raz-0

that sounds like exactly what I do to make mine work anyway even when I haven't lost the little L shaped piece of wire and have to craft a new one. I think I might have to save my pennies and snag one in the near future.

the lawyers win out on class actions, but there were a LOT of users with the click of death. The fact that they got screwed by iomega and the lawyers dodesn't make the zip drive mroe reliable. At my last job, I went through something like 4 of the suckers in 2 years. In our labs at my current job, we don't expect them to lst more than a semester before going CoD. I think we phased them out last year finally, I just know the lab guys hate them with a passion and none of the ones in surplus work. The zip disks themselves seem to be pretty durable if you make sure to keep a sacrificial one around to make sure the drive still works before inserting the valuable ones. Use them if you like them, but I really ahve to say after dealing with the iomega removable media offerings, and other types of removable cartridges, use tape, removeable/external HD, or optical. In pretty much that order for longevity. Don't cheap out on the tape drive. Optical is convenient, but I'm finding that a lot of recrdable media gets sketchy after about a year, for regular full backups that you dispose of the old as you make new ones, they then move up a notch if stuff fits.

well as far as hard drives, the IBM deskstars with 20GB per platter surface density or higher are just horrid for reliability. I've had 15GB per platter surface ones last for 5+ years. The denser ones seem to make it about 18 months at best, even less with poor cooling and if you torque the drive mounting screws too much. As for Iomega, well the click of death on the zip drives was enough to stick them at the losing end of a class action suit. I've had quite a few of the jazz drive cartridges go toes up on me. The drive itself lasted about 3 years. I don't know if their newer stuff is any better, but unless you keep a LOT of full periodic backups, the cost per megabyte of their hard-drive-ish carts is pretty high compared to digging up a USB2.0 enclosure and a good HD. You want an external drive, or a removable internal for backup purposes, because spinning up and down and being exposed to the heat of operating and the disk seeks of things like searching puts wear on the drive. It is also constantly exposed to the same risk of power surges and failures as the rest of the system. However, if you turn it off and unplug it, that goes away. You can even keep the backups off site in the event of something like fire, earthquake, flood, etc..

cool, thanks. Wasn't debating, just wanted to know the actual reason.

was browsing the various purveyors of gear, and saw dawson selling toolless guide rods. Owning a bushingless 1911, they seem kind of handy, but i was wondering if they were reliable or not. Anyone have any experience with them?

not to contradict, I'm jsut curious about the mechanics of it being unsafe. What's the difference between pistol and rifle primers? (and I guess if you are going to type a couple of sentences, why is it safe to use small rifle in 40S&W).

I'm still a new shooter to IPSC, and I'm far from being good, but I'll give my advice fromt he perspective of someone who has only recently made major headway on getting flustered at the bzzer and being unable to follow through with a plan. I also shoot l-10, and what's working for me. 1) read the course description for any special rules, but most importantly to get the number of tartets, steel, and round count. 2) ignore the conga line and the fault lines and FIND EVERY TARGET. Inventory them and know where they are. 3) join the conga line, and find all the places to shoot from. Unless you are good enough to shoot fast from everyone, you may want to only find the ports YOU can shoot from to keep it simple. Inventory the shooting positions and make sure you have at least one for every target. 4) At least in limited 10 and if you aren't already a really good shooter, plan your mag changes with your shooting ability in mind. I still plan my mag changes based on 2 shots for most steel. Giving myself more room to relax and take two shots if I need to has resulted in more one shot hits on steel. But you mix and match what you inventoried in 3 and 4 to get your plans. I try to come up with the two best plans for me, and I try not to do it in the conga line. 5) if you get this done fast enough, hit the conga line again to verify your plan does nothing stupid. It sounds like a lot, but it honestly is taking me less time than I used to be spending on it, and works a lot better for me. Even if it isn't the end all be all, it has pared it down to a set of skills I CAN perform and get better at, which gives me a fighting chance at adding new skills to the process. As for the plan encountering reality, well I have two tips for that. A) you aren't waiting for the buzzer, you are waiting to start shooting. The buzzer is relaxing because it end the waiting, not tension building because you are metnally trying to get you and the buzzer to happen at some magically agreed upon moment that in some abstract way can be "right" Do what you need to do next and don't try to reformulate a whole plan. If making the plan took 2 minutes at the start, you aren't going to be able to redo it completely in a second or two. Inventorying the ports and targets lets you make sure you don't FTE anything, and it gives you a shot at being smooth and going no slower than you have to. Don't try to make up lost time rushing something that has to be done like clearing a jam or making an unplanned reload, or finishing the rest of the stage. A good performance with a mistake in the middle will ALWAYS be faster than a horrible performance with a mistake in the middle. You aren't going to magically get better/faster because you screwed up and you have to in order to not go slower. If you CAN do that, stop sandbagging and perform like that ALL the time. If you can't, well... smooth is fast and consistency usualy gets you better scores when you add everything up at the end of the match.

