How To Social Media (and How Not To)

This is the best timeline...

Hi Point set up a “Name Our New Gun” contest on social media. “YC-9”, for “Yeet Cannon”, got the most votes.

So they put up a short list of finalists, and “YC-9” wasn’t on there. The backlash on Hi-Point’s FB page was swift, and included this post from HK USA’s official account:

Bonus: Check where the web address "YeetKanone.com" resolves...

HK USA's social media game is fire.


PS: Hi-Point, I absolutely would buy a "Yeet Cannon 9".
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Taste Sensation...

In all these years, I had never tried the Italian beef at Fat Dan's Chicago Deli before.

This past weekend, they had a French dip sandwich, and it was delicious. Today I went there for lunch and ordered an Italian beef, hold the giardiniera peppers and add Swiss cheese. The result was an excellent French dip!

Investments for Hard Times...

Practical Collectible Investments for Hard Times:
You can't shoot a looter with a Willie Mays rookie card or a Gibson Les Paul, but a 1912 97% NRA EXC Smith & Wesson Triple Lock is still a .44.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 17, 2019

Automotif CLXII...

1964 Chevrolet El Camino, photographed with Nikon D700.

I've always had a fondness for the various weird open-bed car/trucks. Rancheros and El Caminos, Rampages and Rabbits...

When I saw this super-straight 2nd Gen El Camino as we were leaving the parking lot at Target today, I asked Bobbi if she would stop and let me hop out to take its picture, and she kindly obliged.

Considering that she'd also sat patiently at Half Price Books while we waited on them to tally up an offer for the several boxes of books I'd brought in, this was above and beyond the call.
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...and then the realization hit me...

OMG, I just realized that the #JohnWick universe is Harry Potter for violence nerds!#mindblown

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 15, 2019

Neighbor & Puppers

Spotted waiting these happy puppers keeping their hooman company outside the local Fresh Market the other day. Photographed with Ilford Pan F Plus 50 film in a Nikon N80 with a 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-D.
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Zero-Sum Politics: Team Sport Edition

The kulturkampf demands you take away the other side’s favorite rights before they can take away yours. It’s a race to the boxcars; first team there gets to make the other team ride.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 13, 2019

Had a range day yesterday morning...

...mostly for photographing stuff.

The SBR'd Sig Sauer MPX with the Romeo 8T sight is a hoot.

I tried some different things, moving a bit out of my comfort zone taking photos. For this one, instead of standing off with the 24-105mm f/4L IS USM* or even farther out with the 70-200mm, I got all up in his space with the wide-angle zoom (an old 17-35mm f/2.8L) and got shooter, gun, and target all in the frame.

I think for long guns shooting reactive targets, especially, this technique could turn out some neat shots and I'm anxious to play with it more. I'm wanting to get the shooter, shotgun, ejected shell, and busted clay all in a shot...


*The 24-105 is rapidly becoming one of my favorite lenses. It's great on a full-frame body, but even on a crop-sensor Canon it's got a pretty useful focal range, becoming the equivalent of a 38-168. That's goes from the wide end of "normal" to a reasonably useful telephoto on the long end. For the sorts of photography I usually do around the neighborhood, it's actually better on a crop sensor.

Now & Then

When George Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, introduced the Kodak #1 camera in 1888, photography became vastly more convenient. With a sale price of $25 (roughly $700 today), the camera was preloaded with a 100-frame roll of film. Once finished, the film and camera would be sent back to Kodak for developing. As one Kodak ad from 1889 put it, “Anybody can take photographs with the Kodak.”

The link goes to an interesting New York Times piece that compares a photo essay they ran back in 1951, featuring candids of people out shooting photographs on the streets of the Big Apple, with a photo of people doing the same today. While the folding cameras and 35mm rangefinders have been replaced by DSLRs and smartphones, the similarities are as striking as the differences.
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Gyros Tumbled.

Bobbi is working the weird shift this week.

The easiest solution, which would probably cause the least disruption, would be if I just shifted my schedule out as well. It's theoretically easy enough to do; I can write at night as easily as in the daytime, after all.

However those of you with cats that are fed on a schedule know how well telling the cats "Well, you're getting fed at noon and midnight this week instead of 6AM and 6PM" would work.

So, I'm up to feed the cats right now and then I'll probably try and lay down to get four or five hours sleep until Bobbi wakes up. Then I'll try and get in a couple hours of writing before laying back down for two or three more hours of sleep before the little monsters wake me up for their breakfast.

Which is basically what I did the last couple days, and let me tell you, it does not a thing for my mood or the coherency of my thought processes.
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Something you don't see every day...

