Will I be Here to Use my Toys?

The cattle helped me make a decision. I’m building a platform for prone shooting.

I tried shooting on an anti-manure tarp plus a mat, and while it worked, it could have been better. The wind kept folding the tarp over the mat, and I was so low, I had to walk up and down between the mat and target, moving weeds. Also, I have the impression that mirage is stronger close to the ground. Not sure.

I’m making the platform 19″ high. I got that figure by measuring a chair. The seat was 19″ off the ground. I know I’ll want to be able to sit on the platform sometimes, so why not make it a convenient height?

The frame is going to be pressure-treated wood held together with 1/4″ screws. The surface will be 1/2″ plywood. It’s pretty flexible, but I’m going to have a few slats under it to prevent it from bouncing.

Back when I lived in Miami, I could buy marine plywood. I don’t think anyone knows what it is up here. I have to use whatever Home Depot sells. I’m going to paint it with Kilz and then maybe tractor paint. I’ll use a light color so it doesn’t hold heat if the sun hits it. I don’t see any reason to paint the pressure-treated parts.

The top will be galvanized steel, with a 4″ drop from front to back. That should be enough to make rain run in the right direction. The main purpose of the roof is to keep cattle out. They get into everything. If I made the platform lower and didn’t add a roof, they would be in there all the time, taking selfies.

It’s not easy squaring up frames that are 8 feet long. I decided to use my plywood sheet as a square. I would guess that the saws in plywood factories are trued up fairly well. Using a short carpenter’s square won’t work. I’ll have to finish the platform on my concrete driveway. How flat is it? You tell me. It will have to do. The platform will surely have a little flex in it, so I would guess that it won’t matter if the driveway is off by a quarter of an inch here or there. The platform will probably bend a little when I put it in the pasture anyway.

If I move, I should be able to take the platform apart and put it in my truck. Hope so. I don’t care about losing the money, but I don’t want to spend three days building a second platform.

Getting it to the pasture will not be easy. I’ll have to carry it with the tractor or move it in pieces.

I look forward to using this thing. Lying in the dirt is not that much fun.

It turns out I bought the wrong long-range scope. A guy who taught my first shooting course recommended a Vortex Viper PST, and some guy in the class said they were on sale, cheap, on a certain website. I went to the site and bought one. Then, a week after it arrived, I realized the man who recommended the website was wrong. The scope that was selling cheap was a first-generation model, and my teacher told me to get the second generation scope. So now I have a scope I don’t want.

I looked for a deal on the newer one, and of course, it was a lot more expensive. I ordered one. A Vortex scope is already a compromise, so I’m not going to make things worse by failing to buy the best version.

It looks like the vendor will take the scope back and charge me a hundred bucks for restocking it. I would be able to send it for a full refund, but I’ve already mounted it on a rifle. I don’t know if they would be able to tell it’s been mounted, but I want to do the right thing, so I’m not going to lie about it.

I’m thinking I should offer it to my buddy Mike for the same money. He’s not quite as serious as I am, so I think he would be happy with this scope, especially with a big discount. If he doesn’t want it, I’ll ship it back. Then he’ll have to spend a lot more.

For the most part, I’m living life as though the apocalypse were not well underway; as though I were definitely going to be here on earth for the rest of a normal lifespan. I don’t know what else to do. I keep asking God if I’m really going to be removed, and I keep getting the same answer. I hope I’m right. I do not want to be here for President Kamala Harris or President Elizabeth Warren.

I’m praying more, and I keep asking God to help me do whatever it is he sent me here to do. Maybe he’ll tell me something.

Jesus said he didn’t know the time of the rapture, but I don’t think he said he would never be told. Maybe things have changed. Maybe he has been given the date, and maybe he is willing to give the rest of us information. The word says God doesn’t do anything without telling his prophets, and Jesus is certainly a prophet, even in heaven.

Some people think God gave Adam’s children 7000 years here on earth, and that the millennia are like days. This is something I have often wondered about. We are edging up on 6000 years since the birth of Adam. Would God really be that obvious? Did Jesus die at the turn of one of God’s millennia? Would he start the apocalypse close to the 2000th year after the crucifixion?

There is supposed to be a messianic age 1000 years long. It’s like a sabbath after all of mankind’s troubles. If the sabbath lasts 1000 years, shouldn’t every “day” be that long, especially since the word says that to God, 1000 years are like a day? That reference was made with regard to the apocalypse. Here it is, from 2 Peter 3:

But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,

Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

If Peter says the world will be destroyed at a certain time, how can it be related to the rapture, which is the main thing that concerns me?

It’s somewhat confusing. The Revelation says there will be terrible problems during the tribulation, but it says the world will be utterly destroyed 1000 years later, after the messianic age.

The Revelation says Satan will be bound during the millennium. Because evil spirits won’t be here, people won’t go through the kind of temptation mankind has historically experienced. God will release spirits to tempt people at the end, and there will be a final battle with Satan. After that, heavens and the earth will be destroyed.

I don’t think Peter can be referring to the tribulation when he says there will be destruction, because he writes of total, not partial destruction.

He says “the day” of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. If “day” means “millennium,” then the day of the Lord, during which the world will be destroyed, can come as a thief in the night, even if the final destruction, which takes place at the end of the day, is expected when it occurs. The part that comes as a thief in the night is the beginning.

I think this makes sense.

To recap, here’s what I think.

Jesus probably knows the date of the rapture, even though he did not know it 2000 years ago. He probably won’t tell us the date unless we’re very close to it, and he won’t tell people who have rejected him. He appears willing to give us general ideas about the time of his return, perhaps narrowing it to a month or week.

He will rapture those who are close to him. Then the tribulation will occur in full force. Seven years later, the tribulation will be ended by the return of Jesus. He will rule for a millennium, and people who didn’t reject him will be resurrected to rule with him.

Evil spirits will be bound in hell, so no one will be tempted or otherwise disturbed by them. At the end of the millennium, spirits will be released to tempt man. There will be a battle with Satan, and he and his family will be imprisoned forever. The heavens and the earth will be destroyed and renewed.

Sometimes I think about my future. What if I’m wrong, and I’m doomed to stay here until my lifespan is finished? I suppose that would be tolerable, because I’m set up pretty well now, and I’m sure God would look out for me. What if I’m right? If so, I don’t have to plan for my future on earth, because it won’t happen for another 7 years, and when it happens, I’ll be on a planet where Jesus rules and people are taken care of.

Should I come up with a will that takes the apocalypse into account? I don’t know. Who do I know who will still be here, yet whom I care enough about to provide for? If only ungodly people can inherit from me, do I really care which one takes what I have?

Maybe I should care, because maybe one of them will come around during the tribulation and receive salvation.

Before my friend Travis died, I thought I might make him my main beneficiary. Now he’s much richer than I am and needs no help.

I’m going to try to stay close to God. I do not want to be here during the tribulation, and I don’t want to be useless in the meantime.

Trump Rallies no Longer Permitted to Exist?

The MSM is beside itself. President Donald Trump had a rally in Oklahoma, and attendance was poor.

To read the MSM sites, you would think America had abandoned Donald Trump. But is that true? The surge of racist, envy-driven rioting has awakened a lot of people. So did coronavirus, which, oddly, sent huge numbers of Americans to gun shops to buy their first firearms. Republican voter registration is up. The Trump economy is still good. These are things that ought to make it hard for Democrats to get elected.

Is the surge in Republican registrations real, though? Some say Democrats with no integrity are registering as Republicans in order to weaken the party from within.

It makes sense. Republicans will not reciprocate, because they are less enthusiastic about lying and spying. You can see this in our nonexistent response to the left’s habit of attending conservative events. BLMtifers show up at conservative events to riot and disrupt. When leftists have their own events, we generally avoid them.

According to a well-known former Republican, the reason Trump’s rally didn’t do well is that leftist liars took a large number of tickets fraudulently. Left-leaner Steve Schmidt, who worked as a strategist for people like McCain and Schwarzenegger, brags that his daughter and her friends have hundreds of tickets. Legislator and former bartendress Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez also bragged about the fraud and said she was proud of the people who had done it.

It’s a sickening moment. People who hate Trump are too stupid and immature to understand that subverting democracy is a great evil.

Some time ago, I predicted that America would one day be ruled not by Democrats or Republicans but by people with smartphones. I said technology’s ability to coordinate people was getting so strong, we would reach a point where elections and laws would lose their power. Everyone can’t be in the police or the national guard. It’s impossible to control Americans when a sufficient number of them are united in real time by gadgets. It looks like we’ve just seen a big step toward true technocracy administered by complete idiots. The Beast is discovering his hands.

We seem to be looking at a future in which mobs will be mobilized much too quickly for the government to react. It will be facilitated by a cyberspace infrastructure we all subsidize willingly through wireless and Internet fees. It’s as though the technocratic government already has a taxation system, and we’re all paying.

The law doesn’t matter, and fairness certainly doesn’t. Justice is one of the main things leftists hate. As the electronically coordinated Beast becomes more aware of its power and better able to direct it, anyone who disagrees with its infantile doctrine will be in danger of deletion. They call what they’re doing “canceling,” but that’s just bad English from people who aren’t bright. Cancellation only applies to events. It’s really deletion. They want to remove our voices, our power, our wealth, and all traces of our existence from the earth. Why do you think they pull statues down? A statue is evidence that a person lived.

If Jesus delays his coming long enough, electronic government will happen. It’s inevitable. Conservatives, Christians, whites, Jews, and Asians from China, Korea, and Japan will have to wall themselves inside enclaves in order to survive. No one who disagrees with the Beast will be safe in the general population.

They’ll be able to touch us anywhere. They’ll be able to mob-assassinate individuals they don’t like. If you blog from a cabin in Idaho, they will be able to converge on your property, pull you out of your house, and torture you to death for Facebook. The government won’t be able to help you. They won’t see it coming, and they won’t have the manpower.

We’ve already seen how our government handles riots. In some cases, they break things up, but in many cities, they have chosen to retreat instead. They don’t do that out of principle. They do it because they have no choice. The rioters are stronger than the police and the National Guard.

In the future, we’ll see riots directed at individuals, far from cities. It will be like the torches-and-pitchforks scene in Frankenstein. The police will let the rioters kill, just as they do when rioters attack groups.

According to Jewish legend, mob crime was one of the things God hated about Sodom and Gomorrah. There is evidence of this in the Bible. When the angels visited Lot, a gay mob showed up and insisted on having the angels released to them so they could rape them all night. Jewish legend says the Sodomites ruined visiting merchants by showing up in mobs. Each person would take one item, so no individual committed a crime that, in and of itself, was serious. The effects on the victims were worse than grand theft.

Maybe God burned the Sodomites alive partly to prevent mobs from understanding their power. Maybe he didn’t want their knowledge to spread.

God deleted the Sodomites, leaving only a few survivors. Now their spiritual descendants want to delete the Jews, God’s children, and anyone who succeeds in amassing wealth. It’s like I’ve been saying for a long time: the story of creation is a story of genocidal war.

Control over commerce has moved into the cyber realm. The Bible says the Beast will prevent God’s children from buying and selling. The more stores we lose, and the more we buy through cyberspace, the closer we get to the day when it will be possible to exclude people from commerce arbitrarily and without legal repercussions. Even if we move to insular communities and somehow manage to protect ourselves for a while, how will we get things like oil and electricity? How will we repair the things we have? If we rely on generators, how will we get parts for them?

If we want to defend ourselves, how will we get bullets, brass, and smokeless powder? Those things don’t just jump out of the ground on prepper farms. They have to be shipped from areas the Beast will control.

The Beast is somewhat like Thanos, the villain in the recent Avenger movies. Thanos felt that half of the universe’s population need to disappear. He thought overpopulation was an existential threat, which is an odd thing to believe in a universe which appears to be infinite in size. His answer was to create a jeweled gauntlet that allowed him to snap his fingers and make them vanish. Marvel’s writers didn’t say how he expected to prevent the population from rebounding, which is a little ridiculous, but never mind that.

The left–the Beast–sees people like me the way a body sees viruses. They want us gone, permanently. They truly believe utopia is possible but for the presence and influence of people like me. They want to snap their fingers and delete us. The Beast just snapped his fingers in Tulsa.

Even if we have a temporary recovery from our insanity, the Beast will eventually get what he wants. It’s foolish to argue with prophesy. It’s absurd to try to prevent it from coming to pass.

I have the feeling that something that kept the world going has been taken away. It’s as though humanity had been shot with a poisoned arrow, and I’m watching it die. It doesn’t know it has been killed, but death is spreading through the body the way hemlock slowly extinguished Socrates.

All over the US, tattooed brats are celebrating their own doom.

I have a feeling similar to the feeling you get when you know you’re going to dump your girlfriend. You’re both smiling, she thinks things are fine, and you still spend time together, but you know it’s over, and you look forward to live without her. A lot of people think God is still doing everything he used to do to keep the world running, but I think he stopped a while ago. I think the world has been jilted.

I feel myself mourning. Not for me. For a country that should have had a better end, and for arrogant young boneheads who are sowing agony and eternal damnation into their own endless futures. I also feel bad for weak Christians who appease and compromise, thinking nothing has changed. They think people who see the end coming are cranks. They’re going to get a lot of nasty surprises.

I think people who are truly close to God will have great favor in the coming days. I think many of us will do well regardless of the Beast’s deletion campaign, and the favor God gives us will be used to heighten leftist hatred. It will drive people to sharpen knives and dream of plunging them into us. If you have toilet paper, good food, and a nice house, you will be a greedy Jew who fattened himself on Germany’s Weimar misery and then celebrated Pesach with matzohs made with the blood of Gentile babies. You will be a privileged white who wallows in money generated by the suffering of black slaves. You will be a Romanov who moved from palace to palace, drinking the blood of serfs.

