Month: January 2010

not so much….

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I have no idea if you care or not. I have no idea if you noticed or not.

But I haven’t been writing much lately.

It’s mostly due to lack of time. Lack of time to zip around the ‘net to read what’s going on in the world. Lack of time to do much of anything other than work, sleep, and time with the family. A few off things here and there, but then often I’m ready to do something other than sit in front of the keyboard for longer than I already have. Heck, I almost forgot about today’s iPad announcement, and many times I’ll watch the live feeds of such events but all I did was catch Apple’s 8 minute promo video on their website. Just no spare time for such things.

Plus I must admit, if I have some free time I’ve been watching videos at vbs.tv. The Liberia series is almost done (just finished watching part 7). It’s hard to not watch this stuff, and next thing I know it’s almost bedtime.

It’s just the ebb and flow of life right now.

I do have some things stirring in my head, regarding palm strikes. Still letting it gel. I haven’t written about martial arts stuff in a bit and really want to.

iPad

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I’ve used Apple products most of my life.

It’s my preferred computing environment.

Tablet computers? I didn’t think it’d work out. Everyone tries to jam existing paradigms into a different piece of hardware and it doesn’t work. Apple doesn’t do that. They approach the paradigm from its proper place and try to develop solutions that work for it.

From what I’ve seen, the iPad should do that, very well.

It won’t replace general computers, like laptops and desktop machines, because it’s still rather a restricted environment, like the iPhone/iPodTouch. And I’m sure it still has to be synced and backed up to a desktop/laptop machine. But to have more screen space, to have more “on the go”. Books. Games. Videos. Books. Whatever.

Yeah… I suspect this is going to be a hit. There’s a lot that Apple seems to have gotten right about the paradigm.

All my kids and Wife already want one, each. 🙂

Texas Stars Hockey

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Hockey is one of those games I’ve always wanted to get into but never could. Mainly because any time I’d watch well… I wasn’t sure what was going on. Oh sure, you can watch and keep your eyes on the puck, but it’s those greater subtleties of the rules and the game play. Often it’s best to learn games by watching them with other people who know the game, but that’s been hard to come by for me — I don’t know a lot of hockey fans. At my last job I worked with a bunch of Canadians, all Leafs fans (natch), and they tried to explain the game to me but it just wasn’t enough to take.

My buddy W is in town and he’s a hocky fan (Dallas Stars). He asked me if I wanted to go see a Texas Stars game (they’re the farm team for the Dallas Stars). Sure, why not.

We watched the Texas Stars win 5 to 2 over the Milwaukee Admirals. We had pretty good seats (row F, behind the Stars bench), and gosh if it wasn’t more interesting to watch the game in person than it was on TV. W also fielded all of my questions, not to just explain the “what” of the rules, but the “why”… like why icing is an issue, the method to the madness behind all the constant line changes, and so on. I came out of last night’s game not only having really enjoyed it, but with a better understanding of how the game actually works. I feel that if I watch a game on TV I won’t feel so totally clueless now.

Most enjoyable stuff.

Oh, the Stars’ goalie was pretty damn good. Stars needed to play a bit better defense (W said they needed to be more aggressive); a lot of time was spent in Stars territory. Still, offense was good enough to score 5 points and defense good enough to only allow 2 points, but again I attribute that low score to the Stars’ goalie.

BTW, the Cedar Park, Texas event center? Nice place. It’s like a mini arena. Seats maybe 5000 people (I don’t know, we did a rough estimate), looks and feels just like a large arena, but shrunk down… and that includes the seats. The seats were cramped. I had a hard time getting out of the seats, and W is a bigger guy than me and the seats were no fun for him. Still, it felt like even the cheap seats in the “nosebleed” section aren’t even that horrible given the size of the arena.

It reminds me how good life is.

/ hsoi

I’ve been working as a full-time telecommuter for at least a decade.

I enjoy it. It’s my preferred mode of working.

