Author: Derek
January Anime Recommendations
My goal this year is to provide four anime recommendations each month.
Finally Shooting My Newest Gun
Back in late March / early April, I picked up a Smith and Wesson FPC. Because I’ve wanted a PCC that will take my M&P mags. I wasn’t too fond of the form factor as compared to an AR-pattern PCC. But it was a PCC that took my mags and priced at less than a grand. I couldn’t pass that up.
Life happened, and I wasn’t able to take the new gun out to the range until last weekend. Finding a range around Ward Manor is… difficult. We have some, but let’s just say many are very old-school. BIL and I went to one nearby called Bullseye. One of my former bosses raved about it, so we decided to go. It’s pistol only. More to the point, it’s pistol caliber only. They didn’t blink at my FPC.
Now, on to the shooting review. The gun handled well. The trigger was just like my sidearm with a pretty distinct reset. The damn thing ate all the ammo I fed it, including my IMI “problem child” 9mm. Based on what David from ACP said, I was a little concerned about the FPC feeding from my first gen mags. No issues. The only quibble I had with the gun was what would be the slide release on a pistol. It’s extremely stiff to the point it was easier to just run the charging handle instead. To be fair, I have the same issue on my sidearm and end up sling-shotting the slide.
My other issue was the Sig Romeo sight. The dot kept going all over the damn place. I don’t know if it was me or the sight, but I’ve been hearing about issues with Sig red dots. I’m going to re-zero the thing and try again. If not, I’ll swap it out for something else.
Clearing Out the Tabs
I had a bunch of links collected that I haven’t had a chance to put into Monday Links. Since this week’s Monday post was the 2023 wrap-up, I decided to just clear out all my tabs.
Per tradition, we clear out all of the Reason links.
First is an examination of Colorado removing Trump from the primary ballot. For the record, I think this was a bad move – mostly because there’s been no conviction of incitement or related charge. And that’s not even touching my issues with how we do primaries.
Let’s continue with populist leaders, and a rebuttal of Tucker Carlson’s attack on Dollar Stores.
Florida’s leaders are becoming more and more hostiles to immigrants.
Tens of thousands of students haven’t returned to public school since the shutdowns. And no one knows where they all went.
Magazine bans hurt those who want to defend themselves. This is a talking point that needs to be rebutted, as it seems like a reasonable issue to most non-gun folks.
The St. Louis attorney who used an old-school AR to fend off protestors in his gated community can’t get his guns returned. The dude’s an asshole, but he did nothing wrong – at least legally speaking. This is one of those fears that if the police get our guns for any reason – evidence, malicious red-flagging, etc – we will never get them back.
A case for letting foreign-flagged airlines service domestic air routes.
This is a personal issue. Who created the Cuban sandwich? How can anyone take Miami’s claim seriously. They don’t even use yellow rice for their arroz con pollo.
Now for some Ground News compilations.
There was a record drop in homicides for 2023. The article cites success of gun control. Um, no. This is regression to the mean after the insanity of 2020 and the aftershocks.
It looks like Steamboat Willy will enter public domain.
NASA demonstrates how to use a laser for extremely long distance streaming. By sending a cat video nineteen million miles.
Now on to the rest of the links in no particular order.
Gunsamerica has a checklist on what to look for in trainers to avoid bullshido. I’m pretty sure this is a h/t to Tam.
Bloomberg reports that the FTC has banned Rite Aid from using AI-powered facial recognition on customers. Apparently, there were a lot of folks falsely flagged as potential shoplifters.
Techcrunch has an article on music creation coming to Microsoft’s Co-Pilot.
The Intercept has a profile on FBI and NYPD entrapping someone they called a terrorist. This kind of shit is how you get degradation of trust.
War is Boring takes a look at how the crash of a V-22 Osprey could endanger the Army’s new tiltrotor.
Finally, The Firearms Blog discusses the passing of Gaston Glock.
Metal Tuesday B-Side – Stratovarious – Eagleheart
I’m trying something new for 2024 with these B-Sides. Part of it is clearing out this huge backlog of songs I have on my Metal Tuesday list. So, we will have our normal Metal Tuesday plus a bonus “B-Side” post.
2023 Ward Family Wrap Up
It’s been another year of loss, gain, and change at Ward Manor – with a smattering of other notable events.
The losses. The Wife’s father passed back in March. In many ways, we’d already said goodbye when he went into the memory care facility. Still, there is a world of difference between saying goodbye to the memory of a person and saying the final goodbye.
On a much more minor note, we also lost the Ward Wagon for the better part of July after I was rear-ended at the end of June.
The gains. In June we welcomed the newest member of the Ward Clowder, Boo. He assimilated into the rest of the cats faster than any other previous. If we could stop him from jumping up on the counters.
Gun-wise, I added a Smith & Wesson FPC to the armory. Due to life getting it in the way, I didn’t get to take it to a range until the last day of the year. This is also where I found the Sig red dot I bought for it wasn’t doing what I wanted. Like holding a zero.
We gained some flexibility in our budget when we paid off the Ward Wagon.
The Wife gained a trophy for winning the Area Humorous Speech Contest.
I gained a lightsaber when The Wife and I went over to Orlando for my first concert since probably 2019.
House-wise, this was a year for doing upgrades. We added a retractable screen door – which The Wife and MIL have put to good use almost all of December – as well as new glass doors to our master shower. Also, we upgraded the robot vacuums. Having the self-evacuating ones is really nice. The Wife was really happy when we upgraded to a double-oven range – particularly during some of our big family dinners. I was really happy when I upgraded the monitors on my personal and work computers. We also upgraded the dishwasher – which leaves the fridge as the last original appliance since we moved into Ward Manor. I’m not sure I would consider our new main television as an upgrade, as it was more of a replacement that happened to be a better model.
Changes. The biggest change around Ward Manor was my accepting a new position at my day job. It was a promotion, but it meant leaving a position that I held for thirteen years. It also meant leaving a team that I helped found a decade ago. It also means having to learn a lot on the fly, which I will admit, hasn’t been the most fun I’ve had this year. It also meant a couple of work-related trips, which was something I hadn’t done in quite a while. At least I got to meet a bunch of folks that I only knew virtually – as well as see some people I hadn’t seen in person since the pandemic.
Familywise, my nephew graduated high school. When it comes to kids, it’s always long days and short years. Those long days were apparent when we had our great niece while The Wife’s niece transitioned into a new work-from-home position. On the blog side, I introduced anime recommendations. I’ve been getting back into anime for the last year or so, and it’s good to share some of what I’m finding.
There were some notable anniversaries this year. First, it was the twenty-year anniversary of my father’s passing. Which was an odd coincidence when we laid my grandmother’s (his mother’s) ashes in the same family plot around the same time he passed. Second, it was the fifteenth anniversary of the blog. It’s been interesting to look back through the archives and see how it evolved over that time. Speaking of blog-related anniversaries, it was also the tenth anniversary of Metal Tuesdays. Perhaps the happiest anniversary was the five-year anniversary of asking The Wife to marry me.