Outsourcing...

If you outsource quality control to the end user, just think how much money you can save!

The Winchester white box 9mm round above brought an HK P30L to a screeching halt.

Further, that lip on the bullet's heel, which is what caused the case to look like that, meant the bullet was wedged snugly enough in the chamber that when the firer attempted to clear the malfunction, the bullet stayed in the chamber and only the case was extracted. The powder was dumped into the magazine. This would have been a fight-ending malfunction.

Grousing...

The collarbone is still all jacked up. I guess you just don't knit up as fast at fifty as you do at thirty. (Funnily enough, I remember complaining after my big motorcycle wreck eighteen years ago that I wasn't bouncing back as fast as I did when I was twenty.)

Putting on a tee shirt involves laboriously threading it over the bad wing all the way up to the shoulder, poking my head in, and then wriggling the other arm up and in. It's an awkward process.

Another thing I noticed is that I apparently habitually put open-front shirts and jackets on with my right arm first. For the first month and a half, when I was religiously wearing the sling, this was no problem, since I'd thread my right arm into the sleeve of my gun burkha and then shrug it over my left. Now, though, nearly every time I put the shirt on, I reflexively put it on the wrong arm first, then have to take it off and start over.

Were I a profounder person, I'd insert something here about "training scars".
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Oof.

Statistically speaking, you already know the person you're most likely going to need to pepper spray.

Consistency, how does it work?

“I’m desperately trying to ensure that the president can engage in the prior restraint of online information—specifically so that people can’t make weapons at home.”
“I see. What do you call yourself?”
“The Resistance.”

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 31, 2018

So, you think that there's a bumbling madman in the White House who is Literally Hitler, and that the military is made up of reactionary goons who swear fealty to this guy, and the police of the nation are engaged in a coordinated conspiracy to straight-up murder oppressed minorities...and also those are the only people who should have guns.

Your worldview is wack.
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Sad but true.

So, if you go to any public range, you can see the marks from bullet impacts all over the place downrange. Some of the target carriers will be dinged. The tiles covering the ceiling baffles will have holes. There'll be divots in the floor and walls.

The vast majority of this is because most people just can't shoot worth a damn, but some of it is for a different reason.

It turns out that some folks...usually people who just come in to rent a gun, but sometimes even people who you'd think would know better...think that it's like a BB gun shooting gallery: that anything downrange is fair game to be shot at. They'll get bored with missing their target and deliberately shoot at the wall or floor or whatever until yelled at by range staff. Some people's kids, I swear.

Look, pretty much all that stuff downrange is, of necessity, bullet-resistant to a greater or lesser degree, but the only part of the whole ensemble that's actually designed to be shot is the backstop. Try and ensure all of your bullets land there, okay?

Also, although it pains me to have to point it out, there's a Rule Four angle here, too. Y'all remember Rule Four, right? "Be sure of your target and what is beyond it"? This means that if you're five foot one and you hang a B27 target at five yards and try and shoot it in the noggin, your bullet is going to impact the range ceiling just a few yards behind it. Similarly, almost anybody trying to shoot a Casino Drill on a standard target is going to wind up skipping bullets off the floor.

There's a reason that in a class like this on an indoor range, all the shooting is done with the targets right in front of the backstop.

So please, when using a public indoor range, be mindful of where your bullets will impact after passing through the target. This helps keep maintenance costs down and keeps the place from looking like hammered crap.

Return of the Swamp Thing

#JeffSessions is going to make sure Muslim cabbies don't have to pick up haram drunk passengers anymore! #ReligiousLibertyTaskForce https://t.co/YwKLa3tm2s

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) July 30, 2018

Ouch...

The way my shoulder feels right now, I kind wish home X-ray machines were a thing.

I suppose it's just a front moving through, but...ow.
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Good TV...

Seasons 1-8 of House are free to watch with Amazon Prime video at the moment. I'd forgotten just what a great show that was...
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Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #169...

Supersonic .300BLK loads from Sig Sauer and Hornady. In the background is a Sig Rattler with a Surefire M600df Scout light on it.
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Dunning-Kruger is a hell of a drug.

