Category Archives: Uncategorized

Beretta mags

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The Beretta mags I ordered last week, at a rather nice discount, arrived yesterday. They are, as I expected, brand-new factory mags just ready for that long Deep Sleep in an ammo can somewhere.

I am, first and foremost, a Glock guy. Is the Glock my favorite 9mm handgun? No. The Browning HiPower is my fave. But the Glock is the gun I would prefer to carry through Ragnarok.

However, mostly because of the US military’s use of them, I keep a couple Beretta 92FS laying around as well. A fine gun, by 1980’s standards, but the double/single action design, all metal construction, and overall size/bulk make it a design that is surpassed by more modern guns…esp. the polymer ones.

Anyway, if I’m going to keep a gun tucked away for the end of the world, I’m gonna need mags for it. And when you need spare mags for your blaster you usually want them as capacious as possible while still being somewhat practical. (Which is why Glock 17 happystick yes, Glock 17 drum no.)

So these will get wiped down and tucked away in an ammo can to await the next magazine ban (because I always buy extras for resale) or to await the end of the world. Whichever comes first.

Although theres a good chance they’ll both be the same event.

Regardless, I hope you took advantage and got yours while you could.

Black Friday – CheapAmmo.com

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The notices of Black Friday (or Friday Of Color, for those of the woke persuasion) sales continue to land in my mailbox. Case in point from CheapAmmo.com:
 Here’s a look at what we’ll have Friday morning: • 9mm Ammo – 500 rounds 115 Grain FMJ – $100 (.20/rd delivered) • 5.56 Ammo – 500 rounds 55 Grain FMJ – $160 ( .32/rd delivered) • 40 S&W Ammo – 1000 rounds 180 Grain TMJ – $270 (.27/rd delivered) • 45 ACP Ammo – 1000 rounds 230 Grain TMJ – $380 (.38/rd delivered) • 380 ACP Ammo – 1000 rounds 95 Grain FMJ – $270 (.27/rd delivered) • 22 LR Ammo – 3330 rounds 36 Grain CPHP – $200 (.06/rd delivered)
It’s only Tuesday and the sales are trickling in already. Gonna be an expensive week!

Beretta mags

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Ok, I don’t know who here has the weight to pull off a purchase like this to get the discount , but:

Beretta 92FS Magazine 9mm 15Rds Unpackaged – $9.99 if you buy 41 with code 22BFD50

Their 30-rd Beretta 92 mags are already at 25% off, making them $29.99. If you order 27 of them, as I just did, you get another 50% off and free shipping. That brings the mags down to $15 ea. Since I have a pair of M9 pistols, these seemed like a good idea. I had plenty of 15-rd mags, but those 30-rd mags…mmmm….sexy.

These mags, ostensibly for the Beretta 93R, are tailor made for the Beretta 9mm carbines. But…they work just fine in your 92’s.

Go. Spend. Hoard.

 

Memento mori

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NOTE: Black Friday Friday Of Color sales are starting early. Find a good one? A discount code? Flash deal? Put it in comments.

Went to the movies last night. Bought a ticket and noticed a price discrepancy from the listed price and what I was charged. I asked the high-school-age drone behind the counter what was up. His reply…”Senior discount.”

Doubleyew. Tee. Eff.?????

Look, I admit my hair has got more salt than pepper than it did a few years ago, but I am nowhere..nowhere….near ‘senior discount’ age. Part of me was offended and part of me wondered what else I could get away with.

But…I can’t deny that age comes on apace. Thirty-year freeze drieds are actually coming up on their ‘Best By’ dates, guns that were cheap and plentiful when I bough them are now collectors items, naps have a lot more appeal than they used to, and I spend a goodly amount of time waiting for the Advil to kick in. Apparently, somewhere, I got old.

I’m not stupid enough to think I’ll live forever. And, of course, I know that eventually it comes for us all. But, man, it sucks to be reminded of it.

But, reminded I was…and last month I updated my will. Because, as it turns out, part of getting old means acquiring a lot of stuff. Houses, land, gold, money, guns, vehicles, etc, etc. And I will set it all on fire before I let it fall into the hands of the state. In fact, sometimes I feel I should have some sort of fail-deadly switch to implode the place, wipe the accounts, purge the drives, and that sort of thing.

But, I did the next best thing and paid way too much to an attorney to write up some ‘final wishes’. It was all pretty straightforward. There’s only a small handful of people I want to leave stuff to and if for some reason they are unaccepting or unable to receive it, then it goes to the charity of my choice.

As I’ve mentioned before, if I go to my death without ever having had to use any of the ammo, freeze drieds, body armour, kerosene, chest seals, or parachute flares….well, I’ll consider that a victory.

