I bought an iPhone (again)

As the title states, I did, indeed, buy another iPhone.  Blackberry has lost the plot in a major way, the Passport being the last good one, and all the Android phones I've had have been flaky and slow.  If the spirit moves you, you can leave your complaints about that statement in the comments.  I'm just reporting my experience with the things.

So, since the smartphone is no longer a novelty and is approaching the status of an appliance, I simply decided to buy the most reliable appliance out there.  After a short survey, that turned out to be the iPhone.

So, mobile email is much better than last time I used an iPhone.  Still not up to Blackberry standard, but that's really not an option anymore.  The iPhone has a far less annoying notification system than Android, something I am reminded of every time I pick up my Android tablet and do anything with it.

The iPhone I have is the 6s plus.  It is fast, reliable, and hasn't needed any real fiddling.  Apple does not understand cloud at all, so I've been constantly forced to fix iCloud issues, but that's another story entirely.

We'll see how long I stay happy with it.  Since my last iPhone, I've had two Blackberries running classic, two running OS 10, one Blackberry running Android and the Galaxy Note 3.  I seem to replace my phone mostly annually now.

What bothers me the most is that Blackberry was still the only manufacturer making something intriguing.  They produced devices such as the Passport, which was a stunningly useful formfactor, and the Priv, which was an almost-usable Android phone.  Prior to the iPhone, those were the two phones I bought before the iPhone.

Since I have decided we are in a post-innovation era in the smartphone market, I may keep this thing for a couple of years, which will be a disappointment to my kids, as they've been getting my castoffs.

Back To Revolvers

I'm swinging back to revolvers.  It's not a new thing; I seem to swing back and forth between revolvers and semi-automatics for my main self-defense and carry guns.  I'm going to provide my reasons in this essay.

Define a purpose

This is sort of an engineering approach.  The engineering method is to define a purpose then find a solution that matches that purpose.  To that end, we need to define the purpose of the weapon.

There are actually three major categories of handguns, with subcategories for each.  I'll list them out below as I see them.

1. Defensive handguns
1. Carry guns
2. Non-carry guns
3. Pack/trail guns
2. Combat handguns
1. Gunfighter guns
2. Military combat guns
3. Duty guns
3. Recreational handguns
1. Target guns
2. Competition guns
3. Plinking guns

I'm going to discuss two of the subtypes of defensive guns, the carry gun and the non-carry gun.  I'll be giving my reasons for switching back to a revolver on both.

Carry guns

Actually, when I got my license, I went out and bought a revolver.  I bought a Taurus M85 .38 Special snub-nosed revolver.  At the time, the reason was simple, in that I wanted an uncomplicated weapon to carry, one that I didn't need to worry about state and would not easily accidentally trigger.

The primary requirements, for me, for a carry gun are:

1. Reliability: absolutely must work no matter what
2. Concealability: must disappear when carried
3. Adequate performance: needs to hit at 35 yards and hit hard enough to be effective

The M85 I bought hit all the points except reliability, as it currently has its second broken firing pin.  That's why I went out and bought a Ruger LCR in .327 Federal, which is a better carry gun.

A revolver is easier to conceal.  Sure, semi-autos are slimmer, but the revolver looks less like a gun, thanks to years of Hollywood teaching everyone what a handgun looks like, which is a blocky semi-auto.  The profile of a semi-auto through clothing is much more obvious to the average person than the profile of a revolver.  The Ruger LCR, in particular, is easy to conceal due to a fully-shrouded hammer.  It can be put in a pocket.

When carried in a pocket, the positive action of a revolver is going to be more reliable in the face of pocket lint and whatever else might get into the action than the balance action of a semi-auto.  In general, of course, revolvers are more reliable than semi-autos.  A revolver will have less of a chance of jamming, of course, but, almost more importantly, a dud round does not require working the slide.  The next trigger pull advances the next round into place.

There are plenty of semi-auto carry pistols with adequate performance.  However, given the fact that the round does not have to fit into the grip of a small pistol, a revolver can have much higher performance than a semi-auto.  Since it doesn't have to worry about balancing a small, light slide against a heavy recoil, it can also have a much more powerful round, and the round can be tuned to provide high velocity in a short barrel.  In this, the .327 Federal excels.  It has nearly the same ballistics as .357 magnum but has much lower energy, which means it is not difficult to shoot out of a snub-nosed revolver.  Its delivered energy is excellent and its velocity is high enough to cause hydrostatic shock.

