This morning, two quotes from Shunryu Suzuki came over the Maku mozo! mailing list. In light of last night’s crazy journey, they felt appropriate.
The most important thing is to be able to enjoy your life without being fooled by things.
When you practice as though this were your last moment, you will have freedom from everything.
Stuff to ponder.
“Honey… I want to let you know something.”
Oh crap. What did I do this time….
“I’ve been seeing this gray pickup truck driving very slowly through the neighborhood…”
Ah phew… not me. 🙂 We certainly keep our eyes open for things. Seeing vehicles driving slowly, the driver or passengers looking around at things in the neighborhood always perks our interest, but being Christmastime you can’t help but be extra cautious. “OK, just keep your eyes open in case it comes back.”
A little while later, Sasha goes off. She’s a Kuvasz, it’s in her DNA to be a guard dog. And guarding she was.
“Honey… there was this man standing at the edge of our property, out in the road. He was feeding bread to the ducks, but then Sasha went off, he looked up and saw her and took off… he got into that same gray truck and drove off.”
You see, those neighborhood muscovy ducks love to come to our yard. We care for them. Oh sure, I’m tired of all the duck poop, I’m tired of my flowerbeds getting trampled and the plants nibbled down to stumps. But ducks just don’t understand landscaping and property rights like we do. Besides, after all these years we’ve become rather attached to them. Muscovy ducks have a depth of personality. When you get to observe them and interact with them as much as we have over the years, you come to learn a lot about them. Sure, when they first arrived at the neighborhood pond some years ago we had no idea what the heck this odd duck with the red face was… and they perched too. But once we came to know what they were and how they were, gosh… we became rather fond of them.
It’s all Sneeze’s fault. Continue reading
Can’t wait for Sunday Metal to showcase this.
Brand new Lazarus A.D. (finally!). “The Ultimate Sacrifice”
Sounds awesome.
More vocal range. Heavy. Killer riffage. Lots of changes. More mature sound all around.
Can’t wait for the full album. \m/
Vanity Fair has an article about “Russ Crane”, a sniper in the Texas Army National Guard. (h/t TFB)
It’s an interesting read into the life and mind of a military sniper.
An excerpt:
He told me he believes that the overwhelming majority of people in the world are good, but that they are as vulnerable as sheep to the wolves who prey upon them. His role, he said, is that of a sheepdog with the training and temperament to intervene. We were sitting at his kitchen table. There was a plaque on the wall reading, the future is as bright as the promises of god. Crane said, “There is good and evil in the world. It gets so you yearn for a righteous fight. Personally I believe there are bad people, and God put people here to shoot those people, to let other people live peaceful lives. David was a shepherd boy who became king. The Philistines had their giant, Goliath. The Lord said to David, ‘I’m on your side. Go out and fight.’ David did. And you know, David killed Goliath as dead as Elvis Presley. He was a shepherd, a king, a follower of the Lord. But first and foremost he was a warrior. God understands that we have to have soldiers. Soldiers are part of God’s plan.”
I said, “Do you mean that literally?”
He said, “I know that God has been with me actively in battle.”
“You’ve been fighting Muslims who believe the same thing.”
He said, “It’s a conundrum. But Jesus was resurrected after three days, and you can visit Muhammad’s grave.”
Sheep, sheepdog, and wolves. He’s not justifying the war as righteous, as a Christian vs. Muslim battle. Merely, seeking to find peace in his own mind for why he was put on this Earth to do what he does.
There’s a lot in this article. Crane’s own history and journey, discussions of how the military evolved, support, betrayal, and what life is really like… the indelible mark left upon your life. It’s a long article, but worth the read.
But only because I’m looking at my blog.
WordPress.com has a cute little feature for blogs where you can turn on “snow” to fall on the blog pages.
It’s fun. Why not? Closest I’ll probably get to seeing falling snow this season. 🙂
When I bought all that reloading equipment off Dock, I got a bunch of components as well: lots of Winchester FMJ bullets. The trouble is, I have been having a dog of a time trying to find information about them for running numbers. You look at the Winchester website and while it lists the products, it doesn’t list information like their ballistic coefficients.
But I think I have found them. Winchester has their own ballistics calculator and it’s pretty neat. I haven’t used it much because the data in the app is purely Winchester products, so it’s not that generally applicable. However, it’s that very product-centric setup that yielded results! I just plugged in their products and this is what it yielded.
Winchester 30 caliber (.308″), 147 grain FMJ BT bullets (WB762147N) have a B.C. of 0.415. 0.421
Winchester 22 caliber (.224″) 55 grain FMJ bullets (WB556MC55) have a B.C. of 0.255. 0.267
So that’s what the app told me, and I can only assume it’s right, tho I may be making a small leap in determining all of this. But it seems about right given other bullets of those same profiles.
Just recording it here for posterity sake.
Updated: James Rummel reposted my search for information. Thanx, James!
The thing is, the best way to get this information is to go straight to the horse’s mouth. When I first did this well, I knew that was the right thing to do, but I just couldn’t find a phone number. After James’ post I figured I should try again.
After more Google work I was able to find the phone number for Winchester Ammunition (800-356-2666). I called, pressed “3” for technical questions, and left a message asking for the data. When/if I receive a callback, I’ll update it here.
Updated 2: When I left a voice mail at Winchester it said I’d get a callback within a business day. I didn’t hear back today so I called again. This time the phone message changed to say they were out for Christmas vacation, back January 3. Well, that explains why I didn’t get the callback. 🙂 Cool that they get 2 weeks off. I’ll set a reminder for myself and call back first week of January.
