Monthly Archives: May 2007

Buzzguns!

Posted by TD on May 16, 2007 3 comments

Thanks to the kind folks at Coal Creek Armory, I am no longer a machine gun virgin. Range notes:

Colt m635: Fun to shoot, but challenging. At least in my admittedly unskilled hands (before today I hadn’t fired an AR of any sort within the last 8 years, and I’d NEVER shot anything full-auto), it had a distressing tendency to climb FAST. As in, keep the bursts to 3 or 4 rounds or you’ll be perforating the ceiling. I assumed that the fault was my own, but apparently others feel the same way. From Chuck Taylor:

In fact, the M635 is so light that some have criticized it as being uncontrollable in fully-automatic fire, alleging that it vibrates excessively. To this claim, I can only say that in a special-ops environment, no more than two-shots per burst should be utilized and, from the shoulder using proper technique, the M635 will keep both of those shots well-centered in the chest of any typical silhouette target out to a full 15 meters.

I noticed a similar pattern on my targets; 2 rounds pretty close to POA, with the third and fourth rounds landing way high and right. And doing reliable two-shot bursts was beyond me; stopping at 3 was plenty tough enough.

Uzi Model A: Now that’s more my style. Much more controllable and with a more pleasant recoil impulse. Neither gun kicks HARD, but the Colt’s cycling just felt much harsher and jerkier to me. The only disconcerting thing about shooting an Uzi is the very noticeable lag between pulling the trigger and the first round actually firing; you pull the trigger, the massive bolt assembly flies forward, time passes, more time passes, and then BANG! The closed-bolt design of the Colt is a definite advantage there.

Suppressed Ruger 22/45: MUST HAVE. A quiet, recoilless handgun cannot be beaten as a training/practice tool. I surprised myself with this gun. Between my mangled right wrist and my lack of disposable income, I haven’t actually been to the range in n* months. Yeah, not days or weeks, MONTHS. So I’m beyond rusty, I’m fossilized. Oh, and did I mention that with my eyes, I can focus clearly on the front sight but have only a vague theoretical notion of where the target is? And yet I was able to hold for 3″ 10-round groups, offhand, at 15 yards. I know everyone on the Intarwebs can hold for 1″ at 25 yards, blindfolded. And I’m not holding my breath waiting for the Olympic team to call. But by my own standards I shot pretty damn well, and all the credit goes to that cool little gun.

Conclusion: while buzzguns are tons o’ fun, I’d have to alter the ancient fatherly advice thusly: “If it flies, floats, fucks, or burns up 9mm ammo by the bucketful, RENT IT!” Even if I could afford to buy one, I couldn’t afford to feed it. On the other hand, a suppressed .22 will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

* where 4 < n < 6

Nashville

Posted by TD on May 15, 2007 3 comments

Gave up on sleep at around 6 AM, deciding instead to hit the road to Nashville. It’s a beautiful drive, marred only by construction zones that slowed traffic to a crawl on the way back. Funny thing is, the sections of road getting fixed would be considered perfect by Michigan standards. And there aren’t any potholes. Anywhere. Mind-boggling.

Nashville itself struck me as a nice place that pushes the whole “Music City” theme a bit too far. Suggested city slogan: Nashville, where you WILL listen to country music. I don’t have anything against country, but it’s a bit much when the freaking UTILITY BOXES on the sidewalk blare music at you.

Had lunch at a Mongolian BBQ (not the REAL Mongolian BBQ, but a reasonably faithful rip-off), wandered the city,  couldn’t take the omnipresent music anymore, drove back.

After two sleepless nights at the Worst. Motel. EVAR., my inner tightwad surrendered to my inner… uh… guy-who-values-comfort and I switched to the Best Western. No thick mildew stench! A TV with a REMOTE! A mini-fridge! And glory of glories, free wireless Intarwebs! It’s enough to make a man find religion.

… and that’s all I got.

Notes from the Road, in no particular order

Posted by TD on May 14, 2007 4 comments

Knoxville’s cool. I guess the best description is to call it a small big city: big enough to have all the things you’d expect in a major city, but without the overwhelming scale and attendant problems of, say, NYC.

I ran into a bum downtown. He didn’t want spare change; he tried to hit me up for $5. They get a higher class of bum down here, I guess.

Speaking of high class, Southerners are nice, and they’re SERIOUS about it. I can’t recall being treated with such a degree of courtesy, from EVERYONE, anywhere else.

