No AR build yet

The parts for the upper build didn't make it here this weekend, but allegedly should be here today.  All I got done with it yesterday was to hit the barrel and upper receiver with Brownell's Alumahyde II coating; the parkerized barrel got a parkerized grey coating, and the receiver got a dark earth coating.  I coated the barrel so that it wouldn't rust under the handguards.

I'm going to be super pissed if the parts don't get here today.  I paid for 2nd day shipping to get it here Saturday, but I guess that was a waste.

The enemy within burns bright

This past Friday I got home from work and all was well, and within a half an hour timespan the sickness crept up on me and took me down like an old sick deer. Saturday and Sunday found me alternating between the chills and burning fever, with super swollen tonsils and eardrums. Having a fever Saturday morning worked out well for me though: I spent the morning outside in the 55ish degree weather in a T-shirt, sweat pouring from my face as I cast 147 grain flat-nose bullets. Even with that, it's been complete agony the past few days, and unless there's a break in the pain, tomorrow isn't looking so well either. I haven't been sick on a level like this in a long time. I have some fun filled pictures from Saturday to post, and maybe I'll get around to that tonight or tomorrow morning some time.

Happy New Year!

I hope y'all are having fun on this fine Sunday. I have a range report to get to sometime today (hopefully at naptime), but until then, go take the Rifle Quiz at the Military Channel.

To all a Merry Christmas!

Slow blogging ahead. Y'all take care!

What goes around, comes around

I have been in a perpetual state of sickness for a month now. The problem is that one of my kids will get sick and pass it on to another after a week or so, which means that I've been holding a sick child that constantly coughs in my face for several weeks. It took awhile for my immune system to be overwhelmed, and now every time I start to recover, another one of my spawn will send the germs right back on my six.

"I can't shake him, Goose!"

I'm tired of eating cough drops and just want to be well!!

What's worse than a weekend with three sick kids?

How about a weekend with FOUR sick kids!?!! Yaaaaaaay!

Fevers and snot and much much worse are my idea of a good time. I forgot I signed up for that.

Thanksgiving was great this year, and I have much to be thankful for. It broke my heart to have to eat thanksgiving lunch/dinner with both my family and my wife's family. Eating twice the food was tough, but I hung in there.

I am no longer the owner of a 1911 (temprarily), but will soon be the owner of an H&K P30. With that, there are two holsters on order for it; one of which will be here sometime in the next six months, the other should be here this week. Ammunition is on order and has been rolling in, and night sights should be here any day now, too. It's all coming together.

When I have time this week (riiiiiiight) I'm going to have to put in some hard labor to make a sufficient backstop for the amount of shooting I plan to do in the next several weeks, just to be extra safe. These days there are houses all over the place, so I want to know precisely where my rounds stop. The old target shed has long since collapsed into heap of ruin, not long after I took these pictures of it:




It's been replaced by the steel Nevco targets, and I plan to add more. I drag those pictures out every once in a while because I get a kick out of them. There's a lot of holes there!

State of the CTone Address: Whatcha been up to?

Ohhh, about 320 lbs., from the looks of it:




As you can tell from my blog content lately, I've been otherwise engaged with things. Cute, needy, and extremely high strung things; they're lots of fun. I've been sick as a dog for over a week now, along with my youngest -- this was a gift that all in my family have shared -- today makes me think that the end of the sickness may be further off than I had thought. It sucks when little kids get sick because they don't understand why they feel terrible.

I didn't get any shooty in this weekend due to sickness, pumpkin patches, the need to have essentials like groceries and diapers (lots and lots of diapers), church, and good friends, but maybe next weekend will be different. In the spring I have high hopes to get into IDPA, and I strongly intend to drag both of my brothers into the mix with me as well. I don't get to spend nearly as much time with my siblings as I want, so that's something I'm going to make time for from now on.

