Category Archives: Uncategorized
Learning
I was swapping stocks on a pair of Ruger 10/22 rifles today. I replaced both stocks and was doing a function test.I tried the safety….and rather than the usual ‘click’, the safety just kinda slid over to the side…almost out of the receiver. Hmm. Okay, let me move it to the off position and see if it works…nope. So the safety was moving weirdly and the hammer wouldn’t drop. Hmmm.
Alright, curiosity gets the better of me. I pop the pins and look in the receiver. Here’s where problem one comes in – to see down to where the safety button is you pretty much have to remove everything in between. Which, as you can imagine, is a tremendous pain in the ass.
Turns out, this is not a unique problem. It seems that if you put the push-button safety in a halfway position, in order to facilitate a stock change, you may rotate the safety to the point where the notches for the detents and notch for the sear become swapped around. I had no idea.
On the bright side, I learned how to strip a 10/22 receiver down to the very last part.
As an aside, Sportsmans Warehouse has Ruger 10/22 rifles on sale for $180. And Cabelas will price match.
2020 goals
It is a sad state of affairs when you are so stupidly busy that you cannot get around to shooting all the guns you have been buying as of late. I used to make fun of someone who would buy guns, put them in the safe, and never get around to shooting them. I am becoming that guy. (Well, in some ways, anyway.) My biggest problem is that I have absolutely zero self-discipline to manage my time efficiently and to my best interest. Then again, I have always been my own worst enemy.
2020 is approaching. I am dreading it. Historically, years that were divisible by five have been very bad for me. I expect 2020 to have no shortage of kick-to-the-jimmies episodes. But, I think that for 2020 I’m going to create a ‘goals’ tag and be a bit more diligent about tracking progress of some vaguely defined goals I have. Biggest is to finally get the bloody house paid off. If I can stop spending stupid money on guns, and exercise some self control (see paragraph one), there’s no reason I can’t get the house paid off next year. And, really, that should be the highest-priority goal since once thats paid off I can take the money I was normally funneling to house payments and start chunking it into my Roth. (With a smaller percentage dedicated to precious metals.)
And, of course, 2020 is an election year. I still think Fake Indian Woman will get the nomination, BUT… I’m starting to think that if Joe Biden continues his slow dementia-induced spiral into self-destruction it will be just the impetus for Hillary to jump in as a ‘savior’ for the Democrats. Perhaps as Bidens VP. Who knows. Regardless, the faster I get the bloody house paid off the faster I can get Palmetto State to send me a case of $350 AR’s to stockpile before the election.
Other goals for 2020? Well, some career advancement wouldn’t be unwelcome. I’d also like to upgrade to a newer vehicle. Preparedness goals are easy: more guns and ammo, more silver and gold, more food, and eventually….Commander Zero’s Post Nuclear Bunker O’ Love And Lingerie Proving Ground…I mean, every survival retreat should have a catchy name, right?
Hmm. Thats interesting. Let’s run that up the flag and see who salutes: What catchy name do you have in mind for your happy little hideout?
On my way to 12-step
“There are no classes in life for beginners; right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.” – Rilke
Ok, here’s the thing….. I’d wanted a ‘tactical’ 10/22 takedown for a while. This one isn’t exactly what I had in mind but…Magpul takedown stock, Nikon .22 scope with BDC, Tactical Solutions threaded barrel…and all for less than the dealer cost of the other one.
My impulse control on guns is so low these days. A psychologist would probably say I’m either punishing myself for something or I’m trying to fill some sort of aching void in my life. Regardless, there had darn well better be a zombie apocalypse at some point so I can justify this nonsense.
TC
To do
Havent had a zombie dream in a while….
Dreamt I was in, what I am guessing, was NYC. I was running around with someone else, no idea who, and we had nothing but a backpack full of bandoleer’d .223 ammo, a couple M4’s and a couple tricked out Glocks. I t went well until my partner had their carbine fail and had to switch to their pistol. After that we had to work our way through the city streets as panicked resident tried to evacuate along the elevated subway lines. Ah, good times…good times.
Interestingly, I haven’t watched either of the Walking Dead shows in about a year. Just too busy. I’ve got them recorded on the DVR, but I never seem to get around to it. Same for new fiction…there are a couple books I want to read but it seems like there is always something more productive to be doing. I suppose that’s what being a grown up is.
One thing I do make time for, though, is keeping an eye on personal stockpiles of gear and resources. In fact, I’m heading up to CostCo in a little while to top off a few things and price a few others. At the moment, I feel okay with most of what I have, but I really want to get the freezer back up to %110 of capacity. I used a buncha stuff outta there over the last few months to take some pressure off my budget between gigs, and now is the time to get it back up to that comfortable margin of safety.
Plus, winter approaches and it’d be nice to get some soup and whatnot in the freezer for those cold winter days when I don’t feel like cooking but want something nice. Literally, the easiest is to make the soup, put it into a a vacuum bag, let it freeze solid, seal the bag in the vacuum sealer. Then all I have to do is pull the pouch outta the freezer, throw it in a pot of boiling water (thus not having to deal with waiting for it to thaw), and heat it up that way. No mess other than the spoon and bowl I use to consume it. And, of course, it keeps forever.
At some point I need to review how my preparedness goals for 2019 turned out and start thinking what they will be for 2020. Perhaps I’ll create a separate section on here to keep track of that sort of thing. THe public shame of not achieving those goals might be the motivation I need. We should make it a project…you get your goals together, I’ll get mine together, and we’ll post them around December and see how we do on getting ’em done.
Moar Ruger
This time, though, not another 9mm.
