.
Monday, May 09, 2016
Today In History: Black Friday Sale!
On this day in 1873 came Der Krach, as the Vienna stock market augured in, sending ripples across Europe which would eventually spread to the U.S., triggering a six-year-plus economic slump that would be referred to as "The Great Depression" until a greater one came along and they had to rename this one.
Central Europe and the U.S. were both in the midst of postwar booms, as there was construction and business growth a-go-go in newly unified Germany and re-unified America. Railroads were the dot-coms of the day, drawing speculative investments from people who probably should have been investing in next week's grocery bill rather than The Next Big Thing.
Predictably as the sunrise, the music stopped and there weren't enough chairs to go around and businesses failed. In the U.S., more than a hundred railroads went toes up over a few years and railway construction fell to less than a quarter of its previous pace. As can be imagined, that led to a lot of unemployed people, and the remaining employed ones went on strike against the low wages paid by the profit-strapped surviving railroads.
Things were bad enough that the Democrats, regarded as being on the wrong side of public opinion in the recent Civil War, retook the House of Representatives for the first time since that war.
.
Central Europe and the U.S. were both in the midst of postwar booms, as there was construction and business growth a-go-go in newly unified Germany and re-unified America. Railroads were the dot-coms of the day, drawing speculative investments from people who probably should have been investing in next week's grocery bill rather than The Next Big Thing.
Predictably as the sunrise, the music stopped and there weren't enough chairs to go around and businesses failed. In the U.S., more than a hundred railroads went toes up over a few years and railway construction fell to less than a quarter of its previous pace. As can be imagined, that led to a lot of unemployed people, and the remaining employed ones went on strike against the low wages paid by the profit-strapped surviving railroads.
Things were bad enough that the Democrats, regarded as being on the wrong side of public opinion in the recent Civil War, retook the House of Representatives for the first time since that war.
.
Sunday, May 08, 2016
Miscellaneous Glocking...
- Thanks to a reader, I've got a ZEV Fulcrum Ultimate
trigger kit (well, most of one) here that I'm still waffling about. I can't put it in either of my Gen4 guns (34 and 35) because the parts don't interchange. Of the guns I can put it in, I'm not going to put it in my G19 carry gun because A) carry gun, and B) I don't know how well the Fulcrum trigger plays with the Gadget, although I suppose I could email Tom and ask. I'm probably not going to put it in either the G37 or the Robar'ed Gen2 17 because I might carry those. And I'm leery of putting it in either the 20 or the 32 because I don't know how those little set screws for takeup and overtravel would react to .357SIG/10mm recoil. What to do, what to do?
- It's weird how the same parts setup in one Glock can feel completely different in another one. Both my 37 and the old 17 have a ZEV connector and a NY1 trigger spring. The scale says both guns have a trigger that breaks right at seven pounds, but where that number feels high for the 37, you can feel every pound on the 17.
- What have I gotten myself into with the Special Snowflake Calibers? I need to sell an article to somebody.
Ugh.
Slow start this morning.
Meet the Press was decent, at least the last half of it I saw was.
The show, which has been All-Donald-All-The-Time for the last six months, focused today on the topic of "How did the GOP wind up nominating Donald Trump?" I have some ideas, Chuck; gimme a call.
Andrea Mitchell has her own camera these days, one with skin detail turned way down. It's like how every time Cybil Shepherd had a closeup in Moonlighting it looked like there was a quarter inch of vaseline smeared across the camera lens. They'd cut back and forth between her and the other panelists, who were all in the stark, surreal hypertextures of HDTV, and Andrea and the effect was almost jarring.
In other news, I had to provide some portrait photos for a magazine column and now I understand why we were seeing pictures of a flat-tummied, sideburned, patrol-cap-wearing Chuck Taylor in magazines well into the Aughties. And why Andrea gets her own camera.
Content, or at least some food or gun pictures, to follow.
.
Meet the Press was decent, at least the last half of it I saw was.
The show, which has been All-Donald-All-The-Time for the last six months, focused today on the topic of "How did the GOP wind up nominating Donald Trump?" I have some ideas, Chuck; gimme a call.
Andrea Mitchell has her own camera these days, one with skin detail turned way down. It's like how every time Cybil Shepherd had a closeup in Moonlighting it looked like there was a quarter inch of vaseline smeared across the camera lens. They'd cut back and forth between her and the other panelists, who were all in the stark, surreal hypertextures of HDTV, and Andrea and the effect was almost jarring.
