Gon' Fishin'

Gonna be out of pocket for a bit.  Set up some simple-azz blogpost that I find interesting, per usual.  More later.

Well that settles it.

If Mitt Romey is for it, there must be something HORRIBLE about voting by mail, and I'm agin it.

Jeff Cooper Hearesy!

Naw, this guy pretty much has his number.  

Yes, Cooper contributed immensely to the knowledge base.  Yes, his study of the issue was constant.  Yes he did adapt when a new method proved more effective.

But he was also a curmudgeonly old codger set in his ways, and this was all obvious after only a brief exposure to his writings.

I didn't get into reading his stuff until this blog started in 2007, just after he died, but I knew all the negatives from the jump.  It was obvious.  He did become the default though.  I took his advice, and acted on it, until I learned better.  All knowing that I might very well learn better in the far, or near, future.

"Eschew .223 ARs and plastic 9mm's?  Gravitate toward steel 1911s and .308 rifles?  Can do, until I am more seasoned."

It's not like it is wrong-wrong to take Cooper's advice to heart.  It's not even wrong, singular.  It is a good starting point, especially when there were no other giants with a huge body of comparable published work to take guidance from.  Plus he is entertaining.

"So you are all about the plastic 9mm now, and 1911s are yesterdays news, T-Bolt?"

No.  I still like 1911s.  But I use, and have trained with to much higher proficiency than 10 years ago, both.  And enjoy both.  In a zombocalypse, when I wake up from a coma in an abandoned hospital, and someone hands me a 1911, I say "Cool!"  If instead they hand me a Glock 17, what do I say?  "Cool!"     

July 30

Indianapolis.


Doll's eyes.

Miami Shootout

I didn't know there were clips on YouTube for In the Line of Duty, 1988.  Not to be confused with In the Line of Fire  1993.



I feel like I would have seen this, back then.  I would have been in military school, and the TV lounge was a handy diversion from the day to day.  But I have no memory of this show on NBC.  Prolly watching Star Trek; The Next Generation, instead. 

Alex Keaton's Dad playing a gun enthusiast two years before Tremors.  Heh.  Glad you went from crook to survivalist Burt, Gummer.

It's a 1988 dramatization, made for TV.  And they seems to try adhere to actual events as much as one can be hope for from a movie of that vintage.  You know.  Post Miami Vice.  Some glaring factual exaggerationa, yes.  And some eye-rollingly so.  But the arc seems to at least be trying to adhere to actual facts.

The shootout seems crowded.  But there were two perpetrators and 10 FBI guys.  That's a lotta players to keep track of during the action scene.

Heinlein Tried to Tell Me

"An armed society is a polite society."

That may yet be true.  But I predict there is gonna be a lotta goat ropes while everyone learns their manners and etiquettes the hard way.  Until we get there.

Don't be rambunctious while you OC.  Even if you think you are doing the Lord's work and your part to usher in the Marxist Utopia by blocking trafffic willy nilly.  Perhaps take that as a safety tip.  Heck it says that on the tin. "An armed society is a polite society."

Now this just bugs me

Don't drink this version of Everclear, the denature will inhume you:

but,

That price difference bugs me.  55 buck for a gallon, and for 1/11th of that more, $60, you can get 4 liters.

But a gallon is 128 ounces,  so four liters in opunces, based on the price difference, should be...  139.6?  Nope.  135.25ish.

You are being cheated out of a gill.  Buy Imperial.  ANSI.  Whatever.

And this is a lab supply place.  People buying this stuff are often lab type people.  Smart chemistry and math types that can do the conversions in their head.

Hand Saniboozer?

A commenter mentions a possible substitute for the lack of hand sanitizer:

"Everclear is available, and smells better than most other alcohols. Kind of hard to beat 75% (150 proof) alcohol."

Everclear is available in some places.  But like 11 round magazines you can't buy it in Maryland.  And the prohibition of both was done at about the same time.  And before you go on about how my state suck (tho it does):

"The sale of the substance is also banned in the District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, meaning the next closest place Needham can purchase Everclear is in Delaware."

And here you thought Prohibition ended in 1933...

