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We Should All Have Security

May 9, 2018 / / 0 Comments

At the NRA Annual Meeting, there was a new group of protesters led by actress Alyssa Milano. They don’t want guns in private hands to prevent “gun deaths”. Of course, she has no problem with all guns in private hands, particularly when they’re protecting her.

My issue with these people who demand we give up our weapons is that they can’t connect their need for security with the same need by others. I will be the first to admit that high profile people like actresses and politicians have a need for armed security teams. They face unique threats that I don’t. However, that does not mean I do not face just as lethal threats in my environment.

I want Ms. Milano to be able to have the security she needs to protect her from the threats she faces. I just wish she would understand that I should be able to have the means to protect my life from the threats I face.

Monday Gunday News

May 7, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Springfield Army tells Dick’s to fuck off. And so does the NSSF. It looks like the final straw was Dick’s hiring anti-gun lobbyists. I’m surprised more of the firearms companies haven’t done this, particularly after how Dick’s fucked over Troy after Sandy Hook. Maybe some will follow SA’s lead.

Hillsborough County extends waiting period to five days to do something. Can a waiting period save lives? Maybe for suicides, which to be fair, is the biggest segment of “gun deaths”. For criminals and mass murderers (but I repeat myself), this won’t stop a damn thing. What I find annoying is that a Republican dominated council in a Republican heavy county let this pass without a fight.

NRA insurance banned in New York. The anti-gunners demand we carry liability insurance and then attack any firm that would offer it. That’s a feature, not a bug.

Democratic Congress critter wants to spend $15 billion in paying off gun owners to turn in their Evil Black Rifles And then go after those who didn’t take the bribe. I half-wonder if these politicians make these proposals knowing that they have now choice in passing. Just to virtue signal without having to worry about messy details like coming up with the funding or sending police after gun owners.

NRA Annual Meeting in Dallas:

Trump tried to make gun owners forget his administration is not only not fulfilling the promises made on the campaign trail (cough, national reciprocity, cough), but actively working against us.

A restaurant takes the opportunity to covertly virtue signal.

Gun control crowds smaller than usual. No sign of the Parkland kids or any of the usual heavy hitters.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

May 4, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I was listening to this week’s episode of War College, and they were discussing a new book Strategy Strikes Back. The authors were discussing how to use Star Wars as a lingua franca to discuss military matters. The point that was being made is that Star Wars is a multi-national, multi-cultural, and multi-generational experience that can act as a bridge. Particularly when talking to someone outside of one’s normal culture or even sub-culture.

I found this to be of particular interest as I’m a part of several sub-cultures that live outside mainstream culture. And even those sub-cultures don’t talk well to each other, such as taking atheism to a regular person in the gun culture or talking guns to other atheists. Or talking libertarianism to either. At least with Star Wars there are some touchstones that provide shared frames of reference.

At least it would be nice not to be talking past someone.

And yes, the post title is from a Star Trek TNG episode

One *Million* Glocks

May 3, 2018 / / 0 Comments

One of the big stories in advance of the 2018 NRA Annual Meeting is that Glock is celebrating its one millionth Glock 43 and is giving it away. That is a milestone for Glock and a pistol that’s been on the market for about three years. Here’s the fun part.

For years, the figure bandied about is 300 million guns in private hands. That figure is from before the sun setting of the AWB, much less the explosion from the Obama election. Let’s just go from the end of the AWB in 2004. That’s almost fifteen years. Exactly how many millions more firearms have been produced and sold in those fifteen years?

I’ve heard some estimate America is passed the billion mark, but I think that’s too high. That would require almost 47 million guns per year. My personal estimate is that we’ve doubled the number of guns in private hands.

And the anti-gun folks really think they can peacefully confiscate six hundred million guns?

Ten Albums

May 1, 2018 / / 0 Comments

There’s a meme going around on the Boof of Faces to list the ten albums that had the biggest impact on your musical tastes. The concept demands a blog post, and I asked The Brother to do the same.

Derek

I’m not going to list these in any particular order other than as they come to mind. Some of these may surprise you, considering I run a regular feature called Metal Tuesday.

