The guns from Don arrived at FG&G and I went and picked them up:

The OSU era guns are safe from his sister in law wanting to "turn everything over to the police". Vareck's 44 is still there, but since I don't think Vareck is around at the moment to go get it, there is a chance it will be lost. It's in horrible shape though, rusted and in dire need of a refinishing.

Friday we went to the damn "only open 9-5 M-F" tile store to pick some tile for the shower re-do estimate. There are lots of cool things out there, but we can't make it look too modern or it will not match with the 'slightly more modern than country' style of the house. It's hard to see in the picture but these grey/black tiles are slightly distressed which matches the slightly distressed cabinetry and black granite vanity top. I hate the distressed look, but it's what is there and I don't hate it enough to want to pay to replace it.

Saturday we went up to Forest City (outside Asheville) to visit Jason and Hogan and check out their house. They're close to the Tryon International Equestrian Center which is where some big horse thing is happening next year and the wife is trying to get tickets to already. There was some eventing going on for us to watch as we walked around, and about 20 over priced little stores selling horse crap. At least the cross country was interesting.

Just up the street from their house is a new Facebook data center that's pretty damned impressive. Hard to capture the scale in the photos, but if you see the number of size of those HVAC units on the roof it gives some sense of it.

Got home on Sunday to a dead freezer. Wee. Saved most the stuff in dad's garage freezer, but I can't figure out what's wrong with ours. From the tests I can find on the net, it's not the start capacitor nor does it appear to be the compressor. The flowchart says it's rarely the compressor, but I can't see what else is there, the control circuits are so primitive (yet expensive, of course).

Monday we went to the range to test the SKS and the P85. Apparently I'm the only one without a commie rifle of some sort, Sean and Jason each had AKs they've had in the closet for years. Huh. I'm at least sorta part of the crowd now.

The P85 was... interesting. It's way too big, and the frame cuts into my thumb knuckle and hurts after only a few shots but it's plenty accurate and the single action trigger is light. I went 12 for 12 on the plate rack with the first mag out of it. Went downhill from there because it was hurting and making me flinch, but no one else had that problem. I'm delicate I guess. My 1911 used to do that too before I had the edge of the frame radiused, and the glocks don't do it which is probably why I favour them.

Last activity of the holiday was to swap the stoves back. The woman hates the new one (how it cooks, the smaller cook top, fact she burned herself on the lower oven door when I slammed shut on her, etc). Sean helped me move them around and it was easy to undo the granite mods required for the new one. She's back to "happy", or as much as she can be with an electric stove.

These strange glyphs that showed up in the yard today make me think the cable guys are getting close.

Snake day? I found a snake skin outside the EBC at work, and the woman found one outside my office window at home (and brought it in so I could see it but I haven't had a chance to, mostly because I forgot last night when I got home late).

Solved the fridge problem...

Should get here next Friday unless there are delays due to the hurricane.

Guys are making progress on the cable install. Ran line all the way to the pedestal in the yard before moving on down the road. They've probably got a few weeks worth of work ahead of them doing the rest of the street.

Started pulling some of the deck boards up to see what's going on under there, and as expected we found some rot. The lower deck is fine, it's up against the bricks but the upper deck was just pushed against the siding and it's rotted the siding away. To fix this mess we're going to cut away the lower portion of the siding, then fill the gap with foam, then add a 'kick board' along the bottom edge with some metal flashing and caulk. The deck will look like it's trimmed out but as long as we do it along the whole thing it should look fine. That's way easier and cheaper than trying to replace all the siding only to have it hidden below the deck again.

Today I used the laser equipped magic saw to build a couple of shelves that go up on top of my existing little shelf thingy. It's kinda ghetto, but does match the unfinished top to my workbench. Plans + pallets + magic saw = shelf. Simple.

+ + =

Damn goats have figured out how to turn on the water. Little bastards. Going to have to put a chain/latch on it now.