I have to check on the veracity of this, but, Maryland banned 190 proof booze.  What if 189 proof booze was made?  Maybe I spoke too soon. 

That's a MIGHTY list

Of companies hostile to our rights

Lotta work in that

I dunno if I can avoid them all, but I do what I can.

Some companies I do business with because I am more of a drain on them than a positive.  Bank of America.  They move my money around, but I don't pay them fees or interest on loads or nuffin.  They get a tiny bit from whatever slice of interest they keep on the balance in my account.  But it's just checking.   A bill paying device.  I ditched their credit cards and home loans in the W administration. 

A whole lot of this list is stuff I wasn't patronizing anyway.  I'm not getting a Pepsi at the KFC these days.  So, I adhere to most of this without even trying.  Burger King is straight trash.  Gateway Computers is STILL AROUND?

But it's harder for me to avoid Comcast, Microsoft, and Paypal.

I wonder how China

Exports a Three Gorges disaster like they did the China-Rona?

the (potential) situation with the Three Gorges Dam reminds me of Covid in January. a handful of fringe accounts on here talking about it and silence everywhere else. note: it's still unclear how bad the situation is but it seems serious

— so-called nic carter (@nic__carter) July 20, 2020

Oh and what if Three Gorges goes

And it floods the whole lower Yangtze Valley?

Well, what is made in that Valley that is exported here?  What will all those surviving distressed and displaced Chinese need and will no longer be able to supply for themselves?

Well, Wuhan is there.  I guess we'll have to make our Pandemic virus next time if that dam bursts,  But there is also a lot of pharmaceutical companies there.  Nanking and Shanghai, further down river.  More pharmaceuticals, electronics, steel, chemicals, machine manufacture, and a lot of trade facilities linking China to the world.

So buy food and medicine.  More, I mean.  OTC stuff you might need and still not be around in stores, still, in 18 months. 

Grocery Report

STILL no real hand sanitizer.  I bought the last one in February, I think.

Every now and then they sell methylated, but, no, not touching that.

Dream

In the dream I was chatting with a buddy and the big bossman CEO type at work.  My buddy is one of them Marines that became a hippy.  He said, in the dream, referring to the CEO in front of me "Of course he is a Democrat.  He's as liberal as a plane full of Sumo wrestlers."

What?

Explain that.

"I thought you knew?  Sumo wrestlers are a bit superstitious before a match and only sit on the left hand side of the aisle in an airplane.  So the plane leans left.  I thought you knew that?"

How did my subconscious brain come up with that aphorism and then briefly forget what it meant?

Shootouts

1986, Miami.  "Hey maybe we need to go beyond this whole .38 Special revolver thing."  "Hmmm, maybe your right..."  Setting aside the conclusion they came to for this janky feloy stop.  In 1985 they knew a lot better about felony stops / felony interactions then they did in 1963, and 'they' would think harder about it after 1986.

We, in the gun enthusiast world, tend to concentrate on the hardware solutions, but procedural reforms were also analyzed at the time.  Including some misconceptions.

1997 came along, Hollywood.  Suggestions that maybe the cops should upgrade from revolvers certainly got more urgent after that, didn't it?  And a rifle in the car became more common.  Was 1997 the catalyst for more of a universally militarized police force?   I am ready to entertain that theory.  And if successfully argued it makes that militarization less ominous in it's motivations, rather than sinister plottings of the Clinton's and their cat's paws....

Bog Roll

Ok, tell me if you have a similar experience.

I wasn't caught that short when the Terlet Paper was out.  When paper disappeared I had two dozen rolls squirreled away.  Plus I was going to the office every workday and tried to, uh, do my bidness during business ours.

Two dozen was plenty as long as the shit tickets come back.  And come back they did.  Multiple varieties for the discerning wiper in various sizes.

Now I've bought more.  I don't go nuts, but two dozen is no longer my floor.  Just in case.  Might be 5 dozen all told, now, and it is growing.  And.  I now buy a 4 pack or a 2 pack of paper towels EVERY time I go to the grocery store.  No I don't need 4 more rolls.  But I am getting 4 more rolls.  If this thing happens again I am going to feel a bit more secure about the whole thing.  When does it become a nuisance?  At 10 dozen?  We shall see, I guess.