Some people might not be aware that aluminum beverage cans are lined like this. (Which is what makes it fun when you run into the occasional fedora who still tries to impress with his refined beer palate, declaring that he doesn't like the 'metallic' taste of domestic beers in cans. Whatever, bro. Craft brewing's been trending to pint cans for years now.)
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"STOP TOUCHING IT!" Part the Whateverth...

I swear, if AIDS and ass cancer had a baby, it would look like unnecessarily finger-banging your gun in public restrooms.

HOW ABOUT JUST LEAVING YOUR GUN ALONE IN THE HOLSTER AND NOT TOUCHING IT. IS THAT SO HARD?
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HorsePOWER...

One of my favorite Carroll Shelby quotes was from the early Nineties, after Porsche had shuttered the 959 technology demonstrator program. In an interview, someone asked Shelby about the 959 and Porsche's technological supremacy, and Shelby's reply was dismissive. Paraphrasing, here, but his response was something to the effect of "How much money did Porsche lose on every 959 they sold? You don't think that Toyota or GM has the engineering talent to build a car like that? They do, but they're in the business of making a profit."

Horse"power"...

When I first became aware of cars as a thing in the early '80s, the auto world in the US was at something of a nadir.

From the giddy horsepower wars of the late Sixties/early Seventies, we'd gone through a couple of shocks. The glory days of the muscle car era had been ended by skyrocketing insurance premiums and fed.gov safety standards. Hot on the heels of those came a fuel crisis in '73, followed by a second one in the early '80s.

Direct comparison of power numbers between early '80s and late '60s cars is hard, because part of the sweeping federal regulations that transformed the scene in the early '70s changed how car makers advertised engine power.

Prior to 1972, car makers used SAE gross horsepower, which measured a motor on a test stand with all power-sapping accessories like a/c compressors or power steering pumps (and sometimes water pumps) removed. Occasionally automakers would do other tricks to enhance gross horsepower numbers, like running tube headers instead of exhaust manifolds, using low-restriction air intakes instead of silenced street ones, or just making the numbers up out of whole cloth.

Net horsepower ratings required the motor to be in a configuration like one would find actually in the vehicle. Between this requirement and the sudden tightening of emissions rules and raised mandatory fleet fuel economy standards, horsepower numbers plummeted.

Imagine, if you will, a very fortuitous high school graduate of the Class of '71 whose parents told them they could have their choice of a new Mustang, Camaro, or Firebird. The top motors in those cars produced 375, 300, or 335 SAE gross horsepower, respectively. Ten years later, an equally fortunate graduate of the Class of '81 would have seen the the most potent powerplants in those same three cars reduced to 122, 185, and 200 SAE net horsepower.

I remember that in high school, as I got into that car-shopping age demographic and began to bend the focus of my nerdery in that direction, that I considered 130bhp to be the threshold for "a lot", in much the same way that I considered an eight second zero-to-sixty time to be "quick".

These days, the Zed Drei (189bhp) and the Five-Oh (215bhp) are coming up lacking even when compared to generic base model secretary-mobiles from the Mustang and Camaro lines. The current rental lot Mustang has an EcoBoost turbo 4-banger pumping out 310bhp and its rival Camaro sports a 2.0L 275bhp turbo mill.

Well, that's a new perspective...

I guess things could definitely be worse.

New Band Name

Bobbi just learned about "whisper mode" on Alexa, where if you whisper a question to her, she'll whisper the answer back. (And it can't be a stage whisper; if there's any tonality at all, she responds normally.)

Also, my next band's name is "Sessile Whispering Robots".
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D-Day

Seventy-five years in the past, now. Even the youngest who took part are nonagenarians, and their numbers are growing few.
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Compare and Contrast...

I hadn't been by L. Neil Smith's page in...well, years. I swung by this morning.

Anyway, I found it interesting to compare this current essay of his with this one from 1995.
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Automotif CLXI...

Parked out in front of The Jazz Kitchen on Sunday afternoon was this super-straight '77-'81 Pontiac Bonneville coupe. It's a boat of a car by modern standards, but it's actually downsized from the Peak Boat era of GM B-bodies, 1971-'76, when the Bonneville would have stretched most of nineteen feet from stem to stern and sported a wheelbase long enough to park a pair of Smart ForTwos side-by-side between the axles with inches to spare.

I think this one's a '78 or '79, which would mean the base engine was Pontiac's 301 c.i.d. V-8 smog motor, putting out 135 net hp, with optional 350-, 400-, and 403-cubic inch motors. The latter was a 4-bbl Oldsmobile engine rated at 185 horsepower. Not a ton of grunt by the standards of the '60s-'70s muscle car years, to say nothing of the modern era, but it'd still get out of its own way.

