Testing to see if the auto journal code rolls over to the new year correctly.

Success! (I probably tested it last year too, but I'm always amazed when something I write actually works as designed).

Forgot to mention, but I finally broke down and got a shot timer. Sean got one last year for giftmas and it's been useful when he brings it to practice but he doesn't always go to practice so.... I used an Amazon gift card to offset some of the cost. These things should not cost $100 but they do. Guess the market for building these is pretty tight.

I've decided that what I'll do is the first shots at the range will always be the same. 3 rounds from low ready against the 16 yard plate rack. I'll do that cold every time and just write it down and see how things change over the year. I went with low ready instead of from the holster to try to control the variables. Now with all the heavy coats and stuff it slows down the draw, and in the summer it's easy. Low ready takes that component out of the equation all together.

My first run with the timer ever and the cold drill. 3 hits so that's good, but not really fast. But... gotta set the bar low to show progress. :)

The woman hung up her rodent "art" today. Sigh. Gotta look at these things every morning and night now that they're on the bedroom wall.

Success! The pump data is now being processed and logged on the main pi system!

This is no good, rounds are still binding up in my G34 mags even with the new springs. Something wonky is going on.

Goats coming out into the first snow of the year.

People were freaking out about the snow coming yesterday, kept doing a countdown to "snow in the triangle". I had to get on the band wagon and send everyone this: minimum safe distance. I don't think anyone got it.

Should have taken this photo yesterday, but there is still snow on the frozen pond today.

Downside of the wood stove keeping things warm upstairs, the heat pump isn't do much so there isn't any HVAC downstairs. My office is down to 59F, or was... now with the space heater its' back up to 66F, that's more reasonable.

First try at making naan, without the tandoori oven. First recipe I found wanted you to run the oven at 550F, and get the broiler ready. Whoa. The one I made lets you cook it on the stove top in a frying pan if that's all ya got so that's what I went with. Came out pretty good, but as with the tortillas high heat is better than slow cooking for these things.

I started by painting in the safe/fire indicators, but then got a little adventurous. See what happens when it's cold outside and I'm stuck downstairs too much? Random crap starts happening. Fortunately the colored in horse logo doesn't look half bad.

Also figured out that the color of the finish on the PSA upper is officially "black sharpie". Did a sample scratch repair and it matches pretty closely. Good enough for a working rifle.

I used an old toothbrush and some flitz and polished the inside of the G34 mags. I also put a bunch of the rounds through the go/no-go gauge and found that a lot of them are out of spec. That's why they're binding up in the mag, not only are the cases very roughly finished, they're also too wide. The mag body polish helped, and if you polish the ammo it really works... but who's got time to sit around polishing ammo? I'm not that bored. So basically I just have to struggle my way through this case of out of spec ammo. Interesting that the Glock factory chamber is fine with the oversized rounds but it's the mags that get cranky.

Motivated, or just bored from being stuck inside? Hard to tell, but I made up some 9mm test loads. 5.0gr of HP38 under an unknown (but probably Remington) 115gr JHP. The charge is pretty light, but if I were to load a bunch of these they would be for matches only, so lighter is better. Wonder where/why I bought JHP bullets? Must have been cheap.

The naan came out pretty good, the frozen dough thaws quickly just like the tortilla dough and they still puff up like you would want. We put them back in the oven to warm while the lamb was resting and that sorta over-cooked them so we know not to do that next time. Prior to the over-cook I had put them in a towel between two plates to let them steam like the tortillas and that worked perfectly.

Forgot to post a picture of my new sticks. Getting all official now.

I can not believe this worked. They don't look quite right, but there they are. Home made bagels:

They sure taste good.

Apparently mom left dad some random notes, he's finding them stashed places she knew he wouldn't look for a while (like in the tax folder for year-end planning, his bill folders for future months, etc). One of them had some savings bonds that she said were for me. In addition to some old EE series inflation losing bonds was my original birth certificate copy, a receipt and the tag that was on me at the hospital. It's survived all this time... somewhere.

Sean brought his drone to the range yesterday and we got 1 trial run in with it before someone else showed up and ruined our down range fun. When he gets better at flying it he'll be able to sit way closer to the shooter without worrying about flying in front of the gun. As it is he just sat it at altitude and let it film.

I cut the video down to 1080p, storing 4k video uses a crap ton of space.

When you have extra time, it's easy to get fancy. There was some leftover chicken legs from dinner the other night so I pulled the meat off and pan fried it, then put it over ramen. Just like they show on the package. Looks legit, tastes like salty chicken over crappy noodles though. :(

Sometimes it's the simple things, like eating Sheetz fake ice cream in the parking lot. :)

Not getting out today though, the snow is coming down. Calling for 5", we shall see.

Some useful stuff today, listened to podcasts from work, a few Sherlock Holmes audio books via youtube, and loaded all the 9mm I could find. 506 rounds of 115gr. 426 of them are Remington JHP (I think), and 80 are Sierra JHP. All from the early 90s. I recognised some of the brass even, that weird Chinese "way too yellow" brass stuff we got somewhere that was crazy over powered. I also used all the brass I picked up at the match on Monday. I have like 20 primers left, plenty of powder and brass, but zero slugs. Will grab some at the gunshow on Saturday.

Made tortillas to go with the fajitas the woman made for dinner, and then made some sugar cookies. I tried to make a goat one but after cooking it just turned into a blob. Cutting the goat shape out after they're cooked worked though:

Yesterday I added the $23 flip-up 45 degree offset backup iron sights to the AR, today after much shopping at the gun show I ended up with an optic. Got it for on-line pricing after some haggling so that's cool. It's not the Primary Arms 1-6x, it's the Vortex 1-8x. Different retical and a way way nicer mount (spent and extra $60 on the upgraded mount) but since I already have 4 other Vortex products, I guess I'm just more comfortable with their stuff.

Hopefully we get out to the range tomorrow to zero the sights and the glass in and see how it works.

Now Bob the Pell has an arm. He can try to stab me now. Handy.

The box that I was storing some old brass in had a label on it... from Corvallis. Just this box has been in use since the early 90s. So crazy.

Went to the range, got a 100 yard zero put on the new optic. The good news is I can really see the targets, the bad news is that me/the rifle aren't accurate enough to hit as well as i would like at 200 and 250 yards. Commie ammo in a budget rifle looks to be about a 2 MOA combo. Sigh.

Nothing but being sick the last 4 days. This sucks.

Listening to work podcasts (which are way better than I originally gave them credit for) and loading up 9mm. I used the last 170 of the Berry's 115gr I got at the gun show. I did find a few hundred 90gr bullets, probably for use in 380 but there is 9mm load data and I still have brass/primers/powder left so hmm.... and idea for the next sick day.