Via the Maku mozo mailing list this morning:
We become what we think about.
— Nightingale
I guess that explains why so many men are boobs. 😉
But seriously…
There is truth in the statement. It’s about mindset, and what a difference it makes.
I never heard of Earl Nightingale before. Went looking for him. Found this.
Good stuff.
CMMG. Doing more than right by the customer. (h/t to Marko)
I love going to their website. It’s almost like LEGO… so many bricks to build with. 😉
Corrosion of Conformity is one of my favorite bands. Their 2005 album, “In The Arms of God” I view as a masterpiece.
But that also demonstrates one problem. That was 4 years ago. What’s been going on?
Oh yeah… Down.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Down too. But Down isn’t COC, and COC isn’t Down. I don’t blame Pepper Keenan for working with Down, because they’re far more successful than COC ever was; man needs to make money and pay the bills. Pepper being one of the main songwriters for Down still means a lot of that Pepper J. Keenan lyrical and musical talent is still present. But still, I keep hoping that time will be taken off from Down and COC will be focused on.
I guess I shouldn’t hold my breath:
“It’s a real band now and not a side project,” guitarist Kirk Windstein told Rock Music Menu. “It’s everyone’s main focus and we’ve toured extensively, we’ve been to 27 countries in the last two years, started touring before the record came out, and played everywhere.”
“We’re kind of, for lack of a better term, taking it more serious because it is everybody’s main focus, and while we still do other things, it’s our real band now which it never really was in the past.”
I guess that means we won’t see another Crowbar album for a while either (it’s been 4 years there as well, tho Kirk was also doing Kingdom of Sorrow). *sigh*
Still, I don’t give up hope for another COC album. But if ITAOG ends up being their last, then at least they went out on a high note.
Meantime… I do wonder what Woody is up to.
And now, let’s delve back into the blog stats search terms….
the 3 things everyone should know
muscovy duck shit
Yes they do, and in copious amounts.
how to shoot snub nose well
Practice. Get some training. Practice more.
is a ar rifle good for home defense
Yup.
opeth smokes what cigarettes
Why would you care about this, unless Mikael asked you to run down to the store and buy him a pack?
how fast can 9mm clip empty
Well that depends. First, find me a 9mm clip. Oh, you meant magazine. Gotcha. We might need to care about how many rounds are in it as I can sure empty 1 round faster than 10 faster than 20. Then we need to know by what means are you emptying it: using your fingers to shave rounds off the top, loading the magazine into the gun and shooting all the rounds. Or of course, the fastest way is to just get a cheap aftermarket Glock magazine, load it up, drop it on the floor, let the baseplate shatter and you’ll see really how quickly you can empty a 9mm magazine. 🙂
truth on shotgun spread
Yes, pellets fired from a shotgun do spread out. That’s the truth.
To really know how that spread works out, you’ll have to take a particular shotgun, with a particular choke, with a particular load, and go try it yourself. Set up some cardboard (large piece of it, 2′ to 3′ per side at least) against a good backstop. Step back to your desired distance to shoot from, then shoot. You’ll see how it spreads out… or more specifically, the pattern of how the load’s pellets disperse. This can vary from shotgun to shotgun, from choke to choke, from load to load. So really, the only way to know 100% how things will go is to check it yourself.
do you really need anything more than 9mm
Last time I made homemade ice cream, a gun didn’t help me at all…. I needed a lot of other things to accomplish that.
But if you mean for self-defense, 9mm with good modern self-defense loads works just fine. Caliber is important, but more important is shot placement. 9mm caliber bullets will do their job so long as you do your job.
is a buckshot rifle good for self defense
I didn’t know rifles could shoot buckshot.
how to use 3 dot sight
how to line up three dot sights
why are there three dots in my sight
Because someone was under the mistaken notion it was a good idea. If you can’t replace them with better sights, at least black out the dots on the rear sight.
can a 13 year old shoot a 9mm
Sure. Tori Nonaka handles one just fine. With proper technique and practice, they can certainly handle it.
I spent the weekend of September 12-13, 2009 in a Combined Skills class.
The premise of the class is to provide students with skills that can help you stay alive: skills to avoid violent confrontations in the first place, skills to deal with a violent confrontation should it be necessary. The reason it’s “combined skills” is because a lot of such classes are geared towards a single issue: tactics/mentality, gun handing skills, or empty-hand combatives. This class, as the name implies, combines these things into a single lengthy, advanced-level course. This is not a class for beginners.
Read on for my perspective on the class. I’ll cover who did it, what we did, how I did, what I learned. Yes, it’s a long read, but it’s a good one chock full of information. Note this is all coming from memory after two hard and exhausting days of working, so most should be correct but I may have a detail about a statistic wrong or a quote incorrect. If I do have something wrong, I hope someone will correct me. But you’ll not be able to correct me if you don’t read it all, plus if you skip any of it you might miss the awesome pictures. 🙂
It’s clear that I prefer a rifle like an AR-15 for home defense. I’ve still got my shotguns, I’ve still got my handguns, but if there’s an ability to have a preference, AR-15 is it.
