Visiting "Strangers".....

Hmmm....I seem to be getting a lot of hits from Arlington and Fairfax, Virginia.

Did I make "The Big Time"?

Great Afternoon at the Range

It's like the old saying about fishing, "The worst day fishing is better than the best day at work", although I don't think I'd care to have a "Bad Day at the Range"! The last Bad Day I had was a couple of years ago when my wife hit the target support with my 45, and the round came straight back and smacked my in the upper lip!
OUCH!
Anyway....I had a great time this afternoon with my son. I went through about 150 rounds of 45ACP, and he went through about 100 rounds of 40S&W, putting a small dent in the 500 rounds I bought him for his birthday present.
And we BOTH realized we simply MUST get to the range more than "every couple of months"!
I took me a full magazine to get back into the rhythm I usually have, and out of my first 8 shots, 4 were outside the black! They were all within the "Dinner plate at 7 yds" credo, but I'm capable of much better than that.
It took my son a few shots to get back to his usual skill level, but then he wasn't doing rapid double-taps from low ready!
After my first magazine fiasco, I went back to the basics: good grip, good sight alignment, surprise break, and DON'T JERK THE TRIGGER! I showed him some tips about sight alignment, and I think he understands the "Front Sight...PRESS!" mental attitude for defensive shooting better now. We talked about the surprise break, the "thin glass rod" concept, and I explained to him about how being aware of the trigger reset movement will get him to know and understand his pistol better.
By the end of the two hours we were both doing better than when we walked in, and had a great time.
We're going to head up to Angeles Shooting Range in two weeks, after his 17HMR ammo gets here, along with the sabot slugs I want to try in my rebarreled and scoped Remington 1100, my "Goblin Gettin' Zombie Zapper". I also ordered a Caldwell Lead Sled Plus from Midway, and a couple of bags of lead shot to anchor it down. Learning to sight-in from a bench rest is a new thing to me, and I've written down, and printed out, some guidelines on how to do it.

Range Time!!

Heading to the indoor range Thursday after work with my son. I got him 500 rds of 40S&W for his Sig P226, and three spare magazines for his birthday, and we're gonna go turn some money into smoke and noise!
I also got him 500 rds of 17HMR for his Savage 93R17-FXP rifle (the one he regularly embarrasses me with!), but we have to hold off on going up to Angeles Shooting Range for a week or so until I can schedule a day off from work. I'm anxious to get up there to try the new rifled barrel, scope, and recoil pad I installed on my Remington 1100. I have a selection of slugs I want to try with it and see how they shoot with a rifled as opposed to smoothbore barrel.
Which reminds me....the "Box-O-Truth" did an article on slugs and buckshot through smooth and rifled barrels, and he shot some of the sabot slugs that are out there. They're about FOUR BUCKS a round ( ! ), so I probably won't order too many to start with.
I also want to try some of the Hornady LEVERevolution polymer-tipped rounds in my Marlin 336 30-30 rifle.
Looks like I'd better get that order in to Cabela's, Midway, or Sportsman's Guide tonight!

Boston's Gun Bible

I'll take one of my (in)famous SWAGs and say that 99% of the people who drop by here know about this book, and have probably read it.
I bought it a while back, thumbed through it, thought "This looks pretty good...", and promptly put it on my book shelf.
Well, I started reading it today, and it's even better than I thought, as it covers so much territory. A lot of it's been covered in numerous other books, and a lot of it echoes what my Instructors have said in the training classes I've taken, so I won't go over it. One of the first things that really grabbed me was a quote in the front of the book from Heraclitus on the Warrior Spirit.
It goes:

Of every One-Hundred men, Ten shouldn't even be there.
Eighty are nothing but targets.
Nine are real fighters...
We are lucky to have them, as they make the battle.
Ah, but the One, the One of them who is a Warrior,
He will bring the others back....

Pretty stout stuff!

I don't think I'm in that "Top Ten", but it gives me strength to know that at least I'm a *bit* more aware of things than most of the sheeple who blindly go through life in Condition White.

Cain vs Obama

As usual, Ramirez nails it!

