One More Day...

...of filming Janich bouncing people all over the place. Considering all I have to do is stand around and say, yep, that's good; no, that's not, I'm surprisingly tired.

The wind is coming up tonight...it's already starting to gust as a front comes through. I understand the City of Boulder has already warned residents in the west side of town — adjacent to downtown — to be ready to evacuate tonight if the fire jumps the lines the firefighters have been laying down all day. A monster that won't go away!

Smackdown Time!

-- Post From The Road

What We Do For Art...

-- Post From The Road

Post-Lunch Nappie

-- Post From The Road

You Make Up the Caption

-- Post From The Road

Dealing With Pesky Zombies

-- Post From The Road

More Thwack!

-- Post From The Road

Thwack!

-- Post From The Road

Filming Day

Working on TBD today, so I'll try to get some pictures up from the filming.

I've got a couple of blank slots for SG 2011. I was thinking of putting a list of my ideas (including a day with the top women practical shooters, a class with a red-dot sight on a service pistol, more carbine instruction, and several others) up on DRTV and letting you guys pick the shows you'd like us to do.

Good idea or stupid plan???

Fire Day

"Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the wind turns the minutes to hours..."
--Gordon Lightfoot


Scary as hell today, but we're safe.

The wildfires burning outside Boulder are well away from the Secret Hidden Bunker, but it has been a spooky day. Wind up to 65 mph pushing an out-of-control fire, cutting a swath through the canyons.

Our thoughts and our prayers are with our friends in the fire zone, and with our good friend and his crew who are on the fire line tonight.

Arf!

Our President is deeply disturbed:

President Barack Obama came out swinging in Wisconsin today in a speech that, while making clear references to policy and future plans, didn’t shy away from tackling the opposition. The day’s soundbite, however, wasn’t aimed at the Tea Party, the Republicans, or any political group in general, but at “powerful interests” who “talk about me like a dog.”

In a statement issued late this afternoon, Alf the Wonder Beagle thundered her disapproval at being compared to the President:

"He goes off the prompter and he can't even speak American English! It's 'like a dog,' dog!" the Wonder Beagle huffed."Besides, I have never once poo'ed in my own house! Can he say that? What about the health care bill?"

Updates as they develop...

Oh No! Fatwa City...

I note that today's Day By Day cartoon features a "man with a turban." Oh no! Fatwa City! My high scool pal Bill Baker, who's an instructor for Tom Givens at RangeMaster, has already volunteered to mover to the Secret Hidden Bunker to watch my "6." Hey, we can have a BBQ!

Shot okay at today's match, but my '73's much-ground-on bolt finally gave up the ghost. Gonna have to default to the back-up '66 for the upcoming Rocky Mountain Raid. No big.

Zoms Rule!

Just getting ready for the Zombie Apocalypse...

Sigh...Summer's Almost Gone...

Where will we be...where will we be indeed....

Took yesterday off and drove over to Summit County for one of our favorite bicycle rides, from Frisco up to the top of Vail Pass (10,662 feet), then whoop de do, back down again. It is a beautiful ride in any season, sort of the distilled essence of Colorado. The high aspen are just starting to go shimmery green, the color they get before they go gold. The temperature was perfect, in the high 60s, and the hordes of Labor Day end-of-summer crowds had not yet descended on the mountains.

Then stopped at Backcountry Brewery for one of their award-winning pilsners, Ptarmigan Pils, never as good in the bottle as fresh from their taps.

Am chasing my tail today, doing a little work on next week's podcast so I can take Monday off and lots of telephone conferences. We start filming Season 3 of TBD in Denver next week, with more Season 11 SHOOTING GALLERY scheduled for the week after. Gonna be crazy time for the rest of the fall, to be sure.

Shooting-wise, one of the Ruger 6.8s showed up, so I'm going to try and work in a side-by-side with the same gun in 5.56...I just ordered a bunch of 6.8 — ouchies! They're not giving the stuff away, are they?

Joe Huffman had a nice post yesterday on the current antigunners' cry for us to find "common ground." I of course agree with Joe — the endless meme of "common ground" is simple code language for, "would you guys mind giving up a bunch of your enumerated rights so we can feel better about ourselves?" The answer is no. You want to feel better about yourselves, take a firggin' Pilates class...or go to a range and learn how to shoot! It's amazing how empowering shooting can be!

Bad News

From the U.S. Shooting Academy site:

To Always WIN THE FIGHT

It is with a heavy heart and deep sadness that I must announce today the death of Mr. Tom Fee, owner and president of the USSA. The originator of this dream that we all call USSA, Tom was a man with a keen and driven vision of what he would design, fund, and construct for our future USSA family. A heart as large as this academy itself, Tom promised to provide a state of the art training facility for our military, law enforcement, and civilian defense training where real-life lessons would not only be practiced, but would become the common theme of each day. No stone un-turned, No innovation refused, No cost too large. TOM DELIVERED!!

