Sunny Day...

Bobbi and I walked over to Good Morning Mama's for brunch today.

The weather was positively gorgeous. High seventies and low humidity. Just enough clouds in the sky to look all fluffy and photogenic.

We sat on the patio, shaded by both the pergola and the umbrellas at each table. It was pretty idyllic. The breeze stayed tolerable until it was about leaving time, by which time I'd picked up a gnat that had decided that slaloming through my eyelashes was great sport. We'd finished up by then anyway.

I had the stuffed burrito Sonoma, which is just eggs, chorizo, peppers, onions, and cheese, wrapped in a flour tortilla. Bobbi had fried eggs over house-made corned beef hash.
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Although I can't think of a practical reason...

...the idea of a Glock 42 in 9x18mm Makarov just tickles my fancy.

If only they made a .32ACP conversion barrel. I'd be on that like a duck on a junebug. I'd buy a Glock 42 just because such a barrel existed.
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Clone Correct...

Looks like Sig is bringing the .mil version of the P320 to the commercial market as the P320-M17.

That's kinda cool...

Magpul has gotten into the sunglasses biz.

They seem to offer blue mirrored lenses, which I'm partial to, and my Wiley X AirRage sunglasses are about wore out. (Sunglasses that rely on tension in the temples plus friction from rubber pieces on the temples to hold on to your noggin eventually get un-tense and non-friction, it turns out. Based on my experiment, this takes about five years.)

I use ballistic-rated sunglasses because I don't want special shades based on whether I'm planning on going to the range that day or not. This way I always have eye pro with me.
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What They Think Of You...

Indiana is bracing for a hotly contested senate race this fall, with incumbent Joe Donnelly (D-IN) facing GOP upstart Mike Braun, who won one of the nastiest primary mud-wrestling contests it has ever been my misfortune to live through.

With control of the senate teetering on a knife edge, this race is attracting national attention and a lot of out-of-state dough. In fact, the Senate Majority Project ad below complains that "out of state billionaires"...ie the Kochs...are buying ads to smear our beloved "Indiana Joe". (A recent pro-Braun ad accused Donnelly's family printing business of off-shoring south of the border and dubbed him "Mexico Joe".)


The thing is, the Senate Majority Project has received a couple million from Bloomberg, as well as at least $10M from Newsweb Corp, which is Chicago billionaire Fred Eychaner's company.

So an ad complaining about out-of-state billionaires buying ads was paid for by out-of-state billionaires.

But they think you're too dumb to know that. You know how I know this? Well, this ad was no doubt produced by some LA or NYC agency, and look at who they think will convince those on-the-fence blue collar union worker* Hoosiers who voted for both Obama and Trump, Lugar and Donnelly. They assembled this People of Walmart cast of Totally Not Actors to convince us confused hilljacks of flyover country that people just like us were standing up for Indiana Joe.

There's a tiny chance I'd vote for Braun, because the dude's SoCon mouth noises he made for the primary seemed about as convincing as the visual effects in the original Star Trek series, but I'm insulted enough by this ad to guarantee it'll be a cold day in hell before I vote for Joe Donnelly.

*Did you catch the patch on Do-Rag Dude?
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Some is good, more is better, too much is just enough.

Shootin' Buddy's theory on redundancy for your carry gun was that you should "find a gun you like, and buy five copies." That way you'd have:

"One on your hip, one in the safe, one at the local gunsmith, one at the manufacturer being overhauled, and one stored off-site at a trusted, safe location."

Commander Zero seems to have a similar eye toward redundancy, and explains it here. Go read.
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RIP 9/21/2011-7/11/2018

I think it was about six years ago that Bobbi and I walked into Target's camera department...well, it was just like an aisle or an aisle-and-a-half by then...and saw a display for a new and unfamiliar camera from Nikon.

It took interchangeable lenses, but not regular Nikon lenses. The back and top of it were nearly devoid of controls, like a compact camera. There was what looked like a mode dial, but it was mostly unfamiliar hieroglyphics instead of the normal "PASM".

There was a position with a movie camera icon, so that was video. And there was a green camera icon, which I guess would be automatic scene selection? Program mode? Who knew?

There was a video display playing a looped commercial showing the cool burst photography tricks, and high speed video. I remember the price tag seemed gobsmackingly expensive, as much as an entry level DSLR kit, maybe a few bucks more.

And some parts of it didn't impress 2011 me, who didn't know much about cameras.

The lens that came with it only had three zoom X's, while the Kodak EasyShare pocket camera I was using at the time had that many and cost me a fraction of the price. They both had the same number of MP's, too. (2011 me didn't know much about sensor sizes and crop factors at all, and only had a half-forgotten grasp of apertures and ISO's and other such things.)

In retrospect, it's like the Nikon engineering department had been dragged kicking and screaming into building a mirrorless camera with the sole directive that it not steal a single sale from Nikon's meanest entry-level D3100. The result was a camera that seemed oddly frivolous to camera nerds and yet frighteningly expensive to people who wanted to move up from clipping plastic magnifiers to their iPhone lens...or from Kodak EasyShares.

