Cold. I think it will be cold today. Yesterday stayed jacket weather all day. Even with the sun out, I was chilly in just a t shirt and an overshirt. At least it was sunny. I don’t need SAD on top of the chilly willy.

Spent the morning doing auction and domestic bliss. Spent the afternoon punching holes in paper. Not a bad day at all.

I will say that it took me some time to get my cordless hole puncher out of its secure storage. The keypad batteries died. And then somehow recharged enough that the code was reset to factory default. Once I guessed that, the solenoid had just one more “open” in it. Test and replace your batteries! If I’d needed it in a hurry, I couldn’t have gotten it. None of my accessible override keys worked either. I need to find that key.

I did spend a little time working on some different things at the range based on seeing some of the violence out there, thinking about actually deploying a gub to end a situation, and what the common wisdom has been. I like to start and end with a headshot at 20 yards, supported by leaning against a wall, and aimed.

In the past, I have just walked up, aimed, and fired to see what my quick, very fast aim, and shoot would get me. It’s kind of a ‘cold open’. After that I work on aimed fire, unsupported single hand, weak hand, mag swaps, transitioning, etc.

Back when I started learning, instinctive point and shoot was the new shiny thing. I still like it. If you have time, or it’s a technically difficult shot, by all means, aim, think about sights, where your thumbs are, elbows, etc. But I think you better be able to draw and fire and hit at least COM… because that’s what 90%+ needs to be.

I was working transitions too. Working with the 9 dot target, I went left to right, 5 shot groups, and then again with single shots. “Hurried” aiming. Working with the silhouette, I tried COM, head, single quick shots, repeat until mag swap… I do a lot of mag swapping, usually only loading 5 rounds per mag. It slows down the day, and stretches ammo while working a vital skill.

Every range day I try to do some ‘lift the gub and shoot’ work. I don’t worry about stance, or weight distribution, or grip, or posture. I think it’s a bit more realistic based on the videos I’ve watched of real gub uses. I even ended up shooting a mag while “teacupping”. Yeah, I’m old school.

Since I’m hitting what I want, I figure I’m doing ok. I wish I could get more training time in, but I figure if your technique won’t give you results if you don’t train much, it’s not going to be useful when you need it.

Yeah, I’m the opposite of an expert, and I’m describing the opposite of current fads. Don’t take my account here as advice, other than – find something that gives you results.

Considering how shaky and sore and tired I was yesterday, I’m very pleased with my performance.
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Today I’ll do the stuff I didn’t get to yesterday.

Train. Learn. Stack.

nick

Well, we’ll see what today shapes up to be. I think we’ll start out kinda cold, low 50sF, and then get warmer. Still damp, but should be clear. Yesterday was fairly nice after it warmed up, but that took until after noon, and it didn’t stick around after dark. Which shouldn’t be a surprise since it’s mid January. And really, it’s been mild all last year, and shaping up to be mild again.

I got some stuff underway yesterday. And some continued to get attention. I don’t think anything got finished though. Mostly I worked on my two main PCs in the office. My UPS was not even covering blinks in the power anymore, and I could see grey fuzz on my air inlets on both machines. So. Clear a path to where the machines are under my desk. Disconnect, pull the machines, open, clean, replace DVD, clean some more, close ’em up, vacuum the filth out of the space where they live, get the new UPS in place, change some cord routing, fix the speaker connections while under there, and put the PCs back in place. [wow, I think I kept that grammatically correct.]

I’m not completely back together yet, since I decided to change a video cable and the adapter didn’t work, but I’m 90% of the way. I dislike changes to my main way of interacting with the world and where I spend hours every day. It needed to be done though.

I’ll check the stacks more thoroughly today and try to get the second monitor working again. It’s like being blind in one eye, or confined to a tiny box to only work with one monitor.

Aside from that, I am going to get out of the house for a bit and then do a pickup. I’ll probably hit the HEB too, as W has volun-told me to donate some soda to the kid’s school program. Soda that I don’t have in the house already. I’ll be near my secondary location too, so I can stop in and try to get the cable I need if I can’t find one here.

Too many places for stuff to live.

But I call it diversification and redundancy!

Stack, and learn, and work.

nick

Well, maybe we will get a bit more misty drizzle today. We got some the last two days. Not much, barely got the street wet, but still enough to make it slick on the roads and to make it even moister than usual. Weather map shows clear, but I’m still going with overcast and threatening.

I spent most of the day messing with computers. Far too much effort and time on that stupid Chromebook. Far too little time on selling or getting stuff ready to sell. And too much time on domestic bliss. Oh well, momentum lost.

We’ll see if I can get any back today. Depends mostly on the weather I think. Who am I kidding? It depends entirely on me. And I’m slack. Now, acknowledging that, we are still going to try. At least I don’t have 2 ft of snow to deal with.

If I can poke at 4 different project today, and still make dinner, I’ll call it a good day.

I won’t even count stacking amongst the 4.

nick

*title was a youtuber lamenting criticism of a brand that encompassed a wide variety of choices. I disagree. If the brand doesn’t have at least some continuity across the choices, it isn’t really a brand, just a collection of stuff. And broad strokes act as a summary, letting you move to big picture discussions without getting bogged down in details.

