Monthly Archives: July 2019

Estate sale

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Minding my own business…not hurting anyone…just trying to go about my life without interference and pain. And I get a text message:

“Estate sale near your place with lots of gun stuff…” and an address.

Okay, maybe it’s worth checking out. Hop on my bike and ride over.

So here’s how you know the decedent was a serious gun guy.. he had cleared out his dining room, shored up the floor, and parked a four foot bed lathe and a milling machine in there and made it his machine shop. I got there in time to see a guy buy it for a ridiculously low amount of money and then come back with a flatbed and a forklift.

Indeed there was a  lot of reloading stuff…Berger bullets, Lapua brass, etc, etc. Heck there was freaking quiver of Dewey cleaning rods. I started chatting with the gal selling it all. Her dad passed away in February. Turns out, it was someone I knew. I hadnt seen him in about a year and his diabetes finally got the better of him, but not before cruelly making him a semi-blind, fuzzy-headed, nursing home candidate.

Since it was someone I knew, I had a good idea of what would and would not be there. Lotsa 6.5 stuff, plenty of .223, and lots of expensive reloading gear. The kids were up from Florida and wanted to get everything sold and outta there. Pretty much the perfect storm of motivation to allow one to make some…somewhat profitable…deals. So..yeah..I bought it all. Some of it I’m keeping, like the Lapua brass and a fw of the micrometer dies, the rest Im going to try and flip for quick cash.

And I gotta buy some beer for the guy who turned me onto the deal.

And I was trying so hard to not spend money this week. Mmmph.

Achievement unlocked: Bargain AR

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Last week I made the mistake of stopping in a gun store and found a complete PSA AR-15 lower, w/ Magpul furniture for $65. Well, shoot….wouldn’t you have snagged it too? There was some confusion on the paperwork and I complained a bit and they knocked $5 off the price. So, complete Magpul’s PSA lower for $60.

Then today, PSA sends me an email about this. A complete upper, with bolt carrier group and charging handle, for $199 delivered. Ok, that’s not gonna be easy to beat. Order up.

Final total? A brand new, ‘economy’ tier AR15 for $260.

What a… (wait for it)….bARgain.

:::drops the mic:::

California rolls

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California shimmied like a little hula figurine on the dashboard. I have virtually no experience with earthquakes except for that one time I was flat on my bed in a hospital, with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, and we had the strongest earthquake in 60 years. Its a very queer feeling when something as ‘rock solid’ as the ground beneath you suddenly becomes Jell-o. Its like watching the sun set in the north, or seeing water flow uphill…your brain just cannot comprehend it.

I’ll be cruising the usual discussion boards looking at peoples AARs. It is always good to learn at other peoples expense. Still trying to figure out how the California politicians will blame this on Trump…

Moral of the story: It happens. You’re not wasting your time and money by being ready for it. It DOES happen.

Independence Day

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Pet Peeve #409,811:

We celebrate Independence Day, not the fourth of July.

Today is Independence Day, a holiday made possible by people with guns who didn’t like their government telling them what to do. It’s an excellent day to head to the range and practice your shooting.

Keeping things in perspective

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It’s difficult to not repeat yourself when you’ve been blogging on a fairly narrow topic for over fifteen years. But, I have to remember that not everyone has been here since Day One. Thus, something I may have said ten years ago might seem like a new idea to someone who has only been following along for two years.

Case in point: I’m sure the longtime readers recall me saying, on more than one occasion, that I believe one of the signs you’ve matured as a survivalist is when you start getting as enthused, and spend as much money and effort, on food storage as you did on guns.

Guns are, after all, the sexy part of survivalism. They are also, probably, the least used prep that any of us have. We’ll wind up using a good chunk of stored fuel, medical gear, food, batteries, and toilet paper before we even make a dent in the M855 sitting in the barn. But..when someone gets ‘into’ preparedness the guns are usually the first thing they get worked up and excited by.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. But go ask a cop which one he uses more..his gun or his pen. If there’s anyone who went through Hurricane Katrina and used more than 20 rounds on shooting at people, I’d be surprised.But, we tend to focus on the gun stuff because its fun.

When someone tells me that they’re interested in ‘being prepared’ or ‘having some things just in case’, almost always the first thing I bring up is food. Sometimes money, but more often than not its food. Then fuel. Communications. Consumables. And eventually we get around to the gun stuff.

Is this to say the gun stuff isn’t important? No, of course not…when you’ve taken the time and expense to lay away thousands of dollars worth of supplies that may literally be all that is standing between you and a very unpleasant future it is natural that other people are going to want those supplies. And, sometimes, their level of insistence cannot be dissuaded by anything less than a pistol or rifle. But look at all the disasters and emergencies you’ve had in your life thus far…I’d bet that the overwhelming majority were ones that were remedied with greenbacks rather than green tip. Unemployment, transmission failures, broken water heaters, medical emergencies, etc, etc… all things that, broadly, were remedied with things other than a case of Wolf.

I mention this because I think its worth repeating… the big End Of The World will happen sooner or later, but not before a boatload of smaller, personal End Of The World happens to you. Put away the AR’s and Glocks, but expect to use all the other preps, esp. money, long before the AR’s and Glocks become needed.

