The Case AGAINST Lasers

Shooting Gallery - On the Outdoor Channel

Michael Bane's article on laser sights reminds me of an incident which occurred at an IPSC Winter Club Match a few years ago.

Okay, it wasn't an 'incident' as much as a 'revelation'.

This was a winter match, and everybody wore coats. It was the first year that the Sherwood gun club decided to concede the coats, and declared that this was a Concealed Carry match. Rules: handgun and ammo must not be visible when you stand with our arms outstretched, and the way you present yourself to the Range Officer for inspection must be the way you shoot the stage.

Fair enough. The kicker was "Bring Your Stubby Revolver/Carry Gun!"

At the time, my 'carry gun' was an STI Edge in 1omm, which only could be carried in a 'race-gun holster' due to the extended dust cover. I wore it with my rain coat buttoned up ... well, all of the velcro front-fasteners were velcroed together.

The whole point of the match, for "normal people", was to give us a chance to see how we would do in an IPSC match if we actually used our carry gun. Generally speaking, it was pretty embarassing.

One of the shooters, though, actually brought a stubby Glock with minimal barrel (I don't know what the model number was, I'm not much up on Glocks) equiped with a grip-activated Laser Sight.

The guy was a Master Class IPSC competitor, and accustomed to shooting with an Open Gun. He had a matched pair of hard-chromed open guns with Holosights, and usually was among the top competitors in the club.

Not today.

Every target he engaged, he put on a dancing exhibition. It was a performance similar to the classic "C-More Shuffle", in which a shooter with a red-dot sight is trying to learn how to shoot it during a match. When he started to shoot at a target, he was looking at the minimalist sights, and expecting to see a dot on the target. The problem was, he was accustomed to shooting over the SIGHTS. He wasn't use to looking for a dot on the target.

And when he was looking for the dot on the target, he couldn't find it. Well, it was daytime and the bright cold winter sun just washed out that little red dot on the brown cardboard target.

He ended up with a lousy score, and placed low in the order of finish, because he was relying on his ability to put the dot on the target ... and see it ... and not drag the dot off the target when he pulled the trigger. None of which happened, mostly.

Now, Michael makes a great case for he 'intimidation factor' of a laser sight. Heck, I've seen "Predator" probably a dozen times, and you just can't argue with that kind of graphic evidence.

Or can you?

The thing is, for a "Bad Guy" (Michael's "BG") to be intimidated, he has to see the dot tracking on his anatomy. If the gun is pointed where it oughta be, it's either painting his heart or his head. How many of you thing that you can see a dot on your face? How many of you expect a BG to look down at his chest when he has been TOLD that there is a gun pointing at him?

Show of hands?

Right. The laser sight is only intimidating if the BG realizes he is being painted.

So what if he's not intimidated, and he makes a big rush at you -- the home owner?

This is "rubber meets the road" time, and you probably are going to revert to point-shooting techniques. That is, you're going to swap one shooting technique for another, under the most extreme conditions imaginable. You think you've got the BG buffaloed, and suddenly you're in a Robert Ruark situation where the Buffalo is charging you and you don't know whether to follow the bouncing ball or go with your instincts ... so you hesitate.

What will you do? What WILL you do? Drag out your American Express Card, a la Karl Malden?

Or will you be confused, distracted, and dead?

I'm picking Door Number Two.

The way I see it, if you're counting on your Laser Sight to save your bacon, this should be the gun and the sight that you use "all the time." When you go to the range, you practice with the belly gun and the laser sight. Forget about practicing with your iron-sights, or your dot-sight. Your goal in practicing is to build the groove in which you look at the target, point the gun around the room (or the range) until you have confidence in your ability to rely on the laser sight exclusive of any distractions such as a 200 pound biped Buff charging through your foyer directly at YOU!

If you have any other handgun-shooting interests, consider that the skills needed to shoot well with a laser sight COMPLETELY ignore the skills needed to shoot without it. Point-shooting, being entirely aware of the orientation of the gun, is not a skill which is apparently reinforced with a Laser sight.

Need proof?

Got to a gun store, ask to try one of their laser-sight equipped guns, and try to sight it on the Cape Buffalo head on the North Wall. See how long it takes you to redirect your attention from the over-the-barrel sight picture to the dot-on-brown sight picture. Consider what the Wall Buffalo might be doing if he was an aggressive biped while you're trying to find the dot, and ... walk away.

Use of a laser sight is an unique skill which must be learnt, and practiced constantly. If you're not willing to shoot somebody in the privacy of your home, at the cost of allowing all other gun-handling and gun-pointing skills to atrophy, you might reconsider the vagrant thought that lead you to consider a Laser Sight handgun for home defense.

Or, you can rely on bluff to defend yourself against the Buff.

Kudos to Michael Bane's Shooting Gallery: The Outdoor Channel

I been on blogging-hiatus, and recently catching up on my blogging, and my blog-reading.

Michael Bane's "Shooting Gallery" now includes dynamic hot-links to recent articles from blogs which, apparently, are linked to in his personal website. (I assume that the links are automatic and dynamic, because it has a link to an article that I wrote less than an hour ago.)

I'm flattered that it caught my latest IPSC-related article. He's temp-linked (not a permalink for that website, I'm sure) to the IPSC Practice article I wrote earlier tonite. I'm reluctant to publish this update, as it will wipe out the earlier link ... I think.

You can see that IPSC PRACTICE article here.

You can see Michael's Outdoor Channel website online,. and it is now linked on my links sidebar as:

Michael Bane's Shooting Gallery: The Outdoor Channel

Thanx, Michael. I owe you.

IPSC: The P-Word

It was a beautiful late-winter day in Corvallis Sunday, so SWMBO and I went to the range to PRACTICE!

I never practice.

Okay, that's not quite true. I love to practice, but due to my work schedule and the shortness of the days, I almost never practice during the winter.

However, last spring I bought 2000 rounds of new Winchester brass in .38 Super caliber, and half of it still sits in a cardboard box on the floor of my garage, next to the loading bench. I don't like to use brand new brass at matches, so I usually load it up and take it out for practice ammo.

Having some spare time Saturday, I loaded 400 rounds of it up and invited SWMBO to the range for a practice session. There was no club match scheduled for this weekend, and she has been complaining that her performance -- not up to her standards -- in matches during this winter is mostly due to her inability to get in any practice time.

Here's the answer: let's go practice!

She had, of course, no alternative but to go to the range with me, to practice. Sneaky Geek to catch SWMBO in a quandry.

On the drive to the ARPC range (where the only significant activity was a Black Powder match in Bay 3 ... there were 5 cars there when we arrived 15 minutes after the BP match was to start), we discussed what we should work on during our practice.

I had no idea what I should work on, and neither did SWMBO. I asked her what she thought I should work on, and she begged the question by suggesting that I was a much better shooter than she was and it was not reasonable for her to criticize my IPSC performance.

No help.

So I suggested that since she had complained about her inability to get good stage times, I though she would benefit from training which emphasized quick and efficient movement out of a shooting position, and into a shooting position.

Also, her time to transition from one target to the next might possibly be improved ... as might mine!

She very graciously acknowledged that this was an area in which we might both improve, so when we arrived at the range we quickly set up a stage designed to emphasize these skills.

Starting in a shooting box, engage a US popper (never mind whether you hit it or not, it's just there to distract you from what you're going to do next) and then immediately transition to an IPSC target ... both set up at about 15 yards distance.

Then, exit the shooting box as quickly as possible, move to another shooting box downrange and to the right: total distance about 15 yards. There are two full IPSC targets set 10 yards downrange of the second shooting box, so we need to have the gun mounted and something of a sight picture as soon as we enter the second shooting box to engage these two targets.

I took the first run on the stage, and everything went beautifully. I afterward consistentlyl missed the popper, of course, but was leaning perfectly on my way out of the box and caught two-Alpha on the IPSC target. Quick, efficient run to the 2nd box, gun mounted when I entered and dropped only one point on those two IPSC targets. Good time, good balance, good focus. Not perfect, but it was the best run I made in about 15 attempts.


SWMBO tried it, and took about 20% longer with a lot of misses, so we started focusing only on the concept of engaging the targets on the way out of the box. I suggested that she should already be shifting her weight as she transitioned from the popper to the IPSC target, and she didn't like it. She wanted to step out of the box with her leading foot, which was often touching the ground out of the box before she took her 2nd shot. She was working on her accuracy, and not paying any attention to her movement.

