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The ACOG has spent four decades being the optic with the reticle built for one cartridge. Trijicon has now gone a new way, adding MRAD reticle options to the 4x32 and 3.5x35 ACOG. They have my interest, so the question is: should I go with a dual-illuminated or an LED configuration?
Quote of the Day The hosts of the I’ve Had It podcast faced backlash online this week after cracking up over an X post reading, “We’re digging up Charlie Kirk and doing it again” following Democrats winning majorities in the … Continue reading →
Sale Price: $216.17
Today I am speaking with Val Forgett of Navy Arms about the future of surplus arms in the US. The Golden Age is never coming back, and thanks to the internet allowing government sellers to [...]
The post What is the Future of Surplus? (w/ Val Forgett) first appeared on Forgotten Weapons.
A preliminary investigation indicated the shooting was an isolated incident stemming from a localized dispute between co-workers, and police said there was no ongoing threat to the public.
A second person involved was located at the scene and identified as 26-year-old Elijah Young of Okaloosa County.
After detectives conducted what police described as a comprehensive investigation, they presented the facts of the case to a representative from the Florida State Attorney’s Office.
Police said that based on the evidence gathered, witness statements, and a detailed review of the incident, no criminal charges will be filed.
On a recent evening, I reached for one of my favorite cigars, the Southern Draw Manzanita, which has made multiple appearances in these Musings. This time, I was enjoying a 5 1/2 × 54 Robusto from a box I picked up last March.
The Manzanita sports a smooth, reddish-brown Habano wrapper over a Habano binder and a blend of Pelo d’Oro, Corojo 99, and Ligero filler leaves. This medium- to full-bodied smoke offers deep notes of earth and leather, complemented by chocolate, nuts, and cedar. A touch of pepper and spice lingers in the background, balancing the earthiness and sweeter notes.
I decided that a sweet rye Old Fashioned would make a nice accompaniment to the evening cigar. I made it with J. H. Bards Virginia Rye and their house Blackstrap Old Fashioned Syrup. A twist of orange zest added a bright, aromatic counterpoint to the dark molasses, keeping the cocktail from becoming too heavy. The recipe is inspired by the version served in the distillery’s tasting room in Blacksburg.
After smoking the cigar for a few minutes, I took my first sip of the Old Fashioned and couldn’t help but smile. The blackstrap molasses syrup provided a dark, robust sweetness that complemented the cigar’s earthy, woody flavors. The Manzanita has enough sweetness of its own that its flavors weren’t lost beneath the cocktail.
About halfway through the cigar, I went inside to mix a second Old Fashioned. That’s when Colleen asked if I’d like a small piece of Williams Sonoma Peppermint Bark. Of course, I accepted.
I’m not a huge fan of mint in general, but I do enjoy peppermint bark, especially with bourbon. It’s a tradition in our house for Santa to deliver a couple of boxes of Williams Sonoma Peppermint Bark to Colleen each year. She then makes them last until the next holiday season.
The peppermint bark added an unexpected third element to the pairing. The peppermint provided a refreshing contrast to the cigar’s spice, while the chocolate contributed another layer of flavor. Best of all, the mint never overwhelmed the tobacco. The Manzanita’s spice remained firmly in the lead, with the peppermint complementing rather than competing with it.
Settling in for an evening of sipping and smoking, I had no intention of thinking too hard about the experience. I simply wanted to relax and enjoy it without making mental or written notes. But by the time I finished, I was so taken with the combination of flavors that I couldn’t let the experience pass without recording it.
And here we are.
Cheers!
- Huang honeypotted by hottie?
- The Fridge-Hacking Spree is an Internet-of-Things Wakeup Call.
- The Confessions of an AI Fraud Kingpin
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Google took the path of Apple and provided ‘free’ software, ‘free’ email address systems, and such to schools, in this case, K-12 systems. But here’s the cost… Unless those schools allow the use of Gemini, Google’s AI, then they will also be locked out of Google’s search engine. And they say it like it’s a […]
In This Episode Erin and Weer’d discuss: anti-gun Senator Chris Murphy’s stroke, and wish him well; director Michael Mann suffering minor injuries at a gun range in California; Michael Bloomberg continuing to pour money into the midterm elections; a man … Continue reading →
I gave the underground bunker plans to Claude and asked it to estimate the concreted used in various portions of the house. Here are its estimates: Roughly 775,000 lb of concrete (about 390 tons) in the whole structure. That splits … Continue reading →
Wow….Joel and Aesop back in the same week. Spicy times a-comin’.
