Dick Heller

Dick Heller dropped by the ILA Meet & Greet tonight. He was very modest about his contribution to the case. Then he asked the SCSon to work the next 50 years to protect our gun rights!

(For the benefit of those readers who are scratching their head saying "Dick Who?": Dick Heller took his case against Washington D.C.'s gun ban to the US Supreme Court (and won). It's the most important Second Amendment case to come to the court and affirmed that the 2A is an individual right, not a collective right.)

For more info, see here, and here.

Tech bleg

I'm trying to resurrect an old eMachine (T1105) for running linux and serving up LiveATC.

I believe the processor is dead. It starts and displays the eMachines logo, but never gets to the bios boot up. Also I found the processor fan had a weak connection and may not have been working. Anyway, I'm looking for a Celeron SL5XT, though other Celerons may work as well.

There are a number available on eBay for around $10 including shipping, but I thought I'd try here first. Does anyone have such a beast? Lets make a deal!

Dress Cool!

Are you coming to Phoenix this week for the NRA Convention?

DRESS COOL!
Forecast as of Sunday evening:
Forecast as of Monday evening looks a little better:
Forecast as of Tuesday evening: Friday and Saturday will be beautiful. Sunday is gonna be warm... might as well come on down to central Phoenix and let someone else pay for the air conditioning. Oh, and one more thing: a Margarita on an outdoor patio with friends will really hit the spot about 9PM. Trust me on this.
(Clipped from intellicast). Click here for current forecast.

Dress code: A hat, preferable one that covers shades the ears and loose fitting, breatheable clothing.

Shade and lots of water! There won't be a cloud in the sky and the air is hot and dry. Dehydration will set in before you realize it. Next thing you know you're feeling light headed and wondering why. (Should you start feeling light headed, get inside someplace cool and start drinking water). Shade and a water bottle will be your best friends this weekend!

Update: This is significantly above the 30 year average of 93-94F (source Weather.com)

Dang! I went to the wrong high school

Returning home from the range over the weekend, Cousin John wanted to stop by the CAF (Commerative Air Force) museum at Mesa Falcon Field. Sentimental Journey normally lives here but was up the hill in Prescott for an airshow that particular weekend. John was disappointed.

They were setting up for a prom so we only had about 10 minutes to get a quick look inside the hangar. Yes, a high school PROM in one of the coolest hangars in the country! My HS prom was at some stuffy hotel and had none of this nice scenery! Boy did I choose poorly!

Entering the venue they'd first have to walk past this pair of 3" deck guns out front:
Then the entry to the hangar would stroll past this P-51:
And once inside the hangar, several more warbirds were strategically located such as this A-26:
There was also an F4-Phantom and a MiG-21 in the back of the hangar.

If anyone has a few spare hours at the 2ABB (hah!), the museum is in the SW corner of Mesa's Falcon Field (Map here). From the NRA convention, head north and get on the I-10 east bound. Continue straight onto the loop 202 (I-10 will turn south). Take the Greenfield exit and turn south (right). The museum is 2 miles south. The parking lot entrance is on the left hand side, just prior to McKellips road. Total distance is about 22 miles. A car is probably required. The light rail will get you about half way there, not sure about public busses from there.

Good Timing

The SCQueen's favoritest cousin John was in town for business and scheduled the homebound leg to allow a weekend with this side of the family. I needed to hit the range to make my entry to this month's ePostal contest (hosted by the Conservative UAW Guy). Cousin John was only too happy to come along.

I took a number of pictures trying to capture the action. This shot happened to capture the dirt splash on the berm just right of the target frame, and the ejected cartridge a foot or so above the gun (look in the lower left leg of the 'X'). Given the delay of digital cameras and trying to guess when John would break the shot, this was lucky timing.

It's also a reminder that I need to learn how to better use the camera (A Sony DSC-H9). This was taken using the basic shooting mode. It also has modes for sport shooting that prefocuses, shortening the shutter delay (and probably speeding up the "shutter" speed). This would have been a better choice. It also has modes for shutter speed priority. I really need to learn to use these modes.

.22 Steel Match

The entire SandCastle crew headed out to the shooting club for the monthly .22 Steel match. It's a match centered on fun. Each stage is shot 5 times and the worst time is thrown out. Malfunctions are cause for an automatic mulligan.

A typical stage has five steel plates set out in different patterns at approximately 10 yards. The stage shown here has the closest plate at ~10 yards, and each successive plate another yard back.

Finishing the last stage there was no one waiting behind us, so we took the opportunity to practice a bit. The stage had the plates are nearly the same distance, but varying heights. My typical "slow but hit on first pass scores" ran in the 4-5 second range. Trying Mr. Completely's "keep the gun swinging and just pull the trigger as the gun passes each target" method dropped the times in the high 2 second range, but typically with two misses. Picking up the misses put the times back in the 4-5 second range. It would probably work well for me but I need much more practice.

In all it was a fun morning at the range and a good way to blast through the better part of a Federal Bulk Pack. The RO's were without exception extremely helpful with the SCSon. We just need to work a bit on the SCSon's sight picture.

The SCQueen mentioned "I'd do that again".

Hit Magnet

Ok, as a relative noob at this blogging stuff, I tend to check sitemeter on a daily basis. A definite trend has emerged.... SCS is getting a lot of hits from this search term. (see pic ===========>)

My cynical self says a whole bunch of principals or overpaid administrators are looking over their MUMBOs* "Hey I gotta poll the peons, er I mean parents. What questions should I ask?" (They don't even have to look at the poll results, they merely have to check the box that says I asked ("Polled parents").

My answer related around question #3. Dang if there was ever a low hanging curve begging to be knocked out of the park... But I didn't see it at the time. I figured I was preaching to the choir and didn't lay out the arguments as explicitly as I might have. At best, I'd rate my response a "close but no cigar".

One internet post is not going to sway a school leader. But enough chinks in the armor and the logic will prevail.

Quite frankly, this one post has reached further among the interwebs than ever imagined. Should you see a similar request from your offspring unit's school, take the low hanging curve and hit the Homer that I only singled.

update: There were a bunch more hits on that post today. In fact SandCastle Scrolls is the first hit on those search words

* MUMBO = MBO (plural) = Management By Objective