You’ll be everyone the Beast’s slandering children can blame for their own self-inflicted unhappiness and failure. You’ll be whatever figure of fantasy they can conjure up.

Maybe I should get rid of my guns. I don’t plan to use them defensively. I study the subject, and I prepare for it by buying appropriate weapons and making good ammunition, but those are just intellectual exercises. It’s a hobby. I don’t want to hole up behind sandbags and shoot flash mob assassins. It would make me more like them, and it could keep me here with them a lot longer. It would increase my entanglement with them.

I can understand why Jesus and Paul didn’t resist the people who killed them. Think how tired they were, after dealing with human beings for so long. If you fight the Beast’s kids, you may prolong your exposure to them unnecessarily and delay your escape to heaven.

If I have guns, I might defend myself reflexively instead of accepting a welcome transfer to a better place.

I’ll keep them while I can. I enjoy shooting. As far as I can tell, God wants me to have them.

I don’t want to be here when they come for the guns or when they start imprisoning and killing us. I don’t want the pain of watching the end. I don’t want to see the pierced and the stained, hooting and dancing as they perpetrate atrocities on defenseless people who are better than they are. There is nothing I can do about it, though. I can’t leave the earth. I can only wait to be taken.

I wish I could do more before I go. I tried to get involved in ministry starting in around 2007, but I was rejected and back-burnered over and over. Churches and movements are crooked. They can tell if you’re going to mess things up for them. If you’re honest about greed and lies, or if you talk about the need for inner change, you’re the enemy. Satan runs churches just as he rules Antifa and Planned Parenthood.

If you’re tired of people bothering you and trying to involve you in things, start telling the truth. You’ll be unpopular in no time. I speak from experience.

Maybe I’ll still be used to get something done. For all I know, I may have to remain on earth for 30 more years. I would like to see people get physical healing miracles through me. I would like to see people delivered from compulsions and delusions. I would like to see them grow up and become one with God. Maybe I made these things impossible through my own bad behavior.

If Trump wins and we get a brief reprieve, it will have to be because God stood up for us and defeated the Beast. We just don’t have the earthly tools to beat his benighted flock.

Why Can’t Instructions be Honest?

Here is a question I would like answered. Why is it that every job that involves tools takes 4 times as long as it’s supposed to and requires at least one unexpected weekend trip to a store?

Today I decided it was time to deal with my garbage disposal. It was leaking under my sink. I don’t like working in cramped spaces, so I had been putting it off.

I ran water through it to find out where the leaked water was coming from. It would have been very nice had it been a loose hose clamp or a problem with the joint where waste water leaves the machine. No, neither option was in the cards. There was a leak between the motor and the body of the machine.

Replace the gasket, right? Guess what InSinkErator (50 cents says that really means “Whirlpool”) did to me? They put Torx bolts on the motor. Tamper-proof bolts, to make sure people who pay good money for appliances don’t “tamper” with them by trying to fix them.

Unfortunately, it worked. I pictured myself waiting 10 days for a gasket and a set of female Torx wrenches (which I plan to get anyway) while water continued dripping into my cabinet. I couldn’t stand the thought. I bought a new machine.

My old disposal was apparently the cheapest type available. They sell for under $85. It had a 1/2-horsepower motor. It had a short warranty.

I think it was made for trophy wives who only cook when they want jewelry.

I Googled around, and I saw they made a tougher model with a 3/4-horsepower motor. Done deal. Before I went to get it, I made sure it would mate up with all the stuff the old one was attached to. “No problem!”, the anonymous online liars said.

My old one came with a cord, and the new one didn’t. I didn’t think that mattered, because I could use the old cord.

I bought plumber’s putty even though I probably already had it. I can never remember whether I have plumber’s putty, so I always buy a new can. It’s better than taking a chance and having to drive back to the store.

I got home and looked at the instructions. First, you use the little disposal crank to turn a ring that holds the disposal against the parts that mate to the sink. In the instructions, there is a cartoon of a lady’s hand, whisking the wrench to the left without breaking a nail.

“Child’s play,” I thought.

I put the wrench in the metal loop in the ring and yanked. Nothing happened, unless you count the ring bending. I put two wrenches in two loops. No joy. I beat the rings with a hammer to knock the rust loose. No movement whatsoever. I even tried a cold chisel.

That’s when I went and got the sawzall.

Using a demo blade, I cut the disposal in half below the sink. This took about 30 seconds. They should draw a cartoon about it for the manual.

Now I had full access to the ring. I could really pull on it. Guess what happened? It made the flange spin in the sink. They appeared to be mated for eternity. I saw a huge cake of rust uniting the ring and the thing it was screwed into.

Using the demo blade, I cut the ring in half. Then I yanked on it again, figuring there was no way it could resist. No; sorry. I had to cut it in three places.

I was sweating even though the air conditioning was set at 74. Why do I always sweat during these jobs? I can’t figure it out. I wasn’t exerting myself, and the air was cool. This always happens. I got up and picked a setting in the 60’s.

I would say I was now two hours into what was supposed to be a half-hour job. My guess is that in 95% of the cases, it is literally impossible to do what the directions say to do. I didn’t invent rust. Other people have the same problem. I guarantee it.

When I was done, I was supposed to use a flat-bladed screwdriver to pry out a snap ring that went around the sink flange and held some of the parts in place. First of all, there was absolutely no way to get at it, and second, a screwdriver wouldn’t have fit between the ends of the ring. The manufacturer has to know this.

Solution: use a Fein Multi-master oscillating tool with a metal saw to cut through the remaining rings including the snap ring. I tried the sawzall, but the blade couldn’t cope with the unnecessarily hard Chinese steel. Much later, the Fein tool made it through the ring, and the parts fell out.

I decided to install the cord. I cut it out of the old machine and got the wires ready. I found some butt connectors and wire nuts. Then I read the instructions. I was supposed to insert a 1/2″ wire clamp into a hole in the disposal for strain relief. A wire clamp…”not included.”

Okay, who makes a garbage disposal that requires you to add a cord and does NOT include strain relief? This is something that would cost the manufacturer maybe 20 cents. They include like 15 parts you need to install this thing, and then they leave out the cheapest one.

Back to the store.

Got the wiring done, installed the flange in the sink, installed the disposal but for the waste pipe, and found that because the disposal, which supposedly mated up to installations for other models, was too fat to work with the existing waste pipe and sink flange. The pipe was too long. It pushed the disposal off to the right, making it impossible to tighten the ring that mated it to the sink. I had to pull the pipe out, cut 3/8″ off with the Multi-master, and reinstall it.

Look, if you buy one of these things, I’ll give you the real instructions.

1. Get a long carbide demo blade or metal-cutting blade for your sawzall.

2. Ignore the nonsense about turning the ring that holds the disposal up. Cut the disposal in two with the sawzall, and then insert the sawzall blade into the hole and slice the ring that holds the remains of the disposal against the other hardware. Don’t cut it once. Cut it in at least two places. Then pry it off and fling it into a ditch.

3. Cut the remaining ring and spring with the sawzall. Don’t even bother trying to open the ring. You can’t. I recommend an oscillating tool with the hardest blade you can find as a backup.

4. Have something handy for shortening the waste pipe. Alternatively, have extra pipe in case the old pipe is too short.

5. Always buy plumber’s putty.

You should read the installation instructions online before you buy the disposal so you can find out which essential parts are not included.

There. I just turned a half-hour job which is really a 5-hour job into a 3-hour job.

The bigger disposal looks like a good choice. It’s quieter and smoother than the old one, it has a longer warranty, it should crunch harder garbage, and the construction looks a lot better. It looks like it will be a lot harder to cut in two with a sawzall, however, so I hope I’m not here when it fails, because I can’t even guess how I’ll get it out.

A smart person would go under the sink once a month and turn the ring that attaches the disposal to the flange. This would keep it from seizing. I considered putting anti-seize on it. Maybe I’ll still do that.

The evolution of the garbage disposal, clearly, is not finished. Supplying these things with rings that seize and which are not strong enough to stand up to your efforts to turn them is not a sign of brilliance.

I’m trying not to think about the oven and the awful faucet. The oven trips its thermal fuse when I use the cleaning cycle, and the faucet is just plain bad. I don’t want to buy an oven because they’re very expensive, and the faucet will require working in a cramped space.

Anyway, the garbage problem is licked. On to the next battle.

Ballistics Just Were not Complicated Enough

I’m finally able to carry a full-size automatic while wandering around my property. My Galco Miami Classic II holster arrived.

Until I started looking at it, I didn’t see that it was the same holster I already had for the subcompact Glock. I could just use one holster for both. They have different weights and lengths, however, and adjusting them is difficult, so I decided to have one set up for the Glock 20 and another for the Glock 29.

The Glock 20 is a far superior weapon. It holds almost 50% more ammunition, making it nearly 50% better. The added capacity is more than enough to make it much better than the smaller gun. It has the advantage of being somewhat more comfortable to hold, and it has a longer sight radius, but those things don’t mean nearly as much as 5 extra rounds per magazine.

The big drawback to the shoulder holster is that it has to be adjusted carefully in order to allow the gun to be drawn without a lot of yanking and dancing. It also requires a lot of breaking in before it can be trusted to release a weapon.

It will never compare to the $5 pocket holster I use with the subcompact. That thing lets the gun go instantly and reliably. But the shoulder holster gets things out of the way, and it holds two spare magazines. It also looks nice and could make a useful impression on potential intruders. Open carry is legal on my own land.

Now that the 29 has a Crimson Trace laser on the grip, the Miami Classic will not snap shut on it. The retention strap is obstructed by the laser. I have to decide whether the laser is really a good idea. It works beautifully, but it would require me to cut up my shoulder holster, and it bruises my thumb when I shoot more than a few rounds.

Do I really need it? The gun has night sights, and I’m not the kind of person who needs a lot of help with accuracy. It’s a nice tool, though, and what if I were in a situation where I couldn’t use my usual grip on the gun? That could happen. I might have to use my left hand or something. The laser would make it very easy to aim effectively.

I have some leatherworking skills. I could cut the holster to fit the laser without completely ruining the appearance.

I haven’t decided whether to put a Crimson Trace on the Glock 20.

I’ve been trying to figure my AR15 problem out. I’m just about sure yesterday’s terrible accuracy was not my fault, so the gun or the ammo has to be the problem.

A reader offered a helpful comment about barrel twist. A rifle barrel will turn a projectile 360° in a certain number of inches. Barrels are rated according to that number. For example, a 1:9 barrel has a one-in-nine-inch twist. Different projectiles need different twist rates. A big projectile needs a fast twist to give it a lot of spin, but a small projectile can have problems with too much spin.

What do “big” and “small” mean? I’m not sure. Traditionally, people have said heavy bullets need fast twists and light bullets need slow twists, but I’ve been reading a site that says length is what really matters. Longer bullets need more spin because they’re harder to stabilize. Heavier bullets are usually longer, so people think heavy bullets need more spin. This is the argument.

I don’t know what’s true. As a physicist, I would guess that length is what matters, because a long object will have mass far from its center of rotation, and that mass will have a large effect on rotational stability, so there has to be increased angular momentum (provided by spin) in order to fight any torques that come from that mass.

My barrel has a 1:9 twist, and the sort of bullet it’s made for is not clear. Different “experts” say different things. I saw a source that said it was fine for 55-to-68-grain bullets, but other sites disagree.

I was shooting 55-grain bullets when things went badly. I am guessing, but I don’t think a 1:9 twist is so far off it could account for shooting 5 MOA.

Of course, I am learning these things after spending money too quickly. I ordered a bunch of 40-grain cartridges for the gun days ago. After learning about twist, I was concerned that my non-returnable 40-grain bullets might have been a waste of money.

Not so. I have found out that a gun like mine with a 1:9 twist can shoot the 40-grain bullets I bought with incredible accuracy.

An old guy on Youtube bought the same ammunition and shot it through a gun with a 1:9 twist, and he shot four rounds that made holes that touched each other…at 200 yards. He had some flyers, too, but they were also extremely close to the four adjoining shots. He couldn’t figure out why cheap ammo with the wrong bullet weight worked so well for him.

If the bullets I bought won’t shoot, it won’t be because I have the wrong barrel twist.

I decided to get some 50-grain and 55-grain ammo of the same type, just to see what the story is. I won’t try smaller bullets because I read that really tiny bullets can fly apart and disappear when they spin too fast. They literally disintegrate in front of you while you shoot.

For anything up to the size of a coyote, 40-grain bullets are jim dandy, and light bullets recoil less, so I figured they were a good choice. Now I don’t know. It’s not like the maximum recoil from an AR15 is bothersome, and heavier bullets could be better for some things.

I don’t think any of these bullets are good for self-defense, because they do a subpar job of going deep into large creatures, but the gun isn’t intended for self-defense.

If I can’t get this gun to work, I will talk to the manufacturer. Maybe they’ll take a look at it and find a problem. I’m not too worried about it, because I always thought I was likely to replace the barrel. If it turns out the OEM barrel just isn’t that great, and it’s not bad enough for a warranty replacement, I’ll recrown it myself to see if I can improve the accuracy. After that, if it’s no better, I’ll get an aftermarket barrel and whatever AR15 tools I need to install it.

Sooner or later, we will see this gun shoot 1 MOA at 100 yards. That is for certain, God willing of course.

FBI Refuses to Release new Girlfriend

While America collapses under the weight of its own pride, I’m keeping up with my frivolous interests.

On Monday, I bought my first AR15. I didn’t even try to shoot it until Wednesday. My new induction cooktop arrived on Monday, and I had to install it, and that took up a lot of time. It should have taken half an hour, but you know how things like that go.