Is this you, too?

Halfway decent zombie bunker, for sale.

What an opportunity!

You'd need to barrier off the ramps up from the mud flats, and, of course, put a drawbridge on the causeway itself, but, you get water access for your ownself and the resupply that provides.  Hope you like seafood. 

I don't know why I thought of these

Rubber over boots or galoshes or what have you.  Specifically, with that particular buckle type.

Younger, I remember them being ubiquitous.

Maybe they were the same type the army used, and used for many decades.  So discharged draftees and folks that shopped for bargains at the Army Navy Surplus store would have had them, and they'd be used infrequently enough on snowy day in Maryland that they'd last forever and mostly be ready to go in everyone's coat closet.

My dad volunteered for the military to avoid getting drafted.  So did his older brother.  Most of their contemporaries did.  But they were older, or old enough that neither the Korean nor Vietnam wars entered into it.  We had not fathers about that were war veterans in my neighborhood.  Homebuyers in  my new development were in that sweet spot age group between the conflicts.  Though grandfathers were sometimes WWII vets.

Anyway, that style of galoshes that used to be the only thing available, now is kinda hard to find, but there is a plethora of other options.

A fine tradition in NYC

100+ years ago, before prohibition, the busy body progs were also trying to regulate away saloons.  (effing Teddy Roosevelt...)

You had to serve food if you wanted to serve booze.

So they brought you a sandwich with your drinks.  Then they took the sandwich away.  Then they brought that same sandwich to the next table with their drinks, and on and on.  After a week that one sandwich looked pretty...  leggy.  Especially if it was egg salad.  So, a rubber sandwich was made up to be the served 'food' to comply with the law.  What do you want for nuthin'  A rubber biscuit?

Well, the progs are at it again, and New York saloon keepers are just as resourceful.

Good news, NY bar owners: all you have to do to comply with Cuomo’s moronic “all bars must serve food” order is break out the potato chips. Now known as “Cuomo Chips.” pic.twitter.com/naaf9A12fK

— Kyle Smith (@rkylesmith) July 18, 2020

My Flaws in 2 Groups

Sometimes I hit A.  Often with the first round of the magazine.  Before my hand feels a recoil it does the trigger right.  Then it remembers  I wish they all could be like A.

D used to be my default flinch.  Low and right.  Took me forever to get that fixed.  Sometimes it happens tho.  Shoot now! catching the trigger will get D's again.

This set obliged by grouping the two other flaws into groups.

C, I am trying to fix with more finger on the trigger face.  The theory being I am pushing the line right.  Solve that and I'd have more A, right?  Well, sometimes it is better, sometimes not.  But if B and C were on the vertical centerline I could almost live with the elevation problem of some Bs.

B.  Now is B simple?  Is B the 'need more finger' along with 'the bottom of your hand is heeling it just a bit.'  Or is B up there with a whole new type of flinch I do not quite grok?  Dunno.

Lemme concentrate on that finger and other push left items.  Seems a simpler thing to concentrate on.

How Dare They!

How dare they not select my preferred 9mm!

Ah well.  Let's be adult about this, shall we?

I like the P320, but I half expect the Army to capriciously throw it over the side and pick something else in a year or two.  No reason, just a premonition.

NONE of those featured are bad.  By my lights.  If one fell out of the sky and landed at my feet I wouldn't sell it and get something else.  Wave of the future?  Hell, they are already here. 

Range 13 July

Hey!  That's my grandpa's birthday!

Captain Thuderbolt, dub dub too.  His age and crap vision kept him off a Naval vessel.

Anyway.

Ok, started crap.  Relaxed and got better.  Put more finger on the trigger in hopes of shift right to POA, got a bit better.  Very last was range increase from 25 to 50 feet.  Went to sh!t again.

This one represents my current fault.  High and right, or just right.  That's all seven in those two. 

49 rounds, no malfs, total of 1245 through the gun since built.  Need to clean.

