While the Idea is Cool...

...bipedal armored fighting machines are not really a good idea.  I'm fairly certain any unit of modern main battle tank would hand their shiny metal asses to them.  However I do kind of hope they follow through on it, I'd love to see one.

Phew!

I was short on cash when I stopped at Starbucks, so I just used my debit card.  I guess I'm safe.

Stay Classy Madison!

Well, the occupiers anyway...

A neighboring hotel’s staff alleged voiced concerns about having to recently escort hotel employees to and from bus stops late at night due to inappropriate behavior, such as public masturbation, from street protesters.

Apparently that has prompted the city to not renew their permit... Knowing Madison politics, I almost find that surprising.

(h/t Boots & Sabers)

Couple Bits of Linkage

Ann Althouse - The Anguish of Coffee It can be hard to get it right before your first cup... I call this the "coffee paradox"

Best Selling Pointy Bitz on Amazon! if you can get past the branding, the BG survival knife looks to be one hell of a deal

source

Speaking of Range Mishaps...

Stuff like this make me afraid to get into reloading.  Seems like a pretty easy mistake to make if you're even a little absent minded.

Still Alive

Just working night shifts the tail end of this week, and I don't sleep well to begin with.  Rest assured, I am well insulated from the insanity to the south for the time being.  (Although I think I may need to consider keeping my gear packed and uniforms ready...)

What round for Shark?

Two Bull Sharks Spotted Swimming in Australian Streets.

Glocks, Reload Speed, Mag Capacity...

Obviously are all currently being heavily discussed due to the events this past weekend.  Uncle just put up a decent post relating to a couple of the issues, especially in regards to why mag capacity doesn't really mean squat in such situations.  (Although in the case in question, it was sloppy reloading technique that was the shooter's downfall by most accounts.)

Predictably, the sales of Glock handguns and "high-capacity" magazines for them have spiked in the last few days.  Just surfing most gun forums will get you a slew of threads asking where to get the big mags since everybody's sold out of them.  Personally, I'm not too worried about this causing a new mag ban just yet, and I'm not a Glock fan by any means, so an extended Glock magazine wouldn't do me much good (although there are some 9mm carbines that use them out there, and that could be fun.)  I'm not going to panic buy any though.

Just as much full retard debate has been flying around regarding the political rhetoric that some claim pushed Loughner over the edge.  That's pretty much all bull___.  I don't really make it habit of backing any single politician, I'm generally disgusted by politics at large, and the games the MSM plays with it doesn't make it any better.  However, despite what you're thoughts are on Sarah Palin, she brought up a pretty good quote in a recent response to the accusations being thrown at her campaign.

"We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” Ronald Regan

ETA: Larry Correia's also got a pretty decent post from a couple days ago that sums up a lot of my feelings pretty well too, and it's prettier than anything I can write, since writing's kinda his thing.

It's been nagging me as well.

Is this really a victory?  Because it really strikes me as a bit of a waste of resources, let alone the borderline entrapment.  Did we at least gain some intel on his contacts or anything?  Did he even have any contacts other then FBI agents playing make-believe?

Black Friday

A friend sent me a text at oh-dark-thirty rejoicing in the fact that they were actually in line for the checkout already at Best Buy, and glad to simply be inside (wind-chill is currently sub-zero.)

Thankfully I still had an hour and a half of my shift left, so it didn't wake me up or anything.  Now I'm sitting in my usual caffeine dispensary sipping a nice warm cup and waiting for some fresh cooked, locally produced eggs and getting some much needed words put up around here.  I may poke around the interwebs over the weekend and see what other bike parts I can find for a project I have in mind (already got a set of wheels for $70!)

I'm fairly certain the only retail place other than the coffee house I'll be visiting today will be the comic shop since I was busy playing Army all Wednesday and missed the new books for the week and for some reason he was closed yesterday.

Complacency Kills

I was going to mention this last night, but I'm lacking in motivation as of late, so Tam beat me to it.


In the handful of places I've seen mention of this story, it never fails that one of the first comments is in regards to how dumb of an idea it is.

