Hooray hooray the range is open again.

Our local indoor range has been closed for months for renovation, but is now open again.
Mysti will have the chance to try out her new Walther now.

Post Turkey Day thoughts: Network Television

Watching Boston Legal last night and they hit on something that has had me mystified lately.
With the large number of boomers over 50, with the amount of disposable income they have available, why do the networks not Put programming on for them? Why is it that the only demographic they pitch to are the pubescent and young 20 somethings? Nearly all the shows I have liked have been pitched to small demographic groups, shows like Firefly, Buffy, Angel, Farscape, Treks, and the Stargates all of which had seriously diehard fans, all of which had story lines people of all ages could follow and all of which got less than 1/10 the promotional network backing they should have had.

Will the networks realize their untapped audience before Television peters out and no one bothers to watch at all? They are moaning about low viewership, and yet seem to be ingnoring the largest group of potential watchers. I just do not get it.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Friends, Family, Home and Food. Beyond that I don't really care today for those are the most important things of all. (No necessarily in that order) :)


Have a good day everyone.

Where are the planes?

Just realized I haven't changed my plane picture in ages, which reminds me...Im waiting for some pics of aircraft from a friend of mine :) Maybe for Christmas MH? ;)

Chantilly Gun Show

Was huge, the Expo center is one of the largest in this area, and the lot was packed, no one got parking by the time I got there at 9am until someone else left.

When I got into the Show at about 10 (yes an hour to get a parking space) I went directly to the Ammo booths..... by 10 AM (they opened for business at 9) they were out of .357, .38 and 9mm bulk ammo and only had the really expensive .22 ammo left ($52 a brick) I did manage to find one small dealer who had 500 rounds of .22 for $25 so got those for Mysti and I snagged 1500 rounds of 5.56 ammo for the AR....by 2pm the ammo dealers were out of all the bulk ammo. I saw more people buying what was left of the black guns...and there weren't many to be had. I did hear several dealers mention that they were on back order from 3 to 6 month waiting list. I did manage to snag 3x20 round mags and 2x30 round mags for the AR as well and some ammo cans for storage of my bulk ammo. Today I've got to run out to get some dessicant packets to put in the cans with the ammo.

Total cost for 1500 rounds of 5.56, 500 rounds of .22, 4 mags for the AR and 4 Ammo Cans just shy of $500 prices are insane. Sure hope O is too busy to mess with guns for a while.

Tomorrow I Celebrate a Belated National Ammo Day

Headed to Chantilly Va. first thing in the morning to by some 5.56, 9mm, .357 or .38, Ammo Cans, Maybe a second upper for my AR, and some desicant packs.....on the way home have to buy a turkey :)

Black Rifles, now scarce. No Surprise.

Well now, I am really really glad I bought my XM15 last month, the price and availability of these things are ridiculous now that the election is over. My buddy Jeff at "Just Guns" in Baltimore is out of stock now and the waiting list is crazy.

I need to get out this weekend and get ammo, before it too is scarce.

Update: oops too late, everyone is sold out. Every dealer I called suggsted next weekends gun show at Chantilly Virginia...its quite a drive but I guess I will have to get there.

If your Vista looses it's DVD/CD Drives

Then you can try this solution: **** WARNING MESSING WITH YOUR REGISTRY CAN BE DANGEROUS **** SO do this at your own risk. It worked for me.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11­CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Apparently it seems that this is an age old fix for even XP systems. If you venture to the registry key above by doing the following steps:

1. Click on the start menu.
2. If this is a Vista machine in the search box type in “regedit” without the quotation marks.
3. Maximize the HKLM and then go ahead and browse until you reach the key listed above.
4. In the right panel you’ll see something along the lines of “UpperFilter” and “LowerFilter” you want to click on each “filter” key and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.
5. Restart Windows.

** Note it is not uncommon for one of the entries to already be missing, (Upper or lower) just delete the ones listed that are actually there.

AAArrrrgggggghhhhh

No that was not me being a pirate! At some point over the evening my Vista64 Ultimate Operating System has decided to quit talking to all 3 of my DVD drives. 1 internal SATA and 2 External USB. They work fine when I boot into XP so it has to be a Vista thing.

Im at a losss, tried removing the drivers and reloading and multiple reboots and variations on the theme....no luck, Im left resorting ot The Geek Squad

Just shoot me now. :P

I blame Obama

Mysti's brand spankin new Walther P22 broke while she was working the slide getting used to the feel of the gun. She has been sitting with it in her hand while watching TV (With Snap Caps loaded in the clip) so she could work the action and pick off bad guys to get used to the feel of the trigger. At one point she racked the slide and out popped a 1/2 inch flat piece of metal which for the life of me I cannot figure out where it came from. Walther/Smith & Wesson are being very good about getting the warrenty work done, but holy smoke! I was surprised.

