Remember

Thanks to all you brave men and women who risk your lives keeping us safe. Thank you and God bless you!



Original video found here.

How About Starting With Yourself, HIllary?

Hillary Clinton states "the wealthy are not paying their fair share." Well, how about starting with yourself and the other 230 millionaire congress-critters? It's easy for people like you to take away other people's money and give it away to people who don't deserve it, but never your own money, right?

I can see November 2010 from my house.

Pelosi Now Blaming Pres. Bush

Idiot.

Whatchu Talkin' 'Bout, Willis??

R.I.P., Gary Coleman

Retirement News

Got this in an email and just had to share it.

Due to the current financial situation caused by the slowdown in the economy, Congress has decided to implement a scheme to put workers of 50 years of age and above on early retirement, thus creating jobs and reducing unemployment.

This scheme will be known as RAPE (Retire Aged People Early).

Persons selected to be RAPEd can apply to Congress to be considered for the SHAFT program (Special Help After Forced Termination).

Persons who have been RAPEd and SHAFTed will be reviewed under the SCREW program (System Covering Retired-Early Workers).

A person may be RAPEd once, SHAFTed twice and SCREWed as many times as
Congress deems appropriate.

Persons who have been RAPEd could get AIDS (Additional Income for Dependents & Spouse) or HERPES (Half Earnings for Retired Personnel Early Severance).

Obviously persons who have AIDS or HERPES will not be SHAFTed or SCREWed any
further by Congress.

Persons who are not RAPEd and are staying on will receive as much SHIT (Special High Intensity Training) as possible. Congress has always prided themselves on the amount of SHIT they give our citizens.

Should you feel that you do not receive enough SHIT, please bring this to the attention of your Congressman, who has been trained to give you all the SHIT you can handle.

Sincerely,
The Committee for Economic Value of Individual Lives (E.V.I.L.)

PS: Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas and oil, as well as current market conditions, the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off.

The Definition Of Insanity

Is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Is NY too far gone, politically, to be able to see that instituting a millionaire's tax is only going to force companies to move out of the state, and causing more unemployment?

http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/ny-assembly-looks-at-millionaires-tax-20100526

I never went to school for accounting, but even I can see what this tax will further do to an already crippled economy.

You Knew This Was Coming

Blame Bush

Let's Play With Numbers

Jobs creation? More like fiction:
Here

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Laughs

Shooting My Bow

This is my Bowtech 82nd Airborne I tuned a few days ago. I shot 2" groups at 50 yards.


Does my wallet make my ass look fat??

MArooned: Friday Funnies

Must read Friday...

MArooned: Friday Funnies

US Census Claims A Life

http://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/family-95100-city-woman.html

A Sixteenth Of An Inch

My Bowtech 82nd Airborne compound bow wasn't shooting the way it should when I first got it and set it up. I don't know what happened to it, but it would not paper tune.

Paper tuning is when you shoot an arrow, be it bare-shafted or fletched, through a sheet of paper, from 8 feet away, to see which way the paper tears. A perfect tear is when you get a single clean hole from a bare shafted arrow, or a single hole with three lines equidistant apart coming off the single hole with a fletched arrow. That's when a bow is tuned. If the hole is not "clean," then the accessories on the bow, or the bow itself, would have to be adjusted. Today, I did just that for four hours.

I checked the timing of the cams and one cam was off by a sixteenth of an inch, so I corrected that. Then I put arrows through the paper tuner again. No good. It was still tearing 1" to the left, meaning that the point of the arrow going through the paper was not the same at the fletched end of the arrow going through it. I kept adjusting the arrow rest, but it was too much. It shouldn't be out so far, so I moved it back to the original position. I tore the whole bow apart from top to bottom. I mean, I took the whole bow apart, checked everything, re-timed the cams and the arrow rest. I did things to the bow that I am not at liberty to say due to this information being proprietary. It was also entrusted to me to be kept secret. Then I shot it through the paper tuner again. Much better. The rest was just off a bit so I moved it a sixteenth of an inch to the right. Bingo! A perfect hole.

Next step: sighting in the bow. I took it back to twenty yards and let the first arrow fly. Off to the left about two inches and an inch low. Adjust the sight over to the left a sixteenth of an inch and down a sixteenth of an inch. Let another arrow fly. Okay, arrow is to the left by about an inch but elevation is good. Adjusted the sight over to the left another sixteenth of an inch and let another arrow fly. Bullseye! Sent two more arrows downrange and two more bullseyes. I locked everything down and tightened everything up on the bow. She's tuned. I'll have to get her sighted in at 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 yards on Saturday so we'll be ready to compete at my archery club's fundraiser on Sunday to benefit St. Jude's Children's Hospital. There'll be no losers at this competition; everybody wins!