Future Shock

The pace of technological improvement is dizzying.  And sometimes a body wants to push pause to better grow accustomed.  I would have been fine with one or two more decades of putting a quarter in a payphone, for instance.  Sure, this device that takes decent pictures, summons cabs, plays recorded music or radio programs, gives me driving direction, and communicates with ANYONE in the world for like $70 a month?

But I still type letters to people on an actual typewriter.

I don't have to stuff checks into envelopes for bills anymore.  But I will be damned if I don't make them MAIL me the bills, still.  If I set up auto pay they will auto drain my account.  Or that has been my irrational fear.

One thing that does appeal to Luddite side, by using the high tech side?  I banged my door switch on my refrigerator.  Now it doesn't light up when I open the door without fiddling.  25 years ago I'd have to call someone.  I have no idea how to fix that.  But the internet does.  A bit of searching with the model number written down on the back of an envelope (from my bills) and I find this guy.

More importantly?  There is a how-to video with it.


Not hard, right?  One minute fix... tool required: putty knife.  I am tentative because of I don't know what to force or pry to get the part out, and that fear would paralyze my action.  But once you see it once... 

So can we go back to 1970 partly, and partly 1985, but with all the good stuff of 2020. Well, 2019, nothing good has happened this year.

I'm being irrational again, aren't I?

Reddit Survival Tips

Yeah, yeah, I know... 'reddit.'

But these are good atypical survival tips that you might not know some of.

Ones I liked and need to make more at the front of my survival mind:

• The STAR symbol on the elevator panel indicates the floor that is the most direct route to outside.  I usually know this, but could be helpful in strange building that have weird mezzanies and shit.
  
• If you are ever involved in gunfire or a shooting of any sort, a sharp cracking sound means the gunfire is aimed at you, a deep thumping noise means the gunfire is aimed away from you.  Why did none of you ever mention this?  I know some of you have been down range and heard it personally. 
  
• Anything standing it’s ground and being loud just wants you to leave. If you don’t they will attack. When they are relatively quiet they have already decided to attack.  This applies to people, too.

• Pack a whistle.
  
• Barrel cactus insides aren't what they are cracked up to be as a water source, despite what Race Bannon told you about surviving in the desert.
  
• Very rarely are people mentally prepared to fight a naked man. I need to remember to wear more tear-away clothes for quick strip downs.
  
• Garage door springs are not your friend..

Daily Deaths, US

Ooops!  Death rate clicked up from the WuFlu.

Now you show symptoms after exposure in 5 or 6 days, but you die of it 4-6 weeks later, ifn you are gonna die from it.  So, coincidentally, 4-6 weeks ago was when mass riots got going. 

"But what about all the re-openings, T-Bolt?"

Didn't a bunch of those re-openings start happening long before the riots?  I guess people are more careful at the barber than they are yanking down a statue of James Madison or Frederick Douglas.

Small L, Big L

As it has always been.

A Libertarian Party candidate, telling folks what they must do and please give her political power and accept opportunist Marxist organization's prescriptions:

https://t.co/F7Np3FqDmp pic.twitter.com/lmGgFT6LYL

— Tim Pool (@Timcast) July 10, 2020

NRA Election Results

Well, results are in.  Of my (and many others) two faves

Graham Hill got in

Frank Tait did not.

I just wish Wayne would decide to go home and spend more time with his family. 

Grocery Report

You know, grocery stores around here are much much better.  But not back to pre-Rona normal, no.  Still big holes in some aisles.

Yes, there is terlet paper, and pork and chicken and beef all at the same time.  But not lots, and not the old levels, and not the old familiar brands and packaging.

You want a box of Zataran's Dirty Rice?  Sorry, only Jambalaya.  If you want Dirty Rice they only got Tony Chachere's.  Which is fine.  But last winter you could get both.

My store's in house cookie baker is different.  Different sizes, and no oatmeal raisin with walnuts. 

It's still gonna be a while.

Reblog

Been reading some Dan Mitchell.  When I am to home.  Work's proxy servers don't like some web platforms and wordpress is one of them.  I should be working, not reading blogs, anyway.

