There were no malfunctions of any type to report.
This makes 1130 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 870 rounds to go.
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Sunday, December 03, 2017
Friday Range Day
There were no malfunctions of any type to report.
This makes 1130 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 870 rounds to go.
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Earworm...
A friend was playing the new Tay Sway album while we were on vacation a couple weeks ago and I somehow caught this crazy persistent earworm from it...
Saturday, December 02, 2017
Reliability
I once had a '75 Ford Granada coupe that I was trying to kill. Well, not "kill", per se, but I had resolved to not interfere with its process of dying.
The transmission, a three-speed slushbox, had started slipping dramatically pulling away from stoplights and I just didn't feel like dumping any more money into a high-mileage car that I'd paid a couple hundred dollars for.
When I moved in with a boyfriend back in the early '90s, the car sat, parked and unloved, out front while I drove his spare car. I hadn't changed the Granada's oil or done a lick of maintenance to the thing for probably six months before I parked it.
When I moved out and needed some spare dough, I sold the car to his neighbor across the street for exactly what I had bought it for. I assumed the old guy would need help pushing it into his driveway. Instead, I handed him the key, he hopped in, and that old 250c.i.d. straight six turned right over, caught on the first try, and the car lurched right into its new home with only the normal amount of groaning and clunking.
Thirteen billion miles from Earth is another piece of human machinery of about the same vintage as that '75 Ford. This one is a '77 JPL, and NASA scientists recently wanted to reorient it so the big antenna would point back toward Earth. Unfortunately the maneuvering jets on Voyager 1 have seen a lot of use and are pretty worn out.
They had another option though: V'ger has a set of rockets on its backside called Trajectory Correction Maneuver thrusters. The only problem was that the TCM's hadn't been run in...oh, over thirty times as long as my Granada sat parked in front of my ex's place. Further, as bad as the near south side of Atlanta can be, the environment out past the heliopause is even harsher.
Nevertheless, when they went to start up those hydrazine rocket motors that had sat dormant since I was in middle school, they cranked right up on the first try and the Voyager 1 spacecraft groaned and clunked and lurched right into its new orientation. (Or it would have groaned and clunked if there was atmosphere for sound to travel through and it had a slipping Ford C4 gearbox.)
The transmission, a three-speed slushbox, had started slipping dramatically pulling away from stoplights and I just didn't feel like dumping any more money into a high-mileage car that I'd paid a couple hundred dollars for.
When I moved in with a boyfriend back in the early '90s, the car sat, parked and unloved, out front while I drove his spare car. I hadn't changed the Granada's oil or done a lick of maintenance to the thing for probably six months before I parked it.
When I moved out and needed some spare dough, I sold the car to his neighbor across the street for exactly what I had bought it for. I assumed the old guy would need help pushing it into his driveway. Instead, I handed him the key, he hopped in, and that old 250c.i.d. straight six turned right over, caught on the first try, and the car lurched right into its new home with only the normal amount of groaning and clunking.
Thirteen billion miles from Earth is another piece of human machinery of about the same vintage as that '75 Ford. This one is a '77 JPL, and NASA scientists recently wanted to reorient it so the big antenna would point back toward Earth. Unfortunately the maneuvering jets on Voyager 1 have seen a lot of use and are pretty worn out.
They had another option though: V'ger has a set of rockets on its backside called Trajectory Correction Maneuver thrusters. The only problem was that the TCM's hadn't been run in...oh, over thirty times as long as my Granada sat parked in front of my ex's place. Further, as bad as the near south side of Atlanta can be, the environment out past the heliopause is even harsher.
Nevertheless, when they went to start up those hydrazine rocket motors that had sat dormant since I was in middle school, they cranked right up on the first try and the Voyager 1 spacecraft groaned and clunked and lurched right into its new orientation. (Or it would have groaned and clunked if there was atmosphere for sound to travel through and it had a slipping Ford C4 gearbox.)
I have seen this happen...
“Am I buying the right gun?” freezes up more first-time gun buyers than anything else. They know they don’t know exactly what makes a good first gun, and when faced with dozens and dozens of choices (and probably some really bad advice from gun store clerks), they go into vapor lock, succumb to analysis paralysis and then require extensive hand-holding and guidance in order to make a purchase.Resist the urge for your gun store to try and have every style of every brand in every price range. You can't, anyway.
