. During and after the sight-in, I shot some sub-MOA groups with it using only my range bag as a rest. Not bad for a 4-mil red dot. The DPMS parts-kit single-stage trigger is one of the cleaner that I’ve shot on an M4/M16/AR-15, but it’s definitely not match grade. Overall, the carbine performed perfectly. Not bad for a first-time build!

The Aimpoint also performed perfectly. I used its adjustment cover caps to zero it just as one would in the field. The caps even have the setting directional arrows etched inside of them. I had no difficulty dialing the Micro in. The 4-mil dot almost covered the center of a 100-yard sight-in target at 50 yards. Aiming at the corner diamonds involved a bit of guess work, as they were completely obscured by the dot. The dot is designed for rapid target acquisition, not target shooting. It excels at rapid target acquisition, but is accurate enough for tight groups.

Recoil of the 6.8 mm AR-15 is slightly more than a 5.56 mm version, but significantly less than 7.62 mm out of a two-pound heavier rifle. 6.8 mm seems like a nice compromise between effectiveness and shootability. 5.56 mm is good for varmints, but nothing bigger. The 5th Special Forces Group did a great job in creating the 6.8 mm SPC. The overall cartridge length is identical to the 5.56. The beauty of this approach is that any M4/M16 can be converted to 6.8 mm SPC simply by changing the barrel, bolt, and magazines, or just swapping upper receivers which can be done in the field simply by pulling the takedown and pivot pins as one does when cleaning the carbine. Plug and play.

After initial sight-in, I shot some offhand. The quad-rail upper and medium-weight barrel add some heft to the front end. That enables more rapid follow-up shots, but gets tiresome to hold up after a while. I burned about 60-70 rounds offhand, and all landed center-of-mass (COM) – mostly center of COM. As a plus, the holes weren’t the tiny 5.56 mm/.223 ice-pick variety, but easily visible 6.8 mm ones!

Cleaning wasn’t bad. Unlike the government M4, the enhanced bolt assembly from LMT have additional heat treatment and coating. That makes them more heat resistant and easier to clean. I cleaned and lubricated with the non-hazardous Gunzilla again. I routinely use Otis’ outstanding Deluxe Military Cleaning Kit, which covers all common calibers for breach-to-muzzle cleaning. Works like a charm and preserves your firearm investment. Their optional Brass Scraper Tool Set makes a great addition for the AR-15, as much carbon must be scraped with a direct-gas system.

This AR-15 turned out better than I expected. Although I’d shot similar carbines before, I wasn’t a believer in 6.8 mm SPC until today. Kudos to Lewis Machine Tools for an outstanding, accurate monolithic upper receiver/barrel combination, and Silver State for making tack-driving ammo. They made for a great day!

Post updated/corrected 10/11/09.

I’ve been toying with Google Chrome 4.0.221.8 development version in my 64-bit Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04. I downloaded the .deb and installed it with GDebi Package Installer. Installation proved simple as usual for Ubuntu. Chrome transferred over my bookmarks and settings from Firefox. However, it doesn’t pick up the Ubuntu theme or window effects, so (see correction below the screenshot) It comes up in its default theme:

You can choose other themes, but I didn’t bother. Correction 10/11/09: I did not understand the settings correctly. Thanks to evmar’s help in the comments below, I was able to get Chrome to fit the compiz theme. Simply go to Options -> Personal Stuff, then click on “Use GTK+ theme”, then select “Use system title bar and borders”. This will make the Chrome borders match your compiz-fusion theme. You may have to restart Chrome to get the window controls on the right side of the title bar.

Ubuntu released Karmic Koala 9.10 Beta 1, so I thought that I’d take it for a spin. I downloaded the 64-bit version because that’s what I normally run. As usual, I tried it out in a VMWare Workstation 6.5 virtual machine.

One note of caution: VMWare Tools isn’t compatible with this Karmic beta yet. When I let Workstation install with Easy Install, the VM came up with a blank screen when all was said and done and the GUI tried to load. I couldn’t find any way of getting it working from that point and ended up deleting that VM and starting over. The next time, I had Workstation simply create the VM with a blank “hard drive” and then installed the Live CD after restarting the VM. That worked fine.

The Live CD comes up with the new, bright background – more orange and yellow than brown:

Here are two great stories. First, a 5-year-old shoots and kills an 800 pound alligator who was intent on eating him. Second, a 13-year-old fights off burglars in his home.

These stories aren’t that rare.  Clayton Cramer’s Civilian Gun Self-defense Blog catalogs incidents of citizens defending themselves with firearms. Children defending themselves or their families with firearms appear regularly in the local news, but rarely in the liberal media of course. We should be training our children how to handle firearms responsibly, just as we do with scissors, knives, forks, glass, garden tools, etc. Every child is different and must be handled differently.

Firearms are just another tool, but one that can equalize their potential struggle with those much larger than themselves – either 4-footed, 800 pound alligators or 2-footed, violent, predatory criminals breaking into their house.