Anyway, reasonable libertarian.  Which, from my experience, are different from the Big 'L' Libertarians.  Big Ls often strike me as nuttier than a rodeo turd.

Enjoying Mitchell's stuff.  Both on how racist gun control is.  And the great universal utility of increasing economic freedom.  Cursory checks suggest he is not stark-raving mad.  And may not be mad at all.  He'd never get a job at Reason, tho.  If he smokes weed he sure don't qvetch about it.

I think it would be bigger news

If there was two Tik Tok users the app WASN'T surveilling. 

Yeah, ammo is low out there.

But what they hey, they can't be OUT.

Naw.  Remember way back in April when there was literally zero?

Now it is only almost zero.

No plinking ammo in my preferred flavor.  Or most any flavor.  But I got lots of range time before I get itchy.  I have my hats.

I also have plenty of Federal HST, but what the heck, the website has some, I might as well get more.  Just a few boxes.  I mean, why not?  Then, in a few months, after the madness, maybe 500 rounds of plinkers. 

Two things

I need to make devilled eggs.  Too hot to bake bread.

I am suffering from the 'good enoughs'.  I need more, different, training and to fight that attitude.

Force 10 From Navarone

So Harrison Ford, with Robert Shaw, dispatch two Partisans.

Ford is handy with a pistol and has a P38.

In the next scene, Shaw has one of the Partisan's rifle, but Ford hasn't availed himself of the other rifle and bandolier.

Poor show.

Porker

On this day in Amity history I signed a historic contract which permitted Quint to catch the large predator that supposedly injured some bathers. Without my signature, the deal never happens! #Hero pic.twitter.com/GanxaNGXwu

— Mayor Larry Vaughn (@MayorLVaughn) July 5, 2020

Time for Timer

You know Timer, I don't like eating onions.  Oh the flavor is fine.  I like the flavor.  It's the squeaky texture.  But I ain't eating that onion dish because I KNOW.   Jeez.  Get off my back already.  You been riding me for 35 years.

But he's in California

I got Rep Nunes robots calling my house before 9:30 on a SUNDAY? 

Maybe it's a Soros op.  Gotta be.  He can't be that stupid.

This is Soros spening money to make me like the GOP less.  Yeah, has to be that.

Up the Rebels

Down the British

Amity is a Summer Town

We need summer dollars.

THREE quart

So, I've been a fan of copper bottom ReverWare for forever and thought it was still made.  RX informed me otherwise.

Well, crap.

PANIC!

So I filled in a hole.  I had a one quart, and a two quart.  Had to fine a Tres.  For pasta and whatnot.  Phew.  Found one. 

Now that I have it, I am wondering why they even MADE a two quart.  The three quart is the same diameter and can do everything the two quart can do as well as a two quart, PLUS extra.  I see the utility of a one quart for small jobs, but two is neither fish now fowl.

I've waster 20 years with the wrong pot.

24 hours

Ugh!

The trigger is different.

After months and months of striker fired trigger work, I went back to a 1911 trigger.

And stank up the joint.

My first round was great, then old habits, and it took to the end of a boxof ammo before I got my mojo back a little bit.  The point I usually and opening up groups with fatigue.

First two magazines at the head.  Low and right.

Thirst at center, was just right.  Didn't shift to the centerline until I got a hold of myself.  But pretty lousy, all told.

No malfs.  1196 rounds since I built the gun.  Did a detail strip around round 450 to adjust the disconnector fit.  I guess it sorta was cleaned then.  I lube as needed, and it needed it after the long break.  The gun is filthy.  I need to clean it.

Never malfunctioned, though, in almost 1200 rounds.

Inconvenient for Gun Grabbers

More evidence against their policies. Reported by their allies.  At DC's NPR station.  88.5 WAMU

That's gotta hurt when even biased media have to grudgingly admit their gun control policies stink, are useless, might as well be scrapped.

Maybe they think at this point they will always be able to exert their will on gun policy.  Ever the optimist, and despite Justice Roberts and a feckless GOP, I think they are wrong. 

When your favorite bipartisan pol touts their backing of background checks you should get a quizzical look on your face and ask why, as they do nothing but get in the way of civil rights.