Tactical Poser

So, after two years of wear, my original Royal Robbins gun burkhas are starting to show some of the tell-tale signs of use. Specifically, while a plastic Smith M&P isn't rough on synthetic blends in quite the same way that 20lpi checkering on a Springfield Professional abrades cotton chambray shirts, there's still a certain amount of wear and tear involved over the right kidney.

With summer coming up, I headed to Amazon to order a couple fresh shirts to throw in the mix, only to discover that the Royal Robbins Expedition was no longer available in the darker green "canopy" color that I liked, but only the brighter "avocado" that I don't think looks good on me at all. There's a Royal Robbins Expedition Stretch, but it's available in a color called "artichoke" that looks pretty much the same as "avocado".

This means that I had to head over to the 5.11 section and order a couple 5.11 Taclite Pro shirts in the "TDU green" color. Never mind that the Royal Robbins Expedition shirt and the 5.11 Taclite Pro shirt are the exact same shirt, for some reason it makes me feel like a total poser mall ninja to order the 5.11 product, because I am neither a "Pro" nor am I particularly "Tactical". This is the only way I know how to operate:

Don't tell anyone...

...but I kinda want a gun in that silly .22TCM cartridge. Not badly enough to buy an RIA, though, which leaves me in something of a bind.

Does anyone make a Commander-length .22TCM barrel with a Para ramp, I wonder?
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They were right and I was wrong.

When I started getting back into photography and bought DSLRs to replace the hodgepodge of miscellaneous cameras I'd used for picture-taking, I stuck with a small P&S digicam over the advice of friends and commenters.

"Tam," they'd say, "It's got such a tiny sensor and the lens is kinda 'meh' on those cheap pocket point-and-shoots."

To which I'd invariably respond "But Megapixels! And 12x zoom! And bells'n'whistles! Look, built-in fish-eye effect!" And truly, by the numbers, that little Coolpix S6500 wasn't a bad camera, but... I'd get into pictures on the big screen and wind up disappointed all too often. Snapshots? Sure, it takes great snapshots.

There's a class of cameras, possibly not long for this world, exemplified by the Canon PowerShot G-series and the extremely similar Nikon Coolpix P-series, that Nikon described as "the perfect complement to an advanced photographer’s D-SLR" but was perhaps more realistically summed up in this group test at Digital Photography Review:

"It wasn't so long ago that DSLRs were out of financial reach for most enthusiast photographers. Back before DSLRs fell below the magic sub-$1000 mark, the only way for most people to 'go digital' was to invest in a high-quality compact, offering SLR-like control, but without the expensive extras - the large sensor and interchangeable lens mount.

These days, of course, DSLRs are far more attainable than they once were, making high-end compacts less of a 'next best thing' purchase than in the past, and more of a luxury. In fact, the high end compact sector is sometimes referred to as the 'luxury' compact market..."

Now, half-a-grand high end compact cameras aren't really a thing that exists for me. Then again, neither are $1000 DSLRs. But thanks to the Bigger, Better, Faster, More! world of digital photography, the top-of-the-line 2010-model five-hundred buck "luxury compact camera" is available used for less than a quarter of that price today.

I picked up a used Nikon Coolpix P7000 from KEH for very reasonable money and, while it's not the cigarette-pack size of the little S6500, it's still only about the size of my cell phone in its rubber case. Not really shirt-pocket sized, more coat-pocket sized; it's still easy enough to dangle from a wrist strap or toss in the "document pocket" of my gun burkha.

And it's got the stuff I wanted in a camera: It'll shoot RAW, it has full manual control with neatly laid-out dials, there's an optical viewfinder for composing when it's too bright to use the screen (or for when I just want to use an optical viewfinder because it's what I'm used to) and it'll even shoot in monochrome with your choice of B&W filter effects...

And the pictures...

Speaking of Nikons... But this is a matter for another post.

Automotif LXXIII...

Jaguar XK convertible, seen parked up on 54th near College Avenue.
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Automotif LXXII...

1987 or '88 BMW 535is spotted in Broad Ripple yesterday. Tasty...

See the guy in the third picture? See the camera in his hand? He's 'point shooting', playing street photographer like some hipster. (Not that I've ever tried such a thing...)

Contax TVS, Ilford XP2

Happy Spring!

After a gorgeous sunny Sunday at the range, I spent a shivering Monday doing some work: Chronographing three loads through a test gun and then five five-shot groups from each at 25 yards. The gun managed several groups in the 2.5"-3.25" range which, considering the kind of gun it is, kinda surprised me. The whole time, I was watching the skies darken to the northwest.