Cold and clear again, warming later. Had a beautiful sunrise yesterday. Orange, pink, blue sky… chilly willy though. Should be the same today. Mid 70sF in the afternoon, maybe a bit more. I’ll take it.

After the sunrise, coffee, and getting the kids out the door, I did auction stuff, office stuff, and fell down a rabbit hole with some genealogy stuff online. I was mildly interested, now I’m mildly informed. The biggest change is how much more stuff has been digitized and is available online. Some of it, maybe most of it, is volunteer driven too, from what I saw.

In the afternoon I did small things around the house. Several projects got minor attention and moved a tiny bit forward. I’m avoiding big stuff. One of the projects was recovering and repurposing D1’s old chromebook. It’s much more possible, and straightforward than it was a couple of years ago when I last looked. But it’s also far too much messing around when I’ve got a stack of other lappys that I can update or put new OSs on easily without jumping through flaming hoops.

It’s a shame that schools are buying stuff that has no residual value and pretty much has to go into the landfill after only a few years. The kids don’t really need more at school, but the example it sets is bad.

Today I’ll do a couple of pickups. And more small stuff from the list. I want to keep moving, even if it’s slowly and in tiny steps.

Because that’s how you eat an elephant, one bite at a time.

Always be working. And stacking.

nick

Should be mid 40sF this morning and stay cold for a while. It might be clear and warmer later. There were parts of yesterday that were nice, if chilly. Then it got cold after sunset. Today will probably be similar.

Did my non-prepping hobby [horse] meeting in the morning. That ran a bit late for several reasons, and little was resolved. When I got home the tree guys were still here, but after their lunch they finished up. I’m happy with the job and the price but the old guy running things (a real old school character) keep trying to upsell and kept crying poor. Dude, if you are really that bad at giving estimates, I doubt you’d still be in business…

Today I’ll sleep in, then work the list. Maybe I’ll just do more office and network stuff. Depends on the weather and my motivation. I did get the carburetor for the pressure washer, so if it was nice out I could mess with that. Or the generators. Or the lawn. Or the patio cleanup. Or the driveway cleanup.

It’s a big list.

But hey, someone’s gotta do it and this stuff isn’t going to stack itself. Get busy.

nick

I don’t know how last night’s storm will play out, probably it will be clear but muggy today. It was mid 70sF and a little bit warmer most of yesterday, but overcast with occasional very light mist. Then the front crossed over about 11pm and the temperature dropped to mid 60sF. The rain shouldn’t last long, and I’m hoping for no precip today.

Mainly because the big job yesterday was having a tree company do some cleanup. They remediated the damage to the big tree in the front yard from the ‘derecho’ winds last year, and were supposed to do some cleanup and prevention in the pines that were struck by lightning a couple of weeks ago. They didn’t quite get done yesterday though so they need to come back today and finish. If it’s not raining and there isn’t any lightning.

While that work was going on, I continued on my office cleanup. I made some progress and you can actually see the floor in the office, and not just in narrow tracks to get to my safe and my desk.

Today I’ll start with my non-prepping hobby meeting, and then get back to work on the office and house cleanup. If it’s not raining, I might get to make some trips to the shop, and maybe take another load out of storage. That’s the very tentative plan.

Meanwhile the world turns and lots of things are in motion that probably won’t end well. Better to be ready, and for some, better to leave early than to leave too late.

Prep, stack, get your house in order.

nick

Cool, damp, then warm and damp. High 70s to low 80sF, especially in the sun. Like most of this week. It’s nice to drive with the windows down, and get some fresh air,even if that air is thick with moisture.

Did my pickups. Did my doctor visit. No issue found, so I’ll go see two more guys. I’ll probably use up my deductible again this year. That will make only the third time in the last 17 years.

It was nice that this new doc could just call up my existing imagery and look at it in the office. That is the way electronic records are supposed to work, not just so that every patient has 27 “portals” to check for communication from their doctors.

Hit the HEB for groceries. Almost nothing on sale. 80/20 hamburger was $4.49/pound. Some pork products were on sale, but not a huge markdown. I saved $1 according to my receipt. I used to be able to average between 10-15% savings every trip. I am buying more snack stuff for the kids, and that never goes on sale, but still the difference is striking.

HEB had Charmin blue on sale, 24 pack for $26. Costco has the 36 pack on sale this week for $28. The rolls are bigger at Costco too. I would like to get two more bales at Costco. Maybe today I’ll pop in.

I’ve got some pickups to do today, and some moving stuff around between my secondary, the shop, and storage. Also some office stuff to do in the morning. I really need to do more work on my office cleanup project too, before my wife explodes because stuff is out in the rest of the house.

Part of the office cleanup is to get to my PCs. I need to clean them, and change the DVD drive for a bluray on my main machine. And I need to swap out the UPS and rearrange what’s plugged into what. Every project is fractal. And I’ve misplaced my bluray drives. I set them aside specifically for this update and now I can’t find them. I should have left them on the shelf with the other drives. But I didn’t. Got ahead of myself and now I’m hosed.

Stacks. I’ve got them. Sometimes though, I’m my own worst enemy. If you stack it, keep track of it.

nick