The company I work for finally opened an office in Austin. They opened it due to other projects in the company (all the people and projects I work on are in California), but hey… it’s here, I can work in it. I figured if nothing else, I should establish a presence there. Meet the folks in the office, stake out a claim on a desk, stuff like that. So that’s kinda cool. The office is still being brought online 100%, but today I spent my first day there.

I don’t like it.. 🙂

Don’t get me wrong. The office itself is alright. The people are good (especially the lady that’s managing the office). Yes there are some hiccups as the office is coming online. But hey, all in all things aren’t bad. Plus I have a proper office, with a door, a window, a nice view.

What do I not like? I can’t listen to loud music while I work. I don’t have the smell of Wife’s wonderful cooking filling the air. I don’t hear my children playing. I have to wear shoes all day. I can’t just wander out of my office and go poke at my best friend (Wife) or play with my kids or see what they’re up to. No cats to sit in my lap.

I know. Cry me a river.

I know my life is good. I know that I’m blessed and fortunate. I have a life that many people would love to have. I worked hard to get here. I wouldn’t settle for anything less than the life I have, and through hard work, dedication, and sacrifice I’ve gotten where I am. So days like today? They’re just reminders of how fortunate I am and how good life can be. That whole “count your blessings” thing.

Every morning when I wake up I say to myself, “Daub, don’t fuck this up.”

Still, I’ll probably come to the office now and again. It’s not all bad.

I need help – my .223 Rem reloads aren’t working

/ hsoi / 10 Comments

I don’t get it, or maybe I should have seen it coming.

Working with my .223 Remington reloads, trying to come up with a good round for hunting. Last thing I did was the ladder test. Based upon what I saw, I thought I had a decent window to go with, so I loaded up 30 rounds. The trick was varying the powder in 0.1 grain increments. I’d shoot 5 shoot groups at 100 yards, and whatever grouped best I would use. For all the load details, click on the aforementioned links.

Today I finally got to try things out. I sent a few rounds of Georgia Arms Canned Heat downrange to get the barrel heated up, then off I went. I don’t have time right now to take pictures of each target, but suffice it to say the grouping was abysmal. The best grouping I had was maybe the 25.1 grain group, which made a sort of rectangle 2.5″ high and a little less than 1.0″ wide. 25.5 grains had almost a 6″ vertical spread! And it wasn’t just one flier that ruined the group… you’d see the holes fairly decently spread about.

I don’t get it.

So I thought OK…. maybe it’s me. I’m not the best rifle shooter in the world. I was doing my best to use all the proper fundamentals, especially breath and trigger control. I took my time. But it’s always possible I messed things up. I set the rifle down and went into the range’s store and bought a box of Hornady TAP FPD .223 Rem 75 grain. Yes it’s not 100% the same load, but my intention was to pick a round that I knew was known for high accuracy and that I knew worked in this gun. I wasn’t even using the best shooting form and still managed just over a 1″ group. So, could it be me? Perhaps. Could it be the gun? Perhaps. But I’m thinking it’s the load.

I should have guessed it because during the ladder test there wasn’t that perfect ladder, like I was lead to believe there would be. Even then there was too much spread and “randomness” as to where the bullets hit paper. However, I shrugged it off because with only 3-shot groups, I’d have 2 shots reasonably close and the 3rd off somewhere and figured that was me. Now, I don’t think so.

So I don’t know what to do at this point. I don’t know what to change to try to salvage this load. This is where I’m asking for help.

Meantime, I think I’m going to buy a few boxes of factory ammo, either Federal’s P223S or Corbon’s version with the 62 grain bullet. Zero the rifle for that factory load. Then at least I’ll have the rifle ready to go for a hunting trip and not have to wait on my reloads before I take her hunting. I also think working on those .223 load may have to wait since I need to crank out a large quantity of 9mm reloads. But who knows… this is going to nag at me. 🙂

If you’re an experienced reloader and have any tips or suggestions as to what I can do, please let me know.

