I made some whole egg pasta using the quail eggs (since there were so many of them starting to build up). The dough was different than the mostly yoke + oil + milk recipe obviously but it still turned out OK. It's a little sticky when rolling, the instructions say to keep it well floured while working it and that made a difference. I had some for lunch, it's slightly noticeably different than chicken egg pasta but probably not enough to make it a 'thing'.

Chicken eggs are 50 grams per egg, or that's the definition of '1 egg'. To get 4 egg equivalents using the quail eggs I had to use 21. :)

The recipe wanted 400 grams of flour with 200 grams of eggs. I ended up using only 275 grams of flour with the 200 grams of quail eggs, not sure why. The ratio of yoke to white could be different than chicken eggs which would explain why it was hard to incorporate more flour?

If anything indicates I have a problem, it's that I just put ammo can #100 into the cache. I was going to stop at 99, you know, just to not have a 3 digit number, but then Midway had some super cheap grade 2 cans (which turned out to be perfect, no paint touch-up needed) and I got free shipping so I ordered a few. Now I can get to #105. Sigh.

I also ordered one of the plastic ammo cans with the mag holder foam in it. For some reason a plastic can + foam is $20, but just the foam is... $20. So take the free can? I don't like the plastic cans because they won't stack with the metal ones, but for the mags that might not matter. I'm not going to store mags in cans with foam like that because it's less efficient, but I am going to store my range/class mags in one of the cans. Carrying them around loose isn't cutting it anymore.

Unrelated to fun, been a long couple of 12 hour days at work trying to get stuff done. Nothing too interesting to write about, just fighting with busted code, and reality not matching up to marketing fantasy (and the account teams not happy about me unable to produce reality that matches the slideware).

Got some peas ready to harvest, maybe we can do something with them tomorrow with dinner.

Cruising armslist and gun broker every day now is a thing, some quick time waster that lets you see some interesting stuff and constantly changes. Sorta like instragram. Of course also like instagram there are a shit ton of morons on there, asking 2-3x what a gun is worth, showing off some expensively done yet hideous "custom" garbage (that they spent a lot of real money on to make look that dumb), etc. And then the scammers too, but I think I covered that one already.

One of the spots that doesn't update much anymore but does have more reasonable stuff is Ed's Gun Shop down in Vass. It's seriously redneck, their web site is horrible and the photography is a joke. But, sometimes they have deals if you can find them. Like this....

Saw it a few days back, it didn't have a photo and was priced at $159. I figured it was some ugly pink or blue, because we know how those don't hold value, so I asked for a picture via email. Could have been the 'safety orange' color or the 'CAT yellow'. Turns out it was just black. Huh. I tried to con Jason into getting it, but he did the Barbie Blaster last time so it was my turn.

I put it in my cart and started to checkout then closed it out, saying I wasn't going to do it. It's dumb, unnecessary and a waste. Then... 20 minutes later I went back and tried again and this time went through with it. $171 with tax.

Today I rode the (real) bike down to Eds and picked it up. No real social distancing in the store, no masks (well one guy had one but it was around his chin so he could speak.... that's not how they work), fat people with their kids in tow, basically a busy rural gun shop with no plague. I got in and out as fast as I could.

They changed the mag, or the base plate, it came with the extended one. I'm not sure how I feel about the switch. The extended does let you get a full grip on the gun, but for "ultimate concealment" you kinda don't want it. But is anyone ever going to carry this?

There are some brass marks on the bottom of the slide and on the breach face and there is wear on the top of the barrel where it locks up... but man it can not have been shot much. There was no oil and no residue of any kind inside. Maybe someone dry fired it a bunch, loaded it and carried it around a little and that's about it? I can't imagine it's got more than a box through it if it's been fired at all, or maybe this is how normal people clean their guns? I'm not much on that.

Maybe tomorrow I can take it to the range and try it out.

The woman came down stairs all freaked out this morning about Taco finding a baby rabbit that was hurt. Turns out this little guy was hiding under the wobble board and we managed to capture him. He was wounded, right front leg was screwed up which is why we could grab him. We stuck him in the empty brooder to try to let him recover a bit (otherwise the cat would have killed him in moments) and while he looked like he was doing OK, he ended up dying somewhat quickly after 7pm. He was cooling off and getting stiff when I pulled him out of the cage, and you could tell his leg was totally shattered. 3 of his legs were stuff with rigor, the broken one was just flopping around being held on by just the skin. No way he would have recovered from that injury.