Archery is one of my zens. When I'm out there shooting, everything gets tuned out. I focus on nothing else but the bullseye. It is the difference between breaking the line in the ten ring or missing it altogether and all it takes is a sixteenth of an inch.

They Say...

...it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes the government to bring up the idiots.

Booger Hook On The Brain

It was Jay who complimented me on my finger discipline in my gun-handling at the NRA Convention when we were all fondling the Hollywood guns. It didn't register then, but it hit me just now as to why I automatically keep my trigger finger off the trigger when I hold a gun - archery.

You see, when I shoot my compound bows, I use a mechanical shooting aid - a release. The triggers on these releases are literally hair triggers. Touch them while drawing your bow and a disaster will most likely occur. There is no first stage pull and definitely no second stage. It just goes off with the slightest bump from your trigger finger. Trigger weight is about half a pound, and usually, your arrow is aimed at something other than your target while you're drawing back your bow. I've seen arrows stuck to ceilings; in walls; in the dirt; in a tree; in a forearm; in a hand; in people; etc.

The four rules of gun handling safety applies to archery equally. Getting skewered by an arrow is not the same as being hit by a bullet, but neither one of these things should ever happen by accident. This is why my trigger finger is always away from the trigger when I handle a gun.

Thanks, Jay, for the compliment.

Check Your Engine

Okay, so my truck tripped the "Check Engine" light while I was down in Virginia over the weekend. I didn't have my OBD II scan tool with me, so I had to wait till I got home to find out what tripped it. I was not about to hand out $90 to a mechanic just to plug in the scan tool, plus the cost for labor and parts. It would have ended up costing me about $400 to replace something I could do myself. In fact, my scan tool cost me $145 when I first got it. After two uses, it's already paid for itself.

Well, I drove home and plugged in my scanner. The code pinged back with P1135 - faulty air/fuel ratio sensor. This is the one that comes before the catalytic converter. So I did some research at all the auto parts stores - Auto Zone and Advanced Auto Parts. I even went into Toyota to find out how much they wanted for it. Can you believe they want $215 dollars?? Advanced Auto Parts wanted $205 for the Bosch one. Auto Zone was the lowest with $115.95 for the same one by Bosch. Guess where I'll be getting my A/F sensor from.

So far, after I reset the truck's computer with the scan tool, the "Check Engine" light has not come back on. In the interim, I replaced the air filter, while I wait for the new sensor and gasket to get here. This should allow more air into the intake manifold and increase O2 to the air/fuel mixture.

Looks like I'll be crawling under my truck some time next week. I hope nothing else comes up for a long while.

The Breda Fallacy: it's not about the guns

The Breda Fallacy: it's not about the guns

Should Have Checked My Spelling

Bleh.

Sometimes, Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Something funny happened at the archery shop today. We had a Bowtech Old Glory bow on which I had to change the strings and cables, which I did no problem. Thing was, when I went and put it on the drawboard to check the timing of the cams, I couldn't get the bow to come to full draw. Where it would stop was about a half inch shy. I couldn't figure out why.

My mentor couldn't figure out why either until, he turned his head away from looking at the cams to where the cable fed through the guide loop to the crank and discovered that the knot that ties to the hook that pulls the bow open was getting impeded right there. So, for hours, we sat there and scratched our heads. We got Vapor Trail on the phone; we called Bowtech to see if they did something special for this guy's bow, because it was a 31" drawlength, and that is really rare.

So, having discovered and corrected the problem, the bow is now complete in its maintenance, but my mentor busted my balls like nobody's business, for the next few hours. Then he suddenly stops and says to me, "It's almost as bad as the time I was fixing a bow and something was making noise. I spent 4 hours taking it apart, putting it back together, and I could not, for the life of me, figure out where that sound was coming from. Then my business partner comes into the shop and he says, 'Why don't you try shooting the bow without your watch on?'"

The next few days at the shop are going to be interesting and full of mirth and merriment. He'll bust my balls; I'll bust his. Good times...good times.

GAMO

Okay, so I went down to Charlotte, N.C. this weekend to the NRA Convention. I found the GAMO booth and I voiced my concerns to one of their V.P. of Sales, regarding the direction GAMO had taken with their rifles.

