Microsoft whines about America's Talent deficit

Today on the Wall St. Journal Op-Ed we have Brad Smith, executive VP and general counsel at Microsoft wailing about 6000 Microsoft job openings that they cannot fill.  Of these, 3400 are for "engineers, software developers, and researchers".  Brad Smith then goes on to cry about the US education system.  
   Tough cookies Microsoft.  If you need software people, you can train them yourself.  Run an ad. "Learn Programming.  Good pay.  No prior experience necessary."   That will get you all the applicants anyone could ever need.  Enroll the better half of them in a Microsoft run software training program.  In three months I can teach any decent college graduate how to program anything.  And so can Microsoft. 
   It is crazy for Microsoft to expect colleges to graduate students with five years experience in Windows internals, C sharp, Visual Basic.Net and Excel Macros..  The Microsoft HR droids want to hire people off the street with years of experience in very narrow specialties.  Got news for you HR droids, the world doesn't work that way. 

So where was the air support in Benghazi?

After a month of chattering about the Libyan outrage, who knew what and when did they know it, who was responsible for lack or security men, we have NOT talked about real issues.

1. Why no air support?.  The jets can move out at 600 mph.  We could have had fighters over the besieged consulate within an hour. 
2. Why no Marine reinforcements?  The V22 Osprey VTOL transports are slower than jet fighters, only 300 mph or so.  But they could have landed a company of Marines in the consulate courtyard within two hours. 

These are more important questions than why US ambassadors were pushing the "Video drove them crazy" story on the Sunday pundit shows a week after the attack.

357 Magnum in an automatic pistol?

That's what we get from Coonan Inc according to my latest American Rifleman.  It looks like a regulation .45 automatic but it takes 357 Magnum revolver cartridges.  Interesting and all that, but why?
   357, being a revolver cartridge, has a rim on the brass to seat on the back of the cylinder.  Without the rim, the hammer strike would merely push the entire cartridge up the cylinder instead of igniting the primer.  Revolver cartridges need that rim.  There have been several attempts to make revolvers that could fire rimless .45 auto cartridges, using clever metal clips that grab the extractor groove in the rimless automatic round.  They worked, mostly, but nobody was ever very fond of them.  Convenienal wisdom is that revolvers need rimmed cartridges.
   On the other side, rimmed cartridges don't stack neatly into a magazine  the way rimless will.  The rims have a tendency to catch each other and jam the gun.  Instead of stacking up straight, they stack in a curve, calling for a curved magazine.  Straight magazines, with a spring on the bottom are more likely to feed than curvy ones.  The moment of truth for an automatic pistol is when the slide jerks open, the empty brass is tossed out, the springs ram the slide home, stripping a new round off the top of the magazine and jamming it into the chamber.  As any automatic pistol owner can tell you, there are a thousand ways this can go wrong, jamming the gun.  I certainly don't want to give Murphy's Law something extra to work with like a rimmed cartridge.  I want rimless ammunition for my automatic pistol. 
   Plus, nobody has ever complained about the regulation .45 round lacking in power or accuracy.  357 is a fine round, but it doesn't hit any harder. 
   It's a nice looking gun, but I'd druther have a regulation .45 automatic. 

Obama does better at debating

Naturally I stayed up to watch the Romney-Obama rematch.  Not bad.  Obama looked better and did better than last time.  Romney was as good as last time.  Obama made up a few "facts" on the fly. He said he had called the Lybian outrage terrorism the day after it happened.  I certainly don't remember that, and ever diligent Fox News found the tape, and although Obama had used the word terrorism, it wasn't in connection with the Lybian outrage.  He was just trashing terrorism in general.  Romney got on Obama's case about the pipeline and drilling permits and Obama didn't have much in the way of answers.
  The moderator was a tubby women with an attitude and bad hair (Candy Crowley).  She interrupted, argued, sucked up valuable time, and was totally in the tank for Obama.  I'd never heard of her before.  The audience questions were bad.  I mean does anyone care about the "assault weapons ban" any more?  That question did give Obama a chance to declare himself in favor of the right to bear arms. 
   Nothing new in the way of ideas, issues, or policies came up.  Everything that was said the two candidates have said before and said many times.  What's fun in watching it to see them going at each other face-to-face and seeing how good they are at thinking on their feet.  Both candidates managed to avoid fatal gaffes, and nobody was ever at a loss for something to say.

Nobody can vote for HIM because..

I hear this a lot.  But when I ask " What has he said or done that is so awful?"  they cannot think of anything.  But they KNOW that HE is awful and they could never vote for him, they just don't know WHY they feel that way. 
    And the MSM aggravate the situation, 'cause everybody knows they don't tell the truth.  So nobody listens to THEM. 
   Which might be why the debate was so effective, everybody got so see their guy, on national TV, all by himself. 

Libya is for Losers

The TV newsies have been talking about the Libya disaster for a couple of weeks now.  Coupla things they haven't talked about.
1.  Marines.  I watched the whole congressional hearing, where they had four State Dept guys getting grilled by 20 Congresscritters for hours.  During all that time the word "Marines" never passed anyone's lips.  The back and forth was all about additional State Dept security guys.  Now as for me, when I got Al Quada climbing over the consulate wall, I want a company of Marines.  They know how to handle this sort of thing.  Once over the wall, Al Quada is on American soil, and the Marines can shoot them all.  Nobody talked about this.
2.  Coverup story.  Just what is the White House trying to sell to the voters.  And why?  Apparently the real story is Al Quada planned to attack and burn the consulate, and they suceeded.  To which an intelligent White House would say "We are gonna track 'em down and kill 'em."  A lot of voters are OK with that.
Instead they said "We Americans are to blame for stirring up the natives with provocative Internet video".  Few voters like that story much.

Winter is coming

Mt Lafayette from the Mittersill Inn driveway.  Took this picture two days ago.  It snowed on the deck that night and it stuck up on the mountain.  Notice that leaves have not all fallen yet.