False Spring

It got up into the lower 60s today.  Part of me (a large part) deep down hates that.  It's tricking my lesser instincts into thinking we've skipped winter, which would be awesome. It's only going to make the next few months that much worse.

In the mean time, I tried to hurt myself.   Got some decent pictures though.

I'm trying to forget that moments later I failed to clear the box with my back tire and now my headset's messed up...

I wonder...

Just saw a post about some low priced body armor at SSD, and it made me think about a conversation I had with shooting buddy Cro a couple months back.  I tend to run a very minimal vest on my own time (right now I'm favoring a bare bones Tactical Tailor mini-MAV) but he likes to run a full out plate carrier for training, which makes sense, seeing as the most likely time either of us will be engaging active targets is while wearing full IBAs with plates. (He even more so for the next few months... he says the mountains are pretty there though.)

The downside of this is that we're both poor college aged Reserve or Guard soldiers.  While being pretty serious about our weapons training, we plain don't have the scratch to drop on some plates, even the dirt level cheapest ones, to get the fullest effect out of training with that sort of setup on our own time. (And if you think plates don't make that big a difference when you're shooting, you've never shot with plates before.)

So we got to wondering, why aren't there any dirt cheap "plate simulators" out there?  Something made out of a hard material with the same weight at a hard plate, and coated in blue plastic with "FOR TRAINING USE ONLY" or something on there, with no ballistic rating?  That shouldn't be that hard for one of those blue-gun makers to figure out.  Keep them under $50 or whatever and I'm sure all the poorer mall ninjas would pick them up, not to mention a decent amount of part time soldiers who want to push their training to the next level.

Sig 7.62x39 Rifle Announced

Late last week it was revealed that Sig will be coming out with their 556 type rifle chambered in 7.62x39mm, and possibly using standard AK mags (may look like this.)  While I'm not actively looking for something like that (I feel the AK platform does everything I need for that particular cartridge,) it is always good to see new developments and options.

Utilizing the proven and abundant AK mag is also a great idea.  I can't help but think part of the AR's popularity is that there are possibly hundreds of magazine options these days, and having some weird proprietary magazine seldom helps sales. Unless you can produce them in decent numbers and for a great price (S&W M&P15-22 at less than $20 comes to mind, now that they're easier to find.)

Grumblecakes

At some point this weekend the facebook page picked up a couple more "fans," or "likes," or whatever it is this week.  Not a giant crowd like some of the others, but the small victories can be fun.

I hate being away from home during a daylight savings switch.  It never fails that I'll forget to reset my alarm clock, and thankfully this time it meant I was in my car and halfway to school an hour early, not cursing for sleeping through my first class again.  So I diverted my trajectory to the coffee shop and pulled out the netbook, and got a cup of delicious Mexican Chiapas so fresh that I don't know if it will cool down fast enough to drink before I have to actually get to class.

That's about it really, but I thought somebody would get a little laugh at me.

Sleep

As I sit watching the sunrise from the passenger seat of a 5-ton dump truck, I can't help but think of how nice and warm and comfy I was in bed a couple hours ago...

Not that I don't enjoy army stuff at times, but a November sunrise is aweful late in Wisconsin. And cold. At least the heater seems to work in this truck.

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Almost 100...

Fans on the facebook.  Neat.

Off to be a soldier for the weekend.

Ripped Pic of the Day

So my Mossberg 930 apparently has the ability to make any user appear to have arms constructed of pure awesome.

Not too bad...

Aside from the State Assembly position, I'm not too disappointed in today's results.  Unfortunately a few of the people I was hoping for got knocked out in the primaries, so there were a couple votes against rather than votes for, which always kind of suck.  Oh wells.

But on the upside, AG Van Hollen keeps his job, and I'm more than happy with that.

High-Larry-Us

The target at the end got me big time... the dogs are still barking.



My copy's in the mail...

Woot!

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Today's the Day!

I'm not going to tell who to vote for (contractual obligations and whatnot), but I will tell you to take a few minutes and do it.

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Lame...

So my old beat up Wiley-X SG1s finally gave up their long battle with life, and finally broke down and got an eye exam and some new sunglasses (my prescription hasn't changed since I got glasses my senior year of high school...)  Nice looking Colombia branded wrap-around type with polarized polycarbonate lenses (by the way, prescription wrap-arounds!  Awesome!)  Decent eye protection with good coverage.

The lameness, however, is what they included for a "case."