I suggested that she lead with her trailing foot, in a cross-over movement. She didn't like it, it didn't feel natural and she was concerned that she would trip over the box on the way out. Well, I have been known to do that myself so it seemed a reasonable concern. But she tried it anyway, and discovered that it wasn't as easy as it looked but it was do-able.

It took about a dozen runs before she could time the lean, the cross-over, and the shooting with accuracy so they all worked out for her. It wasn't consistent, but she was more comfortable, so we started trying to put that together with having the gun mounted and prepared to engage the two IPSC targets downrange as she entered the second box.

All this time, I was working on the same techniques, and I found my performance to be degrading with every attempt.

We had been filming each other with the Geek DigiCam on every run, and SWMBO finally asked me to please turn off the unspeakable camera, it was making her self-conscious.

I discovered that it was having the same effect on me. When we practiced with the camera obviously running, we did a terrible job. Without the camera we weren't as concerned with looking good as we were with working on the technique.

Toward the end, we quit working on the leave-the-box technique and focused on the enter-the-box problem. To make it more rewarding (we were both getting a little frustrated by this time), we moved the IPSC targets up to seven yards from the box. This helped us a lot by giving more positive feedback, and we found that we were actually getting more A-zone hits when the targets were closer. This was surprising, because we were actually getting clean misses, rather than C-zone hits, at the two yards greater distance. Go figure.

To wrap up the practice session, we rewarded ourselves by just starting at the second box and hosing the closer IPSC targets. After a dozen runs of the four-shot exercise, our draw times were getting down close to where we thought they should be, we were getting good splits and cutting our transition time between targets to around twice our split times.


We learned a few valuable lessons during the practice:

• Don't try to practice under the forbidding eye of an obvious running camera. It may be okay to set up a camera on a tripod and just let it run, but when you KNOW someone is watching you through a camera, it's a distraction.
• Instead of starting with a difficult problem, start with an EASY problem and make it progressively harder. For example, we should have started with the targets closer to the shooting position and gradually moved them farther away as we became more proficient. Doing it the other way is not only counter-productive, it's frustrating and detracts from the value of the lessons learned. You should start with what you KNOW you can do well, and then challenge yourself to learn what you can do better.
• Practicing with someone else is a good thing. You can take turns, which gives you time to relax between runs. We don't shoot five runs back-to-back in matches, and we shouldn't do that in practice. With the continued, prolonged tension of trying to do too many rounds per turn, you can see your performance degrade and you don't pay attention to EVERY run. They all just seem to blur together, and you learn nothing.
• Practicing with a timer works. It's the only way you're going to gauge your progress. If you can maintain an acceptable level of accuracy, and see your stage times going down, you're encouraged to keep it up. Always have a decent timer handy, and running with the timer on your belt instead of in the hands of a RO puts you in control of your practice.
  
• It IS a good idea to plan what you're going to practice before you get to the range, and to keep the lesson-stages simple and quick. You don't want to spend more time than necessary changing stages, and if you have too many items on your agenda you don't learn any of them well because you can't get enough repetitions to burn in the new skills.
  
• It IS a good idea to finish off a practice session with something easy, fast, and fun. It rewards you for a good practice, and it cancels out the gloom if it has been a bad practice -- and restores your confidence, which is an important part of competitive shooting. Besides, we shoot for fun, we refuse to put up with a day at the range which is NOT fun.

You probably already knew all of this. Heck, I knew it. I set up a bad practice, because I was out of practice at -- er -- practicing.

The next time we go out to practice, we'll use the tripod mounted video-tape camera instead of the handheld digicam. We'll start with closer targets, and move them out as we gain confidence in our skills.

My usual plan is to use the club matches as practice sessions, and hope I learn enough to keep up my skills. My new plan is to schedule at least one practice session a month, more in the summer, and work on specific skill sets.

One more thing:
We brought along a large plastic tarp to catch the brass. We needed two of them, because we were shooting from two different positions. It made a LOT of difference in the amount of time it took to pick up all of that new brass, especially in that the surface of the practice bay was large gravel and I know we lost some of the brass in the intercises between the rocks.

PS:
In case you missed it, the blue underlined text is a link to 1mb videos which demonstrate the subject.

PPS:
Unless you're just going out to shoot up some "questionable ammunition", prepare for your practice the same way you would prepare for a match. Have good ammuntion, have a clean gun, do whatever is required to ensure that your practice is not cut short or slowed down by jams and other malfunctions. Practice all of the safety rules, every time.

Work hard, have fun. Make loud, rude noises and generate noxious burnt-gunpowder stenches. That's what it's all about. Improving your skills, and enjoying it, comes naturally from all of the above.

Christians cower in fear in the New Palestine

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World

Palestinian educator Dr. Maria Khoury geared up for the winter chill with what was at the time a meaningless purchase: a black silk scarf with silver stripes to drape around her neck.

But now, on her daily excursions from the West Bank's Taiba to nearby Ramallah, the scarf serves as a political symbol of the changing times.

"Since Hamas took over, I cover my head in Ramallah," she says. "I don't feel comfortable."

In the largely cosmopolitan Ramallah, though they comprise some 10 percent of the population, Christians are becoming less and less visible.

The first time that Khoury ran into her local parish priest there with her head covered, he raised his eyebrows and laughed.

"I see more and more women covered up," Khoury says, explaining that for now, it's preferable to play it safe and assimilate on the street, even if she would never choose to cover her head otherwise.

"Years ago I even used to go in short sleeves," she says. "You'd have to put a gun to my head to get me to wear short sleeves now."

With fear of government-supported religious coercion on the rise since Hamas's unexpected win in January's Palestinian elections, Christians across the West Bank and Gaza Strip are keeping a low profile, with eyes wide open.

It's not unusual that a minority population live in fear of ostracision for holding religious beliefs which are atypical in their society. But it does seem strange that minorities would make such statements as "You'd have to put a gun to my head to get me to wear short sleeves now."

This is beyond religious belief: it's a matter of a culture which rewards idiosyncratic dress with intimidation. Fear of degradation, rape, assault, death and dismemberment is becoming typical of Palestinian society.

This is an entirely negative reflection on the Islamist influence on government in this region, and we here in what we so cheerfully call "a civilized society" just can't quite get our minds around the concept.

When we condemn a judge for posting the Ten commandments in his courtroom, we act as if we are stopping this kind of extremism before it can be properly started.

But really, we have no idea.

We may be outraged that someone would suggest that they have religious priorities.

We may be quick to step on any hint of absolute morality, because it undermines our inherent of moral relativism.

We feel that our concept of atheism is consistent with avoiding acceptance of ANY religious beliefs in a secular society.

But looking at the extremes in which this antagonism to SPECIFIC religious beliefs (or more accurately, a disinclination to accept the religious beliefs of the majority) may be taken, it seems clear that any society which physically threatens mild deviations from the norm of the local culture is not only counter-productive, it is downright evil in that it causes a significant portion of its population to live in fear for their safety.

I don't know if the Palestinians have a good case to make for the return of land which they claim as their own, by historic right.

But I do know that the issue goes far beyond land. It encroaches upon the right of any people, or any culture which differes from that of its neighbors, to survive.

The right of free people to co-exist is central to civilized society. Any culture or society which alienates its neighbor from free practice of a legitimate religion is not only not endemic to a civilized society, it is a plague upon the earth and deserves no support regardless of the wrongs it believes to have been visited upon it.

On a personal note, I suppose I must know some Jewish people, and I might even know a Palestinian ... it just doesn't occur to me, in most circumstances, to wonder or worry about the religious or cultural antecedents of my friends or acquantances. However, if I had to choose between a pair of people from these two societies, I would be more inclined to support the one who was not committed to the total elimination of the other.

The Palestinian radicals who consider the finest act of their short life is to spill the blood of their proclaimed 'enemy' have already branded themselves as outsiders.

I much prefer a people who want nothing more than to live their life in celebration of their God, without actively seeking the elimination from this earth of a people who don't happen to believe in God in the same way.

William Conrad

If you are an old guy, and you listened to Radio on Thursday Nights ("The Lone Ranger") and Sunday mornings after church ("Gunsmoke"), you know who William Conrad is.


