So at the requisite time of '0 dark thirty last night instead of this:
I get the house alarm going off telling me that the garage door is open. This is strange as this means that the motion detector is not going off nor the heat detector. The door frame has been moved upward, not a panel kicked in, meaning the door has opened.
So I break a rule and go to the area. There is a steel door from the garage to the kitchen. No sounds heard from the kitchen or garage and the alarm monitoring company is now calling. Hmmm..... look out into the garage and find...... nothing but an open door. So I pull the remote batteries from the cars in the garage and the external keypad, lock HAL into "vacation mode" and go to bed.
Tonight, I release vacation mode and wait. My perverse version of at the very best aTTL version of HAL has gone rogue it seems. It will open oh, just about anytime it feels like it. Sigh.... The opener was here when I bought the house and it looks like I have a project for this Saturday.
This version of HAL is getting so disconnected! I also doubt it will be singing "Daisy" when I do the deed.
Sorry for the absence. After taking my day off after classes I seemed to have picked up a bug that forced me to the doctor last Wednesday. I am still getting over it, but at least I heard this conversation.
Radiologist: "Can you remove those".
Patient: "Sure. I will require two shots of Tequila, some K-Y jelly and some pliers".
Radiologist: * blink, blink* "No, this will work".
From the Bench? The proverbial "Bag 'O Gun". A friend brought it to me.
I told him that the pain would be great to him because I did not get it this far and now I have to figure it out.
A Springfield XD something. I will let it sit here for now. I have other pressing matters.
Contrary to popular belief, I'm just not fueled with coffee, Camels, and Hoppes #9. Sometimes you have to do what might be loosely defined as cooking something.
An old comfort food recipe for Veggie beef soup. You start here with boiling the stew beef.
Insert British joke here.
Then, just add this stuff.
Just like me, this soup is pedestrian, functional, and will fill the need but somewhat sorta bland (Sorry Ma!).
Enter my Blog friend Brigid that thoughtfully sent me some Penzey spice bliss some time ago.
Just three of these peppers totally changed the recipe. The smell in the house is wonderful and sampling all night has been wonderful.
I cannot wait to try these on a traditional South Carolina low country dish, the chicken bog. I always rely as others on Tabasco or Texas Pete to bring the heat to that dish. These peppers are awesome!
So after 30 new shooters yesterday I had 27 students for concealed carry class today. Record numbers. We adapted and overcame the challenge. I'm pretty beat up right now but still running on the caffeine I ingested all day.
So I drag the stuff into the house.
Just want to get the guns into the safe. To add to the happiness today guess who shows up? A camera crew for local news. Again. Link is here for My local story on the Fox channel. Sigh. Thanks to my RSO's. They were awesome! I appreciate the fact that the owners of the range allow media into the range if all the students and personnel agree. Most do not. We have nothing to hide.
I do my part. It leaves me without a speaking voice and mentally and physically exhausted. I know that going in and do it.
So for tomorrow my plan is this. I will emulate a old friend I miss and do this.
Wasabi has been gone for almost a decade but even now I miss this dog. I will follow her lead tomorrow and do as little as possible! She loved that spot. Warm inthe winter and cool in summer. So for tomorrow I will try to just enjoy my environment and do very little!
So I continue to work with the Colt Defender. I seem to have found some food it and I like for the range.
15 rounds with 10 at 7 yards, 5 at 10. The reloads with 4.2 grains of Tite Group powder and 230 round ball totally changed the nature of the Pistol. It fed and fired them without a hitch and turned it into a fun Pistol on the line. I was not expecting that the gun would function with those powder loads. Yeah, I pulled the first two rounds to the right as I expected the recoil and tightened my grip before the trigger broke.
So I got an idea. The Commander is now fully in retirement and I thought that she and I did well at USTC. Now she looks to occasional range time and will not be carried. I thought I would be smart and get the CT lasergrips off and put her back to original Walnut grips and put the CT's on the Defender to replace the stock Houge grips.
BZZZT! Wrong! The compact 1911 platform requires a different model. I looked around and CT does have a NRA Instructor discount. About 40% off retail. Woo-Hoo!