My house is built beautifully, but if you pick at the construction of any home, you will find problems. My problem this week was an improper cutout in the stone countertop. My stove is just a cooktop, so it has to sit in a cutout. The problematic, uncleanable old stove sat in a cutout 33-1/2″ long. Guess how long the cutout for my new stove had to be? Here you go: 33-7/8″. Either the person who installed the old stove screwed up and then covered his tracks by dropping a cooktop over them, or Frigidaire screwed up by making a new cooktop that required an oversized hole.

My guess is that Frigidaire got it right.

I had to buy a diamond saw blade for an angle grinder. I put on a quality respirator, moved my pets to another room, marked the counter with painter’s tape, and went to town.

Grey dust went everywhere. There was no way to control it. The blade sliced right through the granite or whatever it is, but the mess was apocalyptic. I didn’t finish the job until late afternoon, and then the dust cleanup started. I’m still working on it. I mopped the downstairs for the third time this morning.

Of course, the wiring for the new stove was in a larger flex conduit than the one on the old stove, so I had to install a new handy box in a hard-to-reach location.

I know a fair amount about metalworking, basic electronics, and basic woodworking, but when it comes to the kind of work contractors do, I’m not the guy you want. I don’t know how to do drywall or install tile. I don’t know how to replace windows or carpeting. I have to figure this stuff out by looking at Youtube and other websites. My buddy Mike remodeled his own house. It must be nice to have those skills on tap. I have to create them on demand.

Yesterday I finally got to shoot the AR. I put some Norma bulk ammo in it and went to the berm. Unfortunately, when I got the gun, I didn’t think about the length of the magazine. Apparently, 30-round mags are standard except in places where 2A means nothing, and these magazines project downward so far, it can be impossible to shoot a gun from a rest.

I managed to pop off enough rounds to get the scope pointed more or less at the place where bullets landed when fired from 50 yards, and I was happy. I probably fired fewer than 20 shots before the rain started falling, and I was done.

I lost considerable time adjusting the eye relief. As any experienced shooter would have predicted, the fact that a salesman and I set my scope up in the store meant nothing. It was a good half-inch too far back, and I have read that this particular scope is not tolerant of big variations. That seems to be true. The rifle has a continuous rail on top, but there is a place where the rail has an oversized step between picatinny slots, and one of my scope’s mounts was right behind that place. I couldn’t just slide the scope forward in the mounts, and I couldn’t just move the mounts forward one slot. I had to move one of the mounts forward on the scope and then move the whole mess forward.

The AR surprised me a little. I thought it would have less recoil, but it does jump a little. It’s a joke compared to a .308, which is one reason our soldiers carry the military version of the AR, but recoil moves the gun, and there is no way to keep the scope on target. You have to bring the scope back down to see where your bullet landed.

The trigger seemed fine when I dry-fired the gun, but when the shooting started, it became obvious to me that it was unbearable. There was a certain amount of resistance until I pulled it back to the point where it was about to go off, and then it was as if it hit a wall. At that point, I had to pull much harder to get the gun to go bang. Not acceptable.

Last night I watched a video, and I learned how to do an AR trigger job. A monkey could do it, so I may have a chance. I also researched replacement triggers. All basic (i.e. mil-spec) AR triggers are terrible. They’re made to be reliable, not to shoot for money. There are tons of replacements out there, and the good ones generally run around $250. I have two mil-spec AR triggers, so I was not eager to spend $500.

I caught a break. I learned about LaRue triggers. LaRue is a top-tier trigger company, and the make a replacement trigger which gets rave reviews. They used to charge $250 for it. Now, for some unknown reason, they have dropped the price to $80. It’s still the same trigger they used to charge big money for. I was all over that. I placed an order, and we’ll see how it works out. In the meantime, I plan to do a trigger job on the parts I have. It should take about 40 minutes, and it ought to work well enough to make me happy while I’m getting to know the gun with cheap FMJ.

Today I went to the CORE Rifle Systems factory and got myself two 10-round magazines plus a sling stud that fits my M-Lok hand guard. If it ever stops raining, I should be ready to shoot.

I shot from a folding table and chair, and when I went back home to work on my scope, I left them in the pasture. I was gone maybe 10 minutes. When I got back, there was a slimy substance all over both.

The miserable cows had slimed my furniture.

My grandfather had cows, and I spent a lot of time with them, but I guess I didn’t know them, because it wasn’t until recently that I learned that cows are completely insane, not to mention mischievous. I can’t imagine why cows would run over to my table and lick it as soon as my back was turned. Maybe it looked like a giant salt block. Maybe they thought the cow messianic age had begun, and that a cow savior had come to fulfill their wildest dreams. Anyway, I had to hose both items off.

I can put a sling on my gun now, but I don’t have the sling I want. Something else to look for. I’ve decided to go with a two-point sling. The whole single-point sling seems like a weird and unfortunate fad to me, and I don’t understand why anyone would want a gun barrel to bang against his crotch all day.

Maybe it works well when you’re in Fallujah and you really, really need to be able to shoulder your gun in half a second.

One reason I went to CORE was to see if there was a post-riot panic. It didn’t look too bad. Caveat: CORE is a manufacturer, so it may not be that easy to deplete their supply of rifles.

One thing I really wanted to see was their ammo supply. The pallet of Norma .223 from which I took a crate on Monday was over a foot lower today. I think the coronavirus panic was worse than the riot panic has become as of today.

I have more ammunition on the way. I got the Norma because I needed something to get started and because my policy is to keep a certain amount of bulk ammo on hand for any weapon which could be useful if my home is attacked. It seems silly to buy a gun and not buy fuel for it. I have enough 30-ish-caliber high-powered bulk ammo to shoot a whole town full of violent agitators, should they choose to visit.

I didn’t buy this gun with people in mind, and I am not excited at all about future zombie scenarios that seem increasingly likely, but I want to be in a position to decide what I want to do. Also, someone who is more gung-ho about the whole pre-tribulation dystopia picture might need the ammo or even the rifle, and if I have these things, I could be a resource.

The fact that I want nothing to do with that kind of shooting doesn’t mean I don’t recognize other people’s right to do it. Not everybody is ready to be a martyr.

I ordered myself some Fiocchi 40-grain V-Max rated at 3650 fps. I don’t know how fast it will fly out of my 16″ barrel, but my guess: pretty fast. I read about people getting sub-MOA groups with it, and I’m hoping that’s true, because it would allow me to do some real shooting while getting my .223 reloading game in order.

This particular load is supposed to be very good for pest control. I have no idea whether it’s appropriate for self-defense, but it seems unlikely. It wouldn’t be a GOOD thing to be shot with it, but it’s not made for shooting people.

I’m hoping I can use it on coyotes and whatever.

Some people have gotten MOA performance out of 16″ CORE rifles shooting factory garbage. That would be fantastic. I want this gun to be accurate, and I’m expecting to have to buy a designer barrel, but what if I can shoot well with the barrel I have? I’ll just keep it and save money.

Fiocchi is typically not expensive, but it’s excellent. The brass should be great for reloading. I hope. Haven’t Googled to find out what people think.

I finally broke down and ordered a couple of holsters. I’m tired of putting my 1911’s down in the back of the utility cart when I shoot, so I have a Miami Classic II on the way. I also got one for my full-size Glock. This is the holster I wore to church as an armorbearer. I’m very familiar with it, and I like it a lot. I don’t know whether the tacticool crowd likes it, but then they poop all over pocket holsters, and I am completely certain they’re the best option for concealed carry of compact guns.

Digression: I watched the upsetting video of the West Freeway church shooting. This took place in Texas. A nut (Caucasian, if that’s of interest) entered the church with a shotgun. He seemed to whisper to an usher, which was oddly polite considering he was wearing a hood and carrying a long gun. He apparently asked the usher a question, and the usher seemed to answer him, pointing to the rear of the church. A security team member sitting on a nearby bench saw him, stood up pretty slowly, and fumbled around for a rear belt holster. The gunman shot the security and then shot the usher in the upper body. Both victims died.

What if it had been me with my pocket holster, instead of an usher with a tight, uncooperative belt holster? I would have had a better shot at winning. I wouldn’t have had to stand up. I could have straightened my right leg and drawn in about half a second, without throwing off all sorts of signals. I hate belt holsters that require a lot of struggling. I can’t believe anyone wears one. Speed is really important sometimes.

Looking at the video over and over, I get the impression that the security guy may have caused things to go haywire. It looks like the gunman was calm until the security guy started talking to him and reaching for his gun. Things might have gone better had he pretended to be a harmless usher, waited for the murderer to focus his attention elsewhere, and then shot him from behind or from the side. But with that terrible holster, he might have alerted him to his intentions with all of the reaching and yanking.

The dead security guy is a true hero, but he may not have handled things well. Impossible to say from watching a video. I don’t know what the murderer said before the shooting started. He may have made it clear that there was no time to wait.

I don’t know if I would have been as brave as he was. I might have jumped under a pew. How can you know unless you’ve been there?

The man who killed the murderer shot him about a second after the first shot went off. No intelligent, informed person can say speed isn’t important. He only fired at the killer once, and that seems like a huge mistake. He was also very slow to go check on him after he fell out of view. Maybe that’s attributable to age.

When you shoot an armed assailant, you shoot him as many times as possible in the first volley unless you have a very good excuse. You don’t stop until you’re sure he can’t hurt anyone. That’s what I think. Most armed people are still dangerous after being shot.

The Miami Classic II is much faster than the belt holsters I’ve seen in person. It’s a little slower than a pocket holster, but it’s not a dreadful two-second belt holster.

Unlike a belt holster, it will hold two spare magazines.

It’s what I’m getting. I’m familiar with it, it’s very comfortable, and if I want to carry while working outdoors, it will be out of the way. I know that from experience.

In late May, I ordered a new 1911, and it arrived today. I actually fondled it briefly at the gun shop where the transfer will take place. The FBI is acting funny right now. Some NICS checks take a couple of minutes, and some take an entire day. Earlier this week, I was cleared in a pretty short time, so I thought I would have a similar experience today. Not so. The shop closed three hours after I filled out the form, and they still had my new gun.

Maybe the FBI deliberately sticks it to people who bought another gun recently. They’re not pro-2A conservatives. They’re bureaucratic Deep Staters. If they’re anything like other Deep Staters, they lean left. Look at Comey, McCabe, Page, and Strzok. Maybe the NICS workers received a memo telling them to slow-walk frequent buyers.

Or maybe it’s a fluke.

It was rainy today, so I wouldn’t have been able to shoot anyway. I do wish I could do all the usual new-gun things. I wish I could clean it and caress it and name it Naomi and so on. Maybe put a little Chanel No.5 on the slide. Just the normal stuff every guy does.

While I was at CORE, I picked up a box of cheap Aguila .45 ACP FMJ. Some firearm makers void their warranties if you shoot handloads. Smith & Wesson doesn’t have that policy, but they do object to ammunition they don’t like. They call it “improper” or something. It gives them weasel room which could turn handloads into a problem. I want my first 50 rounds to be from a box. A lot of things that go wrong with new products go wrong right at the start, so if this gun has a defect, I want to see it while I’m shooting crummy, unimpeachable factory ammunition.

The 1911 is not for self-defense. The caliber is great, but if you carry a 1911 for self-defense in 2020, you have a religion, not a reasonable preference. They’re heavy and they only hold 9 rounds. You would feel really stupid if you carried one, fired at an attacker 9 times and missed, and then got a clear shot.

No one ever said, “Gee, I wish I had brought less ammunition to this gunfight.” No one ever said, “I may be dying from multiple stab wounds, but it’s better than carrying a plastic gun.”

I got the new 1911 because it’s a really neat gun which ought to be very accurate and a joy to shoot. It has a hand-fitted barrel, and that’s a big plus for 1911 accuracy.

Yes, I will have several hundred rounds of defensive ammo for it. Because you never know.

I truly, truly hope I can get the AR15 sighted in tomorrow, and I may actually get to bring Naomi home. Things will be great if the cows will just stop licking my table.

Social Proximation Alert

This weekend, something remarkable may happen. I’m scheduled to have overnight guests.

Guests! In my house! Breathing the same air!

A Democrat governor should swoop in, hanging from a black helicopter, wearing a HEPA-filtered, lead-lined coronaburqa, to spirit me away to a hermetically sealed cell full of Antifa pamphlets and gay pride literature.

I suppose there will not be a lot of hugging or handshaking, but we won’t be wearing diving suits, either.

My friends Alonzo and Teri are planning to come by and invade my guest bedrooms with their 5 kids, one of which is my goddaughter. I use words like “planning” and “scheduled” because my friends have a way of not showing up, but at least we have clear intentions to socialize.

I don’t know what I’ll do with them. I have to figure that out. I assume the kids will spend most of the time in the pool. I don’t know if we’ll be able to go to restaurants. They’re open here, but there may be limitations. I don’t know how they feel when 8 people show up at once.

Are we risking death? Well, as of yesterday, this county had 240 known covid cases, and that includes people who are well and no longer contagious. Based on the length of time that has passed since testing began, I would guess that we only have a few dozen active known cases.

I feel like getting out of the chair and putting my face on the floor and thanking God. In fact, I will.

I’m back. Glad I vacuumed.

Joy is coming back into my life, courtesy of God. Grieving over my loss has been very painful at times, and during the first week I felt as though my purpose here on Earth had been largely nullified, but as God has told me, the way I feel isn’t controlled by my circumstances, and he is able to pour joy and peace into me regardless of what has happened.

If it makes sense to say there are sad things about Spirit-filled Christianity, one of them is this: youth tends to be a much less pleasant time than our later years. People want to be happy when they’re young. They want to be financially comfortable. They want to be successful in marriage and reproduction. They want to have victory in their careers. We talk of getting good things while we’re young enough to enjoy them. Unfortunately, youth is typically a time of weakness and defeat unless we get with God’s program early.

My life is vastly better than it used to be. Sometimes I remember things about the past, and I’m surprised to see how much better things are now.