I noticed this weekend the Pocket Carry Competition Association, which seems like an excellent idea, but sadly they don't actually allow drawing from the pocket. Something to do with lawyers or some shit. Because of that I'll have to decline PCCA; but browsing the IDPA rule book hasn't shown any AIWB disqualifiers, so all this time drawing and dry firing with magazine changes at the Huron poster that Mike W. and Nancy gave me will be well spent (no offense to Hurons. I mean well).

I have another Bladetech holster on the way that is better suited for AIWB carry, and also two of each of the Vicker's slide release and Vicker's magazine release so that the Glock 17 and 26 will be the same. My practice sessions have shown that my stupid-high death grip of doom causes me to ride the Glock brand extended slide release with both my strong hand thumb and the palm of my support hand, which makes me have feeding problems and the slide often fails to lock back on an empty mag. The Vicker's parts should remedy that. As far as AIWB carry, it's by far the most concealable way to carry a handgun; and if you have a hankerin' to carry a full sized pistol, you can do that with ease. Try it!

The Mk12 is rarin' to go with some fire formed brass loads that I did up last week; I'll have to do a write up on that sometime as trying to get accuracy from new brass is usually problematic. The 10/22 is ready for action as well, and I'm already on the hook for a range report with pictures when I get that going. With the cost of centerfire ammo being what it is these days, rimfire guns are becoming more and more popular. The potential for lots of affordable shooting in field positions that the 10/22 provides will certainly make me a better shot; with that I often wonder about what would happen if I had the chance to go shot-for-shot with the 12 year old version of myself, and who would win.

I managed to clean out my weight room this weekend, so hopefully the beer gut that I've earned over the last year and a half since I stopped weight training will start to disappear. I'm also looking forward to all the Whey protein shakes with peanut butter that come with lifting! Saaahweeet! With less love-handle hanging over the belt, I'll have more room to hang all sorts of do-good gadgetry and tactical lights for my wife to roll her eyes at me over, and that translates into equipment reviews.

Lastly, I owe some emails and action items to some folks out there. I'm getting to it; please be patient with me!

Hospital blogging

***Update: Thanks to all for your comments. Wife is home and well; during all of this three of my kids were sick with fevers. When it rains it pours. I'll be at the Modern Day Marine Convention this morning, and hopefully will have some pics of the latest and greatest military grade hardware. Stay tuned.


Sorry about the lack of posting. I've been out of town on travel only to rush home to the hospital to be with my wife. Everything is going to be fine, but I'm growing a bit tired of this place. My family has a permanent timeshare at the hospital.

I sense a disturbance in the internets

No bloggy today. It seems that the internet wherever I happen to be is spotty, and I have no reasonable excuse to offer except that it must be the super-magnet in my head jacking with the computer. At work, home, or on my phone in a restaurant, I can't keep a connection long enough to do anything worthwhile.

Give us this day our yearly CTone

My fourth and final child - a son - was born last night. At 9 lbs 10 ounces, he was the grand finale for sure. Our other kids were born nice a simple and quick, while this one gave us quite a scare; mother and baby are doing great though.

I have now had four kids within four years. For a few more days anyways, I'll have a three year old, a two year old, a one year old, and a newborn. I am truly blessed.

Blogging will be light for a few days.


***Update: Just made it back home last night after five days in the hospital. Still have a big few days ahead with doctor's appointments, sleepless nights, and family visiting their new member. I would have blogged while in the hospital but the internal internet wouldn't allow me to visit blogger.com. Weird. I thank y'all for the comments, and I'll get back to normal blogging here hopefully this weekend.

Busy

Going to a military type trade show for the next couple of days. I should have some really great pictures to upload, but until then, posting may be light.

Blogger back up

For a couple of days last week I couldn't log onto my blog. Strangely though, I noticed that others with blogger accounts were posting away, so I don't know what that was all about. It also looks like some comments got taken off as well. Sorry about that.

State of the CTone address

Things are going well these days. I'm living the American dream in my house that isn't worth anything near what I paid for it, despite the blood and sweat I've put into it. I work too much, but enjoy benefits that America's forefathers didn't enjoy in their time, namely: running water, constant electricity, automobiles (hard to justify "enjoyment" with em' these days), TV, cell phones, and bad ass repeating firearms. No complaints there.

