Back from the Blog Bash. There’s a lot going on, a great deal on my mind, and personal business that must be attended to. Posting’s gonna be light for a few days, at least.

I’ll try to do a proper recap post once things have settled down, but for now I’ll just say that I had a great time, met a lot of terrific people, and can’t wait to do it again next year. I especially want to thank Bitter and Sebastian for all the hard work they put into the event; you guys did a fantastic job and it is sincerely appreciated.

Apologies for taking a break at an inopportune time, but that pesky “real life” stuff gets in the way sometimes.

So unlike all the other Blog Bash people I haven’t posted any entertaining or informative stuff because, well, my digestive system is doing the usual travel-related freakout. Any time I leave home for even a few days, my guts go into open revolt and I end up having to stay near the bathroom; it’s bizarre.

I was already feeling the early warning signs when I arrived, yet I inexplicably proceeded to eat fried alligator, barely-seared, mostly-raw tuna, and underdone fried shrimp for dinner last night. Smart. Then I drank half a bottle of tequila with the gunbloggers. Brilliant.

Despite all the booze and dubious seafood, I haven’t hurled or even felt the urge to, but I’m all cramped up and generally uncomfortable, which is why I’m currently sitting alone in the hotel room while everyone else is getting together for drinks at a nearby bar. Just not feelin’ it today.

Updates to follow…

So drunk to hell I left the place
Sometimes crawling sometimes walking

Note to the sober-in-the-morning version of myself:

Don’t hesitate to drink half a bottle of tequila in front of your fellow gunbloggers, because you will have a king-hell time in the process and let people get to know The Real You.

Should’ve posted this sooner, but…

If either of my regular readers wants me to check out anything in particular at the NRA convention, leave a comment here and I’ll do my best to get you the scoop. I anticipate spending much of Saturday wandering around the convention hall, and I’ll have press credentials.

So there’s this thread on The High Road about a fellow who blew up his FN FiveseveN, but good. The incident also showed up on The Consumerist, to which Tam linked. And a disturbingly high proportion of the commenters agree with the poster that FN (A) sold a defective gun and (B) treated the guy badly after he blew it up. Let’s take a look at some of the relevant elements here:

• The shooter was using handloads. Yes, people can and do shoot thousands and thousands of rounds of handloaded ammo with perfect results. Handloads are also a very, very common element in gun blow-ups.
• Said handloads used a 55-grain bullet, while the only published load data I can find for the 5.7×28 max out with 45-grain bullets. So he’s using bullets a full 22% heavier than anyone officially recommends.
• The notes with the published load data state, “This is an extremely sensitive caliber, please adhere closely to indicated loads and COL guidelines.” They surely put that warning there for a reason, no?
• The same notes go on to warn, “We strongly recommend using only FLATBASE bullets (especially in the Handgun). The shooter here was not only using heavier-than-recommended bullets, he was also using boat-tail bullets, which are longer than flatbases and will protrude further down into the case when loaded to the same OAL.
• 5.7×28 cases have a polymer coating to ease extraction, and this coating can get scraped/worn away in the handloading process. Combine that with the potential for seriously overpressure ammo due to the above points. It’s not unthinkable to me that the neck of an overpressure round could have stuck in the chamber, getting ripped away as the (blowback-operated) FiveseveN cycled, releasing high-pressure gas and making the gun blow up.

So we have a shooter using a highly dubious handload recipe in a cartridge/gun combo that’s well known for being sensitive and unforgiving, yet it simply MUST be the fault of the EEEEEVIL manufacturer that he managed to blow up his gun.

As far as I’m concerned, he should’ve taken FNH up on their offer of a new gun at a big discount and THANKED them for it, rather than turning around and smearing them all over the Internet.

I called up the Executive Inn hotel this afternoon and confirmed that they have free, hotel-wide wifi, with wireless adapters available for those who don’t have their own. I don’t know what the connectivity situation will be at the convention proper, but I believe registered bloggers will get real, grown-up Press Credentials and access to a media room of some sort, which ought to have Internet access. Maybe Sebastian and Bitter can add something to this?

In any case, if you’re bringing your laptop and plan to get on public wifi I highly suggest using some means of securing your traffic. My weapon of choice is a good old-fashioned SSH tunnel used as a SOCKS proxy to one of my home machines.

My own setup uses computers running Linux and OpenBSD, meaning that any instructions I write would be irrelevant to the 90%+ of you who use Windows. So, if you’re on Windows and you’re interested in setting up something like this, I suggest you take a look at this guide. I haven’t actually used those directions since I don’t have any Windows PCs, but they look quite reasonable. Not that you’d have to leave your home PC up and running, with an SSH server installed and configured, AND your router doing the appropriate port forwarding.

Oh, and be sure to set up Firefox to do your DNS lookups over the proxy if you’re really paranoid.

Me? I’m not paranoid; I’m just security-conscious. Which brings me to my next blog topic: tinfoil hats - shiny side in or out?

Clancy’s de-nutting went smoothly and he’s up and about. Still feel guilty as hell about it.

Incidentally, Clancy goes in for The Big Snip tomorrow morning. And yeah, I feel guilty as hell about it.

Ask me anything and I’ll answer.

Yeah, I know. It’s like LiveJournal in here today.