I used to have headaches every day. I suppose this was true for over 4 decades. I assumed nothing could be done about it. This week I realized I don’t even think about headaches any more. I may have had one the last time I was sick. I’m not sure. I have ibuprofen, but I don’t use it for headaches.

I used to be surrounded by people who treated me badly and got victory over me. Relatives, pastors, employers, co-workers, people I encountered on the web…they caused a lot of problems. Now they’re gone. I don’t even get trolls on my blog. They used to swarm the comments.

I worried a lot, even though I hated worry. I think most people who worry do it willingly. I stopped worrying. A man prayed for me at a Last Reformation event in January and cast out spirits of worry, and I don’t worry now.

I was depressed until I was about 30. It was my normal state. Some people live to seek success and improve their lives. I lived on defense. All I wanted was to be left alone. I don’t mean I wanted to be alone. “Left alone is an idiom.” I wanted rest. I wanted shelter from an endless stream of problems and failures.

I don’t get depressed, unless you count rare, fleeting occasions. To understand depression, I now have to concentrate and bring back memories of my former life.

I feel good physically. I have some little issues, but I almost never take medicine. I took some painkillers on one occasion in January, but I can’t recall the last time I took medicine before that. I used to take acid blockers, ibuprofen, and other things to get me through my days. I used a great deal of caffeine. Not any more.

I get to do things I wanted to do but could not. I wanted to live in the country on a large piece of land. Here I am. I wanted to live in the South. Here I am. I wanted to live among law-abiding American Christians and conservatives. Here I am.

I wanted a lot of tools. I have them. I machine. I weld. I fix electronic devices. I have a tractor and chainsaws.

I wanted to be able to shoot without driving half an hour in horrid traffic and being herded into a crowded range with ridiculous rules created in obeisance to liberal politicians. Now I walk 40 feet from my house and blast away. If I want to shoot targets, I hop in my cart and drive to the berm in my pasture.

I hated Miami so much. I can’t describe it. I was like a prisoner who wanted to break out. I’m so happy to be free. I still can’t get completely used to it. Can it really be true that I won’t have to go back? Miserable place. It’s too bad we can’t rip Miami and New York out of the ground, move them to a desert in Mongolia, and surround them with steel walls.

As far as I know, my friend Travis has not been buried yet. I don’t like the idea of refrigerating a body for three weeks so morticians have to shoot chemicals into it and cake wax on it to hide the dehydration and deterioration. The only announcement I have heard said he was going to be buried on May 30, 20 days after his death. I’m not going to the funeral because I want nothing to do with the hypocrites and racists that made up much of his social circle.

I’m thinking about this now because Travis and I used to talk about Miami a lot. We agreed that it was a terrible place to live, and I told him how I had prayed God would help me never to go back. Sometimes he would call about a problem, and he would say he wanted to work things out so I didn’t have to visit. He said he didn’t want to drag me back there.

It’s very fitting that I’m not going to the funeral. He didn’t want me to have to go to Miami while he was alive, and there is no way he wants to bring that misfortune on me now that he is gone.

When we talked about the area where I live, he invariably said he was jealous. He always said the best people he knew were leaving Miami, and he wanted to join them.

Life keeps getting better for me. If you’re really Spirit-led, that’s how it’s supposed to be. You can’t be considered a success unless things get better with time and then end well. If the best part of your life happened 20 years ago, something is wrong with your relationship with God. As the Bible says, “Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof.” If you own the end, you own the whole thing.

Travis’s death caused me a great deal of suffering, but the hard days are over, and things are going to keep improving. Surely God will reward Satan by sending me multiple people to take Travis’s place. I’m not going to end in failure. Even in Travis’s case, I won. Before I knew him, he was headed for hell. I was one of the people God used to help him receive eternal salvation.

The other day I wrote about a revelation I had. God showed me that I should call him my master. I do that all the time now. I wish I could help people understand how powerful it is. I can feel the Holy Spirit growing in power in me when I say it. I feel weight falling off of me. It’s a way of acknowledging that only God gives me victory and good things. When you acknowledge this, he works with more power. He doesn’t want you to help yourself and build up pride.

God isn’t a genie who shows up to give us what we want, without asking for anything in return. He expects us to be willing slaves who are determined to be one with him. A good master feeds his slaves well. He gives them the best medical care. He gives them the best tools and the best workspace he can afford. He gives them complete protection. When he sends them out in his name, he backs them up 100% with his power and authority. What’s not to like?

The word “slave” is deceptive because human slavemasters generally coerce. Satan coerces. You sin until you get a habit, and then the habit takes away your free will. Satan is a pimp. God’s slaves serve by their own free will. They can quit whenever they want.

I’m finally cutting back on reading the news. Covid got me started again. I love not reading that mess.

Why should I read it? It’s for citizens of the world who are Satan’s subjects. I’m a citizen of another country, and I’m not subject to the laws and dangers of this place. If I were visiting Botswana, would I read the newspapers and get upset over politics and problems? Of course not. Those issues are for citizens of Botswana. Why should I waste a lot of time reading about the misery carnal Americans live in? If they want to rip each other’s throats out and insult each other and spit at God, that’s on them. Like a friend of mine says, “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

I’m an enemy agent; an insurgent. I call people to become citizens of my country. I don’t have to get bogged down in their foreign squabbles. America has economic problems? God says he will supply me abundantly. America has diseases? God says no plague will come near my dwelling. Anti-Christians are becoming more and more violent, and they will eventually form mobs and come after us? God protected Lot, Moses, and Jesus from mobs.

I live in a different reality. I’m here, but I’m not here. We have seen how COVID-19 hits anti-Christian areas much harder than Christian areas. That’s a picture of the way God wants us to live.

If you want life to go smoothly, it’s extremely important to pray in tongues every day. A lot. It’s very important to ask God for correction and revelation. It’s important to remove preachers from betweed you and God. The Bible says God will teach you directly.

It’s important to submit. You have to understand that God is your master, not your concierge or butler.

You need to listen to the Bible. Read it, but also listen to it.

You have to stop trying to change the world. You have to stop trying to adapt to it. Accept the fact that you are rejected, and get used to helping individuals, not neighborhoods, cities, or nations.

Be glad you’re rejected. Satan keeps his enemies close.

I love God’s joy. I have to decide what to do with it. The pool needs some work. I need to get the house ready for guests. I should go buy some driveway sealer. Joy gives you enthusiasm to get things done, because it fills you with hope. It destroys discouragement.

Favor is everything. Line yourself up to receive it. Stop trying to get God to do things your way.

Hope this helps.

Pro Tip: Wear Shoes

It’s a beautiful overcast day, and I feel like blogging, so I think I’ll tell on myself. Here goes.

I have a burglar alarm. It’s annoying sometimes. This weekend it annoyed me by beeping over and over.

I had a half-hour power outage. The burglar alarm has a UPS-type battery for backup power. When the battery is low, the system beeps. It appears that the outage drained the battery and the system was not able to charge it enough to make the beeping stop. The battery is from March of 2017, so it’s a little bit past the halfway point of its expected lifespan.

The control panel is not a good product. It’s not intuitive. For example, before you enter the security code to turn things on and off, you have to enter a “1.” This should be printed on the panel in big letters in case a friend has to turn the alarm off while you’re away. It has tiny instructions printed on it, and they don’t tell you very much. It has directions for turning off the annoying beep, which it spins as a “chime.” These directions do not work when the power goes out. When you turn off the CHIME, the battery beep does not stop. Because when your battery goes bad, or the system simply isn’t man enough to charge a good battery, you need to be reminded every 90 seconds, forever. Especially when you’re trying to sleep.

I can’t get burglar alarm batteries where I live. I have to order such things, or I suppose I could pay the alarm company $150 to install a $20 product. I ordered a battery with a larger capacity than the old one, and then I thought about killing the beeps.

I did not call the alarm company. I figured it was impossible to kill the beeps using the panel. After all, the CHIME shutoff did nothing.

I decided to try two things. First, I got out an old computer UPS I wasn’t using, and I plugged it in, hoping it would charge its own battery to the point where I could substitute it for the alarm battery. After a few hours, it charged up, but when I installed it, the beeps continued.

My next genius move was to open up the alarm panel and look for the buzzer, which really is a buzzer, not a chime. I think. It certainly looks like what electronics people call a buzzer. My plan was to take my soldering iron, remove the buzzer, and reinstall it when the battery arrived. Or not. You don’t really need a buzzer on your burglar alarm panel. It has a text display, and it also communicates through my phone. I guess the buzzer is nice if you enjoy hearing the CHIME go off over and over as doors are opened and closed. I don’t have much use for that feature.

I plugged my soldering iron in and turned it on. There is no furniture near the panel, so I left the iron on the floor. I wasn’t going to step on it. Who would step on a hot soldering iron, knowing it’s turned on?

While I was doing all this, I decided to call the alarm company. They might conceivably be of use. I talked to some lady who said she would refer me to their technical people and have them call me.

While I was talking to her, I felt a terrible pain in my right little toe. I was standing on the soldering iron.

It’s not that easy to have a calm conversation on the phone when you’ve just stood on a soldering iron, but I found that it could be done. What really bothered me was the smell of burning flesh which filled the area after I moved my foot. Apparently I left a significant amount of myself on the soldering iron.

It was very late, and I figured I would hear from these people the next day, so I heated the buzzer’s lugs and started pulling. One slid out of the PCB just fine, and then the buzzer fell apart. Now I had a permanently deleted buzzer.

Immediately, the phone rang. It was the tech guy. I told him my problem, and he said, “Press the star key.”

Mmmf.

I put the panel back together and went to bed. Before turning out the lights, I hit Ebay and ordered a package of buzzers for $3.65. The pain went away after about half an hour, thank goodness. Falling asleep was not a problem. Too bad it happened pretty close to 2 a.m.

I don’t know if pressing the star key actually works, but I suppose I should have called and tried before mutilating my alarm panel.

For all I know, the panel has been straining to beep all night with its larynx ripped out. I sort of hope so. I like the picture of an annoying adversary screaming at me silently, features contorted with desperation, while I sleep in peace.

Later this week, my buzzers and battery will arrive, and maybe this will be the end of my problems.

Why didn’t I just look up my panel’s manual? You’re so smart. You think you know everything, don’t you? Get ready for some humble pie.

My panel has no manufacturer’s markings on it, inside or out. Seriously. It has a logo sort of a thing consisting of symbols. It’s sort of like the thing Prince used as his name for a while. You can’t search for it on Google.

Today, by sheer luck, I found out what type of panel it is, and I downloaded a manual. Guess what? There are no instructions for turning off the battery beep. Totally serious. What kind of sick mind writes a manual like that?

I can see him now. Some nerd with 42 pens in his shirt pocket, sneering that if people don’t feel like buying spare batteries, they don’t deserve to sleep.

I should have had a spare battery on hand. Actually, I did, if you count the UPS. Not sure the UPS battery is up to the task, though. Can’t tell without a buzzer. BWAH HA HA HA HA.

Should I get a spare battery now? Don’t know. The new battery should last at least three years. Will I still be here?

I’m thinking I should hook the battery up to a car charger the next time this happens. I think the internal charger in the alarm box is junk. It works off a tiny wall wart. I’ll bet I would have to put up with a solid day of beeping even if I had a good battery, because it would take that long to recharge.

I also think I should put a UPS on the wall wart. If the system never knows there’s a power outage, it won’t be aware it has an excuse to bother me. I’m not sure why the internal battery doesn’t provide complete backup. Maybe it’s deliberate. Maybe the company wants me to know the power is out, even if the alarm is working. I don’t see how that helps me, though.

If I add a UPS, the system won’t know there’s an outage for a considerable length of time, and that will give the power company time to fix things before the system finds out. Most outages are short. They wouldn’t challenge a UPS. As for long outages, the UPS will run down, and then I’m no worse off than I was with a depleted internal battery. It will just take a little longer to get there.

Maybe I should get a motorcycle gel battery to replace the internal battery. It seems stupid to protect your house with an expensive system when you’re going to back it up with a $20 Chinese lead-acid battery that won’t keep a PC running for 20 minutes.

I guess a gel battery would need a different charger. Okay, maybe I should get a lead-acid motorcycle battery. Still better than what I have.

In other news, I got another useful revelation.

One of the tough things about serving God is getting humility right. Even when you credit God with the good things that happen in your life, you can do it in a way that draws admiration to you. I’ve noticed that preachers who heal people get a lot of thanks and admiration, and they don’t do a great job of deflecting it.

You can say, “God did this for you,” but that doesn’t capture the truth of what happened. You can’t help but sound a little condescending.

God showed me this: don’t just say, “God did this.” Say, “My master did this.” Call God “my master” whenever possible. Don’t say “the master.” It’s not personal enough. The feel isn’t the same.

I got ahold of this, and I started telling God he was my master. Try it. It feels wonderful. It makes our relationship seem like what it actually is. I feel tension drain out of me when I say it. It’s as if burdens are sliding off of me.

God has to receive proper credit in order for his power to flow through us. It can’t just be words and thoughts. It has to be in our hearts. Using the proper language can change your heart and open you up so he can flow.

You have to try it in order to understand how helpful it is.

God’s glory is a problem if it starts to stick to you. When you’re close to him, it’s easy to end up in a situation where you are overly exalted. It appears that this is what happened to Satan. You need to be able to reflect the glory and prevent it from harming you.

The Bible makes it clear that God does his most impressive work when others are standing aside. When you’re striving, the credit for what you do is yours. God won’t take credit for it or get heavily involved. When he gets the glory, he does the work.

I can’t say enough about it. Give it a try and see how it works out.

Democrats Killed the Small Gas Engine

Today’s amazing news: sonic cleaners work.