Yup... A little cloth draw string pouch.  The last pair of glasses I got, a pair of cheap $40 pair of plastic frames with the cheapest lenses available, came with a hard clamshell case... the $250+ Ti flex-framed superlight polycarb lensed regular glasses I wear all the time came with a hard case.  Unfortunately the new shades don't fit in those cases, so I have to shop around and find a hard case they will.

Oh well.  I should just be glad to have sunglasses again.

Eight Things Everyone Needs to Know About Zombies

From NPR.

Why shotguns suck against zombies.

It's that time of year, so despite being an old and tired discussion, I'm going to go ahead and talk about killing zombies.

First off, I need to define what the hell I mean when I say zombie.  When I think of zombies, I think the classic Romero style, shambling, stupid, shoot-them-in-the-head style of zombie.  A good, wholesome zombie, fun for the whole family.  Those things in "28 Decades Later", or whatever the newest one is, don't count.  Zombies aren't fast or have super powers, aside from being dead, but not dead.

So we have a slow dumb target, who has issues with stairs, and whose thought process doesn't go much beyond "gar, hungry... nead meat..." much like you're average starving hippie.  The only way to surely stop the threat is to remove the head or destroy the brain (again, much like a starving hippie...)  I have noticed over the years that the average novice zombie hunter will voice his choice of a 12 gauge shotgun of some sort.  Thanks to Hollywood, most non-gunnies tend to think of the shotgun as a magic wand that you just need to point towards your target and shoot.  "With that much lead, you're sure to hit something!"  While the shotgun is a fantastic weapon for the living, most of my dear readers are gunnies, and know that shotguns are possibly the hardest tactical weapon to truly master.

Another misconception, and usually the fall back for the shotty's defender after pointing out that buckshot is less than ideal for the walking dead, is that you can always load it up with slugs and go for the good ol' headshot.  Here's the thing.  My beloved Mossberg 930, an easy shooting gas operated semi, with a relatively large capacity, maxes out with 11 rounds total (assuming you know how to float one on the lifter.)  Plus, even a "low recoiling" gas operated shotty ported to hell and back like mine, still bucks like a pissed off stallion with a standard 1oz. slug load, not to mention that even with rifled slugs the accuracy is less than fantastic, especially since the bulk of shotguns in the world have very simple sighting systems.

Now, does all this mean the ol' shotty should be left out of the zombie bag all together?  No.  For one thing, if the outbreak lasts for any extended amount of time, 12 gauge shotgun rounds are probably the second easiest ammunition type to scrounge for right after the .22lr.  Just avoid the birdshot unless you're stuck in a Hitchcock film.  Another thing to bear in mind is that the shotgun is a devistating weapon against the regular people.  If the outbreak lasts long enough to shut down a significant area with multiple groups of survivors, those other groups may be far from friendly.

It makes so much sense...

If Schroedinger's cat is neither alive nor dead, he must be a zombie!

(I tend to take my t-shirts in a medium if you're wondering...)

One of the best things...

...you can attach to a defensive gun is a white light.

A couple years ago I had the opportunity to play the part of a bad guy for some force-on-force training with the local PD.  They were doing low-light/no-light cold weather training, so we were in the basement of a city park building with all the windows blocked off, and being an unheated building in February, the cold was readily available.

The scenario was pretty straightforward, the "responding officers" would enter the building, come across the caller, a "parks employee" who had come into work and heard somebody down in the basement.  Officers were told there had been a rash of armed robberies in the area and to be ready for anything.  Unfortunately there was a problem with the building's electrical system so the heat was out and the lights did not work in the basement.

The "bad guys" were to wait in ambush in the blacked out basement.  We were armed with a couple old S&W .357s loaded up with Simmunitions, and if we had the opportunity to tag a cop, take it, and if you could make it to the stairs you "escaped."  If the cop got you, react accordingly (i.e., one got me in the knee in the first group after I had emptied my cylinder at them. I let them know just how much getting shot in the knee hurt and was not a very cooperative suspect as they cuffed me.)

The police, on the other hand, were armed with Sig P226s with attached Surefire weapon lights.

By the time the final group was making it through, me and my partner in crime had the scenario down.  We had "home field" advantage, having spent the day in that freezer of a basement, as well as being well acquainted with the layout with the lights on.  I had found a nice little closet directly across the room from a doorway, which provide me with plenty of cover (concealment in reality, but stout enough to stop a sim round.  What kind of bad guy would I be if I didn't cheat a little?) My partner was laid up under the main stairway, and would wait for me to fire before making a break for the stairs.  Being the end of the day, I had a full six rounds, and he had three, since I was further back in the basement, and would be tripping the ambush. We did not have any light sources of our own however, it being assumed that we'd have killed them to try and sneak past the cops.  We settled ourselves in and waited for the scenario to start.