In 1980, the increasingly strict CAFE regs caused GM to downgrade the base motor to Buick's 231 cubic inch V-6. The optional V-8s shrunk to 265- and 301-c.i.d. motors, and the dire Olds 350 diesel V-8, which helped put an entire generation of Americans off the very idea of diesel power.
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Overheard In Front Of The Television...

Newscaster: "After another mass shooting, the nation is asking questions..." 

Me (yelling): "The only question I'm asking is why did it take so damned long for someone to start shooting back?"

Only when these yahoos are getting reliably smoke-checked by their intended victims is this attention-seeking behavior going to stop.

This got stopped by good guys with guns, but people got killed waiting for them to show up.

Anybody who mandates you be disarmed in a country full of guns does not have your best interests at heart.

Ugh.

I have to write. I have to go to the bank. I have to go to the DMV. I have to box up books and take them to Half Price Books.

And I'm having one of those days where getting changed out of my pajamas seem like an insurmountable challenge.

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"The Florida Chamber of Commerce could not be reached for comment..."

"No homeowner wants to be surprised by a break-in, but a 77-year-old Florida woman awakened early Friday morning to find an 11-foot alligator in her kitchen."

One of the photo captions at the CNN story mentioned that it was a male gator, so this could just be an extreme manifestation of Florida Man.
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Yesterday Was Leg Day

I may have mentioned that the Mustang has a brand-new clutch in it. I also may have mentioned that the traffic in downtown Dayton was a parking lot yesterday.

Today, needing to run some errands, I glanced at the weather and thought "You know, the Mustang would be fun, but it needs the a/c charged and it's hot and sticky and blazing sunny out there right now. The air in the Zed blows cold, especially when it's got all this humidity in the air to work with. Let's take the Bimmer to the store."

(Normally this would be a "It's a nice day, let's drop the top and take the roadster," sort of decision but today it was "It's swamp-ass sticky, let's leave the top up and take the car with the a/c." Besides, the Mustang had put in a bunch of work the last couple days.)

So I go out to the garage, hop in the Zed...and nearly slam my left foot through the floorboard when I go to depress the clutch pedal.

There was a moment of panic before I realized that nothing was broken on the car, I had just spent two days using the Nautilus Machine clutch on the pony car and forgotten how light the BMW's is by comparison. I mean, it's dealing with a fraction of the displacement and torque, so that makes sense.

Pony in its new paddock.

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"Battle-Worn"

I'm gonna be honest, I just don't understand the guys on internet gun fora who wring their hands over the wear marks that show up on a gun that gets used. You'll see guys freaking out over everything from the brass smears left on an AR's shell deflector to the finish wear on the chamber hood of a recoil-operated pistol.

It ain't "battle-worn" but it's had the chicken strips rubbed off.

This is what happens to machines when you use them, and they should be at least taken in stride. Frankly, if you are carrying a custom 1911 called the Special Operator Close Quarters Combat Model and show up at gun school and the thing looks like its Extreme Conditions Finish™ has never been exposed to any conditions more extreme than the ones on the top shelf of your gun safe, you look a little goofy. You might as well still have the price tag hanging off the trigger, there, Minnie Pearl.

The other extreme, though is this fad for "battle-worn" finishes. Dude, that thing doesn't look "battle-worn", it looks like you rubbed the slide with sandpaper.
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Automotif CLX...

1994 Ford Mustang GT, 5.0 five-speed, photographed in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn Express in Charleston, WV, about halfway between Stately Manor and Roseholme Cottage.

The pony trotted all the way to its new barn with no hiccups today.

Gassed up in Charleston before setting out this morning, and then topped up on the far side of Dayton. Despite spending thirty minutes in an absolute parking lot* in the middle of downtown Dayton, the pony managed a hair over 20MPG for the first two-thirds of the day's jaunt.


*Well, that's it. I'm downloading Waze.

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

View this post on Instagram

Road trip! #fordmustang #fivepointoh

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on May 29, 2019 at 5:23am PDT

Memorial Day 2019

Remember.

Gun Culture 2.0

The Professor is a smart dude. You should listen to him and read his stuff.
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Ten Years of Trek Time...

• Last season of the original series on broadcast TV to the first feature film? Ten years (1969-1979).


• The first feature film to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier? Ten years (1979-1989).


• The first J.J. Abrams Trek flick to now? Ten years (2009-2019).

Automotive Inflation...

