Some people have an understanding of how and why it’s important. Then there are others who just don’t give a damn.
Let me explain something to everyone. This isn’t a joke and this is deadly serious. There are a few fruit cakes out there that had the gall to call the men who place their lives on the line gutless.
Let’s get something straight. It doesn’t matter which party is in office, their job is to keep their mouth shut when necessary. Accomplishments tied to national security are not to be flaunted in public in the view of everyone.
I have many friends in the engineering professions who do work specifically tied to national security. There is nothing specific on their resumes about what they’ve done. Most of the information listed on any accomplishment is done in a non-nondescript manner where the end use isn’t discernible.
This man however has ripped the veil off of material that should not be seen by the public. When you make it public, that means our enemies can see it as well. Only a moron who has no concept of the sacrifice and danger these men take on their shoulders would dare claim they were acting within partisan interests by posting this message.
If you are fine with this behavior I suggest you go enlist and head down range. Then you might understand exactly what it is this man has done by ripping the veil off.
There are people who hate the United States and we struck back at the man responsible for September 11th, 2001. Anonymity w as the biggest defense to protect the men responsible for striking back. Our fearless leader, in an effort to extort political capital on the sweat of these men’s backs, removed that anonymity and exposed them to danger and attack.
We had no need to know which service, which group, or which team was responsible for taking out evil and laying a solid blow. Without that information those men were merely a few in a sea of thousands, the pool becomes unbelievably large if you consider that depending on the release we may not have even known it was a special operations group.
My dad served his country and we know there were stories we never heard. Not because they were painful, but because there was no reason we needed to know. There were a few we finally heard after the Soviet Union fell, even then it was obvious that parts were left out. When I signed my name on the line I wasn’t looking for recognition, and I knew that depending on where I went I may very well end up with stories that I carried silently until I died.
I feel ashamed at times I never made it all the way through to my commission, metal rods in both legs when they’re turning people away left and right limited my options. Could I have fought harder, probably, in the end though I now know what my dad meant when he said the following, “I left the Navy after 16 years because any country willing to elect Jimmy Carter as president doesn’t deserve to have me serving in their armed forces.” As much as I wanted that commission I am pleased I didn’t have to suffer through the Obama Administration while in the service.
That thought bugs me no end, however I did not sign on that line so a politician could use my work, my service, and my commitment for their own political gain. While I may have never “served” and that disappoints me. I am glad that I haven’t been able to be used and manipulated in such a manner. It wouldn’t matter which party was in office, it’s the behavior of the man and how he respects and leads those who have signed on the line to serve. Obama’s respect and leadership of those who serve is lacking. I had a choice, though many had no choice in the matter.
You don’t go doing work tied to national security looking for fame or fortune. You do it because you know it needs to be done and it needs to be done well. You don’t talk about it, you don’t advertise it, you just work on it behind the scenes. When someone asks you what you do, you don’t provide details, you provide the mundane, they have no need to know. Some can’t handle that, they want to be patted on the head and told good job. They want to brag to show how awesome their job is.
Other’s just silently continue on, content in the knowledge that what they do keeps their family safe at night. That the tools they design will be used by men doing violence on their behalf. It’s a job that has to be done. They know and take solace in the fact that what they are doing does matter and it makes a huge difference, no matter if anyone knows or not.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
Looks like I’ll be meeting and hanging out with a bunch of you the beginning of September. Joe mentioned the Gun Blogger Rendezvous last May and I was planning on going. I saw this and really started itching.
Then I had some unexpected expenses and well the wife an I live in a budget. We’ve stopped using our credit cards and are paying down our debt as quickly as possible so when I dipped into the savings fund I said, “Well there’s always next year.”
I saw Joe last weekend and we ended up talking about it and his travel plans have changed. Initially it still seemed like it wouldn’t work and it was going to kill a bunch of extra time since the point of departure wouldn’t equal the point of return. On the way home from the Boomershoot site I had an idea on how to make that work. I told Joe I’d let him know this week yea or nay.