In other news, I had to provide some portrait photos for a magazine column and now I understand why we were seeing pictures of a flat-tummied, sideburned, patrol-cap-wearing Chuck Taylor in magazines well into the Aughties. And why Andrea gets her own camera.
Content, or at least some food or gun pictures, to follow.
.
Saturday, May 07, 2016
Look...
Just because H. habilis was several branches back on the family bush doesn't mean we're supposed to stop being handy.
I get not carrying a pistol. It's not for everybody and, if done with any level of seriousness, demands certain commitments and obligations that not everyone wants to undertake, and that's cool. It's still (mostly) a free country.
But how do you go through life without a flashlight and some kind of knife? Our most primitive ancestors carried sharp rocks around with them. Hell, carrying a sharpened rock around in case of future need is basically how we tell where the apes stop and the people start in our fossil family album. If they could have carried a light around without it burning their fingers or going out all the time, you bet they would have.
They make flashlights and knives small enough to accommodate any code, dress or legal, up with which you have to put.
.
.
I get not carrying a pistol. It's not for everybody and, if done with any level of seriousness, demands certain commitments and obligations that not everyone wants to undertake, and that's cool. It's still (mostly) a free country.
But how do you go through life without a flashlight and some kind of knife? Our most primitive ancestors carried sharp rocks around with them. Hell, carrying a sharpened rock around in case of future need is basically how we tell where the apes stop and the people start in our fossil family album. If they could have carried a light around without it burning their fingers or going out all the time, you bet they would have.
They make flashlights and knives small enough to accommodate any code, dress or legal, up with which you have to put.
.
.
Friday, May 06, 2016
Chrono Wednesday Part II...
I brought a box of Speer Lawman 125gr TMJ with me to MCF&G to see what kind of numbers it would put up...
Speer Lawman 125gr TMJAfter the ten-round chrono string, I shot the rest of the box at the steel plates from twenty yards out.
LO: 1231
HI: 1292
AV: 1253
ES: 61.25
SD: 19.97
I did have another failure-to-feed, with the round nosing into the bottom of the feed ramp, like the last range session. It was the third round from a full magazine, number thirteen of the day (#282 of the test). I'll note that the 32 uses the same magazine springs and recoil springs as the 9x19mm Glock 19. I'm beginning to think this is a bad idea.
Anyhow, that makes 319 total rounds fired with three failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126) and two failures to feed (#221, #224, #282). 1,681 rounds left to go.
.
Chrono Wednesday Part I...
The Steyr is waiting on ammo other than my stash of underpowered CCI 115gr Blazer Brass to continue building the round count, but that doesn't mean I can't do any shooting with it. I've got a large stash of partially-full boxes of stuff, and I figured I'd get some numbers off different loadings with the chrono.
I pulled some Sellier & Bellot 124gr FMJ and some Federal Tactical 147gr +P HSTs out of the ammo can to test. Being the cautious sort, I loaded and fired ten rounds of the S&B to make sure I wasn't throwing good money after bad. They seemed to cycle the gun with adequate vigor, and so I set out to shoot a couple strings for the record.
Here are the results I got:
All thirty rounds fired without a hitch. A reader informed me that Steyr had changed the extractors in these, and so that's an issue I'm going to look into given the last range session's FTEs.
This makes 330 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with one failure-to-fire (#8), three failures to extract (#234, #266, #276), and one failure to go completely into battery (#116). 1,670 rounds left to go.
.
Sellier & Bellot 124gr FMJ
LO: 1054
HI: 1092
AV: 1073
ES: 38.46
SD: 11.18
Federal 147gr +P HSTNote that the S&B is traveling the same velocity, roughly, as the lighter 115gr Blazer Brass. It's still fairly mild shooting, being some 70fps slower than various 124gr Fiocchi or Winchester Q4318 "NATO" loads I've tried out of comparable test guns.
LO: 960.4
HI: 993.2
AV: 979.8
ES: 32.79
SD: 12.76
All thirty rounds fired without a hitch. A reader informed me that Steyr had changed the extractors in these, and so that's an issue I'm going to look into given the last range session's FTEs.
This makes 330 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with one failure-to-fire (#8), three failures to extract (#234, #266, #276), and one failure to go completely into battery (#116). 1,670 rounds left to go.
.
Overheard in the Office...
RX: "Apparently there were over thirty attempts on Hitler's life? People say 'Why didn't they just kill the guy?'"
Me: "Yeah, but how many of those were Germans and how many were time travelers?"
Thursday, May 05, 2016
On the one hand and on the other...
