Happy Thanksgiving.

Hope everyone out in the tubes has a good turkey day. I’ll be getting up early to go shoot another 161 rounds of 45 ACP XTPs and do some 22 practice, and then hopefully dinner will be ready when I get back.

Night.

Backup…

One of the very annoying things that happens when I lose a hard drive (or a whole laptop) is losing my bookmarks list. I really need to backup my stuff more.

Right now I’m trying to find an online handgun training tool that is a flash shot timer / target thing. You enter your parameters and you can do different drills on different times and such, aiming at the screen’s target. Naturally you want to be careful about clearing your gun…

I had it two laptops ago. That whole hard drive is dead. Crap.

Found it! Sweet!

I am going to do this with a pistol that is capable of firing ammo because I’m super anal about checking my pistol before I touch the trigger. Don’t blame me if you shoot a hole in your screen.

… Ten minutes later …

Well, I’m clearly no pistolero, according to par times for drawing and firing a single shot from concealment. I can’t do much better than 1.5 seconds from the start beep to pulling the trigger. According to Jeff Cooper, a good pistol shooter should be able to do that in one second consistently.

This drill was done with my hands relaxed at my sides. My quicker followup shots run at around 0.16 seconds, so figure 1.6-1.7 seconds for a draw from concealment to a double-tap. I regularly shoot double taps around 1.5 seconds, so maybe I’m just slow right now, or maybe doing it for real lets me dial in a little more.

Too bad I can’t open carry everywhere. I can draw and fire once in a second from my nicer open carry rig, a Galco ‘Concealed Carry Paddle’ which is not particularly well named. No freaking way this thing is good for concealed carry unless you’re skinny as a rail and wear jackets three sizes too big. This is my bulkiest holster by far. Be that as it may, I like it, and my fastest draws are out of that holster.

I think if I had a higher riding concealed carry holster I wouldn’t have as much trouble. Something to think about.

Got English?

The Army does not require a commanding grasp of the language to make rank, apparently.

On my medical profile, I have a line that says: Is soldier healthy without any medical condition that prevents deployment? Now… I’m just a simple country boy, at heart anyway, but seems to me if the answer to that question is No, then I’m not deployable.

The reason this is important is we’re about to embark on the great adventure that is NTC, National Training Center, a six week field problem that counts as deployment. Or so I’m told. Not tomorrow, but in January after block leave.

However, so far the senior line medic, his entire medic platoon at headquarters, and the 1SG have insisted that I am in fact deployable.

Imagine the line was structured like this: Is the soldier healthy, without any medical condition that prevents deployment? Or how about: Is the soldier healthy (without any medical condition that prevents deployment)? Would there still be any question about it?

Jesus. I even got chewed out by the 1SG for saying that I had just been informed of the problem and was trying to fix it, but instead I was being kept at the CP. He flipped out on my ass! He goes on to lecture me about how I don’t know shit about how the process works blah blah blah and I need to get it taken care of and should have before now!

So… I guess me saying how I had JUST been informed of the problem ten minutes prior just sailed right on by, unnoticed.

Now, I think this situation is hilarious. And scary. He probably would have killed me with his bare hands if I had said ‘well 1SG did you ever learn how to diagram a sentence in any of those schools you went to…?’ I actually did try to explain why the sentence, structured the way it was, meant what it did. In one ear and out the other.

Don’t even get me started on the implications of the rest of the profile, which says I can’t march more that 0 feet, lift/carry more than 0 pounds, run more that 0 feet, or do any impact exercise more than 0 repetitions a day. Clearly I’m all set to take on the Huns.

Just damn.

You know…

It’s not smart to ramp your crotch rocket at 80 mph, especially with a passenger on the back. To the person who screamed past me yesterday doing just that, I’ll be surprised if you survive another year on that bike.

They didn’t get that high off the ground, maybe ten inches, but seriously… that’s fucking stupid. A bit of gravel and they would have been lucky to just lose a ton of skin on the road. Did I mention it’s a construction zone, and gravel/debris is common?

I got ready to stop and help as soon as I saw that the bike was literally flying by me, not that there was much I could have done. I don’t have ANY medical gear in my car right now, and the only stuff I own is geared toward major trauma–amputations, gunshots, etc. The cell phone is the only useful thing I had with me.

Some people are just plain stupid. I hope our hero wises the fuck up before he gets himself or someone else killed.

We’ve lost a lot of soldiers to motorcycle accidents of the acting-stupid-while-going-too-fast variety since we got back from deployment. I wonder why… if anything, when I got back, I felt very mortal for a few months. The feeling faded, but my standard issue youth invincibility shield has definitely dialed way back.

I’m so fucking tired.

I got like twenty minutes of sleep last night. I’m really angry about it. This anger will fuel my moving energy, luckily. The moving begins now, since I’m packing up a bunch of stuff now and bringing it to work with me.

At least one of these guys is married, hanging out with a married woman here whose husband is not around. Fucking shady.

Well, that’s it

I’m moving out of this place. Having roommates is fucking annoying. Actually, none of my roommates are bad. It’s the stupid fucks they know and bring over.

Every weekend, some new batch of retards is here. For example, tonight a bunch of people I do not know are here, being loud as hell, at 11:30 PM. I have to get up in 5 1/2 hours. This happens frequently.

I could go downstairs and tell them to take a hike, but you know what? I’m sick of this shit. I should not have to tell people to STFU and leave on a Sunday night in my own place. That should be common fucking sense and courtesy. Along with that, I’m sick of having my shit messed with. Some fuckhead decided to use one of my high school cross country shirts, which was drying on the line outside, to sop up his bloody nose. Thanks asshole! No big deal, since clearly I can go back in time to 2001 and get a new one!

