Thanks Guys!

What a thoughtful and useful gift from my friends at work! A pair of Wiley X Valor polarized sunglasses.

So all I need now is to grow a beard, buy a shemagh and I can be an operator operating operationally like this guy =) 



Dude, Srsy? Why don't you just use that pedal on the right hand side of the floor board and leave. Oh, and if you are going to fall out the back of a vehicle like a drunken hooker at least be wearing some platform heels and a mini skirt, K? 

Many thanks to my friend over at eIAft for the video! He is a great instructor and passionate about what he does.

Thanks again to my friends for the gift and I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas. Mine has been postponed until Saturday. 

Looks like Smith and Wesson gave up on Insight

For the Bodyguard line of handguns. First they seem to have rebranded them into the M&P line and then announce they are now available with Crimson Trace lasers. As an early adopter of this .380 after less than a satisfactory experience with the *-Tek something .380, I picked one of these up when first introduced.  Make no mistake, the trigger is like pulling a sled through a gravel pit, but for what it is and what it does I find it acceptable. Besides, if I put this in a pocket holster I WANT a long trigger on it. Real Estate there is probably not worth as much as I think but.....

Although I think a laser on a "bad breath" distance defensive handgun is a bit superfluous I payed for it and it should work. This is Insight laser #3 on this thing. S&W replaced it free every time. 

Interesting to see that Crimson Trace has stepped up to replace the Insight laser it seems.





Looks like a drop in so S&W did not have to change anything except the laser branding on the lower. Wonder if they will send me one and is it really a direct replacement? Looks like it.  

Oh, +1 on the "Don't look at laser with remaining good eye" stickers on the video! Heh...

Thanks Technology!

Hey. I'm a geek and yet I still get frustrated with less than thought out tech. Check this out.

This is a ETL Secure Logic wall safe. I installed it oh, about 6 years ago. It is basically a steel box attached to interior wall studs. I would not put the family jewels in here as the easiest way to defeat this thing is a battery powered circular saw to remove it from the wall studs. It IS a steel box that would drive your average crack head crazy though and is fantastically convenient.

It is powered by one of these. 

A battery (duh). So what do we keep it in it? Routine stuff. It's rather pedestrian too. 

Sadly though, while attempting to replace the battery one of the leads came off the motherboard. It was not soldered, wire tied, or any other known form of stress relief for a wire known to man or child. Simply pressed on a pin on the board. So now I have to remove this thing from the wall and see if I can can repair it. 

In the meantime, the company seems to have gone the way of many others. No customer service, no phone number, no Website. 

Sigh.... I guess that when it comes to the stuff that matters I stick to such (low) tech:

 

 




 

.22 Rugers (I think)

So my friend drops by to show me his latest acquisitions. I think they started life as Ruger MkIII's. I really can't be sure!

 

Dear Colt.....

Well Colt seems to have stumbled into the Interwebz. I got this email tonight:

Dear Valued Customer,

Colt's Manufacturing Company is currently conducting a market research study to learn how we can better serve you. We value your opinion and would appreciate your help filling out our first ever customer survey.
We assure you that the information you provide will be used for market research purposes only. Your responses are completely anonymous. Simply click on the link below:

 

 

 

Hey, I love my Colts. The oldest one is a model 1902 .38 Automatic. A direct link to the M1911.  The newest is a M45. Sadly, I fear it will be as always too little, too late for the blue dome. They said they were giving up on the consumer market and split the company in half. They have since reformed into one entity.  If I wanted to overpay and get crap customer service I might as well buy H&K *ducks*.

As a young friend of mine that is knowledgeable and proficient with handguns says: "What happens to Colt when you old guys die off? In the world of Ruger, Glock, S&W, etc, what does Colt bring to the game NOW?" He is asking a great question. 

 

Here is your chance. I will take the survey and pile your comments in as well. I will also be attending the Colt Collectors Annual Convention this fall in Charlotte.