After hearing the commotion upstairs, we put on our game faces (er, protective masks...) A few minutes later I could see the officers' lights making their way through the next room.  Thankfully they had broken right at the bottom of the stairs and were clearing the basement in a counter-clockwise direction, giving me the best position to use my nice little closet.  Cue the action!

As the first officer stepped into the doorway, his partner hit the switch on his light behind him.  You know those black on white silhouette targets?  I almost felt bad for the guy as I put two into his center mass.  Turns out my second shot went a nudge high and tagged him right on the lens of his mask.  He went down, and his partner returned fire through the doorway, pelting the wall and door frame as I ducked back into the closet.

One down, three to go, one half out of ammo.  I've got a measly four rounds left, but only one guy between me and the stairs; Officer BravoFoxtrot had fallen back across the next room after realizing his partner was toast.  Freedom's a-callin'!  I move out, step over the "dead" cop, and dive through the door.  I know the room is about 30 feet across, and has two foot pillars every six feet or so down the center, and being an "uneducated baddy" I don't bother slicing the pie or anything remotely tactical beside running to the first pillar, my numb feet clumsily shuffling across the concrete, no doubt alerting the officer to my general location.

Now it's on.  The officer's light snaps on, catching my last few steps to cover.  The pillar is pelted with detergent filled .40S&W rounds as the officer empties the remaining half of his mag at me.  I figure it's time to go big or go home, so I peak out and empty my cylinder at the bright light.  However I am so dazzled I can't make heads or tails of my sights on this unfamiliar gun.  As the cop tries his hardest to reload in the dark, I make my move and duck past him and get to the stairs.  My partner has also managed to "wound" another officer and make his escape while I was engaged in my epic shootout.

Thankfully, this all occurred in a controlled training environment, and the only thing injured was some pride.  It was fun, despite spending 8 hours in a freezer, and lessons were learned.  But what were those lessons?  Let's break it down (full disclaimer: take all of this simply as advice.  This is no substitute for hands on training with a qualified instructor, simply things the writer has experienced in his short life and time around guns.):

• Shooting in the dark it not easy.

It's tough.  You can't see your target, you can't see your sights, and if you're moving, you're constantly worried about smacking into a wall.  

Unfortunately, the breaking glass seldom sounds at noon. If you need to use a defensive firearm, chances are pretty darn good that it's going to be dark out.

• If you do utilize a white light, you need to train with it.

And this doesn't simply mean going to an indoor range and turning the lights off.  Yes, it is important to get some live fire time with a light, but you also need to get to know how stuff is going to look with your light.  Every type of light is going to shine in a different pattern, and depending on the system, they can have a wide variety of colors.  The LED powered Streamlight on my pistol and the old incandescent Surefire on my carbine couldn't provide more different light without slapping a filter on one.

If you use a light on your home defense setup, walk around your house at night with all the lights off and see how things look (you may want to do this when everybody's out of town for the weekend or something...)  Start in your bedroom and work your way to the exterior doors, or whatever route you would take if something were happening, and note where the shadows lay.  Pay attention to the doorways and try to see where your lights going.  If you've got a willing partner, have them wait in the other room and tell you when they can see your light so you know where to kill the light to prevent alerting the intruder too early.

Also notice how much splash your light has.  Can you tell if that silhouette is a bad guy or just your 16 year old trying to sneak in late without pointing your gun directly at him?  (If this is a real possibility you may want to look into a separate light.)

• Proper techniques are key!

Go back to the final shootout in the story above.  There were nearly 20 rounds fired between the officer and myself, and not a single hit was scored.  There's numerous reasons for this.  I don't know why the officer was unable to his me, I can only assume that it was due to his rush to get rounds downrange, and my use of cover.

I do know why my shots missed: I couldn't see a damned thing in the space of time it took me to get my four shots off.  The officer's light hitting my eyes, fully dilated after sitting in a pitch black basement for an hour, had completely dazzled me.  I try to aim for what I thought was the light, but my rounds sailed clear past him since everything was a bright white light.  Some people don't like white lights on their guns because they think it will simply act as an aiming point for their opponent.  This may be true if you're participating in infantry maneuvers across a wide open field, but in a close quarters room clearing type situation like an armed home intruder, proper light discipline will turn that light into the best tool (after the gun of course) available for you.