Derek's Album Collage

  1. Quiet Riot – Metal Health – This was my first non-kids album. It also started my path down to heavy metal. I’m sure my parents regretted giving it to me for a long time.
  2. Sabaton – Attero Dominatus – This was the album that really got me into Sabaton. Particularly, the song “Back In Control.” I remember sitting up and thinking Holy shit, he’s singing about the Falklands War. And I got hooked.
  3. Metallica – Master of Puppets – One of my three introductory albums into metal. This is the one that showed me the difference between hard rock and metal. It also introduced me to how fast metal could be played.
  4. Blind Guardian – Imaginations From the Other Side – So, for the better part of a decade, I didn’t explore metal as much as listen to what I already had. To those who know me IRL, it would be unsurprising to find out that this period coincided with the time I was involved with my ex-wife. Once she was out of my life, I asked The Brother for a collection of metal to get me back into the game. This was the album that brought me back into metal’s loving arms like a sledgehammer to the face.
  5. Garth Brooks – Ropin’ The Wind – This album brought me into country music. I like Garth’s early albums, particularly his way with storytelling in the lyrics. This album would bring me over to Chris LeDoux and several other master storytellers in the country genre.
  6. Classical Thunder – It might have been a cheesy collection sold on TV, but these reignited my interest in classical music. Which in turn, fed my interest in metal. Which brought me back to more classical music. Endless recursions.
  7. Manowar – Fighting the World – Second of my three introductory metal. This one brought me into power metal and the genre’s use of fantasy. Yes, I know Dio did it first. Manowar was my first exposure, and it hit at the right time of when I was playing fantasy RPGs with my best friends at the time.
  8. Seven Kingdoms – Seven Kingdoms – This album started me on the search for female-fronted metal. That led into Amaranthe, Delain, Epica, Dark Princess, Within Temptation, and of course, Nightwish.
  9. Iron Maiden – Powerslave – The last of my three introductory metal albums, and the first Iron Maiden album I listened to. Iron Maiden was the first band that fused storytelling and great metal music.
  10. Mortal Kombat the Album – This is not the soundtrack for the horrible movie, but rather a collection of techno songs for the main characters in the original game. This was something I found in a record store and picked it up. It’s on the list because it introduced me to techno. More importantly, it helped me discover how useful techno is to writing action scenes.

The Brother

My dear brother brought this idea to me and I agreed to it. I am trying to do this chronologically, but I am probably messing things up. These albums are also (usually) the ones that brought me into a genre, but are not necessarily my favorite albums in those genres.

The Brother's Covers

  1. Metallica – Master of Puppets – This is the first heavy metal album I remember hearing and started me on my love of heavy metal.
  2. Morbid Angel – Domination – The album that made me love death metal. I had heard other death metal before, but this is the album that made it click.
  3. Old Man’s Child – The Pagan Prosperity – Like Domination before it, this was my breakthrough into black metal.
  4. Chris Brooks – The Master Plan – I don’t know where this album came from, but it ignited a love of instrumental rock/metal.
  5. In Flames – Whoracle – This was my intro to what is now my favorite genre of music, melodic death metal.
  6. Disillusion – Back to Time of Splendor – This is my favorite album.
  7. Insomnium – in the Halls of Awaiting – The first album I heard of my favorite band (and yes, my favorite band did not make my favorite album).
  8. Clutch – Blast Tyrant – This brought me back to straight-up, kick-you-in-the-teeth, rock music.
  9. Saxon Shore – The Exquisite Death of Saxon Shore – While I know this wasn’t my first post-rock album, this is the first one I remember really getting into.
  10. Allegaeon – Fragments of Form and Function – Finally, and most recently, the album that brought me into technical death metal.

A Year of Loss

April 30, 2018 / / 3 Comments

A year ago, I decided to try and lose weight. Again. This wasn’t the first time that I’ve done a diet, only to fall off the wagon a few months later. Still, I was tired of having my clothes feeling tight, not being able to get anything from anyplace but a big and tall shop, and I was worried about my health. Penn Jillette stated on his podcast that he realized he was having to take so many drugs to compensate for the fact he was overweight. That hit home with me. I didn’t want to have all the health problems with my family history if I could help it.

