KA-POW!

So it's June, which means BONUS TIME!! Despite the current economical status, I have busted my butt at work, and it has been noticed a little bit. I managed to pull in a decent raise. Instead of spending all of it on my car, which I had originally planned to do, I instead spent it on something I've been wating for about 3 years... A Smith & Wesson M&P pistol.

I bought it from megasports firearms in Joliet - a great place for everything 'weapons'. They have a huge selection of pistols, rifles, knifes, accessories, and a very nice indoor range as well. I've been wanting an M&P for about two years, but they use to have a few stoppage issues. They seem to be comming from the factory now with polished feed ramps and chambers and the stoppage issues have seemed to end with the change. The only close competitor was the Springfield XD, but the M&P's feel in the hand won me over. I went to the shop expecting to buy a used compact in .40cal. I've always wanted a compact. Despite living in a no-carry state, I like the way they fit my smaller hands better, and if I planned to move I would get a carry licence. Plus this used one cost less. After speaking to a few of the sales associates and giving it some real thought I pushed aside the compact .40 for a fullsize 9mm.

This really is a better option for a few reasons. First, it will be used primarily for sport shooting and home defense. 9mm is cheap and while a .40 beats out a 9mm any day in the home defense situation, I have the belief that a 9mm will still do a damn fine job. Any intruder who is shot with a 9mm will most likely be in the same position as one shot with a .40; laying on the ground or running away. Plus having more firepower doesn't mean anything if you can't control the recoil, which leads me to my next reason for getting a 9mm full size. My wife will be shooting this. She comes from a very different family than I. I was brought up around guns, hunting, and taught to respect weapons, but not fear them. Her entire family beleives that all guns either have killed, or will kill another human. She told her mother I bought a gun and her first response was "Is everything ok?!" as if I was a threat and planning on using it on my wife. *facepalm* My wife has been very open to learning about weapons and is working on her fear of them. This week I am taking her to our first safety course, then next week we will finally get to shoot in the class. I'm excited. =)

Last week I went with a friend and my father to the range for some shooting. I put 134 rounds through it, and am quite happy with my results. It seemed to shoot low for all three of us, so I'm unsure if that's a sight issues, or just all three of us are shooting wrongly, but it's still close enough to put someone down. I plan to get some Burnell work done and also install WT 2-dot night sights. Perhaps that will change my impact point a bit.

PICS:
-In the case
-Left
-Right
-Slide Back
-Broken Down

TARGETS:
-First Mag: 15ft. 2 way low,8 slightly low,7 good shots. Drawn on bullseye was aimpoint.
-Second and Third Mag: 20-25ft. 3 low, 1 slight high/right, 30 good shots

Lazy people don't break hips

BILLY MAYS HERE FOR.... Awww man, I just can't make a joke about the "BILLY MAYs Defibulator!" or the "BILLY MAYs hot hot pine box". After watching the first few episodes of Pitchmen I started to get my BM impression down pat.

[yell loudly] [point with both hands, all fingers outward - think karate chop] "HI!, I'm BILLY MAYs" [bring in one hand, made into a slight fist] "and I want to tell you about the" [point again, all fingers outward] "amazing new"  [point to product, one finger] <product name here>!
I never bought anything from you, but gosh darnnit, I wanted to. RIP BILLY MAYs.

The Middleman, DA...

David Axelrod... Makes me think of Axel Rose. Any name with "Axel" in it just screams rock n' roll, doesn't it?
Two quotes from him. The first was shown to me by my wife. Her note is directly below it...

“David Axelrod says Obama expressed his condolences to the Jacksons. He said Obama saw the pop star as a spectacular performer whose life had sad and tragic aspects.”
Awesome. Our President spoke about MJ sooner than he spoke about Iran

Well said, love. The reason? Much like Obama, MJ was a celebrity. While entertainment has a huge affect on society, it isn't really important in life. Therefore it's easy to quickly decide the correct, nearly scripted, condolence soundbyte. Unfortunatly, "I think your election was a sham, and so do your citizens. I don't want to play nice with you anymore" was on the very last page, hence why it took so long.

Next up...(from washingtonpost.com)
"There are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going," Axelrod said. "We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."

I need to disect this a bit, because this quote is classic "don't do this" when it comes to college writing/speaking skills.

• 49 words
• "keep the process moving", "keep people at the table", and "keep the discussions going" are all the same idea, repeated.
• "number of formulations"... ok, how many? What are they? What are the results so far?
• "We'll wait and see"... I won't hold my breath
• considering "wait and see", "people at the table","long way down the road", and "finish that journey" are all just sayings with little to no relevance to anything, only about %70 of this MIGHT contain some useful information.