As I left, it was starting to sleet. By the time I got out to Premier Arms, it was steady rattle of tiny ice pellets mixed with snowflakes, like Mother Nature's middle finger on the first day of spring.
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Sign

Contax TVS, Ilford XP2

E + D

Last week we took advantage of Bobbi working the funky swing shift to go get lunch at Eat + Drink, the cocktail lounge adjacent to that SoBro brunch legend, Taste (and run by the same people), which is now open for lunch on weekdays.

Contax TVS, Ilford XP2

Looking north from the patio of Taste, E+D is next door, with the classic neon of the Red Key Tavern beyond.

I had fried pickles for an appetizer and a charcuterie plate for lunch. It came with pickles and pickled eggs. Bobbi had an appetizer of deviled eggs with wasabi tobiko roe on them ("Yo, dawg, I heard you like eggs, so I put eggs on your eggs") and for her meal...

...a delicious-looking calamari po boy. Everything I sampled was good, although the pickles were kinda "meh"; it takes a pretty tart and vinegary pickle to hold up to the whole battered-'n'-fried thing, and these just weren't. I wanna try that po boy, though; I filched some of the calamari and just looking at that picture reminds me of how good it was and makes me hungry.

Overheard in the Office...

RX: "It bothers me because the existence of a Gentoo penguin implies there was a Gen One penguin, and you never see them."

Me: "They were recalled for safety reasons."

RX: "They tended to explode?"

Me: "No, they were twelve feet tall with razor-edged beaks and cranky dispositions."

RX: "That explains why expeditions to the South Pole used to be so dangerous."

Didn't think about that, did ya?

Ah, the glamorous life of getting paid to shoot guns!

When it's 37 degrees outside and you're doing chrono work and trying to squeeze in enough time to shoot 25-yard benched groups, racing the looming clouds that are already starting to spit sleet, and the gun isn't a bad one, per se, but certainly not one you'd buy for yourself to shoot for fun...

Overheard in the Office...

Me: "Do you know what this is?"

RX: "A piece of wood from a ship?"

Me: "From the HMS Victory."

RX: "That's probably red lead paint."

Me: "I won't lick it, I promise. But... This piece of wood was at Trafalgar! And... And! I have a piece of wood downstairs from the USS Constitution..."

RX: "You keep them apart so they won't explode?"

Automotif LXXI...

Jaguar XJL

Huck

Contax TVS, Kodak 400TX

Every now and again a roll of more-or-less random shots from function-checking a new old camera turns up something cool. Often it seems to involve Bobbi's orange stripey tomcat.

Overheard in the Office...

So, a kid brought a "loaded" "gun" to school in Manhattan...

RX: "It looks like it's in Barney Fife mode."

Me: "What, just one cartridge?"

RX: "Yeah. I don't even know where you'd find a round of... what is that? .32 Short?..."

Me: "Uh, upstairs."

RX: "I was going to say '...on Manhattan.'"

Ghostrider

Imagine walking into the Burbank offices of the Lockheed corporation in 1953, where the engineers were hard at work on a new transport plane, and telling them that the plane they were drawing up would still be in heavy use more than sixty years later.

Mind you, some of the guys in the room were alive when the Wright Brothers first flew. The entirety of manned powered flight had happened within their lifetime, and you are telling them that the cargo plane they were designing would be used as a laser-armed gunship in the world of 2019. (Well, you'd have to say "energy ray-armed", because the word "laser" wouldn't even be coined for another half dozen years.) In fact, it would not just still be in heavy use, it would still be being built, which would have sounded as fantastical to them as someone still making Wright Flyers in '53.

(H/T to Weaponsman.)
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Automotif LXX...

Benz G-Wagen out on a good day for it.

If a Range Rover is a tweed jacket, a Geländewagen is a leather trench coat.
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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #120...

SIG P320

Seen in SoBro...

Astronaut Crosswalk
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The Safety Dance

So, the table we got at the gun show butted up against several others that were unused because their usual tenant, a medical supplies vendor, had gotten hurt in a wreck and couldn't make the show. The morning of the second day, we spread out a little, moving some holsters over to the empty table behind us to keep that end of the aisle from looking deserted.

Among the stuff I had over there was a Safariland Glock 17/22/31 paddle holster, on the diagram below in position "H":

Mike and I were sitting in the chairs marked "M" and "T", facing in the directions indicated. Mike was talking to someone on his end of the table when I hear a voice behind me asking "What's this holster fit? Glock?"