I don't know about anyone else, but after reading the article, It really surprised me that a couple of individuals didn't feel it was wise to develop a several hour case of "explosive diarrhea" and occupy the heads for the rest of the flight. Also, I have to ask why the pilot didn't declare turbulance and wiggle the plane a bit while ordering eveyone to stay buckeld in. And if people were concerned enough to have the FBI and other agencies greeting the plane, why the heck not land early for "mechanical problems"? Also, if a palne load of cencerned people ona plane landed amidst LEO greetings after said occurance, it really suprises me that the only place we are hearing about it is a website. I don't know, maybe it si jsut me, but if things are going to go badly, I'd rather it be according to my plan than the bad guys plan.

personally, I use brass or steel screw in standoffs wherever they will fit. However, I horde the plastic standoffs the pop in and out because all the holes seldom line up. My solution to this is to take the plastic standoffs and cut the bottoms flat and pop them through the mobo holes so that everything is supported for reseating cards/ram/ whatever. For the ones with press-punched hills rather than standoffs, I cover them with electrical tape to prevent them grounding any nearby traces. As for the power problem, it might be ram or it might be the motherboard itself. Not all of them have well designed power distribution for the board. It could also just be a matter of heat.

Oh I won't settle into way 1 or way 2 or way X. They are just tools to go into the toolbox for the old subconscious to whip out as it needs them. The question is how useful it is and thus how much practice to give it. Also, to see if anyone had any suggestions about facets of the process that should be integrated before the tool gets well developed. Integrating even small transitions into my group shooting to avoid peeking is probably the way to go, I just have to figure out a way to do it that works well with the resources I have at my disposal.

Thanks for the responses (and taking the time to read my long winded explanation ). It's nice to see my gut reaction seems to make sense. (i.e. way 1 is better). Now I just need to figure out how to practice it without training bad behaviors while group shooting as I suspect that the "peeking" might turn into a habit of visoually double checking my calls if I keep up with what I have been doing.

Apologies up front for being verbose, but I'm trying to explaina visual thing and there's jsut no way to be terse about it. Ok, so you are supposed to watch your front sight, and you are supposed to see it move. But what should you be focusing on when it moves, and how much of the movement, if any, should your eye be tracking? I've been trying to get out and practice more, which has mostly been group shooting at the indoor range when I can fit it in, and dry fire at home. While shooting for groups, I have been concentrating on seeing the sights move in order to improve at calling my shots. What it all comes down to is I can go about seeing/watching the front sights in two ways, both have problems, and I'm not certain which way is the right way. In an attempt to make something visual described in words more clearly, I'm using the word fovea to mean the sharp detailed area of critical vision that gets focused on the fovea of the eye and focus to mean what distance the eyes are focused at. Also, specifically in my case, the path the front sight takes when shooting is roughly similar to the shape of a cylinder and slide warp speed hammer pointed at about 1 o'clock. way 1) keep the fovea centered on the area of the front sight, with eye focus at the plane of the front sight. during the shot and recoil, the fovea and focus stay in the same positon (i.e. where you want the sights to return to). the path of motion of the sights is not concentrated on, but picked up at the edge of the fovea for part of it and then in more periferal vision out to the point it changes direction until it returns back to where I can see more detail. way 2) track the sights with the fovea, keeping the eye's focus at the plane of the front sight. The sight is in focus and the motion is kept within the fovea for the duration of it's travel durign recoil. For simplicity's sake, I'll start with way 2. It seems to have little up side unless I get perfect mechanical repitition, in which case the follow up shot can be a tad faster. But most of the time, returning to a good sight picture is sloppy with this method. It's main usefulness seems to be in diagnosing anything bad I might be doing while shooting in practice. Way 1, seems to result in more consistant sight picture shot to shot, but seems fairly minimal on informational feedback. REturning to a good sight picture, however, is much more consistant. Now normally, I would say way 1 is what works and is the way to go. The only problem is when I am calling shots successfully with way 2, I know I called them right. When I call them with way 1, it's hard to tell if I'm "peeking" looking for blurry holes where the front sight was. So far, I generally have felt I built up two useful skills for practice, but still need to get better at one (or neither of them if I need ot be doing a thrid thing) for actual performance. I'm definitely at the point where improving is work and breaking new ground, and I'd like to put the effort into good habits rather than poor ones. so what exactly are you supposed to see? Using brians book as a guide, 1 has the benefit of better performance and going with the whole visual guidance thing. However, it doesn't have the quite the feel of seeing everything I'm needing to see that 2 has more of. Is 1 showing me all I need to see, and if not, what the heck am I supposed to be looking for?