He explained to me that the reason GAMO went with an integral trigger was because (the typical) customers were complaining how the old-style triggers would get loose, etc. and have a failure to cock, so they changed their triggers to the new style so they won't get loose. I told him how the new plastic triggers were horrible and how they were no longer able to be upgraded to the GTX aftermarket triggers, and how it's nearly impossible to upgrade their rifles with a gas ram. I also pointed out that the cheaper steel they use for their barrels with a polymer outer cover were susceptible to bending when cocking.

I told him that there's a whole community of airgun tuners and serious shooters out here that are extremely disappointed with the direction they took. I also pointed out how poor their customer service department is in returning calls and emails.

He handed me his card and told me that if anyone has any concerns, that he could be contacted. I told him I would write about my interview with him on the forums and on my gun-blog. He was okay with that.

I left him that afternoon having a good feeling that a change might be in the works for them regarding their customer-relations practices, and possibly their air rifles in order to remain a leading force in the airgun industry. They used to make fine airguns, until these changes came along and people were no longer satisfied with their quality. I know I'm not.

NRA Convention 2010

Well, this is the first time since the weekend, that I have had time to sit down and write about the NRA Convention and "THE BREDA BLOGMEET."

The weekend started with me driving down to Virginia to meet up with Newbius at his house. From there, we headed down to Charlotte in his car. Newbius is like me when it comes to driving - we don't want to stop for anything; we just want to get there. So for the next 5 hours in the car, we talked a lot about politics, listened to music. He gave me plenty of food for thought, because I'd like to become more politically active where I live. But I digress.

We finally get down to Charlotte, check into our hotel room and then head out to the convention center, where we would eventually meet up with a bunch of the other gunbloggers.

We're here at the convention hall, outside the Press Room, where we all met up. We spend the rest of the afternoon and evening together, which eventually led to THE BREDA BLOGMEET. At dinner, we were pleasantly surprised by the appearance of Alan Gura, Alan Gottlieb and his wife and Michael Bane. Somewhere along the way, I gave Breda a pack of squid jerky, back at Jay's hotel room, where they were recording Vicious Circle. Everyone partook of it, except Alan, who's allergic, and they all liked it.

Here's (from left to right) SayUncle, Alan Gura and Michael Bane.

The Three Alans - Gottlieb, Andrews and Gura.

Alan Gura and me.

Me, Michael Bane an Alan Gottlieb.

A great time was had by all at dinner. Afterwards, our party moved outside onto the plaza, where Breda was practicing her maternal instincts on the Dixielette:

There truly is something amazingly beautiful about a woman holding a baby.

We hung around outside chatting the night away and before we knew it, it was midnight. So, Newbius and I departed, while Ahab and Ahabette were getting their caricatures drawn on an iPad. It was amazing to watch the artist work the iPad like that. We got back to the hotel room and crashed.

The next day, I milled about the convention center by myself and sat in on Ted Nugent's "show." He was awesome. At one point, he even brought tears to my eyes when he paid homage to the paralyzed Marine sniper by getting him out to his ranch and presenting him with a rifle fitted to him, that he could zero in and fire with an air tube to his mouth. It still chokes me up now when I think about it. Despite his "Motor City Mad Man" persona, I can see that Ted Nugent is a deeply caring and giving person. He's tops in my book.

Afterwards, I made my way back down to the convention hall and went to say "Hi" to Cam Edwards. He was chit-chatting with many other people during a commercial break in his show, but he did pick his head up, saw me and said "Hi" back.

So I wandered around a bit more before meeting back up with my fellow bloggers to go back down to the convention hall, after it closed its doors to the public, so we could all go and appreciate the Hollywood Guns that were being put away to be sent back to the NRA Museum, but not before we got a chance to hold them:

Tom Selleck's Sharps rifle from Quigley: Down Under and John Wayne's rifle from Stagecoach and Rio Lobo.

Me, holding a piece of John Wayne history. Can you tell I'm absolutely giddy??

The Sharps rifle. That gun was heavy!

A fellow blogger had his hand at it too.

Alan with the tricked out .500 S&W from Samuel L. Jackson's The Spirit movie.

Breda with the suppressed shotgun from No Country For Old Men.

Jay with Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum. And to round things up, here's a shot of the gang:

Then we all got kicked out (not really) and went to get some beers and tried to finish Vicious Circle, but the traffic noise was drowning us out. So we moved into the empty lobby of the Wachovia Bank building and we finished the last hour-and-a-half of the show. Then we all packed it in and sadly parted ways.

And that's all, folks. Next year: Pittsburgh! Can't wait.

The Orange Has Landed

After much coercion from my blogger friends, I have finally created a blog for myself. Opinions, views and comments here are just that. Serious, and not-so-serious posts to follow, as this is merely an introductory one. Having said that, let's let the fun begin.