On Vacation

Not feeling the urge to post.

Free ice cream to resume at some future date.

This Blog is Twelve

I just realized today that I missed the 12^th blogiversary of TSM.  It was May 14.

See last year's post to understand why.

And Now for Something Completely Different: Gun Pr0n!

Since this is supposed to be a gun blog (albeit lately it hasn't been much of a blog at all), I thought I'd change tack and, you know, post something gun related.

Last week my dad asked me to take a couple of guns that he no longer had need for and that I didn't want, and see what I could get for them.  So I took them to my favorite Merchant O'Death and was very pleasantly surprised at what the shop was willing to give me for them.  While I was there, MOD once again brought me a couple of things out of the "Special" display case, trying to tempt me. This is usually a very bad thing for my wallet. The first thing he showed me was a 6" 3-screw Smith Model 29, a Dirty Harry special - beautifully blued, no lock, hammer-mounted firing pin, in very good condition.  I haven't succumbed to .44 addiction yet, so I was able to resist temptation.

However, when he pulled this one out of the case, I couldn't help myself:


That's an old Clark Custom IPSC Open class Bullseye gun probably from the early late 80's 90's.  (See first comment.)  It would be equally good as a bowling pin gun.  Check this thing out:




Note the Remington 1100 cocking handle in place of the rear iron sight:


And the hand-done stippling on the frontstrap and the Allen screws on the front of the dust cover for adjusting fit of the slide to the frame:


From the wear & tear on the scope mount, this gun has obviously seen a LOT of use:


The first thing I looked at when he handed it to me was the price tag. Let's just say it was WELL under $1k.

It followed me home.  Soon as I get a chance, I'm going to see how it shoots.

Traveling

The week of April 6-10 I'm going to be in Burlington, VT.  I've already dropped Jeff Soyer an email, but if any readers live in that area, I'd be interested in meeting up with you.  My email's over there on the left sidebar.

Computer Bleg

I built the computer I'm writing this on as a Christmas present to myself in 2008.  It's an Intel Socket 1336 i7 920 2.66GHz running XP Professional with 3(only 3!)Gb of memory.  It's got a pair of Western Digital 500Gb SATA hard drives and a Blue-Ray burner.  The video card is a Diamond Radeon 1GB.  Everything is in an ATX case with a 500W power supply.

It's time to upgrade. I want some USB 3.0 ports, audio that works, and (Jeremy Clarkson voice) MOOORE SPEEEED!

What can I get with a $500 budget, especially if I'm willing to re-use the existing hard-disks, Blue-Ray burner and possibly the video card?

I'd like to switch to Windows 7 Professional.  Not all that fond of Windows 8 at the moment.

Oh, I'm running a pair of LG Flatron W1942T monitors that I plan to keep using.

Am I better off shopping for a pre-assembled system?

EDITED TO ADD:  (Emily Latella voice) Never mind.  The system I've got isn't really all that bad even though it's six years old.  I'm just going to upgrade it some with more memory, a newer video card, and eventually Windows 7.

THIS Promises to be Interesting

Just got a new follower over at Quora:

Michael J. McFadden

Author, "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains" & "TobakkoNacht -- The Antismoking Endgame"

Grew up in Brooklyn, lives in Philadelphia. Background in Peace Studies, psychology, physics, basic statistical and propaganda analysis, writing, editing, nonviolence theory/training/organizing, transportation and bicycle activism, social activism in general, conflict resolution/moderation, vocal pest-control (one hour of me singing will clear most houses of all living things), and cultivating cobwebs.

I can see (obviously) massive parallels between the anti-smoking and anti-gun movements, but I have to admit that I wonder if Mr. McFadden has a blind spot when it comes to "non-violence" and guns.

Time will, I suppose, tell.

Challenge Accepted!

OK, more überposting over on Quora.com.  Mr. Jason Lancaster and I have re-engaged.

He opens: 

I know it seems like I pick on you a lot, but your stuff keeps coming up in my feed. :)

And a bit later:

I wonder if you'll share this exchange on Quora with your gun buddies on your blog?

Why yes, I think I will.

Flashback

It's been ten years since I posted this:

As some of you may know, I grew up on Florida's Space Coast. My father was a Quality Control engineer for IBM, working on the Instrument Unit (guidance system) for the Saturn V rocket. I got to see all of the manned missions up through Skylab launch from just across the Indian River, except for Apollo XVII - the only night launch. I watched that one from my front yard in Titusville.