The last new bodies in the series had been released back in early 2015, and everyone knew that the Nikon 1 was dead, so the announcement a few days ago was pretty much pro forma.

That being said, the early ones like the J1 I'm playing with this month are available dirt cheap as refurbs or used, and even the J5's can be found as NOS in some places for decent prices. Last of the Nikon 1 line, the J5 had a much more normal camera interface, but it was too late to save the line of quirky cameras.

I do want to see how the high-speed video and burst shooting does for action shots at the range...
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I bought it for the lenses...

Ten dollar find at a hamfest. If the #Canon works, that’s a bonus. #canonfdlens #filmisnotdead

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Jul 16, 2018 at 8:05am PDT

QotD: Not Fellow Travelers Edition

OOCQOTD: "Saying "I LIKE GUNS" should not be ollie ollie oxen free for being a dick, no matter how famous you are."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) July 16, 2018

Trivial Pursuit...

On the top of the stack in the Reading Room is Osprey's US Cold War Aircraft Carriers: Forrestal, Kitty Hawk and Enterprise Classes.

I was idly skimming the section covering CVN-65, the Mobile Chernobyl, and noticed that it named the ship's skipper at the time it was commissioned: Vincent P. de Poix. Dude was a fighter pilot in the South Pacific with VF-6 for a little over a year in '42-'43.

Think about this as a metric of the speed of technological advance in the 20th Century: The first captain of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier got his primary flight training in a fabric-covered open-cockpit biplane. When he was born in 1916, the unofficial air speed record was 134mph in a British S.E.4 fighter plane, which is likely rather slower than the first plane to land on the Enterprise was going when it trapped the wire.

As far as the ship he was skippering, it remained in service until the end of 2012. To put that in perspective, the Enterprise's first captain was born during the Wilson administration, before commercial radio was really even a thing. The youngest sailor on her last deployment was born during the Clinton administration, about the same year as the letters "www." started popping up on billboards and in magazine ads.
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Ugh.

Finishing up writing a piece and trying to come up with delicate ways to tell the reader that they're likely wrong about something...

Meanwhile, have a pretty picture from my 'hood:

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From Elsewhere...

Wait, that goober in Illinois saw a woman wearing a Puerto Rican flag on her shirt and started yelling “Are you a US citizen?”

Has that ignorant spoo-bubble been asleep since 1897?

Hey, Jasper, here’s a surprising telegram from President McKinley.
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Photography Is Not Terrorism

So, okay... Lesson learned: When I'm out semi-surreptitiously photographing people and stuff on the street with small cameras, I shouldn't look all Arabic while doing it. And I definitely shouldn't wear one of those radical-chic keffiyeh scarves either.
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Range day...

Rushing along with the P365 review, today was an outdoor trip with Mike Grasso to get some chrono numbers.

I was going to grab some pics for an online sidebar while I was at it, but I left my camera bag at home. Fortunately there was a camera in the pocket of my gun burkha, a Samsung TL500...

This is a .jpg straight out of camera. I remember shooting with my previous Leica D-Lux 3 (nee Panasonic LX2) under very similar conditions...

I just wasn't as happy with the results. The slightly newer Samsung seems to do better in the shade. That's probably why the Leica got sold.

#MyLifeInPictures

Hi Chew is not just
A sort of Japanese poem
Today I learned this pic.twitter.com/UUIpTW6awn

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) July 10, 2018

Trollololol

Posing with a trophy from a gun "buy-back", a police sergeant shows off a deadly Hi-er Point LUL-Z Mk.XIII "Ghost Gun".

One more assault weapon off the streets!


(h/t to alloutdoor.com)

Coarse Idjit Filter

OOCQOTD: "The internet was a better place before you could wind up on it by accident."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) July 10, 2018

Freakout Fatigue

So the announcement of the president's SCOTUS nominee was greeted by choreographed raucousness on the steps of the Supreme Court.

I'm assuming the whole thing was planned ahead of time, because of the four rumored short-listed candidates, Kavanaugh is the one least deserving the hysterical overreaction ("very confirmable", in the words of Chuck Todd).

I guess Bernie and Liz didn't want to waste the chance to get a bit of photogenic grandstanding in as politicking season ramps up toward November, and 2020 beyond that.

I have to say that I don't get the spaz-out over the idea of a GOP president nominating the replacement for a justice who was selected for the high court by Ronald Reagan.

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Prime.

A couple of shots with the Nikon 1 J1 and the 1 Nikkor 18.5mm f/1.8 prime lens. Thanks to the crop factor of the 1" sensor on the CX-format Nikon, this has the field-of-view of a 50mm lens on a full-frame camera.

 It handles daytime indoor available light shooting pretty nicely if it's not super dark.

I love the tap handle for Fountain Square Brewing's "Hop for Teacher" IPA. It's the one that looks like a paper airplane.
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Frustrating.

The P365 test is, of necessity, on a short schedule. I normally have bunches of range visits spread out over a couple months, instead of a couple very high round count ones sandwiched into a week.

I'm hoarding my remaining pain pills for really bad nights or weather fronts, and I don't want to take them on days I'm planning on going to the range, so it looks like I'll just be gutting out some pain this week.