“In December 2015, Chad Myers and his wife Shawndalyn set out to solve a problem: They both wanted to carry concealed handguns, but many of the holsters designed to hold the guns were notoriously unreliable. Typically hooked to a waistband with a clip, they can fall off and fall down your pants, Chad noted.” 

 In other words:

“I just started carrying a gun and basically don’t know anything about it, but I have this genius idea for a product that none of the millions of others who have been doing this for generations have yet considered.” 

 This holster is the love child of naivety and arrogance of truly Olympian proportions. Nearly every crappy CCW gimmick, from Lethal Lace to the Handgun Sling, has this same stupid-ass origin story.

I know several folks with successful startups producing useful things, and that's because they got out into wider world and, via lots of training and/or competition, identified an actual void in the market and moved to fill it.
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A Farewell to Carbs...

Well, while I was all jacked up with my arm in a sling, I figured I'd make the experience a little more tolerable by allowing myself to enjoy some of the things that I'd missed most on my new diet. So allowed myself to have some IPA, an order of fries here and there, the occasional hot dog bun...

Also, I didn't pay much attention to my calorie intake. Well, that's not accurate, actually. I still recorded everything I ate, but didn't care if I blew over the calorie limit every day.

Yesterday was my first day out and about without wearing the sling, since I wasn't planning on going anyplace crowded where my shoulder was likely to be jostled. (I might have overdone that a bit, 'cause my clavicle was hurting by nightfall...)

Anyway, since I'm gradually working my way back to light duty, I figured it was time to step on the scale and see how much damage I'd done, between lack of physical activity and indulging my every dietary whim. Fourteen pounds in two months and a week.

No worries. That's still twenty-six pounds lighter than I was this time last year.

Back to work, then.
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QotD: Your Eyeballs are the Merchandise Edition...

"The media is in the business of selling your attention and will do nearly anything to get it." -Roberta X.

You know the drill. Go and RTWT.
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Not exactly "pain-free", but...

I haven't had any Ibuprofen since yesterday morning but, absent my shoulder getting jostled, the pain is down to a manageable level.

I'm sure my liver and kidneys will be glad of this news.
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Context matters.

This morning my tranquilo was yet again interrupted by someone sending me a link to yet another goofy gun accessory designed for "close combat" that was demonstrated by its inventor engaging in said "close combat" with an armless rubber dummy.

In the middle of this demonstration, dude did a slidelock load of his pistol and then fired finishing shots into the dummy's head. He did that reload standing there in arm's reach of the dummy. Well, it would have been arm's reach if the dummy had arms, but you get my drift.

I guess that's a valid technique if you get in a lot of fights with armless rubber dummies, but it's a little silly to expect someone's just going to stand there and let you reload a gun right up in their grill.

There's a reason I prefer stuff that's been proven to work against people who are trying their best to stop it from working. You need to pressure-test stuff against a resisting opponent, or it's all so much theoretical range ballet.

Tab Clearing...

• Generational LOL: The flawed theory of war.


• I bet this guy was fun at parties.


• Stirring Angst for Fun and Profit


• The Estonian Resistance.

Morning Routine...

So, every morning for the past couple months I've been toddling into the kitchen with a little salsa bowl, into which I deposit:

• One "old lady" formula multivitamin
• Two glucosamine chondroitin horse pills
• Three calcium citrate horse pills, and
• Three ibuprofen

That's enough calcium, glucosamine, and vitamin D that I should have fabricated a complete second skeleton at this point.
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Writing Problems

The problem with having a bunch of writer friends is that we've all heard the same piece of advice a blue jillion times, and in turn we dispense it almost reflexively:

"I'm having difficulty writing right now." 

"Well, you know the solution to that! Apply ass to chair in front of the keyboard and just write."

Yes. I know how to write, thanks. The problem is that I seem to be experiencing difficulty doing it at the moment.

This is the equivalent of being told, when you're having difficulty walking, to:

"Just put one foot in front of the other!" 

"Thanks. I'm familiar with the mechanics of walking, yes. I've been doing it since an early age, but what I'm trying to say is that I appear to be having difficulty doing it right now."

And what chaps my ass is that the writing I do is the easiest, lowest, meanest sort. I don't need to come up with plots or characters or even story ideas. I don't need to have 80,000 words on an editor's desk in three months.

