Jesu- #231

I have laborede sore and suffered deth,

And now I rest and draw my breth.

But I schall come and call right sone

Hevene and erth and hell to doom;

And thane schall know both devil and man

What I was and what I am.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Things That Work: Victorinox Swiss Army Knives


Since I was a kid I have had an appreciation for the Swiss Army knife. I have memories of my fourth grade teacher, who was a giant of a man in my eyes, pulling out a gargantuan red handled knife with a gozillion blades on it for some trivial matter. Being a boy, it was natural for me to be fascinated by knives and this one was no different. How cool was a knife was a virtual toolbox? For some reason or another, I didn't get an actual Victorinox until I was 22 when my wife and then fiance brought one back from trip to Europe. It was one of the smaller knives but it did have the scissors and a few other essential tools. Unfortunately, it fell into the small knife category. Small knives have a way of working their way out of a pocket when seated. A larger knife has enough mass and heft that it will tend to fall to the backside of your leg instead of up your leg and out of your pocket.
As you have already guessed, this is what happened to my small knife. Not having a pocket knife is a hard thing to get used too, especially when you find yourself pulling it out of your pocket 4-5 times a day. That was exactly what I was doing with my little Victorinox. So I told my wife my tale of woe, and began looking for a replacement. And I found one, too. In the most unlikely of places, Casino Pawn in Van Buren. The knife they had was fairly close to a "Champ", the top of the line model. I lost the box and paper that came with it, but I do remember at the time looking up the retail value for the and seeing that it was in the $60 range. So I asked the guy behind the counter what he wanted for it and he said $15. I said I'll take it.


That was 5 years ago. I have seldom left my house without it in my pocket since then. I consider it as an extension of my hand; nearly always possessing the correct tool for the job in a pinch. Honestly, I hardly ever use either of the knife blades. The most used feature is most certainly the scissors. I am constantly trimming a kids fingernails, cutting a tag off of a shirt, opening a stubborn bag of candy, or an errant strand of hair with this device. Unfortunately, the little spring that returns the scissors to ready position often comes off track. A small grip to the greater usefulness of an otherwise very useful tool.
If I ever need to quickly amputate a limb, the saw blade should make quick work of it. I can cut through an 1 1/2" diameter bamboo trunk in about 30 seconds with the sharp teeth on this implement. Not that I'm chomping at the bit to cut my or anyone else's arm off- just knowing that I can if I need to is reassuring.
I'm always flipping out one blade or the other to fix something. The screwdriver blades, the can opener, the corkscrew (yes, no wine bottle is safe around me!), the bottle opener (nor is any bottle of beer!). All in all it is the best $15 I have ever spent on anything.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Six of one, Five of another



In the not too distant past I had the opportunity to shoot a revolver that I have been very curious about for some time. It is the Ruger SP101. A close friend of mine has one that is chambered in .357 Magnum with a 2 1/4 inch barrel and he was kind enough to let me shoot about 50 or so rounds through it.
I already own the SPs big brother, the GP100, and I am thoroughly impressed with it. It is simply a shooter's gun, able to take the hottest magnum loads all day long. My GP has a 3 inch barrel. I have carried it before, but at 36oz, it does weigh the hip down after a while. I have been eying the svelt SP to use as a CC gun because it is considerably lighter at 25oz and it's slimmer profile would make concealment easier. A side benefit that the Ruger SP101 has over similar small frame revolvers is that it, like it's big brother, can shoot the hottest .357 Magnum loads all day long, too.

Now, I'm not sadist. Other manufactures make light .357s, but the thought of shooting .357s or even hot .38 +Ps out of something that weighs close to nothing doesn't sound like fun to me. That being said, I don't plan on shoving Buffalo Bore 185gr Magnums in the chamber as a matter of course, but the piece of mind of knowing that I can is a comforting thought.
Both my buddy and I had plenty of Magnum ammo and we fired them all through the gun. Recoil on the small Ruger was not at all uncomfortable with any of the ammo we had. I still wouldn't want to spend all day shooting magnums in it, but for a short session it is just fine. I did shoot some .38 Special +P loads through it too. These had considerably less umph and I tended to place them on target a little better.