Trying to clean up around here I ordered one of the plastic ammo cans with the mag holder in it (which I seem to think I put in here already). It showed up and it's the "fat 50" sized can, which makes sense now that I think about it. It does hold 15 mags very easily with room around them to stuff some boxed ammo so the next time I ever get an 223/556 that's in boxes I'll put some extra in there. Maybe? Am I using this for an emergency cache, or as planned to just hold my mags so they're not laying around under tables and in my rifle bag where I never can tell what I've got loaded up at any given time?

At the range I took some closeups in bright sunlight and you can see there is something in there. So maybe it was fired. Now that we've put 70 rounds through it, it's been fired. The wear on the parts you would expect to see wear on is there now, so no more questions about it's "has it been fired". It works fine so far, steel, Jason and Sean's various pet reloads. No drama, reasonably accurate, actually has a nice trigger. Safety still sucks balls, way too small to disengage easily and the slide release is mostly useless. I can't drop it with the release at all, no chance. Again, not the end of the world, no one is going to ever be doing slide lock reloads with this thing and if they do having to slingshot it into battery is easy enough if slower. Mostly just that safety though, that really hampers this design.

The Duke Energy tree guys showed up, and over the course of the day made those two trees go away and a pile of (slightly over sized) firewood show up. They did a pretty good job of cleaning up, just some wood chips and pine cones left over, everything else got chipped and hauled away. Now I just have to go move all that firewood somewhere. And split it some day. More chores!

They had a "SAN Win" contest at work, you sold some crap, did a nice write-up on why it was such an awesome win and then they arbitrarily pick some winners. It's a 'cheap' way for them to get a lot of write-ups because while the prizes were large, for real marketing collateral it's probably cheaper than they pay the contractors by far.

I had two entries, one for Blue Cross and one for Epic. I thought for sure Blue Cross would have a better chance of winning (the rep did way more extra stuff, got the customer to do a video about the solution, etc) but it turns out it was Epic that scored us a 3rd place win. $5k in prize money to me. They used to give out rolexes and stuff, which I realize I could just buy with the money but the wonky way I do my accounting "free money" doesn't really mean anything. I track spending, not where the money came from.

Talked to Robert today, he agrees that the market has recovered enough that we can pay off the mortgage and not lose out on too much. They're going to move things around like this:

Which somehow gets me $200k to add to my out-of-investing savings which will pay off the house. Debt free, 100%. Guess I should finish Ramsey's book to see what the next step is.

The neighbor mentioned home made hot pockets, something she makes and then freezes for when she doesn't want to cook. The woman got the recipe and tried it, and while not exactly like the real thing they weren't bad at all. Sorta like an empanada.

The latest quail coop build is done. This one has asymmetric sizing, the open areas are larger and the enclosed sections are smaller to keep the overall length the same. Using all new materials, it takes 10 2x4s and one sheet of plywood of whatever thickness, plus wire, screws, 8 hinges and 4 latches. Ah, and something for the floor. Still using leftover concrete tiles, will have to come up with something when those run out; might have one build worth left in the scrap pile.

Fresh gravel added to the chicken coop and surrounding area to try to undo some of the erosion.

This project was something I wanted to do and had been thinking on how to do it, but then I just jumped in and tried it. Turned out exactly as imagined, nice sliding window in the back which improves airflow immensely.

The only real mistake made here was in the 'frame' on the outside of the door. The door itself is just the siding that was cut out, but I thought it would look nicer with some framing that also added thickness so it didn't flop around in the "2x4 on edge" sized ledge it slides on. I made the door (and opening) sized off the pieces of 1/2" board I had on hand, and the door was nicely even, but then with the edge trim making things seal off nice, the door itself ended up not closing 100%. That made it look funky in the opening with the trim not even on both sides, like this:

There are a couple of ways it could have been fixed, but I went with the ultimately lazy / easy way which was to add a piece to the left trim to make it larger yet appear even when closed. You can't see the left edge of the door ever so you can't tell the trim is too wide on that side. Once it's painted, if it's ever painted, you'll never notice the hack.

The woman wanted me to trim her hair! Very trusting. I used the trimmer with the 1" guard on there to just touch up the edges in back, which made a huge difference in comfort / lack of being annoying. She's still trying to get up the courage to have me touch anything else where clients may see it on the web cam.

Payoff in progress:

Complete.

Apparently Loki is scanning in old photos from college:

Hopefully he shares others!

