Sight Insights

Commenting on Facebook the other day, I mentioned the totally impractical fixation I had on the idea of the Glock 35 with a .357SIG conversion barrel. My head knows that my chrono testing showed that most carry loads only picked up about a fifty foot-per-second velocity boost over the compact Glock 32. My head also know that there's very little that .357SIG offers over good Gold Dot or HST 9mm ammo other than reduced magazine capacity. The heart, however, wants what it wants.

Chuck Haggard is one of the most clueful folks I know, and so when he remarked that a friend of his had reported finding serious point-of-aim/point-of-impact differences with the factory sights when he'd dropped a .357SIG barrel into a G35, I figured I'd better check for myself on my gun.

I bought a box of Sig Sauer Elite Performance 125gr FMJ and fired off a few rounds at 5, 7, 10, and 15 yards, holding the center of the dot on the Ameriglo I-Dot Pro so it covered the bullseye at each distance. POA/POI seems fine with these sights, at least out to fifteen. I'll make a followup trip and use the other bay to bench it at 20 and 25. (IAC's pistol range is 50 feet and the rifle range is 75 feet.)

With the NAA Mini, it was time to try something spicier than the CCI Standard Velocity fodder. CCI Mini-Mag 34gr hollow points and Winchester Super-X Hyper-Velocity 40gr hollow points were ordered from Lucky Gunner.

My initial attempts were foiled by the fact that the schmutz on the laser lens was diffusing the beam enough that it was impossible to see on the target only nine feet away. I fired two cylinders each of the CCI and the Winchester trying to use the iron sights. Not only do the sights seem to be off, but they're hard to pick up since the rear sight is notional at best and the size and shape of the gun makes consistency in grip and trigger press very problematical.

I went and borrowed some paper towels and twisted one into a fine point, squirted it with Windex, and used it to clean the emitter lens more thoroughly.

Having cleaned the lens, I fired one more group each of the CCI and the Winchester, now using the laser to aim. These were fired one-handed, bringing the gun up to roughly eye-level, cocking it on the way, and firing as soon as I saw the dot in the desired spot. The top and bottom five shot groups with the laser are circled.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that the Laserlyte grip makes a big difference in shootability.

More shooting to follow.
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Day Thirty-Two:

Woke up with the alarm at 0600. Back sore, but not as sore as sometimes. Washed a couple aspirin down with a Spicy Hot V8 and dragged the trash can and nine bags of leaves to the curb, then set off for my three laps.

Saw a new pedestrian, about a head shorter than me, blonde, alternating jogging and walking southbound with what looked to be an Australian shepherd mix.

Since I've only encountered her the once, she gets tentatively filed with the Pack of Speedwalking Ladies as "irregular", as opposed to regulars like Quiet Guy with Big Silent Snuffling Floofy Black Dog Off-Leash, Very Nice Obviously Gay Guy with Brace of Silky Terriers, or Dude With Glasses Getting Towed by Two Big Lunging Barky-Dogs.

Yesterday at the range...

I took the Robar G17 to Indy Arms Company yesterday, along with the Glock 37, which I hadn't fired in a while.

The G17 has crossed the 3,000 round mark here, recently (3,091 to be specific), much of which has been with the Overwatch Precision TAC trigger and the last 500 rounds were using the ETS magazines. I'm about at the point where I'm comfortable with both the trigger and the mags now.

Both guns have Ameriglo CAP sights on them. I need to drift the 17's rear sight slightly to the right; it's visibly off-center.

The Glock 37 and I get along amazingly well. The logbook says that yesterday marks 2230 rounds through the gun. I love shooting the thing and it obviously likes me, too. If I had a holster for it, I'd likely put a Gadget on it and carry the thing, RCS Freya magwell and all.
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Day Thirty-One:

Woke up ten minutes before the alarm. Instead of getting up like I should have, I lay awake in bed long enough to turn all the alarms off, and then promptly fell asleep for another forty-five minutes.

After this spectacular display of malingering, I got dressed and headed out the door, intending to take a casual amble around the block because I was sore. 37°F and a steady 20mph wind out of Minnesota had other plans.

1.01 miles in 17:06 at an average heart rate of 128bpm.