This brings me to my personal preference for revolvers. I've alluded already that the .357 is a versatile chambering. It is, in effect, 3 guns in one. Not only can it shoot .357 magnum, .38 Special +P, and .38 Special, it is not picky about what the type of projectile the powder is launching. I could grab 5 rounds with ranging in bullet weight from 110gr to 185gr and as much difference in the powder launching them and have no trouble whatsoever. Some automatics aren't so fortunate. I don't like to deal with uncertainties when it comes to firearms. When I pull the trigger, I expect to hear a boom no matter what ammo I happen to grab (not withstanding Remington UMC, I won't be grabbing that junk any time soon!)

The Ugly: I did have a little trouble with pulling the trigger all the way through the action. This was alleviated by adjusting my grip. No big surprise to me as the revolver is a smaller version of my own. I think a new set of Eagle grips would be good medicine for this problem. Awe, heck. A new set of grips are always in order!

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Thoughts on Thermal Bottles

A couple of years ago I pickup up a cheapie Ozark Trail thermos bottle a my local Wal-Mart. I wasn't too impressed with it then, and for that matter, I'm still not all that fond of it. It has a push button lid that is prone to leaking, the occasional burn, and it leaks its heat off fairly quickly.
Fast forward to the last week of 2009. I'm at Academy Sports and they have the Stanley Classic Thermos (1.1qt) on sale for $17. Cheap enough, I thought, so I bought it. The "Classic" designation hearkens back to Grandpa's or Dad's old thermos bottle. My Dad had one once upon a time. I used to go coon hunting with him when I was a kid. It gets cold out in the woods at night, and if a boy wants to warm up, he had better learn to like coffee. I did. As I got bigger, I understood what hot really was. Camp coffee is almost exclusively percolated. My Dad's Stanley was really good at keeping its contents scalding hot for hours out in the cold.
I had high expectations for my new copy. Unfortunately, expectations are sometimes more of pipe dream than reality. I had a nostalgic remembrance of scalding my tongue on a cold winter night on coffee that was brewed several hours earlier. To be honest, the first use of this thermos was on an extremely cold day. The high was in the neighborhood of 25 degrees. At night the temperature fell down to the high teens. I used a pot and Maxwell House Filter Packs to brew the coffee. I am careful not to boil the coffee. Boiling it just ruins the flavor. I still like it as hot as I can get it, though. When it was sufficiently brewed I poured the coffee into the new Stanley and tested the results a short time later. This day I had to settle for warm coffee. It was probably around 140-150 degrees. I had no way of knowing for sure, I just knew that it was turning to ice crystals before I got to the bottom of my cup. Suspicions were raised.
Well, to satisfy my curiosity I tested the thermos this morning. The thermos itself had sat inside overnight, so it was at room temperature. The coffee coming out of my French Press was a toasty 190 degrees. I poured the coffee in and waited for an hour. After one hour the Stanley Classic had bled off 25 degrees of heat . My house was 68 degrees hardly cold enough to be a test for a thermos. Twenty-five degrees is a considerable heat loss, especially in just one hour. Stanley bills this thermos as being able to keep liquids hot for 24 hours. I'm not exactly sure what their definition of hot is, but I speculate that after 24 hours my coffee would be closer to iced coffee than hot coffee. I plan on taking the thermos back to Academy and trying another. If that one deliver similar results, I'll know that the first example was faulty and I'll modify the review at that point.

Stanley Classic 1.1qt Thermos Bottle: Junk.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Seubold Camp Out Report



To be sure, I could not give a proper report on this event. I was only one person there and saw things, of course, from my own angle. The short answer to the question, "What was it like?" is we had fun. The Man type of fun. We sat around a hobo fire, ate food that was really bad for you, shot clay pigeons, soda cans, and each other, slept in the back of cars, on the ground, or wherever, and simply rebelled from behaviors and mannerisms that are acceptable in mixed company.