For me, the revolver is easier to shoot accurately, which I'll cover in greater detail when I talk about non-carry guns below.  This isn't true for everyone, but it is true for me.

Non-carry guns

This type of gun is one that you wouldn't carry concealed because it is too big.  It is a weapon designed for defense in a situation where the size of the weapon doesn't matter because you are keeping it in a house or car where there is adequate room to store it.  This means that the power factor can be lots higher, as can accuracy, and we can select a weapon that is somewhat more fiddly than a carry gun.  For me, the primary requirements are:

1. Accuracy: has to hit at at least 35 yards, preferably 100 yards
2. Power: has to hit very hard
3. Reliability: has to work even when stored for a long time

For a long time, I've been using an EAA Witness 10mm as my primary non-carry gun.  This weapon meets every requirement except reliability.  It requires too much maintenance to keep in top working condition, but, knowing that, I just cleaned and oiled it rather often, which wasn't hard since I've been shooting it regularly.  It also has issues due to full-power 10mm ammunition that have required replacing the recoil spring for a heavier one and replacing the magazine catch due to damage from recoil.

The Witness is 35 yard accurate, and the gun itself has the potential for 100 yard shots but I can't do it with the gun.  I've always had this sort of problem with a semi-auto, only really achieving good 100 yard accuracy with a Beretta 96FS I used to own that I practiced with nearly weekly for six months or so to acquire that ability.

Recently, I saw a simply beautiful Smith & Wesson N28 Highway Patrolman 6" .357 magnum in a pawn shop and bought it.  It has been worked on and has a brilliant single-action trigger pull as well as silky-smooth action all around.

Anyway, I took it to the range and was hitting bullseye at 35 yards by the end of the day in single-action, so I'm back to a revolver for this particular gun use.  I still have the 10mm and probably won't sell it, but this N28 is a revelation.

The main disadvantage, of course, is that the 10mm has no less than 15 rounds available when fully loaded while the N28 only has six.  Since 10mm and .357 have very similar power, that means that the 10mm is worth 2.5 revolvers.  However, statistically, you'll only ever need three rounds for defense anyway.  If you need much more than three rounds, you need a rifle, not a pistol.

As promised, I'm going to discuss why I hit more accurately with a revolver than with a semi-automatic.  If you hold a semi-auto in one hand the way you'd hold it to shoot it, with a fully-loaded magazine, you'll find that the axis of vibration is quite vertical.  This means that if your hand trembles, as mine tends to these days, the muzzle will flop around quite a bit.  It is quite difficult to keep the thing on target one-handed.  With two hands, it's easier, but still not as easy with a revolver.

If you hold a revolver in one hand, you will notice that the weight of the cylinder drags the axis of vibration more to the front of the gun, which means that vibration in your hands waggles the muzzle less.  

A major factor in shooting accuracy is the interaction between the trigger finger and the trigger.  This is particularly true of long-pull double-action triggers, but it is true of all triggers.  I haven't yet found a semi-automatic with a large enough grip that I can position my trigger finger optimally while providing the choke hold a semi-automatic requires.  Almost all revolvers allow me to slide my hand down the grip to the point where my trigger finger is optimally positioned to reduce bucking the shot by errant trigger control.

With a good revolver, you do not have to hold the gun tightly.  A semi-automatic might not cycle properly if you do not hold it tightly.  When you hold a gun tightly, your muscle vibrations increase and this makes you less accurate.  With a revolver, you can pull the hammer back to single-action and let the thing sit loosely in your hand which means much greater accuracy.

Another advantage a revolver has is that its sights are fixed to the barrel and the frame and the barrel is also fixed to the frame.  Semi-autos, generally, have a camming barrel arrangement to make loading more reliable, but it also makes the whole gun less precise and therefore less accurate.

In the end, I could probably spend the hours and ammunition necessary to overcome my issues with the Witness, and spend the time necessary to retain that skill, but the fact that I picked up a new gun, and, by the end of the day, was more accurate with it than with the Witness, convinces me I need to go back to using a revolver.  The decision is heavily influenced, of course, by the fact that I just like revolvers.

Inner Beauty

I bought a Jaguar.  Yes, the correct response is 'My condolences'.  It is a piece of technology so I will write about it.

