Too Lazy to Fail

Apparently my new firmware has Microsofts Voice Command built-in. Which means that I can say “Call Tracie” and it will call her. Other commands include “What is my next appointment?”, “What is my signal strength?”, “Read messages” etc.

Now all I need is an equivalent that is scriptable, and I will be able to rule the world through my bluetooth headset.

Now I’ve discovered that IHOP will let you camp out the entire afternoon, stealing electricity, on merely the promise of buying something later. Unfortunately, this IHOP’s wifi is password-protected. I would crack it, but I don’t think there’s anyone using it to get the traffic needed for the number-crunching.

It’s just as well. By breaking the AT&T Wireless TOS and tethering my phone to my laptop, I can have near-broadband speeds anyway:

I’d been planning to shut off the $20/month internet access on my phone, but it’s just so darn handy once in a while. The problem is that, while Memphis has glorious 3G coverage that gets me the low-latency, high-speed wireless documented above, Jackson is still stuck with regular GPRS that would see those speeds cuts about 95%.

I’ve started my write-up of the first night at Rangemaster’s Level III course, but there’s more that needs doing. I have about 2.5 hours before I must leave my sweet House of Pancakes for the class, so maybe I can get it out by then on this midget keyboard.

I’m off to Mogadishu on the Mississippi where Rangermaster’s Advanced Tactics and Skills pistol course awaits. Along the way I will have dinner/lunch with Squeaky Wheel. It’ll just be us, because none of you conformists can get away from your pesky jobs. Capitalist pigs.

Maybe I’ll blog about class this time, instead of putting it off until all details are forgotten as before.

I’m looking forward to a few days away from the drama at the office. Hopefully some relaxation and a long (6 day) weekend will see me refreshed and ready to help out on Tuesday.

Rangemaster sent out a Memphis-area anecdote yesterday:

This past Sunday evening there was a very instructive incident in East Memphis. A couple was in town for a special event, and were staying at a local hotel. They got into a domestic dispute, and the wife became quite angry and picked up the .380 semi-auto her husband had brought along.  From a few feet away, she shot him in the head with the .380. At that point, he moved quickly, causing her second shot to miss. He then grabbed the gun away from her and went outside and called the police on his cell phone.  When police and paramedics arrived, they found that the bullet had entered the skin on his head, and burrowed around a few inches without entering the skull. This left what the officer described as a “mole tunnel” in the skin. The shootee refused to be taken to the hospital, and was treated and released at the scene by the paramedics.  At no time did he lose consciousness or the ability to fight back.

This is a perfect example of why we say the .380 is not adequate as a defensive round. This lack of effectiveness is the rule with this caliber, not the exception.

A few bloggers have commented approvingly of the admonition from the instructors at Rangemaster, and I can partially agree: the .380 is not a round I would voluntarily rely upon to protect myself and my family. I am mildly bewildered, however, at the dogmatism with which some folks attack sub-caliber pistols.

While those that preach the virtues of the .45 over the 9mm usually do so either without data or with data that ignores modern cartridge design, those who warn us against sub-calibers like the .380 usually do so with good reason, as the modern hollow-point design and hotter potential loading which rescue the otherwise anemic 9mm aren’t as feasible in a cartridge that has the lighter bullet and lower safe pressure threshold of a .380. Simply put, 9mm works because it can go fast, causing the hollow-point bullet to expand while having enough energy left to penetrate. With the .380, one often must choose between penetration and expansion. Without expansion, you’re just punching tiny holes. Without penetration, you’re not reaching vital organs that will cause the aggressor to involuntarily stop what he’s doing.

It sounds like I’ve come not to praise the .380, but to bury it. It’s not the case, or at least, not entirely.

I’m a lucky guy. I carry a Glock 19, which is a full-size, double-stack 9mm pistol. In addition to the pistol I carry a spare magazine and a 2oz can of pepper spray. These items are neither light nor small, but I’m fortunate enough to work in an environment where a nice untucked camp shirt is acceptable attire for the 20-something office manager, so I can conceal what I consider to be a very adequate personal protection configuration. In addition, my employers know that I carry and have no qualms about it. If someone spots the weapon I’m carrying, I’m not in trouble.

Not everyone is so lucky. Most folks work in less permissive environments, where getting caught with a weapon would lead at best to an uncomfortable conversation, and at worst to an escorted trip to the door, with a quick stop to box up personal effects. Some even make the intensely personal decision to protect themselves when not only the employer, but the state itself has required that they disarm. For these individuals, being “made” will result not only in the loss of respect or employment, but the loss of freedom and all the rights of upstanding citizenship.