I glanced over my shoulder and nodded at the person asking the question, a uniformed police officer; not an IMPD guy, some other local department. "Yep, it's for full-size Glocks."

He nodded thoughtfully while turning it over in his hands, "How much?"

"I dunno... Twenty bucks sound cool?"

He mulled that over for a second as I turned away to see what was going on down Mike's way when, out of the corner of my eye, I see the cop unholster his sidearm. I got a real good look at the muzzle in my peripheral vision, and also took extremely good note of the fact that, even if his lack of muzzle discipline was appalling, at least his trigger finger was in register against the frame. Thank heavens.

I stood up in as casual and non-startling a manner as possible as he stuffed the gun into the holster, sliding his off-hand down until it was cradling the muzzle end of the Safariland rig. Then he nodded, pulled his heater out and stuffed it back into his duty rig and reached for his wallet.

I would venture that a solid plurality, if not a majority, of negligent discharges at gun shows happen when some special snowflake decides they have to test the fit of their loaded sidearm in a holster. If such had happened here, I wouldn't have been able to tell y'all about it because they'd have been cleaning my brains off the next row over and hopefully the .40 slug wouldn't have gone through anybody else on its way to embedding itself in the back wall of the corn dog stand three aisles away.

I don't want the last fleeting thought going through my mind to have been "Boy, you sure are the only one qualified enough..."

Folks, I don't care if you flout the show rules and don't unload your concealed carry piece and have it zip tied at the door; that's none of my business. But if you're gonna carry a loaded gat around the show, it needs to stay in the $&#@^$ing holster, &^%^ it!

Don't pull it out to show your friends, and don't give me that "I had to pull it out to check the holster fit!" because we're in a giant room where there are hundreds of guns for sale just like yours, and we can use one of them instead.

Stop touching it. And especially stop touching it while it's pointed at my head.

Important Safety Tip!

Brownells just sent an email inviting me to Bullet Proof My Shotgun! which is an idea I heartily endorse.

However it's important for you to learn from my mistakes: Test-fire it after you've bullet-proofed it, because only a fortuitous pair of nail clippers kept me from having to prison file an 870 extractor on the concrete outside my motel room door...
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"Hello and/or Duh."

Hey, has anybody thought to ask the #NSA for #HillaryClinton's missing emails?
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 19, 2015

Holster Flap...

Not too long ago, I was at a gun show with a couple of friends. At the clearing barrel, one of them cleared his heater and went to reholster it, but the holster had collapsed somewhat. The gun wouldn't seat and so he tried again, causing the holster to collapse a little more.

With the rest of us standing there watching, he kept trying to force the muzzle of the gun into the holster in what had to be an intensely frustrating exercise. Being able to stow the gat without looking is a fundamental skill if you carry the holster behind the point of the hip, and with people standing there watching as your gear defeats your attempts at performing this task, it's easy to get flustered.

Thing is, this was no novice; far from it. He'd been shooting pistols since he was big enough to hold them and had many hundreds of hours of formal gun school. And this wasn't crappy gear, either; it was a horsehide Mitch Rosen rig that had just apparently decided to give up the ghost after probably well more than a decade of carry.

That leads me to this post (which also harshes on the holster type I love to hate most.) I've personally come around to carrying kydex holsters IWB. Some folks argue that "Kydex doesn't bend to conform to your body!" I don't really get that, because my holster is only about as wide as the gun that's in it, and the gun itself doesn't bend to conform to your body, either, no matter what you wrap it in.

Quality gear is important. Regularly checking that the quality gear is still in good shape is important. Do the important stuff.

Ricoh Suave

Ricoh GR1

Thanks to a reader, I'm getting to see what all the fuss was about with the GR1. Tiny, flyweight magnesium body, instant-on, fast wide-angle glass, manually-adjustable exposure; it's popular with street photography hipsters for a reason. Waiting on a test roll to come back from The Darkroom.

It's the only camera I've ever used that "prewinds". When you insert a new roll of film, the camera motors it all onto the takeup spool. Then as you take each shot, it goes back into the canister. So at the end of a roll of film, instead of a long bit of motor whirr as it rewinds, there's only a little "vwipp" as it reels in the leader. As a bonus, should the back get opened in mid-roll, the pictures you've taken are already safely inside the film canister.

(Local Walgreens and Amazon sell 24-exposure rolls of 200 and 400 ISO Fuji in 4-packs . I've been using the 200 just to see if a camera runs okay or not.)