I have three chainsaws, two gas blowers, and a gas weed eater. Thirty years ago, these were great things to have. Now owning them is torture because Democrats force us to use inferior gas tainted with ethanol. It turns out ethanol is a great fuel for political campaigns, but it ruins small engines, and it’s not great for large ones, either.

Here is what Husqvarna says about using ethanol gas: “It is recommended that you replace gas in your fuel tank every 2-3 weeks to avoid alcohol and water related engine issues.”

I have 6 small engines. I never know when I’m going to need to use one. Nonetheless, if I use gas station fuel, I’m expected to maintain a strict schedule of replacing fuel in every tank, and “replacing” doesn’t just mean you can pour it out. You have to run every engine dry, and then you have to run them dry with ethanol-free fuel.

Obviously, I am not going to turn my life upside-down so I can nanny a bunch of yard tools. I buy ethanol-free gas, I add the best ethanol-fighting additive I can buy, and I buy new carburetors when I have problems.

A stock carburetor for a typical chainsaw runs somewhere in the neighborhood of $100. They’re made in China. They’re not very good. Even if ethanol doesn’t plug them up, the diaphragms rot. It’s not like you’re doing yourself a big favor by buying OEM.

The same carburetor, made in the same country and sold by a different company, will generally cost you under $15, along with a new fuel filter, a spark plug, and some other useful junk, such as gaskets. My belief is that any time you buy a small engine, you should buy a Chinese carb off Ebay just so you’ll be ready for the inevitable. Some carbs are a pain to replace, but many pop in and out in 10 minutes, with no tools except for a screwdriver.

I am a huge fan of Chinese Ebay carbs, but I know have an even better weapon: the sonic cleaner. I saw a Youtube video about using them on carbs, and I saw my destiny unfold before me. I needed a sonic cleaner anyway. A sonic cleaner, like a welder or a mill, is a superpower tool. It lifts you to new levels most men will never reach.

My pole saw pooped out a few weeks back, due to ethanol. I can’t recall whether the carb is Chinese. I have a dead-carb collection. Maybe one of them came from the pole saw. Anyhow, by the time it died, I had a 15-liter sonic cleaner. I filled it with hot water, partially disassembled the carb, sealed it in a jelly jar full of gas, and gave it the business. Today I reinstalled it. No problems.

Of course, in order to check it, I had to put fuel in it, so once I confirmed that it ran, I had to empty the fuel, run it dry, and so on. Even non-ethanol fuel should be removed from a carb before you put a tool away.

I didn’t have total confidence in the effect of running the saw dry, because, believe it or not, you can run one dry and still have problems later. My solution was to run some Sea Foam through it. Sea Foam is an engine treatment made from mineral oil and secret ingredients. It’s supposed to be great for engines. I am hoping it can’t congeal like gas.

I wanted to use my weed eater today. It refused to start even though it has never seen ethanol. Today’s gas supposedly contains things that can plug an engine even without ethanol’s help.

I popped the carb off, stuck it in the sonic cleaner, and gave it 25 minutes at 53° Celsius. I picked 53 arbitrarily. Then I gave it another 25 minutes. I’m about to reinstall it.

I’m planning to get some of the Gucci premixed gas they sell at Home Depot. It’s supposed to be better than ethanol-free. My plan is to run engines dry, add a little Gucci gas, and run them dry again. It’s a giant pain, but it’s not as bad as taking saws apart and working on the carbs. I don’t know if it will work.

It seems like there is something special about the climate here. Small engine carbs just don’t like it. People from other areas tell me they use gas station gas and never have problems. I can’t explain what’s happening, but I’m not imagining my problems.

I may get some Gucci gas tonight. You can’t use it all the time, because it costs $20 per gallon. That’s over six times the cost of ethanol-free.

Replacing carburetors is actually cheaper than using this stuff.

You can use sonic cleaners for jewelry and a whole bunch of other things. A big one will run you around $150, but having a superpower is worth it.

Maybe the weed eater will run tonight, and if so, maybe I’ll be able to use it to clear the beautyberry bushes out of the shooting lane in my pasture. I sure hope so, because otherwise I’ll have to attach the bush hog to the tractor, and attaching the driveshaft will probably be a one-hour job all by itself. Having a quick hitch on your tractor is great, but if your driveshafts are torture devices, it doesn’t help much.

Get yourself a sonic cleaner. Feel the power.

Asphalt Looks Better Every Day

Winter was very disappointing. Where I live, the daily highs should be below 80 from November through March, and there should be a lot of days below 70. This year, we got plenty of roasting-hot days in the 90-degree neighborhood. When that happens, you feel cheated, because while summer can trespass on winter and ruin it, there is no possibility we will have cold days in the summer to make up for it.

Now that temperatures are high and we’re getting occasional rain, the grass has started growing. The lawnmower and I are resuming our romance.

Today the mower would not start. I got a click, and that was it. I put a charger on the battery and went to brush the pool.

When I finished brushing the pool, I tried the mower again. It ran. I mowed most of the yard, and then I got off the mower to move a branch. My mower has a seat switch on it that turns the engine off when I get off, but I bypassed it because it’s unbearable. Because the engine was still running when I got off to grab the branch, I disengaged the PTO so the blades would stop spinning.

When I got back on the mower, the PTO would not reengage. I could still ride the mower, but I couldn’t cut anything.

I guess this is what happens when you mow as rarely as I have been mowing.

I almost shut the mower down to look it over, but it occurred to me that it might not start, and I was at least 100 yards from the area where I park it. I drove it back to its spot and shut it down. Of course, it would not start again. I got idiot lights but no starter, no PTO, and no headlights.

I did what I always do. I checked Internet forums. I found a wide array of problems and solutions.

I found out oxidation could cause the mower to act this way. My battery cables had some kind of hard oxide inside the terminals. I had to remove it with a Dumore grinder and carbide burr. I lost my battery brush, which would have done the job in 10 seconds, so this is what I had to resort to.

I let the mower charge while I had lunch, and when I tried the key again, it worked.

I can never decide whether this mower is junk or not. It’s impossible to work on, and it seems much more complicated than it needs to be. It’s full of engineering errors. On the other hand, I believe it’s 28 years old, and it should run for another 20. The John Deere 430 is hard to kill. It’s way too easy to shut down, but it’s hard to kill.

I was unhappy about the failure to start, because I had a special task in mind for today. I wanted to go to the pasture and cut a bunch of weeds that were in an area where I wanted to shoot.

I shoot into a berm made from sand taken from a pond. On one side of the berm, there are no trees within 100 yards. On the other side, there is a nice wooded area, which is exactly where I want to be when I shoot on hot days. Between the wooded area and the berm, there are blackberry and beautyberry bushes. Today I attacked the beautyberries while trying to spare as many blackberry briars as I could. Blackberries are useful. Beautyberries are pathetic. People eat them, but I think they’re trying to prove something. They don’t taste good.

I found that the beautyberry bushes were not easy to remove with a mower. They fold over so low the blades don’t make good contact. But with persistence, I improved my view of the berm a great deal. I suppose I’ll have to attach the bush hog to the tractor and do it right. Either that or I’ll have to use the brush blade on my gas weed eater.

How much do you want to bet the weed eater starts after several months of idleness? Ethanol gas makes it very difficult to keep machinery running here. Even treated ethanol-free gas lets me down a lot.

When I get my shooting lane cleared, I’ll move my targets. I’ll be shooting from east to west instead of the other way around. Right now, I shoot toward a highway. It’s totally safe, but I would feel better shooting toward the big lot full of trees to the west of my land.

My pasture is dish-shaped, so even without the berm, from either direction, I am shooting toward the ground. That’s a nice feature.

I don’t know how people driving on the road would feel if they knew a guy was shooting a 10mm pistol in their general direction, but then they do 70 with cars coming toward them in the left lane at the same speed, and they don’t freak out about that.

Maybe I should have a policy of restricting shooting to experienced shooters. I will never fire a round over the berm, but women and kids do amazing things with firearms.

I feel as though my enthusiasm for life is returning, 9 days after my personal tragedy. I let a lot of things go while Travis was in the hospital, and my motivation was even worse after he died. I seem to be getting more done now.

As I have written before, I believe joy, as used in the Bible, means something other than ordinary happiness. I believe it’s connected with results and expectations. For example, the Bible says, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” That describes a type of happiness which is related to relief. The word “rejoice” comes from “joy,” and it’s always connected to an event. Something hoped for happens, or something dreadful ends, and people rejoice.

The Bible says, “The joy of the Lord is our strength.” That’s literally true. If you have joy, you expect good things to happen. It gives you motivation to keep going and get things done.

Depression is the absence of joy. It’s discouragement. This is why depressed people kill themselves. They don’t expect things to change for the better.

I had been expecting to rejoice when Travis left the hospital. Instead, joy was taken from me, and I didn’t have the strength to do all the things I should have done.

It may seem strange to get this upset by the death of a friend. I may not have written enough about Travis to give people an understanding of how close we were. I would feel bad if any of my friends died, but Travis was like a family member.

This morning I asked God for joy. It appears it worked. I got the pool in order and mowed the yard, and had the lawn tractor behaved, I would have gotten more done.

I’m coming back to life, and I guess most of the world feels the same way. COVID-19 is going away. Leftists are unhappy about it, because they think the disease will put Biden in the White House, but it’s happening. People are going to work. We can’t play hooky forever.

Leftists say there will be a huge second wave. If that’s true, where is it? Right now, the epidemic is disappearing in places that reopened, and areas that are locked down continue to have problems. Reopened areas are not getting second waves, but locked-down areas seem to be prolonging the first one.

If there’s going to be a second wave, why hasn’t China had one?

Right now, the main reason the numbers look as bad as they do is the local epidemic in Brazil. I don’t know if they got the bug later than the rest of us or what, but their figures are very bad. The numbers keep rising. The other major nations are doing great.

I am determined to keep cutting back on looking at the news, but I still see things. I saw that leftists were going after Trump for using hydroxychloroquine, the quinine substitute some countries use to treat covid. They’re furious at him for taking it. They keep citing studies which suggest it doesn’t work. They don’t seem interested in the opinions of competent doctors who think it does.

Why do they care what he takes? What possible reason could they have for objecting? These are the same people who think we should all be able to get marijuana prescriptions for anxiety. Not just marijuana, but cigarette marijuana which damages lungs and gives off secondhand smoke. They think drugs should be legalized. All except one, I guess.

They excoriated Trump for not wearing a mask. They wanted him to wear something they thought would protect him, even though they certainly did not want him to be protected. Now he’s doing something to protect himself, and they’re angry about that.

One of the great things about Trump is that he knows it makes no difference at all what he says or does. When he goes against the left, they pour vitriol over him. When he does what they want, the response is the same. The result: he pays no attention. He actually needles them to make it worse. Needling people is a vice, but it shows how little their raving bothers him. I think he enjoys it.

Trump gets annoyed in the short term, but you can tell he forgets all about it 15 minutes later. I guess that’s why his blood pressure is good.

Leftists are all over the web saying Trump lied when he said the White House physician gave him the drug. The physician had to write a note, correcting them. He took responsibility and endorsed the use of hydrochloroquinine in Trump’s case. I wonder what they’re saying now. They’re probably calling him a quack.

Maybe they’re saying the note is forged.

Watching Trump reminds me of my own experiences. God knew before I was born that I belonged to him. Whatever my faults were, I was not cut out to be a child of darkness. No matter how much I tried to fit into the body of Satan, I couldn’t do it. I was always rejected, trolled, and mistreated. I have often wondered why people constantly popped up to attack me. I didn’t always know my status as a child of God was the reason.

What Trump goes through is very similar. There is absolutely no way to make the people who hate him happy. They will never make peace, admit fault, or forgive.

Sooner or later, you have to quit worrying about being liked. Jesus never worried about it. He said incredibly harsh things to people. He was extremely rude. I don’t think Christians should make rudeness a goal, but we ought to be truthful. We should lead instead of following.

I just read a book by Anthony Bourdain, the chef who died by his own hand in France two years ago. Bourdain was a lover of the pleasures of the flesh.

He was a wonderful writer. His book is very entertaining.

As I read, the thing that struck me about Bourdain was that he was the perfect child of darkness. He was a complete follower. He accepted every vice you can think of. He devoured the corrupt ethos of the people around him like a starving dog on a bowl of chicken livers. I don’t think he ever had an original thought, and maybe that’s why he was not a great chef. Running a kitchen well is only part of being a great chef. You also have to be creative. Bourdain was not. He admitted he was a very ordinary chef.

His description of culinary professionals is revolting. According to him, big-city kitchens are full of sexual deviants, criminals, drug addicts, alcoholics, men who molest other men on the job, thieves, and liars. They are astonishingly nasty to each other. They hurl filthy insults at each other all day. They brutalize each other physically. They enjoy abusing and breaking each other.

Bourdain wrote about this atmosphere with tremendous enthusiasm. He couldn’t get enough of it. He savored it and wallowed in it. When he was a newcomer, he saw how vile older cooking professionals were, and instead of choosing another job, he was filled with drive to become like them. It’s as though they were father figures and he was trying to live up to their debased standard in order to prove something to himself.

He was like a kid who went to a “scared straight” program and thought, “THESE ARE MY PEOPLE!”, and did his best to go to prison.

He was a man of the earth. No doubt about it. He was programmed to go to hell. He was made for it. Hell fits him like a bespoke suit. He was Jewish, which means he was descended from Abraham, but he preferred the other side.

When I say hell fits him, I don’t mean he’s not likable. He is. But he lived like a joyous pig rolling in week-old garbage. I don’t think anything could have changed his attitude. Depravity and misery brought him pleasure. He could never have turned to God, because righteousness appalled him.

There are two families on earth, and only two, and every person belongs to one of them.

When people die, they go exactly where they belong. There is no injustice to it. God may not have created hell for people, but plenty of people fit in beautifully there.

