Sometimes the Evidence Matters

Finally, the information is on the web. A friend of O.J. Simpson’s says the deal he rejected was for three years in jail.

I’m not a criminal lawyer, but I would guess that when you accept a sentence in a plea bargain, you remain entitled to things like time off for good behavior, as well as parole. Correct me if I’m wrong. So O.J. could probably have been out in maybe a year. In Florida, he could have gone home in six months. We purge our jails twice a year, because if we didn’t, most of us would be living there right now.

The article says Simpson “and his lawyers” rejected the deal. Surely that doesn’t mean what it seems to mean. Surely the lawyers didn’t back Simpson on this horrendous decision. My father and I discussed this case the other day, and it seemed to him that it might be unethical to go along with a client in Simpson’s position who rejected a nice plea. O.J. was recorded conspiring to commit robbery. O.J. was recorded DURING the robbery. Hello? There was video of him entering and leaving the hotel. He was filmed bragging about the robbery later. If Yale Galanter thought a non-ghetto Las Vegas jury was going to let his client go free, I would truly like to know how he came to that conclusion.

Old news stories say O.J. was planning an acquittal party before the jury dropped the bomb on him. What goes on in this man’s head? Discussing the negotiations, the prosecutor said Simpson wanted something “just short of a public apology.”

Most people do something really stupid once in a while, but generally, when we realize we’ve stepped in it, we wise up. A smart person will search himself and repent sincerely; even a fool will try to avoid making things worse. What are you if you can’t even manage that?

O.J. Simpson, I guess.

My Phone is Good Enough and Smart Enough

My experience as a smartphone owner is going well. I figured out how to schedule repeating obligations in Outlook, and I managed to fix my computer so it will sync with my Blackjack II. And I am learning to enjoy scheduling tasks on the fly. Look at this picture, which shows you how I am managing my hectic schedule, which is packed with momentous events.

I’ll tell you how that happened. I grabbed Maynard from his cage yesterday, and as I felt his claws penetrating my fingers, I realized it was time to get out the clippers. So I made an appointment. As we sat down on the couch to read Bill Hylton’s Ultimate Guide to the Router Table, I noticed that a bulb in the ceiling fan fixture was out. So I entered that, too.

At some point later today, the phone will begin nagging me. It’s like being married, only without the disappointing infrequent sex. The phone will tell me to get off my fat behind and fix the bulb. And I’ll hit the snooze button, giving myself another hour. Then it will start yapping at me again. More snooze. More yapping. More snooze. Finally I’ll tell the phone, “I’m only doing this to make you shut your hole,” and I’ll go get the ladder.

Then the phone and I will avoid communicating for a while, which I will interpret as peace, and the phone will interpret as proof that I never loved it to begin with. I don’t care. Listen, if the phone really cared about me, it would have come with a touch screen. You don’t have to hit me with a ton of bricks. I get the message.

George Moneo sent me a horrified email, reading “What? You didn’t buy an iPhone?!” I am pretty sure he was kidding. Let’s check AT&T’s site and find out why I didn’t buy an iPhone, apart from the idiotic, pretentious, ungrammatical tiny “i” in front of the capital “P.”

Okay. That was fast. The cheapest…CHEAPEST…Iphone (ha) plan is seventy dollars per month, before the added crap that rounds it up to a hundred dollars. My God, George. What are you smoking? And the real Iphone (the one that has more memory) is $300, with a two-year contract. Good Lord. I assume George’s wife has seen the bills. If not, sorry, George. You can sleep in my garage for a while.

Let’s do the math. Right now I pay $29 (really ~$40) per month. The Iphone is at least $30 more. Multiply by 24 months. It’s over 700 dollars. In real life, I’ll bet it’s more like a thousand. That’s not a thousand, total. That’s a thousand on top of the thousand I’ll be paying on my current plan.

In return, I get…

Okay, that part is not clear.