And of course that includes Tam and ColtCCO, who are just as awesome in person as you’d expect from reading their blogs. We talked guns, Tennessee, job hunting, and gay comic book characters for a good two hours before I realized it was their lunchtime and Tam’s soup was getting cold. Sorry about that!

Grabbed dinner with ColtCCO, who went WAY beyond the call of duty by giving me a thorough tour of the area. For my Michigan friends, picture Novi but with more trees and hills.

Coal Creek Armory has a chopped-down Hi-Power with THE BEST HP trigger I’ve ever experienced. Breaking-glass crisp and about 3 1/2 lbs. Do Want!

I actually heard a CCA customer tell Tam he was excited about a gun because it was “getting a lot of good reviews in the magazines.” I bit my tongue, and I suspect Tam did the same thing. It was kinda like hearing a grown man say he was planning to stay up all night on Christmas Eve so he could see Santa.

Just about every business here seems to be hiring, which is highly encouraging. ColtCCO tells me there are plenty of temp agencies willing to hire anyone who has a pulse and can stand upright, and they’re flexible about the “standing upright” part.

Unfortunately my nice job-hunting outfit, the one I carefully ironed and hung on the back of the door before leaving, is presumably still hanging there since it’s definitely not in my bag. Dammit. I fail it, where it = packing. Is it bad form to show up at a temp agency in a Stooges T-shirt and jeans? Probably.

So far I’ve told 4 people that I’m staying in a truckstop motel and every single one of them has made a crack about prostitutes. Hey, if I had money for hookers I’d be staying in a nicer place.

Country music is popular in the South. Shocking, eh?

When you order tea, you get a tall glass of sugar with just enough liquid in it to keep a straw from standing upright. Not that that’s a bad thing. It just caught me off guard.

Planning to cruise over to Nashville tomorrow for at least a few hours, but may end up spending the night. Gonna wash up and fall asleep to Adult Swim right now, since I am WIPED OUT.

Oh, and Tam: Batman is gay. So, for that matter, is Spiderman.

Arrival

Posted by TD on May 13, 2007 2 comments

I’m here. Made decent time on the way down, too: 510 miles in 8 1/2 hours is exactly 60 mph average speed, including 3 short stops and about a dozen construction zones. I took it slow through Ohio to avoid the attention of the Revenue Generation Units, but made up for it through Kentucky and Tennessee. Those hillbillies can DRIVE, and that goes double for the truckers. It’s rather exhilarating to be doing 85 in the passing lane when god-knows-how-many tons of Kenworth close on you rapidly and hover about 3 inches off your rear bumper.

I’m checked into the cheapest motel I could find on the Intarwebs, and just learned (to my surprise) that it’s a stone’s throw away from Coal Creek Armory. Literally. I can step out of my room and see the side of the shop. The motel is also everything you’d expect for $42 a night, but hey, I’ve stayed in worse places. Hell, I’ve been deathly ill in worse places.

Alright, time to locate some dinner and get some rest. Tomorrow I’m exploring Knoxville and swinging by CCA to say hi to Tam and ColtCCO. Any other Knoxvillains who want to meet up with Your Humble Narrator? Comment and/or shoot me an email.

Weekend Hotness

Posted by TD on May 13, 2007 No comments

Finally hitting the road in the morning. There may or may not be any updates before my return, depending on Intarweb availability. I leave you with Kirsten Dunst, who’s pretty hot but would be even hotter if she, y’know, ate once in a while.

Kirsten Dunst

Flanking Maneuvers

Posted by TD on May 10, 2007 4 comments

Along with being a gun snob (and I’m gonna write Part II of that Real Soon Now), I’m also a bit of a meat snob. See, my grandpa was a butcher who owned his own meat market; a true, old-fashioned butcher who practiced a trade that’s nearly extinct today.

When you go to the local supermarket now and see the guys in white coats behind the meat counter, you’re usually looking at meat cutters, not butchers. They get prepackaged primal cuts shipped in from a slaughterhouse and break them down into the standard cuts you see in the cooler. It’s still a skilled trade and the guys who do it usually do it well, but their hands are tied when it comes to selecting the very best meat or supplying unusual cuts; they have to work with what gets delivered.

Back in Grandpa’s day, he’d drive down to Eastern Market in the wee small hours and fill his truck with hand-selected sides of beef, then head to the store and start cutting. His customers were Italians, Germans, Hungarians and other European immigrants who all wanted their meat cut like it was in the Old Country. So instead of the one-size-fits-all system we have today, he made a very good business out of supplying top-quality, custom-cut meat to some very picky customers. And after he retired, he stayed in touch with his old suppliers and the guy who bought his store.

