Burial project is complete.

Gazebo now has a fan, and power. It's amazing how much of a difference that moving air makes, it's hot and humid still, but much nicer to just sit around when the air is moving.

Dad came over to watch the wiring, and he "helped" me track down the right circuit to cut into and although not really helpful there, he did some up with an idea. I was using an outlet fixture as my splice, rather than just a box with some wire nuts in it. My plan was to just tie the gazebo and shed overhead lights into the back of that single outlet and then just have an unused outlet sitting in the crawl space. No biggie, it's like that elsewhere. Dad's idea was that instead of tying them hard wired into the back, to put plugs on the wires and just plug them in. That lets me change them if I want, seperate power from the rest of the circuit if I want to for some reason, and makes the wiring way way easier. Ever tried to run 4 sets of wires into a junction box and get them all connected? Pain in the ass. This, pretty trivial.

I also left some of the incoming wire stripped of the outer jacket and exposed so I could throw the clamp meter on it. That black wire hanging out is not a mistake. With this wonky setup I can also stick a EoP adapter in there to get networking out to the shed without having to dig another trench and run more cable. It's a direct 80' run, EoP should work fire on a single wire like that for a single camera.

It's hard to take pictures of all of what I've done today, but I've basically shut down the iMessage mac. I've moved backups to a VM (you can now do AFP to samba on linux!) and am replacing my old 2008 MBP 17" with my 2014 MBP 15" from work (my old laptop that was replaced with windows to comply with company security). To run imessage remoetly now, I'm using 10.13 on a VM on the MBP. Sounds screwy, but it lets me keep the MBP's screen at full resoluiton, keeps it from showing what I'm doing (when you VNC in it unlocks the physical screen) and because it's running under VMware Fusion I can run VNC services from Fusion instead of on the Mac itself. The Funsion VNC server is 10x better performance wise than the OSX server, which is sad but it's where we are. Since it's running on an actual mac there were no issues with iMessage or anything, the CPUID passthrough shows the underlying mac hardware which is all good with the VM. This is even sorta legal from what I can tell.

As I've always got my MBP running upstairs, the VM will always be up when I'm at work or whatever so no issues there. The linux VM that's doing the backups are running on KVM on the same laptop that has the DNS/DHCP/NTP server and the web server VMs. Isolaton and all that. I went from 2 machines to... well 2 machines but I'm only relying on a Mac to do mac stuff now, nothing critical and nothing infrasturcture related.

My documents repo lives on the new MBP directly, and backs up to the linux box. I could serve it off the linux box, but since Macs have such trouble with SMB shares, it's probably easier this way? It's encrypted, and backed up twice, so I think I'm ok. I'll change it if it becomes wonky in any way.

Unrelated to VMs, my paper towel holder showed up today. Last thing I ordered on Sunday, and it shows up today. 1 day delivery on 1 item that really didn't need that sort of delivery speed. whatever Amazon.

Namu... yea, it's a weird ass coffee bar, beer hall, korean food, zen garden WTF place that BCBSNC wanted to go to for lunch. The menu is odd, the food... is legit.

I got my replacement Savage 17HMR, it's exactly the model I wanted. Factory threaded and the better scope rail. Upgrade!

So here's the problem, the brass started splitting about 25 rounds into the first range session. This is exactly the same box that I was using when the original one blew up. Could a small piece of brass have stuck in the chamber and subsequently be pushed into the barrel which jammed the next bullet? Dunno. I contacted CCI about the ammo, asking if there was a recall on this lot number. They wanted to know how many of that lot I had so I had to dig the cans out of storage and sort it by lot number. Fun times. I've emailed them the info and we'll see what they say.

Finally put a fire extinguisher in the van, been meaning to do that for a while. Had several spots to choose from on where to mount it, went with this because it's out of the way in an otherwise useless spot. Gotta find some strong velcro straps to add some retention beyond the OEM little strap.

Got this kit in and put it together tonight. Obviously I don't have a drill press or a lathe or anything, so I used the dremel with the carbide cutter, some files, punches, a small hammer, the drill, the vice... and some odd patients. I had to dork around with it quite a bit to get things to line up even with the fixture/jig doing all the guiding. A drill press would have gone a long way to making it easier and probably more accurate. We'll see how it does in the reliability department.