9mm load recipe – plinking/target load – Berry’s bullets, Titegroup powder

/ hsoi / 13 Comments

Those 9mm reloads I did? I tried them out today.

Bullet: Berry’s plated 9mm 115 grain RN DS

Primer: Remington 1.5 Small Pistol

Cases: Whatever used 9mm cases I have

COAL: 1.135″

Powder: Titegroup 4.5 grains

The only case prep was cleaning the cases (dry vibratory case tumbler), then of course a resize and decap. No trimming, no primer pocket cleaning, nothing like that. I used a taper crimp and I know varying case lengths can affect the crimp, but I’m just looking to make a basic plinking/target load that I can shoot in quantity.

I ran about 40 rounds through two of my XD-9’s. Worked just fine. I tried them side-by-side with some Federal American Eagle factory loads and I couldn’t tell a difference in accuracy, how the ammo fed, how the gun felt, how the brass ejected, how the spent brass looked. I’m sure there’s a difference somewhere, but I couldn’t notice. I’m sure if I pulled out a chrono I’d see something. Yes, I’ll chrono things eventually.

Anyway, the above seems to work like a charm, or at least Good Enough™. The 2000 rounds that I need to reload prior to Tom Givens’ next visit in October? I’m going to get started on it now. 🙂

Updated: Here’s the performance data.

Updated 2: As you could see in the performance data, this same load recipe was tried out with bullets other than the Berry’s. I have used Hornady 115 grain 9mm FMJ RN, and Speer 115 grain 9mm TMJ.  Recently (I’m writing this on 15 June 2010, but this was alluded to in the performance data entry) I’ve moving away from using the Berry’s and instead using 115 grain 9mm FMJ’s from Precision Delta. A couple of reasons. First, the Berry’s would have some troubles during reload… I’d go to seat the bullet and the bullet wouldn’t seat right, shaving the side of the bullet or seating in a manner other than straight and centered. It caused too many wasted bullets. Plus, while the Berry’s is the cheapest of what I can find locally, the Precision Delta is overall FAR less expensive; and when buying the Precision Delta in large bulk quantities, the price differential is even greater. As of this writing I’ve yet to run the Precision Delta through the chronograph, but in general shooting the feel and results are about the same. I’ll eventually do more specific testing.

Updated 3: I’ve been able to run the Precision Delta’s over a chronograph, as well as changing primers. All of that data is here.

As expected, not a lot of performance change. Consequently, my general 9mm plinking recipe will now be:

Bullet: Precision Delta 9mm 115 grain FMJ ball copper jacket (but all the 9mm 115 grain FMJ/TMJ’s I’ve tried have worked with similar results).

Primer: Remington 1.5 Small Pistol (I’ve also tried Winchester, Federal, and Wolf small pistol primers and they’ve all worked with about similar results).

Cases: Whatever used 9mm cases I have

COAL: 1.135″

Powder: Titegroup 4.5 grains

Updated 4: It’s been almost 2 years since I came up with this recipe, and it’s still working well for me. The specific bullet, the specific primer, as you can see (if you trace through all the postings with the load data and chrono results) doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference so I go with what’s cheap or available.

I wanted to add that this ammo has been run through numerous guns without any known hiccups. Sure it worked in my XD’s, but over the past year or two I’ve had to loan some ammo, a magazine full here or there, to students in classes. I didn’t keep track of all the guns, but we see the gamut in classes and I’m unaware of any hiccups. And of course, it’s run through all my guns and I’ve had nary a hiccup. I’d say this is turning out to be a nicely proven load.

Of course, if you opt to use it, YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

.38 Special load recipe – for plinking, using Berry’s bullets and Titegroup powder – version 1.1

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

So I have my original .38 Special plinking load.