QotD: Prepper Edition

"Like the doomsday prepper crowd, I still dream of a world where we’re not defined by where we work or what we buy, and where the Internet doesn’t suck up 110% of our time and attention with pointless trivialities. But if that world comes about, it’s going to happen because we all got fed up enough with the status quo to make major changes. No diabolus ex machina is going to smash Weber’s iron cage and magically transport us back to a simpler, less hectic time where we all sat on the porch in the evenings playing guitar and having real, face-to-face relationships with our neighbors."

Go RTWT.
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Legislative Alert...

This just over the transom:

"Senator Tomes' SB 433 (bringing Indiana's regulations on short-barreled shotguns into conformity with Federal rules) will be heard in the House Public Policy Committee (Tom Dermody is chairman) Wednesday, March 18, in room l56B starting at 9:00 AM."

It's pretty certain to pass without trouble, but it never hurts to show the flag. If you're in the area and want to comb your hair nice and go show some support for Second Amendment rights in Indiana, it'd be cool.

It's past time for the silly Hoosier ban on SBS's to make with the go-aways.
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A reminder:

Ambulance Driver will be presenting his awesome Shooter Self-Care class at the NRA Annual Meeting again this year. If you're going to be in Nashville, you should definitely think about attending.

If you've been to three or five shooting classes and have never been to a class on immediate treatment for a gunshot wound, I would submit that you're doing it wrong. If you're carrying around a "blowout kit" in your range bag and have never taken a class on how to use the contents, you're doing it wrong.

And don't mistake my meaning: I don't recommend this kind of training so you can patch yourself up after the big gun battle with ninjas you're likely never going to have; I recommend a shooter self-care class because if you carry a loaded gun every day or participate in action pistol sports, the most likely person to put a bullet hole in you is you. You want to know what to do if that happens.

Duality

Canon Photura, Kodak Gold 200

3/15/2015: "Oh, thank heavens it's finally warming up. This winter like to have killed me. I am so glad spring is here..."

8/15/2015: "Jebus, I'm melting. It's so humid my sweat won't even evaporate! I would murder people in their beds to be shoveling a snowy sidewalk right now."

It's beautiful out there right now; a perfect sunny seventy degrees. I'll give Indiana this: You get your money's worth out of each and every one of the four seasons.
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Overheard at the Fun Show...

From a guy looking at the CZ Scorpion:

"What caliber is this 9mm Evo 3? .22?"

From an older gentleman perusing the wares at another table:

"Do they have to do background checks on .22s?"

To be fair it was within his lifetime that .22s didn't need serial numbers and could be mail ordered. They were hardly considered guns in much of the country, and he probably got his first one about the time the training wheels came off his bicycle.

From a guy explaining to his wife the great bargain he got from a fellow attendee in the middle of the aisle:

"No, you don't have to do paperwork on long guns, only firearms."

Favorite nickname bestowed on a guy roaming the aisles: "Biker Gandalf".

Fun Show Time!

Let's sing the Fun Show Song!

Flintlocks and Flop-tops
And Number Three Russians
Black-powder Mausers
From jackbooted Prussians,
Shiny Smith PC's from limited runs
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Socketed bay'nets
On Zulu War rifles,
Engraved, iv'ried Lugers
That make quite an eyefull
Mosin tomato stakes sold by the ton
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Rusty top-breaks!
Smallbore Schuetzens!
And all of Browning's spawn
I just keep on browsing my favorite guns
Until all my money's gone.

I''ve got half a table at this one, because if you're going to pay to get in for a few days, you might as well pay to sit down. Come say hi!
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Overheard in the Office...

Me: "Well, Spam is real popular in the South Pacific..."

RX: "Oh, yes! Well, it tastes like people."

Just In Time!

For several years, my route from Indianapolis to Knoxville has been I-65 to Louisville, where I'd pick up I-64 and head east toward Lexington and jump on I-75 south to K-ville. Unfortunately, this is happening:

"If your vacation plans take you south this year, be prepared for some slow downs before you really get out of town.

Groundbreaking on a major construction project on I-65 was Tuesday. Work begins Sunday.

Southsiders just made it through one major construction project at Southport Road, which added lanes in the area.

Now a whole new project will do the same, going south.

It will impact not only those who drive I-65 everyday, but those of you planning road trips south this year."

Festive.

However, the main reason I headed out of Indy on I-65 South instead of I-74 East no longer applies as of the 23rd of this month!

"Non-Ohio residents with a valid concealed handgun license from another state, regardless of whether the other state has entered into a reciprocity agreement with Ohio, will have their license recognized in the state during the period that the person is temporarily in Ohio."