An excerpt from an hilarious Ezra Dyer piece at C/D on the thousand-dollar car:

What all these cars have in common is that they run and drive and I kind of want them. I wasn't looking for an Iron Duke Fiero, but something about a $1000 price tag fires the imagination. You could take the body off and make it a dune buggy! Or put a golf-cart motor in it and call it your Testeless Roadster. Or drive it around town and start rumors about yourself. People would be like, "I heard he invented shampoo and he's superrich, but he'll only drive a Fiero with one headlight popped up."

I understand these urges.

What's interesting is that in my adolescence, a thousand bucks was generally the floor for a pretty decent used car. Beaters were under a grand, and over the thousand dollar mark would generally get you a car less than a decade old with a minimum of dings and a five-digit odometer reading.
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Keyboard Purgatory

Keyboard purgatory:
1) Nice, clicky Azio has wonky Bluetooth. Constantly in the buffer.
2) Ancient Bondi Blue iMac keyboard dredged from office closet has random keys cease working, likely from 2 decades of dust.
3) Now on dinky portable Apple wireless. Ugh.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 24, 2019

There are a hundred and eleventeen keyboards lying around the house and strewn across the attic. I'm mostly just sad that the otherwise awesome Azio had such issues with connectivity. That, and it went to sleep at the drop of a hat and needed to ceremoniously reconnect all the damn time.

Apple's older tiny keyboard isn't bad, but I'd hate to type a novel on it, or even a 2,000+ word feature article. I like that it's battery-powered. The newer replacement is rechargeable. This is theoretically awesome, but I'd hate to need to type something right now and need to recharge my keyboard, as opposed to just throwing a couple fresh AA cells in it.
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Hey, look!

The first half of the SCCY CPX-3 review is up online!

The Last Film

You could be forgiven for thinking the Canon EOS IX is the "EOS 9", but it's actually the "Eye Ecks". That stands for "Information Exchange", and that's a key feature of one of the last...and shortest-lived...film formats out there, the Advanced Photo System format (APS for short.)

126 Instamatic, 110 Instamatic, Disc...each were an attempt to give casual shooters an easy-to-use form factor that didn't involve having to thread leaders on takeup spools while simultaneously preventing the clumsy-fingered from putting a thumb through fragile shutter components while loading the camera.

While indeed easy to use, these formats suffered from iffy image quality, especially the 110 and Disc, due to tiny negatives. The APS, on the other hand, had negatives almost the size of regular 35mm film.

The mode dial is relocated to the back of the camera because there's a little hatch on top where it normally would be on a Canon body. You just pop that open, drop the cassette (which has no exposed leader) in, and the camera does the rest.

Higher-end APS cameras, like this one, read and write magnetic data off the negatives, hence "Information Exchange". You can rewind mid-roll, and then reload it and it will advance to the first unexposed frame. It can record other data, like date/time or exposure settings.

All this was made possible by rapid advances in digital technology in the Eighties and Nineties, and those same advances would, of course, also lead to the creation of imaging sensors that would supplant film.

While 35mm film is still being made, APS sank without a ripple in 2011. This means that any you buy today is at least half-a-decade expired. The Fujifilm Nexia D100 I got claimed to have been cold-stored, and seemed to work okay. Colors were a bit muted.

It's a crapshoot on film, but on the Canons, at least, the APS cameras use standard EF-mount lenses, with a 1.2x crop factor. (This makes the excellent EF 40mm f/2.8 pancake a 50mm equivalent, BTW...) Similarly, the Nikon Pronea 6i uses Nikon's F-mount. Both the EOS IX and Pronea 6i use a pair of CR123 batteries, which is something kept in ample stock at Roseholme Cottage.

With the discontinuation of the film, the cameras are available for next to nothing, so it's a cheap experiment.
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Mini Cam

Well I'll be dipped. The little Rollei A110 actually works still! I shouldn't be surprised; it's a solidly constructed little brick that went for (if I'm converting Deutschmarks right) between $150 and $200 when they started shipping in '75. That's not a cheap toy camera.

It needs to be manually focused, and I sometimes missed. (Although it made the dogwood look ethereal on that drizzly day...)

 Oops. ("Hey, what Instagram filter is that?")

The film was current production Lomography Tiger 110 with a 2020 expiration date. Unlike some Lomography films, Tiger isn't supposed to be color-shifted. Still, a high-end 110 with a built-in meter like this one would have read the plastic tab on the 110 cassette. That tab could be used to specify "High" or "Low" speed film, but Kodak never set a standard for what was high and what was low. Most manufacturers went with 400 and 100 ISO. Some higher end companies went with 64 as the "Low" setting, since there was Kodachrome 110 slide film, once upon a time.