If you only watched television, you know him from "Cannon", which revealed him as Santa Claus with a Gibert Roland pencil-thin moustache.

But William Conrad was much more than that.

He was ... "The Voice" before James Earl Jones and Star Wars, and even before Don LaFontaine.

Picture Orson Wells, and you have almost the complete image.

For me, his most memorable role was as the narrator of "Leiningen and the Ants", a dramatic story which Charleton Heston later portrayed in a movie.

As much as I admire Heston, and as well as he played the role, I have to say that Conrad's vocal presentation was more dramatic, more profound, and more inclined to put me on the edge of my chair.

In fact, you can buy at least some of Conrad's performances here. (I did, and I'll be anxious to get them so I can listen to him while I post later articles here.)

Perhaps this article was initiated by a fit of nostalgia, and I'll be the first to admit that Thomas Wolf was right when he suggested that "you can never go home any more", meaning that when you go home ... it isn't the home you remembered.

It may be disappointing to actually sit through hundreds of hours of William Conrad reading scripts and books in MP3 files.

But I don't think so.

And if it happens that IS boring, I'll never say so.

William Conrad is the king of radio drama, with the possible exception of the recent books on tape narrator Frank Muller.

In Dutch with The Dutch

Cartoons: The End of Europe’s Tolerance? - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com

Do you remember when The Dutch use to be Mister Saturday Night of the Continent? Mister Nice Guy.?

You know, wooden shoes, tulips galore, Zuider Zee means we're all in this together, Dutch Boys holding back the flood waters with a single digit for the Greater Good, Dutch Masters such as Rambrandt, Celebrate Diversity?

No more.

Today, they have stolen the Look&Feel of Peter Finch in "Network". They're hanging out of the gabled windows screaming "I'M MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE!"

They're tired of the riots.

They're tired of having their commercial products boycotted, their embassies burned, their expatriate citizens being assaulted.

They're tired of having foreigners demand that they no longer exercise their freedom of speech.

They're tired of having their movie makers shot, stabbed and exsanguinated on the newly mean streets of Amsterdam.

They're tired of having immagrants ("welcome to our shores!") preach hatred of their culture, their moral values, and their religion.

It is as if they had taken in a homeless person (in the millions), to nurture and to include in their family, and now they find they must protect their back from the alien knife when their only intention was to offer sanctuary and succor to a guest.

As of today, in The Netherlands it is not permitted to speak any language except the home language in public. The burqua may not be worn in public. (No word yet on jewish skullcaps or Catholic crosses.)

Muslim Imams must be 'vetted' to insure that they accept the values of the indiginous culture. Those who don't seem to embrace the rights of their hosts are educated in the 'normal' values. If the imams don't pass the test, or who later demonstrate that they have disingenuously avered an acceptance of the moral values of the country while privately rejecting them, are required to leave the county as unsavory characters.

No more will they allow Imams to preach sedition and revolution and Jihad in the mosque.

No more will they allow muslims to riot, burn and pillage for the sake of religious fervor.

No more will they allow muslims to import young girls, keeping them pent up in 3rd floor apartments and failing to learn acceptance of Dutch culture and language.

No more will they allow immigrants to rape with impunity, and indulge in 'honor killings'.

No more will they allow immigrants to divide their country because these 'guests' refuse to accept civilized values.

The Dutch are taking their country back. If it insults imported extreme religious priorities ... well, too bad. It's their country, and they didn't fight the Nazi's just to save their country and culture for a latter-day fascist invasion.

I say, good for them.

It's about time they acted like they had the cojones to assert the worth of their own culture.

If the immigrants don't like it, they can rethink the reasons why they moved there in the first place.

Extreme situations call for extreme measures, and continuing with their "Mister Nice Guy" persona in gthe context of this assault from within just ain't working for them.

The immigrants who make the extreme effort to move to a new home, and then choose to undermine the structure of that new country, risk reaping the whirlwind.

The whirlwind is now in force, and it has no patience for seditionists.

So be it.

Oh -- My -- Gawd

Michelle Malkin: THE MOONBATS PLOT A COUP

Michelle Malkin via Analogue Kid.

I can't say anything. Neither can AK or MM. This scheist speaks for itself.

Grunt Whining, Grunt Cooking

In 1969, I was a platoon sergeant in a "Grunt" platoon.

"Grunt" means U.S. Army foot soldier, nobody special.

Not Marines, certainly. Absolutely not Special Forces (Green Beret) or "Special Operations Group" (S.O.G.) or Rangers, or Delta Force. Not "Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol" (LRRP), not Airborne or even Military Police or Cavalry or Artillery ... we were Infantry, The Queen of Battle. The Sharp End.

Look at the U.S. Army, eliminate the elite units, take away any glamour or esprit de corps or special training and tactics, and what you have lift is Grunt Infantry.

The Airborne folks had a special name for us: Straight Legs. That means we didn't even parachute into a battle. We walked in. And when the battle was over, those that were left walked out.

No glory, no transportation, no dates with the Donut Dollies or Canteen Girls or Nurses. If you watched "China Beach" on television a decade or two ago, you didn't see us except as the guys on the stretchers.

Well, the amenities often DID include helicopter rides. If we were to be inserted into a hostile area, we rode helicopters. If we were wounded during that activity, we got a helicopter ride back to the rear ... if we were lucky, which we usually weren't.

Before I begin to sound too much like a whiner, let me emphasize that nobody expected any more than this sort of "oh, by the way" treatment. We were almost 100% draftees. Cannon fodder. Reluctant soldiers. The losers in the Draft Board lottery. We didn't want to be there, they didn't particularly want us there, but they (the guvmint) needed warm bodies so they sent us to fill out the ranks. Our best usage was to draw fire away from the GOOD troops.

We were surly, undisciplined, uninformed afterthoughts in the war of attrition. If we lost the war, it was because nobody expected any better. If we won the war, it was because we happened to be there in support of the Marines, or because we received exceptional support from the Green Beanies and outstanding intelligence from the LRRPS and tactical advice from the Rangers.

We didn't get anything from the Green Beanies or the Rangers, and the LRRPS let us walk into ambushes rather than to chance revealing their position by warning us.

That's okay, we never expected anything better and I can live with that. Support was a concept, best illustrated by 8-day "reconnaissance" patrols that they sent us on (similar to kicking a hornet's next to see what happened) during which they sent in a helicopter every two or three days to give us ammunition, C-rations, and 5-gallon plastic water bottles.

Never mind that in that tropical jungle environment, where we moved 10 kilometers through dense foliage every day and set up ambushes at night, we drank more water in a single day than we received in resupply each insert. We had enough food, and we found enough water, and we survived.

Mostly.

We didn't care about the glory (which we didn't have) or the supply (which we didn't have). If your boots rotted during a mission, they would usually send another pair out to you eventually. It may not be your size, but you got new boots. Trousers ripped and embarrassingly exposed? No problem, another pair of pants will be forwarded from the Slop chute (an admittedly Navy term, but appropriate.) Again, one size fits all.

Food ... was an issue.

Ultimately, food was the ONLY thing we really cared about. Well, and our Sundries Pace (SP) issue, which came twice a month. We got razor blades, writing paper, candy and chewing tobacco. Most important, we got cigarettes for free! I wasn't a confirmed smoker until I served my tour in RVN, but I've never been able to permanently kick the habit since I got back to The Land of the Great PX, and had unlimited access to cigarettes ... at greatly increased prices!

We would send back a wounded man from time to time. Regrettable, but not important. One time we sent back a man who, while fording a stagnant stream, had picked up a leech. Nothing new about this, we forded a lot of water hazards every day and leeches, ants, centipedes, flies and other insects were our constant companions. Unfortunately, this leech had crawled up into his penis, and by the time our boy reported it to the company medic (another draftee with a total of three months of medical training), it had almost disappeared into the penis in question. The medic had called in a 'Dust Off' (medivac), and the helicopter pilot complained vehemently because he had a Priority Dust-Off and the patient walked to the helicopter unaided. The pilot was accustomed to PDO patients being carried on board,bleeding; not walking with no visible injury. No matter that the leech would have invaded the patient's liver within 24 hours and killed him in another 12 hours. We were just Grunts, and ignorant, so they eventually let it go without further comment.

No problem, we can handle it. Chopper pilots are very polite and accommodating when they land in a circle of armed men, all weapons trained inside the Landing Zone at the Senior Pilot of a helicopter.