Technology

This particular vehicle is a '99 Jaguar XJR.  Specs are as follows:

• 4.0L supercharged v8, 370bhp.
• Sport suspension.
• Five seats.
• 4,000 pound dry weight.
• Anywhere from 4.9 to 5.3 seconds to sixty miles per hour depending on who's testing.
• Top speed governed at 155 MPH.

Why inner beauty?

It has peeling clear coat, faded paint, dents and dings, and a worn interior.  That means it doesn't have outer beauty.  What it has is a soul.

Ordinary cars are about getting from here to there in the most practical and economical way.  There are acres of front wheel drive cars that have the same or better room, much better economy and are less likely to melt down an expensive piece of aluminum.  So why do people keep buying impractical Jaguars?

When you look at the bones of the thing, what it could be with some body work and some paint, it is low, sleek, seductive and full of presence.  Like any exotic, it looks ready to go fast sitting in the parking lot.

When you get in and fire it up and hear that cat roar, it furthers the feeling of barely contained agility, ready to launch.  If you've never driven a Jaguar, you may not know what this means.  When you press the accelerator, the XJR jumps off the line like a big, playful cat, and effortlessly attains illegal speeds.

Then there's the cornering.  It doesn't squeal.  It has little or no oversteer and understeer.  Just turn the wheel and it goes.  Your passengers will be upset, as they bounce off the sides of the car in turns, get interesting bruises from seatbelts when you hit the brakes, but you won't care and nothing will wipe the grin off your face for hours after.

That's inner beauty.  The car has so much character.  It has so much confidence.  It keeps telling you that you aren't anywhere near its limits.  Go ahead and go faster, it says, the car will sort out how to make that corner at that impossible rate.  Go ahead and go faster on the freeway, it says, you still have passing power at 90 or 100 MPH.  You can still stop if you need to.

OK, how is it on the freeway?

On the freeway, in heavy traffic, it provides the driver with opportunities that would otherwise not be there.  For a mid-sized car (large cars are extinct and I refuse to call these things large cars) it has massive mirrors giving good visibility.  You can see the space in traffic and be in it before you have time to think about it.  You can match speed in any traffic.  You don't have to worry about many cars stopping faster than you can.  Through all of that, the car seldom leans or dives and never seems to lose traction.  Throw it around like a little car, it says, but enjoy the ride of a bigger car.

Freeway bumps don't bother it.  You get the feeling of the road without the jackhammer to the kidneys that many 'sport' suspensions provide, like the imaginary suspension on the Scion xB, for instance.

Braking hard into a corner does not fluster it like it did with my old V6 Camaro, which was positively scary in heavy braking.  Flooring the throttle out of a corner does not induce mind-numbing fear like it does in other rear-drive cars with this much power, either.  I haven't really tried, but I have yet to break this thing loose in any way.

Edit:

I have found it completely possible to get the rear end to hang out in a corner, and have found it completely controllable when it finally does.  It will spin its tires on dry pavement, normally when going from first to second gear in sport mode, as I know better than to break it loose from a standstill.

So, why should we always apologize when we hear a friend bought a Jaguar?

Ok.  It is aluminum.  It is sort of glued, welded and screwed together.  This makes it feel like someone carved it out of aluminum and keeps weight down, but getting body work done on one is rather expensive.  Paint has to be specially formulated, body parts are rare, you can't weld panels to fix them and panels are nearly impossible to remove without Jaguar tooling.  So, this one is likely to remain beautiful on the inside and ugly on the outside.

Edit:

This is actually a steel Jaguar.  The aluminum ones came later.  This means that the bodywork is not particularly expensive and might get done.

That engine.  It purrs.  It roars.  It smoothly applies power until you ask for more, then it snorts, digs in the rear wheels and launches.  But, it is an aluminum overhead cam V8 with a supercharger.  For comparison, my Ford Expedition EL has a 5.4L V8 that simply doesn't require maintenance other than oil changes.  The Ford engine will be running long after the Jag packs it in, but it will never produce the kinds of smiles the Jag does.

It will also never need a new supercharger ($1200 for the part alone), never need a thousand dollar head gasket job, a thousand dollar timing chain job and so on.  Right now, the big cat is showing definite signs of needing a new supercharger at some point, so that is probably the second thing, right after I fix the brakes.