You can put music on the Iphone. But I can do that, too. Except I don’t want to. MP3 players are only for desperate times, like when you’re flying across the country, and you need something to drown out the screaming babies. The rest of the time, they’re a pain. And I have a great MP3 player that holds 40 gigs. Twice the capacity of the Iphone. It already has dozens of albums in it.

You can watch TV on the Iphone. I can do that on the Blackjack. Except I don’t want to. I don’t watch regular TV on a big screen. Why would I watch it on a tiny one I have to hold up in front of me?

I’m trying to watch the Iphone tour video. It’s some wuss in a black shirt. Why do post-2000 hippies insist on wearing black all the time? Maybe this is an old unwashed shirt that belonged to Steve Jobs. Maybe this guy wears it, hoping it has residue from The Force on it.

It’s so boring…it’s actually painful…help me…Ibuprofen…Vicodin…heroin…

I had to turn it off. It’s half an hour long! Who could sit through that?

Truthfully, I already feel like I bought too much phone. I wish I could have gotten a regular non-smart phone, plus a $75 PDA, but I couldn’t do that, because I refuse to add any more weight to my pockets. I keep my hair short, I have never owned a ring or necklace, and I resent it when I have to wear socks. I don’t need more junk hanging off me. The weight of my pistol is very annoying. I’m not adding any more heavy items.

When this PC craps out, I fully intend to go Apple, more out of anger at Microsoft than love for Steve Jobs. Windows has gotten so bad and so stupid, there is no possibility that Apple could be anything but better. But I wouldn’t buy an Iphone if I were a billionaire.

Teflon Wears Thin

Wow, an Internet source says O.J. Simpson just got 18 years for armed robbery!

Some people just don’t know when to leave well enough alone.

More

I don’t know how this story can be right. I don’t have a TV in front of me, so I’m not watching video, but no other website says O.J. has been sentenced.

I do not understand this man. What he did to his wife and Ron Goldman was an atrocity. And murdering the mother of your children is an especially evil deed. Somehow, he skated. His attorneys got him a prejudiced jury who would have found him innocent had they been standing three feet away during the murders. And instead of realizing he was one of the luckiest men alive, he continued behaving exactly as he pleased. Now look where he is.

I think of all the people out there who would have taken his kind of success and turned it into something beautiful. And I think of his children, who know exactly what he did.

My sister does criminal law, and she thinks he’ll do two-thirds of the time they give him. In Florida, a major felony buys you six months (overcrowding), but Nevada is probably different.

You have to wonder if this will make him realize he has to change.

More

See what I get for trusting websites in the former USSR. Or wherever it was. He hadn’t been sentenced when that story came out. It was wrong, but just barely. If the TV pundits are right, O.J. got 16 years. My sister claims it’s 21.

Anyway, he’s going to be away for a good long time.

New Phones Worse Than the Flu

I’m not sure what the worst part of getting a new cell phone is. It may be the expense, but maybe it’s really the chore of learning how to use it.

I broke down and got a Samsung Blackjack II, and it has driven me crazy all morning.

This thing has GPS. AT&T wants to charge you for using their GPS service. It’s hideously expensive, at 10 bucks per month. I don’t really want GPS, but if I can get it free, I’ll take it. And since I already paid for the phone, I should be allowed to use the GPS capability built into it, even if I don’t use AT&T’s service. AT&T disagrees, so they keep the GPS feature locked until you agree to pay them off.

I found a site that offers unlocking software today, and after a great deal of aggravation, I got it working. Now I can use Google Maps, which is FREE FREE FREE. Take that, AT&T.

I also had fun installing the software that syncs the phone with the computer. This is the main reason I got a smartphone. I want to be able to schedule reminders and so on. It turns out you can’t really do this if you install the Notesync software they include on the CD. It crashes Windows Mobile Sync. I am too lazy to check to see if I got the names of the programs right.