Oh but they are beautiful working pieces of art. I DO have a soft spot for them. 

Sigh....

Had a short conversation with someone at work today. He really does not know me nor how long I have been there. He said he was 54 and thought I was much older and getting ready for retirement. The FIRST thing I though of was this:



No I did not whip out a phaser, and I am younger than him!  Sadder for him I did not even know his name. Sadder for me he knew mine.

Sigh.....

Tech Update!

Well I got this about 30 minutes ago from the brown truck of happiness. 

I'm in the tech biz but I had to back up for a moment and be stunned. One day delivery from an Internet order. A 1 TERABYTE hard drive for my computer?!?!

Lets put this into perspective. 

The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing Module had a computer that had 2K of memory. I have for under 80 bucks a TeraByte harddrive. The numbers look like this:

 

















I continue to be amazed.Take a look at this old school pilot fly his craft even when the computer is telling him that it can't handle it.1202 Alarm.

We Must Protect our Phoney Baloney Jobs!

Well I just might have for a little while. I've been home a little over two hours after showing up at work at 0800. It's 0330. 



PLC running half the plant vented its magic smoke around 1800 hrs. Took the UPS with it. Knocked associated downstream comms to other processors with it just for fun. 

Sigh... I can never go to sleep after such fun for a while. Sorry for the late night interruption! 



 

Irony. I haz it.

Waiting on me today in the mailbox was an envelope. I retrieved it after going to work to fix something else that went Tango Uniform. I have been running around that place since Memorial Day weekend plugging holes in the dike.

Inside the envelope was this:

Right on time too. 

 








Thanks President of chemical plant! 

Ya Gotta Do What You Gotta Do!

So a network bridge card went Tango Uniform Memorial Day weekend at work. That killed the communications between two operator workstations to a Programmable Logic Controller. Not just any controller, the one that runs our waste treatment process. So I deftly replace that card with a spare. Its brand spanking new! What could go wrong? Factory sealed. Since 1995.

I ran into the "Bathtub Failure Curve". Here it is:

The "New" card fell out. I ran into the Early "Infant Mortality" Failure. Card is now made of unobtanium.

I work at a chemical plant and the beaker people up front are really good at making oil and water stick together. This thing tries to undo the work they did before we discharge to the public sewer system. So now its like getting into a perfectly functional car but there is no dashboard and no ignition switch.

So, with little options left we went old school. 

Drag a PC out to it with the programming software on it. Direct connection to the processor and force or enter variables to run the thing. Some logic is in the operator workstations so its the equivalent of having a Lobotomy to a degree. It will run for a while without the higher logic but its running. That's the main thing. 

The Smithsonian called and wants the Reliance Electric AutoMax DCS when we are done with it though. So there is that, LOL!  I hate it though. This thing has been so reliable over the years. I doubt whatever I put in next will hold up 20 years.

And that is why Blogging has been light. I hope to get to the range and provide more shooty goodness posts soon. I think however I will be busy with ripping this stuff out soon! 

Springfield Down!

There is no malfunction drill for this. Click, no bang. Tap and rack right? Yes, but behold. 

Broken firing pin on the Springfield SA-XD in .40 S&W. 

So do you carry a back up gun? They are mechanical devices after all. They can fail.

I know you are worried about my Springfield and the fact the firing pin is on back order. In fact almost every gun part I have ordered over the last month is so. You may be worried about my 40-fu. Never fear. 

My favorite .40 S&W. When you care enough to send the very best. A Model 4006 and as a bonus if you run out of ammo it makes for a really heavy blunt instrument! 

Hey Comrade!

So Tam throws some first grade snark out there on the North Koreans no less.  

So I went down the rabbit hole and found this: "In the mid-1990s, an automated exchange system based on an E-10A system produced by Alcatel joint-venture factories in China was installed in Pyongyang. North Koreans announced in 1997 that automated switching had replaced manual switching in Pyongyang and 70 other locales.[2] North Korean press reported in 2000 that fiber-optic cable had been extended to the port of Nampho and that North Pyong'an Province had been connected with fiber-optic cable".