Every week or so, we got to walk to the "Red Line" (representing a road on a map) to where we would, sooner or later, be picked up by trucks to return to base. Or, if we were within 10 kilometer of the base, we would walk back to the base. It was considered "extended reconnaissance" to walk back to the base, and A Good Thing as long as you weren't the people who had been in the jungle for a week and had been living off rice-paddy water (requiring halogen application for an hour before it could be drunk, to kill the parasites) and usually uncooked C-rations which were left over from WWII.

All of this is a preamble to the central thesis: Food is Important to Grunts!

During the one-night-a-week (average) when we spent the night within the confines of a protected perimeter (Night Defensive Position, or NPR: a semi-permanent base camp which included a Mess Hall), we got a dinner and a breakfast of reconstituted whatever's. Reconstituted milk, reconstituted eggs, reconstituted juice, reconstituted mashed potatoes, etc. In the civilian world, we would call it powdered whatever. No food value, very little vitamins, very lilttle minerals, mostly powdered water. The water was chlorinated. Do the math, and it's perhaps not surprising that we honored Joseph Lister for his contribution to our well-being because that was the best water we got for months on end.

But the food that we ate was the food that we carried on our backs. If we were very very lucky, it wasn't all the egregious C-rations, and that's the point of this entire essay.

C-rations were "Canned Food", and everything we got was in a can. Think of dog food with out heat or flavor. The least appreciated was Ham&Lima Beans. Actually, it wasn't bad unless you got a can with a great huge glob of pork fat and very little beans or ham, which happened to me one night as I attempted to eat a can of 'Ham & M*therF*ckers" in the dark. If you find a can of ham fat during the day, you can meld it with other meals to provide value to otherwise bland meals; by itself, I can attest that a mouthful of cold ham fat has little to recommend itself, except as an experience you can use to gross out your friends for decades to come. What do you do? You choke it down: that's the only food you're going to get for 12 hours, and you have many rivers to cross before more food is available.

Personally, I traded "the good stuff" (canned peaches, for example) for "Ham and Eggs" meals. The value of Ham&Eggs is that it has a certain modicum of not-entirely objectionable taste (think reconstituted eggs with spam flavoring --- yummy!) whether it is heated or not.

Speaking of heating, we didn't have stoves. We didn't have heat-tabs, which go with the cute little stamped-metal stoves and heated one canteen cup's worth of coffee, or whatever. What we had was C4 explosives. Everybody carried a one-pound chunk of C4, which was roughly equivalent to 1.5 pounds of industrial dynamite. But it wouldn't explode if you put a match to it; it required a percussion effect to explode. If you lit it, it would just burn with a fast, blue flame. That was enough to heat a canteen-cup full of coffee, or hot chocolate, or a can of C-rations.

Actually, it wasn't enough. You had to cut off a 1" square chunk of C4, and heat your can. Then cut off another 1" square, ditto. And do it one more time, to get a canteen cup of liquid to where it was luke-warm, and thus drinkable. It wasn't actually "drinkable" because it hadn't actually boiled. But it was hot enough to dissolve instant coffee or instant coffee, which was all we had.

Unless we had ... something special.

We often "worked"(patrolled) with members of the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam -- ARVNs.

They had even worse rations than we did. They had rice, usually from Texas. Sometimes they had mackerel (sp), which is a terribly oily fish and was what the NVA and the Viet Cong had for meat. We couldn't get that from them, but the ARVNs would usually trade rice for C-ration.

That's right: their diet was even poorer than ours, and they considered our C-rations to be a delicacy, because it included Meat. Sorry bastards thought a can of Ham & M*ther-f*ckers with a glob of fat in it was a delicacy. They would trade almost anything on the one-in-ten chance of getting a glob of fat because it was it was an improvement on their regular diet. The sad part of it is, they were right.

But they had rice, which we did not.

Before every mission, we tried to find an ARVN who had a pound of rice or two to trade for C-rations. It didn't always happen, because usually we considered the ARVNs to be politically unreliable,k and avoided them. We were desperate for a variation in our diet, though, and we actively sought them out prior to another mission.

Because we never had a cook-pot, we also (to our everlasting shame, because we KNEW that nobody would understand) hunted through the garbage pits of the mess hall for #10 cans which had been cleaned before disposal. We knew that they were filthy and germ-ridden, but the only alternative was to use our helmets as cook pots, and the resulting stew invariably tasted of olive-drab paint. Also, the helmet stank forever on from the residual stew-orts, because we had no means of cleaning cooking utensils. Remember the lack of potable water?


On an ideal mission, we would set out with the following:

• a large tin can to cook in
• a pound of rice
• several C-rations which prominently featured meat. They were never the SAME meat, so we had a different taste every meal.
• Enough water to make a rice stew. Usually, it was water we retrieved from a bomb-crater. It was usually fairly fresh rain water, but not always. We could not afford to use drinking water for cooking. Or washing. Or shaving, or any other use.
  
• There would be a tactical situation in which we would be able to build an actual fire, using wood, and keep it going long enough that we could boil the components of the rice stew.

There were usually four or five members of the patrol (usually a short squad, rather than a platoon), who kept themselves supplied with one or more of the following condiments:

• salt
• garlic salt, or garlic powder
• Java Black Pepper
• McMennahin's Tobasco Sauce
• Italian Seasoning
• If you were very very lucky, Onion Salt or Onion Powder

Here's the recipe, for a small portion (we didn't have the pot capacity for more, or the heat source to heat more between movement end and dark) of Rice Stew:

• Four Cups of water
• Two cups of rice
• as much meat-dishes as you could find in your butt-pack; usually two 8-ounce cans
• any fat or oil that you could find or scrounge
• any salt that you could find or scrounge (not included in SP packs, so Ham&Eggs was prized as much as Ham&Lima because it was intrinsically salty)
• Lots of Java Black Pepper
• Lots of Hot Sauce (Tabasco)
• A healthy measure of Garlic, Onion, or any other pungent herb available
• As much Italian Seasoning as you could talk the "Italian Guy" out of, for a disproportionate share of the meal.

Serves two, three, four, six ... as many as had contributed to the meal. Often it was heavily watered (from disreputable water sources) to make it go farther. The guy who had to sacrifice his helmet as a cook pot typically got a larger portion, but that was a bad trade-off because, as previously mentioned, it either tasted like olive-drab paint or had been used before and reeked like rotting food. We trusted the paint-smell more than that which we got from previously used helmets, which explains the value we place on large cans from the Mess Hall Garbage Dump. (I am, to this day, convinced that the Mess Hall staff at November 2 Night Defensive Position made special efforts to wash and disinfect #10 cans before disposing them in the dump in recognition of the hight probability that they would be used to serve American Troops in the immediate future.)

As we sat around a dying campfire (always before the sunset, so we wouldn't reveal our position), we use to tease each other about being back in The World and preparing this sort of meal for our family. The visual images included crouching on top of a stove while the pot burbled on the burner, half-naked and reeking, chattering a monologue in which every other work was the F-word, oblivious of the sensibilities of our intimate family. We are voluntarily ignoring the stench of Olive-Drab paint from the the new GI Helmet we're using as a Crock Pot, because we know that the smell from a 'used' pot is even worse.

Strangely, I made a pot of GI Rice for my wife during a R&R leave of absence in February, 1970, while we re-established our relationship in Honolulu, Hawaii. She liked it. I was comfortable with my meal for the first time in that month, although I admit I easily ignored the temptation to squat on the stove while cooking.

Why am I telling you all of this useless War-Story history?

Because I still make this dish for myself on a monthly basis, and I have a pot of GI Stew on the stove even now.

It's cooking in a Revere Ware Dutch-Oven. The rice is probably from the same ranch in Texas as provided it to the ARVNs in 1969, but I have more confidence in its cleanlilness. The Garlic and Onion are flaked-version from CostCo. The water is filtered through a Brita refrigerator pitcher,all of the seasonings come from jars with the "Spice Islands" logo on the label. It will be served with either Ritz or Nabisco crackers, or fresh-toasted Sourdough Bread from San Francisco (with Tillamook Creamery Butter spread) on the side.

The Tabasco sauce, however, is from New Orleans as before.

Some things just don't allow substitutes, no matter what the circumstances.