Then earlier this week I got an email at work, the company calendar uses photos taken by employees. I didn’t get a submission in this year because I didn’t have time to prep the photos I was going to submit. They did however look at my submissions from last year and they want to use some of them. They pay the employees for the use of the pictures. It’s not set it in stone, it’s a risk we can take it though because even without it we could do it, it would just be tight. I suspect it’s one of the following though:
So this morning I dropped my check to Mr. Completely into my mail box along with the GBR-VII form. My leave request has been approved so at this point I will be at GBR! So it looks like I’ll be seeing David, Kevin (for the first time since 2009) and Derek (again since 2009) again. If you’re going, find me and say hi. Seriously I’m kind of hard to miss.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
So evidently last week when I went to visit Joe and Ry I should have just used cash to pay for dinner at the Kirkland Red Robin. It was at least positive I used my credit card instead of my debit card.
You see some piss ant that is too lazy to work decided to make a complete copy of my card and go on a shopping spree today. They started in North Bend evidently at a gas station and drove to Ephrata where they proceeded to hit up Wal-Mart and Rite-Aid racking up a 500 dollar bill at which point Bank of America’s fraud division suspended the card and called me.
You see I rarely use that card and usually only for one off purchases who’s costs are immediately paid off by the next bill. So I talk to the fraud department they fully closed the card, asked me if I knew anyone who could be using it. I informed them I’m staring at my card right now, it’s been in my wallet and I’ve used it only once recently, last Tuesday to be exact, at the Kirkland Red Robin. They back charged all the fraudulent charges, closed the card, and I should have a replacement next week.
So I get the inconvenience of being out of my card for a week, which is no big deal, I have an emergency fund for a reason. It is still annoying though. It is annoying because some ass-hat felt that I needed to redistribute my wealth to him. Except in the end he didn’t end up stealing from me, he ended up stealing from those companies. I’m sure this little piss-ant feels that he was just robbing from the rich to give to himself, never mind that the costs of his theft actually gets distributed into higher costs for everyone else.
So yeah, I’m in need of some recoil therapy. Luckily I can blow some stuff up this weekend with Joe and Sunday I’ll be able to shoot the stages I’ve designed. It should be fun, but damn I’m still since I’ve got to redo many of my online recurring transactions now. At least I have a list of which placed I need to go fix.
At least I got my money back, because this would definitely be me if I got a bead on the parties responsible if I didn’t.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
When you end up in a rush is usually when you do something wrong. Last Thursday night, before leaving on my current trip, I spent a bunch of time cleaning a gift for the in-laws. I cleaned it from top to bottom after test firing it. After I was done I did a full functional test to make sure everything still was working correctly. Packed it up and all was well.
While I was busy doing all of that I decided that I should clean my XD. It hadn’t been cleaned since April and it was looking pretty crusty. While cleaning it was about 85 degrees in my shop, I was sweating like mad and mid cleaning my latex gloves bit the bucket. I couldn’t get a new set on so I just gave up and decided to soak my hands in chemicals. I hate doing that because many of them will absorb through the skin but the biggest dangers were already done.
I quickly finished scrubbing and cleaning the weapon. Put it back together and in a rush to go pack other stuff for the trip I missed a step. I put all the parts back in. I didn’t break anything either. What I didn’t do though was dry fire it before reloading. Normally I test every part individually before loading the weapon and holstering it. Verify all the safeties, make sure all feels well and nothing is out-of-place. Since I decided I didn’t need to test all the safeties I didn’t bother with functional testing. Well there was one test I really still should have performed but didn’t.
I pulled out the gun and unloaded it today for the mother-in-law to take a look at. She squeezed the trigger but nothing happened. She hands it to me and I say, “there’s the slack and it should break about here.” Nope trigger is total mush. I promptly start trying to remove the slide. There is one problem though, you have to drop the striker to remove the slide and barrel assembly. I start playing with the slide and notice that the striker will fall if I slightly pull the slide back out of battery.
