Wednesday, February 29, 2012

At least everybody stayed inside most of the night...

Got about 4 inches or so of snow, then it turned to rain around 1am.  Nice, heavy, driving, pouring rain.  Now the roads are effectively flooded since the storm drains are packed full of ice and snow, and it's hovering right around 32 degrees.

I'll be very glad to get home in about a half hour and just go to sleep until Skaldi stops throwing up all over the world.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Really MLB?

Astros remove Revolver from throwback jersey to make MLB happy.

Now they look stupid, and I hope any living player that wore those jerseys get nice and vocal about how disrespectful MLB's decision is.

(h/t SayUncle)

Monday, February 27, 2012

Never Snowing Again

Since Manda's new skis weren't enough, there's now a brand new snowblower in the garage.  Supposedly we're getting anywhere from 4 to 14 inches in the next couple days, but this should solidly assure the storm will dissipate just before hitting Central Wisconsin.

Skiing

All told, we probably only did a little over 10k of XC skiing over the weekend, but it was the first time we were able to get out this year.  None of the snow has stuck around long enough to even think about grooming trails around here, so we had to go 4 hours north.

It was fun (especially with the stops at White Winter Winery and South Shore Brewery...) but I came back to an overnight shift and I'm dead tired.  There's a good two hours before I can go to bed yet...

OOB Dets Suck...

FN-57 KB... ouch.

Friday, February 24, 2012

"Act of Valor" AAR

Got a bit dusty in that theater the last couple scenes...









Go see it.

Skiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

First XC ski trip of the season has finally happened (snow has not cooperated at home this year.)  Nice overall, but the sun did peak out enough to warm the fresh stuff up enough to get tacky, and start freezing to my grippy middle section, so by the end of the trail I wasn't gliding anymore.  Hopefully tomorrow it'll be a bit better, and different trails means hopefully different conditions.

We're going to head into the nearest town big enough to have a theater in an hour or so and catch "Act of Valor," which I'm pretty excited about.

No photos to show, I forgot the microSD to SD adapter card thingy, so no way to pull them off the up-armored camera.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Phew....

The apartment is cleared out, so that worry is off the shoulders.

To celebrate, we'll be heading up north to go skiing, since the snow refuses to stay here for more than 24 hours. May hop on and say some stuff or post some photos, but don't expect much until Monday.

So to Kill Zombies...

It has to be colored "radioactive green?"

I'll admit that I've enjoyed the whole zombie thing for a while, but it's getting a bit absurd and quite overdone.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Muzzle Flash Photography

Since I'll be busy all day, here's a gun video from Destin to keep you occupied.

Moving

Out of the apartment over the next couple days... probably will be sparse around here.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Whiskey Followed by Beer

On Modern Marvels when I got up this morning.  Sometimes I wish there was just a channel with nothing but that show...

Monday, February 20, 2012

Extended M&P Mag Release

"The Costa Catalyst" from 21st Century Gunfighter.

I really haven't had an issue with the stock one, but this could be a great upgrade for smaller hands.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Illumination Equipment?

What kind of lights do people out there like to use?

A while back I wrote up a piece about a training experience and how it led me to love having a white light on my gun.  I always intended to follow up on that one with an article about gear, but I've only been able to use a few different lights and mount setups.  I'd love to hear what some of your opinions are on different gear, and maybe see if we could round up some more examples of what's out there for a decent spread and compare some stuff.

Feel free to let us know what you like, dislike, and all that fun stuff down in the comments, and if you'd be willing to possibly loan some gear to the cause, shoot me an email and we'll see what we can get set up!

Friday, February 17, 2012

M26 Being Issued

2nd BCT 101st is the first to be issued the new shotgun system.

Bonus donut of doom!




















I think it's a great tool for any breaching team (and so did the design team, there's a pull-out breaching stand-off device on the muzzle.)  I'd love to get some time with one of these.

(h/t TFB)

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Monday, February 13, 2012

Credit

Caleb has a good post about using other people's stuff.  It's a good read (so go read it.)