Your current facility that we all enjoy and love daily is the continuation of all that Tom Fee envisioned providing to you. Tom is gone, but his dream is larger, the vision is constant, and our determination is unbreakable. The USSA, forever under the watchful eye of "Tommy", will continue to succeed and flourish for many years to come and will never compromise our relentless commitment to the USSA family that rests deep within our core ethos:

That's right pal, TO ALWAYS WIN THE FIGHT

Tommy you will be missed

In honor of Mr. Tom Fee and in respect to his wonderful wife Bridget and their 5 daughters, the USSA will recognize a day of mourning and will be closed for business Wednesday Sept 1, 2010. We will re-open tomorrow Sept 2, 2010, ready, willing and determined to provide our USSA family the quality of service, training, and camaraderie that you have grown accustomed to during the past 5 years. I thank all of you in advance for your patience and understanding during these difficult and challenging times and would ask that you keep the entire Fee family in your thoughts and prayers at a time when they will need them most.

I look forward to seeing you all down range soon

Semper Fi

B.K.Delauter

CEO
USSA

I worked with Tom Fee and my heart goes out to all of my good good friends at USSA...

Technological Unintended Consequences

You guys know I've been pretty happy with my iPad. The biggest benefit of the tablet is that it has unshackled me from the 6+ pounds of my laptop, which I've carted around the world for years and years. I've always been puzzled about the direction laptops took over the years. My second computer (first was an IBM PC) was a...pause for effect...Osborne CPM machine (pictured above) back in 1981 or so. Lucky I didn't go blind on that little 5-inch screen, but I did manage to write a couple of books on it, including one that used a pretty nifty database I put together. I sort of wish I still had the old thing, but last I heard it was being used as a doorstop in some non-profit's office.

Early on, I got hold of one of the NEC "notebook" computers (a friend of mine was their flack) that were never in widespread distribution. It was a wonderful little monster, only good for word processing but I used it all the time. And yes, I did have an Apple Newton, but in my defense I'd like to point out that I was writing for the Chicago Tribune News Syndicate at the time as one of their computer "experts," and they chipped in the money for me to buy the thing and try it out. I spent hours inputing my address book, personal data, etc...and it crashed...I spent hours inputing my address book, personal data, etc...and it crashed...you get the picture. Plus, it would only "recognize" my handwriting if I wrote with my left hand. I discovered the Newton a couple of years ago in a box in the basement, and I think I finally threw it away.

Anyway, the iPad is what I always wanted...light, fast, always connected, able to do almost anything I wanted to do on the road. I have an app for podcast that I'm working with, and my Blue Snowball USB mic will connect through the iPad's camera connection kit...limited audio editing, which is the only thing holding me up there. Ideally, I'd like a subset of GarageBand, my primary audio editing tool. Since the iPad already has a subset of iWork, I'm hoping GarageBand is in the future.

So, as to the unintended consequence, I don't ready the pathetic dead tree media anymore. I whip through the news, RSS feeds, etc. every morning while swilling coffee like a crazy person. I previously did this on a laptop, and every time I came across something interesting, I'd pop it onto the MB Blog. In fact, I wrote most of my blog posts over coffee in the AM. Since I changed to the iPad as my morning "paper," my blog posting has dropped, because that's harder to do on the iPad than a laptop (or maybe I just haven't ramped up to full speed on using the iPad). It's also harder to use the internal keyboard...I have a wireless keyboard, but I'm still figuring out how to juggle the keyboard, the iPad and coffee at the same time.

So this is my excuse for the relatively light blog posting...I'm working on it!

BTW, David Crane over at Defense Review has a great article on the Reset Rifle-Integrated Power Rail, essentially a powered accessory rail for the AR platform and/or next-gen battle rifles:

Manufactured and marketed by RESET Inc. as an “integrated powered rail adapter for any tactical weapon”, the RIPR is designed to act as a central power source and thus obviate the need for multiple batteries types for tactical rifle/carbine/SBR accessories like combat optics, laser designators/illuminators a.k.a. targeting lasers/illuminators, and tactical white lights.

My friend Clyde Caceres had one of these at Wes Doss' conference a few weeks ago and I spent a bunch of time with it. It's an interesting concept...a central battery driving a powered rail, so accessories could be made smaller and lighter. David quite correctly notes a number of potential problems in his article (so read it!), but this may be the way military weapons are heading. My understanding is that the system can also carry a data pipe, allowing real time GPS feeds, information updates, all kinds of Starship Troopers stuff. Worth keeping an eye on, n'est-ce pas?

Presented Without Comment

Thanks, Tam!