What's this all about? Could be anything, right? Basicly that promise the big O made about not taxing folks back when he was criticizing McCain for it? "I pledge that under my plan, no one making less than $250,000 a year will see any type of tax increase,". Well he kind of lied.

It drives me nuts how most peices of political information are so scrubbed and vauge, it's not information at all. Mr.RockN'Roll could have said that about anything!

Excuss me, Sir. What can you tell us about the declining spermwhale population and the opposition to whale hunting in general?
"There are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going," Axelrod said. "We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."

Exceuss me, Sir. How does the current administration feel about legos? Has there been any discussion about what is liked more - blue or red blocks?
"There are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going," Axelrod said. "We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."


Excuss me, Sir. Do you have any comment about the numbers of starving little people debate teams who also like to participate in long distance races?
"There are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going," Axelrod said. "We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."


Excuss me, Sir. Can you comment on the possibility of additional stimulus packages despite thier assurances of help yet obvious failures, and perhaps why the big O's administration wants to take back one of it's key primary promises?
...I think you get the idea.

MJ...

Yes, he was a musical icon. Yes, I loved his music. Yes, he changed the music business. No, I would not trust my child with him.

What is it with people praising his life so much because he's a celebrity? I am shocked at the forgiveness of the public and media. Am I really that old-time to have morals and not be blinded by fame? Why should a persons skills null thier personal actions? If I kill one person, and save another from certain death, do they balance out? If I beat my wife, but have a few hit songs like Chris Brown, does that make it ok? What if I like urinating on underaged girls, but "I belive I can fly"...do I get off then like R.Kelly did?

I'm not even talking about legal justice; even I have gotten out of a ticket or two. I'm talking the state of morality in this country and around the world. If I have a neighbor that has been accused of child molestation, has childrens parties at thier place all the time, built an amusement park for them, has no sembalance of an adult life, invites children to his room for sleep-overs I'm sure as hell not going to trust my child in the same area as him! What type of parent would!? Why is he being praised so much? The tallented, kind-of-adjusted, black MJ died a LOOOOOOOOONG time ago. I respect his music, but can never praise the man.
He hasn't even made any good music in like 10 years. Big whoop.

By the way, I never wish harm on anyone *cough*except child molestors*cough* and I do think that thoughts like this are rough for the family. He matters to them, not me. If one of my family members died I'm betting Janette won't write about them on HER blog! =P So yes, I do feel bad for the family because they have reasons to mourn. The rest of the world needs to grow a pair and suck it up.
EDIT:
Some amusing or interesting thoughts I've read today on MJ...

• NOOOOOOOO not MJ! Someone tell the paramedic to grab him by the heart and just "Beat it"
• To quote Chris Rock, "the brother was turning clear..."
• I wish I could fast-forward a week of my life and get Michael Jackson's death and the "global mourning" out of the way. Hopefully this won't last long and we can get back to our regular scheduled programming and keep an eye on socialist Obama and how he deals with nuclear war with N. Korea, unrest in Iran, all the while sinking our economy deeper into annihilation all for the betterment of the global citizen.
• It's a shame how the media covers and adores him and other non-essential personel and they look the other way at the real hero's of our Nation ie: all the Congressional Medial of Honor recipiants that have passed on as well as every Silver, Bronze and all that have gone above and beyond in the line of duty. The folks that deserve it don't get the recognition the media gives whacko & other entertainers."
• BT: What's really a shame is that Wacko Jacko stole Farah Fawcett's thunder.
  Farah was making the news big time in the morning until Jacko kicked the bucket. Now they've been talking about it ever since and probably will be for weeks. We'll probably not hear another thing about Farah.
  T: So one famous beautiful white woman died, and one ugly white woman died.
• The idol worshiping media is all over the Jackson distraction like stink on a heaping pile of manure while pushing Ed Mc Mahon's and Farrah Fawcett's death to the back pages of oblivion. Also, it's a good excuse to ignore little things like the Cap & Tax bill our gang in DC is spiriting through.
• Ho hum, ho hum. Ya' know what I hate about the whole thing? The 400 text messages I received in a 30 minute span from everyone who thought they were breaking the story to me.
• G: I wouldn't be surprised if he was faking it. He's weird like that.
  Y: No better way to pay off that debt...
  T: Except to actually die. Then he wouldn't have to worry about it.
• Wait a minute...Heath Ledger died?
• I haven't seen this much butt-kissing since the election...

*Let's Say...