There were two dawns that day.

Consequently, I've been a space exploration enthusiast from a young age. I try to watch all the launches, or at least listen to them on the radio. I remember listening to the launch of the Challenger early in the morning here in Tucson, and thinking - as the station broke for a commercial - "At least this one didn't blow up on the pad."

Morbid, I know, but I'm also an engineer. I wasn't then - I had just graduated from college in December and didn't have a job yet - but that's been my orientation for most of my life. I knew that each manned launch was a roll of the dice, a spin of the cylinder in a big game of Russian Roulette, and that NASA had become just another government bureaucracy. (And I also knew just how close we had come to losing three men in Apollo 13 because a series of small, innocuous errors had cascaded into a catastrophic failure in a system that was almost neurotic in its quest for safety.)

It was just a matter of time.

Still, I was shocked when they came back from commercial to announce that Challenger had been destroyed in a launch accident just minutes after liftoff. I knew that all seven of the astronauts were dead. I knew that the "teacher in space" wasn't going to get there, and that a classroom of students had to be devastated by that realization. Many, many classrooms, but one in particular.

I watched the footage of the liftoff, now splayed in endless grisly loops on every network - all of which had previously declined to show the launch live and interrupt really important stuff like "Good Morning America." I watched as the flame bloomed out from a Solid Rocket Booster joint, impinging on the huge external fuel tank, and said, "That's what killed them. What the hell caused that failure?" I watched the Satan's horns of the SRB exhaust tracks as they trailed up and away from the epicenter of the blast. And then I watched it all again.

Over and over.

Later I discovered that the engineers at Morton Thiokol had tried to get the launch scrubbed, knowing the problems that cold weather caused in the O-ring joint seals of the SRBs, but they had been told to "take off their engineer hats and put on their manager hats" in order to make a launch decision. The launch had been delayed too many times, and President Reagan would be making his State of the Union address that night, with a call to Crista McAuliffe - Teacher in Space.

I decided right then that I didn't ever want to be a goddamned manager.

I also found out later that the crew, at least most of them, probably survived the destruction of the Challenger, and were alive and aware all the way to impact in the Atlantic. I like to hope not, but facts are sometimes ugly things.

And I wondered if NASA could regain the spirit, professionalism, and devotion to excellence it'd had during the race to the moon - and doubted it severely. As I said, NASA has become just another government bureacracy, more interested in expanding its budget and not making waves than in the visceral excitement and attention to minute detail that space exploration should inspire. (I'm speaking of the upper-level management, and many of the lower-level drones. I'm quite certain that there are still hundreds of people there still dedicated to the dream. They're just shackled and smothered by the career bureaucrats and the nine-to-fivers who punch the clock and wait for retirement.)

Anyway, all this is leading to a blog I found while perusing my sitemeter links tonight. GM's Corner, which linked to me last month, has a recurring "new blogs" post. This month's entry is Dr. Sanity, the blog of Dr. Pat Santy - who happened to be the flight surgeon for the Challenger mission. She has a post up about that day, and it's well worth the read: Challenger - A Flight Surgeon Remembers.

Highly recommended.

That link still works.  It's still highly recommended.

OK, Who Ordered the Gale?

I got to the range this morning right at 0700. The gate was open and there was no one else there. It was also still pretty dark. I got my truck unloaded and started setting up my steel when reader Mike C. and his lovely wife E. showed up, followed by reader Brad all the way from Sierra Vista. The wind was blowing hard enough that I didn't bother to put up my regular target stand, but after about 8AM the wind dropped off and it was, while still cool, fairly pleasant.

Mike C. also brought some steel, so with our various firearms (M1 Garand, M1 Carbine, .458 SOCOM AR, PS90 carbine, a .300BK AR and a .300BK Handi-Rifle, various and sundry handguns) we rang steel for a while. Finally the wind dropped off enough that we decided to set up our target stands.

It was a trick.

A bit after 0900, reader DC and a friend showed up, followed by Primeval Papa. And somebody turned on the wind machine. Nothing that wasn't steel remained standing.