The Lomo Tiger is 200 ISO, and I'm betting that the cassette had the long tab, so that the camera reads it as low speed. A number of photos have that slight magenta cast you get from lightly overexposed color film.

Just because you can do something...

Seen at Pewpewtactical.com's FB page...

Never have I ever been shooting an AK underfolder (or HK91A3) and thought to myself "Hey, this stock is so badass and comfortable that we need to find a way to retrofit it to other guns."
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QotD: Trigger Warning Edition...

Mosby has some strong opinions on trauma gear...

"If you carry a gun, and you’re not carrying a tourniquet or two, you’re either LARPing, or you’re a fucking idiot. The fact is, a “gunfight” implies bilateral ballistics, and the enemy gets a vote. If you assume your one box of ammo a month “practice” regimen means you’re automatically a far better marksman than the bad guy you are going to end up in a gunfight with, well, I’ve got an 8 ounce jar of fairy dust I’ll sell you cheap, and it’s guaranteed to make you stronger, faster, higher flying, and generally more attractive to members of your preferred sex."

I can only imagine the REEEEEEEEE this will kick off. Go and RTWT.
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Overheard in the Office...

Me: "So... if a pregnant woman sneaks across the Rio Grande and gets caught... can she be deported before the fetus gets due process?"

RX: "You know, $#!+ like this is why no one likes you."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 20, 2019

On a newsstand near you!

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

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

After months of sitting idle, the Broad Ripple SUV's tires were dead flat. We aired them up and pedaled the not-quite-a-mile down to Next Door SoBro for lunch.

It was my idea because their loaded smashers are my kryptonite...

View this post on Instagram

The #loadedsmashers at @nextdooreatery are my kryptonite. 😮🤤

A post shared by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on May 18, 2019 at 8:19pm PDT

Adaptable. Portable. Not so pocketable.

While the EOS M is a tiny camera and well-suited to using the Peak Design Cuff strap, the problem is that the APS-C sized sensor makes it hard to have truly tiny lenses. Canon makes an EF-M 22mm f/2 pancake that looks interesting, but that's more than I'd really prefer to spend on a toy lens.

The EF-M mount lens library is so small* that you practically need Canon's EF-to-EF-M adaptor. Add the thickness of the adaptor and then whatever EF or EF-S lens you mount on it, and we're now well out of pocketable territory.

Also, the first two versions of the M had weird and clunky interfaces, with sparse and dumbed-down external controls. You had to use the (excellent) multi-touch screen to do most things. If I were to commit to the M, I'd have to go with the M3, which added a front dial, articulated screen, and a full PASM dial & exposure compensation dial on the top plate.


*The lens library is small enough to make me question Canon's commitment to the mount. While rumor is that it will continue on as Canon's crop-sensor mirrorless complement to the EOS R, they may just be selling off overstock until they can give it the old heave-ho the way Nikon did with the ill-starred Nikon 1 family.

Fascinating neighborhood history...

"The other “bayou” was the fascinating Bacon’s Swamp. Today, the area that used to be covered by this large Marion County bog is part of Broad Ripple. Although Google Maps still shows a lake there called Bacon’s Swamp, this is really just a pond, re-engineered out of what used to be a genuine freshwater wetland.

Like its neighbor a little to the south, Bacon’s Swamp was created by the melting Wisconsin Glacier. About 20,000 years ago, the ice left an indent on the land that filled with water. As limnologists (freshwater scientists) describe, the process of swamp formation, lakes age and die like living creatures, filling up with sediment and plant matter and gradually losing the oxygen in their depths. Bacon’s Swamp evolved into a peat bog, one of the southernmost in the United States."

This is right in our 'hood. The Bacon farmhouse, a stop on the Underground Railroad, was on Keystone Avenue where the Donut Shop is today, almost a literal stone's throw from Indy Arms Company.
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Facebook's Hidden Dislike Button

Me: "Did you like it?"
RX: "I clicked 'Like', didn't I?"
Me: "But did you really like it, not just Facebook Like it?"
RX: "I don't Facebook Like things."
Me: "I do. If I don't Facebook Like things, then it's impossible to Facebook Dislike things."

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 16, 2019

"Huh. She clicked 'Like' for every single post in this thread but mine..."
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He's Not Wrong...

92 Elite LTT in Dark Star Gear Orion holster with Dark Wing.

At Mountain Guerrilla, Mosby wrote:

"[I]n this day and age, leather is a sexual preference, not a valid holster material. Look, I get it. A custom made, tooled leather holster is classic. It’s pure sexiness (see? Sexual preference.). Even for CCW use, it’s suboptimal, for a hundred different reasons that people in the training community (you know, people that actually practice this shit…) have belabored. If you’re still wearing a leather holster, that’s fine, just acknowledge your fetish."

