Snowflakes in Hell

Finally,  I managed to wrangle myself a pin for shooting ten chickens in a row.  I shot a 35 out of 40 overall for that set.  I came very close to getting a pin for rams, but by the time I was on the tenth ram, my pulse rate was so high I could see my heart beat moving the rifle, and I missed.  Damn!  But hey, I’ll take my chicken pin.  Turns out I don’t do well when I don’t eat before going to the match.  I do better when I eat first.  I’ll have to remember that.

It looks like county executives are eager to find out exactly where Mike Bloomberg and his cohorts buy their Bill of Rights toilet paper. Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano has started his own anti-gun coalition so they don’t feel so left out.

From GeekWitha.45:

The case of Fred illustrates for us, in living color, just exactly how far superior ideas go in the 21st century: They’re not worth much without an infrastructure to back them up.

In fact, as much as we want to believe otherwise, the man with the inferior ideas and superior infrastructure wins, and this pisses us off, it supremely offends our sensibilities.

This is one of the better observations of the situation out there that I’ve seen.  Read the whole thing.  There’s a lot of analogies that can be drawn between politics and the workplace, because the workplace is really a microcosm of how people react to each other in a society.  Fred was the manager everyone likes, has great ideas, but who could never get any of them done.  We all have seen executive types with the power suit and nice hair who lie, cheat and backstab their way to the top (Romney), and the quirky engineer who spends his days in his office wasting his time on crackpot designs that he always claims will save the company (Paul).  Then there’s the folks that just bully their way to the top by sheer force of personality (McCain), and who drive everyone batty because they don’t think they can do any wrong.

If I ever ask Bitter to marry me, I have found the perfect engagement ring!

Sorry for the light posting today. Too much having to earn a living going on this week, and tonight is my weekly silhouette match. I thought, though, I’d give an update on some things I’ve learned with respect to reloading:

1. You do yourself no favors with a cheap digital scale. They don’t hold zero well enough, and tend to measure underweight if you trickle powder into one. Stick with a quality beam balance or spend the money for a decent digital scale.
2. Case tumblers can really shine your brass up nice, to the point they look better once fired than new cases look. At first I thought a high sheen on the brass was merely aesthetic, but it actually makes your brass remarkably easy to spot and recover.
3. Powder dispensers don’t seem to measure all that consistently if you’re thinking about loading up to the maximum recommended powder load. I’ve had best results setting the dispenser to throw a bit under and then trickling up to weight.
4. A powder trickle is well worth the money.
5. My Alpha Chrony is very finicky on a low light range, and often can’t see small bullets like .223 and even 6.8 SPC sometimes. It never seems to have trouble seeing .30-06.

The main thing I’ll be looking to improve is my reloading speed. It can take me a few evenings to reload as much ammo as I can shoot in an hour at the range. Nonetheless, it’s a very fun winter time distraction, much the same way brewing beer is, except reloading isn’t quite as detrimental to health, well, except for the lead exposure risk.

Kim asks the question, Ahab has his answer.  Here’s mine:

I think overall, the country is more conservative than progressive.  But however any one of us defines conservatism, yes, we probably are a minority.  Don’t fear, because here’s the catch: everyone’s political views are a minority political view.

Gun owners are minority in this country, and gun owners who care strongly about gun rights are an even smaller minority.  Gun owners who care about gun rights enough to get as involved as many of us are, are a very small minority.  But you know what?  That’s the case of any special interest.   That’s why we form into associations, coalitions, and political parties in order to advance our causes, and why so often the compromises and vying interests along the political path often produce results and candidates that are less than we would desire.