redmanfixit

I can't say that EVERYTHING Ayn Rand said in Atlas Shrugged is agreeable to me, but so much was. I try to "vote" for things I approve of with my money. I try to greet everyone I meet with courtesy and respect. When I spend money in a place it's not unreasonable to expect the same from them, for starters. Wherever I find a place that provides me with better service, at a good price, I "vote" for it. If I can I will pay a little extra because I know it cost's more. I let them know I'm doing that and why. I talk about the business in a positive way to people I know. There is the other hand. It adds a slightly higher level of complexity to shopping, or banking or insurance or whatever, but next thing you know, change follows where we spend money. For example; I remember buying an automobile that I intended to own for at least 15 years. I guess there was no connection for me between my....ahem, reproductive capacity, and my car. I planned that, I looked around at what maker had a good rep. I was unwilling to buy new JUNK every year. Think about what you "vote" for every time you spend a dollar and ask other people to as well. Find out about the companies that you buy products from and if they behave badly don't give em' your money! A couple of banks LEAP to mind here! Oh well! 1 buck at a time. Don't buy junk. Don't settle. Or I suppose we'll continue to let them herd us right along!!

If it doesn't need to be a natural Diamond, you might go to Diamond Nexus Labs. They make Diamonds in the United States in a laboratory. They are about a hundred bucks a carat loose, finished. I am certain they don't come out of the pressure vessel "finished". No Karma. No Bad vibe. No stinky politics. No Blood. http://www.diamondnexuslabs.com You will see that although not PERFECTLY like a natural stone, they have 99.5% of the character of natural stones as far as physics is concerned. Oddly they never have inclusions. (flaws) (-; I don't get money from this so I think I can go on a little. I have a very practical wife, from the Midwest. She insisted!! I didn't need to get her much more than an engagement ring and wedding band. I thought it might be fun to get her something really sparklely for her pierced ears! What fun. Well they are REAL diamonds. I could tell She liked them a lot. Check it out! No, I did not fib either!!

Consciousness adapts to it's environment. You can discover things about your true nature with observations of this sort. "The thread into the maze of the Minotaur". Given that there are no physiological explanations for failed "memory page calls" you can begin to trace out where you are inclined to direct your energetic resources. I think that this is a nice example of what Joseph Campbell was invoking when he said "follow your bliss". When you are doing that, your choices never lead you to be "working". Activities take on a "sweetness", the activity becomes effortless. Like when you're on the fall line on a ski slope and everything is in balance, you're weightless. It's a difficult to describe state of consciousness. Natural language does not articulate it's scope gracefully. When you see people write from the "quantum reality" perspective I think this is what they're trying to get across. Be patient with them if you detect sincerity. In this way consciousness really does create "reality", whatever that is! Bring that into moment to moment awareness and it allows you fine tune the experience without too much suffering. It helps to reduce the level of "suckage" in dry fire practice, for example. (My apologies, there should be an attribution here, but I find I'm unable to recall the members name whose tag line I stole this reference from!) One of the many reasons I participate in shooting sports is the opportunity I have to find immersion in the moment. To find the "fall line" on a stage and stay there if I can. There are lots of ways to do that, but this one attracts me in a compelling way. I see this perspective in Brian's Book and I imagine that at some level it also attracts the people that make up this forum. (Ahhh, GrassHopper!) I bet you're a good cop. I bet you mostly love going "to the office" (I didn't pick work there on purpose!). I'd even bet, that sometimes you'd just like to shut it out for a little while! There is the "other hand" though. Could just be a Homer Simpson, or Kelly Bundy thing. True in my own case, especially. My brain is just "full". So I have to be really careful if I try to learn something new. It could push something out that I really need to know, like the location of my car keys, or my address! (No....really...it HAS to be right around here SOMEWHERE, Aw Geeeze, @#$%%@##**!).

Lucky Dog!!

You see what you want to see, and you hear what you want to hear.

Very often, if you remember to check, you will discover you are holding your breath. Everyone has a kinesthetic component to their intelligence, some of us more, some of us less. Breath is one of the most fundamental ways people get messed up. Change your breath and you change your responses in stressed conditions. Don't forget to breath.

Darkness attracts malfunctions. Figuring out how to manage the gun, a flashlight and a magazine and safely clear a malf! So nice if local LE has an idea what's going on so they don't come round and say WTF?? Hard to find a place around where I live that we can set up full size COF's for night time fun! Lucky you!

Colostomy Bag!! YaaaaHa ha ha ha! I love it. Never thought of that one! Were you ever in military medicine?!! My O.D. is the pres of the local archery club as well as a shooter. Same potential comedy but with a much greater assortment of hardware. Colostomy Bag....Oh Man!

