Friday, March 6, 2015

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Without A Voice

1) Republicans complained that they only had one of the three levers of power in Washington.

2) They won a a majority in both the House and Senate last November.

3) They have the numbers, but not the will to lead. A minority of the majority party voted with the entirety of the minority party to fund DHS.

Michigan has fourteen Representatives in the House.

Nine of those fourteen are Republican.

Six of those nine voted to fund "Amnesty."

  • Dan Benishek, District 1, 202-225-4735
  • Mike Bishop, District 8, 202-225-4872
  • Candice Miller, District 10, 202-225-2106
  • John Moolenar, District 4, 202-225-3561
  • Dave Trott, District 11, 202-225-8171
  • Fred Upton, District 6, 202-225-3761

I voted for one of these.

I would like to remove the candidate I helped put into office as failure should have consequences, unfortunately there is no recall mechanism to remove a member of Congress.

I am left without a voice.


















Monday, February 16, 2015

Ammunition Storage - Re-usable Indicating Silica Gel Canisters

Ammunition needs to be kept dry.  Sealed containers are start.  Adding silica gel packs to absorb any extra moisture inside is even better.

When I first started my stockpile collection, I dropped 10g packets into each ammo can.  As I'm rotating through the hoard sensible supply, I'm finding that the packets are now indicating 60% saturated.  I've decided to add date labels with a piece of painters tape to reduce my opening and closing. (They are already labeled by caliber.)

SilicaGelPackets.com has a nice selection of non-carcinogenic indicating gel packets. The 10g packets that are perfect for a .50cal ammo can~(approx 1200 in^3), are packaged in plastic baggies that will melt in the oven when trying to dry 'em out.  They also sell the stuff in bulk.

I have some cigar tins lying around that are perfect for the gun cabinet, but a little bulky for the ammo cans. So enter the google-fu and I found some aluminum lip-balm containers on bulkapothecary.com that look to be the right size. A little tinsmithing with a finish nail on the tops, and voila==> small re-usable, indicating silica gel canisters.

3 hours @ 300F when the orange turns green and you're good to go.

For a relatively small investment <$50,  I have 50 packets that can be reused.  (I'm also reclaiming the beads from all the plastic baggies to re-use in the cigar tins.)

So...how do you keep your powder dry?

And do you practice any specific inventory management scheme when heading to the range or storing new purchases?  FIFO, LIFO, WIHOH.

(FIFO = First In, First Out)
(LIFO = Last In, First Out)
(WIHOH= Whatever I Have On Hand)










Thursday, February 5, 2015

So, This Happened.

One of my sons is involved in the Civilian Air Patrol.

He forwarded this e-mail from the Commander.


From: <redacted>
Date: Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 8:12 AM
Subject: Military Ball Gate Access - Response Required
To:<redacted>


Good Morning,

While I appreciate, on a personal level, the fact that you have answered the race question as "Human," this response on the form that we have to give to Base Security will result in you being denied access to the base.  Please respond to this email with the typical answer to the question regarding your racial background, beyond the designation of Homo sapiens.

Thanks,

<redacted>, <redacted>, CAP
Commander, <redacted>

I've withheld the names and ranks for the sake of privacy.

1) I'm proud that my son has the balls to answer the race question this way.  We are either a color-blind society or we ain't.  I wish more people would call it out when presented with a demand to declare their race.

2) I'm disappointed that humans are not allowed on base. ;-)

I wonder if there would have been any fuss if he had put Aryan on the form.

All in all, this made my day.