Even if I weren't shooting, I'd need to be parsimonious with them because all the drug-seeking yahoos who can't hold their dope are making it hard for people in legit pain to find relief. ("I don't have 'overactive nerves', Doc, I have a fractured clavicle. Are broken bones common drug-seeking behavior?")

And if institutional paranoia about opioids wasn't bad enough, well, there's hardly anything you can't make worse by getting the government involved...
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Back to work...

Yesterday saw me at the range for the first time since the accident.  Gonna be doing some shooting with a new test gun for a Shooting Illustrated article...

Interface...

Earlier I made this comment about the Nikon 1 J1:

There’s a decent camera buried under that weird interface... #nikon1j1

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Jun 29, 2018 at 6:14am PDT

Which in turn spurred this...

Zero Context Quote of the Day: "'PASM' is like 'PRNDL' but for cameras."#NationalCameraDay #photography pic.twitter.com/mVg7gsDin1

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 30, 2018

For those who haven't been bitten by the shutterbug, "PASM" (or an anagram thereof) has become a quasi-standard array of settings on the control dials of cameras that offer the photographer control over some of the basic camera functions.

• "P" = Program: The camera analyzes the scene through the lens, references the current light sensitivity setting of the sensor (or film speed, in the old days) and sets what it thinks is the best combination of shutter speed and aperture diameter to get a good image.
• "A" = Aperture Priority: The photographer sets the aperture diameter, which gives them control over the depth-of-field (how much is in focus) and the camera then adjusts the shutter speed to get a good image.
• "S" = Shutter Priority: The photographer sets the shutter speed, most likely because they're worried about freezing motion, and the camera adjusts the aperture to let in enough light for the shot.
• "M" = Manual: The photographer takes full manual control over shutter speed and aperture diameter.

There's also a setting, usually colored green, that's labeled "auto" or has a little green icon of a camera or similar. In that setting, the camera takes control of pretty much everything, including ISO (light sensitivity) and turns your DSLR into a two-pound Point & Shoot the size of a shoebox but with the potential for really good image quality if you accidentally point it the right direction when you press the button.

It's generally an indicator that a camera has pretentions to being used by serious hobbyists when these settings are easily accessible via a control dial on the camera and it was one of the things for which Sony's higher-end NEX series of mirrorless cameras caught some flak. They had well-laid out controls and all the technical chops to be serious hobbyist cameras, but switching back and forth between, say, Program mode and Aperture Priority mode required a dive into a menu.

This was understandable with Sony because maybe the guy who did the camera interface had just gotten transferred over from the DVR remote control or car stereo head unit division the week before and only knew cameras as an added feature of his cell phone.

But the "PASM" dial on Nikon's 1 series was initially buried one layer deep in the menus, too. And Nikon doesn't have an excuse, since they practically invented the modern serious camera interface, or at least stole its various components and integrated them.
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Telephoto zoom & fast prime...

I've been trying out a couple of different lenses on the Nikon 1 J1 to see how they handle.

The above shot was taken with the Nikkor 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 run all the way out to 110mm. These are flowers in the neighbor's garden photographed from probably 15 or 20 yards.

This one was walking home from lunch yesterday in the gaps between thunderstorms. I was using the Nikkor 18.5mm f/1.8 prime, which is compact and very light.
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I don't know what it was...

...maybe the front that came through yesterday, skidding a line of thunderstorms ahead of it and dropping the temperature by twenty degrees in a couple hours, but my collarbone hurt bad yesterday. As bad as at any time since the first week after; not the dull ache I've grown accustomed to, but the jagged stab of broken glass.

It's been enough to make me wonder if somehow the fracture hadn't become mobile again.

It was better today, but only by comparison. If it's still sharp & stabbing on Monday, I may see about getting an X-ray someplace for a second opinion on just how well this thing is knitting.
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Sorry...

In rather a lot of pain today. Yelling at the cats when they bother me and then immediately feeling badly about it.

I'm not concentrating well enough to follow the complicated plot twists of the Dr. Phil show, let alone write anything coherent.
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Punny.

Sometimes Alexa doesn't heed Bobbi's soft-spoken commands.
Bobbi thinks she's just not paying attention.
I explained that our robot servant has her head in the cloud.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) July 4, 2018

Hey, look!

There's a column I wrote up at Shooting Illustrated.

It's got some tidbits I picked up from Claude Werner's snubbie classes at TacCon '17. Claude's one of the best thinkers in the training industry. If you get a chance to take a class from him, you should.

Happy Independence Day!

I hope all y'all have fantastic and very 'Murrican day on this Fourth of July.

Go and tell some royalty to piss up a rope.
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Pocket knives...

I have a bunch of pocket knives, and I used to rotate through them but for the past several years now I'd pretty much settled on a plain ol' Spyderco Delica, albeit one with the Emerson wave opener on it.

At some point in the last few days, though, I lost it, either at the movie theater on Saturday or at Fat Dan's for lunch on Monday.

So I spent some time this morning pawing through my knife roll, trying to decide what to put in my pocket to replace it.

There were some unexpected memories in there, too...

