A Moment Where I Fully Agree With Jon Stewart

The Daily Show
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Multi-Gun Practice

Early in the morning, a simple stage, 3 pistol targets, 3 shot gun targets, and 6 rifle targets. Three shooting boxes with staged weapons.

We usually run a multi-gun on months with a fifth Saturday. Couldn't work ourselves up to it. So a small group of us went out and ran that stage, each of us getting to run 5 or 6 times.

Good practice. An opportunity to run fast or slow down, concentrate on weaknesses and consider the sight picture, or just hose it and see how it looks afterward.

We were done and props put away by 10:30. Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that.

Harry Potter and Halo

If you play first person shooters, this will be funny.

The Power of the Internet

As I mentioned several posts back, I had revived an old slide scanner I bought in a junk shop and had been looking at scans of the slides that were included with the scanner. I don't have anyone's name, only the slides, which are dated September 1965. I scanned this one and thought that the view should be searchable.


It is clearly the Acropolis, captured at a moment in time. The car in the foreground helps date it. So I searched for a couple of things finally trying "acropolis looking up from the square". I found a view in the first page of images. Found out the name of the area. Searched the name Monastiriki Square and found this.


It is one of a series of images that can be viewed here. This is what the Athens Tourist Guide has to say about it. From an old slide, to that much information, in about two minutes.

Sometimes it feels like the future.

Building Bikes

Greybeard asked if I had ever built a bicycle from the frame up, and the answer is yes. I can lace spoked wheels, check the alignment on the frame, reface the surfaces on the bottom bracket and head tube, and install all the components and get it right.

It is a joy to have the opportunity. Most of the assembly work in a bike shop is low end mountain bikes and cruisers. Most of the repairs are pretty straightforward.

A couple of times a year, a full build like this came along. In my day, high end bikes meant Reynolds 531 tubing, a lugged frame, pretty paint. It meant working with the customer to select the components, measuring and fitting the customer to the bike. Frame size and geometry is the first thing, then it's crank length, stem height and extension, handlebar width and drop, saddle type and position, gear ratios on crankset and derailler.

When one was finished and you turned it over to the customer, and they were truly satisfied, it was a fine moment. Bicycle building like that is a craft, a mix of skill and artistry.

Another, closely related, skill is full rebuilds. Taking a bike that has seen a lot on miles and rebuilding it, replacing some components and bearings as needed, cleaning, and bringing it all back together, a mix of old and new.

I remember one very clearly. I had a customer bring me a Schwinn Paramount. You might not have known that Schwinn built anything like a Paramount, but they did, in small numbers. Beautiful high end bikes, outfitted with the best components of the time. I completely stripped the bike and verified the frame alignment and the customer sent it off to be professionally repainted. While it was gone, I built him a new set of wheels, cleaned and checked all the components, replaced the headset, chain, derailler pulleys, freewheel cluster and bearings.

When it all came together, he took it home. He was back in the shop two days later and when I saw him come in I was concerned something was wrong. He walked back to where I stood and said, "It's better than new. Maybe it's the wheels, I don't know, but this bike never rode like it does now, and I just came in to thank you."

That was a fine moment, and it really didn't have anything to do with running a business or making money.

Visually, With Hundred Dollar Bills

Because the debt clock in the sidebar is just numbers, I offer you the ruin of the Republic in a visual format. You don't know whether to cry or to laugh.

All About The Bike

It's All About The Bike was a library find on the new book shelf. Partly a story of guy with enough money to build the bike he really wants, it has some history, some trivia, and some of his personal stories of what cycling has meant to him. It reminded me again of what I loved about bicycles and working in a bike shop.

Another Point of View

Al Jazeera's commentary on the attacks in Norway. It's interesting to note that at the top of the page they are reporting that several arrests have been made in connection with the attack.

Oslo II

Looks like I jumped to conclusions about the perpetrators of the terror attack in Oslo. Terrorism is still an atrocity, whatever excuse the terrorists use. The loss of life, the wounded, the damage to the society, is all the same.

It also doesn't change, based on events in the past 30 years, that my conclusion would have been correct, based on percentages.

Oslo

How long will we, can we, continue to tolerate this?

M-1 Garand Sequence of Operation

Borepatch has posted an Army training film explaining the operation of the M-1 Garand. It explains the entire sequence of operation. If you have a Garand and want to gain a better understanding of how it works, you're going to watch these videos more than once.

Old Computer Geekiness

I bought an old Nikon slide scanner at a junk shop for $20.00, had the scanner, the software, and 2 trays full of slides. SCSI interface. Bought an old Adaptec card and 50 pin SCSI cable on E-Bay.

There are no drivers for XP for Adaptec 2920-A cards. Google provided several answers. I found drivers. There are no XP drivers from Nikon for the old slide scanners. There is a 3rd party software that works.

So here it is. After much geeky work, here is the first scan. It is one of the slides that came with the scanner. Someone went to Europe and used Kodachrome. The title on the slide holder just says "Paris, Sept 67. I don't know who took it. I bought the scanner in a junk shop in eastern North Carolina. We are obviously at the base of the Eiffel Tower and if someone speaks French, perhaps they will tell us what the little cart was selling.

When It Sings

In the gun shop at lunch, and knowing my weaknesses, the guybehindthecounter hands me a 4" Ruger GP-100. Heh.

The truck goes in the shop tomorrow, and that's never cheap. I don't have 6 pictures of Mr. Franklin to let go of right now. Still, it sang the song. It is the Precious...

Need to spend more time shooting the guns I already own. Yup, that's what I'm telling myself. Grumble, grumble, harumph.

"But honey, I swear when I picked it up, it glowed!"