(For those unaware of the difference, an "FMJ" or "Full Metal Jacket" round usually has exposed lead on the base of the bullet. "TMJ" is Speer's trade terminology for "Total Metal Jacket"; the lead is entirely enclosed in a copper envelope. This removes a source of airborne lead. I will frequently just refer to these bullets as "FMJ" or "ball" in informal writing or conversation. Aspies and OCD sufferers will just have to deal.)
I'll take a box to MCF&G with a chrono here in the next day or two.
.I've said it before and I'll say it again: The factory Glock sights are like the stock photos that come in picture frames or the cardboard credit cards that come in a new wallet: Just there as a placeholder until you fill the sight notches with the real thing.
Anyhow, that makes 269 total rounds fired with three failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126) and two failures to feed (#221, #224). 1,731 rounds left to go.
.
Weird and disjointed dreams last night...
There was everything from running around shooting bad guys like a champion to walking through this fantastical downtown that was like if Tim Burton was hired to do the plagued streets of NYC in The Division.
Later, I joined Starfleet. Well, a starfleet. There were spaceships.
And then still later we were holed up in this clapped out chipboard sno-cone stand in the middle of post-apocalyptic suburbia, everybody trying to squeeze behind the freezer or the sno-cone machine while some dude on a hilltop across the road took potshots at anything he saw move through the open door.
It sure seemed like longer than seven hours. Dreams are weird.
.
Later, I joined Starfleet. Well, a starfleet. There were spaceships.
And then still later we were holed up in this clapped out chipboard sno-cone stand in the middle of post-apocalyptic suburbia, everybody trying to squeeze behind the freezer or the sno-cone machine while some dude on a hilltop across the road took potshots at anything he saw move through the open door.
It sure seemed like longer than seven hours. Dreams are weird.
.
Wednesday, May 04, 2016
R.I.P. Pat Rogers...
Thank you, Pat. Thanks for all the teaching, the advice, and the kind words. The world's a better place for you having been in it.
"I'll shoot anybody I find in my house!"
Really?
Everybody expects it's going to be nazi zombie bikers come to rape their TV and steal their dogs. Nobody expects it's going to be the developmentally disabled adult child of the previous owners of your house coming "home" to make himself a sandwich. Further, there are places where you might be legally justified in shooting someone but, well, "Hey, it's okay, you didn't know he was a 70-y.o. Alzheimer's patient" probably doesn't help the Ambien work any better at 3:30 in the morning...
EDIT: This ties in with stuff talked about here, too.
.
"As an EMT I have responded to at least one call where a woman called 911 believing she was having a heart attack. We responded to the home and entered it and the husband was standing in the kitchen completely unaware that his wife had called for our services. If he’d been armed and under the premise that he would shoot any stranger who was in his home he would have shot the very people responding to his wife’s call for help."Too many people get a gun and then look at it as some sort of universal problem-solving tool instead of a fairly narrow-focus bullet launcher.
Everybody expects it's going to be nazi zombie bikers come to rape their TV and steal their dogs. Nobody expects it's going to be the developmentally disabled adult child of the previous owners of your house coming "home" to make himself a sandwich. Further, there are places where you might be legally justified in shooting someone but, well, "Hey, it's okay, you didn't know he was a 70-y.o. Alzheimer's patient" probably doesn't help the Ambien work any better at 3:30 in the morning...
EDIT: This ties in with stuff talked about here, too.
.
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote...
April was a heck of a month. I was on the road for eighteen days, total. Flew out to New Hampshire, where I promptly got sick unto death and spent what was supposed to be a productive writing sojourn in secluded Castle Frostbite flat on my back with the creeping death.
I flew home in time to turn around and drive south to catch a ride out to Topeka for a weekend of gun school. Sunday after class, we grabbed dinner and loaded up the truck and headed back east.
It was long about just east of Evansville, in the wee hours of the AM, when I noticed that my blinks were occasionally getting very long. I looked over at Jack Clemons in the driver's seat and asked "Hey, are you cool?"
Jack pondered this with a level of concentration that was visible on his forehead. "No. I think we need to pull over for a nap." And so after a couple hours' shuteye in some restaurant parking lot at 0mygod30, we continued east.
I retrieved the Bimmer at 0800 and headed back west through Louisville rush hour traffic and then north to Indy, with my blinks starting to get long again about the time I hit I-465.