...which is sure to trigger plenty of butthurt.

There are good leather holsters, but if you can buy it for fifty bucks or less at your local gun shop, it probably isn't one of them. And by "good", I mean that there's a whole slew of factors ranging from 'has a reinforced mouth and is rigid enough to not collapse when you're rolling around atop it' to 'is thick enough and well-enough stitched to get shoved down your trousers and sweated on for twelve hours a day for five or ten years without falling apart'.

There is, however, one area where I've seen some pretty clueful individuals looking into leather holsters again: AIWB holsters, and for a couple reasons.

One is comfort, in that the leather holster is generally more able to move with the body and naturally devoid of hard corners or projections. A well-designed kydex AIWB, especially with a wedge or pad or Melody's Dr. Scholl's solution will mitigate that, but it's there.

The other reasons have to do with retention. The most common failure mode Craig Douglas has seen for kydex is it just breaks during the tussle. The good ones generally don't, especially when worn by the sort of person who inspects their gear and replaces it when worn. And again, if it's under fifty bucks at the local gun shop, it's probably not one of the good ones.

The other part of retention is in how the holster retains the gun in the first place. Kydex holsters are popular because they're fast. The reason they're fast is that they rely on mechanical retention to keep the gun in the holster. You insert the gun until the holster *clicks* on the trigger guard. When you draw, you apply enough force to cause the holster to let go of the trigger guard and *pop*, that's it. The holster isn't holding the gun anymore. It's all or nothing.

A good, well-molded leather holster holds the gun via friction. (Insert the <$50 caveat here.) When you're rolling around on the ground hyperventilating inside a FIST helmet trying to keep dude from yanking your sims Glock out of the holster and flailing at him with a dull training blade in your other hand, any little bit of help you can get from the holster in ensuring the gun stays put is appreciated.

How important that is to you is, of course, totally predicated on what you consider the likelihood of that scenario.

While I would dearly love a baller J.R. Customs AIWB holster with, like, sharkskin trim for my Wilson because that's my fetish, I'm pretty secure in the idea that my daily Dark Star Gear kydex holster is up to the task.
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Ugh deadlines...

Submitted two feature length articles today with a third due by Friday. Plus I need to do some photos for two of them.

It amazes me how closely the mental fog of a long day's writing feels like physical exhaustion. (Apparently that's science and stuff. The thinking probably burned more calories than physically running the keyboard did.)

Have some more gratuitous gun pr0n as a sort of pre-review teaser...

QotD: Tortured Language Edition

"The city's part of the deal will be paid for with an extension of the "innkeeper's tax," a few more pennies on the dollars that pay for hotel rooms. 'Cos what're visitors going to do if room rates go up, use some online service that presently doesn't pay that tax...? Oh, that's right, they might just do that. Better yet, local news sources are claiming "it won't cost taxpayers a dime;" taxpayers who vote in Marion County, that is."

Bobbi notes the bizarre language created by trying to find a diplomatic way of saying "The new facility won't cost local voters a dime because we're gonna take the cost from out-of-towners."
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Massive Organ

Via The Online Photographer comes this video...



Being born at the tail end of the Sixties and growing up in the suburbs, I'm a child of the Mall Era and really missed out on the glory days of the downtown department store. We went to the mothership of the Rich's chain in Atlanta reasonably frequently, but by the early Eighties, it was a shadow of its former self.
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Hardcore.

Walter Kuhn has been taking race photos for more than 40 years, and he's got the scars to prove it:

"Kuhn said he was "less than an inch" from losing his life in March 1998 when a driver crashed during the last practice before a race in Phoenix, causing a tire to fly through the fence and hit Kuhn right in the head. He's got the scars to show it, but that's not all. As it turns out, Kuhn captured the very tire that hit him just moments before it all happened."

The video may not scale so you may need to click through.

I really want to get out for at least one practice day this year and get some shots.
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At least it's entertaining?

From the WaPo:

"Then, this past February, Trump announced on Twitter that Americans should “HOLD THE DATE!” on July 4 for a “Major fireworks display, entertainment and an address by your favorite President, me!”"

This is, of course, like anything else done by President Camacho (to include breathing) an absolute red cape waved before the bull of the press, and triggers more hand-wringing and Won't Somebody Do Something?
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Serious Gear Fail

Remember a couple years ago when an IMPD officer had his Glock discharge in the holster when the officer sitting next to him got some bit of gear inside the light-bearing Safariland and then stood up?