But, realistically, and statistically, I’ve got about another 25 years left on the clock. Sure, I could have an aneurysm tomorrow, or get hit by a bus next week, but so far it’s been a somewhat quiet (in terms of life threatening events) existence these last few years.

But…senior discount. That still rubs me the wrong way.

Wifi valve control

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There’s a guy who lives a few blocks down he street from me who is a retired engineer. He’s an extremely handy fella and routinely engages in hobby-like activities that would be well beyond the ken of mortal men. One of the things he has done is installed wifi enabled remote valves and sensors on most of his water system. I was amazed when I first heard about it a year or two ago but, as it turns out, the technology is getting more and more mainstream. Most notably, he installed remote valves in his basement to allow him to shut off water to the water heater and other appliances via his phone. Additionally, there are also sensors that, when they detect water where it shouldnt be, send him an alert and optionally automatically shut off pre-selected valves.

This is the way.

If you hit Amazon and search “wifi valves” or a similar search term, you can see a rather staggering amount of devices that will perform these tasks. Truly, we are living in the future.

I’m a suspenders-and-belt kinda guy so in addition to an automatic shutoff when water is detected, I’d also want an audible alarm to bring the matter to my attention….just in case wifi technology and servo-enabled valves decide to not quite work as planned.

And, most importantly, having a pipe patch kit handy. Gasket material, dope, hose clamps, sections of hose, etc. I once got a broken pipe  capped off using a section of hose that slipped over thebroken end, hose clamped it in place, and then folded it over on itself andhose clamped it again to effectively cap the broken end…allowing me to run the water again.

I need to research some more, but I suspect by this time next year I’ll have some sort of HAL 9000 setup going to keep a handle, so to speak, on something like this happening again.

Water water everywhere

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Sitting on the couch watching TV at 10pm and there’s an odd noise in the background. Hmmm. I mute the television and hear a sound of….water? The hairs on my neck stand up and that little adrenaline rush bumps me from ready-for-bed to red-alert mode.

When you live in the same house for a number of years you become very attuned to the sounds of your surroundings. You know what noises are supposed to occur (or not occur) and when. This was a ‘something is not right noise’. It took about six seconds for me to run through the possibilities and then I was bolting down the stairs to the basement where, even before I saw it and heard it I could smell it…water.

We had snow during the week and the temperatures dropped abruptly. I wasnt ready for it and didnt turn off the water to the outside spigots. One of them cracked and a high-pressure jet of water was doing its thing.

I immediately grabbed the main shutoff lever and swung it closed. That solved the immediate problem. It also turned off the water to the entire house. But…with the immediate problem taken care of, now was the time to look closer.

The outside spigot branches off from the main water line and has it’s own shutoff as well. I closed that off and re-opened the main. Water was back to the rest of the house and the outside spigot line was isolated and shut off. I’ll deal with it in the spring. In the meantime, damage control.

I had always been concerned about pipe breakage in the basement so I shielded all my stored preps that were near any pipes. I also never put anything that was susceptible to water damage anywhere lower than a foot and a half off the floor. So, yeah, a few cardboard boxes of Pmags got soaked but while the boxes are a soggy mess, the mags are fine. I’ve a fan running down there now to dry out things but the bigger issue is: if I had gone to bed early, this thing would have run all night. How can I be alerted to such a failure in the future.

Well, first step, is I should have shut off the outside water two weeks ago. That was the biggest fail. But after that, unless I’m taking a stroll through my basement once a day, I need some alert systems. So..off to Amazon to pick up water alarms. Additionally, since I have plenty of unused ‘channels’ on the security cams, I’m going to dedicate a camera or two to keeping an eye on the basement.

All in all, it could have been a lot worse. But it could have been a lot better too.

Flashlight holster

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So its been a couple weeks since I picked up the flashlight I posted about a while back. Thus far, I’ve been extraordinarily pleased with it. It’s just a tad bigger than what I’d want to carry around in my pocket for everyday use (that need is far better served with the Fenix E12), but for a flashlight to keep in my Bag O’ Tricks (TM) or on a belt….wonderful choice.

The belt thing, however…..

Like pretty much every high(er)-end flashlight you buy these days, this thing came with a nylon belt pouch. Nothing wrong with that. But I want something a little more durable and a bit more resilient. Fortunately, the internet is not lacking in ways to spend money. Specifically, this little piece o’ gear.

Mounted on my new Viking Tactical belt, it fits just fine and remains out of the way but handy. Recommended.

What? The Viking Tactical belt? Oh..ok….more about that later.

 

Vote

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My usual election-themed Heinlein quote:

“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.”

― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

Yeah, yeah, yeah…”If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” Whatever, man…. I’ll vote every chance I get.