I promptly look inside and see something that is wrong. There is a small piece that normally springs up and down but it is fixed in place and isn’t moving. I pull apart the striker mechanism and find exactly what happened. The spring fell over and was not providing positive movement to the piece to allow the safety to disengage correctly. Fix the spring reassemble and promptly dry fire. Works just like it should now.
So here’s the lesson. Always functional test the most important aspect of the firearm after being reassembled. My new rule is if it comes apart even in the most basic way, in the XD for example I remove the slide, it gets dry fired immediately when it has been reassembled. I had a gun that was useless the past couple of days, not freaking cool, but it was my own damn fault. Learn from my mistake.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
I am currently on “vacation” visiting friends and family. Yesterday I met up with Phil and Scott from RNS down on the Tacoma water front.
Phil’s awesomeness was just radiating from him while at the restaurant. It was a fun evening and was nice to catch up with friends I usually only see once a year at Boomershoot.
Earlier in the day though the wife and I went to Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium for the first time since our wedding.
I wasn’t smiling because well, I don’t normally smile. Don’t know why, but I just don’t smile that much if it’s a staged photo. We paid a visit to where we had our reception too.
The Gibbons were out just the same as they were during our reception. Just as adorable too.
We also found the Sumatran Tiger that was on display at our reception.
Here she is now, evidently she is most likely pregnant too.
And there’s even more cubs at the zoo, here’s baby snow leopards.
Yes, they were just as adorable in person. There were a couple other cats that were adorable but I only have pictures. If you have kittens, that’s exactly how they were acting but they were bigger. I wanted to play with the kitty cats. We did however stumble across a red wolf puppy.
Yes I know all of these are wonderful cell phone quality, I didn’t feel like lugging around my SLR and backpack. Yes I had an urge to shoot the little bastards. The only good wolf is a dead wolf however I consider a zoo a sanctuary and given they are nothing like the Timber Wolf or Grey Wolf. That brings me to a story of someone who needed blunt force trauma to the face.
You see there are peacocks that run around the zoo uncaged. They’re beautiful with gorgeous tails. When we finally ran across one it looked like it was shedding its feathers, but still seemed odd. As TMW and I were talking a couple overheard us and told us that a woman was chasing the peacock earlier and stepping on its tail to get its feathers. Yeah I was filled with rage when I heard that. While I am not fond of some animals in the wild, I understand their role and don’t want to drive their extinction. That said, something like that just disturbs me on so many levels.
So yeah, I’m going to be visiting other friends all this week and will blog when I can.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
I will state this up front. TMW and I received a free pair of ESS frames and lenses with no attachment to them. They were ours to keep and use. I have worn them constantly since I got them at Boomershoot this year. So while I did get free stuff, there was no request for a review, and I was not compensated for this. In other words, the following is entirely my opinion and no one paid for any of this so the FCC can go suck an egg.
My previous eyewear was no slouch however they left something to be desired, doubly so since I was spending considerably more time with ear muffs on. For those who haven’t spent all day wearing hearing protection while wearing sunglasses, let me enlighten you. There is the frame which runs back behind the ear. Your ear muffs sit around your ear attempting to create a tight seal.
Two things happen because of that frame. Extra pressure is applied from the muffs pinching your head between your frames and a decrease in noise reduction from the hearing protection. Enter ESS’s Cross Series.
I have two of the three frames, the Cross Bow and Suppressor.
The Cross Bow frames are your everyday frames and I have worn them every day since Boomershoot and they have been amazingly comfortable. The rubber pads maintain the comfort while also helping to keep them from sliding off your head. I also use these when working in the shop doing things that don’t require hearing protection. That includes cleaning the toys, I just swap out for the clear lenses.
Every part of the series in individually replaceable. Scratch or destroy the lenses order new ones. Break a frame, order a new frame. Break a nose piece, order a replacement.