Outlook can also make it crash. I found I had two versions of Outlook installed, and I thought that might be a problem, so I removed Outlook Express. Don’t get me started on the total inadequacy and utter badness of the Windows “Remove Windows Components” tool. It installs stuff you don’t want. It uninstalls stuff you DO want. It’s ridiculous.

I went through all that, and it turned out the other thing was the problem.

I’m supposed to use Outlook to enter my stuff so it can be transferred to the phone. I hate Outlook. It’s primitive, especially since I can’t stand Office 2007 and therefore rely on Office 2000. I never use Outlook. I have opened it up this week to see if it would be of any use, and of course, it’s garbage. I used to have a wonderful piece of scheduling software that let me program all sorts of regular obligations into it, and I got reminders and so on. With Outlook 2000, if you want to get a haircut every Wednesday during the year 2009, you have to make 52 individual entries. As far as I can tell. Idiotic. Another fine Microsoft product.

I’m looking to see if I can download something better.

I hate the tiny QWERTY keyboard on this thing, but it’s miles ahead of my old LG, which required several presses just to type a single letter.

Here’s to sticking it to AT&T. I will never use Google Maps, but I have the satisfaction of knowing I can.

Interesting Movies on the Radar

I see Drudgebart has linked to a review of the new Clint Eastwood film, Gran Torino. I can’t wait to see this one.

Think about it. It’s about a crabby old guy who drinks beer and has too many guns, who sits on his porch glaring at punks who set foot on his lawn. I can relate! This is my dream lifestyle! I’m nearly there NOW! I just hope there are a couple of parrots in the film.

Looks like Jean Claude Van Damme has a film out, too. Weird. It’s called JCVD, and it appears to be a strange mixture of truth and fiction. Playing himself, Van Damme confronts things like his drug and domestic problems, as well as the difficulties of being an aging action star with a dead career.

Van Damme has made a lot of bad movies (and bad decisions), but he seems like a more sympathetic character than, say, Schwartzenegger, who has never publicly admitted wrong or questioned himself. Have you ever seen Arnold admit he did something dumb? I haven’t. I would be surprised if he was capable of admitting fault. People seem to love him now, but they’ve forgotten Pumping Iron, the old documentary in which he displayed his true personality. He was quite obnoxious.

People who never have a moment of humility are a little scary. Except for me, of course.

According to Wikipedia, Van Damme is not lying when he says he was a karate champion. True? I don’t know. It says he got a reputation for lying because people who checked out his claims didn’t realize he competed under his real name, which is not Van Damme.

What Exactly IS “Congress”?

I just took a look at Howobamagotelected.com. Man, is it funny. And sad. I’m sure you’ve seen it already. A conservative group sponsored a scientific poll, comparing the knowledge of McCain and Obama voters. And of course, the Obama voters came out behind.

That makes sense. Liberalism appeals to coddled ivory-tower eggheads with high IQs and the common sense of lemmings, but it also appeals very strongly to people who are either unintelligent or ill-informed. Like many conservatives, I have had the experience of explaining undisputed, verifiable facts to self-proclaimed liberals, and then having them tell me they agree with conservative positions. Awareness tends to lead to conservative opinions. But we live in a nation which no longer educates its people, and a huge percentage of Americans know almost nothing and make decisions purely on the basis of emotion or a desire for approval from others.

People tend to become more conservative as they age. That’s because we learn as we get older, and as a result, older people know more than young people. When you’re old, you know better than to run with scissors, make the minimum payment on your charge cards, or let random men in pickup trucks blacktop your driveway for “bargain” prices. And you may also know better than to vote for socialists who spout empty slogans and promise a return to the utterly discredited notions that destroyed the prosperity of Europe and caused more suffering than Nazism.

The more you know, the harder it is to fall for a leftist pseudo-messiah. Prison inmates are, on average, exceedingly dim, and they overwhelmingly support liberal policies. That ought to tell you something.