Hooray!

There was minimal difference in actual mileage between the two routes, but the southward one was often more inconvenient for me, going square through the heart of Indy and then right into the thick of the never-ending construction in the Louisville spaghetti bowl. I generally put up with those hassles rather than risking becoming the next Jeffrey Jordan while clipping through about ten or fifteen miles of southwestern Ohio.

Remember when Ohio didn't even have concealed carry? And then it did, but it was all messed up and riddled with local exemptions and you couldn't CCW in a car? And then they fixed that but only recognized a handful of out-of-state permits?

Everybody wants to throw a "Hail Mary" instead of grinding away with "off-tackle left on three", like Ohio did.

Three yards and a cloud of dust. It's the Buckeye way.

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Painfully twee...

Leica R4, Ilford FP4 Plus

An adorable little cottage on a snowy day down in Broad Ripple Village.
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Another blown chance to use wiener in a headline!

Via email comes this suicidally geeky and totally-don't-try-this-at-home-kids way to cook a hot dog.

(Here at Roseholme Cottage, we just use a handy little pop-up hot dog toaster that toasts two buns while cooking the hot dogs.)

Say what, now?

The FAA says no posting of drone footage on YouTube?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

That's a good one, Canute. Have fun with that.

Anyone want to start a betting pool on how long before we have a drone footage on YouTube of another drone hovering along with a Guy Fawkes mask over its camera?
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This is interesting...

Indiana's "Castle Doctrine Against The Cops" law just had its first legal test...

"And we hold that, on the facts of this case, Cupello exercised reasonable force under Indiana Code Section 35-41-3-2(i)(2) to prevent or terminate an unlawful entry by a public servant into his home. Thus, we reverse Cupello’s conviction."

.pdf of the decision here.
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Dammit.

Just... dammit.

Thanks for all of it, Terry.
The worst was good and the best was magic.
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Like the lights come on in a nightclub...

.@CARandDRIVER Jesus, you can see the uneven panel gaps from twenty feet away in a 420x200px photo. Man, we were just blinded by love then.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 12, 2015

Grumble

I could happily vote for a politician that demonstrates a sound grasp of the sacred principles of Myob and Kyfho. #notholdingmybreath
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) March 12, 2015

*grumble grumble*

I have just returned to my desk from answering a knock at the door*, and am trying to re-board my train of thought for something that I was writing.

I am tempted to print up a sign...

I don't want to talk about my soul.
I'm good on magazine subscriptions.
I won't send you to band camp.
Unless you are a delivery driver needing a signature for a package containing money or something cool that I ordered, please do not knock.

*It was the JWs.

Tab Clearing...

• The Very First DSLR: Funny, 1987 doesn't seem that long ago...


• He was such a nice boy, now he's cutting off heads and owning sex slaves.


• A front-row seat to totalitarianism.

Hoosier Donkey's Ass Found On Wiener's Leathers' Phone.

I'm sorry, that was the best I could come up with on short notice.

You'd think that with Scrabble tiles like "Wiener" and "Leathers" I could come up with the Mother of All Headlines, but no matter how I rearranged them, it was like I had an "S", a "C", an "H", an "A", a couple of "Ds" and a few "Es", an "N" and an "R", a "U"... but no "F". If you can make something better out of that, do share by email.

Yes, that's right, the Indiana General Assembly almost made it through a long session without any egregious scandals, like a rep getting a DUI on the way to the statehouse! Instead, with only a couple weeks to go before everybody went back to their day jobs selling insurance and lawyering and whatnot, Rep. Justin Moed (Dem-My Fair City) displayed a staggering lack of judgment and self-control by getting caught sending pics of his butt to the same college student that Anthony Wiener did.

To give it that Parks and Rec Hoosier twist:

The site reports that Moed's name was accidentally included on a pink leash and collar he bought for Leathers on Amazon.com, which is how she reportedly determined his identity.

Outstanding!

Rep. Moed's office released the following statement in a letter written to the local newspaper:

"I am truly sorry I have hurt the ones I love most with my poor judgment. I am committed to rebuilding trust with my family and my community. This is a private matter and I ask for it to be treated as such. I apologize to my constituents and to everyone I have let down."

No, Justin, I'm afraid your privates became a public matter when you sent pictures of them winging through the airwaves.

It's stuff like this that makes the Chamber of Commerce order Maalox by the 55-gallon drum.
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Overheard in the Office...

Discussing a current political scandal...

RX: "Democrat or Republican? Not that it really matters..."