Dumb to use a serialized upper on a ghost lower, but that's just my G23 upper with a 9mm conversion barrel in it as a tester. We ran that combo on Jason's lower like this and it worked just fine so if it doesn't work in mine it's my work, not the parts compatibility.

Alarm guy is here swapping out the old cell radio on the alarm for a new one. They're not going to support GSM or whatever and now have to switch to LTE. Guess they're needing more bandwidth for the out of band cameras and stuff they sell now. I don't care about that, but the old radio keeps erroring out so they have to replace it anyway. Upgrade parts are covered by the dealer but the service call is on me. Meh.

The old radio (here) has it's own battery, the new one doesn't so presumably it feeds off the battery from the unit downstairs.

Actually put the 22 slide on it and ran a box of rounds through it with the can in the yard.. Only one FTF, which is actually better than it does on my Gen 2 real lower. I'll try it tomorrow at the range with 9mm.

So official, business debit cards with our LLC on them???

Sean and Julie had a huge BBQ yesterday, and the woman missed it because she's been feeling pretty sick. Not puking, but very dizzy. I knew it was serious when she couldn't sit out with the goats and didn't even finish her chores. Anyway, the BBQ was fine, he grills stuff on gas and then finishes on it charcoal. Kinda works, it gave it some good flavor. Of course he had to set off some fireworks, he's one of those assholes. Sigh.

Since I couldn't go to the range today (staying home with the sick woman) I spent a good 8 hours working on the shed project. I got all of the wire run through the conduit, the conduit run under the deck and through the trench, the wire tested (!), and the trench filled back in. I've not made the 120v feed live yet, I ran out of electrical boxes and such for the inside so I had to stop wiring and run to Home Depot. After I got back... I got a case of the *tired* from working all day. There is always next weekend to finish. So close!

Customers canceled lunch today, and it was my only scheduled thing so I took the opportunity to finish wring the shed. I don't have the generator cable run inside yet, but I've got 120v live so now I have lights.

And a camera, of course. Had it pre-configured and put away in storage just in case. This was one of that awesome deal I got on 'referbs' that were basically new. Using EoP for this one, with the adapter inside the shed and on the other end of the line inside the house it's a pretty direct run and we're only putting one device on it so 200mbit should be plenty. WiFi doesn't actually show up inside the shed, must be the metallic insulation lining?

Knocked out that center channel a little better on the ghost frame. Doesn't look particularly pretty, but it's opened up correctly in case I want to run a normal upper on it. The Tacsol .22 upper spring is small enough it was just fine with the old channel cut out, but it just wasn't quite right... so I risked fixing it. Any time you hand wave the dremel around it invites disaster... if only I had an end mill or whatever Jason does to make this not look like a redneck with a dremel did it.

We looked at that 2 room suite yesterday, and the woman is putting an offer in today. It's a hot mess, trying to deal with this rich hippie types who are inheriting their money, they have no sense of actual business. Whatever, if she can get it, she will. If not, we'll continue looking. Actually, I think she's continuing to look anyway, the deck is pretty stacked against us in this deal.

Caprine website is active, or at least the redirection is there and email to the domain gets forwarded to me. Shouldn't ever need it, but we've got the LLC, might as well own the domain.

Saturday I took dad and we went down to Kelly, NC (yea, it's a real place) to look at some land. Guy has 21 acres of nothing for $25k, it's useless as anything but a timber or hunting property. It was logged 25+ years ago, so it's grown back and it's really overgrown. We only made it about 200f the way back into the property toward the creek at the back, and it would take a long, long time to try to cut a trail all the way down. Some guys were hunting it last year, and there is a tiny trail and clearing with a tree stand, but that's it.

Got my Taurus G2c rebate. $215 OTD for the gun, minus the $25 rebate that actually came.. and damn that's a cheap weapon.

The sun has been bugging me in the morning as I sit drinking coffee; with the temps high it's not exactly nice sitting in the sun at any time of day. So... a cheap shade as a proof of concept. The woman says it's ugly, but it was $20 at Home Depot, clearly not the highest quality thing. If it works, next season we can get a nice fabric one. if it doesn't work, well I'm not out much. But it's going to work.