In other news it appears that even after people seeing me in HD TV, it did nothing to slow this weekends attendance for Basic Pistol and Concealed Carry Classes. 25 New shooters Saturday and 28 CCH students Sunday.
I'm ready! I have my spiffy shirts ready to go!
Wish me luck! I have never taught this many students before at one time!
So at work today one of my friends is trying to find low brass .12 ga #7 shells for rabbits. Make no mistake, he and his family eat them. As his Father comments while they are hunting he says you can get #X shot (I can't remember what number it was) and use it if they are in range. I told him: "Hell, you can use a rock if they are in range". That garnered some laughter.
The next one? A old friend commented tonight on the events of the day. I will leave you with this one. "So I served in the Army during the Korea era and they taught me how to shoot a M1 Garand and Carbine and I took an oath to defend the Constitution. Now they are trying to tell me I can't have a Carbine in my house! Pound sand!"
How quickly can you get your gun? I agree that the best option is on the body carry but I do like to sleep occasionally.
For me here at stately manor I do not have some issues others may have. I live alone but for many there are State and Federal Laws concerning accessibility of Firearms by minors. For me its NCGS 14-315.1 At the very least its the Youth Handgun Safety Act on the Federal level for everyone else.
Biometric access works and I have one example here. There is a problem with trusting electronics to read your fingerprint and fire a solenoid to open the door though. If there was not, they would not give you a key to manually open the thing.
Me, well here is the nightstand.
Um, yeah that is a Heathkit GC-1108 alarm clock. I bought it new and assembled it a long time ago. It will not die.
Wait, I digress. We were talking about the FAST Holster.
It looks like this for long guns out of the box.
It is a really strong magnet! So we get to it to see if it will do what I ask of it. Hang a Winchestershotty off of it.
Guess what? It works!
I'm impressed! It shipped from Indy real quick and cheap enough. They make them in several sizes and I will be getting more.
I'm not just observing as a third party the swirl around gun control. I am experiencing it first hand. The range has been packed with people I have never seen before. The Basic Pistol class and CCH classes are fully booked + for next weekend. Ammo of almost any caliber is hard to get. Hell, primers and powder are too. Again.
I have a day job. I don't need to do this. I go to the range and do what I do because of my passion to pay it forward. Give citizens the knowledge to defend themselves. Still, I never thought it would get this crazy.
So for tonight I have a moment of Zen.
From the new Mustang the view into the garage. Three generations of these cars are represented here, another generation is out of the shot as it is the daily driver.
I'm thinking sometime in the Spring I will take some days off and put the new one on the road. I long for the release. Maybe meet some old friends in WV and head to IN to meet more.
After some spirited conversation with a family member tonight I decided to throw this little quiz out. For ones that already know the answer, please feel free to chime in.
So what is the evil assault rifle that needs to be banned?
Exhibit A
Colt M-4
Exhibit B
Glenfield Model 75C by Marlin.
Decades mark the difference between these rifles. So which one is the "EVBIL ASSAULT RIFLE OMG the children!" Well guess what. Both fire the .22LR cartridge and both are semi-automatic. So now we are left with the fact that the M-4 has a large capacity clip magazine. Oh, maybe the "shoulder thing that goes up" too. Really? 10 rounds vs 20? At what point does capacity become "EVIL"?
Last I heard man's capacity for evil goes back to the first of recorded history. Cain committed murder on his brother with a rock if memory serves.
Sorry for the absence. Remember this little project? Well we had some "feature creep". Go figure. That invalidated the licenses I had for the operator workstations. So I wander off to get upgraded. I thought I could just plug in the new license code for the SAME FREAKING SOFTWARE just upgraded from 15 screens to 30. NOPE!
After attempting the oh, 4 GIG download three times at work, I figure everyone is hogging the TWC Business Class bandwidth to look atYou Tube, streaming Pandora, downloading uh, stuff. Whatever. I'm not in charge of the Interwebz connection. I tell my manager I'm going home to download the stuff and burn a DVD.
So here again is this dude.
s
I hate this guy!
I'll be back later as we actually ran the stuff using VNC to the development workstation and a batch of stuff was made this week. That will not help the production schedule next week though!
Oh, other activities are heating up too. Just to make it interesting. Oh, joy.