Hey, look!

I got a piece up over at NRA Family. Go check it out!

From Facebook discussion on the topic:

"If someone is walking directly towards me, it's important for me to realize that "Hey, can I get you to hold it right there?" at a reasonable distance is not being "rude" or "not nice", and that if they do not comply with this request to set a boundary, that fact is in itself telling me something about them."

.

Bummer.

Got an email from someone with the skinny on the NYPD Glock situation.

No, they are not doing anything so baller as issuing a special run of factory Glock "19L" guns (jargon for a 17 with the grip chopped to take 19 mags) but rather they're getting Glock to make a batch of Glock 17 mags blocked to only hold 15 rounds.

Oh, well, when something seems too cool to be true, it probably is.
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More testing...

To Indy Arms Co. again yesterday morning with the Laserlyte-equipped NAA Mini and the ETS Glock magazines.

The ETS magazines continue to function without any problems.

Twenty rounds of CCI Standard Velocity .22LR were fired strong-hand-only through the NAA Mini by bringing the gun up one-handed to roughly eye-level, thumb-cocking on the way up, and firing as soon as the dot was visible in the upper A-zone.

The dot got harder to pick up on the last couple cylinders, and that last shot, a miss high and left and labeled "WTF", was just point-shooting blindly when I couldn't find the dot fast enough. Maybe a better shooter than me could point-shoot this gun better at nine feet.

The problem seems to stem from schmutz on the laser's lens. Firing unplated, outside-lubricated .22LR ammo through a revolver tends to deposit a fine coating of lead, lube, and powder residue all over everything near the barrel-cylinder gap. The thing with the NAA Mini is that the whole gun is near the barrel-cylinder gap, including the emitter on the Laserlyte Grip Laser.

Of course, this residue is from fifty whole rounds; an amount of ammo that might apply on the range, but not in any conceivable use of the gun. I'm going to wipe it down, clean the lens, and order some plated bullet ammo from Lucky Gunner. Then we'll do some chrono testing and maybe shoot some jello!
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Tab Clearing...

• I keep telling you, Trump is not the death of democracy, he's its apotheosis. For all the other celebrities out there who are planning a social media run for the brass ring in four years, I'll throw this slogan out there for free: "_____ has a 2020 Vision for America!" President Kanye or Baldwin will be entertaining, I'm sure.


• Some web research recently led me to this piece on The Onion Field Incident. (I knew two police officers who called the NAA Mini revolvers they kept secreted on their persons "Onion Field guns". How realistic that is, I can't say, but I reckon it beats harsh language.)


• "Sweet Home Alabama" doesn't play well in Brooklyn.

The end of the beginning...

One month down, the rest to go... pic.twitter.com/hhFF3qlbxc

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) November 30, 2016

Need someone familiar with NYPD to email me...

"But the NYPD had the manufacturer customize the Glock 17s to carry only 15 rounds so it would be consistent with the interchangeable Glock 19 magazine."

Dude, a department-issue G19L would be the heat. People pay big money for Robar or Boresight Solutions to chop their 17s to take 19 mags.
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"Senseless" Gun Violence?

I thought that the act of #gunviolence that happened on the #OSU campus yesterday was very sensible. Stopped that knife & car violence cold. https://t.co/CIQXqhsXz8

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) November 29, 2016

Testing, Part 1...

So, I got an email recently from Laserlyte telling me that they were big fans of my blog and would I like to receive...absolutely free!...an NAA Mini Revolver and their grip-activated laser to test?

A digression: These are grips with a laser, not Lasergrips™ because Crimson Trace makes Lasergrips™ and, up until early 2014, Crimson Trace had the patent on grip-activated lasers. But, just like Colt and others were champing at the bit waiting for S&W's patent on the bored-through revolver cylinder to expire in 1869, other companies had designs ready and waiting to hit the marketplace on the CTC patent's expiration.

Well, they said they're big fans of my blog, so I suppose they read it. Okay, here goes...

The box arrived. Understand that I had the choice of black, white pearl, teal, or pink. I went with teal so as to get into the spirit of this, but I wasn't willing to go all the way to pink. I'll do a lot for you readers, but I have my limits.