Stopped by the range on the way back from Pinehurst today and did amazingly shitty the whole time. Low/left constantly, except with my off hand in which it's low/right. It's not the freakin' gun, it's me. Slow I can do fine, but any sort of speed leads to horrible inaccuracy. Probably not going to compete on Saturday, I'm just not in good enough shooting shape to make it worthwhile or fun.

I brought the old LCP out and did some of those "get the hell off me" drills with one handed point shooting at short range. It was fine, when it ran. Had a huge number of failures to go into battery, and then this:

That's pretty much a no bueno in a fighting gun there, and clearing a double feed in a tiny pistol is hard under stress. I think it's time for the LCP to get taken out of the rotation and replaced. It's not reliable enough for real use.

The new fridge and freezer are in and it was a good news / bad news sorta deal. The bad news is that the 72" or whatever measurement in the store was not the size of the fridge we got. They must have had it sitting up on top of something because the stuff we received was more 'normal' in height. The good news is though that the trim kit on the old setup worked on this one. The upper trim was actually two pieces put together, so I just removed one of the pieces and the resulting trip blocked the gap at the top perfectly. The units came with bottom trim, but the old single length piece went right on as well. So that's done.

After searching and failing to find a bluetooth adaptor that would do 3.5mm to bluetooth including the mic (all the ones that say you can use the for calls have their own built in mic in the unit) I discovered this:

You can use the 3.5mm to lightning adaptor that comes with the iphone 7 with the iphone 6S, but then you can't charge your phone. Belkin makes a dual lighting adaptor, but they also make this 3.5mm and lightning adaptor. It's only available on the apple web site from what I can find, but at $35 is the cheapest (and only) solution I can find to my problem. It works, so I'll order up a few more just in case and then some day I can upgrade away from my iphone 6S if I want.

The guy from the forum showed up Saturday and picked up the fridge. He and his wife host lots of kids from their son's baseball team so they have tons of Gatorade and stuff in their main fridge. This one will go into the garage and hold all that crap now. I made a joke about trading it for a couple boxes of 9mm, so he brought me a couple boxes of 9mm...

Started in on the deck remodel. I used what good pressure treated lumber I had on hand but had to go to Home Depot to get the real supplies. I wasn't sure how I was going to bring home 16' boards, but after a bunch of running around at Harbor Freight and Northern Tool I found a 'tailgate extender' in stock at a reasonable price and now I can haul long boards safely.

Forum guy sent me some pictures last night of the fridge installed and filled with stuff. Looks like it's going to work for them.

Lots more work on the deck today, got the new lower step edge done, now I need to run the 16" joists but it was freakin' hot out so I sorta gave up after I got this far. I then worked on turning the old bench into some goat toys. The woman needs to put them where she wants them and then I'll tie them all together, but they were quite happy to just climb around on them where I dumped them this afternoon.

I got a new battery for the truck, what a pain in the ass. I wanted to get an Optima and online it shows they have the proper one but in the store they don't really stock it. I didn't bother to ask the dude why the web site says "in stock in store" since obviously he won't know. I got the regular one with the top and side posts but am only using the side posts. Most of the trouble came when I dropped the lock-down screw and it fell under the battery tray somehow. Had to disconnect everything, pull the battery, pull the tray (which is held down by 7 screws) and then reassemble everything again. The side terminals are not in the right spot so it's hard to get things connected, but it's done now and hopefully will not require changing for another 5 years. The Napa generic battery that was in there was dated 2011, so that's pretty good life out of a regular battery that gets discharged a lot.

Went to the range after swapping the recoil springs out of the LCP. I had some Wolff extra power springs I was going to put in last time it was having trouble. With those new springs it fed and fired all 5 types of ammo I had. One handed, off hand, fast, slow, it's all good. Whew!

Nothing for a week? Guess I've just been going to classes and working. Got my VMware sales something something certificate, it as pretty easy. Have to do the technical certification next, that's going to be actual work.