Snowfall means winter is here

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Had our first real bit of snow yesterday which means it is time to make sure any seasonal preps have been attended to. For me, that mostly means putting sand and a shovel in the back of the truck, putting the Winter Module into my Bag O’ Tricks(tm), and making double-sure the generator is ready to roll.

I live in an extremely urban part of Montana, so the power rarely goes out here and when it does it is usually in the winter, it is very localized, and is almost always back in a few hours. So, there’s not really a huge risk of damage there…but whose to say the next outage won’t be region-wide? Or larger?

The part of Montana I live in is also, weirdly, the warmest part of Montana. When Billings and Great Falls are -20, it’s 5 degrees here. This valley, for some reason, seems to just stay warm. Probably a volcano down there somewhere that no one has paid attention to.

Regardless, it’s time to switch modes from warm-weather to cold-weather. And, that means making sure your vehicle is ready for whatever winter brings. I had a whole series of posts on that sort of thing. There’s nothing heroic or glamourous about freezing to death by the side of the road because you thought one of those foil mylar blankets and a few handwarmers were going to be all you needed to get through a cold night in your car. No one is going to hand out awards to people who made it through a crisis with the least amount of gear…grab a sleeping bag or two, shove them in a Home Depot orange bucket, hammer a lid onto it, and – presto- a watertight, dustproof, dirtproof, protective container for your sleeping bag.

In addition to car stuff, go make sure you’ve got everything you need in case a pipe pops somewhere. Make sure nothing is obstructing the water shutoffs, have material handy (clamps, sheets of gasket material, etc.) to at least jury-rig something to keep things relatively dry.

And , of course, carry extra warm clothing. I dont mean “Extra warm” clothing, I mean extra “warm clothing”….because there is always someone, usually a Gyno-American, who underdressed for weather because the warm goosdown parka was ‘the wrong color’ or was ‘ugly’ and instead thinks wearing fleece tights and a ‘cute’ fleece jacket will suffice. And the hat will ‘mess up’ her hair. Carry extras, guys.

WInter is here, time to shift gears.

Interesting times

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Call them what you will…disasters, events, apocalypses, crises, whatever…..but they come in two temporal flavors: the fast and the slow. The fast ones are easy to recognize – an earthquake, tsunami, explosion, martial law, riot, etc, etc. Its basically going from zero-to-MadMax in the span of a few moments. The slow ones are things like what we’re experiencing now….every day the water gets a bit warmer and you don’t notice it until the day it becomes a rolling boil. And by then….well, I hope you had your gear stashed and your plans made….because, brother, it’s too late now.

Gas prices are still absurd, inflation is uncontrolled, politicians of both stripes are warning of politically motivated violence, crime seems to be increasing, the housing markets are fomenting cries for socialist policies, taxes are going up, and who knows what the international situation will be adding to the mix. Interesting time to be alive, isn’t it?

Eventually all of this will be a memory…inflation will drop back to its ‘optimal’ level of 2%, the housing market will calm down, politics will return to something you can talk about without it devolving into a knife fight, and your average Joe won’t feel like a trip through the WalMart parking lot is like taking a stroll through Fallujah.

The big question, of course, is what will the medicine look like that finally cures this ailment? Chemotherapy kicks cancer’s butt but it darn near kills you in the process. Will the fix for these things be almost as bad as those things themselves? I mean, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Hitler built the autobahn…but look at the cost.

I have no idea what its going to take to change the current situation. But I am fairly confident that I know what it will not take…it will not take out-of-touch leftists whose solution to inflation and crime is “Green Deals” and “inclusive” pronouns.

Next week’s elections should be telling. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m gonna go on a limb and guess that the major issues on the minds of your average voter are inflation and gas prices. I’m of the opinion that most people, fundamentally, look out for Numbah One and that means that when chicken jumps 70% in a year they will vote on the economy and their pocketbook, not on transgendered bathrooms and carbon neutrality.

No two ways about it, these are weird times. So far, I’ve been able to deal with inflation, scarcity, crime, and pandemic simply because I’ve been preparing for stuff like this for the last thirty years. Food prices up? I’ve enough stockpiled food to help defray the high costs. Housing is expensive? Good thing the house is paid. Crime is up? Dude….not even gonna worry about it. Pandemic? Happily unvaccinated and still healthy as a horse. But you and me, we’re the exceptions. And, unfortunately, it isn’t the exceptions that decide the outcome of elections, but rather the general populace… the general unprepared populace.

So, long story short, make sure to vote next week, and make sure to grab some friends and drag them to the polls and make sure they vote. Then go back to your bunker and keep working on your readiness, ’cause one way or the other this nonsense is still far from being done.