That's not to say the firing line wasn't full - it was. There were a lot of hardy people out this morning to throw lead downrange, but by 10AM I was pretty much done. I shot until the next cease-fire, packed up my stuff and was off the range by 11:00.

So, the Central Arizona Blogshoot had seven attendees, two of us actually bloggers.

Sorry, but I don't think anyone took pictures. When we weren't shooting, we were trying to keep our hands warm.

Überpost!

Just not here.

Over at Quora.com a while back, someone posted the question "Why is the National Rifle Association so influential in American politics, and how did it become so?"  I answered.  You can read the whole thing and all the comments, but for the purposes of this post, just scroll down to the comment thread started by one Jason Lancaster.  I'm sure Billll will have something to say about it.

I have to admit, it's been fun.

Central Arizona Blogshoot?

It's become a sort of tradition, at least since 2010.  Here's a short list of Arizona bloggers I know of who are still active.  If there's anyone I should add, let me know.  Want to meet up at the Elsy Pearson Public Range in Casa Grande on Saturday, 1/24 and throw some lead downrange?

Great Satan Inc.

Exurban League

Sandcastle Scrolls

Empty Mags

Eric Shelton

Cowboy Blob

Desert Rat

Moonbattery

Vox

Nine Pound Sledgehammer

Primeval Papa

flat5.net 

Cap'n Bob and the Damsel

Of Arms and the Law

Void Where Prohibited

That's fifteen.  Remember, they don't all have to be gun bloggers, just bloggers who might be interested in going to a shoot. And you don't have to be a blogger, either, just a reader.

So who wants to go shooting?

The 2014 TSM Year in Review

And this may be the last one of these.

Posting in 2014 was the lightest ever.  In 2003 when I started this thing, 697 posts, and I didn't get started until MAY.  Highest year ever, 2008, 818 posts.  2014, just 223.  (Ha!  223.  I see what I did there....)

I have to say, after eleven years of blogging, the Blogger interface is much, much better, its reliability is excellent, and it's still free.  Not bad.  But like most things in the modern world, culture is passing blogging by.

So, The Year In Review.  January had 22 posts.  I still like this one best.  We had a Central Arizona Blog Shoot the first weekend in January, but now that The Other Kevin has moved to parts East, looks like I'll need to set this year's up myself, unless someone volunteers.  Longtime reader and outstanding commenter GOF lost his home to a fire and his mother to illness.  And in the comments to this post, reader Matt set him up with a new (to him) computer.

I'll keep saying it:  I have the best damned readers in the world, and I'm honored that you spend your time here.  Thank you.  (Especially you, John Hardin, for recovering lost comment threads!)

February also saw 22 posts.  I bought my first firearm of the year, a Mossberg 930 JM Pro.  To be completely honest, I still haven't put a single round down the barrel.  In the best post of the month, I put up Bill Whittle's Afterburner entitled "The Unmarked Matt-Gray Crown Vic."  It pretty much anticipates events of later in the year, and it inspired commentary you might want to look back at.

March brought only 17 posts.  Not a lot to choose from.  I was spending a lot of time over at Quora.com - a target-rich environment.  I put up a couple of cross-posts and if you really want to read them, the archive is over there on the left sidebar near the bottom. I did do one überpost that month, R·S·P·E·C·T for and the Rule of Law, in part inspired by that Bill Whittle piece from February. That one drew some excellent commentary and a few links.

April?  Eleven posts.   Lots of time spent over at Quora, so most of April's content is cross-posts from there.  And I got stalked by Markaphasia who just seems fixated on me, my readers and this blog.  If I had to pick a best post from the month, it would have to be I Got Called RACIST™ Again!

May, the anniversary month for this blog, generated fourteen posts, one of which was The Secret to Happiness wherein I announced my semi-retirement from blogging.  To wit:

I'm not completely hanging it up here. I'll still post from time to time - mostly in the near future I suspect about the upcoming Rendezvous - but I doubt seriously that there will be any more überposts.

I'm convinced I made the right decision.  I have spent more time with my wife. I've read a BUNCH of books.  I've fixed a couple of things around the house but have lots more that needs work.  I've not made it to the range anywhere near as much as I'd like (see February).  My mom's still with us, but not doing well at the moment and now Dad is having some issues with his heart.  I helped Mr. Completely organize the 9th Annual Gun Blogger Rendezvous (which may have been the last one, no thanks to me.) 

