Hardened defenses, Virtual Box, Brexited

Yesterday my Airsoft AK-47 arrived.  I had Cindy throw the battery on the charger while I was at work so we could try it out when I got home.  I have to tell you, I was very surprised by the gun.

First of all it looked very realistic.  If you did not notice the orange Airsoft band around the muzzle of the gun you would think it was the real thing.  Not only does it look real, it feels real in terms of weight.  I could not believe it weighed between 7 and 8 pounds.  A good portion of the gun appears to be metal. It comes with two ammo clips, each capable of holding over 300 plastic bb’s so if you fully load each one you have a long time between fill ups.

Installing the stick battery that powers the gun is a bit clumsy but I eventually got it all in place.  I went out front and leaned a pretty thick cardboard box I had in the garage against one of our oak trees.   I stepped about 40-50 feet away and took a couple shots in semi-auto mode where you get one shot per trigger squeeze.  I was immediately impressed by the power of the gun which is advertised as 495 FPS, far exceeding the single shot, spring loaded Airsoft gun I bought awhile back.

I then flipped the selector to full auto mode and squeezed the trigger.  I was amazed at the fire speed for this “toy” gun.  It ripped into the cardboard box, quickly filling it with dozens of holes in a few seconds.  Damn this thing was no joke.  Not only is it powerful, it’s pretty accurate as well.  Later Cindy was in the backyard picking off small targets from 90-100 feet pretty easily.

I have no doubt that if we have an opportunity to use the Airsoft gun against a chicken predator it will quickly be running/flying the other direction.  I saw some videos of dumb kids shooting each other with similar guns with less FPS and they had real nasty, painful welts as a reward.  Check out the video if you want to see what it looks/sounds like when you squeeze the trigger.

At the end of the video I reiterated my viewpoint on real assault weapons which may seem hypocritical since I bought a toy version of one.  I would never suggest that the Americans should be denied the right to own guns.  My problem is with the availability of weapons that are clearly for offensive versus defensive intentions.

Yesterday I discovered Virtual Box, a free virtual machine product from Oracle.  The reason I discovered it was after I wasted a couple days trying to get a virtual Windows 10 machine running on my Windows 7 workstation utilizing Microsoft’s VirtualPC.  When I would try to run the Windows 10 install it would bomb out saying I had insufficient memory and CPU power even though I allocated virtual resources far above the minimum requirements.

After a lot of frustration I found other people did what I was looking to do easily with Virtual Box that evidently doesn’t have the same limitations.  I downloaded and installed the product in a few minutes and a few minutes later I had the Windows 10 installation successfully running.  If you are looking for a flexible and powerful VM solution definitely give Virtual Box a look.

I woke up this morning to see that Britain voted to officially leave the EU which is sort of a big deal.  It was a divisive issue very reminiscent to American politics of the last 16 years.  Both sides thought the other were idiots more or less.  My thoughts as an outsider are mixed.  In theory the EU seems like a good thing, free trade between nations with minimal restrictions should be good for an economy.  The standardized currency, the euro, that the majority of EU countries use was again an attempt to promote trade free of exchange rate differences.

Well the downside for Britain has been a loss of direct control in other areas. Being a member of the EU meant some important decisions that affected citizens of the country were being made by non-elected EU officials based out of Brussels.  Some of the most polarizing of these is the requirement for Britain to accept immigrants based on EU requirements which has created a very American-like resentment of these immigrants being granted benefits in the generous British system.

The vote to leave certainly was not a landslide, winning 52% of the vote.  Shortly after the vote, Prime Minister David Cameron who was on the pro-EU side announced he would be stepping down in the fall in a very gracious speech.  The process to leave the EU will be a slow one but it will be interesting to see if it proves to be a smart move down the road.  Britain’s exit could give legs to movements in other countries to leave the EU such as France.

This weekend I will be busy.  I purchased the 8 channel security DVR to upgrade the surveillance of the coop/backyard so I want to get it up and running.  I also would like to take a harder look at electric fence options although that will be a longer term project.  I still have the raw materials in my big shed to build the cover over my wi-fi water sprinkler controller and water equipment but I think I need to wait to get that done until the stitches are out of my shoulder.

On the fun front hopefully Cindy and I can get out to see the new Independence Day.  I was a big fan of the original.