So what is a person operating in a non-permissive environment to do? Some would tell them to find a new line of work, but that’s easy to say when you’re secure in a job that allows you to protect yourself. The “undercover carrier” is then stuck between a rock and a hard place, between employers that will fire or imprison him if they discover that he carries a weapon, and trainers/writers/gun store employees who imply that there is no excuse for not carrying at least a 9mm, and who mutter under their breath that you’re really not safe with anything but a full-size .40 or .45. Again, I note that full-time trainers work in environments where concealment and secrecy is not a factor.

One option is to go to great lengths in attempting to conceal a full-size pistol. There’s lots of great options out there, and effective every-day concealment in comfort is attainable, but slipping under the radar at Walmart is a lot easier than hiding a large, hard object (Stop snickering!) from people who see you up close nearly every day. For a time I wore a Glock 26 in a tuckable holster with my shirt tucked in and properly bloused. One day a very bright 14 year-old intern with the church’s Urban Ministry program spotted the clips outside my belt while standing beside me at a copier, ruled out a knife or a cell phone, and asked very innocently, “Mr. Simer, do you carry a gun?”

Now, everyone in the room except for this young man knew the answer to that question, but I’m in a permissive environment where it wasn’t a big deal. I give that example to point out that full-size weapons WILL be discovered eventually. Somebody will give you an unexpected hug, or spot some outside bulge or attachment point for the holster, or hear you go “clunk” as you walk too close to a doorframe and hit it with your pistol. Ask yourself: What are the ramifications of discovery? If they’re too costly, as with my friends that carry in spite of state law, then you’ll need to re-evaluate your carry gun.

Someone once said that comparing stopping power among handgun rounds like like comparing ranks among army Privates. ALL handgun rounds stink for self defense, and will “fail” in the manner Rangemaster described occassionally. Some fail more often than others, and while we must take that into account when equipping ourselves, we must also make practical considerations that will allow us to carry in the first place. Rule one of a gunfight: “Have a gun.”

So I’m a big fan of the pocket pistol. I’ve carried a .380 in my pocket when any other gun would have been impossible to conceal under the mandated atire. I carry a larger pistol because I’ve made arrangements for it to be comfortably concealed, and I operate in an environment that endorses my decision to carry. If I ever have to work in a non-permissive environment again, I will not feel ashamed to put a sub-caliber pistol in my pocket. Hey, it beats throwing rocks.

You may not know this if you don’t know me in meatspace, but part of my “Office Manager” position at the church where I work is running the audio/visual during the services and doing all the planning and preparing that is involved in that. It’s a holdover from my part-timer days as “Audio/Visual Technician” and probably constitutes about 20% of my time working at the church now.

(As an aside, I don’t know for certain why they hired a Computer Science major with poor hearing and no formal education in the matter to run the technical side of their programs. This goes both for ECC and for Union University, who paid me for a while to help run their Instructional Technology and Campus Media office. I suspect the answer in both cases as to do with gullibility, but on whose part, I couldn’t say.)

So as someone who is not at all qualified to be doing what I do, I’m now going to gripe about people who aren’t qualified to do what they do. If you’re reading this and you’re one of those people, just know that I do love you, I appreciate what you do for the church, and I wouldn’t kick any of you off the stage because I know that you’ve got a willingness to do your best and, despite my gripes, you do a great job.

This issue you run into any time you do anything which requires skill, talent, or professional ability from folks at a church is that, requiring volunteer effort, you usually get to deal with folks whose cups do not run over with every one of those qualities. They try really hard, their heart is in the right place, and they do pull off some pretty great stuff, but the ones that do it for a living would rather not do it on the weekends, and those that don’t rely on their talent for a paycheck probably don’t have the experience to know when they’re doing the right thing and when they’re causing problems.

One problem that folks who sing in a group often have is microphone discipline. What I need them to do is hold the microphone really close to their lips while aiming it into their mouths and project their voice outward. I’ve tried several things to get some folks to effectively do, you know, what they’re up there to do, with little success:

Sing to the Clock

The advice that always worked for me as a choir member is: “Pick a point on the back wall and sing as if that’s the microphone, or the ear of the person you’re singing for. Make sure you can be understood all the way back there.” Again, I’m not a professional, but it seems to me that if you do this, biology kicks in, and your posture and breathing problems go away or are at least mitigated. People don’t do it, or if they do, they don’t make it a habit, and I have to keep pointing to the clock above my head, which makes me look silly and makes them look like they’ve been caught slacking off. A look of surprise on the faces of worship team leaders makes the audience try to figure out what happened, and my objective is always to be unobtrusively helpful in my amplification during services.