Horror and tragedy.

The Socialist Libs took control and it was due to the Majority of American voters.
The Dems have the House, Senate and White house. Shortly with the Democrats appointing the judges they will effectively control all three branches of the government.

The democrats will have what they have wanted for years, and while they are not filibuster proof, its pretty damn close. They will be able to claim all the praise for any good over the next 4 years and will be unable to blame the Conservative Republicans or Independent politicians for any failures. Glad I bought my gun when I did, hope I can some day buy another....or even keep the ones I already have.

Halloween

Mysti did up the house and I'll have a few pictures to post once I resize them.
We also took some video but it really was too dark to see too much. When she started
this craze of hers, we would have over 250 kids come by, each year the number dwindles
and this year we didn't even hit 75. I guess at some point she is going to realize it
just isn't worth the hassel. But for now she gets a real kick out of the kids being scared witless.

Waiting:

We have to wait till mid November to join the right Gun club to access the range where we can try out our new long gun....ugh a new toy and I can't play with it for the first month of ownership! Our indoor pistol range should be back on line next weekend.....so....we play the waiting game.

Where are they now?

Mysti and I stayed in this past weekend, the weather was cold and very verywet with fairly high winds. Our usual indoor shooting range is down for renovation for another week or so...so it has been all about staying in, cutting hardebaker board for shower repairs. Mysti really gets into this home repair thing, reminds me of Brigid, or vise versa.

Yesterday was Buy a gun day

Drove out to Essex for Mysti to pick up her Walther P22 (pictured previously) and on the way home we stopped at our friends Gun Store and I picked up a Bushmaster XM15 E2S, it is a base config but I intend to customize it later.


It's an M3 model (heavier barrel than the M4) which means It is not classifed in Maryland as an "Assault Weapon". Maryland Laws state it has to have at least a 16" barrel that is not cut to reduce the weight in any way,However I am permitted to purchase any upper for it that I see fit for it after the initial purchase. So now I can mod it all I want and put any optics I want, heck I can even get it made full auto with a silencer....just not allowed to put a flash supressor on it....This state is weird...just freakin weird. It took me 20 minutes to make this purchase (because we were shooting the breeze) and I walked out of the store with it....it took Mysti 13 days to be able to get her P22 pistol....simply because it was a pistol. Did I mention weird gun laws?

I have not abandoned the Blog :)

No, I started a new profession. Yes to be sure I will be leveraging my technical talents from my life long technology pursuits, but this is something new, and as such I feel the need to focus on learning how to do this new stuff well. Yes this means I spend a whole lot of un-reported OT reading non-recreational material but in the long run it should pay off.

Benefits:
Very little in the way of Night work
No weekend work (normally)
simple 8-5 hours monday - friday
No micromanagement
Low pressure so far
I get to explore new tech.

Down Side:
I am not the expert any more.
For the 1st time in 20 years I feel like a noob

ummm thats it....so I think Im looking good and so far insulated from the Market turmoils, as long as I don't look at the bottom line of my 403b. *sigh* Patience young skywalker the market will recover.....

New Job

Learning new stuff...totally different from what I was doing before....brain hurt, skull expanding to try to accomodate more info.....cerebelum liquifying melt down imminent.

Gun Show results.

Due to issues that I will not go into, I did not get to the Gun Show on Saturday, however Mysti and I did get there today. I picked up some Ammo Cans and 500 rounds of 9mm ammo. While Mysti found many little doodads that she wanted to pick up. They were not really gun related per-se, however the big purchase of the day was a Walther P22 pistol, so now Mysti has her very own weapon. Of course with the regulations in this state she wont actually get the thing till next week.

At least now she has her own reason to be at the range with me :)
This is the model she got.

Gun Show redux

6 hours of work left, then hiho, hiho, it's off to the Timonium Gun show we go. I'm betting even money that Mysti decides to buy a .22 of her very own to shoot with, rather than beat up my collectors item :)

This show promises to have approximately 600 tables so we should come home with the trunk loaded. I'm hoping to score some water tight ammo cans, some silloette targets, some snap caps
and ammo.

A plan I can Agree with.

Here’s the Kim Du Toit Prescription for Economic Recovery, Sweetness And Light, and All Good Things To Come:

1. Top tax rate (gross income > $250,000): 20%
2. Middle tax rate ($100,000 - $$250,000): 15%
3. Bottom tax rate: 10% ($25,000 - $100,000)
4. Alternative minimum tax: abolished, forever
5. Capital gains tax: 5% [update]
6. Death tax: abolished, forever
7. Corporate tax rate: 15%
8. Not one red cent for banks, insurance companies or other financial institutions.

A good Video with more than you ever wanted to know