As the decline of the world accelerates, we’re going to see huge numbers of people ganging up on God, Christians, Jews, and Israel. They will be more and more direct and bold in their attacks on God himself. We’re going to marvel at them, and many of us will feel that we have to do something. We’ll think something must be wrong because so many people are competing to get into hell. Nothing will be wrong. We’ll be seeing people who belong in hell, establishing their credentials.

I don’t mean we shouldn’t love them or hurt for them. I’m just saying we’ll be seeing something that makes perfect sense.

We’ll be seeing the Bourdain mindset, sweeping over multitudes.

That was quite a digression, but I won’t delete it.

I feel as if COVID-19 were a sorting mechanism, like a cream separator. It’s doing a great deal to divide people into pro-God and anti-God factions. I don’t think the world will be the same afterward. Some people think masks and social distancing will be the big changes. I don’t think so. I think covid is pushing many, many people into the arms of the Beast. It’s teaching them to cling to the government nipple, trust the state without reserve, and jettison their rights as though they were dirty diapers. It seems like far fewer people are being driven in the opposite direction.

I suspect the main changes will be in people’s attitudes toward governments, rights, God, and those who believe in God.

If we’re really getting close to the end, we should expect all the signs Jesus spoke of. We already have one very strong sign. He said it would be as the days of Lot and the days of Noah. Perversion and wickedness abounded in those days. Genesis said a homosexual rape mob in Sodom tried to violate two angels.

Luke 21 contains the description Jesus gave of the end times. It looks like a lot of the things that have to come to pass haven’t transpired yet. It looks like the rapture can’t come this week or this year, but next year can’t be ruled out.

Enough of that. I’m glad I’m feeling more like getting things done.

Anything Worth Thinking About is Worth Overthinking

I don’t feel like being responsible just yet. I think I’ll write about some trivial things.

My reloading efforts ran into a speed bump. I have been trying to create 10mm cartridges with 180-grain Speer Gold Dot bullets, and I want 1225 fps from a compact Glock.

This should be simple. I did it about 10 years ago. I may get scolded for saying this, but I still carry that ammunition. There are people who are afraid of old ammunition, but in reality, it’s extremely stable. You can put it in on a shelf and shoot it 75 years later with no problems, if you can still hold a gun. It’s common to buy military surplus ammunition which is decades old.

I suppose you have to be concerned if you walk around in wet clothes a lot, but that isn’t me.

Yesterday, I fired a few rounds of my old ammunition. Zero issues. The gun itself is the weak link. It appears that lint from my holster and clothing have the potential to gum up the firing pin.

When you make your own ammunition, if you want to do it right and know what kind of velocity you’ll get, you need to know how much powder is in each casing. To do this, you need a good scale. It has to measure accurately within +/- 0.05 grains, and a grain is around 1/15 of a gram, so you’re shooting for about a 1/150-gram interval. That’s between 6 and 7 milligrams, isn’t it? Check my math.

Precision isn’t very important for moderate loads, but when you start going for more velocity, you risk blowing up cases, so you need to be more precise.

I had a Lyman digital scale, and I learned that it couldn’t be trusted. I bought a second digital scale, and I found out the resolution was 100% too big. Now I have an old RCBS beam scale. Can I trust it? Sort of. I use check weights to set it, but I don’t know how good the check weights are. I ordered better ones. I think what I have is fine, however. I’ll find out after the new weights arrive.

I got around the problem with the first digital scale by weighing two charges at once and dividing by two. I figured the powder measure was pretty consistent, and I had reasonable faith in the digital scale. I started getting 24.0-grain double charges, and I wanted 12.0 grains per cartridge, so things looked great. I made several test rounds, and they came in between 1200 and 1250 fps. Perfect.

Then I let the process sit for a few days, and before starting up again, I checked the powder measure on the beam scale. I got 11.8 grains. I guessed I had weighed the successful rounds incorrectly and that the 11.8-grain figure was accurate. I had to find out. I didn’t want to adjust the powder measure, use 12.0 rounds, and end up with 1300 fps. I made some 11.8-grain test rounds and fired them. I got velocities in the area of 1100 fps. Terrible.

Somehow, the powder measure had started throwing 11.8-grain charges, and I had to start calibrating it all over again.

On the up side, it looks like my digital scale was right. I checked some new double charges, and I got 23.6 grains if memory serves.

Why would the powder measure shift? No idea.

The check weights aren’t slated to arrive until Tuesday, so it would be stupid to go ahead and make defensive ammunition before they arrive. What do I do?

I think it’s time to crank out .45 target ammunition. I don’t really care if I know how much powder is in a target round, as long as I know the amount is safe. I have a bunch of old .45 brass and a fresh box of lead bullets.

After I typed the word “bullets,” I had to go take care of a tax matter, and while I was working on it, I heard and felt a loud thump. It was as though a truck had hit the house. I went outside and saw that the big oak in my parking circle had lost a fork. It was lying across the driveway. Had to go out, cut it up, and move it. It’s a beautiful day for working outside. It’s warm, but it’s dry, and there is a good breeze. While I was at it, I went to the pasture and moved some tree chunks from Hurricane Irma so the cattle wouldn’t have to keep walking around them.

I’m glad the oak lost a big branch, because the oak needs to be cut, and this will make it easier. A tree cutter quoted me $1000, which didn’t include hauling the wood. That’s insane. It’s a 30-minute job for him. For $500, I would have taken his offer, but $1000 is not going to work.

The smaller the tree is, the easier it will be for me to cut it myself. I hope more of it falls.

The tree is leaning, and the danger is that it will “barber chair” or split before it falls. If that happens, a part that splits off can swing around and kill me. I have read that you can prevent this by putting chains around the trunk. If it can’t split, you can’t have a barber chair.

To get back to shooting, I have to do something with the ammo I’m creating. I have very few factory-made ammunition boxes. When I used to go to gun ranges, I took cardboard ammo boxes out of the trash cans. They work pretty well, but they don’t last forever, and they fall open if you’re not careful. And the only range I go to is in my yard.

I decided to get some Harbor Freight ammo cans. These are sturdy plastic hinged cans. Like miniature plastic versions of the steel military cans, sort of. My plan is to throw ammo into them for storage, and when I want to shoot, I’ll move it to small plastic boxes with grids inside them. These boxes are made by a company called MTM. I already have some.

When I’m shooting, I like to know how many rounds I’ve used, and I don’t like to count. A box with a grid inside it will do the counting for me, and it will be lighter than a Harbor Freight box with hundreds of cartridges in it.

I’m getting a new chronograph. The Chrony F-1 I have now works fine, and it was a good choice when I only shot a few times a year. Now that I shoot more, it’s a drag. It has a display which attaches via an 18-foot cable. Attaching that to the chronograph and settling it firmly in the utility cart is a pain. I don’t like having to suspend the cable over old cow piles. The chronograph stores data, but it has some kind of primitive 1980’s-style interface for getting the data out. I don’t even know how it works. When I read about it, it was so unappealing, I decided I didn’t care to learn the details.

With my old chronograph, I had to shoot, stop, enter a number into my phone, shoot again, and so on. I’m all done with that.

Also, the company that makes the Chrony F-1 has an extremely backward website. They don’t have an online shopping cart. You have to email orders. On top of that, it looks like they don’t respond. I sent an order for parts the other day, and I haven’t heard a word. There is no conceivable excuse for doing business that way in 2020.

The chronograph has light diffusers which are held on by steel rods, and I shot one of the steel rods because I was twisting and contorting myself so I could shoot at a lower height. If you lose your steel rods, don’t buy new ones. Get some wooden ones. The diameter is 5/32″. The length is 18″. You can also order 5/32″ drill rod from Zoro Tools, which is what I have done. No idea whether the Chrony people are going to send anything.

I’m getting a newer model from a company called Competition Electronics. It has a bluetooth connection, and there is a phone app. You shoot as fast as you want, and the machine sends the velocities to your phone. I believe the app gives averages and standard deviations. Not sure. Anyway, it will be a big improvement. I should be able to use a Fire tablet instead of the phone.

I had been putting the Chrony on the same cheap tripod I use for cameras. That will not be necessary any more. I got myself an Amazon Basics tripod. Not having to remove my camera and attach the chronograph will speed things up, and it will certainly make it easier to shoot bullets and footage simultaneously.

It’s funny that we still say “footage” now that there are no feet involved in video.

I suppose it’s too late to drive to Harbor Freight. Gives me something to look forward to tomorrow.

I Like Stuff That Works

I think I may finally be able to carry a 10mm Glock with some confidence. Today I installed a Crimson Trace Lasergrip on my Glock 29, which is a compact pistol.

Long ago, when people with Confederate flags roamed the earth openly and Bruce Jenner was a man, I bought a Glock 29 and put a Lasermax laser in it. I had a benighted notion that it actually mattered if the laser beam was aligned perfectly with the gun’s barrel, and I also thought the Crimson Trace couldn’t be adjusted. In reality, when you’re forced to use a pistol with a laser, you’re in a situation in which a little misalignment means absolutely nothing, and the sight has two screws that let you move the beam to your point of impact.

A Lasermax is a guide rod with a laser in it, so it’s pretty well aligned with the barrel no matter what.

The Lasermax eats batteries like crazy. Install them today, and they’ll be dead a year from now. Also, in order to use a Lasermax, you have to push your Glock’s slide lock to the left before you shoot. Lasermax includes special slide locks with their lasers. Finally, my Lasermax has a cap that holds the batteries in, and after a time, these caps fall apart. It took something like 10 years in my case, but I didn’t like it.

One of the things they always tell you about emergency equipment is that it has to be simple. If you have to remember to do three things before you can fire a round, you’re likely to forget two of them, and then you get shot. This is why I carry my gun with a round in the chamber. The world is full of stories of people who got shot because they hadn’t chambered rounds.

I was always concerned that a) my batteries might be dead when I needed the laser, and b) I would fail to turn it on in a timely manner. A Crimson Trace doesn’t pose these problems. The batteries last for years, and as soon as you pick the gun up, the laser is on.

There are a lot of people who hate lasers, and that mystifies me, because they really, really work. You can shoot a 12-gauge shotgun accurately from the hip with a laser. Ask me how I know. The projectiles really do go where you point the laser.

I’ve seen people say you shouldn’t depend on a laser. As if you’re suddenly going to forget how to shoot if your laser doesn’t work. “Which end do the bullets come out of again?” Every gun owner should become a good shot, but once you’ve done that, a laser can’t do anything but help. If it fails to turn on, you’re no worse off than you were before you bought it.

I know how to shoot, so it’s too late for me to become a person who “depends on a laser.”

I don’t know, but I suspect that a laser would help with putting multiple shots in a small area quickly. Reacquiring a sight picture takes time, but any idiot can point a laser in a hurry.

You can tell I haven’t practiced multiple-shot drills with lasers. Sorry. It sounds like a great idea.

I am enduring a reloading hiatus. I have lost confidence in my powder scale. It’s a Lyman something or other. Maybe it’s deteriorating from age. It seems to drift a lot. Scales have gotten accurate and cheap since I bought it, so I ordered a new scale for about twenty bucks. Amazon is taking forever to ship it, and I don’t want to eat up my brass making cartridges that may have too little powder in them.

I’m thinking of making some 9mm defensive ammo. Somewhat irresponsibly, after my dad died, I started carrying the Glock 26 I bought him, without thinking about, or updating, the ammunition. I have a lot of target ammo, and I have a lot of brass and lead bullets, but I have precious little defensive ammunition.

I could buy defensive ammo, but it’s always overpriced, and that discourages practice. Nobody wants to put 100 rounds of 80-cent pistol ammo into a target. Defensive ammo is sold in tiny boxes, like jewelry, and the natural tendency is to treat it like a Faberge egg collection.

I also put Truglo sights on my new 10mm. It was quite a pain. In the past, I had always ordered Glocks with night sights installed, but I didn’t see anything like that available this time around. I learned that you have to have a tiny 3/16″ nut driver to remove the front sight. My choice was a Wiha precision nut driver, not the ones gun-related companies make. Wiha makes great tools. I don’t trust a gun company’s Chinese offering, especially when it’s more expensive.

To remove the rear sight, I needed a sight pusher. The rear sight was hard plastic, and it was pressed sideways into a dovetail. There was no way a punch was taking it out. I bought a fancy sight pusher from NC Star.

I thought the sight pusher was a good tool, because I saw gunsmiths using them on Youtube. In reality, it was very crude. It had a bunch of screws in it to provide pressure, they went through aluminum, and none were lubricated. There were a couple of screws that were supposed to rotate in tight steel pockets, and they weren’t greased, either. They kept locking up. I worked on the pusher for quite some time, opening things up, adding grease, and so on.

It works. No doubt about that. But you need to spend the first half hour working on the tool itself.

I am tempted to scrap the aluminum frame and make a better one from steel on the mill.

Now the sights are installed. The old rear sight was in so tight, the sight pusher deformed it. If I ever went crazy and wanted it back, I would have to buy a new one.

I may not be a gunsmith, but a lot of the time, I can buy tools and use them myself for an amount comparable to what a gunsmith would charge. That seems like the smart choice. When a job is done, I have a tool and some new skill, as contrasted with nothing.

It’s nice to have both carry guns functioning correctly. Now if I can just get the spot of dried pipe dope off the 9mm.

New York is the New Wuhan

Is it time to stop talking about coronavirus numbers? The new infection rate is still dropping, and it’s not going to stop. Repeating this every day doesn’t make it interesting or illuminating.

I guess I can report something of special relevance to me. The known-case number in my county seems to be frozen. It barely moves. We’re still stuck under 130 cases. Days ago, we were at 121.

But that doesn’t mean I’m safe at the grocery, because of all the unreported cases, right?