June brought 21 posts, so I obviously didn't retire immediately.  As previously mentioned, I DID read a lot more - the entire Dresden Files collection in 15 days.  Highly recommended.  Helps explain the mere 14 posts in May.  Presidential candidate shoo-in Hillary Clinton opened her mouth, and I had something to say about it.  Remember her words when she starts campaigning for real in a couple of months.  One thing I've noticed about this year is that I've promoted a LOT of Bill Whittle's work in lieu of writing something myself.  Four of those 21 posts are his videos.

In July the post count edged up to 25.  I was still playing over at Quora, which gave me the Quote of the Month.  Savor that one.  My parents (mentioned above) celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.  Still a fine looking couple, though mom's short a head of hair these days.  Lots of Bill Whittle content, some good QotDs, and I started hawking the Rendezvous.

August saw another bump in the post count to 30, with a lot of Whittle content.  The Quote of the Month was another example of why I'm so bummed out that the GeekWithA.45 stopped blogging.  Robin Williams took his last bows in August, and spurred a lot of discussion over whether people should be able to end their own lives when they decide they've had enough.  There was also a lot of retrospection over Robin's career, and I was struck by an excerpt from a speech he gave in the 1996 film Jack.  Give that a read, if you haven't already.

Reader GOF (remember GOF, the guy whose house burned down and one of my readers got him a new computer?) used his new computer to excellent effect in the aftermath of the Ferguson MO debacle.  Can I get an "AMEN!"?

September brought the Rendezvous and fourteen posts.  Wait, what?  Perhaps I was shocked to inactivity by the threat of Tam hanging up her Empress of Snark crown.  The cat my wife and I ended up with when her daughter moved out passed after almost twenty years.  Still miss that furball.  At least he waited until I was home.

October saw posting dwindle back to eleven pieces, and Bill Whittle represented three of them.  One of those was about the film Fury, and I posted an email from my favorite Merchant O'Death in that piece.  Finally, more than eighteen months after I ordered it, my 8# jug of Unique came in. 

November brought us another election and I generated a whopping 15 posts (Bill Whittle starring in five of them).  My wife and I went to the Tucson ComiCon where I apparently contracted Ebola, and some dimwitted SOB hit my Mustang in the parking lot, causing $2k worth of damage.  The big news was that some undocumented journalist went through a lot of footage and found Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber talking about the stupidity of the American voter.  I don't believe that to this day ABCNNBCBS has given this story more than about ten minutes, tops, but it made the rounds of the internets.  And I wrote a short follow-on to March's überpost that drew some comments.

And, finally, December.  Twenty-one posts for a grand total of 223 for the year.  Quote of the Month goes to Non Sequitur of the Day.  Read that again and savor the crazy. 

And that's all I've got for you.  Hope your New Year's Eve was everything you hoped it would be, and that 2015 is better than last year.

Try Again. Or Rather, Don't.

I received this via email:

Good afternoon,

My name is Brooks Clifford, I’m part of the online marketing team at http://nationalcarryacademy.com/ We provide classes, training and information to certify over 15,000 citizens with their conceal to carry permit each year. The reason I’m e-mailing you today is that we did some research and found you to be a highly regarded criminal defense attorney.

We wanted to ask if you would be interested in providing insight to our readers in the form of a blog once a quarter and in return we are happy to provide you a backlink to your website and add you to our “Additional Resource” page for clients in your state.

The benefits of having you guest blog for our website include: building high quality links back to your own website, increase visibility to your website, and building an audience through a new channel. We’re looking for fresh faces to write with our team to help build new perspectives as well as provide different point of views on a variety of topics related self defense and firearms law.

While we have a long list of topics to cover ourselves, we’d be more than open to any ideas you’d have on your own. Please contact me at [email protected] if you'd be interested in working together. I look forward to hearing back.

Best,

Brooks Clifford
CMO National Carry Academy

(Bold emphasis mine.)  I think they need to restaff their research department.

Dealing with Loss

I posted about a week ago that Boo, my 19 year-old cat died.  Nineteen years is a long time to share with another creature, and loss is painful.  If you've ever had pets, you've almost certainly gone through it.

Another blogger lost her best buddy not too long ago.  Brigid lost her black Lab, Barkley back in February after almost eleven years.