If the public had been better informed, Obama might well have lost. He’s a real zero, there is no reason whatsoever to expect him to be an able President, and McCain’s qualifications were clearly much better.

It’s an interesting situation. I used to think that the power of the new media would guarantee a fair shot for conservativism, and that as a result, the country would continue sliding to the right. But I underestimated the right’s power to fall on its sword–actually, to jump up and down on it like a pogo stick–and I also underestimated the old media’s willingness to openly whore for its chosen candidate, and to stifle the new media and blunt its effectiveness.

The conservative Blogosphere used to be a factor in politics, but that’s no longer true. We are dead. We are nearly powerless. No one pays any attention to us any more. Pajamas Media is part of the reason. There used to be a healthy exchange of links on the right, but when PJM contaminated the data stream, and especially when it became obvious that PJM was an utter failure, and the principals became desperate and started circling the wagons, the linkage became incestuous. I predicted this when PJM was created. People who used to communicate and exchange links quit. Glenn Reynolds started putting up ridiculous blind links to PJM’s mother site, in vain hopes of turning it into a significant web destination. Links that used to go to pieces of quality writing went to unremarkable blog entries of little merit.

Let me ask you something. Say it’s October of 2008, and I come up with something as damaging to Obama as the Rather memo was to CBS. Do you think the major PJs would link to me? Please. No one beyond my small circle of readers would ever hear about it.

There are bloggers I just don’t communicate with any more, and PJM is the reason, and I’m not alone. I wish they would just let it die instead of pretending it’s viable. PJM is never going to be anything but a flop. It has had years to succeed, and so far, we have seen nothing but failure. Certain pockets have been lined, and that was probably the only real purpose of the enterprise, and the funding has dried up (according to insiders), so why not close the lid on the coffin and say you gave it a darn good try? I suggest the Pee Wee Herman approach. Say “We meant to do that.”

The conservative old media didn’t help. They have a zero-sum mentality, and they deliberately ignore people who pose a threat to their franchises. They let a few new people get near the cameras–especially attractive but boring girls with no talent or knowledge or insight–but on the whole, we’ve been kept out. The tokens got all the gravy.

Meanwhile, the left was turning the Internet into the biggest cash and propaganda conduit in the history of American politics. Obama even managed to use it to suck up gigantic illegal donations from our enemies in China and the Muslim world. With no repercussions. Doodad Pro will never be called to testify before Congress. Obama got away with countless crimes, and nothing will ever be done about it. Meanwhile, John McCain got hoisted on his own remarkably ill-conceived campaign finance reform petard. Great law, John. That worked out real well.

It amazes me to see how the right threw away the Internet. We used to own it. And it’s a huge loss; it is still the future. If the Internet were TV, 2008 would be like 1950. The explosion, in its fullness, is not here yet.

Our online inferiority is going to be permanent; it will take years to begin digging our way out. The lingering PJ magic is still at work, like a daily dose of Roundup and Nonoxynol-9. The conservative old media has learned absolutely nothing, except this: the right is in trouble, so they need to work even harder to protect themselves from competition. The left wiped us completely off the map, and we helped. We are not a factor. We have been utterly crushed, and we aren’t smart or altruistic enough to do anything to fix it. I congratulate Markos Zuniga and George Soros. When your enemies are as inept as we are, a victory is nothing to brag about, but they beat us really, really badly. Their knees are on our throats, and they deserve credit. They sold our nation an Edsel, and Americans think it’s a Ferrari. We couldn’t sell raw meat to sharks.

I know it makes the cheerleaders mad when I say this stuff, but here’s something to think about: they have always been wrong. There is a difference between thinking positive and refusing to face reality.

I’ve been wrong, too. I was wrong when I said the future for the right was rosy.

Five Hundred Bucks for a Calendar

The cell phone search is going poorly.

I ran over to Radio Shack, because it seemed like they had the best prices. The techno-toddlers over there told me that any AT&T Blackberry I buy will come with a $20 monthly charge. So $480, for grown-ups who know how to multiply by 24 months. Uh…NO. Let’s not do that.