*Let's say someone pulls a gun on you and your family and threatens to kill all of you, and you have every ability to take them out what do you do?
A. Laugh at them
B. Ignore them
C. Say "I'm going to do something about this...after you shoot one of us"
D. KILL HIM!

This is the best analogy I can think of to describe the situation with NKorea right now. As you may have guessed, Obama has decided to pull out option C. *facepalm* While I wasn't a huge fan of Bush, at least he would have been dealing with the NKorean threat by now. I mean, he went in to Iraq for WMDs with no valid proof (dumb move all together), and here is lil'Kim TELLING US he's building nukes and weaponizing every bit of plutonium they can. He's threatening the US directly. How can the big O be such a fool?! He wants the world to be this utopian place where talking gets things done all the time - they don't. One of my highschool teachers had a very odd lesson one day. It revolved around the idea that WAR SOLVES EVERY PROBLEM. Granted, it may create 2, 3 or 100 more in it's place, but force and threats gets things done.

*Lets say you have 10 kids. "you have 10 kids" (bud-dum chish!).
You give each of them 10 dollars. (10x10=$100)
Little Jimmy decides to sell his new toy truck and earn %5 of the total GDP of the kids. (5/100=$5)
He now has $15, which is 15% of kid GDP.

Now lets say you want to stimulate your kids spending, and give them an extra $90 FOR NOTHING. (100 + 90x10 = $1000)
If Jimmy wants to sell his truck for the same $5, that will be only .5% (half a percent) of kid GDP.
He will now have only %10.5 of kid GDP. ((100+5)/1000) Ripoff. Not much of a worthy investment and he's probably better off keeping his truck to play with.

If he wanted to end up at the same %15 of kid GDP he would have to sell his truck for $50.
This is an increase of %1000 from his original price of $5!

Has the truck changed in any way from the time it was worth $5? NO! Are there less trucks, driving up demand? NO! Therefore, has the worth of the truck increased? NO! Are any of the other kids going to buy a truck for $50? NO! (Maybe cross-eyed Stephen, but that's because he stuck a fork too far up his nose and became the "special" one). So little Jimmy is now out of the retail trucking business along with %9.4 of the rest of the world. (Unemployment rate as of this writing)

To solve this issue, would you:
A. Assume the $90 was too little and instead give each child and additional $200
B. Wait for the kids to spend the money on other more important things (no truck would be bought for a while) until the money supply came down, and then monitor and limit the amount of money to the stable $10

Stimulus packages = dumbest move you can do to solve an economic crisis. You can not change the fact that money, and the spending of that money varies. It has its highs and low, and history has shown that when you try to counteract one of these highs or lows, it is counterproductive!

The more currency you pump into any society, the less valuable each unit becomes. It's all about percentages people! %1 of $100 is $1. %1 of $11,000,000,000,000 (11 trillion) is $110,000,000,000!!! Our monetary system works on worth, and worth is based on PERCENTAGES NOT AMOUNTS! If there was only $5 in the whole country, I'd be a rich man. This is not rocket science! Why is it that I get this, my six year old niece probably gets this, yet our president, previous president, government officials, and the freaking FED don't get this! It's their job to understand inflation. You know what happens to me when I don't do my job, or in this case I costs my company trillions of dollars? I don't get a raise, I don't get extra vacation time, I don't get a private jet. I get canned. fired. trashed. given the pink slip. a boot in my rear. If I'm very lucky I'm not sued.

Maybe in the future I'll write about the fact that this money isn't even real. Long gone are the days where money meant something - it usually meant gold or silver. With the FED having complete freedom to create as much money as they want without backing it, it's anyones guess as to how bad it will get. To give you an idea, though... 100,000,000,000,000 (yes, one-hundred-TRILLION) Zimbabwe dollars recently sold on ebay for $14.10USD. My poor neice may be ahead of her class counting over 100 now, but she has a LOOOOOOONG way to go.

*Let's say you own a wonderful home and assist with a support group for abused families. Let's also say you are fairly close (proximity, not emotionally) to your neighbors; a single mother and a teenage daughter. The mother and the girls father are divorced and live separately, but for some reason (another rant I'll get into some day) the mother has full custody. Are we setup correctly? ok...

Considering that you live close to your neighbors, you overhear some things. The mother is very loud, and abusive. She berates the girl, and tell her that it is good for her. "It builds character!" She brainwashes the poor girl into believing everything she says and it really screws with her social life, self image, and even physical health. One day the girl tells her mother she's sick of it and wants to live with daddy. The mother laughs, says he's no good, and then beats her. You can hear the fight, and know exactly what's going on.