I've had this CRKT K.I.S.S. longer than any other. Back when I first got a job in a gun store, I bought a Spyderco Delica Clipit that I wore around the store hanging from a belt loop and used for opening & breaking down boxes and such. When I started commuting on a motorcycle, I traded the Clipit for the K.I.S.S., because the Clipit would scratch the tank on my GPz.

That means I've had this knife something like twenty years or more.

Those scratches on the pocket clip are from the asphalt of Peachtree Street, when I had my catastrophic wreck in the summer of '00.

I was carrying this knife at my very first Blade Show, and I met Ed Halligan and chatted with him for a while. He was a kindly old dude, and we compared wreck stories. He rode his bicycle some sick distance every day, like thirty miles or more. One day, a couple years before our meeting, a hit-and-run driver knocked him off his bike and he rode home, a dozen miles or so, with a busted clavicle. Guy must have been tough as nails.

Marko got me this Kershaw Blackout as a "welcome to Tennessee" present when I moved up to Knoxville, late in 2000. I think having the K.I.S.S. and the Blackout at the same time was the first time in my life I'd ever owned more than one half-decent pocket knife at the same time.

I've got knives that are a lot fancier these days, but these have seniority.

As far as what knife to carry now, however? Well, I might as well just carry the waved Spyderco Endura. I'd only switched to the Delica from it because when I put on all that weight, the bigger Endura was uncomfortable in my pocket. Having lost the weight, I can carry it comfortably again.
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Deselection...

It happened as I was taking a picture of a flower. The picture above, as a matter of fact.

The photo below shows the location, although it was taken a month or two earlier. I was down near that stop sign you can see in the photo, just past the parked car. The flower was in the landscaping of the house on the corner, to my right.

Now, this was literally two or three days after the daytime armed robbery I referred to in an earlier post. That armed robbery occurred two blocks south and one block west of the the flower in the photo...

Anyway, while the neighborhood we live in is on the northern edge of what could be described as "Midtown Indianapolis", the side streets are quiet enough that you hear cars rolling up. Even Teslas and Leafs.

While I don't know the folks that live in the corner house, we've nodded at each other plenty over the years, I know they have a son about high school age, and they've patronized Indy Arms Company while I was working there.

So when I heard the car rolling up behind me, I turned in that direction not only out of simple curiosity, but also to see if it was my neighbor pulling into their normal on-street parking spot.

It wasn't.

The car that was slowing and swerving toward the curb wasn't the older 3-series coupe or the new Honda compact SUV driven by the residents of the house, but a white Dodge Cirrus or Plymouth Breeze hoopty that had been hit everyplace but the ashtray. Driver and passenger were neck-tattooed dudes dressed like extras from the "Worst Part of Indianapolis" video and both were looking right at me. Meanwhile, I'd unconsciously (and not necessarily smartly) exhibited a classic "picking" motion, with my camera now cradled in my left hand and my right thumb coming to rest on the OC canister in my front right jeans pocket, elbow pushing back my gun burkha just a little bit.

The car stopped its arc toward the curb and returned to the center of the lane, made a rolling stop at the sign, and turned right.

Were they slowing down so dude in the passenger seat could bail and snatch a camera quickly?

Were they the guys from the previous day's robbery?

I'll never know.
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Weights and measures...

All the Pentax Q stuff is so tiny and light. In the Event Messenger 100 (a small, purse-sized bag) I'd carry the 01 standard, 03 fisheye, and 06 telephoto zoom lens, with the 02 standard zoom mounted on the camera. If the camera wasn't in the bag, it felt empty, the lenses are so light.

The Q7 and the four lens kit weighed barely an ounce over the one pound mark. I have full-frame autofocus zooms that weigh more than all of that combined.

The Nikon 1 J1 is small and light, but the bigger 1" sensor means it needs bigger lenses. It all still stows in the Lowepro bag with ease, but just ten ounces makes a noticeable difference in the weight of the bag.
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Sorry.

I didn't blog yesterday or this morning because, frankly, I didn't want to subject y'all to another several paragraphs of whining about how my shoulder hurt all the time and it was crazy stupid boring being stuck in the house all day every day.

Eighteen summers ago I spent the summer in a wheelchair with three out of four flippers deadlined for repair with less whiny angst than I've managed a busted collarbone this year.

Saturday I went downtown with Shootin' Buddy and watched Sicario: Day of the Soldado. That was fun, but an achey shoulder cut into staying downtown for the Taco & Tequila Festival. Sunday I ran errands with Bobbi, but what started out as a pleasant afternoon out was soon turned grim and complain-y by shoulder pain. I'm about over this.

"The Freemasons are poisoning the wells!"

As a collector of conspiracy theories, I have to confess that the vast majority of the Grand Unified Conspiracy Theories with which I'm familiar tend to have a rightward or at least libertarianish bent. So it was with some fascination that I read one from the other pole, one where the Vietnam War caused the modern White Nationalist underground.

I suppose I should have expected no less from The Nation. Watching The Nation and The New American get into it would be like watching Spock fight Spock-with-a-beard.
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Andrea Mitchell needs to shut up and sit down.

