The replacement resistor came, plugged in exactly like the failed OEM unit and the truck is back to functional again. It kinda seems like the fan 'starts up' slower than before, you crank it up and it leisurely goes from low to high, but honestly I don't remember what it was like before. It's got auto climate controls so I never actually touch the fan speed or anything else other than turning it down from max or min or whatever the woman sets it to because she refuses to believe that auto climate controls work and always sets it at the ends of the scale and then manually changes it later.

Slept on the van mattress for 3 days. Day 1 I was totally crippled, could barely walk. Day 2 and 3 were better and better, so I don't think it was the mattress at fault, but me hurting my back wrangling the goats to get their hooves trimmed. I'll try again in a week or so, see if I end up crippled right away or not. Can't be crippled on the road like that.

I bought some mags off a guy on the forum, more for collectors purposes than to use them. They were actually priced in-line with current new mag prices, so the collectability factor was free. First up was a period correct gen 2 357sig mag. It's got the gen 2 single side mag catch cut-out, the funky old font, and only goes to 10. Clearly a ban-era civilian mag. Now my pre-ban G23 isn't' a 357sig, but I have the period correct conversion barrel for it and now a period correct mag, just like I would have been able to get in the 90s.

Next up is even better, a brand new G17 LE only marked 'during ban' mag. Date stamped to the '94 ban so when they get around to the '21 or '22 ban this one wouldn't be suspect. Maybe. Came with the original bag too which I almost tossed not realizing it was original. Whew, glad I double checked.

The wire for the barn electrical project showed up, so now when the plumbers dig the trench we can put down direct burial wire 1' under the pipe. Also have direct burial ethernet to go into the trench too, might as well maximize the trench value.

Day 3 of fighting with apple to try to get my new phone working. I really don't want to put the details in here because I've had to reiterate them so many times to the various support levels. But its' annoying.

The 9x25 barrel is here! Gotta take it to the gunsmith to get it fit, it's sold over-sized. Annoying, but it's for 'accuracy'... and it's the only place I could get one made at this point.

Went for a run today, and you can see there is becoming a defined path I'm running on around the pond:

The woman puts less red sauce on her pizza and it turns out better, I'm going to do that next time:

Did a test run of the van with the minibike on the back, hauled it up to dad's place and back for about 1.5 hours on the road. Couldn't tell it was back there at all, no wobble, no sag, no strange handling feeling. I've got a good feeling about the setup.

Here's basically what I posted to the forum about the 9x25 adventure:

With some love from Bar Sto, and fitting expertise from @rbrooks my G20 is now capable of shooting 9x25 Dillon. For those of you who haven't heard of this irrelevant cartridge, it's a 10mm necked down to 9mm. it was created for gaming purposes, but now I'm using it to just see if I can launch a 90gr 9mm bullet at 2000 fps out of a regular handgun. I got to 1700 fps with my 357sig, so maybe it's possible.

First off, the barrel. Bar Sto refuses to sell anything drop in, they oversize it just enough you've got to hand fit, or oversize it a LOT so you really have to. I get it, accuracy is their stick and I wouldn't have gone with them if any of the drop-in vendors still made a 9x25. eBay wasn't panning out finding what I wanted in the last 6-9 months so I went with what I could get. I also learned what it takes to fit a barrel and some of the finishing tricks watching it happen, so in the end it's money well spent.

Next up, the dies. I actually got these last year, figuring if I waited until I got a barrel it might not be easy to find the dies. Dillon is the only game in town at this point, and their dies have some issues. First off, they're made to go in a progressive so the lock rings suck. I replaced them with the Hornady ones I like that lock sideways instead of screwing a set screw into the threads. The dies also don't fully flair or come with an expander, they're assuming the powder drop stage does the expander. I pulled my 9mm expander die from the kit and added it here. Works well once you get it adjusted.

So adjusting, this is the hardest cartridge I've had to load for. Strange bottleneck, you have to size your own brass from 10mm, the dies are really tricky to adjust and... that damn BarSto barrel has NO slop in the chamber. None. The crimp die has to crimp far enough down to get the whole neck in spec without going too far as to bulge the case. There is no 'lee factory crimp die' for 9x25 so you can't just fix mistakes with another pass.

On the plus side, the carbide sizer is really nice. I'm lubing the cases anyway because it seems like the thing to do, but you still run into split necks and such. They tell you to use only new 10mm brass or you'll end up splitting them, but I don't have any new so I'm dealing with the 1/20th failure rate on the once fired:

Once these are fire formed I'll check them for length and trim. This is going to be a labor intensive handgun round.

After the learning, I loaded up 10 rounds for tomorrow to test. 10.0gr CFE Pistol, 115gr XTP, CCI350. There isn't a lot of load data on these and the one load manual that has it only lists old powders I don't have, so I'm doing a combo of googling for stuff (10.2gr CFE Pistol / 115gr was a combo I found a few times) and trying to extrapolate from 357sig -> 10mm and then backing down a bit. As long as I work up slowly I figure I'll find the limit before something bad happens.