Edit:

I fixed the brakes.  That was actually cheaper than expected because I have Jag brakes, not Brembo, and they used a rather standard brake set.  The supercharger issue appears to be the snout bearings which might be a relatively cheap fix.  It, at the moment, needs a valve-cover gasket job to stop an oil leak.  It has also had two cooling lines replaced due to disintegration of the stupid plastic elbows, although, to be fair, the Expedition has gone through two plastic tees in the cooling system already.

So, is it worth it?

Do you like to drive?  No, really, really drive?  Do you have kids?  Are you a bigger person?  Then the Jaguar XJR might be for you.  It is actually not designed to be a full-on sports car and has a lot of design elements designed to make it mostly a comfortable machine, but then you can mash the throttle and summon a true exotic.  If that mix seems right for you, and you either are good with your hands or know a mechanic, then it might be a good idea.

If you are hot blooded, passionate and impulsive, then go buy the most expensive one you can afford.  Unlike a lot of other cars with similar ability, this one won't try to hurt you physically.

Windows 7 (Again) And Other Stuff

My son, who is into gaming, has been pestering me to build him a windows box. I finally arranged to get it all set up, having downloaded a Win7Pro64 disk on the advice of windows using friends of mine.

 This is when I found that a 2.4GHz quad core Intel processor is considered mildly obsolete. It also has a Radeon 4870 and 8GB of ram. The specs are fairly low by modern standards, but they should do. However, Asus, the motherboard manufacturer, no longer provides drivers.

I have found the network drivers, and Windows Update seems to be installing other drivers right now.
Anyway, that project is going swimmingly. I also have a decaying linux box, with a motherboard that periodically refuses to boot. I have found some 10krpm SFF SAS disks (2.5"), five of them, and am going to add them to my system, possibly adding three more later, as raid0, to improve my performance, as I have adopted KVM and need fast storage.

 I am going to have to address the machine performance as well. The processors are fast enough, 8 2.9GHz cores, but the ram, 14.7GB, is not enough. It is 14.7GB because of interleaving. Anyway, with two VMs running 4GB each, I'm running out of space.

 I also need to address my main storage array, which has precipitated my need to investigate Linux MD raid, which now supports RAID6, online level migration and online capacity expansion.

I have enough ports on my motherboard to connect 14 devices, 8 sas and 6 sata, and I have an 8 port sas controller as well. With 6 sas ports used by the sas hardware, going up to as many as 14 in the future, I will need at least 9 ports for the sata array, for a max of 23. Right now, I am looking at 15 ports, which can easily be done with the higher speed sas controller. I suppose when I get it set up, I will post some performance numbers for both the raid6 software raid array and the raid0 scratch/VM disks.

The Trouble With Linux

I have Linux boxes, several of them. My day job is supporting Linux boxes. On my desk here is a dual 1207 Opteron with two Barcelona CPUs running Debian. At work, I have a Xeon quad core and a HT P4, one running Debian and the other running Mandriva. I also have a Myth box in the other room.

I have been using Linux for a while, and am pretty competent with it, is what I'm trying to say. I have even used Linux as my only system for stretches of time, normally ending up with some sort of Apple laptop sooner or later, because Linux just doesn't seem to work.

I switch between Debian and Ubuntu mostly, while work demands that I use Mandriva where possible. I switch between Debian and Ubuntu mostly because the underlying Aptitude package system is the best system configuration tool I have used.

While using Debian, I begin to pine after the desktop-like features of Ubuntu, when, for instance, my Debian system fails to play a DVD because the codec is invalid or missing or something. Also, Flash doesn't work well or often.

Then I switch to Ubuntu for a while. First off, I can't use my software raid main volume that I use with Ubuntu. The Ubuntu installer knoweth nothing about software raid. Well, put it on the SSD and worry not. Everything goes on so slickly; even Flash works and works fairly well. There is a really nice front end for the package manager and Ubuntu happily suggests packages when you try to execute a command that doesn't exist.

However, after a while, the automatics in Ubuntu make the system get weird. None of the configuration is in the correct place. I spend hours tracking down how to fix the simplest things. I don't like messing with GUIs to fix problems. Even when I fix something, it gets fixed back. It can get tiring.

I get to wondering, also, whether I really need all that UI stuff, and get to pining for Ubuntu's XFCE simplicity. Seriously, XFCE loads in less than a blink after login.

Anyway, right now, as I said, I'm using Debian right now, and exploring the wasteland that is GTK, using FreeCiv to do it. GTK has gotten so piggish that this monster Opteron machine running 2.4GHz is slow. It takes minutes for each move. It is so bad I am speccing out a new computer based on a much faster single CPU in order to achieve faster single-thread performance. There is really nothing wrong with this machine, but I need faster GTK performance.