 

The idiots one encounters when blogging

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Blogging is not always horny groupies and lucrative product endorsements. Sometimes you have to deal with what could be generously described as ‘douchebags’. It used to be that the majority of them were ‘producers’ from hole-in-the-wall ‘production companies’ who somehow could never be bothered to have email addresses that were from real domains. They would say how they were developing a ‘survivalist’ reality show and blah, blah, blah. I haven’t gotten one of those in a couple years, so I suppose the trend finally died down.

However….I get emails from people every so often saying how they think the blog is terrific (although they can’t mention a single post they read on it) and how they’d love to submit a ‘guest post’. Usually this ‘guest post’ topic is only vaguely related to the normal content of the blog. So..whats the angle? Probably some sort of affiliate linkage on the ‘guest poster’s part or some other scheme. But what do I, as the blog owner, get out of it? Good question. So, when one of these parasites emailed me asking if they could do a guest post, I asked them about what was in it for me…

We’ll make up a name for our intrepid huckster…oh, lets call him ‘Danny Major’. Disco Danny sends me an email that contains this:

I have been reaching out to sites in the prepping and survival
> categories regarding the potential for offering guest posting
> opportunities. Unlike others who tout for guest posting opportunities
> I actually visit sites before I contact them and although I couldn’t
> find anything on COMMANDERZERO to suggest you accept guest posts I
> couldn’t find anything to say you don’t either, hence the ‘shot in the
> dark’ of the subject line!

My reply: Whats in it for me?

Danny Boy comes back with this: Hi, thanks for replying Commander Zero. What are you suggesting? Or is it a case of me misunderstanding your mirth and you are actually responding in the negative with a question?

Ok, let’s suss this out. I reply: I spend fifteen years working on a blog and you want to use that work and brand-building as a forum for your guest posting…thats great for you, but what do I get out of it that I can’t do myself? I’ve been posting for 15 years, I can come up with posts pretty easily. So, why would I let you post there? How does it benefit me?

If someone wants to advertise on the side of your building it would be reasonable to not give them that space for free, right? Surely Dan-O must recognize that. But….I get this non-answer: I fully understand any hard working siteowner being protective over their website. So thanks for taking the time to reply, and keep up the good work on commanderzero.com

Well, geez, thats not an answer. So: You havent answered the question. What are you providing to blog owners in exchange for the platform they are providing you?

At this point the novelty is wearing down. There’s a bit more back and forth and I tell him: Okay. I’d be happy to accept a guest post from you but I’ll need to strip it of any affiliate links.

And then…:::crickets::: silence.

It’s a pretty sleazy thing to do…you whip up a generic post that might fit the topics of a half dozen websites, load it with affiliate links, and then trot it over to some blogs to try and get the blogs owner to  post it so you can collect on the links. And the blog owner gets…nothing.

I’m telling ya, this blogging thing sometimes puts you in contact with some pretty weird and annoying people.

SpecOps and ALICE legacy gear

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Ah, the joys of legacy gear. Back in The Day™, and by BITD I mean the mid to late ’80’s, your milsurp gear came in one color – OD – and your attachment system was ALICE. Fastex buckles, MOLLE webbing, and MultiCam were still unknown and not quite ready for prime time. As a result, some of the longer-in-the-tooth survivalists like yours truly tend to have quite a bit of legacy gear laying around.

I mention it because I was trying (and failing) to clean up the mountain of ballistic nylon that is sitting next to my desk. In it was this wonderful little pack from SpecOps. (And, yes, it’s quite overpriced on Amazon.) It’s basically a modernized version of the medium ALICE pack. The medium ALICE pack was capable of being used with or without the frame. (The large ALICE pack, on the other hand, must be used with a frame.) I picked thse packs up years ago on closeout, I believe, so I got a fairly decent deal on them. They were purchased with the notion these would be the packs to keep in the vehicle ‘just in case’.

While the ALICE packs had a lot of flaws, most notably being wildly uncomfortable, their low price and universal availability made them a good choice for tucking a pack away somewhere and not caring what happened to it. The SpecOps bag having compatability with the older ALICE frame was a nice feature for guys who have a buncha old ALICE packs and frames laying around.

As an aside, one of the things I love about the ALICE pack is its ability to be used, with the shelf attachment, to haul jerry cans and ammo crates. Do not underestimate how handy that can be. Would you rather carry 5-gallons of gas by can handle for a mile, or would you rather have it on your back leaving your hands free?

SpecOps isn’t the first outfit to modernize/upgrade the ALICE platform. The guys at Tactical Tailor had their Malice pack for quite a few years. But, ALICE gear has faded into the past and is actually getting a little harder to find as it is awash in the mountains of surplus MOLLE/PALS gear from the last twenty years of military activities.

The new MOLLE packs are, from what I am told, quite the improvement although early generations suffered from frames that tended to be a bit brittle. Being someone who loves gear, I wound up picking one up from the folks at Old Grouch Surplus a few years back. The nice thing about the MOLLE pack is it has a separate internal compartment that holds the military sleep system, which make this a good pack for throwing in the vehicle in the winter when you want to have all that I-guess-Im-gonna-be-here-a-while gear in one place.

By the by, I don’t know if SpecOps is still a going concern or what. Their various social media outlets havent been updated in years, and the selection on their website keeps dwindling. I hope they get some new blood and start putting out more products…I’ve been rather pleased with their offerings.

Anyway, I was putting those packs away and thought it was worth a post.