Now the Suppressor frames are why I fell in love with ESS, plus a little story I’ll get to here in a minute.
Notice how thin the ear pieces are on the frame? They are unbelievably flexible and well are wide and thin to help distribute pressure. Not only do they solve the pressure problem but the fact they are thin helps hearing protection form a good seal around your head. In other words they solve the two main problems you find with most safety glasses. The visibility while shooting with the copper lenses I might add is amazing. The rear strap effectively keeps the glasses in place while you’re not wearing hearing protection.
The comfort and visibility are quite nice. With most glasses if there is a gap anywhere I can see out, I will most often find myself using that to look, completely defeating the purpose of the safety glasses. These however I just look as I normally would, my peripheral vision remains while I cannot effectively look through gaps to try to skirt around the glasses.
These have become my go to glasses for yard and shop work where I need hearing protection. Even my father-in-law, who is a machinist, is going to be ordering a prescription set that he can use at work. My mother-in-law is getting a pair as well. I’m going to get a complete kit to toss in my range bag so I know I’ll always have a set with me when going to the range.
As a FYI for how much use these things see for those who haven’t met me, I am actually unbelievably anal when it comes to eye and hearing protection around tools and equipment. I know growing up with many 4th of July’s I’m sure I’ve done a decent amount of hearing loss. To top that off I enjoy my weekends by spending time shooting guns and blowing up explosives. I regularly wear plugs on top of wearing muffs specifically because I’m around such loud impulses.
It has become such a habit I wear hearing protection if I’m going to be around loud noises, it’s just easier to wear eye and ear protection than to buy hearing aids and hope the doc can repair my eyes… which brings us around to the story.
The Story
You see, your humble host has spent so much of his time around explosives, entertainingly close is entertaining for me. For many it’s terrifying but I’ve been around explosives enough that as long as you remember the cardinal rule I’m not that afraid. In other words a box on the ground with nothing between me and it doesn’t cause me discomfort being close.
Sometimes you just end up turning your clothes a nice shade of brown. So now you’re asking yourself, where is all this going? Well Tango got my earlier entertainingly close excursion on video.
Now, towards the end, the video doesn’t show it too well but I was easily with 10-15 feet of a bunch of those boomers. If you don’t understand how close that was, let me say, I should have been wearing my Carhartt jacket. What do you mean I hear you ask, well let me show you.
That wasn’t from the mud, that was from the ammonium nitrate prills. There were more injuries on the other side of my arm too. That peppering occurred during one of the last couple shots. So at this point I found my limit of how close I was willing to go.
But you see, your humble scribe often acts before the page fault has allowed all the necessary data to be returned to memory for the correct decision. Even more than that, often the page fault doesn’t occur until after the fact where the event itself causes the page fault.
Can you guess what happened? I’m sure you can, especially since this is a post about eyewear. Well let me set the stage for you.
It is the last day of Boomershoot. Everyone but staff has left and we are rounding up piles upon piles upon piles of explosives. There were so many explosives I said, and I quote,
You know something is horribly wrong with you when you’re finding it tedious and exhausting to set off hundreds of explosives.
If you’ve never been there for staff cleanup and haven’t worked the days preceding the event you just can’t really fully understand it. I seriously don’t know how Joe does it but I’m grateful that he does.
So I’m tired and exhausted and we’re tailing down the end of a very long week.
Continuing on though, we have to look for boxes of Boomerite that may have skipped over the berm, while walking behind the berm I discover an ant hill that is by no means small. Well to demolish said ant hill we place a couple of targets of Boomerite on it. I place them in such a manner as to give me the maximum distance without placing anything between me and it.
We start shooting explosives. We shoot more explosives. We shoot three waves of explosives most of us extremely tired and exhausted by the end. We call the range safe after the “last” boomers go off and we start cleaning up. Then as someone walks behind the berm, “TMM, we forgot the ant hill.”