I completely agree.

I don't care how much you publicize the "virtual speed-bumps," there's still a percentage of people who won't have heard about it, and could conceivably swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid hitting little Suzie.

There's another percentage that will no doubt be driving that same route every day, and that's where the post's title comes from.  It's a long standing saying in the military.  Don't get used to things, or you'll wind up dead; don't let your guard down; etc...  In this case there's a chance that one of those regular commuters will become so accustom to "running over a little girl" on the way to work that if a kid did chase a ball onto the road in the area that driver's not going to think twice until the telltale "thump."

The forced perspective aspect is kind of cool, but the anthropomorphizing of the image is equal parts morbid, tasteless, and dangerous.  Why not just a giant 3-D "SLOW DOWN"?

Those guns are huge!

No, wait, just tiny guys...

GunPundit posted some photos of Afghan forces and their various small arms.  What caught my eye was the last picture with a couple ANA dudes rocking some M16A2s.  Yeah, 5.56mm type.  I had just forgotten just how small your average Afghan is compared to your typical American service member...

I love my state...

Such interesting people.  Pretty expensive statement though.

Rubber Band for a Spring?

So last night I mentioned that Cro busted the extractor spring on his M4gery partway through the day at the range yesterday, well before I got there.  On the upside, he's been running his RRA built gun pretty hard for for tens, if not hundreds of thousand of rounds, since 2005.  It's amazing in its own right that the spring lasted this long.

So I offered to grab on of the spare bolts I've got laying around these days. A little later he sent me a cryptic text message saying that he had "fixed it with a rubber band... two mags, so far so good."  Needless to say my mind was racking with how this is possible all the drive home and back out to the range.

Now a little background on Cro.  He is an Army Engineer officer, and has a good amount of gunsmith training.  He's a smart guy to start with, and if you know anything about Army Engineers, we tend to be the "only one sure way to see if it works!" kind of guys.  So he had a thought and ran with it.  Since I can, find out what exactly happened after the jump.  There's even a video!

Bleg

Kinda how I feel after the last couple days of shifting boxes around aimlessly.  Of course the gub'ment computers block anything with "blog" in the title, so I had to search an unfamiliar city for a welcome-ish looking coffee house, that once located, had internet that fought my poor little netbook tooth and nail for an hour before submitting and letting me even check my email.

Lots of stuff going on in the world I'm sure, but not much time to read much of the news and absorb it, so there you go.

However I think we can all agree that walking around Pakistan with a sword just may raise some eyebrows.

Hopefully Sunday I'll be able to hash together some stuff and set things to auto for the week.

What's With Short Frenchmen?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy doesn't want tall bodyguards.  Seriously.  We know the guy is short (5'5"), but from a straight up security standpoint, it's a horrible move.  Tall security guys can see better in a crowd, and tend to be a bit more intimidating.  But leave it to a Frenchman to be so insecure about his hight to compromise security so he doesn't feel too bad.

1,800+ views...

in a matter of days, primarily due to Tam.  The squee inducing fawn from Wednesday has quickly eclipsed all others to become the most viewed post on my entire blog.  Not sure what to think... quite school and take up wildlife photography?

What's a good way to set your coffee shop up for a hold up?

By actively making cops unwelcome.  I guess they just hope their karma will keep them safe (although I'd imagine that treating a human being this way simply because of their profession doesn't help out your karma much...)

My usual caffeine distribution center is all sorts of borderline new age and hippie-ish, but not too long ago they hosted a "morning coffee with the SPPD" sort of event, where the general public could come chat some of the city's finest in an informal setting. (I had classes, so I missed out on it, but the concept seems like a great idea.)

Crazy...

So it may not be the gun's fault?  Britain's Prime Minister warns against "knee jerk" legislation in regards to yesterday's shooting.

"You can't legislate to stop a switch flicking in someone's head and for this dreadful sort of action to take place," 

Please shoot me App?

Say Uncle brings us one of the dumbest ideas I've seen this week.