I think that the landlines they DO have are in better shape than here. 

Aside from eating sawdust and dirt clods they do have these traffic signals in the Capitol City. 






Hmm... Comrade if I make an illegal turn do I go to the gulag? I mean really. They have cars? 

Rolling Restoration Has Begun It Seems

On my daily ride. The '94 Mustang is finally succumbing to over 215K miles, no garage, and being totaled some years ago. 

A crack on the dash pad has been joined by another. Me being a Mustang sorta guy thought "No biggie, just get a new one". They are not to be had anywhere on the Interwebz. So we look around and find these people:





I'm thinking you just don't get one of those vacuum machines at the 2:30 mark from Eastwood! Looks like a summer project!  
 
    

Old Habits

Die Hard.

There really is no reason to put a bookmark on a Kindle! Sigh....

Shhhh! She's soaking in it!

A light application of Break Free and a soak for tonight.  Then a gentle nylon brush for the engraving to see what we might have tomorrow. 

Marked .36 Caliber. More detailed pics and info tomorrow.

Inverse HAL

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 a TTL 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. 

Irony on Line One Sir!

So today I get a letter from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Credit Union, Reynolds Carolina Credit Union, Allegacy Federal Credit Union. It in terse prose stated: "...we have decided to close the Financial Center located at the Reynolds Building Reynolds American Building effective December 31. 2012 at noon." 

Really? From 1929 for over 50+ years this was the headquarters of R.J.R. Tobacco Company. A storied building: "The Reynolds Building is a 314ft (96m) skyscraper in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It was completed in 1929 and has 21 floors.^[1] When completed as the headquarters of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, it was the tallest building in the United States south of Baltimore, Maryland, and it won a national architecture award.^[2] The building is well known for being the predecessor and prototype for the much larger Empire State Building that was built in 1931 in New York City.^[3]

The Empire State Building Manager always sent a Birthday card to its little sister. 

The brass revolving door was always maintained and the elevator lobby was a monument to the Art Deco style. 

The marble is a nice touch! 

So after becoming downtown Winston-Salem, R.J.R. needed some more room. It started at Whitaker Park, built in 1977 in the outskirts of the City.

Public tours were given here and one of the things you had to be careful of then was if you worked there during those hours, your grooming and clothing were inspected (I know). 

Then the skyscraper downtown was not enough. The RJR World Headquarters was built across the street from Whitaker Park. 

 

 
 






This is where you got a photo taken for a passport to travel for training.

Ah, the 80's! 


So, after defining a City, the company is no longer what it was.  I assume some will comment about the lack of the really cool Buggy Whip factory that town had back in the day.  I get that. For a young boy smelling the tobacco that permeated the City, and to see this at its apogee and participated in it as a young man, I am saddened.

 It covered city blocks. I worked almost everywhere Downtown. I knew where to get the best Sugar cake, the best lunch. I walked these streets. No more.


Now what is left is in Tobaccoville, NC. 

I lament its passing.  I have not walked the streets in decades. I fear that what has happened would be too much to witness. 

I will also never forget the first question during the interview after taking the written test.  The written test had stuff like "design a 24 volt DC power supply with 120 VAC in with a .25 volt ripple. Show all work." 

The first verbal question was someone handing me a flashlight.  He said it did not work and for me to fix it.  I turned it on and it worked.  If you took it apart without verifying the complaint you failed that question.  

Hey I get to whip out a purse tommorrow

I said I would not comment on students in Basic Pistol class, but this time around I have to.  I had 16 students today. They have never touched one before.  I had a petite attractive female that continually worked the iPad AND Blackberry during class.  Immaculately dressed in the upscale "casual style".

So we get to it and I put a Ruger MkII .22 caliber in her hand along with 5 other students on the line at the same time.  I picked the Ruger out for her to shoot first.  You really have to work on getting a case of slide bite on one of those.  So while I was watching other students shooting I came back around to her.  She had the Ruger sitting on the shelf with the barrel in the notch on the shelf shooting away.  Uh, I was flabbergasted.  