I've thought about this some. Perhaps not as much as others. In Colorado, where I live, posted prominently at the gate and around the premises of equestrian facilities, are signs that say loudly that sports involving horses are inherently dangerous and the participant is there at their own risk. Colorado law apparently supports this in not allowing lawsuits based on mishaps with horses. I have not read the law but I expect that there may be an exception for extraordinary negligence, but otherwise, play at your own risk. Other than people that are "anti" trying to shut this sport down for all the "reasons" they have, using lawsuits, perhaps as our sport grows we should all start thinking in this direction. I am endlessly impressed with the dedication to safety I see in this sport. As the numbers increase, the laws of probability will move us toward some kind of incident. Thus, I personally will NEVER react negatively to, or think ill of any official at a match, however picky or un-charming they may be in the moment, in any situation that has to do with safety. I do not want to discourage anyone from saying anything at a match based on an observation they may be making about an issue, even if it seems fussy. I realize from threads I have followed here, that there are many competitors and officials that are really disturbed when observers of a run make loud comments about fingers or muzzles. OH WELL. It's only money or junk (well OK perhaps really nice junk, sometimes) but this is just a game, finally and I can never see it being so important that safety on the range is ever less than the first rule before all others. As our sport grows, and I'm doing everything I can to get people to come out and participate, We can "weave" this into the fabric as we go.

Depending on the hour of the day, my two favorite drugs in the world, chocolate and caffeine vie for first place in my attention. I'm sorry to say that there is no such thing as white chocolate! It is not possible to have "white fudge" because real fudge is made with chocolate, which is nearly black thus making it impossible to have "white fudge", whatever that is!!! I'm sure it's a nice confection, but who knows what's on the outside of it!! I also intend to become a member of the 1911 elitist snobs if they'll have me!

I want to come shoot some of your matches!! Where are they? Now it gets really disorienting! Boulder Colorado. Would you believe that's there's an actual Boulder Rifle Club!! (You likely have to live around here to really understand that.) We have lots of tech tinkerer's and leftovers. There is the St. Valentines Day Massacre, Halloweenie Match, for two of the named matches. Sometimes we just make up occasions. It's fun to have guests! Personally I like to go for the grin factor!

Tanfoglio is famous for presto chango guns. You can set a Tanfo up with parts that let you use the same gun in different divisions with out much trouble. I was talking to Henning about it the other day and between what he does to them and the factory you could set up something sweet. I shot Cha-lee's and his pal Conrad's Tanfo Limited .40 Smith guns and they had the softest recoil impulse of any major caliber gun I ever shot. SWEET. Ask Cha-Lee and see! The CZ design has some inherent advantages to it that are well known. None other than Col. Jeff Cooper thought it was mighty fine.

I have cast and shot thousands of recovered lead boolits. I recover my lead from the indoor range bullet trap where I play a lot. Solves a disposal problem for my range and it only takes a little work for hundreds of pounds of lead. Yes they smoke, so what? Tumble lube works just fine as regards preventing leading. The factor that most effect's leading, as worked out by Mr. Lee ( I have a lot of respect for crabby old engineers) Is the "Pressure" the metal will withstand. Lee sells a simple, effective hardness tester that will allow you to easily test your alloy to establish the pressure of the load vs metal. Use slower propellants, or if you want to get real fancy, use gas checks. I'm too lazy to use gas checks because it adds a step I'm trying to avoid anyway. The smoke doesn't really bother me and I'm not that good anyway. I still have a blast and I really like the people I get to hang with! Lee's modern reloading most recent edition has all the info and a collection of loads for just about whatever you wish to make. You can use metals recovered from processing the scrap sold to get money to buy alloying metal. Babbit metal has lots of tin and antimoney in it and is not a special order metal. OK this is shouting here, but it's really important! PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE ADMONISHMENTS ABOUT NOT GETTING LEAD POISONING!!!! VENTILATION IS ESSENTIAL. LEAD EXPLOSIONS FROM CARELESSNESS WILL SCREW YOU UP BIG TIME!! Have fun, shoot more, advance the sport, do it on a budget. Remember, you either pay time or money. Which do you have the most of??