I arrived in the late afternoon with my Grand Cherokee full of mischief. I had enough ammunition to hold off a fairly strong advance, a pistol, .22 rifle, and a shotgun. Arrgh! My plan was to fold the back seats down and sleep in the back of the car if it was going to get really cold. It did. I unfurled my extreme cold military sleeping bag and had just enough room to stretch out my 6'2" frame. Foodwise, I planned with simplicity and manliness in mind. Drinks- water or coffee, food- deer chili, Fritoes, summer sausage, Ritz crackers, and a pair of apples.
That evening we rustled up some grub; Mr. Mike Scherer laid down some potatoes and ham, I made my chili, someone had a pan of cornbread, and that was all that was needed. With supper finished it was time to get down to the nitty-gritty. Time for a little Airsoft! The guys broke off into two teams and spent several hours pegging each other with hard plastic BBs. Jonathan probably took the hardest fall of anyone that night. The good news is that no one was seriously maimed and they all appeared to have a great time.
As the night wore on we turned our attention to stoking the hobo fire and telling jokes and anecdotes. Folks started turning in around 11:00PM. I held out until 11:30. I have no idea what the temperature actually was but I did recognize that it was "colder than the proverbial well digger's arse". No sleeping on the ground for me. I forgot any reading material so I turned on the radio and let Bob Wills, U2, Marty Robbins, and a few others sing me sleepy.
In the morning we slowly made some breakfast. I had trouble with my stove. Apparently small propane bottles don't work all that well in sub-freezing temps. We finally got a little coffee made and inhaled all the biscuits and bacon and whatever else hit the pan. From here we made our way down to the big pond for a little clay busting. I had never shot clay before so I was anxious to give it a shot. What a blast it was! I shot through a little more than a box of shells and let my father and brother-in-laws share another box. Unfortunately we ran out of clay, but everyone got a chance to bust some.



From here we moved back to the pistol range to spank some aluminum cans and old CPUs. We shot the guns that made lots of noise and had lots of fun doing it. When it was all said and done I walked away holding about 5lbs of brass.


All in all it was just what I needed. Guys need a chance to be guys once in a while. Like Brad Paisley says, "With all of these guys linin' up to get neutered, its hip now to be feminized. Well, what can I say, at the end of the day, Honey, I'm still a guy!"

Friday, January 1, 2010

Munich, Germany, 1972

Munich, 1972. This was the year that Islamic terrorism was brought front and center to the world's attention. Then, it faded away from Western world for a time. During the '80s and '90s Islamic terrorist activity was strictly a Middle Eastern problem. Now it is not Israel who is the sole target of Islamic hatred. We in the West share their wounds and their frustrations.
Steven Spielberg's film, Munich, tells the story of Israel's handling of the the Munich massacre. Their secret service, Mossad, was activated employing a super secret band of agents who risked their lives to extract revenge from the PLO. Spielberg is careful to point out the ramifications of their retaliation: whenever one of the PLO planners was killed, the PLO found a way to strike back. It was a perpetual slaughter machine.
The point was made that after each PLO henchman was killed, six more would be standing in line to take his place. The Mossad director, Ephraim, noted that since his fingernails continually grow he continually cuts them off.

Avner-This is a dream. You can't take back a country you never had.
PLO-A-You sound like a Jew.
Avner- F*** you. I'm the voice inside your head telling you what you already know. You people have nothing to bargain with. You'll never get the land back. You'll all die old men in refugee camps waiting for Palestine.
PLO-A- We have a lot of children. They'll have children. So can wait forever. And if we need to, we can make the whole planet unsafe for Jews.
Avner- You kill Jews and the world feels bad for them and thinks you are animals.

So we are here, in the twenty-first century with a hungry and neglected Islamic population, who wants to kills Jews, who wants to kill Christians: a population that has grow unchecked for too long. This film ignores 99% of the reasons why the Islamic terrorists are doing what they are doing and planning to do. One might draw the conclusion that it is unnecessary to do so for their arguments are so patently weak and/or irrational. OK. I do. Spielberg is trying to show the human side of all the parties involved. That is fine. The Muslims are God's creation to. He sent his Son to atone for their sin as well as our own. Spielberg does propose the question of dealing with these people. Is the bullet and knife the only reason that they understand? I wonder.