Yes, that's Indy Arms Co product placement you see. Thanks for handling the transfer, guys! Clean, well-lit range for indoor shooting on the near north side!

The NAA Mini shipped with the usual little rosewood grips.

Which were promptly replaced with the LaserLyte V-Mini Grip Laser. The small screwdriver bit on my Leatherman Juice CS4 worked fine for the installation. (I like the Juice line because they're about the size of a middlin' Swiss Army knife and can be pocket carried, rather than in some pouch on the bat belt, which I hate.)

The basic NAA Mini in .22LR is a tiny gun, shown here with a Glock 17 for scale.

I bought these targets from Law Enforcement Targets.

The shot marked #1 over the ear was me just throwing the gun up and blindly point-shooting at three yards in a two-hand grip. The next two shots, I put the un-adjusted laser dot between the eyes and the bullets barely nicked the left edge of the paper.

The shots low to the left, marked #2 and #3, were actually shots #4 and #5, and were made in careful two-handed slow-fire using the iron sights.

I then cranked on the laser adjustment screws with the supplied Allen wrenches until the red dot was right there where #2 and #3 landed while the iron sights were held right between the eyes.

The remaining 25 rounds were made in two- and three-round strings, just bringing the gun up to roughly eye-level and pulling the trigger when the laser dot was in the eye-box of the target.

Much, much more to follow in parts 2, 3, & et cetera.
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#SeemsLegit

To find out your stripper name, just use the name of your first pet, your mother's maiden name, and your social security number. #SeemsLegit

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) November 29, 2016

Sudden Jihad Syndrome strikes again?

Dammit, I went for the long shot big payoff and put my $1 on "Amish" at 1000000:1.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) November 28, 2016

Cyber Monday sale...

Sig Sauer has a shiny new web store that is a joy to navigate (the less said about the previous site, the better) and they're having a "Cyber Monday" sale with 20% off any one regularly priced item. On a bigger ticket item like a caliber conversion kit or an optic, 20% is no joke.

This isn't any kind of affiliate link, either, just a heads up.

Ugh.

Bobbi had to work the weird shift this weekend and I broke my promise to myself and let it discombobulate my schedule.

On the upside, that means I got to eat a bowl of lovely breakfast-for-supper, a scramble of sausage, potato, eggs. On the downside, that was somewhere after midnight and I didn't lay down to sleep until 1:30, and cat-feeding time comes at 6AM.

Woke up, fed the cats, and went back to dozing fitfully for another couple hours, and now it's time to get an umbrella and walk three times around the block.

More when I get back.
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I LOL'ed and LOL'ed...

Stalin is never given enough credit for significantly reducing the carbon footprint of the Ukraine. #trudeaueulogy

— Kevin Creighton (@ExurbanKevin) November 27, 2016

Sunday.

Woke up, walked my three laps around the block, and continued on for breakfast at Good Morning Mama's.

Came home and napped before heading out to bag leaves. Taking an aspirin break for my back and then heading out to bag and rake some more, so as not to be a malingerer.

Not much else to write about today.

Oh, Fidel Castro is still dead.
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Today's gonna be a good day...

You know you got up on the right side of the bed when literally the first thing you hear on awaking is that Fidel Castro is smoking a camel turd in hell.

What a wonderful early Christmas present #FidelCastro got me! Thanks, Fidel! I didn't get you nothin'.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) November 26, 2016

...although it's always a little disappointing when a tyrant dies of old age instead of being stood against a wall by his victims. #castro

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) November 26, 2016

From the Bookface:

Day Twenty-Six:
Forgot to set alarm. Woke up to Bobbi's alarm and her bustling about long enough to absorb that 2016 had finally killed the right person, slept another hour.
Woke up again. Ate breakfast. Complained. Got dressed. Headed out for three laps. Very consciously taking it easy on the pace. Ankles very stiff and sore for first lap, but got a little better.
1.00 miles in 18:53 at an average heart rate of 130bpm.
Having to report to all y'all keeps me from punking out on mornings like today.

 Maybe go to the range this morning, then catch a movie and some food with Shootin' Buddy. I think it is going to be a fine day.

It sure started out good.

Black Friday II...