Go to this link, read around it. Let your frustration subside. Shoot fast and accurately! #1102283

I have an angle on this you may never get to unless events conspire to move you that way. I will tell you upfront what my perspective on this is and where it issues from. Medicine as it is practiced in this country is not about wellness it is about sickness. The big money is not in wellness. Unless you are an unusually educated consumer, you are unlikely to find remedies for the underlying causes of a disorder. As with any generality this is not ALWAYS true but it is true a significant part of the time. More likely you will be offered a treatment for a symptom, in the hope that ultimately your body will return to equilibrium on it's own. It works often enough that people accept those times it does not with resignation. Ultimately people become an income stream for companies that make potions for relieving symptoms without addressing underlying causes. I got to this place in dealing with my own health problems and those of my wife. Both of us were more less abandoned by allopathic physicians and given a prognosis of incurability and degeneration into death. Pissed me off. If you have a history of problems that includes treatment with antibiotics, and at this point most of us do, you are likely suffering from a combination of nutritional deficiency and infection with pathogenic organisms in your digestive system. Immediately, anti-inflammatory drugs will bring some relief. Taking them in the long run is fraught with peril and many of the people responding to this thread have mentioned this. Another approach you can take is nutrition based, again people have mentioned this here and it is a good idea to determine if you have food intolerance's or allergies. WAY more people are gluten intolerant than anyone ever realized before now, for example. Direct therapies like alternating hot and cold packs, counter irritant therapies and compression bandages of one form or another, bring relief for acute symptoms. (Deep Heat, Tiger Balm, Icy Hot) Potions and pills. If you pay attention to advertising on the tube, (you can't totally ignore ALL of it) you will have noticed the recent emergence of live culture digestive supplements being offered. Activia, Good Belly, Danactive, these are appearing all over the place. THESE products are literally the tip of the iceberg in the classical sense. The area in biology this touches on is biofilms. This is HUGE. The implications for this transition in science and health is staggering. It is very worthwhile to get a working knowledge of this topical area because there is literally a revolution unfolding and it's not on tv. In the short term do the combination of treatment of acute symptoms. Compression, anti-inflammatory's, ice and letting the injured part rest. Give yourself credit for being able to choose the components that are right for you. Good physicians know that many times, all they have to do is listen to their patient and they hear what has to be done from the sufferer. Easy job and they get the credit and the money. OK first odd angle. Find a Vitamin Cottage and get a product called BTotal. When you've been on courses of anti-biotic's you have depopulated your gut of flora that make essential nutritional elements for you from the foods you consume. This is a product that is sub-lingual, like nitro for angina. Many of the B complexes that are involved in preventing inflammation do not pass through your digestive system intact. They are broken apart by gastric juices. Normally these are synthesized in your lower intestine by the flora that inhabit that ecosystem. This will bring a surprising reduction of acute symptoms. Also there is the added bonus of more energy and a clearing of your thinking processes. This stuff is very similar to what you may have heard is given by injection to big money patients by Hollywood doctors to compensate for the Hollywood lifestyle. No crank just the good stuff. It's cheap and smart in a lot of ways. I have no financial interest in that product nor do I have financial interest in Vitamin Cottage. I just think they are worth supporting because of my experience with getting and staying well. OK. Second odd angle. Go to ercprobioticenzymes.com and spend time with the FAQ pages. Follow the pointers and beat your head on the information you find there till some of it starts to get through. I DO have a financial interest in this site. My wife and I own it. We will respond to any questions you have and we have accumulated an enormous amount of information about how to stay away from doctors and the obviously deficient American Health care system. Anyone that comes to our website from BrianEnos.com will get a discount on any of the products we sell, as if you were members of my family, should you decide that you might benefit from them. I am not a doctor. I am not making medical recommendations. I am sharing information that has literally saved lives and transformed peoples lives. What's this got to do with shooting?? This is a performance sport. This approach is so fundamental to performance that it would take pages and pages to explain it. Don't get me wrong. I was a Navy Corpsman for 11 years. I have 20 years in the Allopathic health care system. I LOVE interventive medicine. Fixing blown up, shot Marines and Sailors was and is something close to me that I have a hard time explaining. There are gaping holes in the way the system deals healing processes after the drama is passed and that is not a small thing. The best investment you make is wellness. No one is better suited than you, to keep your health intact. You must seek good information. Ignorance is really expensive and stupidity is fatal. Wisdom is where you find it. It pops up in unlikely places, you'll find it if you are open to the sound. So... a lawyer once told me one of the smartest things I ever heard. "Avoid the American legal system in the same way you would avoid a high voltage wire on the ground in a rain storm. If you have contact with it, there are only two possible out comes, you will either be killed outright or you will be badly burned. The only insulation you will find effective is money". Sadly, now more than ever, our medical system is starting to look that way as well.

Do a search of old threads. This forum is wide AND deep. There is a bunch of good advice on this topic, if you look!