Negligence: Las Vegas Officer-involved Shooting Video

I don't know if I've ever actually posted the video, but I do know that I cited it in March of 2005.

In case anyone is still interested, here it is.

Essentially, during an arrest in Las Vegas, Nevada, a suspect was being cuffed by a deputy sheriff in a parking lot while being covered by another deputy with a drawn pistol. During the engagement, the covering deputy's pistol (Glock? Sig? hard to tell) discharges, striking the asphalt pavement near the prone suspect. The suspect and the arresting officer are noticibly disconcerted, if I may be forgive the understatement.

Fortunately, nobody seems to be injured and the covering officer immediately holsters her pistol. One wonders a lot of things, such as whether the covering officer really needs to have her pistol drawn and pointing toward the suspect ... but that is a matter of departmental policy, and I'm not conversant in this area.

Watch the video, draw your own conclusions, but I note that you're probably as poorly informed on departmental policy as am I. Still, when a firearm discharges, we might be forgiven for jumping to conclusions in regards to the degree of negligence which might be involved.

QUALITY OF THE VIDEO:

It comes across as rather rough on my computer, you might be well advised to download it before you play it because of transmission interference. If you don't get a 'clean, smooth' copy let me know and I'll see if I can find a file version that isn't 4th or 5th generation.

Target Barn Shooting Bag

For my birthday, my Sweetie (SWMBO) bought me a brand new red Range Bag from Target Barn.

While my bag is red (as is SWMBO's T.B. Professional Range Bag), it's available in four colors: Black Blue, Green and RED!


My old Dillon bag was green, and I was ready for a change. I have too many things in Dillon Blue already, and Black is so ... common. I had started campaigning for a red Target Barn range bag for my birthday as soon as I bought one for her, last year. This year she remembered and bought one for my very own, bless her heart. I'm not saying she feared that I would steal hers, but I did admire it and I'm sure she just wanted me to quit drooling on hers.


The "Professional" grade range bags from Target Barn come with a couple of great accessories. Included in the $69.95 price is a brass bag and a pistol sleeve.

The brass bag has a plastic snap-on clip so it readily attaches to your range bag. There's a drawstring at the top, so brass doesn't spill out when you unload it from the back of your Jeep, and the bottom is a mesh that drains foreign debris (such as dirt, sand, fir needles, etc.) and water. MAJOR factor in brass-bag selection in Oregon.

The pistol sleeve has a zipper on the side ... not on the top ... and is big enough that a STI Competition pistol with C-more sight and compensator fits comfortably inside and you can still zip it closed. I'm reasonably confident that any IPSC pistol will fit as well inside this commodious bag. There's a side-pocket which zips closed where you can store this pistol sleeve, although unfortunately you can't zip the side-pocket closed when the pistol sleeve is inside it ... in order to accommodate the oversized pistols, the pistol sleeve is too tall to allow the outside pocket to close with the sleeve inside it. However, it does fit completely inside the main compartment (see below) without interfering with the operation of the double-zipper that closes it.

If you don't want to store your pistol sleeve inside this pocket, it works great for storing two of the Dillon small utility boxes ... I use them for First Aid supplies and Tools & parts ... and a small timer.

On the outside wall of this zip-pocket is a smaller zip-pocket, perfect for storing flat items such as score sheets, match booklets, rule books or notebooks where you can record notes for your future memoirs.


Another feature of the T.B. Professional Shooting Bag is a side pocket with magazine loops stitched to the inner wall, holding as many as 7 double-stack magazines. I also use it for storing a small KleenBore Pocket Cleaning kit (PocKit), and a couple of granola bars for snacks. I get hungry during a match.

On the exterior wall (inside the pocket, protected from the elements) of that same zippered side-pocket there's a strip of elastic material with stitching at half-inch or one-inch intervals which allows you to insert pens, pencils, knives, screwdrivers, squib rods, chapstick (or lipstick) tubes, cleaning rods, etc.


The main compartment is the length of the bag (16-1/2" less padding) and easily eight inches wide. There's room for earmuffs, belt, ammunition, camera, gloves, snacks, a plastic zip-bag of cleaning rags and small towels, and a whole lot more. There are side-pockets, accommodating the pistol sleeve (with some difficulty) on one side and a large staple gun with a box of extra staples in the other side.


There are small zippered pockets on the ends. I keep a folded disposable rain poncho in one end, and the other end contains a "snake" bore-cleaner,
a small bottle of oil and a four-ounce squirt bottle of MP7.




ALL of the walls of the Target Barn "Professional" Range Bag are padded. almost everything seems to be double-stitched. The material is heavy Cordura (or ballistic) nylon. The padded shoulder strap is fitted with STAINLESS STEEL pressure clips for sure, easy removal and installation. The clips attach to large STAINLESS STEEL D-rings, which are triple-stitched to a heavy (Cordura or ballistic nylon) strip which runs under the bag from one D-ring to the other, between the double-walls of the main compartment, so the weight of the bag and its contents is supported not by the bag fabric, but by this heavy strip.

The large D-rings provide a place to hang the brass bag, and any other containers you wish. I have a couple of extra brass bags, and I use at least one of them for holding a bottle of water. I also have various protective eye-glasses in cases which attach with clips. Some of the clips aren't large enough to encompass the thickness of the D-rings, but I have circular key rings which I use as an intermediary link between the clip and the D-ring.

My Dillon bag had plastic clips between the shoulder strap and the bag, and didn't provide a place to hang brass bags, eyeglasses, water bottle holders, etc. I clipped them to the zipper pulls instead, and broke two of the zipper pulls and one of the zippers because I stressed them beyond the capacity for which they were designed. This is not a problem with the Target Barn bag.

The Target Barn puts two thick, heavy plastic strips at either end of the bag, to support it on whatever surface you choose to place it on. These don't really keep the bag out of the mud, but they look like a very sincere token gesture to protect the contents from ground moisture.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT:

The bag isn't perfect. I would like to see it a half-inch taller. This would allow the pistol sleeve to fit easily into one of the interior side-pockets of the main compartment, and perhaps even into the large side pocket, without interfering with the zipper.

It might even allow 170mm magazines to fit into the magazine-carrier side pocket.

Even if this dimensional change isn't implemented, I can live with the pistol sleeve fitting imperfectly into the side or main compartment.

The biggest downside is the inability to accommodate long magazines in the magazine carriers. This could be resolved by either moving the series of magazine pockets lower in the side-pocket, or leaving the bottom of at least a couple of the magazine slots open at the bottom, so the long magazines could slide farther down and clear the zipper.

However, neither of these limitations detract significantly from the over all convenience and usability of the bag. It was designed to be a small, light bag that meets most of the requirements for most shooters, and it accomplishes that goal admirably.



For those who feel they NEED a larger bag, Target Barn also offers the Tournament Bag ($135) with larger dimensions (23x10x14" high!), greater capacity, but the same great durability, quality and accessories ... except the "pistol sleeve" is replaced with a "pistol bag", and the water bottle is included!

The Real Happy Birthday to ME!

Today is my birthday.

Here's the present I received from The Hobo Brasser.



(Click on the image for full-size)

It's Howdy Doody Time!

"What time is it, kids?"

Welcome to The Howdy Doody Show, online !

It's Howdy Doody Time,
It's Howdy Doody Time;
Don't just say "Howdy Do"
Say "Howdy Doody Do" ...

I remember Howdy Doody, and the Early Days of Television. Not that we HAD a television set. It wouldn't be practical, considering that there was no cable access ... just antennas ... and there were no television stations in the immediate vicinity of our home in Pendleton, Oregon.

I remember the first time I saw television.
We had gone to visit family friends in Portland, which DID have a television station. Thus, in the early 1950's I saw my first episode of "Dragnet", which years later went into syndication and was presented as "Badge 714", which was Joe Friday's Badge Number in the LAPD.

Dum de dum dum ....
This is the city.
Los Angeles, California.

I remember when our neighbors bought a television.
They invited me over to watch with them in the evenings, after dinner. Hugh and Juanita Murchison became my best friends, and I was nine years old in 1954. A television station had started up in Pasco, Washington, and the signal was strong enough that we could receive a signal. I don't remember the 'network affiliation', but I suspect it was CBS because for years afterword you could only receive that one station, and I saw the CBS peacock for the first time on that television .... in black-and-white.