Somehow – somehow – I have managed to keep the willpower to stay on track for a full year. Everything I’ve read led me to the most basic rule of weight loss – “Consume less calories than your body burns.” So, I fired up a calorie counting app I’d used before and started my budget. This time I followed some rules.

  1. Track everything. Even on days when I knew I was going over, I still put everything in my food log.

  2. Manage budget on a weekly basis. I strove to keep under every day, but my main goal was to be under my calorie budget for the week. If I knew I was going to have a party or a team lunch, I made sure to “save up” extra calories earlier in the week.

  3. Weigh myself once a week. – Before I’d weighed myself daily, but there’s too much fluctuation on a daily basis. It’s discouraging. Weekly weigh-ins gave me a better idea of how I was actually doing.

  4. Enlist help. – The Brother was nice enough to help me with this, which was a good thing because he’s the one I do my grocery shopping with. Having someone asking me if I really wanted that package of cookies or chips helped when I was sitting on the fence.

  5. Accept defeats. – There have been weeks when the scale went up instead of down. I needed to understand that those were tactical defeats, not strategic ones. Losing a battle does not lose the war.

  6. Have short and long term goals. – My first short term goal was just to hit 300 lbs. That took seven months to hit, but it was a lot easier to work to that then the 200 lbs. long term goal. I need both to keep my motivation up.

  7. Celebrate wins. – When I hit one of my short-term goals, I have a “bye” week. It’s a week I can eat as I want without worrying about calories. I still track everything I eat during those weeks.

  8. When in doubt, say no. – This was one of the harder lessons, as I love to eat. If I had a doubt whether I should eat something or not, I had to make my default setting as “no.”

  9. Understand that this is a way of life. – This lesson came much later from an episode of Squirrel Report. If I want to keep the weight off, I’m going to be counting calories for the rest of my life. Even when I hit my long term goal, I will still need to count calories.

So, how effective has this been for me?

Starting weight: 355 lbs.
Current weight: 261 lbs.

Starting pant size: 56
Current pant size: 44

Want. So Much Want.

April 27, 2018 / / 0 Comments

So, in case you were unaware, I have recently paid off my car loan. That freed up some cash in my budget. Being a believer in the Dave Ramsey system, that additional cash is probably going back into savings. Still, there are some guns I saw during my latest excursion to the gun store.

  1. S&W M&P 2.0 – I want the full size and the compact to replace my current carry guns. The fact that I’d only need to invest in new 15-round mags for the compact and a couple of new holsters is also high on my list of pluses.
  2. Bond Arms Bullpup (aka Boberg) – I just want this as a gadget thing. And for some people to think I work for HK when I load the mags. (Non-gunnies, ask the gunnies for clarification)
  3. A higher end EBR – I’ve got a very basic S&W M&P-15, and I’d like something a bit better. Honestly, I’m half tempted to find an FS2000. I love the look and feel of those. Failing that, I’m thinking hard on a Sig MCX or a Tavor.
  4. A good and pretty 1911 – I love the look of 1911’s. I wouldn’t mind one as a BBQ gun. Probably need a pretty holster to go with it.
  5. A good stainless steel full size .357 revolver – I’ve got a decent snubby, but I’d like a full-size one. Probably a GP-100, but I wouldn’t say no to S&W.
  6. A good lever action in .357 magnum – Because everyone should have a cowboy rifle.

There’s a bunch more I want. I’d love one of Ruger’s new pistol carbines, but I wish either Ruger or someone else would make a magwell that would take M&P magazines.

Ah well. Dreaming is easy. Budgets are hard.

Florida Baseball Sucks, So Let’s Keep Propping It Up

April 26, 2018 / / 0 Comments

The local fish wrapper decided it needed to reply to a recent WSJ article on how professional baseball sucks in Florida. Full disclosure: I’ve been to exactly one Rays game, and I’m not a huge fan of baseball to begin with. So, why am I writing about this?

Because the same Tampa Bay Rays that is being sued by the players union for not spending enough on the team is busily trying to get the local governments to pony up for a new stadium down in Ybor.(That’s pronounced EE-Bore for those of you not familiar with Tampa.)

That’s my tax dollars going to prop up a team that has trouble selling seats already. That’s my tax dollars going to yet another public stadium with false promises of it being a boon to the area economy.

Bread and circuses.