Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Well, that took exactly a year...
On July 17th, 2006, I reported that my TPH broke. (Be sure to read the comments, some of the silliest ever on this site!)
Finally, I found parts for it, and got this in email:
Quote:
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Thank you for ordering from Numrich Gun Parts Corporation!
Your order number: {redacted} and your Package ID is: {redacted} was shipped on Tuesday, July 17, 2007.
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I gotta say, Numrich Gun Parts absolutely and completely rocks! They're like the best kept secret. They appear to have all parts for everything, even bizarre things like TPH safeties. Shop online here: http://www.e-GunParts.com
Shortly after the thing broke, I'd made the situation worse by trying to remove the broken safety, which resulted in the striker sproinging out and sticking, which prevented me from re-assembling the slide. Pulling the poor little broken gun chunks from out from the back of the safe, I had to undo that mess, so I could properly take the gun apart, clean her up, and put her back together, as good as new. It took about an hour of cursing and staring furiously, trying to grow X-Ray eyes, but I finally got it right.
Sleek and smooth. I forgot how tactile that little TPH is. I'm still giddy, a week later. It's like having a whole new gun for free. Or rather, for the $35 + S&H that it took. :)
I'll letcha all know how she shoots after I get a chance to take her out.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45  
Darkness Descends On Russia...
For the last 5,6 years or so, I've been keeping an eye on Russia, with my feelers out for signs of backsliding into their former state of shit and darkness.
When they start locking up activists in mental hospitals, and holding brown shirt style Putin Youth Camps, nascent undercurrents are crystalizing into definite form. It's pretty clear that Putin's entering a new phase of his game.
We can at least be grateful that the old Soviet system dispanded, calving off sub nations, and that her navy rusted into disuse.
If you have people you care about in Russia, seriously consider getting them out. It could well be 1936 Germany over there.
Predictions:
* If Putin leaves office in 2008, it will be in name only. The power will follow him.
* The Russian military will be slowly rebuilt.
* Keep an eye on the oil! Putin will make moves to secure a larger chunk of the oil reserves (hence his recent claim on the North Pole) than he has now. At this time in history, oil is the only energy source suitable for war. He who has some critical portion of it can make war at will upon he who hasn't. (And the astute among us will review the last 100 years of history in that light.)
* Russia isn't necessarilly looking for a rematch on the cold war, at least not at this phase of the game.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Bad Guys Still Probing...
Airports Warned About Terror Dry Runs
I figured something was up when the TSA started taking an extraordinary interest in my multi-meter and pocket oscilloscope, items they usually ignore.
{What? You don't travel with an oscilloscope? What if you suddenly had a problem that couldn't be solved without a frequency analyser? Feh. And y'all consider yourselves prepared for all contingencies ;) }
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
My Harry Potter Post:
The Potter series is deeply subversive.
It is massively pro self-reliance, pro self defense, and distrustful of establishment authority, whose fecklessness and lack of character makes it a ripe pawn for mediocrity, and eventually, evil.
This comes out in spades in book 5, and comes to full fruition in book 7.
If JKR were an American, she’d be a gunny.
And there ya go.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
The Rootin' Tootin' Shootin' Gallery...
Well, I'm waaaay behind in posts, thanks to a happy weekend with Reader Argentium Tiger in the house, which was immediately followed by gwa9 descending upon Indianapolis for a teacher's convention, leaving me to fend off the kids and zombies by my ownsome. Nonetheless, I figure I owe an update on the 4th of July airsoft shootin' gallery:
So, the night before, I'm wrestling the screen tents out of the garage rafters, my basic plan being to dock them end to end, so as to contain the airshot. Upon doing this, the range is preposterously short, so I dig out a tarp, thinking to use that as a center segment.
As I'm working on the tent, ably assisted by my neighbor, I'm reviewing the evidence of opposition that has occurred. The bottom line on that is that a few people tried to raise objections without "owning" them, passively casting them in terms of "a concern has been raised". I'd considered my response, and passed back through the grapevine this response: "I simply don't respond to vague and anonymous "concerns", because they're categorically impossible to address. If anyone has a genuine concern, I'll be happy to take it up with them, and I remind people that participation is voluntary."
