Got my monthly ammo order. Current batch of cheap Wolf stuff is the same as the Barnaul sealed Russian mil-spec stuff, and the odd lot of "red army standard" 223 I got was sealed up with some nice purple stuff. Feels very slick too, expecting it to feed well.

My random order of stuff came from Midway today (that I used that free shipping on). Cardboard targets, some $7 hexmags, and one box of 380 freedom seeds:

I tested out some of those Berry's 380 bullets over 2.9gr of HP38 and they worked well in the P380. Softer than factory loads but no problems cycling which is all I care about for plinking/practice rounds. With the recipe verified I went ahead and started loading and got carried away...

That's all of them. Not that impressive (only 230 rounds) but on a single stage it's some work. Actually plugged the speakers into the laptop and listened to music "out loud" and cranked away on the press while the woman was out with her friends on Saturday night. Somewhat relaxing.

The van ran out of blinker fluid so I grabbed some at the auto parts store. Could have ordered on Amazon but all I could find there were fancy LED replacement bulbs that were 3x the cost of regular bulbs. Given that these last 5+ years I think it's OK to go with the old school ones. Check back in 15 years and see if I made the wrong choice.

Painted the base plate to one of the hex mags, will put it into the rotation and see how it holds up. Everyone enjoys making fun of my Sunflower Yellow mag base plates, but we always know which mags are mine and they're easy to see on the ground in the dark.... wonder if they make glow in the dark spray paint?

I wanted to make taller loves of bread, something that could be cut up for more regular sized sandwiches. They say to just use a smaller dutch oven, and since I have a 5 quart it would be easy to get one smaller. 3 quart isn't very popular, the next size down is 2 and they're pretty much an order-only item everywhere. So, if I can't easily make the pot smaller, I'll make the bread larger. Right? So I just bumped the ingredients up by 1/3 and figured to make a larger loaf that way.

So that sorta didn't work. I mean it's better but it didn't rise up and make a nice fluffy loaf. I did shape it in a bowl lined with parchment paper first and then just transfer that to the cast iron and it worked very well. Zero sticking to anything, just lift the loaf out and pull the paper off. I'll do that again.

The other bread issue was the moisture content. We made the pizza dough for next weekend on Saturday and it was very difficult to get right. The dough was super wet because it was so humid in the house. It's not that warm out so the AC doesn't run much and pull the water out of the air. It can do humidity control but it wasn't to 'over cool' 1-3 degrees to make that happen and I don't like that. 78F and 550midity feels right, but 75 and down starts to feel way too cold when you come in from outside. Dad likes his place at 72F and it's freakin' cold when you walk in, not comfortable at all until you've been inside for hours and then it double sucks when you go outside. Anyway, the pizza dough ended up needing a lot of extra flour worked into it and I suspect the bread could have benefited from that as well.

So last thing for now. On Saturday I went to that gun store that's closing and it looked like they had a Hi-Point C9 for ~$120 after their discount. I was tempted, I keep saying I should get one to run all this found 9mm ammo through (in case it blows up the gun with a 9mm major load) but don't actually want to spend $160-180 on one. $120 was tempted, but I walked away. I saw signs in the store about everything being on Gun Broker so I went home to look there. They had some old milsurp stuff that I thought might be interesting to Jason. While browsing, I see the same Hi-Point C9 they had in the store is up for auction, starting bid was $99.95, with a "buy it now" price of $120. Hmm.... so impulsively I register for Gun Broker and put in the $99.95 bid. The auction has a while to go and I assume it's like eBay where someone snipes in at the last second and you lose out, but I'm OK with that. It lets me think about (and lose a ton of sleep over) buying a $100 POS without having to actually spend $100. Or do the paperwork, which I think would be the most embarrassing part.

The woman made some apple chips last week, but they were random thicknesses and weren't dried well. So, just to show her the way I broke out the mandolin and cut up some super thin and consistent apple slices and dried them correctly. Now we have a big bag of dried apples, and she's happy to eat them but NOT give me any props for knowing how to make dehydrated stuff well. :)

Ah, shit. No one sniped me, so now I'm the proud owner of a $107 OTD hi-point C9. I bet it works though, no one ever says hi-points don't function and I bet I can get my investment back out of it when the novelty wears off.