I tend to think of my blog as being somewhat image driven (even if I've been slacking on that lately...) and I'm cool with others using my images.  As long as you link back to the post that the image is from, go for it.

Oh, speaking of images, here's picture of Simon Cat.  If only he'd stay that way...

Remember Tomorrow

Is Starbucks Appreciation Day!  Hooray Caffeine!!

Heh...

I'm not a big fan of people who go for the permanent solution, so I can't help but agree with Tam.  If you're gonna do it, go big.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Good Day's Work

The results of the morning of casting.
Pretty respectable pile of .44 and .38 bullets.

Bullet Molding Day

Off to Cro's to mold some bullets this morning.  MandaFern says I'm not allowed to taste the lead, not even for quality control reasons.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Tiny Tanks!

Ok, not technically tanks.

Spent a good chunk of today test painting some Strykers for GHQ Micro Armor.















Here's the Mortar Carrier from the bunch I did up.  Really simple, sand for the base (a 1" square of plasticard) primed it grey, dark brown followed by a drybrush of a bone white for the base; hit the truck with an OD green, washed it with a brown wash, picked out some details with black and light brown, and then a light drybrush of the bone color again to weather it.

It didn't take too long, and I got six of them done in a couple hours.  I'm quite pleased with the detail they crammed into the little things too.  They're 1:285 scale pewter...
















I ended up painting the Command truck, the Mortar, a line APC, and the three MGSs that come in the Stryker Infantry Task Force Combat Command box (which are pretty good deals if you're looking to get into it.)
















I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but it's supposed to be pretty realistic.  I'm probably going to shell out and get some actual tanks for the "Beer and Pretzels" quickplay rules they've got posted on their site.  I think it'll be an interesting change from 40k.

Contest Time!

Aaron has updated his gun contest page for the month. Go forth, win cool stuff, make me jealous.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Tuesday

Tuesday means wargames.

Old photoshop of one of my models from back in the day... turned out well.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Seriously...?

I guess since most police departments and the majority of military guys have all jumped on the carbine bandwagon, we can just go ahead and stop taking Shotguns seriously.

In my opinion, if you're using MW2/3 or whatever for your marketing inspiration, you're doing something wrong (that goes for you too, Eotech... you're making me embarassed to have your sight on my gun.)

Stupid Import Laws...

And SBR laws too while we're at it...

Civilian Semi-Auto CZ Scorpion for European Sales.  Not sure why, but I really like the looks of it, and wish I could get one.

Carry Like a Pro

Part 2 of Rob Reed's advice for new carriers, something very important to many of my fellow Wisconsinites.

I posted Part 1 last Friday.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Hand to Hand

How long do you need to be in the Army before you can say "I'm too old for this s___"? Gonna be one sore neck in the morning.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

M&P22 Has Returned

S&W replaced the Firing Pin and Firing Pin Return Spring, and it got back to us yesterday.  The new spring is noticeably stronger feeling than the old one, so we'll see how that works out.

Overall though, you can't complain about getting your gun fixed for the price of driving to the FedEx office a couple times.  S&W warranty service is fantastic like that.

AR15 Parts Cutaways

Several photos showing the insides of AR15 parts on WEVO.  Always cool to look at.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

M&P9 Mid-Size

When the Balloon Goes Up is taking up the call for a mid-sized M&P, much like the Glock19.  I wholeheartedly agree, this is the sort of beast I've been dreaming about since at least last August.

The original photos have been re-arranged, but I contacted the OP of the thread in my link and got a peak for you guys-

Source
 The guy second from the bottom there.  The grip was cut down and trimmed to fit a compact length magazine, and a custom bolt and plug were made to fill in the heel of the grip and keep the palm-swell in place.

BGU's concept has a shorter barrel and a slightly longer grip.  I would rather have a little shorter grip, since that's the hardest part to conceal with carrying IWB, and I like the longer sight radius available with the "full-length" slide.  I'd feel pretty comfortable with the short mag in the gun, and one or two full size mags for reloads.

Another One Drinks the Kool-Aid

A Girl and Her Gun has joined the ranks of M&P users.