I feel my main AR is fairly well set up as a “fightin'” gun for home needs, including things like having a light on the fore-rail. The one thing I feel I is missing is a good scope/sights. I do have iron sights on it and they work well enough, but I really want to get a red-dot scope such as an Aimpoint. The reason is simple: target acquisition is faster.
So what model to get? Well, I don’t need night vision. I like the optic to be rugged. I want it to be simple (thus the Aimpoint over the EOTech) I do like the battery life as the point is to be a gun always at the ready, so turn it on, leave it on, and when/if I need the gun it’s ready to go no need to have to waste time turning on the optic; just change the batteries once a year. I was originally leaning towards the ML3 because I could get it in a 2 MOA dot. The M4 or M4S would be awesome: best design, uses a common AA battery and has amazing life, but wicked expensive. Tom Givens said all the top 3-gun competition guys were using the ML2; I don’t know why, but my guess is it’s least expensive and the 4 MOA dot is good enough in terms of precision but also a bigger dot means your eye picks it up a lot faster and thus you can get to shooting sooner. That’s some food for thought. The more I pondered that, the more I felt that yes, a 4 MOA dot would be better for my particular purpose of a home-defense/fighting rifle. I doubt I’d be taking shots beyond 100 yards. This is not a sniper/accuracy rifle, and 4″ at 100 yards is still minute-of-dead-bad-guy. If I was taking a shot inside the home, 25 yards is probably my longest shot, with more common distances maybe 10 yards give or take 5 yards.
So as of this writing, my feeling is to get the ML2. Or if for some reason I want the ML3, at least getting it in the 4 MOA configuration. I should say for the longest time I wanted the 2 MOA because I’ve got this thing about precision. People say you can buy the 2 MOA version and crank the brightness up until the dot “blooms” and then it’s bigger: you can make a 2 MOA dot a 4 MOA dot, but you can’t make a 4 MOA dot 2 MOA. There’s something to that, but when I look at a bloomed dot it’s “fuzzy” and distracting. Might be fine for some, but not for me. I can’t make the gun into an “everything” gun. It has a purpose, I need to build for that purpose and have a good rifle for that purpose, instead of a tool that’s half-assed for any/every purpose.
But…
I’m reconsidering getting any sort of sight/scope/optics.
The main reason is money, but also priority.
After taking the Combined Skills class, one thing Tom Givens made clear was that home invasions (where there’s a victim in the house) aren’t as frequent as we might think. Rather I should say, in his years of research, most violent crimes — especially where a gun is used to defend the victim — tend to happen at not-home: on the street, parking lots, etc.. Why are most of the stories of “person defends themselves with a gun” home invasion stories? Because at home is where most people in the USA have access to a gun. Something like half of the households in the USA have a gun in them. How many private citizens are legally allowed to carry a handgun on the street? About 3% of the population. Thus, when you hear the stories, you have to think of it in that context.
It’s not that I don’t want to have a good home-defense gun. But rather, I already have a sighting mechanism on my AR and it’s a good sighting mechanism. I get hits just fine with irons. But perhaps my money (the $500 it will cost for the Aimpoint plus a LaRue Tactical mount) might be better spent on a couple cases of ammo and more time at the range with my handgun. So, where to prioritize? Getting more gear for one thing, or spending the time/money on continuing to hone another thing.
I don’t know. This thought only just occurred to me this morning in the aftermath of the Combined Skills class. It’s something to think about. Not like I’ve got the money right now anyway… gotta think about braces for Oldest. 😯
I wouldn’t say Aerosmith is a true metal band, but I would say that you cannot deny the foundational influence that Aerosmith had upon the bands that followed them. From the hard rockin’ blues style, to the legendary escapades of the Toxic Twins and crew backstage, they certainly helped to shape what was to become metal.
Updated: Ugh. Seems the video I had queued up was removed from YouTube.
But, here’s footage from The Midnight Special in 1974, performing “Train Kept a Rollin'”.
It’s late… I need to get to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a full day in the Combined Skills class. I shall have a full review of the class afterwards.
A few quick things.
More later….
It’s been raining pretty heavily over Central Texas the past 24-48 hours. One area about 90 minutes drive north got 13″ of rain in less than 12 hours and had some pretty bad flooding. Some predictions today are 6-12″ of rain to the west of where I live (into the Texas Hill Country). There’s been bits of flooding here and there… small stream beds that were bone dry are now full. Storm drains are backed up with debris and can’t carry the water away fast enough. The ground is so parched that it just can’t soak up the water as fast as it normally could…. but at least with the sporadic rain events, it gets some time to soften up and that should help moderate the flooding.
At least we had a break in the action last night and were able to go to the Parish Fair for a few hours. I got to have a funnel cake. Life is good. 🙂
Right now it’s coming down at a very strong rate. At least the lawn is happy.
And… I’ve got Combined Skills class.
It’s still going on. Just not sure how things are going to change based upon this rain. I suspect if it’s coming down there as hard as it is here, we just can’t be doing range drills…. cardboard targets will not work.
Tomorrow is supposed to have rain but far less chances.
Well, it’s going to be an interesting day. 🙂