Me: "Democrat. Which I guess is a return to the normal order of things. It used to be that Democrats would get caught in other people's pants and Republicans would get caught in other people's pockets, but there was this period in the Nineties and Aughties where the world was turned upside-down."

RX: "Now they all get caught with their pants in other people's pockets."

Quoted...

"There's a difference between just carrying a gun, and carrying a gun at people."

It seems to be getting around.

Good! :)
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Huck

Nikon N6006, Kodak Tri-X 400

"Or, even more depressing, go over to Rangefinder Forum or your favorite photo forum ... while there, you can post pictures of your cat taken at full aperture."

I'd just gotten the camera and thrown a roll of film in it to test it. You know, walk around the block and shoot a bunch of blah pictures of trees, sky, houses, and cars under various lighting conditions. On the way out the front door, I half-turned and one-handed this pic of Huck atop his perch in the living room.

The rest of the roll is what I expected: blah pictures of trees, sky, houses, and cars under various lighting conditions, and the camera works fine. Got a great picture of Huck as an unexpected bonus.
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Figures don't lie, but liars figure.

Yet another report of a Major Survey(!) reporting gun ownership in decline.

Yeah... "Hi! I'm an anonymous stranger on the phone who is Totally Not From The Government. Do you have an expensive, controversial, high-profile theft target in your house? No? How strange."

Also on the decline according to phone surveys: Pot-smoking and adultery.

The FBI keeps recording month after month of record numbers of background checks, and yet gun ownership is supposedly on the decline, presumably because those purple LCPs Ruger keeps cranking out by the tens of thousands are going to a handful of elderly male gun collector Tea Party survivalist nuts. Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.
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Fat Bike

IMPD Patrol Bike, Leica R4, Ilford FP4 Plus

Saw these neat fat-tired bikes being ridden by IMPD bike patrol officers in Broad Ripple the other day. Temps in the teens and plenty of snow on the ground, so hats off for being out pedaling. With its warrens of narrow side streets and alleys, as well as the convergence of the Monon and Canal Towpath trails, bicycle patrols make a lot of sense in Broad Ripple Village proper.
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Snow Daze...

Canon Photura, Kodak Gold 200

A snowy brunch with Bobbi and the Data Viking at Zest a couple weekends ago before heading to the gun show. I was burning up a test roll of Kodak Gold 200 in the Canon Photura I won on eBay for $5 from Goodwill. Camera seems to work. I don't know how much I'll use it, but... $5.
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Simple Minds

140-character tweets, speeches condensed to soundbites, 300-word tl;dr opinion columns... it's getting to where caricatures of the other guy's political views are condensed to where they'll fit inside a fortune cookie with plenty of room left over.

Democrat? #COMMIE!

Republican? #RACIST!

Seriously, the "conservative = racism" thing is just part of the orthodox liberal catechism now. If you say you're for voter ID laws, no matter what reasons you give, you might as well be telling your Democrat friend or co-worker that you have a Klan robe in the back of the closet at home. They can literally fathom no other reason why one would require some proof that the registered voter is, indeed, who they say they are other than RACIST!

It's a little creepy to experience first-hand. Especially when the Democrat looking at you accusingly is someone who you actually consider kinda uncomfortably racist themselves. I admit, I look a little askance when someone tells me "Oh, I met this new person yesterday..." and the first factoid they give me about them, after their name, is what color their skin is. Well, unless they were white; that never gets mentioned. It's always "Oh, I met this lady, Sheila, at the shelter yesterday, she's a black gal..." or "Susan, the little Asian receptionist at the vet..." but never "Annie, this white girl I know..." But I'm the racist for kinda being in favor of cutting down on voter fraud?

Tempting fate...

So after getting all excited about going to the range yesterday, I looked at the actual weather, which was going to be high forties instead of low fifties, and the fact that my roommate was home sick from work and might need tending-to, and decided that the range could wait until today. It was going to be warmer today, anyway.

Well, it's warmer, alright. Warmer and rainier. Oh well, there's always tomorrow. Dammit.
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Still right there waiting...

SoBro Cyclist, Leica R4, Kodak BW400CN

Someone mentioned that they missed black & white film, to which my only answer is that there's no need to miss it, because it's right here. Load some in the old camera, shoot some pics, and develop them yourself or send them off. The cool kids seem to be doing it these days.
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Overheard in Roomie's Bedroom...

So Bobbi is suffering through a kidney stone as stoically as she can, but you can tell she is just miserable. At one point in the morning she went staggering from the smallest room back to her bedroom and collapsed gingerly* into the bed. Little Rannie the cat followed on her heels, jumped up on the foot of the bed, and proceeded up towards Bobbi's head, chirping and warbling all the way.