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Chugging right along...
There were no malfunctions of any kind to report.
This makes 1030 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 970 rounds to go.
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Friday, December 01, 2017
I used to think folding shotgun stocks were cool...
...until I actually started shooting shotguns much.
The O.G Remington 870 top-folders were bad, and the ATI plastic knockoffs are completely dreadful, but making prisoners fire buckshot from gauges equipped with Choate top-folding stocks as an enhanced interrogation technique is specifically prohibited by the Hague Accords.— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) December 1, 2017
Testing, testing, two, three, four...
Back in October, I intended to do the shooting portions of ECQC with my carry gun, a Glock 19 Gen4. In the first string of fire, I remembered just how much of this course was shot from the Two...
You'll see that Craig has a good mechanical index there, with his elbow up, a locked wrist, and his strong-hand thumb flagged along his pectoral muscle. (Sharp-eyed folks who enlarge the picture will notice the bullet impact, the spent case, and the shadow of the spent case on the target.)
When I do that with my Glock 19 carry gun, the muzzle line is...slightly behind the parts of me that are farthest forward. Now, this is not a safety problem as there is rather a lot of horizontal offset, but still, I had a longer-barreled Glock 17 in my range bag and a couple hundred rounds of muzzle blast over the course of two mornings' worth of shooting...
So I swapped over to my Gen2 17.
Now, that 17 hadn't been cleaned in...I'm not opening my spreadsheet to check, but it may be as much as 3,000 rounds. More importantly, it hadn't been lubed probably since I shot it in that Tom Givens class more than a year ago. So the gun was drier than a popcorn fart and pretty dirty, and I was shooting it in the blowing grit on a range in the high desert, in a one-handed hold that I don't practice near as much as I should...
On top of it, I blew off shipping ammunition out to New Mexico, and so the night before class, we hit a seedy gun shop in Albuquerque and I picked up a few hundred rounds: A couple boxes of Estate brand 9mm 115gr FMJ and the balance in Independence 115gr FMJ. I had no idea that, in addition to lousy shotgun ammo, Estate also loaded awful pistol ammo, but they do.
So...combine the gun being drier than a popcorn fart, uncleaned for almost 3000 rounds, blowing New Mexico grit, weaksauce 115gr range ammo, and all that shooting from Two, and I had probably nine or ten FTFs in only 275 rounds.
I held some of the Estate and Independence out from the class to do chrono testing when I got home and, in addition, the Atomic Nerds sent along ten rounds of the 9x19mm Georgia Arms "Canned Heat" remanufactured ammo they'd been shooting, just out of curiosity.
Tuesday morning I took this motley assortment of ammo, along with fifty rounds of Federal Premium 124gr +P HST and a hundred and fifty rounds of Winchester 124gr "NATO" FMJ, down to Marion County Fish & Game to do some chrono testing.
At ten til eleven on a Tuesday, I had the entire facility to myself.
Here are the numbers:
And the factory new stuff I had along for the test? Well, the Winchester Q4318 performed like it usually does.
Finally the Federal Premium 124gr +P HST hollowpoints...
Had to snug the left grip screw down. It hasn't loosened since.
There were no malfunctions of any type to report.
This makes 830 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 1170 rounds to go.
.
When I do that with my Glock 19 carry gun, the muzzle line is...slightly behind the parts of me that are farthest forward. Now, this is not a safety problem as there is rather a lot of horizontal offset, but still, I had a longer-barreled Glock 17 in my range bag and a couple hundred rounds of muzzle blast over the course of two mornings' worth of shooting...
So I swapped over to my Gen2 17.
Now, that 17 hadn't been cleaned in...I'm not opening my spreadsheet to check, but it may be as much as 3,000 rounds. More importantly, it hadn't been lubed probably since I shot it in that Tom Givens class more than a year ago. So the gun was drier than a popcorn fart and pretty dirty, and I was shooting it in the blowing grit on a range in the high desert, in a one-handed hold that I don't practice near as much as I should...
On top of it, I blew off shipping ammunition out to New Mexico, and so the night before class, we hit a seedy gun shop in Albuquerque and I picked up a few hundred rounds: A couple boxes of Estate brand 9mm 115gr FMJ and the balance in Independence 115gr FMJ. I had no idea that, in addition to lousy shotgun ammo, Estate also loaded awful pistol ammo, but they do.