Yes, you most certainly do need to aim a #shotgun. Here are the actual facts: https://t.co/glUz08Gxrx#stayinyourlane pic.twitter.com/TFpzquxMYB

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 29, 2018

It's funny 'cause it's true...

Sale!

Tau Development Group has a discount code good only today for 20% off: "TAUDAY2018".

I finally got around to ordering my Glock 43 Striker Control Device. Yay!
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Automotif CXLVII...

International Harvester Scout II, spotted in the parking lot at The Gallery Pastry Shop during Sunday's brunch excursion with Bobbi.

Apparently the grille and headlight rings, much like the Dead Sea Scrolls or all those lines on the ice in hockey, convey a bunch of information if you know how to read them. I think they say this one's a '73, but it's hard to tell for sure.

Bonus picture of giant outdoor chess set from the same parking lot:

Ow.

The collarbone is only just sore if it somehow gets jostled, but the left elbow and shoulder have been held nearly immobile for over a month and are just fountains of colorful pain as I try and gradually get some range-of-motion back into them.
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Be careful, old people vote like crazy.

The Boomer pig in the demographic python is well and truly hitting the cloaca of retirement, and apparently it's going to be a hot mess.

You get enough broke retirees and enough kids trying to pay off the loans on their degree in Anthropological Studies of Sixteenth Century Tierra del Fuego by driving for Jimmy John's and Ubering in the evenings...well, that's a potent Free $#!+ Army just waiting for a general.
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The Name of the King

Worth the watch.

Of note near the beginning is the constant flicker of consul's names across Republican Rome.
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Unexpected regret...

Broad Ripple High School, alma mater of angry beard-o David Letterman, former Second Lady Marilyn Quayle, and current baller Paul George, is no more.

The remains are being squabbled over. Charter schools are interested in the property and would seem to have the law on their side, but developers are anxious to anchor the opposite end of The Strip by planting another ginormous "multi-use" office/retail/apartment space there. (What's Broad Ripple quality of life going to be worth in rent premiums when it takes you thirty minutes to negotiate the handful of blocks to College or Keystone Avenues on your daily commute?)

My big regret is that I never got around to getting up there to take in a football game by the Broad Ripple Rockets.

When the air turned crisp and smelled of fallen leaves and woodsmoke, you could just hear the crowd and a hint of the announcer's voice over the speakers from about a mile away to the north, maybe see a little skyglow from the stadium lights if there was a touch of overcast to reflect it...

Fretting...

Tomorrow is the appointment at the orthopedic doc when I find out whether I'm healing up normally or surgery will be required.

I'm more than a little nervous.
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Four Years

Sapping and Impurifying...

You obviously lied when answering the "DO YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER LIKED SOCCER*? (Y/N)" question on the INS forms anyway, so...

*(Other than the US Women's Olympic team; they're cool.)

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 24, 2018

Q-S1 + 06

 Local color, as seen on my walk to lunch yesterday.

Camera was the Q-S1 with the Pentax 06 15-45mm f/2.8 telephoto zoom. I ordered that lens from a dude in Japan a day or so before I broke my collarbone and it just got here the other day. I wish I'd thought to check Amazon for NOS lenses first.
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How not to internet market, part three...

So, you're obviously capable of doing enough research to get my phone number, but you couldn't do any research about who you were pestering for a holster review?

I've literally dissed better holster companies than yours, bro.

Next time you buy a list of gun blogs from Media Lodge or whoever, take some time to do a little background research. Or hire an actual, you know, professional marketing company.

Jesus, anything but this bush league nonsense...
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How not to internet market, part two...

When last we left the holster review, I'd been writing a pretty straightforward piece on why the holster was unsuited to be safely used for inside-the-waistband carry (appendix or otherwise) and fixing to leave it at that.

But I decided to look a little more into the dude who'd been hectoring me via email...

You know, the one who had escalated from wanting reply emails to wanting to talk to me on the phone...

Folks, I hate talking on the phone. There are, like, four people on the planet that I seem to be able to talk to on the phone for more than five minutes without wanting to open a vein, and one of them is blood kin.

So no, Luke the Feedback Guy at Craft Holsters, you may not have my phone number...

Does anybody else think a social-media dude for a company with five FB friends is sketchy af? Yeah? That's not just me?

Okay, so anyway, I'm fixing to write up this review the other morning when the landline here at Roseholme Cottage rings...

"Hello?"

"Is this Tamara?"

"Er, yes?"

"Of the booksbikeboomsticks?"

recordneedlescratch.wav

Okay, the landline number here at the house is not only unpublished, it's not even my phone line.

If you're going to be hawking holsters that are Tagua-grade hot garbage, not quite up to basic DeSantis quality even, despite nearly Galco-tier pricing, then maybe you want to make up for it by not being a pushy jerk with serious boundary issues? I'm just throwing that idea out there for free, run with it if you want.

Personally, I'd staple up some milk jug plastic and fashion belt loops out of duct tape before I'd purchase a holster from Craft.

So there's your holster review. Good day, sir.
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The Smallest Minority...

...will fit in a concentration camp about 6'x3'x2', unfortunately.

“The American revolution ennobled every man, whereas Jacobin revolutions ennobled Mankind. What chance does a man have against Mankind?”