I arrived home staring down a double handful of deadlines for various writing chores and internet scutwork, plus this past weekend was one where Bobbi works the graveyard shift, and then there was the driving her to her mom's doctor's appointment on Monday. I would have slept yesterday away, but yesterday evening was the monthly meeting at MCF&G.
As I sat at the table, Dee, the club vice president, looked over and asked how I was doing. "I'm not even sure what day it is anymore," I replied.
.
I flew home in time to turn around and drive south to catch a ride out to Topeka for a weekend of gun school. Sunday after class, we grabbed dinner and loaded up the truck and headed back east.
It was long about just east of Evansville, in the wee hours of the AM, when I noticed that my blinks were occasionally getting very long. I looked over at Jack Clemons in the driver's seat and asked "Hey, are you cool?"
Jack pondered this with a level of concentration that was visible on his forehead. "No. I think we need to pull over for a nap." And so after a couple hours' shuteye in some restaurant parking lot at 0mygod30, we continued east.
I retrieved the Bimmer at 0800 and headed back west through Louisville rush hour traffic and then north to Indy, with my blinks starting to get long again about the time I hit I-465.
I arrived home staring down a double handful of deadlines for various writing chores and internet scutwork, plus this past weekend was one where Bobbi works the graveyard shift, and then there was the driving her to her mom's doctor's appointment on Monday. I would have slept yesterday away, but yesterday evening was the monthly meeting at MCF&G.
As I sat at the table, Dee, the club vice president, looked over and asked how I was doing. "I'm not even sure what day it is anymore," I replied.
.
Tuesday, May 03, 2016
Foregone Conclusion?
Sitting around the clubhouse after the monthly club meeting at MCF&G, the TV was on FOX59 with the volume off, when everybody noticed the news that Indiana was the state where the Cruz campaign went to die.
.
.
A New Option...
Starting with the July issue, Shooting Illustrated will be an "Official Journal of the NRA". In other words, it will be one of your choices you can receive monthly as a bennie for being an NRA member.
.
"Why the changes? Until now, NRA has not had an Official Journal that exclusively covers guns, gear and the skills necessary for personal protection. We want to ensure this vital segment of our membership has a journal that reflects their interests. Since NRA already has such a publication in Shooting Illustrated, the decision to make it a member magazine was simple."This is cool, because I'm partial to the magazine vis a vis the other choices on the slate, and not just because they publish me. At the risk of sounding like I'm toadying up to editor Ed Friedman, he's very aware of self-defense as a prime driver of new firearms sales, the popularity of the action shooting sports, and generally the whole "Gun Culture 2.0" thing, and the content of the magazine continues to gel in that direction. I'll be changing from America's First Freedom to SI immediately.
.
Anticipation...
But if you went to a 10mm Auto fan club meet, how could you stand out from your fellow gun hipsters? With a 9x25 Dillon barrel, of course. 9x25 Dillon is a 10mm case necked down to take a 9mm bullet. Think of it as .357SIG in a 'roid rage.
I've had plans over the years to convert various guns to 9x25 Dillon: the G29 I used to carry, my stainless Delta Elite...I even sketched out a bubblegum pink STI 2011 carry gun. But it's taken me 'til now to actually pull the trigger and order a conversion barrel for a Glock 20.
I got home from helping Bobbi accompany her mom to a doctor's appointment to find the envelope from Lone Wolf Distributors in the mailbox. Stand by for silliness with chronos and jello blocks...
.
Monday, May 02, 2016
It's okay, honey; they didn't mean you.
As more and more people exploit the special snowflake loophole to drag their livestock with them everywhere, even The New Yorker can't avoid taking notice:
.
"Are you going to ruin it for all of us?” one of my dog-fancying friends asked, when I told her that I was writing this article. I was surprised to learn how many of my acquaintances were the owners of so-called emotional-support animals. They defend the practice by saying that they don’t want to leave their pets home alone, or they don’t want to have to hire dog-walkers, or they don’t want their pets to have to ride in a plane’s cargo hold, or that Europeans gladly accept dogs everywhere. They have tricks to throw skeptics off guard. “People can’t ask about my disability,” one friend told me. “But if I feel that I’m in a situation where I might have a struggle being let in somewhere with my dog, then I come up with a disorder that sounds like a nightmare. I like to be creative. I’ll say I lack a crucial neurotransmitter that prevents me from processing anxiety and that, without the dog, I’m likely to black out and urinate.”Nobody's the villain in their own narrative. As a matter of fact, in our participation ribbon culture, everybody's the star, and the petty rules and signs and placards and flight attendant announcements don't apply to them.
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