They said what I really need is a Samsung Blackjack II. So now I am looking that up.

Or maybe the Epix.

Geez.

Choice Equals Pain

Technology is giving me ulcers again.

My old LG phone has not been right since I put it in the washing machine. I would like a new phone that has a decent camera, a comfortable texting keypad, and PDA features to help me keep track of things I’m supposed to do. I’d like to be able to plan things on my PC and then shoot the data into the phone so it can remind me to water plants, go to the dermatologist, pay bills, and so on.

That’s about it. I think playing music on phones is pathetic. I’m not all that interested in video. I can’t see myself watching TV shows or movies on a tiny screen I have to hold in my hand. I just want a small object that will place calls, take photos, and be responsible so I don’t have to.

Man, are the choices confusing. First of all, AT&T (the only network that functions on my block, so please don’t make my ulcers worse by suggesting other carriers) has a limited selection of phones here. I can buy other ones on Ebay, but I’m worried that AT&T will somehow find out I’m not using a phone they offer, and they’ll shut down my service and have me put in a concentration camp. Assuming the phones work, the options are so confusing, I have no idea what to buy.

I can get a Blackberry 8100 for a reasonable price, but it’s bulky. I can get a Sony W760a, but it seems heavy on music and other BS I don’t want. I can get an LG Vu, but I worry about texting on a touch screen. And there are tons of other phones I haven’t even looked at. And every “top ten” list has ten different phones on it.

The Iphone can be had for a fairly low price, but I think I may have to pay extra for service. And it’s Apple, so if I buy it, I’ll start craving organic food and boys.

I can feel my hair falling out. I may give up and buy a Bic pen and a pad.

No Shame

Moxie done met herself some conservatives in L.A.!

You have to read this.

Avoid This Country

Here is the piece I wrote yesterday morning.

Rachel Lucas says she’s moving to England, even though there is no Mexican food there.

To quote one of America’s great thinkers, “That’s insane. You’re stupid.”

I have never been to England, unless sitting on a runway counts, but I hear they have excellent food there. Of course, I am referring to food cooked by foreigners. And for once, by “foreigners,” I am not referring to the English themselves.

I know it’s confusing.

The regular English food sounds suitable for coercing confessions out of terrorists. Even worse than the comfy chair, plus the stuffed cushions.

By the way, they’ve been using the comfy chair at Gitmo for quite some time. I’m so glad they’re shutting that hellhole down. Here’s a transcript of a torture video. I know it’s real, because I found it on Dan Rather’s Myspace page:

Blackwater Dude: [poke, poke, poke] Out with it, Achmed. Who is the leader of Al Qaeda in Basra?

Achmed: Son of a Zionist goat. May the prophet–peace be upon him–micturate on your favorite Koran.

Second Blackwater Dude: Have you got all the stuffing up one end?

Achmed’s Wife: Have you got anything without spam in it?

Achmed: It’s not halal.

Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby: SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM…[Cheney shoots Blackwater Dude in the face]

Cheney: Sorry!

Blackwater Dude: ‘Tis but a scratch.

Waitress: BLOODY REPUBLICANS!

I’ve seen TV shows about the British navy, in which the food and drink are criticized as inhumane. The thing the shows’ writers never seem to realize is that the food back on shore wasn’t noticeably different. And as a bonus, British sailors were drunk all day, every day. Look it up. The navy gave them free beer and rum. They were too blown away to know what they were doing.

I realize you could say the same thing about Britons in general, but the ones on land had a choice.

Historians say Britons had to be forced into the navy, but I very much doubt it. If they offered recruits free beer today, they would have to use water cannons to repel the waves of shrieking, hysterical applicants.