Amazon is offering their 7" Kindle Fire tablets for $33.33.

That's a color gizmo that can show pretty much ALL THE MOVIES EVER and is about the same size as my VHS cassette of Pink Floyd's The Wall, which cost me, I think, $24.99 back when that was most of a day's pay, and it only showed one movie and you had to stick it in another machine that was connected to a TV just to see the movie.

The future is pretty hella cool, and a lot cheaper than I thought it would be.
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Black Friday...

In addition to some deals on magazines and such, Lucky Gunner is offering a .30 cal ammo can for 99¢ with any purchase of $50 or more. Just enter the code "BLACK-FRIDAY" at checkout.

(This isn't any kind of affiliate link, but they're nice people and you can never have enough ammo cans, you can only have too little space.)

Crown Point Gun Show, Part II: The not-guns part

The old Lake County courthouse in Crown Point is a glorious Victorian-era pile occupying the whole of the town square. Naturally, the seat of county government has been relocated to a hideous concrete-and-glass complex hard up against the jail, outside of town.

The old Lake County Sheriff's House & jail, famous for a gangster who stayed briefly within its walls before letting himself out and taking off with the sheriff's car.

Right next door to the old jail is Crown Brewing. That's their Basilisk chocolate milk stout.

After stopping in at Crown Brewing, we headed slightly north and west to Griffith to check out Blythe's, a large and bustling gun store. A couple doors down from Blythe's was a shop called simply "Charcuterie". If Griffith could put a pass-through between the two stores, they'd have a hit on their hands.

After browsing guns and smoked meats, it was time to head just around the block to New Oberpfalz Brewery for a late lunch. I had a pint of Hopwagen American IPA, on the right, while Shootin' Buddy ordered their Krieghammer APA.

 I was in the mood for some charcuterie.

And then it was time to head back south, through the fields of spearmint and corn stubble and spinning kilowatts.

Giant machines to suck the lightning from the sky and send it through copper pipes into faraway houses where it's turned into glowing dreams on Chinese glass.

Did It.

The last .13 miles was at a 16:52 pace. I couldn't have done that last month. ECQC keeps paying unexpected dividends.
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About time.

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade just opened with Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem playing "Twist and Shout" on a float when a crowd of people dressed as marching band members and majorettes ran out and began dancing wildly.

Me: "Oh my God, it's a mashup of the Muppets and Ferris Bueller's Day Off! It's like all the good stuff from my childhood! This is like Generation X fan service! We must've reached the fat part of our earning curves; pop culture nostalgia is catering to us now!"

RX: "Enjoy it while it lasts, missy."

5k on Turkey Day

I'mma have a cup of coffee, maybe a yogurt, and then it's off for a solid hour's walk.
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Range Day.

 Went out to Atlanta Conservation Club with Mike Grasso yesterday for some basic shooting chores.

The Wilson had fired 1,250 malfunction-free rounds, but the vast majority had been FMJ, so I wanted to put more miles on it with hollow points. It ran fine with the Federal 9BPLE 115gr +P+ JHP. There was one instance where my gloved thumb fouled the slide enough to keep it from going fully into battery, but that's on me, not the gun.

Another fifty rounds through the now-upgraded Sig P320C. This makes 376 malfunction-free rounds, 76 of which are aluminum-cased CCI Blazer and 100 steel-cased Wolf Polyformance.

Fifty more rounds through the ETS magazines, which continued to feed and function just fine.
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Day Twenty-Three...

Cold and raining this morning.

My phone says it will give me a special little virtual medallion if I walk 5k tomorrow. I think I will.
I think a future version of the program should use Double Dog Dares and Bet You Can'ts as incentives.
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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #152...

Gen 2 Glock 17, modified by Robar Custom Guns. Also added: Orange Ameriglo CAP sights and an Overwatch Precision TAC trigger.
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Gun Show & Aftermath, Part 1...

So, Saturday I drove up to Lafayette to meet up with Shootin' Buddy, and from there we continued north to the Crown Point gun show. The trip and the show is worth a post of its own, but this is about the things I bought, or rather it's mostly about one of them.