If you're working with somebody, don't be a Blue Falcon and silhouette them in a doorway either.

• Don't relay solely on the light.

The officer had not simply freaked out because it was dark.  He had deduced through my "killing" of his partner that I was willing to harm him to escape, and his ears told him that I was dangerously close.  At this point it is fully justifiable to shine that light directly in my face and serve it up with a forty-caliber chaser.

-

This was not the first time I had dealt with low light situations (there's another good story there, and I'll get to that in a gear related light post in the future) but it was the most dramatic example I've personally had as to why people hang lights on their stuff.  Are there times when a weapon mounted light aren't the best solution? Sure.  But there's plenty of situations where they are a massive force multiplier, and you always have the option to simply not turn it on.  However I'd rather have the light hanging there and not need it than be stuck wishing it wasn't sitting in the workbench at home or something.

All that being said, what are your thoughts?  Let the comments roll baby.

Just in time?

Well find out come Tuesday...

Sig has released some info on a new sub-compact, the Sig P290, and in the couple days it's been bouncing around the interwebs, I have to say it's grown on me.

Apparently it's a completely new platform, so far in 9x19mm (which is pretty nice in a tiny pocket rocket) with a "6-8 round capacity," which I'm hoping equates to a stubby mag as pictured, and an extended mag with a finger rest.

No word on pricing, and probably out sometime next year.  Steve has more pictures and stats over at TFB.

Whaa?

So about once a month, I notice somebody has been referred to the blog via this site and it confuses the crap out of me.  The only thing I can think of is perhaps it's got something to do with these two posts.

And it begins...

It sounds evil outside.  Constant 25mph+ wind gusting up to 50mph so far.  Hooray.

Gun Control for the...

...WTFness?

'Nother 300BLK Video

Still looks like fun.

Speaking of Coffee

Last weekend a couple friends and I ran over to Appleton (WI) to hit up a costume shop and to generally break up the monotony of life overall (little day trips are good for that.)  After lunch at a fantastic little Italian Restaurant I forget the name of, I ducked into the little coffee house across the street to get a cup.

I then learned, much to my pleasant surprise, not only does Acoca Coffee have incredibly comfortable couches (as seen here), but they also have absolutely delicious daily roasted coffee brewed by the cup.  I had a large Sumatra (organic and fair trade certified, a good hippie approved coffee.)  I have yet to meat a Sumatran bean I didn't like, and find it a good meter for unfamiliar coffee brands.  Needless to say, I was not disappointed.

If you find yourself in Appleton and in need of some fresh coffee and don't mind the mild hippie vibe that always comes with a coffee house in a college town, it's well worth stopping in.

Some people...

Mild coffee shop rant... (aimed at another customer though)

So if you're too busy talking on your cell phone to correct the poor girl making your drink to the fact that you wanted a small triple mocha soy latte and not the large one she charged you for and made you, why did you bother to hang around taking up counter space while I wanted to order a simple cup of black coffee until you were done with your phone call just so you could complain?

Just so you know...

Been meaning to write some stuff, but school, work, and more school has been getting in the way, especially with being that time of year when I'm trying to squeeze in every last minute of riding before the white stuff hits.  Rest assured that I fully intend to talk about white lights on defensive guns in the very near future (meant to get to it all summer...)

Back to the Bree Creek Quadrangle Stratigraphic Column... due tomorrow morning, wish me luck.

I'm OK

I'm not really huge on poetry, but sometimes it can hit home pretty well.

Hooah!

US Army Snipers take First Place at International Sniper Comp. at Ft. Benning.

The winning team included Sgt. 1st Class Edward Hoymeyer and Sgt. 1st Class Chance Giannelli, from the Special Forces Sniper School at Fort Bragg, N.C. The two scored 1,258 points out of a possible 1,507 during the competition. They were also the only team to receive a perfect score on the final event of the competition.

(h/t - TFB)

Ugh

"Hey, so I know you've got a concert Saturday for Choral Union, but I totally think you should get another head cold.  I mean that one a couple weeks ago wasn't too bad, even if you were doing Army crap."

"Screw you body.  Screw you."

Thank His noodly appendages for Theraflu.  Hopefully I'll be able to breath through my nose Saturday. (And yes, I sing baritone in the large vocal ensemble at school.)

Pic of the Day, BMX Edition

I didn't do much... believe it or not it was my first time at a skate park on a bike, and I've always felt awkward on a tiny little BMX (and Marty's is huge for a BMX...) but I may drag along the P1 and see how that fairs next time.

Smoke

Grr.