Well, just this past week another IMPD officer was tussling with a shoplifting suspect who got on top of him in the ground fight and attempted to pull the officer's pistol out of the holster. The holster's retention worked, but the dude managed to get a finger into the mouth of the holster and fire the still-holstered weapon, hitting the officer in the leg.

Not all light-bearing holsters are created equal, and some obviously have way too much clearance around the trigger guard. This kinda defeats one of the main purposes of a holster.
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News of the World...

BBC News has a fascinating photo essay on the chaotic conditions in the backcountry of the Sahara, a region that has gone completely Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome with the collapse of the government in Libya and the atomization of ISIS and Al Qaeda.
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Meanwhile, in North Korea news...

We seem to have taken possession of a North Korean cargo ship that the Indonesians busted last year for running around with its paperwork shady and its maritime safety tracking doohickeys turned off. Maybe we can file a mechanic's lien and rename it MV Pueblo.

As a side note, I'm looking at pics of Kim Trey in the linked article, and... Wow. He's really well into the transformation from Dear Leader to Maximum Leader, if you know what I mean. He's morphing into late-stage Marlon Brando before our very eyes. Dude is packing on the avoirdupois like there's nobody in his life to tell him "No."
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First aid isn't cool, but guns are, apparently.

Bring up the idea of first aid supplies and the response is predictable...

People who argue about spare mags and BUGs start hooting and chest-beating and flinging handfuls of leaves and poo, lest they be thought "unprepared".

Like OC spray or a flashlight, first aid gear (and the knowledge of how to use it) is one of those things that has much broader applicability in the real world than a Glock, but e'rrbody wants to carry the Glock. (And endlessly debate about what caliber it should be and what brand of bullets should be in it.)

I don't even necessarily keep the first aid gear on my person for most of the year. This is because I utilize the best protection against accidental self-inflicted GSWs: I leave the gun alone in my holster and don't mess with it.

There are three places I'm likely to unholster or reholster during the day, and totally uncoincidentally, there's a blowout kit staged at each of them (nightstand, car trunk, range bag).

I'm not a "high-responder"; if I were the sort of person likely to run over and get my hands bloody if I saw someone get injured, I'd be more likely to carry it on me. I have several friends who've actually used the med gear they carry on their person to respond to car or motorcycle accidents that happened in their presence.

If you do want to carry basic stop-the-bleed gear on your person, there are easy ways to do it. PHLster offers the Pocket Emergency Wallet and the Flatpack TQ carrier. Dark Angel Medical offers an ankle kit.

I'll let blogger wizardpc have the last word, here:

“I carry a 2lb gun because I might be in a gun fight” 

“I don’t carry an 8oz GSW kit because it’s heavy and, really, what are the chances of me needing that?" 

Okay, then. 

You do you. I don’t care. But the attitudes are a little comical.

Word.

(EDIT: I should add a disclaimer, here. PHLster's Amazon store is legit, but I'd caution against buying tourniquets from random sellers on Amazon, since odds are good that they're airsoft-grade fakes.)
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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #176...

 The Zev OZ-9 at the range the other day, doing chronograph work.

Speed holes are to 2019 what tail fins were to 1959 and shoulder pads were to 1989.
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Bad news today...

R.I.P.

I knew from talking with Gail Pepin at NRAAM that Denny was in a bad way, and figured I'd wrap up the writing work on my plate and then take a couple days to go visit up in Rochester. Yet another lesson in Not Putting Stuff Off, I guess.
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The largest window for error...

Mark Luell asking the important question:

Based on pure probability, what’s the most dangerous thing we will do with our guns in our lifetime? Is it:

• Going to Public Ranges?
• Taking multi-day professional instruction?
• Getting into a gunfight?
• Living life with and around guns?

I don't keep a blowout kit handy in case I get into a gunfight with thirty-eleven ninjas in the Kwik Trip parking lot; I keep a blowout kit handy in case I get shot by the person with the greatest window of opportunity to shoot me.

If you're wandering around in public with a loaded gun on your person, but without at least minimal tools to stop a bleeding gunshot wound close to hand and some training to use them, I flat-out question your judgment.
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Leading Experts Recommend!

Local Housewife Searched for Gettysburg Info. What She Found Will Shock You!

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From an Away Game...

Some keystrokes on why Heckler & Koch LEM triggers are such a hard sell:

"On the low-information forums, it's lumped in with DAO triggers as bad/wrong/stupid-lawyer-trigger-for-cops.

On high-information forums, it slows down people's Bill Drills and makes it hard to put up hero numbers. The relevance of these numbers to actually shooting people is the subject of numerous endless debates.