My favorite shows were "Lone Wolf", "Dateline: Europe" (the James Daly episodes), and "The Crusader" with Brian Keith. My bedtime was 9pm, so I don't know what shows were presented later except that on weekends I could stay up until 10pm. So did the Murchisons.

I remember when my family finally bought a television.
It was a blond Packard Bell. I was ten years old in 1955, and I never spent an evening with the Murchisons again. Instead of talking to each other at dinner (6pm; people ate according to a schedule in those days) we always watched the news. Friday night, it was followed by "The Friday Night Fights"; boxing matches became interesting for the first time, and I learned more than I needed to know about Gillette razors and razor blades.

Later that year, we visited friends in South East Oregon, near the Idaho border. They got a different station, and I saw "Kaptain Kangaroo" for the first time. I didn't realize until years later that Captain Kangaroo (Bob Keeshan) had previously been Clarabelle the Clown on Howdy Doody.

In 1956, I watched Soviet tanks roll into Budapest, Hungary, and I saw my first dead body ... hanging from a rope, by his heels. I'll never forget the image of a thoughtful man who tugged the trousers back over he private parts of the corpse (who was apparently a politician who was, somehow, no longer in power.)

I remember hurrying home after school to watch "The Edge of Night", and later "Dark Shadows".

Sunday Nights were dominated by Ed Sullivan, and "Toast of the Town". (For precise dating of when we bought a television, I saw "Toast of the Town" before the show changed its name.) This is when I learned that New York City was the center of the world. Later, the show became "The Ed Sullivan Show". I saw The Beatles for the first time, didn't like their music. (A few years later I was buying their music ... from the Columbia Record Club. I liked "Hard Day's Night, didn't like "I Want To Hold Your hand". I thought "From Me To You" was the best thing they ever did, but that was before they became famous. What did I know? I knew more than I ever had before, and I was beginning to form opinions, a practice which has, unfortunately, never stopped.)

I really liked Topo Gigio, and Senor Wensas.

I remember summers, when I would stay up late at night to draw cartoon characters and build model airplanes until the television went off the air at midnight.

I remember the "off the air" ceremonies. First they would play a clip of "High Flight" with pictures of a military jet and a flag, and then the National Anthem played over the image of a waving flag. Then there would be a long tone as they showed a test pattern. The announcer would say: "We now conclude our day's programming. We will resume broadcasting tomorrow at nine AM."

That's right. Television went off the air at midnight, and didn't start up again until the middle of the next morning. There were less than a million television sets in America in 1955

I get this number from the Howdy Doody website, a nostalgia webpage which includes a comparison of Howdy Doody, Television and Cultural events from 1917 to 2000. I recommend it because it provides some interesting perspectives on 20th Century history.



x

Islamo-fascist flame job

NOVA

I've mentioned before that the Muslim community doesn't seem to care about 9-11, or other outrages against civilization ... buildings ... people. I've openly wondered why they don't react to terrorism. I even suggested (in comments to a previous post) that they might have demonstrated against terrorism as they do about cartoons.

But I never said it as well as did the Dutch cartoonist, Joep Bertrams.

Such eloquence deserves a Pulitzer prize.

All together now ...

Tax Time - Free Online Filing

Free File Home - Your Link to Free Online Filing

The Infernal Revenue Service, in it's infinite generosity of spirit, still provides an online filing service for those of us who live online.

If you have an adjusted gross income of $50,000 or less, you can take advantage of this service and get your return posted almost immediately.

I used it last year, and as soon as I find my W2 forms I'll use it again this year.

This is a nice surprise for me, as I had heard that you were no longer permitted to file by phone (my previous favorite way of avoiding all that pencil work.)

As I had mentioned a couple of weeks ago, it's a good idea to grab a tax booklet and estimate your return before you commit to the numbers they calculate for you. My experience last year is good ... I actually got a few more dollars more back than I would have expected. It wasn't much but it was more than I spend for a pound of Vihta Vourhi N-350.

your mileage may vary

UPDATE:

I've finished my taxes.

I chose TurboTax as my vendor, and I was delighted that I didn't have to buy or install any software. The entire tax return took about a half hour.

Because I was on a roll, and it was so easy, I paid them another $24.95 to also complete my state taxes. (That's how they make their money out of it ... the federal tax return was, as advertised, free.) I don't begrudge them the expense, because I had already entered most of the information so continuing with the 'state tax' part of the process was fairly painless. Besides, back in the days when I use to take my taxes to an accountant, I paid a lot more than that to have my taxes done.

Another option was to create an electronic signature, or to print out a hardcopy and sign it, then snail-mail that to the tax people. I chose to physically sign the return, so I will still have to spend another $0.39 for each return. But it's easy to do, and my refunds will be electronically deposited to my bank account.

I followed my own advice and estimated what my refund should be. TurboTax came up with the same numbers. Last year I used another vendor (TaxNet) and they got the state tax return very wrong because they miscalculated the appropriate state tax due.

As is true with almost everything, there IS a catch: my tax return is not ready to actually file until it has been reviewed and accepted by the IRS. That reportedly takes 24 to 48 hours, after which time I have to sign in again and complete the return. This came as no surprise to me, because the same thing happened last year. I expect to receive an email either tomorrow or the next day, with a link allowing me to log in *(you have to register for the service - no charge for that) and complete the return.

A pleasant surprise was that TurboTax added a step where they (supposedly) reviewed to return to check for common errors which might delay acceptance of the return, or even case the IRS to audit my return. This took no more than a few seconds, and the option was free.

My guess is that it checked for such errors as entering different income amounts for state and federal, or for "wages" (box 1) and "social security wages" (box 3) and "medicare wages and tips" (box 5).

I saved all of my personal information, and since I'm much more pleased with the TurboTax service than I was with the Tax Net, I may use it again next year.

Feb11 ARPC Match Pix: 2

The Wall

Much has been said about The Wall. Mostly, by me.

Here's more:

ARPC build a very wide bay, and found that they needed two smaller bays more. Toward this end, they built a wall of huge concrete blocks between the two halves of the bay. During most club matches, one half of the bay is used as either a safety area or remains available for the use of Club Members who are not competing. The 'other' half is used to build a stage for the monthly IPSC match.

The Wall doesn't extend quite the entire length of the bay. There were concerns that somebody might be replacing targets at the extreme downrange end of the "club" side of the bay while someone was engaging a target 'obliquely' on the other side, causing rounds to impact the berm of the club side ... possibly causing consternation or even minor injury to the club members on that side because of bullet fragments splashing off foreign objects on the berm.

To avoid even the least chance of that occurance, the IPSC stages on the 'other' side of the bay are always carefully designed so that their is no possibility of bullet impact on the 'club' side.

Thus, all of the stages presented there feature a number of targets placed so they can only be engaged parallel to the wall, and the targets are always sited uprange of the end of The Wall.

In the most common configuration, the IPSC shooter starts standing immediately adjacent to the wall, engages a few targets directly downrange, and then engages the rest of the targets at an acute angle to The Wall. Charge lines are placed, or other design considerations are imposed, to prevent the IPSC shooters or any other people in the squad from wandering past the end of the wall where they may incur injury from rounds fired from the club side.

You'll see this in the videos. I promised in Part 1 of this two-part series to show you more videos of people shooting this stage ...

And here they are.

Big Dawg shoots the stage with an Open Gun.

Doug shoots it with a Production Gun.


Fish shoots the stage carefully, but fairly quickly. (Note the magazine dropping during the reload in the thumbnail.) Because this is the last stage of the match, he is overjoyed at shooting "a non-open gun cleanly". He does a Happy Dance. SWMBO gives him "a round of applause". Fish expresses his joy verbally, and does another Happy Dance.


Fred (no photo available) shoots the stage very conservatively, in Limited 10.

SWMBO is careful to keep the gun mounted when moving between shooting positions.

Walt - has a lot of jams. This film is 7mb long, which shows how frustrating to the shooter a series of jams will inevitably be. Take a close look at the closing seconds of the film. Walt doesn't actually sweep his knee as he tries to Unload and Show Clear with a live round caught in the extractor, but it does look like it from this angle.

Editor unrepentant over cartoons

The Australian: Editor unrepentant over cartoons [February 16, 2006]

I offer this without comment. I report, you decide:

THE cultural editor of a Danish newspaper that started a global row over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed today stood by his decision to publish the controversial caricatures, saying they were aimed at promoting debate.