Updated 3: It’s January 3, 2011 and I called Winchester at the above number. I asked for the B.C.’s of those 2 bullets and received them! I updated the above entry with strikthru’s and the proper numbers.
So, the B.C. listed in their little online calculator is for whatever bullet is in their loaded ammunition, which apparently is slightly different from the bullets they sell as components. I guess? Kinda curious how they’re different numbers, but there you go. I would have liked to discussed this further on the phone with the gentleman, but it was their first day back after 2 weeks vacation and they were VERY busy playing catch-up, so I got my information, wished him a Happy New Year, thanked him, and hung up. So, there you go.
Never owned a Chia Pet.
These days they seem to get heavily advertised around Christmastime.
Commercial was on TV last night and I thought… why not? Buy one for each of the kiddos. It could be fun.
Of course I know the end result is the cats will eat the plants, then throw up green whatever on the floor soon afterwards… and not just because they were eating from the Obama Chia. 😉
Maybe I should get the kids a mood ring or a pet rock.
Tom Givens is coming back to KR Training in May 2011 to run a one-day shotgun course. I’ll be there.
I’m still a proponent of a rifle for home defense (e.g. AR-15/M4-gery in .223/5.56), but I’ve warmed up a bit to exploring shotguns in this context. Certainly it’s better than nothing and for some it’s the best or only choice. So it shotgun works best for your situation, fine. But what hurts me to hear is a lot of misinformation that continues to be preached as gospel about how to use a shotgun for home defense.
For instance, ammo selection. That birdshot is good. That you want a big spread of pellets. No and no.
Here’s a simple scenario. Someone breaks into your home and takes a hostage (your spouse, your child, etc.). The bad guy 15 yards away holding your loved one close and in front of them, such that you really only see the bad guy’s head over your loved one’s shoulder. You followed conventional wisdom and have birdshot and an open choke. Are you going to take that shot to save your loved one’s life? I wouldn’t.
Now change the scenario slightly. Instead of a shotgun you have an AR-15 with good ammo (e.g. Hornady TAP .223 Rem or 5.56x45mm NATO 75 grain) and a red dot scope. Now are you going to take that shot? I would.
Birdshot is for birds. It’s made to be enough to hit a small flying object, but not blow that little dove to smithereens. So if it’s that “gentle” on a dove, how tough do you think it’s going to be on some bad guy? Buckshot is… for bucks, deer. They’re roughly man-sized and man-tough. Buckshot works better for this context.
Open chokes also good for birds… at least, low flying ones. You want just the right amount of pattern spread so the “pellet cloud” is wide enough to cover the area where the bird is, but still dense enough to have enough patterns in that area where the bird is. If the birds are going to be further away, you need tighter chokes so the pattern doesn’t spread too much before it gets to where the birds are. Same holds in home defense: you need to control where all those pellets go. If they spread too much before they reach their target, first that means less pellets on target, but it also means where are those other pellets going? they are most likely going to become unacceptable hits.
Furthermore, shotguns by nature cause pellets to spread no matter what ammo you choose or choke you select. Will you be able to properly gauge the spread and distance to take the shot you need to when you need to? Will the pattern be tight enough at 15 yards that you could take that shot? And the further the distance, the more the spread, the less chance you can take the shot. Yes home defense isn’t some 200 yard engagement (typically… those of you in rural areas, maybe), but you may have longer distances to account for than you think.
But let us consider… I’m talking about some contrived situation. What are the chances someone will break into my house and hold my Wife or Kiddos hostage? I don’t know what the chances are, but they aren’t zero.
You don’t get to choose what your situation will be. Luck favors the prepared, so wouldn’t it serve best to be prepared for as wide an array of scenarios as possible? Shotgun is good, but limited. Rifle gives you more options to address a wider set of possible scenarios. I won’t poo-poo the shotgun because it’s just another tool. With any tool you have to think realistically about the tool, know what it can do and what it cannot do. If that tool doesn’t work for your needs or perhaps if there’s a tool that can suit your needs better, don’t be reluctant to seek out better.
Austin man foils a robbery attempt… in his own home.
Andrew King and his wife walked into their northeast Austin home Thursday afternoon to find an intruder standing on their staircase.
Afternoon. Thursday. Most home break-ins happen during the day on weekdays. Why? Because that’s the most likely time when people (and witness neighbors) will not be around.
They walked into their home and discovered the burglary in progress. So, all those “home defense guns” you have? or maybe just a baseball bat, or whatever it is you keep at home? Doesn’t do you much good when you’re walking into your home. But that gun you can keep strapped on your hip? It’s always where you need it when you need it.
They called 911 and it wasn’t picking up. Mrs. King also hit their alarm system call button. Still took the police at least 5 minutes to get there. Lots can happen in 5 minutes. It also demonstrates that the police cannot be there to protect you because they weren’t… they were only coming around to help clean up afterwards. What stopped the burglary was Mr. King getting directly involved.
It’s fortunate Mr. King is a skilled martial artist and was able to utilize those skills to hold the burglar at bay. It’s also fortunate the burglar didn’t have a gun. I applaud Mr. King’s mentality and resolve to fight and defend himself, his wife, and his home. Ultimately it’s that sort of mindset that wins the day.
Agony Column. God, Guns, & Guts!
Whatever happened to these guys?