Split some wood today, got all the rounds by the woodshed done and maybe 1/5th of the stuff on the driveway. Lotta wood.

Rebuilt one of the coops so it's got a small wire side for Bob and then a regular wire + enclosed hutch for the other birds. This lets Bob see the other birds so he's not alone, or something. I just do what the woman says. This way I get my baby brooder cage back which will be important in a month or two.

Zoom!

We had some heavy cream left from something and some mini chips from last cookie batch so I decided to make mint chip ice cream. We had peppermint extract, which neither of us knew why. Anyway, it was super simple to make, and even using 2% milk since we had no whole milk it came out amazing. Another win.

The first 9x25 loads worked OK, and are launching those 115gr XTPs at 1650-ish fps and putting out 715 ft lbs of muzzle energy. That's some serious oomph.

The woman wanted me to make the butternut squash biscuits but got canned yams instead of the (still wrong but worked) butternut squash 'hash' she got last time. I didn't think it would work, and sure enough it didn't work. Didn't get biscuits, got these flat cookie/waffle/whatever things. We choked a few down, and then tossed the rest.

Working on 9x25 loads, got my first massive case failure. Headspace is just a little excessive, having trouble balancing cambering the rounds vs. being easy on the brass. The delta is just a few thousandths.

This did show up today, a blast enhancer. Supposed to be a muzzle brake but the ports are kinda pointing the wrong direction. Should make the fireballs larger which is what I'm after. :)

Looking at some of the photos coming out of the new iPhone 12 mini, they are way way nicer than my old 6s. Guess 5+ years of progress is noticeable.

Several things done today with no photos to show for it. First, got maybe half the firewood stacked. The woodshed itself is now full, and I've started on another rack outside. I figure there is enough wood on the ground still to fill the two racks I have left, and maybe the half full ghetto rack that hasn't fallen over yet. Some of it is drying nicely already, it should be superb firewood in a few years when I get around to it again. Next year's wood is ready to go on the left side of the woodshed.

Also went up and visited with dad a bit and took the bike, so I got a ride in with the visit. He seems to be doing OK post surgery, a little scare this morning with low blood sugar but he hadn't eaten in a day and it's not like his diabetes has gone away so you would think he would be more 'aware'. He's on pain meds for the surgery recovery though, so it makes sense he would be a little off.

Thunderstorms and rain here tonight, and the internet is down at the woman's office. Got email from the cable company saying that, and sure enough it's not working from here.

In 9x25 news, I reset the dies and got a little more length in the shoulder of the cartridge. Instead of using the whole sizing die and ending up with totally in spec ammo like the commercial stuff, I've lengthened it a bit to make it easier on the brass (not blasting the shoulder forward during firing). It makes it pretty tight in the chamber, but that's the trade-off for extending the brass life (maybe). You can sorta see the extra few thousandths I added:

What didn't happen at the range was hitting 2000 fps. With the 12.2gr charge of Longshot and the CCI350 primer, I should have been over 2000, but I was only at 1965 fps. My barrel is just too short, so adding more powder is both dangerous and counter productive, I've maxed out what I can do. So... give up? Well not exactly. There are two ways to fix it. Add more barrel (hard), or... lighten the bullet. I'm already using the 90gr XTPs which is basically the lightest .355" bullet normally available. You can get some 88gr cast stuff but it won't hold together at these speeds. Lehigh makes some wonky all copper magic bullets that look like screwdriver tips and they're supposed to be all amazing self defense bullets, but really they're just light. 65gr to be exact. That's much lighter so with the same powder charge I'm hoping to get those last 50fps I need to kick me over the edge. Expensive? Yes. Worth it? TBD.

In my quest for simplification, I wondered how I could use my EDC as the home defense gun too. Having a light is really important for the HD gun, even more so I think than the EDC. The G26 lacks a rail, and even if it did putting a light on/off every day twice seems like a bother. So I came up with this idea. The mantis X people make a rail base plate to hold their training sensor package, but it would also allow me to put a light on there. Come home, swap from the carry mag to the HD mag takes seconds and now you have a light.

It's awkward and hard to use momentarily as you should, but might it be 'good enough'? Am I really going to correctly use a light even if it's mounted better?

Bent up some brackets so now the clock is hanging on the barn instead of screwed to the wall. Having to take it down and change batteries, set daylight savings crap, etc is going to chew up the wall if I have to keep using screws directly. This is much better, and should still be stable and not have it blown off.

I made the templates for the van curtains. When the sewing chick finishes her current project she'll let me know and we can get my curtains in progress.

Screwing around at the range filming our draws I've learned a few things. First, Sean is 20 0.000000aster than I am, however I'm about 100% more accurate. He can get a miss on target from the holster in 1.0s 500f the time. I can get a hit on target from the holster in 1.2s 1000f the time.

One of the things the instructor we were watching on YouTube was saying was that you need to go on the "B" and not the "P" of beep. The beep is 0.2s so if you wait until it's done you're wasting a huge amount of time. I thought I was going on the "B" but the video shows me just standing there until after the beep finishes. I could be having trouble processing the sound and reacting, being so damn deaf and all.

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