I used to watch Horatio Hornblower DVDs and marvel at the bravery of the sailors. Cannonballs would come flying into their ships, ripping off arms and legs, and the sailors stayed at their posts, shooting back and calling the French fairies. But bravery had nothing to do with it. They were plastered. Get me drunk enough, and I’ll fight the French, too. Well, okay, I see how ridiculous that looks. Replace “French” with a nationality that fights back.

In the old days, sailors had to store their water in barrels. A few days after the barrels were filled, algae and bacteria turned the water into slime. Even the British won’t drink that. The brilliant solution to this problem was to fill the barrels with beer instead. It lasted much longer. So if you were a sailor, and you were thirsty from climbing up and down the rigging and flirting with other sailors, your only option was a large serving of beer. Imagine how far gone you would be at the end of a busy day. A stint in the navy would be like climbing into a portal and experiencing the Seventies as Dennis Hopper. Or like going to a typical American college.

I don’t understand why the British would avoid Mexican food. It’s not like eating Mexican food requires especially healthy teeth.

If I were Rachel, I just flat wouldn’t go. Not until I located some Mexican joints or confirmed that I could fix my own, using ingredients from English grocery stores. And I’d be scouting out places that serve Indian food. It’s not an ideal substitute, but it comes closer than toad in the hole.

Intermission

I have a database problem which is interfering with comments. Working on it.

Eastern Bloc Rifle Would Make Comrade Obama Proud

It looks like the new trigger has fixed up the PSL/Romak III/FPK/Whatever. The gun cycles and shoots, and the trigger feels great and has a very light pull.

When I got to the range, my shots were completely off the paper, but after I searched for a while, I found the black. I had to move to 50 yards to do it. Here is what happened when I finally zeroed the scope:

The upper shots were made before a scope adjustment. I realized I was not going to learn anything at that range, so back I went. Here are a whole bunch of shots at 100 yards.

That was pretty exciting. Unless I am mistaken, that is a very nice group with some flyers caused by shooter error. It looks like there is nothing wrong with this gun that a new owner won’t fix. It appears to be highly accurate.

I shot another 20 rounds, but by then I was pooped. Here they are:

I think fatigue explains the difference here. I don’t think it’s the gun.

Here’s what I don’t get. I see people saying they get 1″ rifle groups with iron sights. I can’t do that with a 4x scope, because the error in my aiming is that big. The scope doesn’t magnify the target well enough for me to find landmarks on the target and hold the POA accurately. Add the error of the rifle and the error induced by trigger pull problems, and 1″ accuracy is impossible. So how do people do it with iron sights? My guess: the usual explanation applies. They lie their butts off. Or they shoot all over the paper, circle the three closest shots, and call them a group. To me, if it’s not 15 or more shots, it’s not a group, and it means nothing. Anyone can put three consecutive bullets in a one-inch circle by blind luck. If you can’t do it with 15 rounds, shut up.

I figure the aiming error with this scope is about 1″, meaning that even if I pull the trigger perfectly and the rifle is 100% accurate, I should still expect a 2″ group. The trigger error is probably about the same size. So I’m pretty happy with these targets, because they’re not much worse than that. If I’m right, this rifle will reliably put bullets into a circle the size of a quarter. You just have to hire a robot to fire it.

I think I may have a bum magazine. The magazine disengages when you push a lever in front of the trigger guard. It is getting harder and harder to push. The upper end of the lever has to slide on the metal of the magazine, and I think it’s getting rough with age. I have to find hard objects to press against it; it’s nearly impossible using my thumbs.

I am tired of this scope. I don’t see how I can exploit the rifle’s accuracy with 4x optics. I guess I can find a 9x online.

Am I wrong about this? It seems like a bigger scope is always better. With these little ones, you can’t really tell where you’re aiming, and you can’t see the bullet holes, so you have to have a spotting scope (which I did not have today). I love the 14x scope on the .17 HMR. The 4x Russian scope is dandy at 50 yards, but at 100, you just can’t tell what’s going on.

I’m looking at the Kalinka site. Maybe this is a 6x scope.