The weather is strange though. Two months ago I took this picture with my kidos while wandering through a park in the cold: Two weeks ago we had snow on the ground, and this week we saw the 90s. Not the 90s like rolled pant bottoms and poofy haircuts; I mean 90 degree temps! Very strange.

Also, I'm building a new rifle to be my walking everything rifle. If it's up to what I hope it is, I may even be living my dream of shooting F-class and competing with the world's best shooters in the next year or two. My reasoning is, if your racecar isn't living up to your expectations, no matter how close, than you build a faster racecar. I'm almost there.

Another exciting development is that my wife's computer died (for the 3rd time), and she not only has a shiny new one, her old one is in the shop getting a new hard drive so that I can use it. Quickload will be the first item added, then we shall test its ability to capture frames from movies. Deduct from that what you will. I've been through so many PCs in the past three years that I haven't been able to do the things I started this blog to do. That will change soon. Exciting times are ahead, and I'll keep my few readers informed of what's going on. Thanks for reading!

Professional Obligations

We all must set priorities in life, and sometimes that means that you have stuff that is more pressing than others. Apparently to some lawyers, professional obligations is a code term meaning that they forgot about that important date that was set for them to be at a certain place to do a certain thing because they had mix-matched their priorities.

I'll be off the net today. Y'all have fun.

Down with the sickness

Last night was awful. I very rarely get seriously sick; I get a cold once a year or so, but I get the flu like once every five years. I picked up the flu sometime last week, and it set in full force Saturday night, with last night being the worst. The shivering sweats with high fever I could do without, and now I know how my kids feel when I put them into a cold bath to bring the fever down. The bright side is I called into work so as to not share my gift with my colleagues, so I should be able to get some blogging done if I can appease CTone the youngest and get him off my ankles.

Thought provoking images

I found this thread at AR15.com. ****Warning. Some graphic images in here****

There are several pictures in there that literally took my breath away. The picture of the brother hugging his brother in uniform and then later kissing his brother's casket - it took everything I had to not loose it when I saw that one. You don't even know.

Not all of them are sad, but the ones that are will get you.

Life comes at you fast

Been with a family member in the hospital for the past few days. Everything's good to go, but everyone was bracing for the worst there for awhile. This on top of other obligations: financial, travel, other family; you know how it is.

Man, the holidays can be harsh!

I'll get it together here shortly.

Technologically challenged

I took one look at the Edit Template page on Blogger and knew that it was too far over my head. I used one of their given templates, which still means that I'm uncool, but I wanted an updated look. That, and the way my old page was set up made it hard to read.

I'm really dumb when it comes to this sort of stuff. I only recently figured out how to "Follow" other blogs, or what it even means. And I still have no idea what the RSS feed thingy does. It's just there.

One day I will figure out how to make this blog look cool, but until then, I hope it's easier to read.

I'm alive

Had a four day weekend with Thanksgiving and all. My wife worked two of those days, so I went full loser and maintained pajama posture while hanging out with the kids, playing video games, and not shaving. There was also a birthday party in there too, which was interesting in that cramming a dozen kids and twenty+ adults in such a small house makes for some good times.

There were no accomplishments to speak of, with perhaps the acception of the loading of 100 rounds of .380 acp, as well as some .308 to refine my RL15 loads for another test. Now I just need time to shoot them. One of the bigger problems that I have found is that when you load up some new rounds for a test, and don't shoot them immediately, you start to second guess your work. That can be bad.

Other than that, the world still turns and the Republic lives on. More to follow when I get it.

Fighting the mighty allergy

Sorry about the lack of posting. I've been going toe-to-toe with what seems to be a cross between the cold and the flue, although it's apparent that it's neither; I have some sort of seasonal allergy that is kicking my butt. Problem is, since I'm not contagious, I'm still going into work. By the time I get home I'm completely spent and ready to go to bed early.