. . .

"There was a legitimate news story we had to cover and we chose to cover it in a not very ordinary way," he said, referring to the letter he sent in September to 40 cartoonists asking them to draw the prophet as they saw him.

. . .

"But because we do have a tradition of satire in Denmark, some of the cartoonists, in fact, did make satirical cartoons, but that is what we do with Jesus Christ and that is what we do with the royal family and with politicians," he said.

. . .

When asked whether he regretted his decision to publish the Mohammed cartoons, in light of the firestorm they unleashed in the Islamic world and threats against him, Flemming said it was like asking a rape victim whether she regretted wearing a short skirt.

"What I did did not transcend normal practice," he said.

(Emphasis added)

Gentlemen of IPSC: Walt

I use to play golf.

I wasn't very good at it, but I played it anyway (see "I Hate Golf")

One of the reasons I didn't enjoy it was because of the crummy people I ended up playing with. For example, I played for several years in the Portland, Oregon "City League". Businesses within the community would form teams, and we would go golfing, one team against another, at local golf courses around The City. There were about a half-dozen courses we played at, and we would play nine holes every Wednesday after work in a Round Robin arrangement. I mention this only because it explains why we ended up playing with strangers so often. Many of the people I wouldn't have associated with, given a choice.

I can't count the number of tantrums I witnessed. Somebody would get a bad lie (is that the right word), or slice the ball, or hook it, or skull it, or miss a putt. There are as many ways to err in Golf as there are in IPSC competition, but they don't send you home for being a dodo-head in Golf. More's the pity. After a couple of repetitions of these errors, they would start muttering to themselves, and sometimes end up throwing a club, or a ball, or breaking their 5-iron against a convenient tree. I swear, I'm not making this up. It's amazing how easily some people blame their inadequacies on a tool with no moving parts.

About ten years ago I completely gave up on Golf and took up IPSC as my primary weekend activity. I had been competing in IPSC off and on for about 10 years already, and I knew what I was getting into. I'm no better at it than I was at Golf, but I realized that I meet a better class of people on the Pistol Range than I did on the Golf Links.

I would much rather spend my time with gentlemen (and gentle women) than with overgrown adolescents.

After yesterdays column about the ARPC Club match, with pictures, I received an email from my friend Walt. He's the "recovering Revolver shooter" who spent the day coping with a recalcitrant pistol. It just didn't want to work right, and while The Good Lord and John Moses Browning know that a pistol match is not the best time to try out a new gun, sometimes you just can't resist the temptation. (I found myself in much the same situation around 2000, while I was trying to find a usable load for my 10mm Edge. I had loaded the ammo too long, and spent an uncomfortable day at Dundee having to manually rack the slide for every shot during the first stage. Fortunately, I had more than one load, and the gun was working fairly well by the end of the match.)

Walt wrote to thank me for posting the match films. He likes the moving pictures almost as much as I do, and wasn't at all bothered that so many of them displayed his nervousness and frustration while trying to clear one jam after another.

I was glad that he understood the reasons why I posted the videos. Maybe someone watching them would be able to offer a reason why the jams happened, and help him resolve the problem. And there may be some people who see only film of guns that work perfectly, every time, and don't realize that a reliable pistol doesn't always just happen. They may not be aware that a large part of The Game involves technical stuff such as tuning your ammunition to the idiosyncrasies of the gun.

But the primary reason why I featured Walt so prominently was because he was having a terrible day . . . and he was enjoying it.

Early in the match, every time he shot a stage there would be three or four people gathering around Walt to analyze the things they saw, and offering suggestions to cure the things they THOUGHT they saw. Try a lighter lubricant. Can you get a stronger recoil spring? Maybe the gun isn't going completely into battery. Is the problem occurring only with certain magazines?

Walt wasn't dealing with the problem all by himself. Everyone there was on his side, and showed it by being as supportive as possible.

Why?

Because Walt isn't a whiner.

It doesn't matter how his game is going, he's always even-tempered, cordial, and open. No sulking in the corners or snapping at his friends when things go wrong. He has no anger to take out on others. He doesn't swear, even under his breath. If something goes wrong, it's something that can be either fixed or endured. His ego doesn't get in his way. He's not there to impress anybody, but he does because he is Real Person.

Because Walt is a gentleman.

IPSC seems to attract this kind of people. Many of us have been around the block a few times, and have learned how to handle disappointment, and frustration. Sure, we see the occasional over-aged adolescent from time to time, but they don't seem to last very long. Nobody says anything (unless you have an unrelenting potty-mouth), but the camaraderie that typifies IPSC competition just doesn't embrace under-developed personalities.

If a person can't control his temper, we don't want to go shooting with him. Or her.

We like Gentlemen, of any age, of any gender.

Walt is one of The Good Guys.

Feb11 ARPC Match Pix: 1

JerrytheGeek's Shooting Gallery: Albany, February 11, 2006

As I mentioned three days ago, I did get some videos of the latest club match. Some of them embarassing, some of them funny, some of them must curious. (All videos are 3mb to 5mb in size. Clicking on the video links should bring up Windows Media Player in a new window.)

These may not be of interest to everyone, but the selection does provide a look at what a club match is like. Most telling is the commeraderie, and the friendly atmosphere.

(Incidentally, not all of the videos are presented in this article. I have seven of the videos yet to be edited and loaded, which I'll present in a separate article Feb11 ARPC Match Pix 2.)

The videos are best justified as showing that it can be Winter in Oregon and STILL be warm, dry and sunny. Since the weatherman will have his revenge on us this weekend (freezing temperatures, wind, and snow mixed with rain is forcast for the Sunday match) I'm glad I have this record to look back at.

The lineup of 17 videos can be taken in haphazard order by clicking on the link at the top of this page. For those who know the Columbia Cascade Section members, and especially for those who were there, I'll try to organize them a bit better and provide a directory here. The videos are presented in the same sequence here as in the Gallery, but I've linked directly to the files here so you don't have to make a separate step through the website to see them.

I don't have the score sheet handy, and the actual names of the stages doesn't really matter, so I've assigned arbitrary names to each stage.


The Bobber Stage:

This was the first stage of the day for our squad. Facing a wall, there are double IPSC targets on both sides. Moving downrange, maneuvering around a couple of inconveniently placed barrels, there are mirror arrays on the left and right sides: three static IPSC targets, and a 'bobbing' IPSC target which is initiated by hitting a Pepper Popper. It's possible to hit the Pepper Poppers from the starting box, and our two exampler competitors both used that to their advantage, as the bobbers slowed down to an easy-to-hit cyclic rate in ten seconds or less.



Fred started shooting IPSC a couple of years ago, and spent quite a while being very deliberate in his approach. This year he has exhibited more confidence and more aggressiveness. He has always been an excellent shot, but now he is hitting the targets much more quickly. We were all glad to see him turn in an exceptional performance at this match, and I wish I had more film of him so he could see how good he looked.

SWMBO took on the same stage, using approximately the same strategy, but using an Open gun. She benefits from much more experience and is prettier, too!


The Classifier Stage:

As I mentioned before, we were tested on TAKE 'EM DOWN CM03-03, an 11-round Comstock classifier stage which presents a mix of IPSC targets (two 2-target arrays, with no-shoot targets between each pair) engaged from behind a Bianchi barricade, and then three Pepper Poppers engaged from behind another Bianchi barricade. It's a hoser stage, with a kicker: the penalty targets!

Geek pain -- I missed the far-right IPSC target and hit the penalty target instead. I had 41 points out of 55 possible, but with 40 penalty points subtracted from that score I ended up with ONE point. I had a good time (in both senses of the expression) and it looks good on the video because you can't see the penalty hits on the film. One other shooter on the squad, Doug S., had got double no-shoots on an earlier stage, so I'm seen yelling to him "I did it for you, Doug!" Then you see Doug walking downrange to tape the targets, thanking me for my thoughtfulness. "No mission too difficult; no sacrifice too great" where your pals are concerned.

No, they didn't believe me, either.