So...combine the gun being drier than a popcorn fart, uncleaned for almost 3000 rounds, blowing New Mexico grit, weaksauce 115gr range ammo, and all that shooting from Two, and I had probably nine or ten FTFs in only 275 rounds.
I held some of the Estate and Independence out from the class to do chrono testing when I got home and, in addition, the Atomic Nerds sent along ten rounds of the 9x19mm Georgia Arms "Canned Heat" remanufactured ammo they'd been shooting, just out of curiosity.
At ten til eleven on a Tuesday, I had the entire facility to myself.
Here are the numbers:
Estate 115gr FMJOn the weak side for 115gr FMJ, but so is most cheap plinking ammo these days...
LO: 1148
HI: 1189
AV: 1174
ES: 40.75
SD: 14.38
Independence 115gr FMJI would have sworn on a stack of bibles that the Independence had more ass behind it than the Estate, but there you go. Both are still pretty marginal. Now let's look at the remaufactured Georgia Arms stuff...
LO: 1127
HI: 1172
AV: 1158
ES: 45.01
SD: 14.14
Georgia Arms 115gr FMJDefinitely hotter, but more erratic than either of the factory new loads. Incidentally, with the rounds sitting nose-down in the "egg carton" cartridge tray in the box, you could tell that bullet seating depth was pretty variable.
LO: 1174
HI: 1237
AV: 1215
ES: 62.94
SD: 17.52
And the factory new stuff I had along for the test? Well, the Winchester Q4318 performed like it usually does.
Winchester 124gr FMJ "NATO"Even more erratic in velocity than the Georgia Arms reloads. I wish I were surprised.
LO: 1135
HI: 1198
AV: 1178
ES: 63.27
SD: 20.73
Finally the Federal Premium 124gr +P HST hollowpoints...
LO: 1213
HI: 1253
AV: 1227
ES: 40.60
SD: 13.67
There were no malfunctions of any type to report.
This makes 830 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 1170 rounds to go.
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Thursday, November 30, 2017
If schadenfreude had calories, I'd weigh 500 lbs.
- "...that odious choad of a prima donna Lauer..."
- "I have a serious loathing for Matt, in case you can't tell. He's practically a caricature of the egotistical monster of a TV celeb... Compared to him, Robert Patrick's character in T2 was a paragon of empathic humanity."
- "...his shallow vacuity and clinical narcissism shine through even on the small screen."
- "...the most entertaining thing I'll likely see on my TV this morning, unless Matt Lauer catches fire or something."
- "Matt Lauer is on my television screen, warbling and emoting..."
- "Mike Bloomberg gave Matt Lauer the tour. I assume the NBC cameraman had to use a special wide-angle lens to get both of their egos in the frame at once."
- "So there was consummate Manhattanite Matt Lauer, hectoring teary Paula Deen on stage. You could see the mixture of contempt and glee on his face: Contempt for this Southern hick who had actually admitted to saying *gasp!* the "n-word" in the past and glee that here was someone he was so obviously Better Than."
- "Matt Lauer is interviewing Bill O'Reilly. That much egotistical douchebaggery is hard to appreciate on the small screen; it deserves Imax."
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
"Tomorrow: yesterday on TODAY!"
First the TODAY show gets saddled with Megyn Kelly, who drags the 0900-1000 slot down, trying to play warm and charming variety talk show host.
I didn't know I could feel sorry for Kathy Lee Gifford, and yet I do, because I can't imagine many people sit all the way through Megyn's forced and awkward hour to get to Kathy Lee and Hoda's 1000-1100.
Now we find that there was a reason I've picked up a creepy vibe from Matt Lauer for all these years. I can't believe the dude was pulling down $25M/yr....as much as the rest of the cast...unless he had pictures of a senior exec doing something unsavory with a barnyard animal.
Given the nature of his work, who his employer is, and the fact that we're talking a contracted salaried employee making eight figures a year, this was not just water cooler rumors and innuendo that got him binned. They didn't move unless the risks of not moving were worse than the risks of firing him. They know what kind of lawyers Lauer can afford.