I realized after loading a bunch that the powder drop was actually dropping 3.7 grains of Titegroup. I’m on the really low end of things so I didn’t think it’d make that much of a difference, but I swore one time at the range those loads felt a little snappier. So I reloaded a bunch more .38 making sure to load it at 3.5 grains.

At the range this morning I tried out both loads side-by-side. I don’t have any chrono results, but I can say I felt a hint more snap in the 3.7 grains vs. the 3.5 grains. And there’s something that wants to say the 3.7 might have been a hair more accurate, but I didn’t have enough on hand to really make that determination.

Nevertheless, 3.5 or 3.7 didn’t make too much practical difference in how things felt. I’m going to run my supply down (should be easy with next month’s snub class), and when I begin .38 loads again, I’m going to try it at the 3.7 grains and see how it goes.

Anyway, at this point I’m pretty satisfied with my .38 recipe. I’m sure I’ll experiment more in the future, different powders, different bullets, different lengths and so on. But for now, what I have works and is good enough to go forward.

Paranoid vs. Prepared

/ hsoi

Earlier I made mention of two concepts: paranoid, prepared. I think it’s worth elaborating on them.

To some, a particular level of preparedness is paranoia. You carry a gun? You must be paranoid, thinking everyone is evil and bad guys lurk around every corner. You’re storing food and water? Do you think Armageddon is coming? Yes, I can see how some could perceive these two notions as a range, and how one could classify something closer to one or the other. However, I don’t think these two concepts are mutually exclusive nor on a range. Nor do I think someone who is prepared is (necessarily) paranoid.
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Initial 9mm reloads

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Time to change the Lock-n-Load AP from .38 Special to 9mm.

I’ve actually tried a couple 9mm recipes already, and based upon them and the components I have available, here’s what I’m going to start with:

Bullet: Berry’s plated 9mm 115 grain RN DS

Primer: Remington 1.5 Small Pistol

Cases: Whatever used 9mm cases I have

COAL: 1.135″

Powder: Titegroup 4.5 grains (or maybe 4.4)

The only case prep was cleaning the cases (dry vibratory case tumbler), then of course a resize and decap. No triming, no primer pocket cleaning, nothing like that. I used a taper crimp and I know varying case lengths can affect the crimp, but I’m just looking to make a basic plinking/target load that I can shoot in quantity.

The powder selection is because I’m kinda liking Titegroup, I’ve got a bunch of it, so let’s run with it and see what I can get from it. The last time I used Titegroup had 4.2 grains and wasn’t enough to really make the guns run. So what to use? The Speer #14 manual says the max is 4.5 grains, using a Speer TMJ RN 115 grain bullet and 1.135″ COAL (or a Speer GDHP and 1.125″ COAL). Hodgdon’s manual says 4.8 grains using a 115 grain Speer GDHP and 1.125″ COAL, and lists 4.5 grains as the minimum. Hodgdon’s website adds a 115 grain LRN with a COAL of 1.100″ with a max of 4.3 grains and min of 3.9 grains.  Furthermore, Berry’s plated bullets really can’t go more than 1200 fps, and 9mm by nature tends to push towards that limit. Given all of this, given the performance I saw in my prior test, given that I’d like this to run in any 9mm gun I have well… I’m thinking 4.5 grains ought to be right. I didn’t want to spend all day sweating single granule differences in weight, so the final weight was somewhere maybe 4.45 grains. Close enough.

Since this is the first time for a load, I wouldn’t want to load up a lot: load a few, see if they work, then come back and adjust and load more. However, given what I’ve seen, I think this load ought to work out OK. Thus I loaded 45 rounds (was going to do 50 but had 45 primers left in this one tray so I just went with that). That should be enough to ensure the load cycles in all my 9mm handguns, do some basic testing for accuracy, see how it feels, and just see how it goes.

So at this point, I’ve got my .223 loads, my .38 loads, and now these 9mm loads. I shall be going to the range soon to try them all out. Reminds me… I need to swab out the AR.