Forgot to put these in the other day. The woman wanted dessert, I wanted to use up a bunch of quail eggs... so... quail egg brownies. They turned out amazing, very happy with the crunchy crust and chewy interior. Sorta a 'waste' of quail eggs, but only if you're getting them retail.

After the shocking results, well, not "shocking", but surprising results in that I was carrying the weakest 32ACP ammo out of all that I had on hand, it made me wonder just where I got the info that made me pick that one in the first place. Just that I've shot it the most and know it works? Lucky Gunner mouse gun ballistics results? Random? Anyway, I picked up a few more types (at reasonable prices) to try. I'll chrono them all, burn up a bunch of rounds of the best to make sure it's reliable and then switch over.

The 32ACP is weak, but the P32 is so light I've been able to carry it every day everywhere. Just in my gym shorts or sweats around the house and yard it's always with me. I've tried the P380 in the same way but it's heavy enough that it pulls my pants down. If I'm not going to wear a proper belt and holster than the P32 is the gun for the job. Better than nothing?

Unexpectedly, the AR stock adapter for the PLR was in stock (ha) and I managed to grab one of the 2 kits they had. It's supposed to let you convert your SU16 over to use a pistol grip and AR stock, but since the PLR16 and SU16 are basically the same mechanism it works on either. I used the KAK brace off the AR pistol (replaced it with a SBA3) and a folding adapter and got this:

It looks OK, but the adapter is pretty bulky and adds length which is easy to adjust out of the brace, but it also makes it long when it folds, like this:

Unlike an AR you can fire the PLR just fine like that, but it's too long even folded to fit in the spot in the van I wanted to put it. I was pretty bummed about it, mostly due to the $150 for that high quality folder mechanism. The Chinese crap is $90, so I went with the real thing (not airsoft) so I can use it on a real AR if I wanted.

The two halves are held together by the pivot at the trigger guard/mag well and now instead of a friction pin it's got a captured pin in the rear. Now it folds like this, and... that fits exactly into the 17" laptop case I got for the sub2k which fits exactly in the spot in the van 'wall' that I want it to fit. Winning?

so now the sub2k will be replaced once again with the PLR16, but now with the brace it makes it a true 100 yard gun, er, pistol. Not a rifle, not a SBR! It's a little bulkier than the sub2k, but it's shooting 556. I like that the van 'longer range gun' is now in a rifle caliber.

It's art! I function tested the PLR16 in it's new config, and it worked well with the pmag but was having trouble with the metal mag. I don't know that I've tried a metal mag in it before, so I can't tell if I should worry or not. I'll function test the two pmags I have labeled to carry with it next time and if it's 100% then I'll clean it up and stash it in the van.

The hexmag failed on me, 190 or so rounds into the test. Follower seemed to fail and the rounds nose dived (dove?) into the feed ramp and a tap-rack wouldn't actually clear it. I've not seen that malfunction in this pistol like that before, at least not with an OEM mag. Not a good sign.

Also at the range today I tried out the 12 gauge to 9mm adapter. It worked fine, it fired and they extracted without fail, but the 100 yard accuracy was nothing usable. Probably outside the design spec for it to work at 100 yards with no actual sights and a 2" barrel.

I dropped off the new coop over at Maxwell's yesterday... but he wasn't there. He had one of the vet techs meet me and we moved the coops around and transferred birds. Only 4 escaped. We're not very good, but we did catch them all eventually. I brought the smallest double coop back and we left 2 birds in it. The tech wasn't sure which was male and which female so we just kept one of each color pattern to be sure. Kinda glad I did that now, these birds are 1/3 larger than my existing, I think the girl would beat up all the boys if they tried anything.

One of the problems with the coop I brought back is that there is only one door on the wire side, just like the other one I made 'wrong'. That one I hacked that wire frame in to block part of the door which was OK, but I didn't want to do that a second time. Today I blocked the openings with cardboard so I could remove the doors and cut them into two doors and remount. It works pretty well dong that, some extra hardware and now I can open either side and control the birds still.

Still carrying every day all the time, from the time I get up until I go to bed. The P380 and LCP both pull my shorts down too much and are super annoying to pocket carry like that, so the P32 is it.

At the range Friday I tried some drills shooting pine cones at like 3 yards or less. Sounds dumb, but it's the most likely use for this thing, shooting at a dog (or snake) trying to attack the goats. Point shooting like that turned out way more accurate than I thought. Kinda happy about that.

The modified feeders are working well, should probably mention that. With the pieces of pipe on there they can get their heads in to get food but not flick it all over the place and waste it. I don't even need the Frisbee under the feeder to catch wasted food now.