Glug, Glug

I’ve thought up a handy rule of thumb: “Hold the microphone as if you are drinking a glass of water that is about half full. That puts the microphone at the correct angle and distance from your lips.” People get what I’m saying, but we once again see that knowing the right thing to do and doing the right thing are often far separated. Besides, at least with the clock thing I have a handy visual signal I can give a floundering worship team, but the best visual aid I can give for this can easily be incorrectly interpreted as “I need a drink,” and some church folks are just too uptight about that sort of thing.

Hypochondriacs, Rejoice

I’ve tried telling them that “If you aren’t worried about picking up harmful bacteria from the microphone, your lips aren’t close enough to it. I clean these mics every week.” This is a lie. I never clean the mics. Maybe they can tell? People are way too afraid of a few germs these days, in any case.

No, Really: I Won’t Let You Ruin Everything

Sometimes people will intentionally hold the microphone far away because they are afraid they’ll sound bad. I’ve tried to reassure them that I will not leave them turned up if they’re distractingly bad, but to no avail. I actually had a student who helped lead chapel worship at Union tell me that some days she didn’t feel that she was singing well enough for the Holy Spirit to work through her on some songs, so she alternated between holding the microphone far away and lip syncing while not actually singing anything. I told her that the Holy Spirit was working just fine for me through the marginally-developed intellect that the good Lord put in my noggin, so she could feel free to do her cheery best and let me objectively decide for her, but if she really thought she was too useless for even God to use, that perhaps she should stay off the stage and let them get someone with less talent who would at least do it wholeheartedly. She never came back, and that’s a shame, because when she tried she was the best voice we had.

The point here is that consistency is more important than talent, and I still struggle with getting folks to believe that at the church. The folks I would call the top vocalists on the team aren’t necessarily the people with the greatest voices, just the people who give it their best shot every single time. Some of my most frustrating brethren I’ve heard sing like superstars, but they’re too gosh-dern concerned about how folks will perceive them if they mess up, so they just choose to rarely contribute at all instead.

I Finally Did It!

I finally figured out how to get people to maintain microphone discipline. Most folks know that I can listen to each channel individually through my headphones, even if they don’t understand that I can also see who is slacking by the column of lights on their channel. I discovered that if I put one headphone up to an ear and look around as if I’m confused about why things don’t sound right, they quickly stop lip syncing and start producing sound again. Bingo! This has the added bonus of not requiring them to look surprised or to acknowledge the correction in any way, and likely allows most of them to think that they got away with it and that I didn’t notice.

But I did notice, because I am always watching. Watching and listening and judging.

I love ‘em, anyway. Maybe I’ll even start cleaning the microphones once in a while.

10/22: Still sitting in the corner with one-too-many factory powder coats, screws painted over, and barrel stuck about four degrees off center. Ruger couldn’t get their act together with their new shipping/pickup system, and I haven’t called them back since about a week before Guatemala. Next chance I’ll get to talk to them during their business hours when I won’t be at work is next (not this) Friday. If they don’t take care of me then, I’ll make a comprehensive whining post here, print it, and ship them the gun. If they don’t make this right, I’m not sure I’ll buy another Ruger firearm again. To the dozen people who’ve found my site and emailed me after a Google search such as “Stainless 10/22 Review”: I’d buy the blued version if I were you.

AR-15: I have the stripped lower and plenty of nice magazines, and can finish the rifle for about $600, but I know that when I build it I will have to feed it, and that’s expensive. What’s more, I’d like to put a quality red dot on it, and those don’t grow on trees.

Carry Gun of the Year: This year’s model is a Glock 19. I went from Glock 23 (which was too expensive to shoot: .40) to a Glock 26 (purchased because I thought I needed a smaller gun, when what I needed was a holster that worked for me: the MTAC), and now the “compact” 9mm. There’s been some back and forth about “adequate” vs. “perfect” handguns, and I’ll make my contribution real soon (title: I Don’t Like Guns). My Glock 19 suits me just fine, and I wear it all day every day with no discomfort.

Wife’s Guns: Tracie likes her Kahr CW9 with a rubber sleeve added to the grip, but wants a Kahr PM9. We found one tonight for $100 less than normal, but used. I took it to the store’s range and it exhibited some sort of problem returning from slidelock. They are going to send it to Kahr, then give me a call when it comes back repaired. I will probably take 100 rounds to make sure it’s reliable before purchasing. Truthfully, I would love a PM9 of my own as Back-up Gun, but like the AR build, things keep popping up that I’d rather spend money on. Like being out of debt.