RX: "Oh, it's so good that your cat is concerned about whether I'm okay or not. She's trying to comfort me."

Me: "Well, that or... Carnivores do follow the weak and sickly, so she could just be hoping you'll fall over."

This is, of course, just joking. Rannie, for all of her often-ill-tempered aloofness, becomes downright solicitous when one of her humans is in distress.

Meanwhile, semi-related and found at Sebastian's place...



*"Collapsing gingerly" was not something I'd seen before.
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Dry Fire

Responsible Tam should do some dry-fire work from the holster this evening because tomorrow is going to be the first time I've busted caps on the clock so far this year. (Last time I went to the range I forgot to charge my timer, see.)

Automotif LXIX...

Driving through the neighborhood on the way to get some drive-thru Steak 'n' Shake and what do I spy?

 Well, that rates pulling over and hopping out to go get a closer look...

Yup, that's a Lamborghini Gallardo, alright. I like the license plate frame, too. And before somebody pops off with some nonsense about a Sig Sauer license plate frame not being very "Gray Man", I've got someone who can articulate my response to that far better than I...
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See sharp.

A neat Tumblr with photos of the same subjects from the same spots done with a Leica M6 film camera loaded with Ektar 100 (that's a pretty sharp film relative to the 200 and 400 ISO that are the most commonly used for non-professional photography) and various vintages and qualities of digicams, from an older 6MP Kodak Easyshare point-'n'-shoot on up through a 40MP Pentax medium format 645D.

The turning of the seasons...

Let us hoist the wassail cup!

And we'll bicycle around the block at 7:00PM without needing a headlight!

Someone elsewhere grumped that if people wanted to take advantage of more daylight, we should just change our schedules, to which I retorted:

Oh, good idea! I'll just change my schedule. And I'll get my employer and all the places I shop and all my friends to change their schedule, too, since changing just mine would be kind of pointless. I think I'll call it "Daylight Savings Time".

Since this is all just arbitrarily agreed-upon convention, we can keep DST year-round for all I care. Having sunset at close-of-business is ridiculous.

Oh what a glorious day it will be...

See what that says? That says "Tamara will be at the range."

I can't even remember what fifty degrees and sunny is like. It'll feel like Cancun. It'll feel like Tahiti. It'll feel GLORIOUS.

Good-bye, Winter. You have way outstayed your welcome.
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Overheard in the Office...

I showed Roberta the article on the bulldozing of the ancient Assyrian capital by the neolithic goatherds:

RX: "It's the cradle and the grave of civilization."

There's high irony in people who couldn't build or repair a bulldozer on a dare using one to destroy the relics of one of the earliest complex civilizations in the middle of a place that is now devoid of the concept.

Vandals

The Vandals were one of several "tribes" during the Migration Period to muscle their way into the territory of the crumbling Western Roman Empire. They first came to the attentions of Roman historians when they were living in what is now southern Poland, and their name is thought to perhaps indicate origins in Sweden.

During their wanderings through the collapsing Roman state in the west, they paused in the Iberian peninsula long enough to give it its Arabic name, al Andalusia, before expanding into North Africa and founding a kingdom there. It was their looting of Rome in 455 that permanently verbed them into the term for wanton destruction.

However, looting is an understandable motive. People want stuff, and if you've got stuff they want and you can't stop them from taking it, then vae victis, baby. It's a hard ol' world.

This? This is just senseless. This is protosimian poo-flinging and nest-fouling. It's barely a full notch above crapping in the village well. We need to change the term for "breaking stuff just for the sake of breaking stuff" from "vandalism" to "wahabbism". It would be more accurate.
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Obama Derangement Syndrome

Remember how, when Bush was president, the loony Left blamed everything on him?

Well, this morning my Facebook feed is blowing up with people more or less finding the most convoluted excuses they can think of to blame the slashing attack on our ambassador to Korea on Obama.

To use a more recent example than Cindy Sheehan, you know how dumb the whole "Hands Up, Don't Shoot!" thing sounds? Well, that's exactly how dumb it sounds right now trying to make some bizarre Benghazi-esque connection out of the razor-wielding kook in Korea.

This is the flipside of where our un-American love of the Führerprinzip has gotten us. Not only do we think Our Guy can do no wrong, but when Their Guy is in the big chair, we blame everything bad on him. The elected executive of our republic has metamorphosed into some Frazer-esque sacral king, on whose luck rides the success or failure of the harvest and the path and frequency of Gulf coast hurricanes.