We don't really do flames on BrianEnos.com. We have a higher standard of civility here. TRUTH! Haven't seen much in the way of flames. Although there is a little "stiffness" that becomes evident in some of the back and forth. The Mods are pretty quick as well as even handed. Pretty classy joint ya got here! One thing I find excellent about these shooting games we play is they end up as cauldrons of innovation. Lots of times the "set dressing" is just for fun. Just underneath there are some training opportunities that are hard or impossible to set up on your own or even with a few friends. Back to suggestions. At my local club, we have set up some notable theme shoots. Zombies are always good. Of course on an indoor range you have to send the rounds toward the bullet trap. The repetitive pattern that emerges is kind of like a multiplex theater. We have designed sight barriers of sheets of cardboard and light wooden frames we hang from the support structure of the range to divide the shooting positions into lanes and we set up scenarios in which you move by one means or another laterally across the range. Maze's are nice too. Sheets of black plastic hung up to form corridors. Doorways to pass through. The occasional dead end to get stuck in on the way to the firing line, if the range is long enough. Of course you have to be sure you don't impair air flow with all the props and junk!! Animated targets are fun. Several of the regular troops are handy with a welder and soldering iron. It's fun to have shoot targets that do unexpected things. We keep the delicate parts low and make the shootable uppers of the usual paper and wood. We have even had a target that advances toward the shooter when they step into the lane. Not too fast or too close but it is quite a surprise. The stages are easy to animate by using motion detectors that normally trip security lights, with relays to switch the power and windshield wiper motors for motivators driven by emergency lighting batteries. There are kit boards out on the net that are adaptable controllers. They have on board simple logic and memory programmable from a laptop RS232 port. Don't cost too much either. I think it's right use of technology! We have a modified three wheel powered chair that we have had the shooter sit on and move them across the range at a steady pace. Many people find it very disorienting to shoot while moving when they are not afoot. A couple of the cops that come out to play with us, forgot how to run their guns because of the odd effect of not walking or running while shooting. I suppose that there are people that get a lot of practice at that but they don't seem to want to come play with us. That may be one reason to practice shooting targets that are moving! 3D targets are great fun. Recently one of our deviant regular contributors found some polymer shell targets that withstand multiple hits. My wife went out and found the remnants of Halloween costumes and we dressed them as monsters. Those make great animated targets. The scoring turned out to be simple because the rear part of the target was flat as the shell was vacuum molded. We used a standard USPSA target taped to the back and scored the hits where they penetrated the paper. All these stages are lost brass. It really takes people that are willing to hustle to score, reset and tape. If you want to get the match over and the range cleaned up by a reasonable hour. Since we have a concrete floor, there are sweepers to get brass out of the path so no one stumbles with a loaded gun. ( Kind of like the people that show up for USPSA and IDPA matches are anyway.) These matches have helped me learn techniques I might never have had the chance to try out other wise. I can actually get a sight picture from my muzzle flash, for example. It is possible to shoot accurately that way but you must have opportunities to get the experience. Target identification is obviously more difficult when the light is low. Actually having to find targets and keep track of your hits in the dark is a challenge. How well do you know your gun? Try clearing a malfunction in the dark, on the clock, while rolling along on a little cart! It really unnerves a lot of people. Darkness attracts malfunctions like crazy! We've had shoot targets pop up from a barrel that appears to be full of fulminating acid. Using a theatrical smoke generator. I really do try not to let people know how much time I spend on this stuff, I'm pretty certain the veneer of normalcy I try to maintain in the community would fall to tatters in that light. You've been warned!

In my experience gun mounted lasers can be wonderfully useful tools for low light shooting, however they are illegal for use in IDPA so we really don't need to worry about that here. I know I'll probably go to hell for this but, locally there are people that think you should have an opportunity to try things out that you might find on someones gun that the rules don't cover. Since usually, most matches take place in daylight, on outdoor ranges, a laser sight won't help THAT much, if at all. Some lasers are bright enough. But you STILL can't know how it might work when you REALLY need it to. I realize that "rules nazies" will go ballistic about the idea of letting people try to figure out if they have gear that will work in a local match, but I really don't see why not. Generally, there are fewer and fewer places for people to practice all the time, ESPECIALLY where I live. (Boulder County CO.) There is NO PLACE for someone to practice shooting in low light without the Police coming to ask you what the #$&% you think you're doing. Gunfire at night seems to attract attention! Have you noticed that equipment that seems to work fine at the practice range, doesn't in a match? I don't trust ANY gear that I use in a match or for carry till I have run it in at least 10 stressed shooting situations without a malf. As long as people aren't doing something unsafe, I think there is always a way to help them mature as a shooter and gain experience that will help them understand where some of the opinions about gear people have, come from. It's a GAME we invented for practical practice, the GAME is not life and death. I think that figuring a way to help a visually impaired person (for example) find a way to be able to run a gun, competently is more important than the "rules" in a local match. OK now I'll cower by my computer and wait for the flames to start rolling in!