Deck again today, dad came by and helped... and I let him because I had the basic layout done and he could finally figure out what I was trying to do. Got the 2nd step joists in and did all the corner cuts and whatnot.

Had to put in a lot of extra bracing to hold the ends of the top boards when they're in; I've come up with a cool (or 80s style, can't tell which yet) way to lay things out but it's going to take a lot more labor than just doing it the easy way. Probably why no one would do it, paying 3x the labor costs for something that's not that important is a bad idea. However, doing it yourself? Might as well try.

When I did this side, I had to raise up the back board on the second step. I mistakenly made the lower level actually level to gravity and not level to the "level" the original deck was. The original is about 1" off over the whole length, so I had to cheat on the back a bit. You won't see it when the top boards are on, and they should flex enough over their entire length to make it seat well and not be noticeable. Lots of "you won't notice it" on these projects it seems when you're trying to match up someone's previous work.

Found a lumber yard tag on the ends of one of the old boards. 1986, same as the barn. It was pressure treated lumber, but in the 80s that means arsenic. Yikes.

Dad's old stove made it to Sneaky's place without incident. As a 'thank you' for the stove, sneaky gave me a box and a half of old 45LC ammo he had (but no longer has a 45LC to use it in). My S&W will shoot this stuff just fine. I really like the old time box design:

On a call, got the wild idea to try to clean the G34 barrel after 8k rounds and no real cleaning. What a chore...

My first of two more attempts at finding a budget tactical pen arrived today. This one is actually pretty good. Flat top, screws together (the ones that don't are just lame and come apart with any actual use), no frills, under $10. I got the grey one instead of the black because it's hard to find black stuff inside of a black bag. Also, it probably looks less tacticool in grey? Although you can see the finger grooves or whatever they are easier in the lighter color.

Somehow sneaky ended up with yet another horse. A freebie from a friend of his moms. He now has 5 useless rescue horses and this new one, which is too young to prove out to be useless or not. He's going to try to break her when she's old enough and turn her into an actual rideable horse instead of a lawn ornament that turns grass into poop.

Who ripped open the bag and ate all the cat treats? Yea, the baby possum is growing up.

Want to get the bike inspected so I can renew the tags, which means I need to get that flaky switch replaced as they test the brakes individually even if you don't use them that way (makes sense since most riders don't know how to ride anyway). So... time to take that little bastard apart and see what's causing it to be open when it should be showing 150+ ohms when it should not. Assuming some crap or oxidation is in there...

And we're done. Actually got it apart without breaking the housing, although the one way retainers were damaged of course. Polished all the contacts, got the crud out, got it back together with glue holding the one-way tabs in, a wrap of electrical tape followed by some gaffers tape just for good measure. No idea how long it will hold up, but hopefully long enough to make it to the next time I have to order parts so I don't have to pay the outrageous $20 shipping on a $15 part (or pay $47 from the local dealer).

Watching a training video with John Lovell and about 950f the way though he realised that there was a horse walking around behind him the entire time and that's what was distracting the camera guy. Funny. Horse gives zero shits about the dude shooting and talking.

Forgot to take pictures of today's quick project, but it's all on one of the cameras. Replaced the little stack of bricks that held the water bucket with a larger framed in brick thingy. Used some pressure treated 2x4 I had left from the deck project, and bricks from the scrap pile. I did go get half a yard of sand to fill in around it as well as refresh the runs and fill in some holes up in the driveway.

Got the bike inspected today as well. The local shop wasn't doing them because they were "short staffed", although when I left they had 3 guys sitting around and nothing being worked on. I'm guessing they only have 1 guy who can do the inspections and wasn't there. I rode up to Cary to another shop and had them do it, then rode out toward Sanford and put some miles on the bike before getting to work on projects. It was a really nice day out, high 70s and low humidity. Doesn't get any better. Too bad I have to go to Vegas and miss the best weather in months.

Video from last week of me working with Trevor. I look so damn slow but I guess I'm just being careful? No, I'm just slow. :(