Ladies and Gentlemen, we regret to inform you...

...that it is, in fact, one of the Monday-est Mondays of the entire calendar year today.

The National Weather Service forecasts that it is likely to remain Monday all day long. 

At least there are Cyber Monday deals to take the edge off the day. Retail therapy can help!

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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #253...

Hotel room nightstand shot from TacCon: Taurus 856 T.O.R.O. with a Holosun 507k in a PHLster City Special, six rounds of Hornady Critical Defense 110gr +P in an eight round Tuff Strip, my trusty POM spicy treats dispenser, 500 lumen Surefire EDCL1-T, and a waved Spyderco Dragonfly.

Click the links to steal this look!

(Do I think the Hornady 110gr +P Critical Defense is the bestest load for the .38? Probably not, but it's easy to get the dot sighted in with, and reloads are speedy with those pointy bullets. Its performance is certainly adequate, especially if you're not particularly worried about needing to defeat vehicular barriers.)

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Insert modem handshake noise here.

This is your annual reminder that "Cyber Monday" is a shopping day that was only relevant back in the late Nineties. 

Back then you couldn't order from Pets.com or eToys.com any time from Thanksgiving day through the following Sunday without worrying about your kids picking up the phone and knocking your USRobotics 14.4k modem off your dialup AOL connection. 

So everybody would put off their online Christmas shopping until they got back to the fat pipe connection at the office on Monday morning, and do their e-commerce gift shopping while they were supposed to be working.

Now that everyone has hot and cold running broadband in their pockets 24/7, the whole idea is a little retro.

Anyway, Happy Cyber Monday to those who celebrate. There are some good deals at BezosMart on Lego sets, Kindle eReaders, security cameras, and Canon lenses.

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Such a deal!

Amongst the special sale items at BezosMart today are Walker's Razor Slim active ear pro for 47% off.

Don't they know people might use those while touching icky guns?

(Remember when using them in classes or matches to wear them backwards so that the mics are aimed at the RSO or instructor.)

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Buy More! Spend Now!

It's Prime Day, the big sale day at BezosMart, which is generally more hype than anything else. For many things, like appliances or electronics, you're better off waiting for more traditional sales, like Labor Day or  Black Friday.

But if you want the products actually made or marketed by Amazon, this really is the best day. They've got 7" Kindle Fire tablets for forty bucks and the Kindle Oasis is, like, a hundred bucks off.

It's the Kindle Fire that gets me. A high-res touchscreen tablet with sixteen gigabytes of memory, a thing that would have been absolutely nothing more than a prop in a cyberpunk scifi movie twenty years ago, is going for the price of dinner for two at Applebee's. Add drinks and dessert and you can get the 32GB 8" HD version.

I mean, I remember when the the 3.2" 160x144 screen on the Sega Game Gear was pretty frickin' magic. It's color! Backlit! You can play Mortal Kombat on it! Now my wristwatch has better than double that resolution. 

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Great deal!

Hey, if you've been wanting to try out a full-frame mirrorless camera but were put off by the price, Amazon's got a banging good deal on the Sony a7 II for their Early Access Prime sale today.

That's, like, 40% off. I paid almost that much for the used one I bought for SHOT back in '18. Those things take great pictures.

Such a deal!

Amazon's got a Prime Day deal running on the Canon EOS M6 Mark II mirrorless camera, bundled with the kit zoom and detachable electronic viewfinder (normally sold separately for, like, two-fitty), for under nine bills for the whole kit.

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Crazy Friday

I'm not a fan of the concept of Black Friday under the best of circumstances. Packed in like cattle at the break of dawn with people ready to get in fist fights over This Year's Popular Toy sounds like the opposite of fun to me.

This year? You'd need a screw loose to willingly thrust yourself into the scrum. Between the 'Rona and all the spun up, stressed out, overwrought reaction to it...and the spun up, stressed out, overwrought reactions to the reactions...you can definitely count me out of even entering the parking lot of any retail establishments today. 

People are so tightly wound these days that they're throwing down with AKs over pizza being late.

I'll be shopping at home!

VZ Grips are available on Amazon for improving the traction of your favorite blaster without uglifying it in the process. They have their own store there as a hub for all their different offerings.

For the shutterbug on your list there's Peak Design's cool system of carry straps. There's the Leash, for the smallest mirrorless cameras; the Slide Lite for normal-sized mirrorless and smaller DSLRs; and the Slide, which will work even with pro bodies and big telephoto zooms like that beastly D1X & 80-400mm combo above. They have their own Amazon store, too (and their bags are as cleverly thought out as their straps. They're basically the Magpul of photography gear.)

I've gotten literally years of use out of this Logitech keyboard cover now; it's written columns and feature articles over lunch here at home and blog posts on the road and I'm still on the first set of batteries. At this rate it's possibly going to outlast the iPad to which it's connected. Recommend.

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For SaleSold...

Want a good deal on a full-frame DSLR? Let my loss be your gain!