Frick, Joe is already up on the hill in the direction I was originally going to shoot, well I only have one other option. I move about 120 degrees to give myself maximum distance from the target. Without realizing it though I have now inadvertently broken the cardinal rule. Parts of the anthill are between me and some of the explosive.
I squeeze off that round and immediately I’m encased in a cloud and my left hand, arm, and face feel like they’re on fire. It freaking hurts. I start falling off the top of the berm and immediately drop the muzzle and flip the safety on. Tango is behind me and I take off the rifle and hand it to him asking him to clear to make life easier. I probably could have cleared it, but at the time I was wanting to do it one-handed. One handed hand off is easier. I didn’t need to compound this with shooting myself or someone else.
Again for those who don’t know, my pain scale is screwed up compared to most people. There is a reason for that and I have done serious damage and then showed up to the doctor 2 day’s later with him saying “WTF!?”. I would take my pocket knife and dig out glass from my arm and hand when I would find it. In this case my arm felt like I had just take it to a belt sander with 120 grit on it.
I had a high number of pain exceptions and overloaded the system. It took a visual inspection to clear the faults. My brain registered a high number of impacts, thankfully only a few broke the skin, the two most notably.
You can’t really see it but the spot I’m bleeding out of on my knuckle is a ripped open scar, (it’s bigger now), and my lower arm and hand are both bright red from being peppered with smaller spots bleeding. The hit below my left eye was a solid hit, I washed some crap out of it when we got back to the hotel. Inspection of the ant hill after the fact indicated that I was also blowing up a stump. Also not visible in the picture was dirt and marks from larger debris that had obviously impacted the glasses.
I am extremely grateful I wasn’t any closer, given the few major cuts I had along with the peppering of bleeding I was on the hairy edge.
At the time I wasn’t so sure I was going to document my stupidity. I realized though now it actually is one of those things that speaks well for ESS. The glasses didn’t really end up with any pitting and they did their job. I will say I wish I had been at least wearing my flight gloves to save my hand.
So in closing a big thank you to the guys at ESS, especially Steve Dondero and Ari Drougas from ESS.
*Also I forgot to mention, there were a couple of folks shooting next to Shelly and Anette, and thus next to the ESS guys, who were shooting without eye protection. Yeah the ESS guys tried to give them free suppressors to wear but they turned them down. I’m of the mind that an extra 50 bucks in my pocket won’t make a lick if difference if the time comes my glasses have to do their job. In fact, I’ll probably wish I had sprung for the more expensive set.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
Where you want to work on something but at the same time you want to go work on a bunch of other stuff.
Yeah today is one of those days. On the upshot I did discover a new theme I prefer for the site while working on the pet project. I’m doing some other stuff around the house in preparation for some stuff going on later this month.
I’ve also been working finishing up my stage designs for August. I’ve got two more stages to go. I did however make one stage that was an adventure into minimalism, making due with less. It’s a short stage, but should be fun never the less. I have discovered though it takes practice to think about Revolver, L-10, Limited, and Open and coming up with different solutions for each. Even more so trying to avoid the wide open hole to let someone just completely wreck the stage.
I need to shoot more stages though to help the creativity. I would go work nationals as staff. I think I’ll plan on trying to do that next year.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
I had something thought up for tonight. Got home and dove into two other projects. One will be unveiled probably tomorrow or Sunday. Another early next week. Also spent some time applying some polish.
I’m headed down to the local gun shop tomorrow. It looks like there may be some industry reps there I can talk to. There’s a few things lately I’m interested in, but not enough to empty my wallet yet. So I will listen to my friends Linoge, JayG, and Robb and just ask.
I’ve also got to finish up my USPSA stages so they can go in for review. One is done and wrapped up, once they’re all completed though I’ll do a post on them all. I’ve also started and am working on the finer points of the frame that goes with this. I keep meaning to work on it more, but I keep getting distracted. Hopefully I’ll have some time in the next couple weeks to really spend on it.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
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