I've built and shot thousands of 9 mm and .45 ACP with Wolf primers and they run as well as any I've used. I use a Dillon 550. an old one. My wife and I have several different 9mm's between us and my .45's eat that ammo without a blink. This is consistent with what I read in other threads.

Is there a difference between a banker a lawyer and a prostitute? Other than obvious one where the prostitute actually works.

I am a 1911 type and have hand loaded for years. I love my 1911's. Definitely an emotional relationship. I also have a G21sf. I only like my Glock I don't have the emotional thing going, I just like it more and more the greater the number of rounds I put through it. I have run about 7 thousand rounds of hand loads made with bullets I cast by hand from recycled lead. Never have had a problem with leading in the gun. My loads handily make a power factor of 180. I run the same load in both my G21 and all my 1911's. Bullseye is also one of my favorite propellants, I really don't see moving away from a versatile, proven reliable formula like that! Eat at Joes 10,000 flies can't be wrong.

From a Good country to a Good country. You are twice blessed! Welcome to the US of A.

This has been covered a LOT. Glocks run lead just fine. The rules are well understood and a search of the forums here will reveal them. I have run THOUSANDS of rounds of lead thru my 21 SF no worries. No leading, no Kaboom! The crimp is a good place to start. Pull tension (crimp) is a known effector on consistency and velocity. Also, what is the recommended load for titegroup in that bullet weight? There are plenty of instances in which too lite a bullet for a given propellant load will give erratic burn rates and low velocities. Slugging the barrel is a good idea to be certain. Having multiple sources of load data (I like OLD reloading manuals) written by smart old guys in addition to newer ones for the newer powders.

That we set up our 3rd Saturday Non-sanctioned by anybody but us, combat pistol match and a bunch of people showed up and we had a blast. Then we had the turkey shoot ( I didn't win one) and the place was full of smiling faces. Nice people, lots of fun and lotsa rounds!!

Low light stages are pretty much the same as regular lighting cept they're dark! Hee Hee! Most matches I've attended are very safety directed. Low light pushes it up a notch. RO has to be able to see. Keep people back further from the activity. Sweep the range between shooters, quickly to make sure there is no brass left to interfere with footing. (We put on some elaborate scenarios sometimes that are lost brass to keep them moving.) Pick up mags, score, tape and go. Everybody works!! ALWAYS use your best DI voice for "clear the range", before staging the next shooter! An extra set of eyes for tardy tapers is wise. You get lots of opportunities to goof with people in constructive ways, if you give it a little thought. Overlap the shoot targets creatively. In low light it's difficult to keep track of the actual layout and you can't see your hits, so it forces you to stay very focused. Mixing no shoots in there in creative ways also presents some nice confusion. If you have smarty pants people with fancy lasers and things, try putting some crepe paper streamers hanging down in front of the targets. Fancy gizmoes are neato but they sometimes don't work the way you imagine. Reduced scoring areas are fun too. We've done some matches that were ALL head shots! Trying to get a precise sight picture when your pupil is dilated for low contrast lighting is very educational. Yes you can learn to use the muzzle flash to get a sight picture. And see the downrange area. Even with good tritium sights, if it's dark enough to see them well, it's likely too dark to see what the target looks like. Unless you're wearing night vision. It is also possible to shoot accurately using only the top of the slide/barrel and NO sights, but you have to figure it out by doing it. Brian does say "see everything". Can you do it in the dark? Managing a flashlight and doing all the normal gun handling stuff is a B#*%H. Inevitably, if it hasn't been practiced, someone will get owies from slides and that sort of thing because of unpracticed grip and support decisions. Bandaids are nice for that! Simply reminding people that it's smart to turn the light off at mag changes or when moving, will mess with your rhythm in amusing ways. (I seeeee you!) Ever practiced clearing a malfunction in the dark? Remember, no time outs when you really need to know how!! Oddly, darkness seems to attract malfunctions, among other pesky things. Minimal gaming allowed is fun. Sometimes we purposely have closed stages in low light and flashlight. If you carry and you are so unfortunate as to have draw, are you going to be able to see everything before you start? You should have a chance to "see" what it's like before you have to know! Don't forget the use of 3D targets too, lots of possibilities there! Have fun. Be safe. Learn how!