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 21, 2018

Holster Review, Part One...

Thumbnail sketch of my morning yesterday...

I got an email a while back from some dude repping for a holster company asking me if I wanted a free holster to review.

I get a lot of emails like this. A lot. Like I usually do, I didn't answer it.

Dude emailed me again, wondering why I hadn't replied to his email. I binned that one without response, too.

Dude emailed me yet again, wondering why I hadn't replied to his email wondering why I hadn't replied to his email.

This happened maybe one or two more times (I am clearly ignoring you, can you not take a hint?) before I replied.

I told dude that I was fixing to do a 2000-round test on an HK P2000SK and asked if his company had any holsters they would specifically recommend for AIWB carry. He sent a straight-drop, tuckable single-belt-loop holster.

It had...issues...that made it less-than-suitable for the intended role, in my opinion.

Then the P2000SK displayed its cycling issues, causing the test to be called off, at least temporarily.

I explained to homie that there was, at the very minimum, going to be a delay because I'd need to send the gun off to get fixed. He replied that he understood, and that I should just contact him with a link to the review piece when I got it done.

In fairness, I haven't exactly been communicative over the last couple months, between other work projects and then benching myself for the summer with a busted collarbone.

The emails started up again, wondering where the holster review was.

And then this morning I get this...well, in context I can only describe it as passive-aggressive...email missive from the guy:

No, you may not have my phone number.

But you're right that I promised you a holster review and you obviously want it very badly, so here it comes:

This holster is absolutely unsatisfactory for the requested role of appendix inside-the-waistband carry (or any inside-the-waistband carry, really) for the following reasons:

• The holster mouth is completely unreinforced. The only thing keeping the holster from collapsing after the gun is drawn is the structure of the holster itself, which is a single layer of not-terribly-thick leather.
• The sweatguard is a single-thickness piece of the same leather, which means that unless the wearer has abs as flat as the Texas panhandle, that sweatguard is going to collapse faster than the Falcons' defense in Super Bowl LI. Of note, while the sweatguard lacks the rigidity to remain vertical after this, experimentation proved it was still rigid enough to pull the LEM trigger on the subcompact HK.
• The point of attachment is a single belt loop connected to the bottom of the holster via a single strut made of a stitched-together double layer of leather. Unfortunately two layers of this leather aren't much more rigid than one in this particular role; the holster was able to shift around rather more than I like. 

So, thank you for the opportunity to try your holster, but I would suggest the above areas be tended to in order to render the product suitable for carry.

Then comes this morning, to be discussed in Part II, to follow...

Attire...

I am indeed a hobbyist.

I tried to give Dark Star Gear money for this shirt when I first saw it, but they didn't let me. Next time I'm using a pseudonym.
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"Oh god, it reeks of murder... Mustn't panic..."

When your sleep buddy is a cozy guinea pig.. pic.twitter.com/taWhXKBdXS

— Land of cuteness (@landpsychology) June 21, 2018

QotD: Things Are Different Now Edition...

The late 1990s were only twenty years ago. Gas was less than a buck a gallon. Also, you could watch TV for days without hearing about our crumbling infrastructure. Some folks saw things looming on the horizon, though...

"In meetings at work during the run-up to Y2K, I made a number of suggestions about power conditioning and UPSes. They were pretty routine and most of them were implemented before the year 2000. In making them, I pointed out the power-distribution infrastructure was aging and there was a lot of construction around our two main sites, concluding, "we may be entering a time when commercial power is less reliable that we're used to." There was much harrumphing at that crazy notion. Now we're getting two or three glitches on the power every week, and ugly hits that take a fair amount of rebooting slam us a dozen times a year, despite a big UPS that carries the critical loads. I'm not happy about being proved right."

"Hi, $blogger! We're looking for reviewers!"

From elsewhere: "I love how the general blogging community has built the rep of being a bunch of panhandlers who will fellate anybody for some free shit and being treated like an Authoritative Source."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 20, 2018

Here be no dragons...

"No planes, no interstates, and no hotels. And definitely no chain restaurants." These are the rules a Harvard prof uses in introducing Ivy League students to flyover country.

Go read the article. It's surprisingly fair, even sympathetic.
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Gimplications.

So, to set the stage, it's important to understand the toilet tissue arrangements at Roseholme Cottage. We use only the best: Charmin Sensitive, the Cadillac of bumwipe. This is stored in an under-counter cabinet down at the far end of the galley kitchen.

If someone is fetching a replacement roll from there and notices we are down to three or four rolls left, they push the appropriate Amazon Dash Button, and a fresh case is summoned to the front doorstep in two days' time. Three, tops.

Anyway, yesterday morning, Bobbi had done her morning puttering-about and headed out the door to physical therapy. I was home alone when my morning coffee had its salutary effect on my still-sleepy digestive tract.

I got up and ambled into the bathroom, only to be greeted by a toilet paper roll with maybe three squares on it.

Not being Sheryl Crow, I ambled with rather more urgency toward the aforementioned kitchen cabinet, only to realize with dawning horror that it was empty.

By this point, my innards were starting to get a little insistent.