I don’t think it works that way here. If we had a lot of unreported cases, we might still have a low number of reported cases, but we would have a high transmission rate. People who didn’t know they were sick would be infecting others. A low transmission rate, when coupled with a low known-case number, seems to indicate a low actual-infection number.

I think we simply don’t have many sick people here. Don’t ask me why. I don’t think the sparse population is the entire answer. Maybe it is, but there are rural counties that have done worse.

It’s funny how the disease is distributing itself. It’s really not a big deal in most places. If you remove New York State from the USA total, the numbers drop by about a third, and New York isn’t as populous as you think. COVID-19 is much more common there than in most places, and it’s also more common in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, and New Orleans. Other places that may make the list: Cleveland, St. Louis, DC, Baltimore, and Kansas City.

Should we call it the Chinese virus or just the Democrat virus? Very strange.

L.A. isn’t too bad, though, and San Francisco is doing well.

It’s important to note that COVID-19 isn’t “common” anywhere. It’s not like the flu. It’s “more common” in some areas, but it’s not common by cold and flu standards. When New York City (not State) has well over a million cases, you can say it’s more common than the flu in that location. At least 10% of Americans get the flu every year, so you would expect nearly a million obvious cases in New York City. The lab-confirmed rate is much lower than 10%, but the CDC doesn’t limit itself to tested patients when compiling flu statistics.

I wonder how COVID-19 will affect rural home prices. I hope they go sky-high so I can make a profit when I sell this place, but I hope they stay really low so I can get a great deal when I buy another one.

I’ll bet it won’t help property values in New York City. If people leave, I hope they go to California, which is already destroyed. Please, God, keep them out of the South. If they ruin the South, there is no place left to go.

The bias of the press is still astounding. I saw an article saying what you buy these days depends on how you vote. It said Republicans were more likely to buy guns while Democrats were more likely to buy toilet paper. It said Democrats were rationally preparing for lockdowns and time at home.

That’s so idiotic, it hurts to think about it. How can anyone try to rationalize selfish, senseless, destructive hoarding of a product that is in no way related to the disease? How does “time at home” relate to a need for 300 rolls of toilet paper? There was never any danger, real or perceived, that we would not be allowed to buy toilet paper. It was an absurd Satanic mass delusion.

If they were worried about being stuck at home, they would have hoarded canned goods, but they have gone much easier on canned goods than toilet paper. If they were worried about being stuck at home, they wouldn’t have hoarded bottled water in the beginning, but they did. The water supply, which doesn’t depend on bottles, was never in doubt.

Hoarders can’t be excused. What they did is utterly nonsensical. The person who wrote the article was just trying to make leftists look better.

As for guns, a whole lot of non-conservatives have been trying their best to get them. It’s not just right-wingers. Coronavirus converted a lot of gun-haters. I still don’t understand why a Democrat or anyone else would think an epidemic would make a gun more useful. I suppose a gun may help you if you live in an area where they’re releasing criminals and refusing to send cops to crime scenes.

There have always been big buyers on the right. Some are profiteers. Some are irrational hoarders. Some are preppers. Some are just getting ready for the banning of lead and our leftist future without easy access to guns. Then there are people like me who like to buy ammunition in bulk to save money.

Things continue to go well here. Life is easy. I’ve made lots of ammunition. I must sound like a scared pandemic prepper, but I was already at work before the hysteria started. I think my Hornady Lock-n-Load AP press is finally working correctly.

This press is like a Chinese lathe. Basically, there is nothing wrong with it, but the factory didn’t finish manufacturing it. It came with a lot of rough edges. They say a Chinese machine tool is really a kit. When it arrives, it may be unusable, but after considerable work and study, it will do just fine. Same thing with the Hornady press.

Here’s something that plagued me. The press refused to prime brass. Every so often, a shell would go through with no primer. This allowed powder to leak out onto the press. As a result, the press’s column was generally coated with grey residue, and I had problems with gummy crushed powder clogging things up.

It turned out the base plate the shell plate sits on was too thin. I’m only writing about this in case some Googler has the same problem. The spring-loaded punch that seats primers screws into the base plate. The top of the punch should be level with the top of the plate or slightly lower. My punch protruded through the plate. The primers are loaded by a slide that moves back and forth over the punch, so because the punch protruded, it caught the slide and prevented primers from loading.

The simple answer was to Dremel material off the bottom of the slide so it could pass over the punch.

It was annoying to find that this problem existed, because manufacturing a flat piece of steel to a desired thickness is a very easy task for a machinist. There is no excuse for getting it wrong and then passing the product on to a consumer. If the base plate were 20 thousandths thicker, the primers would always have loaded correctly.

I know that was boring, but someone on the Internet will eventually need the information.

I’m expecting 3,000 more rounds of .22 LR to arrive today. This will bring me up to over 9,000 Mini-mags. It’s not enough for a lifetime, but it’s enough to sit back on while I wait for prices to drop so I can accumulate a final stockpile at relatively low prices. As I’ve said earlier, I would have left it for other people to buy, but they were ignoring it, so too bad.

I have to make defensive ammo for the 10mm pistols. I’m not really that interested in self-defense these days, but I am interested in tools, guns, reloading, and shooting, so I want to do things right. I’m planning to load 180-grain Hornady Gold Dots to about 1200-1250 fps. That ought to be fine.

I don’t want to kill you, but I do want to be able to kill you. Not because I like killing people, but because I don’t like getting involved with firearms and then making bad ammunition choices. I guess I’m like an old lady who puts plastic covers on furniture she never lets anyone sit on. Shooting people isn’t the point. I just enjoy learning about guns and ammo and trying to do things well. The fact that I don’t want to use my carry gun doesn’t mean I don’t want it to work correctly.

Ammunition technology keeps improving. The .40 S&W has started to look a lot better. You can get very good performance with the same Gold Dots, with a little less recoil and weight. Makes me wonder if buying another 10mm was the right idea, but I know it will work. I can get 1200 fps from the 10mm, compared to maybe 1100 from the .40, without over-driving the 10mm. That can’t be a bad thing. I still think .45 ACP is a great option.

If I didn’t make my own ammunition, I wouldn’t go near the 10mm. Hot factory ammo is just too overpriced.

I’m enjoying life and continuing to improve. I don’t know God’s plans for me, but I am content to putter around and have fun until I find out.

Let’s All Play Trivial Pursuit on Zoom

The coronavirus curve looked really good last night. It continues to oscillate, but if you do what math people do, more or less, and draw a line through it to approximate its basic direction, you will see that it points downward.

This is somewhat startling, because testing is ramping up. Yesterday, I read that a test of Los Angeles jails revealed 200,000 cases, generally asymptomatic. Did I read that right? That’s a lot of cases. If testing is getting better and more widespread, and the curve is still dropping, then things are even better than they seem.

Maybe one of the upward spikes was assisted by this event.

The press is still deluded. I saw an article claiming Kentucky cases had spiked two days after anti-lockdown rallies. Ridiculous. Coronavirus has an incubation period longer than two days. There is no connection. Of course, whoever wrote the article didn’t point this out. He probably didn’t know it. It’s probably some snowflaky millennial who maxed out with Algebra I and has to call his mom to change a flat tire.

It’s very unfortunate that journalists are so…I will go with “unintelligent,” since it’s not a term created in order to insult. I will steer away from harsher terms. It’s a pity there is nothing like an LSAT for journalists. It would be a First Amendment problem, but think how much better life would be while it was going through the courts.

I applied my prediction equation last night, to see how it was doing. Wonderful result. The equation’s prediction was about 47% high. The reported numbers adhered very strictly to an exponential equation for weeks, and that’s over with. A figure of +47% is still remarkably accurate, but it does indicate that the disease is petering out. Not that you need it, because official sources say the same thing.

People want to go back to work in order to save the economy, but will it work? No. I think it will be very helpful, but it won’t be anything like a true recovery. Americans have been conditioned to believe the following falsehoods:

1. COVID-19 is extremely contagious.
2. COVID-19 is a severe disease.
3. COVID-19 is very dangerous for all demographics.

Taken together, 1 and 2 are not true. Number 3 is not even close to true. The disparate impact of COVD-19 is one of its remarkable features.

Regarding contagion, either the disease is not very contagious, or it is generally extremely mild, or both. If it were contagious and severe, we would have something like a billion known cases, as we do with the flu, every year. If it’s very contagious, it is generally extremely mild, because severe cases are obvious, and we only know of about 2.7 million cases. As for severity, we know how severe it ISN’T, because we have seen 2.7 million purported cases, and something like 85% were mild or asymptomatic. That puts an upper limit on the average severity. We don’t have a lower limit, but the Los Angeles testing suggests the actual infection numbers may be very, very high, and that would prove the disease is generally barely perceptible.

As for COVID-19 being very dangerous for all demographics, we already know this isn’t true. If you’re under 50 and healthy, even if you get a symptomatic case, you’re very unlikely to get really sick or die. If you’re considerably younger, the odds are worse than those of going to Las Vegas with 20 dollars, playing roulette, and driving home in a Bentley.

Well, maybe not that much worse. But a lot worse.

There probably billions of young, healthy people who think they’re facing a high risk of severe illness if they go back to work or mingle with other people in public, when in reality, they’re much more likely to die from the flu or in a car wreck.

My guess is that this belief will continue to kill restaurants and other businesses involving gatherings for at least 6 months. And it will be hard on people like performers, ticket agents, event organizers, venue owners, mall owners, and so on. If you’re a musician, your parents were right. Get a haircut and apply at Walmart. On the plus side, touring makes a lot of money for people who are very corrosive to our morals, so maybe rappers and rock stars will be less powerful and annoying. Many famous performers don’t make much money from royalties. Imagine a future with less Lady Gaga. Nice.

Plagues really scare people. Even when they’re not plagues.

By the way, this epidemic will be the final blow to many familiar chains and businesses. It’s a big step in the direction of a future where a huge portion of the things we need have to be bought electronically. Daddy Beast likes.

Will the pandemic come back? I’ve been thinking about it. Here is my answer: no.

How can I say that? The “experts” say it will always be with us. The explanation is simple.

From now on, we are going to test like crazy. Everyone who so much as coughs will be tested. Big Sister will work hard to gather data, and what will she do when a local outbreak occurs? She will put the boot on it, fast and hard.

COVID-19 can’t just appear everywhere, all at once. It has to start in identifiable, discrete locations. We can address that, and we will. Any place where a case is detected will be locked down. Patients will be quarantined. It will be much harder for the disease to spread next time.

We will also have a vaccine pretty soon, and believe me, we will take it. The pressure will be overwhelming. Even anti-vaxxers may be forced to submit. There may be arrests for people who refuse, even though no one cares if you get a flu vaccine. The flu just isn’t glamorous. Tom Hanks didn’t get it.

I think COVID-19 will pop up here and there, and it won’t get much traction. But the news will still cause hoarding, so buy stock in Georgia Pacific. They make toilet paper. Still the only known cure.

Maybe when people realize the flu was worse, they’ll force us to be vaccinated for that, too. The implications are disturbing. Auntie Sam may be extremely powerful and personal next year.

I wonder about our current status as rights-deprived subjects. Will that continue? Leftists will argue for it, because they always do. They have always been against any civil right not protecting sexual sin, the murder of the unborn, crime, obscenity, or recreational drug use. They love gun control, restraint of free speech that isn’t obscene, the forced purchasing of insurance, over-regulation of commerce, and all sorts of other dangerous infringements.

They routinely advocate for the restriction of political speech, which is the type of speech the First Amendment was written to protect. It wasn’t written for Hugh Hefner, who surely regrets what he did in life.

It’s bizarre how they characterize themselves as proponents of freedom, because they adore government and cede their rights to it eagerly in order to obtain a false sense of security.

Leftists may not realize it, but most would be happy to live in government-financed cages, eating Soylent Green, as long as they got to sin all they wanted and didn’t have to pay for medical care.

We already have those cages. They’re called “housing projects” and “rent-controlled apartments.”

The idea that human beings love liberty is a myth. Generally, we love security, and we will debase ourselves all day every day to get it. People who really love liberty are anomalous. It’s remarkable that there are so many of us in America. It’s probably not sustainable. The pet hamster mindset tends to prevail when times get hard.

We’re looking at a scenario in which we have to balance our natural cowardice and love of security against our knowledge that we will be poor if we aren’t free. I hope the desire for a decent lifestyle will prevail, because it will tend to preserve our freedom.

If you want to be lifted above this mess, get to know God. Pray in tongues every day. Repent. Spend time with him. Let him change you. Your happiness and success depend on your relationship with God, not on what happens around you. Think about Daniel in the lions’ den. Think about Noah. Think about Jesus, walking away unseen in the midst of a crowd of friends, relatives, and neighbors who were trying to throw him off a cliff.

Think about Passover.

The fact that most Christians have lived in defeat for centuries doesn’t mean Christianity doesn’t work. Think of the horrible doctrine that held them down. You don’t have to believe that garbage.

I should talk about masks. The “experts” keep leading us in circles. They said masks didn’t help, perhaps in order to discourage sales so they could funnel them to care providers. Now they’re saying they do help, and in some places, you have to wear one or you can be kept out.

I believed the “no work” line, except that I thought a mask might help a person not to touch his face, and I thought it would reduce sprays of things like snot and droplets. Now the consensus, which seems somewhat more sound this time, is that masks are helpful. So I think I was mistaken.

I can get quality masks from my friend Mike, but I think they should go to people who really need them. Like people who are financing their retirements by selling them for a hundred bucks each.

In other news, I’m afraid I turned my reloading press into a bomb.

I was running my Hornady Lock-n-Load AP some years ago when I noticed that the plastic restraint on top of the primer tube was not reliable. It’s supposed to hold the tube and primers in place. It kept coming loose. I blamed Hornady, and I believe I was correct, but recent research suggests I can make the plastic cap work if I do little things to fix the press’s fit and finish.