UGH....PC Repair....MY OWN

Well, after listen to this thing make strange noises when I first powered it up, and then watching the temperature of the GPU on the video card go over TWO-HUNDRED degrees, I figured it might be a good time to pull this one the desk, take the covers off, and see what was going on.
Sure enough, the fan on the video card was barely turning. I have some good video cards "in stock" here, but I really didn't want to use one as I've had people call me at 6pm on a Sunday night saying they needed their PC fixed RIGHT NOW, and they were wiling to pay a premium for 'after hours' service.
So off to Best Buy to get another video card. I'd much rather get one from Newegg, as they're always 25%~40% cheaper than Best Buy, but what the heck....it was a nice day and I wanted to get out of the house.
Blew about 3 pounds of dust bunnies out of this one, and then did the YF's as long as I had the compressor set up (drier on the air outlet, grounding strap on the blow gun to discharge static) to clean PC's.
Got this one all spiffied up, plugged in the new video card, and upgraded the hard disk while I was at it.
I did a fresh install of OpenSUSE 11.4, migrated my data from the old hard disk, and here I am.
The new video card barely breaks 100*, and the new drive is noticeably faster than the old one. Should be good for at least another 50,000 miles....

My First (and other) Car MEME....

Idea courtesy of Old NFO.
The first car I got to drive on a regular basis was my Mom's 1964 Corvair Monza Spyder. Fun little car until my sister got rear-ended by a semi one day. She was OK, but the car was never the same after we got it out of the shop. I learned more than I wanted to know about "Trailing-Throttle Oversteer" in that little guy. It was "Monza Red" with a black interior. It also had one of the neatest radios in it I'd ever seen. It was a Sony MDL-something that had AM, FM, SW, and LW, and it hung under the dash in an accessory bracket that let you pull the radio out, and carry it along as a portable.
I spent many a cold winter night listening to WRVA ("The Lou Dean Show") while laying in bed with the headphones on.
Mom traded that one in for a 1967 Corvair Monza, with the 110 HP engine, and a POWERGLIDE.
Oh, the ignominy of going from a 4-speed to a two-speed AUTOMATIC right when I was getting my driver's license!
The '67 Monza was "Marina Blue", one of the prettiest colors you could ever paint a car.
The next car we got, which was still my Mom's car, was a graduation present for me. We got a 1969 Dodge Charger R/T with the Special Edition package. I was bummed when it came in because the dealer we order it from was a grade school friend of my Mom's, and he checked the "Delete R/T Stripe" on the option box because he didn't think my Mom would like having that big white stripe around the tail. They substituted some chrome and red R/T emblems on the rear fenders, and the thing wound up being a real sleeper. Wit the f-70x14 bias ply tires it wouldn't hook up for sh1t (I could lay rubber for blocks with that thing!) but once it was rolling, hang on!
We kept it for a couple of years, and then the insurance companies came down on "Muscle Cars".....HARD. Even though I was an "A" student, had NO accidents or tickets, and was getting the good driver/good student discount, or insurance went from $186 a year to $483 EVERY SIX MONTHS! The Charger was "T5 Copper Metallic" with a tan interior.
So, we got rid of it, and I moved on to....
A 1971 Ford Capri. It had the 1600 "Kent" engine, with a four speed, and the tiniest one barrel carb I'd ever seen. The "Kent" 1600 was a pretty stout engine (it was the basis for the early Formula Ford cars), but this thing was seriously DE-tuned. It wouldn't pull more than 5000RPM in NEUTRAL! I swear, you could put a brick on the accelerator, walk away for a week, and it would still be running when you came back.
Really a stone, but it handled pretty well, got great mileage, and got me through college in style. It was some kind of non-descript medium blue metallic with a white ( ! ) interior.
I could go on about the cars I've "owned", but these were the ones I was driving during my 'formative years'.
Maybe I'll just do a post listing all the cars I've owned. It covers the gamut, from Corvairs to Jeeps, and Corvettes to El Caminos.....

For Wirecutter....(among others)....

A buddy of mine sent me this, and I *immediately* thought about Kenny.

Enjoy!

BEWILDERED TEXAN

While walking down along the Rio Grande this morning, I saw a Muslim extremist fall into the water ; he was struggling to stay afloat because of all the guns and bombs he was carrying. Along with him was a Mexican who was also struggling to stay afloat because of the large backpack of drugs that was strapped to his back. If they didn't get help, they'd surely drown. Being a responsible Texan and abiding by the law to help those in distress, I informed the County Sheriff 's Office and Homeland Security in Austin. It is now 4 PM, both have drowned, and neither authority has responded.

I'm starting to think I wasted a postage stamp...

Wow....10 Meters is WIDE OPEN!

I haven't seen the 10 Meter band open like this in YEARS! There's stations calling CQ out past 28.500, and the band is supporting propagation from all over.
I worked T32C earlier today on 10, and then half an hour later worked him on 15.
Great day to play radio!

Bullet Impacts Filmed at ONE MILLION Frames Per Second

Amazing stuff!

Steve Jobs -February, 1955 ~ October, 2011-

May the place you go to be Insanely Great beyond your wildest dreams.....