As part of my continuing efforts to gradually rebuild my depleted 5.56 ammo inventory, I picked up a hundred rounds of Winchester Q3269. I found a correct magazine for my little Steyr .25 pistol; that's the mag with the weird tail on the floorplate.

For the future amusement of the internet, I acquired a box of Liberty Ammo Civil Defense 50gr .357 Magnum ammo, which is allegedly travelling some 2100fps at the muzzle. Also grabbed a box of G2 Research 10mm ammunition which should, by combining the awesome power of the 10mm Auto cartridge with hypetastic RIP bullet technology, blow a jello block covered in four layers of denim clean into an alternate dimension.

Lastly, I purchased an ETS 31-round Glock 9mm mag, which joins the 20-rounder I already had.

Saturday I brought the Robar Glock 17 to the range along with both ETS mags. I discovered that the slick plastic of the magazines did not play well with the Wolf Polyformance ammo, with the rounds binding severely in the magazine by the time I'd stuffed ten in there.

I disassembled the mag and extracted the Wolf, bought a box of brass cased Federal RTP and loaded the magazine with no further problems.

A few rounds gone, with no malfunctions. The 20-rounder, which has already been on a couple range trips, worked normally.

Neither the 20-rounder or 30-rounder had any malfunctions in the 17. The Wolf Ammo worked in the Sig P320 with no issues.

Monday morning, I was back at the range with the two ETS mags loaded up with 50 rounds of Federal American Eagle 115gr FMJ.

Again all fifty rounds functioned fine through the guns. I'll be continuing to keep these magazines in play.

Pocket Pistol Range Day

Friday the LCP II fired ten rounds of Sig Sauer V-Crown 90gr JHP with no malfunctions to report. To find out how the other guns in the picture did, go here.

For the LCP II, this makes 746 rounds fired since the gun was last cleaned or lubricated with eight failures to return to battery (#128, #158, #245, #600, #628, #630, #697, #704) and one failure to feed (#540). 1,254 rounds to go.
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Overheard at the Shootin' Range:

Dude: "I need another target. Do you have one of, like, Osama bin Laden or Hillary?"

Clerk: "Sure." *hands dude a 'Zombie Osama' target*

Dude: "Thanks! My dad's a Vietnam vet. He'll love this!"

*Dude goes back onto range*

Me: *to range door* "Now I know why the Viet Cong won! I saw your dad's shooting out there!"

Day Twenty

The alarm went off at six. I remembered it was Sunday and reset it for seven. Woke up at seven, got dressed, and headed out into wind chills in the teens.

No backpack. Wool hiking socks. I think today will be the day the cotton socks and wool socks change places in the sock drawer.

Did two laps around two blocks instead of three laps around one. Comes out to about a tenth of a mile more.

1.11 miles in 20:44 at an average heart rate of 123bpm. It was 26°F with a steady 10mph breeze out of the northwest. That wind had teeth.

And the parting on the left are now parting on the right...

On the upside, Speaking Truth to Power appears to be hip & trendy again after 8 years of being boorish and obstructionist

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) November 20, 2016

The cyclical nature of American politics has given me an idea: If we could combine the energy policies of a Democratic administration with the foreign policy of a Republican one, we could develop an infinitely renewable source of energy in burning Dixie Chicks CDs.
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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #151...

Harrington & Richardson Self-Loading .25, circa 1920
Steyr Pieper 1908 .25, circa 1922
Colt Model 1908 .25, circa 1909
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Speed readings.

Brought both Rugers to Marion County Fish & Game yesterday to do some chrono testing. Halfway there, I realized I'd forgotten both my camera and my phone. I drove on anyway, only to arrive to the reminder that the range is closed for mowing on Thursday mornings, so I turned around and drove home to get the picture-taking equipment.

The chrono work with the Ruger American yielded some surprises. The 115gr American Eagle FMJ ammo was as slow as I'd feared:

LO: 1101
HI: 1165
AV: 1134
ES: 64.00
SD: 19.84

You start getting 115gr bullets down below 1100fps, and that seems to be the threshold at which clean ejection is a problem in a lot of pistols. This stuff probably would have been a horror show in the Canik or the Steyr, or the Ruger 9E, for that matter, at least when new.