Anyway, I turned on the lathe and made myself an aluminum primer tube cap. I’ll show you a photo. It’s basically a counterbored tube with two set screws to fasten it to the primer tube. I don’t use the lower screw. It’s not needed. The cap does a great job of keeping things together.

The primer tube on this press is a skinny aluminum tube, and there is a steel outer tube around it. I thought the steel tube was there to hold it up. This is true, but yesterday I learned that it’s also a shield. On very rare occasions, primers inside tubes have exploded.

The force of a primer explosion is small, but you can put 100 primers in a tube, one on top of the other. They can set each other off, and then you have a bigger explosion. How much bigger? I don’t know. Not big enough to blow a shield apart. The gas exits upward.

Problem: my cap is firmly attached to the shield, and it only has one small hole through which gas can escape. Also, it’s heavier than the stock device. What happens if the primers blow up? Will the cap’s restriction force the exploding gases to blow the shield open? I would not like that. It would be bad, and because the shield is next to a big container of powder, it could lead to even worse things.

Now I see why Hornady gives you a rubber cap to cover the top of the powder measure.

It pains me to give up my beautiful aluminum cap, but I may do it. And I’m going to wear eye protection from now on. And I’ll put a fire extinguisher in the gun room. What a pain.

I’ve had a few issues since beginning to reload again. I found a great series of videos from a guy who really knows how to set this press up. They’re a bit long-winded, but I’m going to watch all of them. You might like them, too.

Hornady provides an inadequate manual along with the press, and there is no way you can make it run using only this tiny amount of information. You need more sources.

I’m thinking that in the future, I will do my best to manufacture all of my own ammunition. I won’t do rimfire because I can’t. I may or may not exclude shotgun shells, because I don’t use many. Not sure. But I want to make my own pistol and rifle centerfire ammo. I can make exactly what I want, and in many cases it will be a lot cheaper than factory stuff. In the case of all-lead bullets, I will even be able to make the projectiles themselves, and they will cost almost nothing.

They’re going to take factory lead ammo and bullets away from us before too long, so if you want to keep shooting lead, you’ll want some bullet molds. Either than or buy bullets this year.

I probably have 30 pounds of lead. I saved some downrigger weights from my dad’s boat. It’s not hard to get free or cheap lead from other sources.

One benefit of reloading is that when people panic, factory ammo sells out faster than reloading components.

I’m hoping supplies of everything will open up during May, and then I can start laying things in. If I have to spend a couple of thousand dollars, so what? It’s important. It’s better than paying for car and home insurance. I’ll have something permanent I can keep.

I’m not one of those nuts who wants a pile of lead so he can shoot it out with the feds when the familiar substance hits the fan, but I don’t want to be an 80-year-old man who polishes his empty guns and misses the days when he could actually shoot them.

I hope to crank out maybe 200 rounds of target 10mm today, and I’ll also create an ample number of defensive rounds. I may as well accept the fact that I’ll need more 10mm brass. You have to practice with your carry gun.

I don’t know if 10mm was the best choice, because .45 ACP is very, very good, and it’s easier to shoot. I can always get a Glock in .45 if I change my mind. Maybe I should look for an alternative brand which is just as good or better. Glocks are wonderful tools, but carrying one is like marrying a homely woman who makes great pies and changes her own oil.

MORE

I don’t know where my brain was this morning. I read a story about a big number of positive COVID-19 tests in L.A. County jails, and, later, I posted what I thought I remembered. I said 200,000 inmates had tested positive.

I always write and then go back and check to see if anything I wrote was incorrect, but somehow that system failed to engage today, as did common sense. As bad as L.A. is, there is no way it could have 200,000 inmates (unless you consider all Californians inmates), let alone 200,000 who have coronavirus.

I must have been distracted. It’s amazing that I could have written something that stupid and then let it make it to the blog. Thankfully, a reader has used a comment to point the problem out.

My best guess is that I saw a story which mentioned the jail test in addition to the fact that 200,000 people go in and out of jails nationwide every week. Either that, or I need to stop drinking so much hand sanitizer.

Anyway, I hope the rest of what I wrote was reasonably lucid. I will check.

Any Demographic that Actually Needs “No Spitting” Signs Should Expect Problems

It’s a banner day. I’m blogging from the gun room instead of the upstairs Chamber of Manliness.

Yesterday I set up a second set of Home Depot (only the finest) shelves, and I got the vast majority of my junk off the floor. I can walk in and out without tripping. My monitor is connected to a laptop, so it’s running. I have a nice comfy overpriced ergonomic chair. I’m within 20 feet of the refrigerator. It’s heaven.

I have Roku on the TV, so I can watch Youtube and Amazon Prime without using a browser.

Are you tired of the horrifyingly inappropriate “At Home Together” Roku home screen? Roku forces it on people, to remind them that a company that helps people watch Keeping up With the Kardashians is entitled to tell customers they can’t leave their houses. I kept getting rid of this theme, and it kept coming back. I finally found that if you go to the theme menu and select the customizing option, you can disable Big Sister themejacking. You’re welcome. Maybe I can find an AR-15-related theme, or one about whale-meat recipes.

I’m actually considering NOT blogging about coronavirus today. It’s yesterday’s news, unless you live in a place like New York. I don’t mean nothing is happening. Just that there isn’t a lot to say.

I talked to my cousin yesterday about the dirty habits of Northeasterners, which must surely be contributing to the epidemic. She started telling me how disgusted she got when she saw people sharing drinks and eating from each other’s plates. She told me about turning down things friends from the Northeast handed out at ball games. She said she watched them like a hawk. She was right there with me. It’s strange how people from the Northeast think germs are imaginary.

I just checked, and New York City is a major VD hub. Big surprise.

I have to say that I wonder what life will be like now that the lockdowns are about to be forced out of action. Will people flock to malls and restaurants? Will they pack places like T.G.I. Friday’s? I’ll bet they don’t. I’ll bet in-person commerce will still be pretty subdued. But at least we’ll have a choice.

By the way, I was wrong about the flu being as bad as coronavirus. It’s worse. I checked again, and they think the flu may have killed as many as 60,000 Americans this season. That’s on top of the 80,000 we lost last year. Remember all the mass graves and the economic hysteria? Me neither.

Coronavirus is on track for somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000. Hasn’t caught up with the flu yet.

Last night, I decided I was going to make 10mm ammunition. That didn’t work out. I set up my powder measure, and when I started weighing charges, they went like this: 9.3, 9.4, 9.7, 10.0…something was wrong.

Could it have had anything to do with the fact that I left the powder measure in the workshop for several years, where it rusted? Could it be in any way related to the fact that I had never, ever cleaned it?

I don’t want to jump to conclusions.

Cleaning a powder measure is not all that easy. I had already cleaned rust off the outside. I did that a few days ago, using the buffer. The inside was more of a challenge. I came up with a solution. I remembered that I had a big gun-cleaning kit with wire brushes of various sizes. I stuck brushes in a drill and reamed out the hollow parts of the powder measure.

I also noticed that powder was sticking to parts that were not rusted. I blame Hornady One Shot gun cleaner for this. It’s a phenomenal gun cleaner and dry lube. Hornady says to spray the insides of powder measures with it. Hasn’t worked for me. When I used it, powder stuck much worse. I think it leaves a residue powder likes.

I had to clean everything out with window cleaner and alcohol.

When I got this thing years ago, I broke it. Hornady said to spray the inside with One Shot, but this was impossible. The plastic hopper tube is about 8″ long, and you have to spray through it to get One Shot into the metal parts from above. I figured it must have been removable, so I tried to unscrew it. It popped out of the metal part. Hornady had pressed it in.

Nice.

Ever since then, I’ve held it in place with tape. I now think this is the smart way to go. If you ever need to clean your powder measure, it will be hard with the plastic in place. By fastening it with black electrician’s tape, I made it removable.

But thousands of people have used these things successfully without breaking them and putting tape on them, so I may be totally wrong.

It was a mistake following Hornady’s instructions. That, I’m sure of. Maybe the insides of the measure shouldn’t be lubed at all, or maybe a good-quality spray silicone is the best answer. I could also hit it with brake cleaner first. Some people pour graphite powder through them before using them.

Before long, I’m going to toss some Accurate No. 7 in there and weigh some charges. Hoping for the best. I don’t see any parts that could be considered ruined, so I don’t think a new powder measure is the answer.

Powder measures that were made more recently than mine come with internal baffles that supposedly make powder flow better. I have not been able to find them sold separately. I don’t know if they work.

I finally ordered a Powder Cop, which is a little device that gives you some warning when you fill a case too much or too little. I don’t plan to wait for it, because you can avoid problems simply by being careful. I think it’s a good buy, though. Blowing guns up in your hand is bad.

My plan is to make a whole lot of lead 10mm rounds for practice. After that, I’ll think about defense rounds, which would require me to change the settings on the press. I overbought defensive bullets. I think I have around 500. I believe I could go the rest of my life on that amount, including a little practice.

When 10mm is done, it will be time for .45 ACP. Then .38 Super.

I better start weighing charges. These cartridges aren’t going to create themselves.

Dining Room Furniture is for Losers

All you single males out there, and males with wives who have their priorities straight, listen to me. Convert your dining rooms to gun rooms. You won’t believe how great it is.

Yesterday I found a way to mount a Hornady Lock-n-Load ammo press on a Rockwell Jawhorse. Today I’ve been getting out my reloading junk and putting the press in working order. It’s fantastic.

The thing that concerned me most was the state of the powder measure. This is a complicated dispenser that drops powder into cartridges. Before I understood just how bad rust is up here, as contrasted with Miami, my powder measure developed a nice orange-brown coat. This would be a problem for most people, but not for Eccentric Man, strange visitor from planet Heaven. I had a Baldor industrial buffer waiting for me with a wire wheel and an assortment of buffing compounds and buffing wheels. I disassembled the measure, cleaned off the rust, and moved on.

I found my Lyman powder scale. It can be operated using an AC adaptor or a 9-volt battery. Being me, I stuck a battery in it years ago, for no good reason. Then I left it in there. When I opened the scale up, the battery was in bad shape, but no chemicals had touched the scale. I was in business.

It almost looks like Duracell made the battery in such a way that failure would be less likely to damage anything but the battery itself. Are they that smart?

I stuck 10mm dies in the press, and now I’m trying to remember how it works.

I just downloaded a manual. With God’s help, I may be able to make some ammo tomorrow.

I learned something useful: you shouldn’t clean your brass until you remove the primers. Heh heh. I ran a 10mm shell through the deprimer, and the pocket is filthy. I soaked the shells in citric acid and water to clean them, and it looks like I’m going to have to do it all over again.

It’s amazing to see that the Jawhorse is rigid enough for this use. You could literally hold up a pickup truck on my workbench, if you could balance it, but it flexes when you make ammunition. The Jawhorse weighs about 75% less, and it doesn’t seem to move at all. We’ll see if that holds true when I’m pushing shells into dies.

I received some night sights for the new Glock. What to do? They don’t install themselves. Eccentric Man wasn’t intimidated. He has workbenches, tools, and a Panavise with Pana-hands in his dining room. I stuck the Glock’s slide in the vise and went to work. Then I realized I really needed a sight-pushing tool to do it right. I also needed a tiny 3/16″ nut driver to remove Glock’s silly front sight screw. That’s okay! Eccentric Man has Ebay and Amazon apps on his phone. The tools will be here very soon.

I’m going to make a new lever and handle for the press. I’ve seen some things other people have done, and I like their ideas. I could pay a lot of money for a new lever, but why? Eccentric Man has a propane torch, vises, and a lathe. He can make his own lever for $10.

I guess it’s odd for a Christian who is obsessed with God’s love and who has zero interest in violence to enjoy firearms so much, but I do, just as I enjoy nice tools and good kitchen knives. It makes me wonder what will happen to me if I’m ever involved in a defensive shooting. They say cops and prosecutors really don’t like it when you defend yourself with quality equipment. They prefer you use your grandma’s rusty .25 automatic, filled with ammo your grandpa won in a poker game in 1952. It makes you look like a harmless creampuff who never thought about firearms until he was ambushed.

People say that if you use things like a laser, a 10mm, and excellent expanding hand-loaded rounds, you’re as good as indicted, even if you did nothing wrong. I would probably be very well equipped in a shooting situation, but it’s not because I’m a potential serial killer. I just like getting gun-related stuff right.

I’m not a psychopath. Really. I don’t fit the profile. I don’t start fires, except, well a few dozen times a year, because I have to get rid of downed trees. I don’t torture animals, except, yes, I do shoot squirrels because they’re annoying. You don’t know what they’re like. If Ellen DeGeneres lived here and shared the place with Richard Simmons, THEY’D shoot them. And I hardly ever wet the bed these days. Probably not even once a week. I’m not the droid you’re looking for. Pay no attention to the AK with the green laser under the rear seat of my truck.

I could carry a Kel-Tec with cheapo 9mm JHP and hope for good shot placement. That would make me look like a bona fide gun moron. Of course, it didn’t help George Zimmerman. It’s what he used, and he refused to shoot until he was on his back having his head pounded against concrete, and his prosecutors literally perjured themselves in order to railroad him. Now he’s so crazy, he may actually be what they claimed he was before they drove him around the bend.

It probably helps to live in the right county. Zimmerman lived in Seminole County, which, like Wyoming, is far to the left of my county. Where I live, the cops would probably help me hide the body.

You really need a gun room. You should even convince your doctor it’s a medical necessity, for your nerves. Then it’s deductible. If they can give you a note that forces restaurants to accommodate your filthy, smelly, stupid, untrained dog, and if they can prescribe blunts for insomnia, and if they can prescribe castration for an 8-year-old boy just because he enjoyed watching The Turning Point, surely they can prescribe gun rooms.

It might even cut some ice with your wife.