I think he means have the barrel pushed up/backwards from directly in front of the muzzle. For example when sitting down for a seated start, or some shenanigans that might have you perofm some movement that might lift the gun out of the holster by pushing up on the muzzle. It might be something more common for tall people, I know I've had the muzzle end of my CR-speed bopped around on an obstical a couple times. No idea if that would negatively affect retention in the ghost as I haven't seen on in person, but I know some of the limcat guys at my club bag their guns between runs to avoid this type of problem. (then again some don't, and we haven't had a dropped gun in quite a while AFAIK).

supermicro X5DAL- G motherboard, Two 2.4Ghz 533Mhz FSB intel Xeon processors. 1GB of ECC registered ram. ati 9800pro 128MB video cord (have a geforce 6800GT on order) herculies digifire 7.1 audio card (w/ firewire) dell 2001FP 21" 16ms LCD. lite-on 48x CDRW drive optorite 8x DVD+-RW drive

I think the review was fine. Except for one thing. At least when I got it, the ishot web page was nothing but exceeded bandwidth limit errors. Seems to be good now, but those things with a store are kind of lame.

got 51... the other's except for one, I really can't feel bad about missing.. never saw them and still don't want to.

davidwiz: you are correct. You might also want oto ready our CC TOS before using it on paypal as many CC companies prohibit 3rd party charges like paypal and will leave your butt out in the wind if you ever dispute it.

Hands down biggest downer movie I can recall is testament. think of it as the day after's high-quality low budget, REALLY downer cousin. Came out in 1983. I haven't seen it in many years, but when I saw it I was probably about 14, and man it did it get to me. Other downer films, but nowhere near the same calss. dead ringers closet land I'd have to go trhough my collection to recall some more, there are plenty of them.

There are plenty of tricks, but they are all in camera or practical, rather than computer generated. The big one is the tire weights. There are others though. There is also unspecified post processing on it, but I believe it is mopre of the looks pretty category (i.e. evening out lighting and whatnot). It wasn't released in america because the car it advertises ins't (or wasn't) for sale here.

Just take your business elsewhere. It's very simple, and there are plenty of options.

well if you are looking for a nice forearm exerciser, I really must say I have been very hapy with my twist-o-grip. http://www.twist-o-grip.com/ Although it appears they changed the surface for it, so.... main down side is that at the most useful levels for the average guy, it gets kind of squeaky. also, if you like the traditional type of grip exerciser, iron mind has them in "weights" you wouldn't believe. (100,140,195,280, and 365lb.) http://www6.mailordercentral.com/ironmind/ I will note that you should be exceptionally careful past the 140lb mark. I found them very useful for getting the grip strength up so that I could get past 3 on the twist-o-grip. [EDIT] I've used the powerball, and it's neat, but if you reach the limits of it and use it that way regularly I have chipped plastic from the channel that guides the axel. I've found the twist-o-grip to be a lot more durable and for strength building in the forearms is qutie good. The powerball is more like an aerobic supplement these days.