No one objected squat directly to me, before or since. The basic dynamic of the thing was that 1 or 2 agitators had tried to work behind the scenes to muster some support, had gotten nowhere, and was generally told to sit the heck down and let it go. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with next year. ;)
Alas, sigh, I have only mini tarp on hand, and must run out to obtain Maxi tarp. I set the two screen tents about 20 feet apart, and think to use MaximusTarpus as a bridge between them. After much sweating, and, truth be told, cursing, I find that Maxi tarp is actually big enough to cover the whole shebang, thus:
I hung up a few CDs to test the range, and within minutes, I was mobbed by kids, so I let 'em in, one at a time. This boded...well.
Darkness descending upon the land, I decide to call it a night.
Awaking at the crack of dawn to sort out the signage, interior, and everything else before showtime @ 10:30, I am greeted with disaster:
As I headed out to inspect the damage, I wasn't certain what to expect. The thought of sabotage honestly crossed my mind, but I figured I'd let the evidence speak for itself. It turned out to be entirely wind damage, without any sinister elements, or permanent damage.
I commenced sweating and cursing, and had the tent back into operational shape about 40 minutes later. Racing against the clock, I setup the range for "plinking mode":
, slapped the signs on, grabbed the safety glasses, and looked around to see what was missing.
D'oh!
Rifles would help. I had the girls fetch them.
A few minutes later, at the stroke of 10:30, the guy kitty corner across the street started blaring his ancient collection of patriotic vinyl, and the block party is officially started. I plunk in the chair, waiting for the mob of kids to arrive.
And I wait.
And I wait.
WTF?
The across the street neighbor drops over, seeking refuge from his neighbor's noise system, and we shoot the bull for a while, and eventually decide to heck with it, WE were gonna shoot.
Two mags later, we turn around, and an even bigger mob of kids is back, staring through the tent door, wide eyed!
"THIS IS AWESOME! THAT IS THE BEST GAME! CAN WE PLAY?"
Two hours of tincan carnage later, I have to chase them all out, so as to be able to get some lunch. I racked the guns in the house, hung up the "Closed, keep out sign", and headed for the chow tent. {Sorry, I'm not going to post pix of other people's kids on the net...doesn't strike me as kosher.}
Along the way, I'm getting winks & nods from folk, and it gradually dawns on me...the neighborhood is INFESTED with gunnies. Way more than I'd thought!
W00t!
Anyway, as I'm passing through the tent, two older women I don't recognize ask me how the shooting gallery is going. "Oh, it's going fine. Shooting stuff is always an outright hoot!" At that point, they said something so surreal that my mind grasped the essence of the meaning, but I cannot quote the words themselves. Their reaction indicated that they thought that we where shooting live animals with real guns under tarp. {Houston: WTF? No, really! WTF? Over?} I blinked slowly at them, as if they'd just grown spare heads, and realized I was in the presence of the agitators. "No," I explained slowly, keeping my wits and friendly demeanor about me, "why on EARTH would anyone do that? We're shooting paper targets and tin cans, that sort of thing, with underpowered air guns that shoot plastic pellets. "Oh, thank goodness", they replied. They then proceed to ask about the tarp, indicating they thought it was "to prevent people from seeing the shooting." I explained that the tent and tarp was a safety measure, to contain the pellets so I didn't have to worry about eye protection for bystanders. I don't know how much sunk in, but I did invite them to come on over and check it out for themselves. They declined as if I'd just offered them a dead muskrat to go with their beverage. Shrugging, I rejoined the festivities.
About an hour later, it was time for the shooting contest proper to begin, and I shortly had two long lines, one for kids, and the other for adults. The best kid shot 37/50, and 3rd place was taken by a girl. (You go, girl!) The adult first prize went to a guy who shot 39/50.