Fortunately, there was the latest shipment of toilet paper, still sitting in its case lot box in front of the cabinet.

Normally these boxes are in sorry shape. Containing three 8-roll packs, they are not insubstantial packages and usually burst open somewhat on impact with the front porch.

Not this one, though. This box was as mint as a comic book collector's prize possession, all edges un-rumpled and all corners square. All flaps still tightly glued shut.

Further...and this was a first...the box was sealed shut with clear packaging tape. And I mean it was sealed like the tomb of Amenhotep IV. And here I was in my pyjamas, without a pocket knife ready to hand.

I waddled briskly off in search of a pocket knife and returned to the kitchen, desperate to get into the box. I stabbed at it with the pocket knife in my one good hand, but the packing tape must have been kevlar reinforced, because the box just skittered away from the knife, across the tile floor.

Bracing it against the cabinetry with one foot, I managed to slice through the packing tape, only to discover that the Charmin plant must have bought their box-sealing glue on sale, because they sure weren't sparing in their use of it to glue the package shut.

Just before I had to declare an emergency and kiss my socks goodbye, the box flap tore in the middle, rather than giving way at the glue seal. I hauled out a plastic-wrapped package, tore it open one-handed, and headed for the smallest room at a butt-clenched sprint.

I was successful. It was a small success, but these days I'm taking them where I can get them.

And this was the Great Toilet Tissue Incident of 2018.
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Low-hanging fruit...

Can't say the man's not consistent in his belief that illegal immigrant children should be kept with their fathers.
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Family resemblance...

When Pentax jumped into the mirrorless interchangeable lens camera craze in 2011, it's pretty obvious from where they drew their styling inspiration.

The Pentax Auto 110 of the late-'70s and early-'80s was pimped as the tiniest interchangeable lens SLR on the market, using the little 110 Instamatic film cartridges Kodak had introduced in '72.

Pentax marketed the Q-series digitals the same way. Ironically, the teeny 110 film negatives are the same size as a Micro 4/3 image sensor, which is much larger than the little 1/2.3" sensor chosen for the initial Q models. (The later Q7 and Q-S1 had slightly larger 1/1.7" sensors.)

From Wikipedia.

The small sensors are going to cause problems with noise at higher ISOs...

click to embiggenate

The above image is using the 3.2mm f/5.6 03 fisheye lens on the Q-S1, which has the later, larger sensor. It's a 1/6th second exposure at ISO 3200 and is obviously noisy as dammit.

Despite being an interchangeable lens camera, the Q-S1 uses the same 1/1.7" sensor size as my late, lamented Coolpix P7000, a higher-end compact. (The original Q and the Q10 use a smaller sensor, the same size as the one in the old Canon ShowerPot SX500 I've since handed off to Bobbi.)
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So are "titular" and "prognathous"...

"Bolus" is a fun word to say. So are "gazebo" and "zamboni".

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 17, 2018

Nothing so exciting...

Glock blue guns from Ring's have always been only available via gray market to the general public, retailed by secondary sellers.

People often wonder why this is:

Can't have irresponsible and untrained civilians owning things that LOOK like Glocks, but buy all the real guns they want. 

I... 

I... 

I don't get it. 

Bear in mind, this is GLOCK making the demand, not Blue Guns.

Civilian trainers can buy them for civilian training and civilian holster makers can buy them for civilian holster-making, but Glock apparently has a bee in their bonnet about cosplay or running around the back yard playing cowboys and bank robbers with anything that might look like their product.

Glock...to a level nearly unique among firearms companies other than maybe HK...vigorously protects its branding and trade dress and is real squirrelly about who it lets do what with it. Making a toy gun that even looks too much like a Glock will probably get you a visit from Smyrna's legal beagles with an armload of C&D's.

Glocks are apparently super srs bzness.
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Steadycam...

Thank you pistol shooting, for letting me hand-hold 1/5th-second exposures...#pentaxqs1 #indianaworldwarmemorial pic.twitter.com/sQ9Bl4PX0F

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 16, 2018

Overheard on the Intertubes...

Frustrated Friend: "The enrollment at some of the non-shooting classes I'm hosting is disheartening." 

Me: "People are stupid about non-shooting classes. For a long time I’ve been comfortable bagging on folks who have 200 hours in a plate carrier with a carbine and not eight hours drawing a 19 from concealment, but I need to start bagging on people with 200 hours of running a 19 from concealment and not eight hours of legal/med/retention/defensive driving/intermediate force...  

 Congrats. You’re trained like Joe SOCOM in the skills you’re least likely to need..."

Quiet, shady tree-lined streets...

It's a quiet, low-crime neighborhood, but it is in the middle of a big city, and low-crime don't mean no-crime:

He was in his car in the SoBro neighborhood, parked in his drive along the 5300 block of Carrollton. It happened during a time of day where you’ll typically see families with kids in strollers and on shoulders. People on bicycles. A mail carrier making his rounds. 

Police said it was about 2:00 p.m. when that man, 34, was approached by two armed men. They got away with cash and a a cell phone.

