We did another round of sushi takeout from the same place as last time, and ate in the van again. Dark this time, but the woman brought the little battery lantern so there was soft lighting (vs. the WAY TOO BRIGHT LEDs I've got in the van now).

I ordered some overpriced wolf 00 buckshot just because it was wolf. It's not steel cased, or even steel based, or steel shot, but it does say wolf on it. I ordered two 120 round boxes and they shipped them separately and one came almost directly here, the other one went to Charlotte first. The first box was fine, the second was a little beat up but inside half the packages looked like this:

I don't think that happened on the trip here, pretty sure that was like that at the factory. QC probably isn't even a thing in Russia.

Rifle/pistol class, it was good. New instructor so hopefully he sticks around. Only 3 civilians in the class, the rest were mil skippies from Bragg or points unknown.

In the 'qualification' test in the beginning I came in 5th out of 12. Not bad considering how little time I spend with a rifle like that. I was slow, but accurate.

My college era keyboard is finally going into the trash. It doesn't work, or half the keys don't work and I've been reluctant to toss it but come on... it's not exactly a memento. Notice how yellow it is, and it's never sat in a window or in sunlight. It's just old. Doesn't have web addresses on it either, just 1-800 numbers. Doesn't even have Microsoft's web address on it.

I got these yakisoba noodles at the store to try, and was pretty skeptical when i found you had to microwave them instead of just putting hot water in or boiling them. Turns out... they're really really good. I think I got the beef flavor last time, this time I got the spicy beef and used the whole sauce packet and damn were they SPICY! Not like 'white man spicy' but so hot I had to drink some milk after to stop the burning... and of course they let me know when they made their way out of my body. Very painful. So lesson learned, don't use the whole spice packet. Protein on top was some leftover brisket. Tasty.

4 hour POC with Samsung in Korea completed last week. Four revisions on the test plan, lots of 'no!' but it was well received. I had to do it a few times, mostly training the SE to be able to answer questions since he had to translate everything I said into Korean. Easier for him to answer some of the questions without having to ask me first.

Kinda odd they had it in the office in person considering the lab is here and I am here... there was no value in being in the office all looking at a single zoom session vs. just being wherever they wanted looking at individual sessions. But hey, face time with the customers.

After that long ass zoom session that was physically painful (keeping the volume up high enough I could make out what he was saying) I decided to go all out and get a real headset. Used my working from home credit and got a real headset and an external volume control. I move the volume around all the time depending on who's talking to having a knob is way easier than dealing with it on the screen. I mounted it right under the edge of my desk, it's very convenient.

One thing that's super lame about these $120 'pro' headsets is that they little wings that hold it up off your head are spring loaded and the tension is too weak. if you have a small head they just slide down and end up falling off your ears. The fix? A rubber band between the 'ears', keeps them from opening. Now it fits perfectly, but really, for $120 I would expect either tighter springs or including a few sizes of rubber band so you could 'customize' it.

After the class I wanted an angle foregrip on my poverty pony AR. There aren't a lot of choices anymore since it's a keymod rail and the whole 'angled foregrip and not a vertical foregrip' thing happened with the rise of the AR pistol and that was mostly after m-loc won the rail standard wars. I found this aluminum one on Amazon and it said it worked with both standards. Don't know how it actually works with m-loc but it works great with keymod. They include two types of screw attachment widgets, just pick the ones for your rail and the drop into the machined recesses in the part. It was good enough I ordered another for the other AR.

The amusing thing is how it's listed on Amazon to get around their anti-2A filtering. "Outdoor attachment accessory" indeed.

It was 68F out today, we went and played frisbee and got in 8 holes (skipped the first because it was full of idiots we didn't want to get stuck behind) and when we finished #9 and were going to go back to #1.... it started raining. Only briefly but we went home anyway.

I also washed the van today, it had some sort of road tar crap on the side I wanted to get off there so even though it's going to rain tomorrow at least it's not going to have whatever that is drying on the side. There are a lot of rock chips on it and a few dents I don't remember. Poor old van, it's getting some use.

Booster shot today, used the Lorazepam and I didn't freak out as much. Got kinda woozy toward the end though....

I also deleted my blog. It was locked since the hack, hadn't updated it and I wasn't feeling the desire to share personal stuff with anyone anymore so... easy one click and it's gone. Still have the domain and hosting, will come up with something to do with it.

Christmas, Facetime edition.

Lots of food centric gifts this year. The woman got me some fancy ramen, made fresh and showed up in a cooler, and the woman's brother got us an ice cream maker. Wasn't that excited since ice cream makes me so sick now (and we returned the one the step mom let us try) but.... this one has recipes for gelatto and sorbet that use no milk. Hmm.... so I tried making the dark chocolate sorbet in the little book that came with it. Turned out pretty good!

Only a half batch because I didn't have enough cocoa on hand but it's a good enough test. The woman wants lemon basil next, so we'll have to get lemon.. and basil. Not stuff we keep around often.

One of the puzzle room chairs fell apart, or more accurately the base came off the frame. It's just held on by 3 screws slightly screwed into the particle board base of the seat. Over time I guess the back/forth motion just fatigued the 'wood' and it came apart. To fix it, I pulled off the cover section at a time and glued a 1/8" thick strip of wood onto the base, then stapled the cover back down. I used slightly longer screws that go through my wood and into the particle board (but not through it into the cushion) and now it's solid again.

The woman asked why I didn't use books to hold the wood flat for gluing, but the last thing I wanted to do was ruin a book getting wood glue on it. So... the oil jug from the garage was the preferred weight.

Got another of the PA 1x prisms to try it on an AR. The original one I got is on the RDB and while I'll probably never shoot the RDB again, the little 1x on there is just setup so well. The 13 mounting options included with it made sure it would work on everything and one of the combos is perfect on the RDB. When seeing which 3x magnifier lined up with the prism (for use during zeroing only) I stuck it in front first to check the height... and it turns out it actually works there. It shouldn't, if you put it in front of a red dot you just get a tiny field of view because your eye is 4"+ behind the magnifier. With whatever happens inside the prism sight it makes it so that your eye is effectively at the 'input' side of the prism while looking through the 'output' end. Freaky. I won't leave it on there, but it was handy to zero and be able to keep the optic that says mounted further back like I would want (vs. having to leave space to clip the magnifier).

Work gave us a year end gift, and they actually did a nice job. Instead of just some useless lexan piece of shit (sorry, 'award') or random junk no one but the exec picking wants they sent us to a site with 25+ choices (including 'none' or a donation to various charities). Instead of the default 'mini studio' which was some LED lights and a holder for your phone for better zoom sessions, I got a coffee sampler. They personalized the box label, but they also personalized each of the 5 bags of coffee. Nice touch.

Dad got some sort of funky coating on his corvette so he no longer needs to clay bar it or use detailing spray. Uh, OK. He gifted me a full can of honda spray polish and a clay bar kit, so I used the spray polish to clean up the van a bit. There was some road tar or something on the door and random spots of crap everywhere. Now, it's 80lean! Not as good as a real wax job but better than nothing.

Saw this on the way to fight club today. You wouldn't think an orange and black corvette would look good, but with the new design it really is an American super car now. Thing looks awesome in crazy super car colors.