Living on base will save me a lot of money and I’ll get to sleep more at night. Get up at 5:45 instead of 5:00; $300 in rent I won’t have to pay; whatever gas I use driving back and forth will not be expended. I’ll have to pay a bit more for a larger storage space, but that’s not huge. Another $25 a month. Big whoop. Oh, and I can use my nice kitchen stuff more. I don’t have it unpacked here because people like the retards that are here now would certainly break shit or someone would let my nice kitchen knives get fucked up in the sink/not dry them and let them get permanent spots.

I need to move back on base anyway eventually, since when everyone deploys I won’t want to shell out for an apartment all to myself. Even shitty one bedroom places are upwards of $450 in this town; everywhere cheaper is ‘low income housing,’ because my measly ass paycheck is so large. Seriously, I got rejected because I make $2000 a year too much. Welfare doesn’t count as income in that situation, see… that’s why the guy with five kids making $18,000 can have his big screen HDTV in his low income, three bedroom place at only $400 a month.

The downside, of course, is the fact that I’m not going to have my guns around. It’s not worth keeping one on base, see, in case you get caught. No reloading on base either. It makes shooting more complicated, naturally, but all I have to do is choose a new storage place more convenient to my route for shooting. Oh, and I don’t have a shipping address on base that I can get packages, especially gun stuff, at. I’ll have to get a PO box or ship it to a friend’s place.

I also can’t get my Jeep Wrangler on base right now, although all I have to do is get it on there once. I can probably bluff my way on once, especially if I tell them that I’m not driving it full time and just need a place to store it. Who knows. The problem then is getting back to the house for Car #1. If I have to I’ll fucking tow the Wrangler on base and say it’s not running. Actually that’s probably the best plan.

So I have my problems moving, but I don’t give a shit. I’d rather live on base and save the cash and the pain in the ass. It’s not as important to me to get away from work these days. I used to drive to the west side and sleep in my car, I hated being on base so much. The cops were cool with it. I got to know this one guy… he’d stop by some mornings about 3:30 AM to make sure I was still alive.

As if I needed any more reasons, the electric and water are going to get turned off again soon. I don’t feel like being here for that. I plan to be moved out almost entirely by wednesday.

Youtube makes me laugh.

The people! The comments! Hahahahahaha.

I love how people get all wrapped up in their pride and get offended when some troll says shit about their video… little flame wars about how they each are clueless with little dicks.

I just wanted to watch some shooting videos. Seems like every other one there’s a guy on there saying how whatever the shooter did was Unpossible!!11!

Seriously, watching some of those guys shoot steel makes me feel soooo slow. I take comfort in the fact that I shoot hot 45 ACP loads from concealment, not 9mm or 40 S&W from an IPSC rig. Small comfort… I still couldn’t do what they do.

Victory

Well the new load worked great. I only fired 160 rounds, so I can’t say it’s conclusive yet, but I’m happy.

Unfortunately the new overall length didn’t fix the problem in my Rock Island. It still fed perfectly fine from the Wilson Combat magazine but won’t feed at all from the CMC Powermags.

While I was out there I intended to zero my shotgun with slugs, but it seems Wolf slugs shoot dead on. Good enough for head shots from 35 yards, anyway–off a rest, natch. It will be a moot point once I get my ghost rings installed. I would have done some more shotgun drills but the stock started coming loose. I’m just going to loctite every screw I ever see from now on.

Naturally I lost at least a quarter of my new brass. I could be shooting in a room with closed doors and windows and still lose brass. I don’t get it. I also lose socks in the dryer. Damn brass and sock gnomes.

I’m tired. Movie time.

Screw it!

I’m going to bed anyway, even though I only have eighty rounds done. This single stage press takes waaaay too long.

The good news is I only have to charge, seat, and taper crimp the rest. It will probably take me a bit over an hour to finish in the morning.

I love this Starline brass. It’s all sexy and new. The primer pockets are uniform, and the brass I’ve weighed has been remarkably consistent: 85.2 grains is the weight I typically get, with some variations up to +/- 0.3 grains. The Winchester brass I weighed earlier had variations of over a grain and a half each way. The flash holes appear to be drilled and look a lot neater than in most of the brass I have. I forgot what the case length was, but it was below spec just like every other 45 ACP case out there.

The rounds are loaded to 1.250″ over 6.0 grains of Universal with a .470″-.471″ crimp. This batch will not be as precise, since I’m using my powder measure and it’s being kind of finicky–I’m not sure why, possibly the temperature change in the garage in the last few hours. I have a micrometer screw on the measure and I went from mark 0.80 to 0.77 to 0.75 over two hours trying to keep my charges consistent. As long as the rounds stay within 0.1 grains either way, I don’t care too much. This is why it’s important to check the powder throw before you start each batch of cases and check every ten rounds thereafter.

I wanted to get some completely done before bed just in case I end up going out early tomorrow. Eighty rounds will give me a good indication of reliability, enough that any big issues will be obvious. Cycling a couple rounds through Kimber #2 (the SIS Pro is my #1, Gold Combat is #2) felt great. It seems I had the stock spring in the gun still, which I replaced with a Wolff 18.5# spring during cleaning.

I never leave the stock spring in the gun because I carry +P ammunition, and I like the feel of the slightly heavier spring as well. I can only guess why I didn’t replace this one. Maybe I figured an $1800 pistol didn’t need any help from me. We’ll see in about twelve hours.

Good thing I bought Coke

Because I’m not going to bed until I load another 200 rounds to test tomorrow. I set up the powder measure so hopefully that will cut down on the time a bit.