Each of us deals with loss in different ways.  I've been blogging for a bit more than eleven years now, but I'm a good technical writer.  Anything other than posting an announcement of his passing is pretty much beyond me.

I've been reading Brigid since she started blogging.  To deal with her loss, she wrote The Book of Barkley, and it is everything she is online and more.  It is the story of  her life and the portion she shared with Barkley.  Brigid is an artist.  Words are her medium.  She paints with them - still lifes, landscapes, and sweeping frescoes of words.  Some are dark, some are cheerful, some are funny and some are startlingly beautiful and poignant.

She has used the proceeds from the sales of her book to help other bloggers, donate to Lab Rescue, and help out her dad who is 94 and in poor health.  Want a good book?  Pick it up on Amazon or wherever good books are sold online.

Damn...

I saw some of this on Facebook, but Bayou Renaissance Man has a post up about the saddest thing there is, I think: the death of a child. Please, go read. And if you can, please chip in a little to help with their medical costs.

GBR IX - After Action Report

Yeah, I know, I'm really late on this one but I have a (mostly) valid excuse.  Immediately upon return to Arizona, I went back to work and busted a** for the next nine days in a row.  THEN I got four days off.  Sorry, but I didn't touch the blog the last four days.

So!  Gun Blogger Rendezvous #9 is in the record books, and as they go, this was a pretty good one.  Attendance was down this year.  A lot of regulars couldn't make it for economic or work- or school-related reasons, but we did have appearances by former attendees who hadn't made one in a year or six.  The former DirtCrashr who now resides at Not Clauswitz made an appearance, though his wife declined to come at the last minute.  The not-blogging-much Conservative UAW Guy (and now partner in a gun shop) came and brought his lovely better-half.  Namer of the Blogosphere Bill Quick of Daily Pundit put in a repeat appearance, as did Billll of Billll's Idle Mind.  Engineering Johnson, who contributed a refurbished Model 74 Winchester rifle and a custom holster for the Ruger Mk III Hunter also repeated.  Unfortunately, his dad True Blue Sam couldn't join him this year.  Mr. Completely and KeeWee, our hosts rounded out the bloggers who came, at least those whose names I got. 

This year we had a lot of local attendance, with a repeat by the Wilson family and friends, who somehow managed to take home most of the top prizes (including three of the four guns given away.)  And we had a repeat appearance by local manufacturer and Special Occupational Taxpayer Richard Brengman of Special Interest Arms, and his distributor Brian Borg of SilentCarbine.com who brought an assortment of suppressed firearms and a squirt-gun to play with to the Friday range trip followed by the Friday night Show-n-Tell.

I kinda lust after one of their De Lisle carbines.  As Billll said about one of his other suppressed weapons, I've handled office staplers that were louder.  I just need to win the lottery....

Breakfast on Friday was supplied by the National Rifle Association, and their representative spoke to us about current strategy and concerns.  They're quite concerned about Bloomberg and his personal fortune.  The NRA isn't throwing a lot of money at Washington state's I-594 initiative - at least not what Bloomberg's throwing.  Her argument, condensed, is that the NRA has a more limited war chest and must fight on a broad front.  Bloomie can pick and choose, and throw as much money as he wants at something, not that doing so will guarantee him a "win" (see Wisconsin Sheriff David Clarke's victory in the face of $150,000 of Bloomberg's money - more than both candidates spent in total.)  Still, gun-rights supporters in Washington are not pleased by the NRA's apparent lack of involvement, and the organization was so informed.

As is traditional, we held the raffle on Saturday evening, and we raised, even with light attendance, right at $4,000 for Honored American Veterans Afield.  I'd like to thank the manufacturers and their reps, distributors and retailers who contributed to the Rendezvous so that we could raise that money:

• Ken Jorgensen of Ruger - for the Mk III Hunter
• MKS Supply for their nine years of support and the .45 Carbine they donated this year, plus shirts and hats.
• Osage County Guns and Kevin Creighton for the Sig 1911-22 they donated.  This was their first year.
• Lori Yunker of Burris Optics for the AR-F³ sight they donated.
• Allen Forkner of Swanson Russell and Redfield for the Battlezone 6-18x44mm scope they donated.
• Eric Harvey of Dillon Precision for providing one of their "Ammo-shift" bags.
• Larry Weeks of Brownell's for providing once again one of their top-of-the-line range bags and five tactical flashlights.  Brownell's, too, has been a sponsor from year one.
• Crimson Trace for a pair of laser sights for Glock pistols.
• Cabela's for the donation of a rod-n-reel, shirts and hats.
• Tom Tayor of Mossberg for the donation of T-shirts, tactical pens and a very nice Schrade lockback knife.
• Bear Bullets for the donation of a tub-o'-.22 ammo. (A Remington Bucket O' Bullets - 1400 rounds worth!)
• WGM Tactical Precision for the donation of a stripped AR lower (which I guess qualifies as the FIFTH firearm given away), and a lifetime membership to Front Sight
• Front Sight itself for a certificate good for a four-day training course, or two two-day classes.
• Special Interest Arms for the donation of scope mounts for a No. 1 Mk III and a No. 4 Enfield
• Engineering Johnson for the Winchester Model 74 and the beautiful hand-tooled holster for the Ruger.

I also want to thank the folks at U.S. Firearms Academy for graciously acting as our shipping receiver, the fine folks at the Washoe County Regional Shooting Facility for the reserved range space on Friday and the Western Nevada Pistol League for use of their shooting bays and steel on Saturday, and finally the folks at MiScenarios for the interactive digital range time on Sunday. That was worth hanging around for, and the better part of a dozen of us showed up to try it.

Once again, thanks to the National Shooting Sports Foundation for their sponsorship (they bought our pizza Saturday night).

If I missed anyone, please let me know and I'll be sure to include you.

And yes, I ended my eight-year drought by winning... the Hi-Point.

I think I'll steam-punk it.

There are Days...

...when I wonder why I gave up the advantages of a beige cloth-covered box in a comfortable air-conditioned building.

Today was one of those days.

At least it wasn't 106°F.

Quick GBR Update

It must be clean living, but I missed almost all of the bad weather between Las Vegas and Tucson.  After the indoor digital simulation training at MiScenarios on Sunday, I dropped Mr. Completely and KeeWee off at the Silver Legacy and headed South for Las Vegas a bit after 13:30.  I rolled into Las Vegas about 20:30, grabbed something to eat at Vamp'd (Not bad!  I've paid a lot more for a steak nowhere near as good - two thumbs up), and then drove on to Henderson to get a room for the night.  I got drizzled on just a tiny bit rolling into Vegas, but the clouds did look threatening.

I pulled out of Henderson this morning at 08:30 and hit Phoenix about 12:00.  The only rain I drove through was between Kingman and Wikieup, and it wasn't that bad.  Apparently Phoenix got slammed this morning, but by the time I rolled in it was over.  I-10 West was closed West of the I-17 exchange, but I was headed East, so that wasn't a problem.  I had to stop by my company's main office and pick up some stuff, and I had to drop off Capitalist Pig's and Ms. Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's rifles that I transported for them, rather than them having to deal with the TSA.

Tucson, in the mean time, was getting hammered.  All gone by the time I got home.  I rolled into my driveway at about 15:30.  I'm wiped out.  And I have to be on the road tomorrow at oh-my-god:30 for three to four days of onsite service work at a mine 200 miles away.

Blogging will be light for the next couple of days, but there WILL be an After-Action Report from the Rendezvous!

At the Rendezvous!

Hit the hotel parking lot yesterday at just after 6PM, got checked in and went in search of dinner. Per the schedule, those arriving early departed for the El Dorado Buffet at 6:15, so I managed to join them just after 6:30. Pretty good crowd for Wednesday! Eleven of us, in total. Got refueled, and then a few of us went to the Hospitality room where we shot the breeze until about 11PM.

Today we have breakfast together, and then at 2PM a tour of Scheel's. I'm taking my camera. This place is HUGE.

The rest of the day will be occupied as each attendee prefers - gambling, touristing, sitting around the Hospitality room beating gums and drinking adult beverages, etc. Dinner is at 6PM, then back to the Hospitality room to close out the night.

Don't you wish you were here?

Critical Snark Shortage!!

Tam has (temporarily or permanently) hung it up due to an ongoing problem with a cyberstalker.

Dammit.

I just hope she keeps snarking on the Book of Face.