So the PPU, with its much more dramatic muzzle blast, was much hotter, right? I would have sworn on a stack of bibles it would be...

LO: 1065
HI: 1147
AV: 1119
ES: 82.12
SD: 23.57

Color me surprised. I guess it's just slower-burning powder causing all the sturm und drang out at the end of the barrel? All twenty rounds fired functioned fine through the firearm.

For the LCP II, I brought along some 90gr Sig Sauer V-Crown JHP ammo and a box of Sellier & Bellot 92gr FMJ. The V-Crown's velocity numbers were about average for the defense ammo I've tested in this gun, being a little faster than the Gold Dots and a little slower than the Critical Defense:

LO: 806.9
HI: 896.8
AV: 849.3
ES: 89.92
SD: 33.88

Those velocities were a little more scattered than I normally expect from Sig Sauer ammo, too. I'll likely try another box from a different lot, just to see what kind of difference that makes.

The Sellier & Bellot FMJ posted the stoutest numbers I've yet seen from a .380, other than some 90gr GDHP out of the Sig P250. (And the P250 Compact's got another .75" of barrel length over the Elsie Pea Too.)

LO: 927.0
HI: 996.5
AV: 964.7
ES: 69.53
SD: 19.10

I need to get off my butt and shoot some jello. It seems like if one is of the "Carry FMJ for maximum penetration" school when it comes to mousegun calibers, then more velocity would be better velocity.

Recoil was, as they say, brisk but manageable.

I fired off the remainder of the box of S&B, for a total of sixty rounds through the LCP II that day. The pistol experienced two more failures to return to battery. (#697, #704)

It occurs to me that maybe I want to contact Ruger about the recommended recoil spring replacement intervals on these things. I mean, if this were an Officer's Model 1911, it'd be about done with its second recoil spring.

For the LCP II, this makes 736 rounds fired since the gun was last cleaned or lubricated with eight failures to return to battery (#128, #158, #245, #600, #628, #630, #697, #704) and one failure to feed (#540). 1,264 rounds to go.
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Still walking...

Day Eighteen:

Awful sleep last night. Slept from 10:05-1:30 and then again from 3:15-5:30. Despite alarm set to go off at six, I got out of bed at 0550 when I heard Bobbi rummaging around with the leaf bags in the back yard, the carrying to the curb of which I'd intended using for this morning's workout.
I hopped up, carried two bags from the front porch to the curb, got dressed, carried the remaining bags from the front porch to the curb and, not seeing Bobbi emerge from the back yard, started my laps.

Rounding the block on my first lap, I saw the bobbing light of Bobbi's headlamp arranging leaf bags on the curb. "Hey!" I called, still a couple houses down the darkened street.

Her headlamp turned toward me. "Hey! Yeah, you with the headlamp!"

The headlamp immediately scurried around the corner of the house toward the back yard. As I drew even with the house, I could see she'd locked the gate. I shrugged and finished my laps.

She'd done the sensible thing when hailed from out of the darkness by an unknown figure at 0615 on a city street.

Distance was 1.06mi in 20:24 at an average of 124bpm.

I was wearing the barefoot shoes this morning, which seriously shortens my stride. Also, I forgot my phone at home, so it measured my walk via pedometer rather than GPS.

Overheard on the Street...

Bobbi and I are walking to 20 Tap for supper tonight, enjoying an unseasonably balmy mid-November evening...

Me: (singing) "Yo ho, yo ho! A pirate's life for me!"

RX: "You're not a pirate."

Me: "Are you denying me my self-identification as a pirate?"

RX: "Yes, I am. Pirates are bad."

Me: "They warned me this sort of thing would happen in Trump's America!"

More chooting...

I intended to go to MCF&G and do some chrono work yesterday, at least I did until I saw the weatherman saying that today was going to be a good ten degrees warmer. So I decided to go shoot indoors at Indy Arms Co. instead.

In the last-minute rearrangement of my departure plans, I left my .380 ammo at home. Further, the Wolf Polyformance stuff I'd brought to shoot through the Ruger turned out to be a no-go. The coating on the steel-cased ammo didn't play well with the nickel-teflon coated mags of the American Compact, causing the rounds to stick and bind in the mag tube.