On a totally positive note, while in the store doing paperwork I saw the dude had some blister pack Anderson lowers on the floor, like he was moving them somewhere. $40. $40! Since I had already filled out the paperwork it was trivial for him to add another line on there with one of these so for $150 OTD I got the hi-point and a lower in a cool package. He even knocked off the 20 cents it should have been ($150.20) due to tax on things, just to not have to make change for a dollar.

The propane tank certification sticker. I expected the process to be involved, maybe a pressure test, leak down test, sniffer, etc. Nope, just Billy Bob spinning the valve and lookin' around. So safety program? Vaguely. Scam for the .gov to make some cash? More likely.

OK so that was weird. The security PC crashed (power went out) and it corrupted the root disk of the web server clone. At least it was the backup that died! I copied the root VM disk over from the production system and dropped it on top of the corrupt one and... it worked. Huh. Just change to change the MAC address in the ethernet config file (and move it from eth7 to eth9) and change the host name. Also commented out the certificate renewal script but I don't think anything else needs to be done on the clone.

I probably should get a UPS for the security system since it's in a different place from all the other gear.

A random selfie we took to text to someone (who I can't remember).

The storm knocked part of one of the dead trees in the paddock down and when it hit the ground it broke into pieces and one of those pieces blew through the fence. I had to go to Agrisupply to get some more 2x4 wire before I could correctly fix it. You can see the middle picture my quick fix to keep the goats in while I was shopping for parts. I now have 90' feet of wire in the barn (picked up a 100' roll) so whatever happens in the future I'll be ready.

While getting that wire I saw they had 2 QT dutch ovens, something I wanted to make my bread loves taller.

It worked, and this loaf came out perfectly. The woman doesn't really like the taste of the bread, and admittedly it is a little bland, but it's edible. I'll have to work on some other recipes and see if I can make something more interesting.

Took the Hi Point to the range on Friday and put 85 rounds through it. It's... not fun. Recoil is substantial with the blow back action, but it does work. If you run the slide really slowly you can get the rounds to nose dive into the feed ramp and hang up. Doesn't happen when firing, only when loading very very slowly.

This guy reared his ugly head yesterday on my way to work:

Figured I picked up another flat, so while at Blue Cross I pulled out my little pump with the gauge on it and checked what I thought was the low tire. Front passenger side was like 30psi, way too low so I put it back to 40 where it's supposed to be and went to my meeting. When I got out the light was still on so at home I checked the others. All 3 other tires were low too. Guess I need to keep a closer eye on these cheap tires as they don't hold pressure well.

At the range on Sunday afternoon Sean and Jason fired a bunch of rounds through the Hi Point and we took it apart to see how it was built. The slide is showing some wear, the funky coating is coming off but with that and some lube the action really smooths out. I don't think it's going to fall apart, and you can no longer setup those nose dive failures with any ammo. The feed ramp coating is wearing off and ammo just pops up in there. Jason even fired some 147gr JHP rounds without drama.

17 cents per round delivered for new brass 9mm. Too good to pass up, so I didn't. This will flush the last of the steel case 9mm out of the cache.

The replacement Toshiba laptop battery arrived today. eBay still doesn't show that it's shipped yet though. They ain't no Amazon.... Now it's time to build a fresh centOS install and get DHCP and the web server moved over to it from the VMs. I like the VM idea, might do VMs under red hat's hypervisor, but want to get them off the mac onto something else that's more automated. The laptop is better than a pi3 because it will always have a screen and keyboard attached and be 'clean', the pi3 always needs me to track stuff down (keyboard, display, cables) at the worst possible times. Also the $22 9 cell battery will give the Toshiba a nice built-in UPS so I can get it off my overloaded main UPS and get that onto the security system to protect it vs. brownouts and quick dips.

Ah crap, I lied. I have 2 cans of steel. One of 2000 rounds of Novosibirsk (or whatever) that are 124gr and look like gold, and then 1500 rounds of Silver Bear 115gr. Well, looks like I need another 2 cases at some point. Who knows what next month's deal will be.