Walt, "The Shooter Formerly Known As The Revolver Guy", had JUST given up his revolver (for the time being) and bought a Limited-class auto-pistol in .38 Super caliber from Fred. It's not clear how much Walt had shot the new gun before the match, but (as is not uncommon) he was starting out with a mish-mash of ammunition from various sources. He started out using some 20-year old Egyptian military ammunition, and it just wasn't working for him. By the time we got around to the Classifier stage, he had dumped about half of it on the ground and finally got his snoot into a box of 'the good stuff'. You'll hear some cheering at the end of this video, because this was one of the very few stages where he managed to make the entire run without a malfunction.

The Poker Stage:

The start position was "gun on the table, elbows on the table". It looked like a social situation to me. There were 4 IPSC targets in front of the table, with a lot of hard-cover and some ugly white stuff. Around the corner to the far left were a few more IPSC targets, then you had to run back half-way, turn another corner and snake down-range to engage the last three ISPC targets. Lots of places to lose time, but it was essentially a Hoser stage with many temptations to go faster than you could shoot accurately.

Big Dawg started us off with a demonstration of just how quickly a big man can move when he really wants to. He lost 20 pounds over the winter, and is working on another 20 pounds. At this rate, he'll be so tiny by next winter that he'll have to stay on the porch.

The Geek run wasn't as bad as I had feared. At least I got my shots and didn't hit any penalty targets.

And The Shipster turned in his usual smooth, no-errors performance. It's fun to watch him shoot, because every time he comes out he gets a little better. He should be bumping up a class before the year is over, if he keeps working at it.

There was an interesting rules question on this run: The Range Officer is suppose to make sure that every competitor starts with protective glasses and hearing protection, but who watches to make sure that the RO has HER ears on?

The it was Walt's turn. He's still experimenting with odd-lot ammo at this point in the match, and I moved in closely to see just what was happening to cause the jams. I thought it might be that his recoil spring was too light for the load, and perhaps the slide wasn't returning to battery, but that isn't apparent from the good view I had. Sometimes the hammer would drop but the round wouldn't go off; sometimes the hammer wouldn't even drop, which means he had to rack the slide for the next shot. You might run through this sequence a few times, perhaps you can spot something I couldn't. Let me know if you do, please. (I cut the film short after Walt moved away from the 2nd array.)

The Steel Stage:

This was a nice 'field course' with three Pepper Poppers ... left, right, and center ... that must be engaged from the starting box. Moving downrange, there are targets left and right which are placed so you almost MUST stop to engage them to keep from breaking the 180. We did, in fact, have one DQ in our squad because the shooter over-ran the array, then backed up to engage it, and lacked just one step from having moved far enough back that he could legally engage the uprange target in the array. SWMBO had to DQ him, and later reported that it was one of the hardest things she has ever had to do. She has been a certified Range Officer for several years, works as an RO at almost every club match she attends, and has worked two USPSA National Matches, but this is the first time she ever had to DQ anyone. It helped that the competitor realized what he had done as soon as he took the shots, and he was just standing there waiting for the inevitable.

Big Dawg is the first example, and you'll see him move past the first target array before he realized he has gone too far. He DOES back up far enough to engage them safely.

The next shooter is Fish. He has two Open guns, and a Limited gun, but everything seems to be in the shop this week. Here you see how a good L10 shooter handles the confusing target arrays. I've often told him that he should give up the Open guns and shoot his Kimber all the time, but he just smiles and shakes his head. I know he has too much fun shooting Open to give it up. In Part 2, you'll see how he feels about the L10 gun at the end of a good match.


The ZigZag Stage:

No still photos available for this stage, and only one Video.

The Geek may not be pretty, but it's the only record of what this stage looks like. You can't see much of the stage, because of the extensive use of "Visquine" (SP?) as vision barriers. I'll be glad when all the vision barriers are Orange Snow-Fence, because you can see what's going on when you look at the film.

The stage forces you away from the starting position (centered on the bay, facing uprange) to engage a couple of targets around the corner on the left. Then run right past the end of the vision barrier, where you can see an array of IPSC targets. Moving left along the 2nd vision barrier, there's a large port where you can engage one, two or three IPSC targets far downrange. Finally, move back to the left and engage a mixed array of IPSC and steel targets around the end of the vision barrier.

You can go fact, or you can go slow. And you can pour a lot of rounds downrange at the last array if you choose to leave the far-left 'far downrange' target until you get closer to it instead of engaging it through the mid-range port.

That pretty much wraps up the first 5 stages. The last stage, "The Wall", will be exclusively featured in Part 2.

Vice Presidents: Gore vs Cheney

I'm sorry for US atrocities on Arabs after Sept 11, says Gore

The US committed "terrible atrocities" against Arabs after the September 11 attacks, according to Al Gore, President George W Bush's defeated rival for the White House in 2000.

Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up", often on minor charges, and held in "unforgiveable conditions", the former vice-president told a mainly Saudi audience at the Jeddah Economic Forum.

"Unfortunately there have been terrible abuses and it's wrong," he said. "I want you to know that it does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country."

Mr Gore said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qa'eda's hands by routinely blocking visas for Saudis but he also challenged Arabs to take a stronger stand against Iran's nuclear plans.

In other news, Vice President Cheney has invited former Vice President Gore to go quail hunting in Texas.

Happy [Geek] Valentine's Day!

Today is Valentine's Day.

Guys hate Valentine's Day.

I'm not sure why this is, but it's true. Probably it's because we see it as a phoney "go shopping, spend a lot of money, be touchey-feely or you're a bad guy" kind of holiday.

You know, like Mother's Day, Father's Day ... there's even a Children's Day, for goodness sake! (My father once told me that every day is Children's Day; I replied that I hadn't noticed. But that's another story.)

It's not that I don't like shopping for SWMBO. In fact, I enjoy buying unexpected gifts for all of my family. I just resent being coerced into buying things for my loved ones.

And I don't do "wrapping". I'm a crummy present wrapper. For example, I did 90% of my Christmas shopping almost a month before Christmas this year. But it took me six weeks to get the last of the presents wrapped and shipped out to my children and THEIR children. In fact, they would still be waiting for their "Grandpa Geek" box if SWMBO hadn't volunteered to finish the wrapping. (I can't prove it, but I suspect that SWMBO re-wrapped all of the gifts I HAD wrapped, when I wasn't looking. Thank You, SWMBO!)

That's on a "GOOD" Holiday - Christmas - which I enjoy. I have less enthusiasm for holidays which are founded only upon the wish of merchants to sell me more stuff so I can give it to somebody who doesn't really need or want it.

So this year, I bought SWMBO a set of Kitchen knives.

I had been telling her for TEN YEARS that she needed a set of kitchen knives. What she had were decent knives [LIE ALERT!] that were never sharp, and which didn't match. I mentioned again last month that she needed a decent set of knives, and I would have given them to her but I never considered them 'romantic' enough. Knives are like vacuum cleaners or blenders, or a really good mixer which is another thing I talked about for years but never gave her even though she really needed it so she finally went out and got a Kitchen-Aid mixer of her own.

Anyway, she replied that she thought Knives were a very romantic gift, so I bought them for her for Valentine's Day. I gave them to her last weekend, so we could revel in the fact that I actually gave someone a gift before it was past-due. They had red handles; she likes red.

I'm not sure she really knew how to handle that, or the three jars of Cherry, Strawberry and Raspberry yogurt I bought along to 'dress up' the package. Well, they were red; she likes red. I got her a red range bag last year 'just because', and she never did figure out what the occasion was. The answer, of course, is that I saw it and knew she would like it, so I bought it and gave it to her immediately. It was wonderful, watching her fight the impulse to tear up.

The good thing about buying 'kitchen accessories' for your sweetheart is, next year you won't have to go crazy trying to find a gift that top last year's gift.

Guys are easy to shop for, for Valentine's day.
The choices are few:

1. Beer
2. Books
   
3. Really good Irish Whiskey
4. Guns
   

(If she buys you a gun, make sure you act like it's something you would have bought for yourself even if it isn't an STI. If she buys you a book, pretend you don't already have it. Trust me, this is important.)

Did I wrap her Valentine's Day Gift?

No, I did not. I put 'em in a gift bag, with a nice card that somehow managed to express my feelings exactly. The box of knives was too big to fit into the gift bag, so I bought a curled-ribbon paste-on thingie and stuck it on the top of the knife box.

Don' t never let nobody tell you I ain't a romantic.

PS: no, we didn't go out to dinner tonight, which was a darned shame because SWMBO had a gift-card for two free meals at a local fish house. Maybe next weekend ... I hope they have a good wine.