I wound up buying a couple boxes of the house ammo, Federal RTP, and soldiering on.

 The guy to my left was obviously trying to make me feel good about my shooting that day.

The American had no malfunctions of any kind. (It's at 400 rounds now, if anyone's counting.)

The Elsie Pea Too failed to go fully into battery on the second and fourth rounds and then ran fine. Incidentally, the guns had been left locked in the trunk of my car in an unheated garage overnight and were quite cold to the touch at the start of the range session. As the gunk accumulates and the lube evaporates on the LCP II, it's going to be more sensitive to stuff like that. I'm thinking that this gun is probably going to get 1,000 rounds instead of 2,000. Probably. We'll see.

For the LCP II, this makes 676 rounds fired since the gun was last cleaned or lubricated with six failures to return to battery (#128, #158, #245, #600, #628, #630) and one failure to feed (#540). 1,324 rounds to go.
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"He say you brade runner."

So I'm walking over to the intersection of 54th & College last night, to meet Jon from PHLster for dinner at Fat Dan's.

As I get to College Avenue, a jogger rounds the corner onto the side street I'm just leaving.

His chest is glowing.

I mean, there's a multicolored glow in the center of his chest, illuminating his t-shirt from the inside.

It took me a second to process that it was his smartphone, held on some kind of strap under his clothing.

For just half a heartbeat, there, Indianapolis 2016 was Los Angeles 2019.

Graphic novel guns.

Rugers at the range again today.
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You're not going to believe this...

Dear 1987 Me: The Camaro, Mustang, and Corvette are all on the 2017 @CARandDRIVER 10 Best list. All have a version making 500+ net BHP. https://t.co/UuTdU9fvJY

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) November 16, 2016

...Oh, and we elected Donald Trump president.
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Rounds downrange.

Both the American Compact and the LCP II went to the range with me yesterday. I had fifty rounds of Lucky Gunner's Armscor .380 for the LCP II and fifty rounds of American Eagle 115gr FMJ for the American.

The American Eagle ejected extremely weakly, and caused this failure-to-eject on the fourteenth round of the day (#314 through the gun), a classic "limp wrist" caused by there being barely enough energy to function the gun. I concentrated on really clamping down my grip for the remainder of the box and experienced no more malfs, but the attention I was paying to holding the gun as immobile as possible probably contributed to the vertical stringing of my shots on the target below.

I'll chrono some of that AE today to see how weaksauce it actually is.

The LCP II experienced a single failure to return to battery on the twenty-fourth round of the day (#600 of the test). There were no other malfunctions to report.

For the LCP II, this makes 626 rounds fired since the gun was last cleaned or lubricated with four failures to return to battery (#128, #158, #245, #600) and one failure to feed (#540). 1,374 rounds to go.
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Progress...

This morning's walk was different, in that I added a backpack with a ten-pound weight for my three-lap stroll. Also, the neighbors one street over are having work done on their property that left a backhoe parked across the sidewalk overnight, so that disrupted my pace a little.

Adding the backpack obviously upped the effort a little.

Still, the above is the screen cap from my first walk, sixteen days ago. I've obviously gotten to where I can walk more quickly. I need to work out the range-of-motion issues in my legs so that I can maybe think about making it a jog a couple days a week.
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Future.

It's weird how sometimes the future reminds you it's here.

I was just gathering some images off my phone to use in a blog post by emailing them to myself. (Easier than cabling up to my Wintel laptop. If I had dough, I'd just get a Mac laptop or an iMac and not have to worry about this.)

Anyhow, the phone asks what size I want the images to be, and I casually send them in full resolution. This sends five pictures, totaling 7.1MB in size, whizzing through the ether to be boomeranged back down the DSL line to the router and back to my waiting laptop.

The entire hard disc drive storage capacity of the full-height Seagate on my first PC-XT was 10MB.

If I had comments on, the third commenter would point out that their first computer didn't even have a hard drive. I would respond frustratedly, pointing out that I'd said "my first PC-XT" and not "my first computer". The fifth commenter would proclaim that they had first programmed DEC mainframes using punch cards made from dinosaur toenails or something. Slide rules would make their appearance by comment ten.