And with the general public? Well, a dude who worked at my LGS got all enamored of my (DA/SA) P30L while I was shooting the 2k Challenge with it, so he ordered an HK45 off Gunbroker. When it came in, he was all excited about it having the "Law Enforcement Modification" trigger... for about five minutes. Then he was shopping for the parts to convert it to DA/SA. I asked him why. He replied "Feel the second trigger pull!" I was, like, "Dude, you're never going to feel that second trigger pull!" but he just wouldn't wrap his head around it.

That's pretty much how every General Public customer responded to dry-firing a LEM in the showcase, no matter how patiently you tried to explain or demonstrate that the slide reset the action every time."

A sure barometer...

Local network affiliate did a series on "Social Media Influencing" on the 6 o'clock news the other week, so that fad's about played out.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 6, 2019

Emulation...

While I love the interface on my Ricoh GR Digital II, of all the brands of digital cameras (do we even need to specify "digital" as a modifier for "camera" anymore, or can we just accept it as the default?) that I've messed with, Fuji is the one that is most oriented to the photographer who cut their teeth on old-school film cameras.

On my Fuji the shutter speed is still controlled by a dial on the top plate, and the aperture by a ring on the lens. Nikon does this and charges a mint as the retro Df, while Fuji just does it on all their interchangeable lens bodies.

Fuji also has various film emulation settings in-camera, something more typically (and effectively, to be honest) done in post-processing.
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"It ain't natural!"

Not everyone is happy watching the current Jeopardy! champion's gallop into the record books.

"The only thing more troubling, as a commentary on American culture, than his grinning, relentless march to victory — regardless of when, or if, it ends — is that millions celebrate it."

Personally, as someone who has traditionally yelled "BET IT ALL!" at the screen every time Double Jeopardy came up, I'm enthralled to run across a contestant with the chutzpah to do just that. Thus far he's had the smarts to ensure that it hasn't come back to bite him hard. Eventually it will, but until then it's fun to watch.
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Automotif CLIX...

The first drop-top Ferrari of the season tells me it's finally that time of year where the top can pretty much stay down on the Z3 except for rainy days and interstate road trips.
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Hmmm...

How would you know?

There's one thing in particular that really puzzles me about pharmaceutical commercials.

"Sufferers of Sweaty Elbow Syndrome can relax. Clinical trials have shown that Placebon causes up to a 7.5% drop in elbow sweat production in almost half of users. If you or someone you love are living with SES, ask your health care provider about Placebon. 

In rare cases, patients reported depression and suicidal thoughts. Stop taking Placebon and see your health care provider if these occur. Side effects are rare, and include herniated discs, coronary artery blockages, and sudden incontinence. Patients who use alcohol or have visited regions with ebola outbreaks should not take Placebon. Do not take Placebon if you are allergic to Placebon."

It's that last highlighted part that gets me every time. How in the Ninety-Nine Names of Spongebob am I supposed to know if I'm allergic to a drug I've never taken? Environmental exposure?
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Faltering?

The compact camera market is in free-fall. Outside of specialty gizmos like "ruggedized" cameras that can film underwater or various superzooms, there's hardly a reason to buy a pocket camera for most people these days, given the capabilities of the typical cell cam.

The larger-sensor ILC (interchangeable lens camera) market is cooling, too, albeit at a slightly slower pace. But even freshly-launched, much-hyped offerings from biggies like Canon, Nikon*, and Olympus are featuring incentives to soften the impact of the summer slowdown.

*That $200 discount was fast.

The Fire Down Below

I feel like I ate most of a small @bazbeaux pizza slathered in house-made chorizo, feta cheese, and jalapeños for dinner. Probably because I did.#regrets but also kinda #SorryNotSorry pic.twitter.com/U0jZKDfUn9

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 2, 2019

Automotif CLVIII...

I don't know how my Roman numerals got all jacked up like they did, but "CLVIII" is the correct one.

At any rate...

"Hey, that's a super-straight W126. I wonder what year it is?"

"Ah. An '87."

Monon Trail Dogs

This is Duchess...

...and her buddy is, of course, Duke.

It doesn't seem like that great a job.

So, Harry & Meghan have secluded themselves, declaring that they'd like a bit of privacy for the birth of the royal sprog.

Naturally this means that NBC News has appointed a 'round-the-clock Watcher of the Ennobled Crotch, whose job apparently consists of peering at the grounds of Windsor Castle with the intensity of a young John Cusack holding a boom box aloft.

Incidentally, "Ennobled Crotch" is the name of my next band.
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How It Is...