I think...

...this would be a great idea.

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Automotif LXVIII...

Walking back to my car after lunch on Monday, I rounded a corner to see this peering at me over a snowbank.

It's a Chevrolet Greenbrier, aka "CorVan"; a van built on the floorpan and rear-engined powertrain of the Chevy Corvair.

I wonder it it had the optional gasoline-fueled heater? Being air-cooled, they weren't very cozy without one.

Being an early '60s van, it's basically a big sheet metal box of air, weighing in at barely over 3,000 pounds with an empty tank. Car Life tested one with the base 145-c.i. flat-6 and recorded an extremely leisurely 0-60 time of 32.2 seconds, which isn't surprising given that the 2x1bbl motor was only pumping 80 horsepower (and those are the big imaginary gross horsepower, not the tiny realistic net ones we use now) through its two-speed Corvair Powerglide slushbox.

I can quit anytime I want to, really.

So, with the repair bill for the Subie being far less than I had budgeted, I rejoiced at the windfall and wisely put it in savings...

Well, except for $30 of it. That $30 I sent to KEH Camera and they sent me this:

Rollei Prego 130WA

It's a Samsung-era Fuji-built Rollei and, unlike the early Pregos, it's actually a tiny little camera, as can be inferred from the soda can and film canisters. I dunno what these things retailed for back in the day, but it must have been spendy, given the alloy shell and the prominent "Germany" wording sprinkled here and there (German laws are pretty lax on that; it's why there are tons of "Made In Germany" Manurhin PPKs out there on which the only thing made in Germany is the rollmark.)

Ideally I want a film setup that mirrors my digital one: A pocketable camera to go with the SLR around my neck. I'm almost certain that the Contax will be the pocket rocket, but the little Rollei was priced so right that I decided to give it a shot, too.
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Ugh.

Up too late last night. It was "bowling night" (raid night for our World of Warcrack guild) which goes 'til eleven, and I swore a mighty oath I'd go to bed as soon as raid was done. Instead, I stayed up another few hours reading and surfing the internet tubes and I'm paying for it this morning.

Oh, well, at least it'll be an early night tonight. Monthly club meeting at MCF&G and then home and to bed.

In the interim, I have to get these rolls of film in the mail to The Darkroom. Our local Walgreens will send your 35mm film off and process it but (get this) they don't return your negatives, only a CD of scans. That rather misses the point of using film in the first place, don't you think?
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Just in time...

"Hmmm... Jeeves, I think we'll be taking the Forester today. Do knock the snow off it, will you?"

Obviously I got the Subie up and running in the nick of time...
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Sorry...

Weird schedule weekend here at Roseholme Cottage. Bed at 0300ish, up at 0600 to feed the cats, and then back to a fitful doze through the local morning news and Today show, and awake-type awake at 10:45 or so. At least I assume I'm awake. I've put clothes on and wandered around the house some.

Gotta go get the Subie dug out.
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"A dime makes a pretty fair screwdriver..."

...except when the slot is too narrow for it to fit, or so wide it slips and buggers the edges.

Most of the older cameras I've been messing with have a little circular battery cover on the bottom, to accommodate a range of batteries from the '60s era mercury cells (or their modern zinc-air substitutes) on the old Leicaflex SL to the familiar lithium CR123 that drops into the mid-'90s Contax TVS. These typically have the dished slot to allow the use of a coin as a screwdriver, but there doesn't seem to be any standardized thickness of coin preferred amongst the different makers.

Fortunately, Bobbi gave me a handy little gizmo to settle that problem: A coin screwdriver with a varying-thickness rim. It's handy. I should get more.

...and more snow.

Two days ago, the TeeWee weatherfolk were calling for 1"-3" of snow, transitioning to rain in the afternoon, with a high of 37°F. Yesterday morning, they'd revised that to 2"-4" of snow with maybe a little freezing rain atop it in the afternoon, and a high of 35°F. By yesterday afternoon they'd stopped all mention of non-snow precipitation, and this morning they're saying we might see 32°F later in the afternoon.

 We had about 6" by 11:00AM, when it started seriously tapering off. (Although they say we could get another inch or so later in the afternoon.)

The neighbor two doors to the left had his snowthrower out and cleared the sidewalk in front of our house...

...so when I shoveled the walks in the front and back of the house, I went and shoveled the neighbor's to the right. Paying it forward, as it were.
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Brilliant!

Emergency DHS budget solution right here.


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