Got the generator feed cord fed into the shed itself. Instead of trying to go through the floor again which proved problematic, I got this thing and ran it in the wall next to one of the studs so I could anchor down the conduit without punching screws into the inside of the shed.

Very happy with how that came out, it looks almost professional.

Went to the range today after working on the shade and generator, did some drills for tomorrow. Jason is improving, Sean and I seem to be staying the same.

Passed the 300 round mark through the LCRx, and loaded some nickel cases to see how they do. The brass gets really dirty with the Trailboss powder.

Someone hit a deer on the road (the dirt road, not the main street) and then around 7:30am someone else shot the deer to put it down. The woman was not happy at the shooter, but then realized that the deer was clearly not going to make it with it's leg all busted up....

My cucumbers have a lot more and larger seeds than commercial versions. Mine on the left, store bought on the right. I must lack the correct genetic engineering to get those seeds down.

More growing things!

Double rainbow on the way home. It looked amazing through the cheap polarized glasses I'm still wearing from the Aruba trip, much less so with the naked eye. The camera caught probably 500f the color you could see in real life.

Friday we went to the Fainting Goat Brewery. The plan was go to around 3pm and do some day drinking, but turns out they're not even open until 4:30pm. We had no idea, since we've never been day drinking, but I just kinda assumed these places were open a lot. Anyway, with that plan foiled we went to Anna's Pizza up the street, had the womans' favorite white pizza for an early early dinner (ate outside, the weather was amazing) and then went back for a beer. Wonder what the little people are doing?

More work complete, I've got the house end done and now I just have to figure out the actual shed layout, build the exhaust vent and cut the wire to length.

Did some serious cleaning this weekend, moving stuff, tossing stuff, boxing stuff, etc. I've had my range bag and stuff sitting on the floor in front of the book case for months, it's just where I put stuff between trips. Now... it actually goes IN the book case and the floor is clean. The woman is shocked. I made room by putting some books in other book cases and tossing things that weren't relevant anymore (old catalogs, magazines, etc).

As part of the cleaning process, I swapped out the mag tube spring on the M500. I bought it as part of an order of springs to save on shipping and just hadn't got around to swapping it. The difference in length between the old OEM one and the new Wolff is pretty significant.

Tried another prepper bread recipe. This one doesn't look like bread, and it tastes more like a biscuit than bread, but it's pretty good. Especially with some butter or jam or something on it to make it less dry. Going to try to make it with all dry ingredients next time, I used actual oil in this batch but that's the only thing other than water. Although, veggie oil is shelf stable so really it's not a big deal but I wouldn't want to carry it backpacking/camping so I'm going to see if I can find a dry fat source that works. Otherwise it's flour, salt, sugar, baking powder and water.

We caught not 1 but 2 mice in the pantry. Hopefully that's the last of them, hate to have a whole family of rodents pooping in our food.

Different range day today. No pistols at all, just some rifle work and I wasn't in the mood for anything serious so I took the PC9, and.... the flintlock. Jason was enamored with it:

It did have a lot of failures though, had a couple of flashes and some trouble with the flint, but in the end it all worked out. We couldn't hit the 10" gong off hand even as close as 75 yards in. For my last shot I propped it up on some sandbags and hit the 10" at 150 yards. Damn thing is accurate enough if you can stabilize it.

10mm is best mm.

The whole story is that a guy on the forum had this up for sale/trade, and I offered him my XDm in .45 that I don't shoot. He reloads 45 but not 10mm, so with a little cash on my end I got rid of a gun I don't use for a long slide version of the same gun in a caliber I don't have. Wait, what?

My 40 dies work for 10mm of course, so with just an order of some 10mm bullets I'm ready to load for it. Easy. He had some brass with it and I had a tiny amount in the box from when I shot Sneaky's 10mm, so I've already sized up a batch and as soon as the bullets arrive I can load some 10mm. The guy included 220 rounds of factory ammo as well. Winning.

Holy crap, I was on fire last night for some reason. 2nd in division, 4th overall. Sean screwed up a stage (much like I did last time) with procedural and not bad shooting. Jason has really started trying to push for speed and did way better than usual. He's now in the top 1/3 rather than the middle.