Four hours in the classroom.  Sight alignment, sight picture, stance, etc.  That flew out of the window as soon as she got on the range.  We work on it, but to no avail.  .38 revolver?  Ducks head to the left and yanks the trigger.  No better with my humble ministrations with the Glock 19.  I finally get to ask her privately if this class was a gift from a "significant other".  She says no, she wants to get her CCH permit.  I tell her there is much to do if she wants to do so.  She was not happy about that.  

Although a famous Gun Blogger told me in comments and on the phone that "You are doing the lord's work" in teaching new shooters I cannot turn water into wine.  

So for tomorrow? I get to whip the purse out. Class is suddenly at capacity with 24 souls. If nothing else the number one Firearm salesman is again proving to be so. 

  

































I come away from the classes tired, weak of voice, and emotionally exhausted.  When I do so however I am the most happy person on the planet.  Wish me luck for my 8+ hours in the classroom and THEN go shoot tomorrow!

Seriously Dude?!?!

I have a long time friend. He used to be my next door neighbor in a previous life. Intelligent, wicked sense of humor, and uh, somewhat off the reservation at times. 

When I lived next door he would occasionally drop by. Most times he would ask if I had something or other he could borrow. Not a cup of sugar, but more along the lines of: "You have a 30 watt soldering iron, a 10K audio potentiometer, a VARIAC, a pair of hemostats, a gallon of gasoline and a keyhole saw I could borrow"?

Sorta like that. So I moved and he and his wife are still in the same house that is very close by. His fondness for the offbeat continues to amaze me. He over the years has become a close friend.

I am on the way home tonight from visiting Mr. and Mrs. Curmugeon. I get a phone call from my friend asking if I have any optics laying around. 

I get worried. This guy whipped this out previously. 

Yep, an AMT Hardballer .45 ACP. Wait, it gets better. He also whips this thing out. 

 











I think there is a Ruger MkIII here, its hard to say. 

So, I tell him I have one of these laying around. 

He wheels over to stately manor and promptly bolts it on this:

Uh, I would have never thought of using the AMT frame with a Kimber .22 conversion kit, much less finding a left side grip replacement to allow mounting optics on a pistol. 

Disclaimer! I had NOTHING to do with this except having the optic on hand. 

So I can't decide if my friend is the King of the Island of Misfit Toys or Dr. Frankenstein. If he is the Dr. I fear that the brain acquired was from someone named "Abby something". +1 If you get the reference from a movie!  

I have personal instruction tomorrow at the range with a Female student that wants to really figure out how to run a Glock 9 and a .410 pump shotgun. I think he will be there with this! I need a disguise. 

  

Some assembly required....

So I get a belated Birthday gift today from my parents. We have never been date specific on anything anyway. A joke about shutting the Cracker Barrels now as a goal now struck a nerve. 

A rocker to replace the well worn one on the porch. 

In case you were wondering, the big black thing upper right in the pic is a variable ratio power steering gear from a '71 Mustang. Is toast. 

The other thing to arrive today is this:

This will present a bigger DIY project. I love the fact that it is load side switching and does not require a true and formal sub panel from the main breaker box. The fact that I have an obsolete panel makes this even more useful. The problem now is the Darwin award winning redneck call of "hey y'all watch this" that has forced OSHA to mandate that the neutral and ground be bonded on the generator. That immediately makes this useless as the neutral and ground are bonded in the breaker box. Add the fact that you need to do some simple math. 

I am leaning toward a Briggs and Stratton or a Generac for the generator. I'm holding on a 9Kw peak, 8Kw load. 

Now however, the lawyers will not tell you how to put the gen set on a floating neutral. No worries however. If it has wires, I can figure it out. 

Oh, this looks cheesy enough to be entertaining. It's not here yet.

      
 .