And the point of that whole story is that I grew up eating really, really good steaks. Hell, I didn’t even realize there were cuts other than Filet Mignon until I was 10 years old. That kind of upbringing warps you for life.

Grandpa’s gone now and in my current employment-challenged state I can’t quite afford to live on filets, so I’m learning to work with cheaper cuts. This afternoon’s experiment was flank steak pinwheels. The flank steak is a cheap cut, and for good reason: it’s full of tough connective tissue. By pounding out the meat and marinating it in something acidic you break down that tissue somewhat. It’s still pretty far from filet, but it doesn’t COST like filet, either.

I threw together a marinade of teriyaki sauce, soy sauce, lemon juice (the only acid I could find in the kitchen), minced garlic, black pepper, and red pepper. Gave it 4 hours in the fridge; 8 or even 12 would be better. Tossed ‘em on the grill, cooked for 5 minutes per side, and voila: tender, flavorful, medium-rare flank steaks. Not the best meal I’ve ever eaten, but perfectly passable for a first try.

For Round Two I’m thinking about rolling some bacon into the pinwheels (adding bacon is ALWAYS a good idea) and using a marinade with wine and vinegar. Hey, a man cannot live on ramen noodles and microwave burritos alone!

A Reader Answers the Call!

Posted by TD on May 10, 2007 5 comments

Thanks to Bonnie for pointing me to All-Ett wallets; I think I’m going to try one. I’ll have to spring for the leather model, though. Nylon just won’t cut it. I did own a nylon wallet once; I was 8 years old and it was yellow with blue trim and a red stegosaurus on the front. But a grown man using a nylon wallet is like a grown man wearing velcro sneakers: everyone takes one look at you and decides you’re either mentally retarded or a child molester. It just has that creepy vibe, y’know?

…

Posted by TD on May 10, 2007 1 comment

Short version: Needless, infuriating bullshit family drama, sprung on me as I’m literally going out the door. Have to be here through Friday evening, thanks to said drama.

Long version: If you have to know, email me.

Sorry for the LiveJournal-ish post. I know I sound like a teenage girl here.

Pocket Stuff

Posted by TD on May 9, 2007 4 comments

Both PDB and Marko have posts up about their daily-carry gear, so I’ll jump on the bandwagon too. Here’s my pocket stuff:

pocket stuff

The phone is garbage and needs to be replaced. As I’ve mentioned before, though, I thoroughly hate telephones so I’m in no hurry.

Keys are a minor but chronic annoyance. I carry them in my left front pocket along with the phone, where they scratch the hell out of the phone and jab me in the thigh when I sit down. I’ve thought about getting one of those retractable belt clips, but they (a) make you look like a janitor, (b) jingle when you walk, and (c) don’t work well with car keys.

The Seecamp is a little jewel of a gun. While admittedly heavier than the popular Kel-Tecs, I gladly accept the extra weight in exchange for quality and reliability that are miles beyond the K-Ts. Aker’s sharkskin pocket holster covers the triggerguard, holds the gun in a consistent orientation, and prevents printing. It’s a decent rig, but drawing with any kind of speed requires regular practice.

Spyderco’s now-discontinued Rookie was a scaled-down version of the honkin’ big Police model. I prefer the lockback design over liner-locks, which can fail if the design and execution aren’t JUST right. ATS-55 steel takes and holds a good edge and hasn’t rusted yet. A good knife; simple, reliable, and straightforward.

I’m not a regular smoker, but that same Zippo has ridden in my watch pocket every day for the last 12 years. I suppose it’s the closest I get to being superstitious.

There’s nothing remarkable about the wallet; in fact, I’ve never been able to find one I really like. Even the expensive ones fall apart after a year or so and end up too fat once they’re filled with my cards and IDs. Any suggestions for a really good, high-quality wallet?

All of that is just my bare-minimum, everyday gear. The Seecamp often plays second fiddle to a Glock 29, and I usually have some sort of flashlight on me… for a while. I’ve never lost a wallet or set of keys, but I go through flashlights the way most people go through Bic pens. They just disappear one day, never to be seen again. I know I should get with the times and buy a SureFire, but losing a $100 flashlight would ruin my whole week.

And I made it through the whole post without any lewd “show me what’s in your pants” jokes. I’m gettin’ old.

Expanded WYSIWYG editor in WordPress!

Posted by TD on May 9, 2007 No comments

Full article here. I wish the WordPress folks would turn this on by default!