For sale is this well-cared-for Canon EOS 5D Mark II, a camera that is a bit long in the tooth but still capable of outstanding images (and about as cheap as you'll find a modern full-frame DSLR.) For blog readers, I'll ship it with a battery, battery charger, and body cap for $450, shipped. SOLD!

The camera:

A couple of sample shots...

Email me if interested!
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A surprising find...

I carted a couple large boxes of books to Half Price Books yesterday. If you've never done this, they have a pretty organized system for processing incoming books. Books are stacked and their barcodes scanned (or ISBN numbers entered) and sorted into stuff for which they're paying you and stuff which they'll be glad to take off your hands if you don't want to cart it home.

You can tell if they stumble on a real find because they'll hesitate, maybe wipe it down, and double-take at the monitor in front of them. When I saw the clerk do that over a yellow-jacketed book in the stack I brought in yesterday, I figured I'd better google it up and see what I found. I'm glad I did, because it appears that Dougal Dixon's Man After Man is bringing rather more than the $2.99 I gave for it all those years ago.

Anyway, I decided not to sell that one to Half Price Books and threw it on eBay instead.
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On a newsstand near you!

The latest issue of RECOIL Concealment is now on a newsstand near you (I think. If the newsstand near you is a Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, or Walgreens... I got mine at Walgreens.)

Inside, you will find one of those shilling sellout reviews full of uncritical praise that... Well, I'm kidding, there. But you should read the review, so they'll let me write more.
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Camera for sale...

My Panasonic Lumix GF3 is up for sale on eBay.

Fantastic combination of a decent-size 12MP sensor in a tiny body that's just about pocketable when fitted with a collapsable lens, like the Panasonic 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6.

Going, going...

Auction ends today!

Here's what this stuff is selling for, used:

• NEX-5T body at KEH: $168
• 16-50mm PZ lens at KEH: $149
• 18-105mm f/4 G power zoom at KEH: $499
• 55-210mm lens at KEH: $182
• 50mm f/1.8 lens at Amazon: $214
• Sigma 60mm f/2.8 Art lens at Adorama: $159
• Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC DN lens at Amazon: $299

That's almost $1700 worth of stuff. Trade-in to a camera store, of course, would be about $700, but I'm hoping to realize at least $900, so I can buy a second used Sony full-frame body. Anything over that would be gravy.

The NEX-5T and both the 30mm and the 55-210mm have done yeoman duty at Blogorado and Paul-E-Palooza. It's a tiny body, but a full APS-C 16MP sensor. That 30mm Sigma is a fantastic lens, and almost good enough to make me not want to give up APS-C just to keep using it, but having the two different Sony sensor sizes was making packing for trips weird.

SALE!

Okay, I've decided to pull the trigger on this and ditch my APS-C sensor Sony E-mount stuff and get another full-frame Sony E-mount body and macro lens.

This will get me shut of Sony crop sensor lenses and leave me with full-frame Sony stuff for work and Olympus Micro 4/3 bodies for fun and playing hipster street photographer.

Here's the stuff in the package: Sony NEX-5T, 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 collapsible power zoom lens, Sony 18-105 f/4 G lens, Sony 55-210mm f/4.5-6.3 zoom, Sony 50mm f/1.8, Sigma 60mm f/2.8 Art, and Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens.

No reserve eBay auction is here.

Auction ending tonight!

Crimson Trace Lasergrip and Lightguard, with genuine powder residue from the inaugural Citizen's Defense Research class! And Dark Star Gear holsters!

Christmas in July!

Amazon wants us to spend a lot of money on Prime Day. I need to check to see if there's anything I can't live without.
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Sale...

Amazon has their Echo Dot on sale for $39.99 again. If you were wanting to try a voice-controlled doodad in your house to see if it's useful for you, it's almost a no-brainer at that price, especially if you're already an Amazon Prime member.
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Be strong, Tam!

It's Amazon's big sale day (Prime Day!) today. I am sure that all kinds of fabulous stuff I don't need will be dangled in front of my nose at prices too good to pass up...
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Of beans and noses.

I'm pretty sure I got the following metaphor from Gunsmith Bob.

Every so often in the firearms retail or gunsmithing business, I will have a customer approach me with a big metaphorical lima bean in their hand and say "Will you please put this bean up my nose?"

And I will feel uncomfortable because I know this is a bad idea and I will reply "Sir, I'm not sure you want that bean up your nose. It could cause a whole lot of problems and might require an emergency room visit to get it out."

And they will say "But I really, really want you to put this bean up my nose!"

And again I will reply "And I really feel that I need to tell you that you shouldn't put that bean up your nose."

Pleading now, the customer will say "But I'll give you a lot of money to put this bean up my nose!"

And, having done my duty by warning them, and consoling myself with thoughts of how the customer is always right, I will sigh and go ahead and put that bean up their nose.

What does this have to do with gun selling or gunsmithing?

"Excuse me, I noticed you don't have any Taurus Judges in the display case. Can you special order one?"

"Well, sir..."

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Grand Opening Sale...

Looks like they decided to put on a bit of a sale for the Grand Opening here at work. Sale prices and suchlike may be found in this post at INGO.
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