Would you:
A. Keep watching TV. You may not like her, but she has a pool and you don't. Plus the mother is still invited to the next support group for abused children.
B. Tell your family a week or two later what happened. "gee, that didn't seem right...", yet still keep the invite open to her.
C. Call the cops. Get the girl out. Take back your invite to the mother. Speak out against her and support the father

If you picked A or B, leave my site now. here's the thing... I completely agree that we should not meddle in our neighbors affairs. But I also believe in the saying "show me your friends, I'll show you your future". This whole situation with the Iran election is a huge deal for them. For Obama to be weak and not say anything denouncing the acts there for so long is such a shame. When election results came back less than three hours determining that Akmahinajajarbinks was the winner by a landslide when the other guy (who cares about his name?) was expected to win by the landslide, the first words out of Obama's mouth should have been "That shit don't seem right!". Apparently it's how things work in his line of business though - I mean he did come out of Chicago. Don't get me wrong, I'm from there and love it, but I'm pretty sure Obama got a few votes from many dead relatives of mine.

*Let's say you're a hard working American. Let's also say the government raises taxes to pay people who don't work as hard. Are you going to work as hard in the future, knowing most of what you are working for is going to lazy people?

*Let's say you're not a hard worker. Let's say you're a slacker. Let's also say the government gives you everything you need - housing, food, complete medical coverage, and a welfare check all paid for by the guy busting his ass. You even have enough money to buy a big screen TV and rent a limo to bring you to the welfare office to pick up your check. Are you going to want to bust your ass?

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” – Ben Franklin

I'm not struggling to pay bills because I took the entire $250,000+ mortgage that the bank offered me. I'm not struggling because I have a bigscreen TV. I'm not struggling because I spend money on the things I want instead of the things I need. I'm struggling because despite buying a home I knew I could afford, being happy with my 23 inch TV with a purple spot on it, and doing everything right, the amount of money I have becomes worth less and less every day. The stimulus packages don't help us, they hinder us. I'll hold onto my 'trucks' until I can get that %15 back. $5 just isn't worth what it use to be.

Smells like... victory

ok, so it wasn't napalm I was smelling, but gun powder was a good substitute.
Last Friday my wife, one of our friends and I went to our second pistol safety course. We finally got around to shooting. The first pistol I ever fired (many many years ago) was a Ruger .22, and that was the first one we started with. It was nice to shoot it - .22's are always fun little guns to shoot. The big deal was having my wife shoot. A mentioned in a previous post, my wife has no experience with guns. so to see her shoot was pretty exciting. She was nervous, as expected, but did a very good job. She only shot about 5 to 7 yeards out, but was very accurate and handled her weapon safely. She loved shooting the .22 and wants more of it. When we moved to the .38 revolver she was a bit more nervous and wasn't thrilled with the recoil. Despite not liking the .38 as much, she shot a ton through it. I, too, did not like the .38. it had more to do with the grip and revolver frame than any "recoil". While I offered my 9mm to her to shoot she declined. She's not quite ready for that step up apparently - which is fine. I'm thinking when we get some cash I may pick up a small .22 for her for when I head out there.
I shot pretty well. The .22 and .38 were dead on accurate so I was hollowing out bullseyes with it. The I switched to my new 9mm. As before I was shooting a bit low. I was consistent - as in I would put bulletts through the same hole multiple times, but they were always 2-3 inches low at 7yrds. I had our instructor, which has 40 years shooting experience and has won many target shooting competitions, shoot my gun to see if it's the gun, or me (and my father and friend, who was also shooting low). She took 5 shots. 3 were on dead center, 2 were close to it, none of them were low. So it's me. Until I work on my trigger control I have to just adjust my aimpoint and/or sight picture. I do plan on getting both new sights and a trigger job anyways, so I imagine my shots will be better after that too.

BUSY!

So other than my incredibly busy work schedule, just about every weekend until the middle of august is booked.
June
26th - Walking all night in Relay for Life
27th - Possibly going to a large gun show in Kankakee (I'm getting more "central Illinois" by the day. *facepalm*)
July
3-4th - Celebrating America. =)
10-12th - Party witht he family
17-18th - OMG A FREE WEEKEND?!
25th - Driving to Iowa for a wedding
30-2nd - Driving to DC!! (Ugh. This 12 hour drive will be a rough one)
On top of that I have to...
-Work on my exception to policy waiver for the Air Force
-See a dentist (I think I need my wisdom teeth out. ugh)
-Keep the wife happy =)
-Arrange some items on my web page for when I head to DC because the server is comming with me.
-Stay sane at work. Harder than it sounds!
Fun times.