Linux on the desktop is adrift. Debian is pretty much excused, as its focus has always been on the server, not the desktop. Ubuntu and Mandriva are both desktop efforts. Mandriva 2010 is providing, shall we say, a certain level of job security, and that is all I'm going to say about that. Ubuntu, however, is so very close.

GTK, Gnome, KDE are all pigs. They chew through CPU cycles and ram like rampant hogs. When you are done configuring a decent desktop system, you are looking at a VM footprint of around 2GB. Look at XFCE4 on Debian, with a minimalist system, and the VM footprint runs around 512MB or so.

Why does all this matter? Well, CPU performance is as much about bandwidth as anything else, and, keeping the VM size down leads to less bandwidth usage, meaning more efficient usage of clock cycles. Keeping most of the code the size of the L3 cache would be ideal, but unlikely.

Anyway, there is an old adage that the XFCE guys seem to get, that Debian has long fought to retain, that Apple occasionally rediscovers, that Microsoft has never seemed to get, which is that 'software does something'.

Linux developers need to understand that the strength of the platform is efficiency and reliability. This is important, because the fancy graphics is pretty much the strength of the professionals, Apple and Microsoft. Fancy graphics don't matter in the long run. What matters is rock-solid performance.

Anyway, that's my opinion; the trouble with Linux is that they seem to be trying desperately to match the architecture of the for-pay systems. They need to go back to the simple ideas that hatched the revolution.

HP Veer vs. Dell Streak Mini 5

So, next month, my contract is finally up for renewal. I have become annoyed with the iPhone (3gs) and don't really want to pay for a 4, even tho it might, in theory, fix some of my complaints. I want to move on, if for no other reason that variety is the spice of life.

So, to survey the field, there are currently iOS (Apple), Blackberry, Android, WebOS and Windows Mobile 7. I'll deal with the ones I'm not looking at first.

I have had a Windows Mobile device, running 6.5, and it was horrid. I hear 7 may be better, but am not yet willing to find out. Blackberry is in the same boat, although I did look long and hard at the Torch. I currently have an iOS device, and my problems with it are by now well known.

So, that leaves Android and WebOS. I was pretty much set on the HP Veer until I picked up a Dell Streak Mini 5, which is a 5" Android handset. Sure, it's massive, but I'm pretty large, so the size never bothers me. It also doesn't have a hardware keyboard, which is a major reason to not be interested. It will, however, run flash very well, has a large screen and will soon run Netflix. It would be a unified device, giving me little reason to buy an iPad.

However, on the other hand, there's the HP Veer, which is a very small smart phone that is nearly on overgrown feature phone, providing a select set of services, such as email, messaging and facebook, while missing some of the other things, such as Netflix. It does, however, have a serviceable slide out keyboard.

I guess it broke down to HP vs. Dell. I have never liked Dell machines, generally preferring HP in any bracket where they compete. I think, more than anything, that is what is tipping the scales. That and the fact that the HP Veer does only messaging pretty much. When I'm carrying my phone, messaging and light browsing are all I do with it. I will eventually get an iPad if I get a Veer. The iPad will take over the media jobs and the heavy web browsing.

Don't like the iPhone anymore

It really revolves around the thing being a lousy messaging phone. The onscreen keyboard hasn't gotten any better (I was assured it would), the autocorrect is really annoying, as it makes me check every word to make sure it didn't change to something horrible (check damnyouautocorrect.com), and the email application is just as annoying as ever.

On the Blackberry Bold, an incoming mail, or any message, was added to the master message queue for you to see, in order it was received. The email subject was shown, at least what fit, and hitting the backspace key deleted the message. No muss, no fuss, the occasional accidentally deleted email, but, overall, quite usable. The iPhone, however, pretty much requires you click on the email, as the other options are 'edit' followed by touching each one you want to delete, followed by 'delete'. Or you can try the swipe to delete thing, sick, horrid joke that it is.

Then there's the keyboard. I now use a bluetooth keyboard at work to type messages rather than try to use the keyboard. I've ended up working on my laptop rather more, something I'd pretty much quit doing when I had the Blackberry.

Anyway, I'm off to buy a Palm Pre Plus, refurbished, and see how annoying that will be...