Fanfare

At the National Cathedral

In a Relative Way

Spent the day with her and another couple at the beach. The water was warm, there was a steady breeze, and the sky was clear. We sat under umbrellas, talked and read books, took a long walk, went in the water as the tide came in and the waves were at their best.


It's the same state park we've been visiting since before our youngest was born. We used to load them all into a 1970 Olds Vista Cruiser, strap a stack of boogie boards and a cooler to the roof rack, and make the same journey. All day in the water, staying until the sun was on the horizon, driving home in the dark with everyone else in the car asleep.

The beach is the same in a relative way.

Martial Arts and Shooting Sports

If your knowledge of martial arts comes from the media and movies, well, think about people you meet whose knowledge of firearms and shooting comes from the same source. You can say many of the same things about both of them, because they are related.

* You will meet lots of interesting people you will be proud to be friends with.
* You will meet an occasional dud.
* There' no magic about it. If you want get better at it, practice.
* It's not the only answer. It's just another tool in the chest.
* Keep it in perspective. It can be a great hobby, but don't let it take over your life.
* Other people will be curious. You will have to answer questions, usually the same ones.
* People that know you and know you do this will form their opinions based on you. Like it or not, you are an ambassador for the sport.
* One day, for a few chaotic moments, it might be the most important thing you ever learned.

Early This Morning

Along the new bike path by the river, around 6:30 this morning. The full heat of the day hadn't hit. The trail was mostly empty. I had noticed this view on the way out and stopped on the return leg to snap this picture right after sunrise.

A Historical Perspective on prosperity

I've been listening to the Evil Party try to hash it out with the Stupid Party on the debt ceiling, spending, and taxes, and I can not improve on what was said so long ago.

--We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
--Winston Churchill

Turning Point

The news is full of coverage of the wheeling and dealing on the debt ceiling. The Democratic President is pressuring the Republicans, attempting to frame it as a problem with their unwillingness to negotiate. If the conservatives cave in and throw away their advantage on this, we will see higher taxes and higher debt and one day, historians studying the fall of the United States will look back at this time as a point where the United States saw the problem that could destroy them, saw the solution, and turned away.

But Practicing Takes Time!

Let's take an example from childhood. Learning to ride a bike? No one hops on and rides away. You wobble, seeking your balance, turns are terrifying, stopping is worse. If you persist, though, in a few weeks you can ride. By the following year you forget that it was ever hard.

There's a lesson here for other things. Because we do forget that learning things is hard, or that we ever struggled with them. But learning to walk, to read, to swim, to hit a baseball, to solve a quadratic equation, to build a fire, and so on, were all hard in their turn. When we started to do them, we did did them poorly.

I came across an article titled Am I Tough Enough To Be A Beginner? The article explores this from the point of view of martial arts, but it could be applied to anything that you want to learn. Those guys at the top of the score sheet at the last three gun match weren't born with those skills.

You can't learn to do something well unless you're willing to do it badly.
--Katherine Derbyshire

More Than Yesterday

I don't know how much I can get back. I'm 54. I don't know exactly why I feel pulled to try. But I have decided to lose another 15 pounds and work on my cardiovascular fitness this year. I have an old road bike I haven't ridden in years. Until today.

I didn't go very far and I didn't go very fast, but it was more than yesterday.

Gun Safety

I was reading some Civil War letters, and came across this one. It is a letter from Manley Stacey to his father, one of a series that starts here. In it is this quote:

Yesterday on the March one of the 125th. picked up a Revolver, & commenced fooling with it, & Shot one of his own men through the Head, killing him instantly. It was an awful sight.

Manley was killed in December of 1863. He, also, was shot accidentally.

Starting a New Blog

As some of you know, I study a martial art. The head of my dojo has asked me to own a website and monitor a Facebook page for our local organization. It is going to be hard to maintain any anonymity and accomplish this task. So hello world. My name is Mark Harrington, also known as ASM826.

The new blog is Aikido Arnis of Farmville. The first couple of posts are up and it is live. I will be continuing to blog here as well, as this site is my personal blog, and I can put up whatever seems appropriate.

The Facebook group is also called Aikido Arnis of Farmville. All of this is an outcome of my recent attendance at the annual organizational summer camp, held every June in Cheraw, S.C. Approximately 80 people from dojos all over the U.S. attended. A slide show of my pictures from the event can be viewed here.

The style of Aikido I am studying is called Suenaka-ha Tetsugaku-ho Aikido. There is much to say about it, even though I am a novice, and some things will be cross posted at both sites. If you as my readers will indulge me as these changes in the sites occur, I promise better posts and pictures as this develops. I have always seen shooting as a martial art, and now as I improve in and explore Aikido, I feel my shooting is improving because of what I am learning.

The journey continues.

A Lesson

If you, by any means and for any reason, depress the trigger while sweeping yourself, this is the outcome.



Any tactics or equipment that cause you to shoot yourself should probably be reconsidered.

Go and Read

Go read. I cannot possibly post anything you should read as much as this.

John Adams

The resolution was voted on July 2nd, 1776. The document was dated July 4th. John Adams wrote a letter to his wife Abigail on July 3rd. Other than the date, I offer his words for your consideration today. Happy 4th of July. Enjoy the picnic. Applaud the fireworks. Hug your loved ones. Remember.

Since the vote was taken The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.
--John Adams

There and Back Again

A sore left wrist. A couple of tight places in neck and back. I learned a lot. I had fun. A series of posts will be be coming, mayhaps the first one later today. One thing is for sure, my sutami is a lot more dynamic when I don't have to worry how I land.

What a beautiful, sunny morning. It makes you happy to be alive, doesn't it? We can't let the sun outshine us! We have to beam, too!
--Takayuki Ikkaku