That's not far from where I'm typing this, not far at all. The approximate scene of the crime was within easy line of sight as I walked home from lunch yesterday. As a matter of fact, you can see the relatively busy thoroughfare of 54th street, a common walking route for me, in the background of some of that TV news footage.

I'm going to wager that dude was sitting in his car, futzing around with his cell phone like people do all the time, when all of a sudden and from out of nowhere...!

Sitting in parked cars is where people get jacked up. You're pinned in a box, and most people don't pay any attention to their surroundings while they'te in there.

Look around you before you pull into the parking space, and again before you shut off the car. When you shut off the car, exit the vehicle smartly, don't get lost in your glass cocoon.

What interested me in some of the discussion about this was the weird reluctance people have to locking their doors, like it's something you only do out of fear. Let me quote fellow blogger Unc on that one:

My kids always, in an annoyed tone, ask: Why do you always lock the doors? And I respond with So I don’t have to shoot anyone.

Little project well underway...

Pentax Q’s out the yin-yang... #pentax #pentaxq #pentaxq7 #mirrorlesscamera

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on Jun 14, 2018 at 10:33am PDT

I've been waiting near a month on a zoom lens to arrive on the slow boat from Japan, but according to the tracking number it should show up Saturday or Monday.

This is going to be fun, albeit kinda sad, since the story of the Pentax Q series is already a closed book. Initially, I just wanted a teal camera, is all...

Sorry.

I certainly did not intend to miss two complete days of blogging.

I don't think I've slept for more than two hours at a stretch for the last three or four days. It had been getting better...I think I managed four hours of uninterrupted sleep last Thursday or Friday...but it's gotten worse again.

Just being able to lay flat on my back would be such an improvement. I tried that for a little while this morning. Getting up from there without aggravating the shoulder is really hard, though.
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Painted into a corner...

Let's start this off by reminding everybody that, as the good civil libertarians at a certain website proclaim in their very name, Photography Is Not A Crime.

And the folks at Photography Is Not A Crime (or PINAC) are on the same page with the cops and the courts on another basic issue:  If you are sitting in a place of public accommodation with two walls composed of floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows, you don't have much of a reasonable expectation of privacy, and therefore no real legal protection from being photographed.

And if the place of public accommodation you're in is staffed by people who just got a whole mandatory day of sensitivity training about their customer (and non-customer) service policies...

...how do you expect them to make someone stop taking pictures of your kid?

And why is this Starbuck's problem? Can you not ask the dude to stop yourself? And do you understand that, depending on jurisdiction, there might be no up-front legal reason he needs to? Now what?

(Personally? I'd leave. Simplest solution.)

Vague terms of service, capriciously enforced...

Brownells’ YouTube channel has been terminated w/oout warning or notice.
If you’re opposed to the attacks on our communitys 1st & 2nd Amendment rights, please contact GOOGLE : 650-253-0000 OPTION 5 FOR YOUTUBE, MESSAGE YT & GOOGLE:https://t.co/csetulvAckhttps://t.co/9oLz6TGWZx pic.twitter.com/T85z9Py2l0

— Brownells, Inc. (@BrownellsInc) June 9, 2018

Tab Clearing...

• The fake bomb detector scam...


• The alleged gun-detecting cell phone case...


• Neutrinos are weird (and get weirder the more we learn about them.)

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.

Camera Chow

Click to Embiggenate

Sensor Sweep...

The Nikon Coolpix S6500 I used for a year or so back in 2014-'15 is on the left, with the Pentax Q10 on the right.

The Q10 is the second iteration of the series, being a more value-priced proposition than the original Q, largely by replacing the magnesium shell of the original with a plastic one. It debuted in September of 2012 and featured a 12MP 1/2.3" sensor...

A digression to mention that digital camera sensor size descriptions date back to the earliest days of digital video. A 1/2.3" sensor is 6.17mm across by 4.55mm tall, or 7.66mm across the diagonal.

The Nikon, which hit the market in January of 2013, has a sensor with the same physical dimensions, but 16MP resolution. The lens on the Coolpix is the equivalent of a 25-300mm zoom, in 35mm terms, but only an f/3.1-6.5. Consequently the Coolpix tends to be noisy at longer focal lengths in anything but the best of lighting conditions.

With a wider choice of bigger, specialized lenses, and the ability to shoot in RAW for better image processing, the Pentax Q10 ekes a lot of performance out of the little 1/2.3" sensor by comparison...but it's still a tiny sensor. Noise is going to happen at higher ISOs no matter what trickery you employ.

Punchy

As Bobbi noted, she's been working the early shift this week, which has her arriving home from work at about noon, doing her best to go to sleep not long after, and waking up with her alarm clock at about 10:00 PM.

Myself, I had been going to "bed" (for a given value of...) at midnight, because I'm trying to spread the pain meds out at least six hours apart to make them last as long as possible. Projecting forward off the recent past, I figure I've got about another week until things are down to a dull roar.

Even without this week's disruption in the normal routine at Roseholme Cottage, being forced to sleep semi-sitting-up meant that I was rarely getting more than two or three hours' uninterrupted sleep at a lick. The occasional four-hour stretch is still cause for celebration.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if my writing is a little garbled for the next week or so, you know why.
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