The last shooter up was my neighbor, who was shooting mostly for fun. She was having a hard time, having an eye dominance issue, and shot a tight group...in the upper corner of the paper. Knowing her husband was a hunter, we decided to play a trick. Since no one was looking, I quickly reshot her target for her, scoring 41/50, theoretically putting her in first place. She had some serious fun with him, till we let him off the hook. It also turns out that he's a _serious_ hunter, with several safaris under his belt, another planned for the fall, and a crack shot. He took 3 or 4 practice shots to get on the X ring, and then casually shot a perfect 50. Then he proceeded to shoot the 10 ring completely off the paper.
:) :) :)
He smiled at me. I smiled at him.
Did I mention that I love my neighborhood?
I can't wait for next year.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Happy Independence Day!
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Instapundit Publishes an Anonymous Confession:
In response to Michael Yon's update on his wiped out village post.
I will quote the short post in its entirety:
Quote:
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WHY DON'T AL QAEDA ATROCITIES GET MEDIA ATTENTION?
Because that might help Bush.
UPDATE: A journalist whose name you'd recognize emails:
Yon's story doesn't get attention because it is humiliating.
It is humiliating because it is obvious that we media – and our allies in the state department, the legal trade, the NGOs, the Democratic Party, the UN, etc., - can’t do squat about such determined use of force.
Our words, images, arguments and skills can’t stop the killing. Only the rough soldiers and their guns can solve the problem, and we won’t admit that fact because the admission would weaken our influence and our claim to social status.
So we pretend Yon’s massacre – and the North Korean killing fields, the Arab treatment of women, the Arab hatred of Israel, etc. - doesn’t exist, and instead focus our emotions and attention on the somewhat-bad domestic things that we can ‘fix’ with our DC-based allies. Things such as Abu Ghraib, wiretapping, etc. When we ‘fix’ them, then we get status, applause, power, new jobs, ego, etc.
Please don’t be surprised. We media are an interest group not much different from the automakers, the unions, and the farmers.
Sadly, this makes sense. And this fits the pattern.
posted at 05:16 PM by Glenn Reynolds
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Updated Reflection...
It's worse than that, really. The press really has degenerated to the point where they're making shit up, and creating controversies on the flimsiest of pretexts.
Fire departments have long known about sick firefighters who light fires so as to fabricate opportunities for heroism, and they have zero tolerance for that sort of thing.
A free press is critical to the well being of our Republic, but a demented press having departed reality is outright destructive, no better than the arsonist firefighter.
As an institution, the press is ill, in denial, and the editorial process is simply...broken.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Monday, July 02, 2007
Meanwhile, in a completely different corner of the Internet...
Quote:
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{redacted A}: I replied to {redacted B} in post 202. I think the internet term for that is "owned". {ed note: actually, it's p0wned.}
{redacted C}: He's too thick to realize it, though. I am SO sick of debating antis who think that saying "Not so," and, "You're wrong," make them right.
All of us have shot his arguments so full of holes that we could read the newspaper through them, and yet he continues to shovel his crap against the tide.
{geekWithA.45}: One of the conditions of victory is that the loser understands himself to be vanquished.
In a democracy, which give preference to persuasion over force, and on the internet, in which persuasion is the only tool available, this gives the guy who is dumber than a box of hammers the superpower of invincibility.
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And that brings us to a common problem, both on and off the 'net. Ignorance, stupidity, willful obtuseness, and just plain old obstinacy confers the superpower of invincibility in the persuasion game.
What to do?
Sure, we can just walk away or toss them out, but they're still gonna scuttle back to ijit friends, and eventually vote for whoever's promising the 'ol socialist standby of "free shit for you at the expense of the productive."
Gah.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Some People Simply Need To Be Killed.
Michael Yon shows us why.
You can't let people like this run around loose, you just can't negotiate with them, and even if they came to the table and kept their word, you'd still not want to debase humanity and defile the planet by sharing it with them.
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Posted By: geekWithA.45
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