In other gun news, and there is just so much gun news and nothing else, my life is really getting monotonous, I cleaned up the main safe. Dad came by today and got his stuff out of my other safe so I could move the un-used guns there and pack them in. I now only have the stuff I actually use in the main safe, and it looks tidy... sorta:

I've taken the spike's AR down from the 'live weapon' shelf and put the PC9 up there. It's not live yet, I want to test it with a 30 rnd mag and the 147gr HSTs and if it works as I suspect it will then it becomes the downstairs staged long gun, I guess. If some shit goes down it might be better to have the AR, but the PC9 is easier to shoot fast and at the 50 yards or less range you can really shoot at around the house the PC9 dominates. Or so it appears from the matches I've run wit it. Optic is simple and fast and you can really see everything vs. the big 1-8 on the AR which makes you treat it more like a precision rifle and less like a "get off my lawn" gun. Yes, 9mm is not 556, but 147gr 9mm coming out of that 16" barrel is up there at 357mag like velocities and you can shoot a lot of them really fast and accurately with it. Probably good enough.

Put the light sensor on the goat barn lights per my task list, now the woman has two sets of lights to leave on for them when she's unable to get home before dark. Also cut down a few small trees that needed to go in the area she was clearing of bushes that are poisonous to the goats yet right by the paddock where leaves can blow in. Goats are dumb enough to keep eating the bad leaves for some reason.

Packed (sorta) for my flight tomorrow. Got Bs on both flights, just wasn't fast enough on the check-in or 1/3 of the plane paid $25 for early check-in.

In January for 2004 while partying with Lydia, I took this photo:

Yesterday in October, 2018, I took this one while at a Sirius partner party:

I borked up the zoom a little, so they're not exactly the same but I'm thinking with some editing I could get them to line up. The important thing is that 14 years ago I was up there in a totally different place in life. Will I be there again in 2032? I should try to be, and take the same picture.

So at insight 2018, yet another Vegas trip with yet another lame set of talks. Still hoping for something good, I've got the rest of today to hit a good session. Kathleen is back at Netapp though, ran into her and spent some time catching up. Well, 'catching up' in a mostly superficial way as only can be done while screaming at each other over the noise of the conference floor.

I made this the night before I left, it's a correctly angled glock grip simulator complete with a set of stock sights. Looks kinda silly but I am using it to work on my grip pressure, posture and alignment while traveling. It's cedar, so it makes the luggage smell nice too. It's easier to focus on grip and posture when there is no trigger, or targets.

Dinner at Fleur last night, which was a nice way to start.

Drinks with the team, I told the bartender to make something with fireball that doesn't suck and isn't just a shot. He came up with this... but no one really knows what it was. Some pineapple juice, some mint maybe? It was tolerable, but I wouldn't recommend it.

I don't have any pictures, but I managed to stay up (and out) until midnight. I ran into the academy kids at the bar as I was leaving; they were just starting. But I get credit for being there, maybe they'll think I'm a cool old fart.

Went curling last night, and we lost. But we had 3 noobs on our team, so that's gotta be it... actually we all suck and it's just luck at this point and everyone sorta knows that. The development league starts in January, we keep talking about doing it but this time it might just happen.

Bought this last year, actually used it today to clean the chimney. There was some fluffy soot up near the top but down lower it was just very fine gray ash. I think that's to be expected, we're keeping the firebox hot so it's burning well, but as things cool as they go up they don't burn as well? Hmm, does that make sense? If it's burning down low how does it burn less well up top, where is the fuel coming from? I've got a baseline now anyway, next year will give us another data point.

Got to the range today too, weather was awesome so I took the bike.

I'm trying dual monitors at home again. I've had the 2nd one for 6+ months, it's just been sitting there because when you try to run duals off the dock with the display port adapters it freaks out about which is which and put the primary on one but the dock on the other, sometimes, and changes randomly. At work I've got one on display port and one on VGA analog and it works just fine so that's what I'll try here. Seems silly to run a good monitor on VGA but if it works and lets me display more text, it's a win.