I write short little non-fiction columns and articles on dry technical matters, and I write them on request, rather than on speculation. All I need to do is spit out my opinion on the requested topic when my string is pulled, and I seem to be experiencing great difficulty doing that at the moment.

This is where some writer friend chimes in with "There's nothing special or creative about writing. It's just a job and you do it like any other job."

Hey, people find themselves unable to deal with their job...face burnout...all the frickin' time. I know people from accountants to auto mechanics to dentists who found themselves unable to deal with the thought of one more stuck spark plug or nasty cavity.

I don't think I'm burned out on writing, but it's like there's a magic force field around the MS Word icon on my desktop that manages to deflect my cursor someplace else, like Safari or Lightroom*, every time I get near it.

I'll bust out of this like I have every time before, but dammit, if you can't vent whinily on your own blog, where can you vent?


*And yes, before someone suggests it, my work computer doesn't even have games on it. I have a Mac mini desktop that only has MS Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, and whatever bloatware came with this version of OS X. The games are on a Dell laptop that doesn't get booted up before 6PM.

Saturday Morning Rambling

So I'm actually watching a golf...tournament? match? game?...whatever, and finding it moderately interesting. Not a sport I've ever had the faintest urge to try, but there's obviously a ton of technique involved.

What I'm really paying attention to are the photographers, both the pros and among the spectators. What kind of clod holds an iPad up to take pictures in the throng around a green? The people behind you want to see Tiger putt, too, jerk.

More than one pro running a Nikon or Canon with big glass on a monopod has a Sony a6xxx slung around their neck that they occasionally grab one-handed shots with. That's interesting.

This led to a discussion on Facebook about sports photography, which bears some relation to the photography I like the most.

Kevin from Misfires And Light Strikes described the setup for shooting basketball games back in the days of film. That had to be some challenging work.

Photographing shooters on an outdoor range in daylight isn't terribly technically challenging, but indoor sports is something that's near impossible to do without equipment selected for the task.

Indoor sports photography with your typical f/3.5-5.6 "all-in-one" vacation zoom is an exercise in frustration. I once filled up a couple cards of awful, blurry crap for lack of the right lens, as well as zero experience in shooting that sort of action. I learned some things that didn't work, though, and am itching to try again.

Prime Day purchase arrived...

SureFire had sent an M600 DF Scout Light writer's sample for testing. Having used it already in the shoothouse as well as regular house-type houses in Alliance, OH, I have a pretty good idea how it's going to work...

Tactical Mom Jeans

But I also knew that there was one accessory that made a ton of difference in comfort, given my preferred light placement: The 45-degree offset mount. I ordered one from Amazon on Prime Day and it showed up on the porch day before yesterday.

You can see the offset mount better in this embiggenable picture of one of the other attendees.

Now I just have to switch the mounts out on the light and throw it on the house carbine.
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That Sinking Feeling

This July Fourth, in the middle of downtown Indianapolis, a century-old brick sewer line collapsed, opening a sinkhole in the middle of the intersection of Ohio and Pennsylvania. The busy intersection was closed for a week while repairs were made, further snarling traffic downtown, which was already bad from having I-65 through the heart of downtown closed for a month for bridge repairs.

With that sinkhole repair only a week or so in the rearview, a crater opened last night beneath the intersection of Illinois and Maryland, right in front of Circle Center Mall, and just in time for thousands of people to arrive downtown for Summer Celebration.

The intersection of Illinois & Maryland. The impending sinkhole would be in the lower left corner of the photo.

Marion County's Republican party is seizing the issue and making waves:

"This is not what we want them to see," said Senator Jim Merritt, the head of the Marion County Republican Party. 

 Merritt believes it's time to take stock of the city's infrastructure and is calling for a public audit.

While the Unigov combination of Indianapolis city and Marion county makes the local government not quite the Democrat shoo-in of most big cities, the Republicans are still definite political underdogs. However, they got a mayor in office for two terms back in 2007 on the platform of plowing side streets clear of snow in the winter.

Current Democrat mayor Joe Hogwarts is having a rocky first term, with collapsing streets, thousands of massive, un-filled potholes, and what looks to be a third consecutive year of record homicides. If the GOP can scare up a candidate with more charisma than a dead tuna, next year's elections are likely theirs to lose.
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