I didn't know I could feel sorry for Kathy Lee Gifford, and yet I do, because I can't imagine many people sit all the way through Megyn's forced and awkward hour to get to Kathy Lee and Hoda's 1000-1100.
Now we find that there was a reason I've picked up a creepy vibe from Matt Lauer for all these years. I can't believe the dude was pulling down $25M/yr....as much as the rest of the cast...unless he had pictures of a senior exec doing something unsavory with a barnyard animal.
Given the nature of his work, who his employer is, and the fact that we're talking a contracted salaried employee making eight figures a year, this was not just water cooler rumors and innuendo that got him binned. They didn't move unless the risks of not moving were worse than the risks of firing him. They know what kind of lawyers Lauer can afford.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Since I already had the one magazine loaded...
There were no malfunctions of any type to report.
This makes 600 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 1400 rounds to go.
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Wowww! Woauuughh! Woe!
Rannie has been roaming the hall and singing the mouse baby song for over five minutes straight. It's got to burn calories for something that small to make sounds that loud.
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Monday, November 27, 2017
It's time again...
...for my annual Cyber Monday rant, where I ask "How is this even a thing anymore?"
See, twenty years ago, when everybody was on dialup, nobody bought anything online on Black Friday, The Biggest Retail Shopping Day of the Year, because they were all out shopping in meatspace. Even if they'd been at home, they would have had to fight to use the lone dialup connection since the kids were out of school and playing Ultima Online and dad was home from work and patiently waiting to download some porn.
But when you went back to work on Monday, you could screw off at your desk for a couple hours and use that big ol' T1 fat pipe internet connection to get some quality shopping in at boo.com and Pets.com and all the other .coms that are no longer with us except for Amazon.com.
Nowadays you have a broadband internet connection in your pocket and could theoretically be using it to shop while you're standing in line out front of Mart-Mart on Thanksgiving afternoon waiting for those Black Friday door-busters. So why is "Cyber Monday" even still a thing?
That said, here are some of the ads clogging my inbox this morning:
See, twenty years ago, when everybody was on dialup, nobody bought anything online on Black Friday, The Biggest Retail Shopping Day of the Year, because they were all out shopping in meatspace. Even if they'd been at home, they would have had to fight to use the lone dialup connection since the kids were out of school and playing Ultima Online and dad was home from work and patiently waiting to download some porn.
 |
| The reasoning behind "Cyber Monday" was already waning in relevance when this was the new hotness. |
Nowadays you have a broadband internet connection in your pocket and could theoretically be using it to shop while you're standing in line out front of Mart-Mart on Thanksgiving afternoon waiting for those Black Friday door-busters. So why is "Cyber Monday" even still a thing?
That said, here are some of the ads clogging my inbox this morning:
- Sig Sauer has 25% off...well, almost everything, it looks like.
- VZ Grips has 20% off today.
- KEH Camera Brokers has $50 off if you spend $300+, $100 off if you spend $600+, and $200 off if you spend $1000+. Discount code is "CYBER17E".
- Maxpedition has a BOGO sale on all Legacy Series backpacks, bags, and accessories. (I have been using the Fliegerduffel suitcase Shootin' Buddy gave me for years now. Recommend.)
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Falling just short of 500...
I was curious to see how this lot of lightly-loaded TulAmmo would function the gun. This is, after all, the stuff that was having a hard time cycling the P30L.
Shooting at the 3/4 scale IDPA target, the upper -0 area is the TulAmmo at five yards and the lower -0 is a box of Winchester at seven.
There were no malfunctions of any type to report.
This makes 483 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 1517 rounds to go.
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Saturday, November 25, 2017
Four hundred down...
I have only documented this occurring with the magazine I have numbered "3" on the baseplate, but I'll be looking for it in the future.
There were no malfunctions of any type to report.
This makes 400 rounds since the weapon was last cleaned or lubed with no malfunctions of any type. 1600 rounds to go.
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Friday, November 24, 2017
Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #167...
*Which I bought at retail from VZ's web store because I didn't know that Amazon sold them for the same price (and they were Prime-eligible from there! See link above.)
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More Sales...
- Grayguns has stuff on sale through the end of Cyber Monday...
- Maxpedition is running a Black Friday sale, 40% off their AGR gear...
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