Sorry if you’ve emailed/commented and I haven’t gotten back to you. I left on July 5th for Guatemala, returned yesterday, and didn’t want to advertise that I was going to be out of the country.

There’s not a whole lot that’s blogworthy from the trip, but PDB said that this exchange should go in:

(Paul enters the TSA security checkpoint in Atlanta after going through immigration and customs. He has his hair buzzed at about 8mm, and is wearing cargo pants, an ash-colored T-shirt, and a nasty-looking sunburn that is still healing and peeling a week after it was inflicted. Well-versed in the security fashion show by now, he places his laptop in one bin, his tan 5.11 clearance sale boots into another bin, and his Blackhawk backpack behind them, sliding the stack down the rollers to the older gentleman manning the machine.)

TSA Agent: What branch you in, son?

Paul: Oh, I’m not in the service.

TSA (Now with massive grin): Ah, you one of them contractors, then!

(At this point I thought of using Tamara’s “No, sir, I’m a tactical poser.” line, but I thought of something better.)

Paul: No, sir. I’m a church secretary.

(Edited to add…)

BONUS!

(The team is making the final approach to land in Memphis. Paul looks out over the city.)

Paul: Yep, it’s Memphis alright. I can see the muzzle flashes from here!

It is impossible for me to save money by changing my own oil. A local dealership will do it for $12.95, which is about what it costs me to buy 5 quarts of oil and a filter.

However, I can (at least in theory) do it myself in half an hour or less, in the comfort of my own driveway, without having to drive to the dealership and then sit for two hours while my car progresses through the queue of vehicles. I can also make sure things are done correctly: a friend recently had a Wal-Mart greasemonkey leave the oil cap off of her car when finishing up, nearly killing the engine. On multiple occassions in high school I had Jiffy Lube guys short my car by two quarts.

Also, if I do things myself I can rotate my own tires in about 10 minutes with no expense, and save between $8 and $15, depending on the shop.

Finally, it’s a good excuse to get in and under the engine of my car, looking for leaks and worn belts. It’s never a bad thing to have a clear understanding of the state of your vehicle.

I had not changed the oil in any car since I had last lived at a place that would permit it, several years ago. I had never done the deed to a Taurus/Sable, either, though I have done just about everything else that can be done by an amatuer to my Sable, usually out of financial desperation and with a frightened eye toward the repair manual. I figured that, not being familiar with the task, it would take me longer than I might expect it to regularly.

So uh, do you know anyone who has given themselves an electric shock while changing their oil? Now you do. Apparently there are exposed electrical contacts about two inches below the base of the oil filter in 97-2001 Taurus/Sable sedans. Who knew? That, combined with a purpose-bought metal wrench not having room to be applied correctly, resulted in fire moving up my right arm, a shower of sparks, acrid smoke, and oil pouring from the still-attached used oil filter.

I was terribly afraid that I had done damage to the electrical system of my car. A quick trip to the auto parts place in my wife’s car, and I returned with the rubber strap wrench that I would have bought in the first place had I not had a fascination with the unique movement of the metal shock-wrench.

Maybe next time it will be a bit less traumatic. I swore at several points that it wasn’t worth it, and that I’d never do it myself again, but hey, it’s worth at least one more shot, because I already bought the oil.

Here’s a close-up of the hole blown in the filter, presumably heated by the electricity running between it and the contacts through the wrench:

Be careful out there, people.

The other night I was removing my pistol for the night when I noticed that my Comp-Tac paddle holster had developed a nasty crack. This particular paddle was my favorite holster, and was used probably fifteen hours a day, six days a week, for nine months. I emailed Comp-Tac, who had me ship it in for replacement.

It’s oddly reminiscent of my first holster, a Comp-Tac “Shirt Tucker”, which I managed to snap the clip off of after a similar amount of time and use:

I’ve been swearing by Comp-Tac products since I started carrying, but I’m wondering after two broken holsters if I should move to leather. I’ve got a Don Hume JIT slide headed my way as a “backup holster”, but I may eventually switch my primary from Space Age Materials to the more rugged Dead Cow Materials.

Looks like I did better on the Major Field achievement test than I thought I did. Truth is, there were at least a couple of folks taking the test who were capable of scoring higher than I, but they were only weeks away from graduation. There is no passing score for the MFAT per se, but it’s handy to have a high score if you will be using faculty as references during a job search. The students that should have outperformed me already had jobs lined up, so they didn’t care enough to try during the exam.

It also looks like Union has increased the MFAT prize from $25 to $50. Every little bit helps, I suppose.