I didn’t shoot any other guns today. I took the K31, but I left it in the car.

A fellow shooter taught me something. One of my shells hit him, and he complained. I had no idea you were allowed to complain about being hit with hot brass. I get hit all the time, especially on the pistol side. He said things were different on the rifle side of the range. Apparently they provide people with pieces of cardboard to set up on the podiums, to deflect brass. And of course, they don’t tell you this at the mandatory class.

I think this gun is accurate, and I think the Russian ammunition is a bargain, and I need to get more of it, before Comrade Obama starts taking names.

Help me Escape From Psalm 37

I have a new mission in life, and it’s not to create a dessert that will kill you before you leave the table. My mission is to memorize the 37th psalm before I die.

A few weeks back, I wrote about memorizing psalms. I have been working at it steadily. Generally, I can knock off maybe half a psalm a day. But number 37 has been driving me nuts for like two weeks.

I can’t explain it. It’s a long psalm, yes, but that’s not the whole story. The prose has a lumpy, counterintuitive quality that makes it resistant to memorization. In comparison, 1 and 23 are much more fluid. Naturally, faith junkie that I have become, I am trying to see a divine purpose in it.

Today I got up to-what was it?–a couple of verses past “The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide.”

I may have a party when I finish.

A reader inadvertently gave me an idea for a Christian book today. I’m trying to work it out.

We Should All Send her Cards

Nancy Reagan is 87 years old. She lost her husband four years ago, after a long and horrible illness. Last month she fell and broke her pelvis, and she is currently recuperating.

At his first post-election press conference, Barack Obama joked about having consulted every “living” President. And then he joked about how he would not be holding any seances because he didn’t want to get into a “Nancy Reagan thing.”

Is this change? I guess it is. I can’t think of another President who would say a thing like this. Even Jimmy Carter has more class. Suddenly Bill Clinton looks like a statesman.

Americans wanted the favored candidate of the Daily Kos, Amanda Marcotte, and Jeremiah Wright. I guess we got what we asked for.

I am Ready for the Killing Fields

I hope I lived up to Comrade Obama’s expectations today, as I celebrated his victory by practicing my shooting. I want to be ready when we line up capitalists and shoot them so they fall into mass graves.

I started out with the PSL, but I had to quit. For one thing, the zero was like 15″ high, and for another, the rifle did not work. I put a new Red Star Arms (in honor of Uncle Ho Barack) trigger group in it, and I had problems with the spring falling off. Today I adjusted the spring. Now it doesn’t fall off, but for some reason, after the gun goes through a cycle, it’s not cocked.

I got out the K31, and the zero was off. Here is me, trying to find the bullseye at 100 yards. I was not able to move the POA far enough to the right to make the bullets go where I aimed.

After that, I managed to do some shooting. I believe this is 20 rounds. I felt pretty good about it. It seemed like the flyers were due to obvious mistakes, and other than that, things were fairly tight. But I found I was having a problem with the trigger guard biting my middle finger when the gun went off.

Here are my last 20 shots, which I shot after changing my grip to protect my finger. I was perfectly content with these. There are flyers above and to the right, caused by mistakes I was able to perceive as I made them. Other than that, I sent the bullets through a pretty small hole. It’s frustrating when you think you’re doing everything right and you somehow end up way off; it doesn’t teach you anything. When you’re off and you know what you did wrong, it’s a good thing, because you know what to fix.

I got out the SW1911 and fired off 50 shots. Here are the first 25, from 7 yards. It’s amazing how rifle shooting improves your trigger pull. It seems to reduce my tendency to shoot to the left.

Here are the last 25 shots. I was tired, and you can see what that did to my shooting.

Some alien life form was at the range, shooting into a 3″ circle at 25 yards. I have no idea what planet he came from.

I’m going to contact the people at Red Star Arms and find out what’s wrong with my trigger. I’ll bet they can tell me.