Something a little different from the run-of-the-mill cataloged pistol…if you know what to look for.
ETA: It’s a Ruger #5058… a .44 Mag Redhawk but with special grips and a full-length barrel underlug that is unique to this model. Basically, its a scaled-up GP-100 in .44 mag. Special run for Lipsey’s Distributing. I beame aware of them a few months back and found that they were doled out to Lipseys in dribbles and drabs…I found this used one online. It’s been a while since I had a .44 mag wheelgun and I wanted the Ruger for it’s end-of-the-world durability but really disliked the aesthetics of the usual Redhawks. This guy, however, appealed to me. I need to swap the fiber optic sight for something more durable, but otherwise the only other thing that might happen to this is a trip to Bowen for a little tweaking here and there. Finding a holster might be a trick since no other 4″ Redhawk has the full underlug but I suspect a 4″ Anaconda holster will fit fine.
Link – Prehistoric Preppers: A Look Back at Pre-Y2K Survival Gear and Conventional Wisdom
Last month I mentioned that this year is the twenty-year anniversary of the Great Y2K Scare. I happen to be bopping around the interwebs and came across this dated-but-still-interesting piece about how things have changed preparedness-wise since then.
I like how “…will get you killed.” is the punchline to every disagreed upon evaluation of a piece of gear…”that [AK/Baofong/Sleeping bag/knife/gas can] will get you killed”. That’s pretty much darn near becoming a trope.
The bit about the lack of AR ubiquity has a bit of truth to it. Back then it was pretty much an AR or AK world with the occasional Mini-14 or HK thrown in just to keep the diversity thing going. But if you had an AR it wasn’t nearly the exercise in ballistic Lego that it is now. Maybe you changed the sling around and found a carry-handle-mounted scope. Other than that, it was a stock A2 or CAR. So, yeah, that changed.
I wonder sometimes whatever happened to those people I saw on the news with the desert scrubland retreats that they bought and cavernous basements of 5-gallon buckets. Did they follow through and keep the lifestyle? Or did they pack it all up, ship it to Goodwill, and move on to a different cause célèbre?
I will say, my thinking has shifted a tiny bit since then. While it’s strongly about being prepared, there is a larger note of resiliency. I’ve come to realize, maybe a bit late, that the small End Of The Worlds will happen far more frequently and often than the big End Of The Worlds. Those small EOTW’s look like job layoffs, house fires, illnesses, car problems, etc, etc. And while five-gallon buckets of wheat will come in handy in Mad Max-ville, they aren’t going to do much to get a transmission repaired next week. So…smart spending, smart saving, smart lifestyle….and underneath all of that, the constant and steady incremental activity of getting things more prepared, more resilient, and more resistant to ‘problems’.
Anyway, its an interesting little article and, for those of us old enough to remember, a fun little poke at an interesting time in our shared collective survivalist past.
Costco Powdered Eggs review
I’ve never heard of anyone in the military who had to eat powdered eggs and had anything positive to say about them. Perhaps the military gets a lower grade of product…or perhaps military food preparation is abysmal.. or all of the above. My experience with powdered eggs has been okay. Theyre not “Ohmigod these are awesome!” but they aren’t “What the hell is this crap?” either. On a few occasions I have fed them to people without telling them what they were and no one said anything. I find them to be acceptable, and certainly a better alternative to no eggs. Anyway….
All powdered eggs seem to be extremely distasteful before cooking. You get this orange-colored thing that looks like pancake batter and smells like burnt cheese from a toaster oven. It isnt until you start cooking them that some sort of transformative process begins and they become more appealing.
These eggs, branded as “WildRoots” and picked up at CostCo, were exactly like every other powdered egg product I’ve tried. Not bad, not great, but definitely a worthy addition to the food storage.
As mentioned a couple posts back, my local CostCo had them on closeout, marked down from $6.97 to $2.97 which is a stupidly good deal.
For those of us who, at the moment, don’t have a backyard full of chickens but want to maintain a semblance of ‘normalcy’ when it comes to breakfast, and have some protein on hand, these would be an excellent choice. Canned bacon, dehydrated eggs, hash browns, biscuit/muffin mix, powdered milk, Tang, canned fruit, pancake mix, honey, and you’ve got a pretty decent breakfast with a shelf life of several years. After a long night of manning the barricades, chasing looters, and guarding the house, a breakfast like that would be rather welcome, I should imagine. In a slightly more realistic vein, these are an excellent choice for hunting cabins and other non-grid locations where store-bought eggs aren’t an option and you’re not around often enough to keep chickens.
They are packaged in a foil-ish paper pouch but I would vacuum seal this stuff up to be extra sure it is protected for long term. If you can’t find these at your local CostCo, here’s the nutritional and company info:
Don’t get annoyed if you can’t find them at your local CostCo. It seems that powdered eggs are powdered eggs are powdered eggs… there doesn’t seem to be much difference between ones I’ve tried. Augason Farms sells #10 cans of powdered eggs and I’d bet they are identical to this stuff. Only major difference is packaging and CostCo’s remarkable discount.
At $2.97, it’s worth buying a box just for the experimental value.
Costco eggs closeout
Remember a few weeks back I discovered that Costco was selling powdered eggs? Well, I was going through Costco and saw this:
The price ending in “7” instead of “9”, as well as the asterisk in the corner of the placard, indicate that this product is being moved out with no plan to restock it. So, if you’re close to the Missoula Costco and want a smoking deal on some powdered eggs…this is your chance. Hell, I have cases of #10 cans of eggs and I still picked up three packages. For three bucks you’dbe crazy not to. How are they….thats a post that’ll be ip in a couple days.