Quote of the Day Those inclined to believe promises of “free, free, free everything” might consider their proximity to so many unfulfilled Soviet rights, and question the reality of what these latest apparatchiks are pledging. Matt WeidingerNovember 3, 2026Democrats promise … Continue reading →
The difference between death and taxes is that death does not get worse every year. My property tax bill for my place here in town arrived the other day. And, my property tax bill for the Beta Site arrived today. … Continue reading →
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to TFB’s Silencer Saturday, brought to you by Yankee Hill Machine, manufacturer of the new Victra 20-gauge shotgun suppressor . This week we are taking a first look at a new silencer for review: the PTR Vent 1 . The silencer made quite a splash when it was first announced, so let's take a tour through its features and specifications and talk about some testing plans.
Yesterday I took the M&P22 back to the range to try several different types of .22LR ammunition. I intended to chronograph them but the battery in my Garmin was dead, so that will have to wait.
After my first range trip I Loctited the rear sight's windage adjustment screw. It stayed in place this time. After I confirmed zero I shot at least my rounds at the 25 yard plate rack.
I fired 380 rounds in total yesterday, in the order below.
In summary, the functioned perfectly with CCI Stingers and Remington Golden Bullets from a bucket I bought around 10 - 15 years ago. It didn't like Remington Vipers and it had some bobbles with Federal Punch. Federal Champion bulk pack and CCI Standard Velocity worked well with one failure of the slide to lock back on empty with each.
Details:
- Federal Punch 29 grain flat point solid. 50 rounds. 3 or 4 failures to feed (FTF).
- CCI Stinger 32 grain HP. 50 rounds. No malfunctions.
- Remington Viper 36 grain truncated cone solid. ~80 rounds. Numerous FTFs and failures to lock back on empty.
- Federal Champion Value Pack 36 grain HP. 50 rounds. One failure to lock back on empty mag.
- Remington Golden Bullet 36 grain HP. 100 rounds. No malfunctions. CCI Standard Velocity 40 grain solid. 50 rounds. One failure to lock back on empty mag.
So far I've put 571 rounds through the gun since buying it a little over a week ago. It seems to have a preference for CCI Mini Mags, CCI Stingers, and Remington Golden Bullet HPs.*
I have 5 more magazines on the way, along with a barrel nut to replace the thread adapter, since I'll be shooting this mostly unsuppressed. The barrel nut won't require removal for field stripping.
With two range sessions under my belt with the Smith & Wesson M&P22 Compact I can say that so far I'm very pleased with this pistol. It would make a great little kit gun for those who prefer autoloaders. Also, with the right ammo, it's reliable enough to rely on for self defense for folks who cannot handle a more powerful chambering, or who have hand issues that make racking the slide on a centerfire semiauto difficult.
*A note about Remington Golden Bullet .22s:
At one time I and many other experienced shooters would have considered Remington .22 Golden Bullets to be junk. However, around 15 years ago Remington greatly improved the quallity and I found it to be good, solid, reliable high speed .22 LR ammo. I don't know if that better quality carried over after Remington's bankruptcy in 2020. I'm getting down the last few hundred rounds from the 1400 round bucket I bought around 15 years ago. I'll have to get some current production Golden Bullets to try.
I was gonna go photograph the Monumental Marathon this morning but it was 34℉ out when I should have been leaving the house and it was eighty degrees just the other day.
I am not yet seasonally acclimated. At any rate, the Drumstick Dash is in just a few weeks, so I punted. By then I'll be a little more cold-tolerant.
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An eye-catching 911 Carrera droptop snapped with a Nikon D4 and a 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G VR zoom lens. Click to greatly embiggenate.
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Quote of the Day For two decades, Tehran’s line on the bomb never changed. It does now. The New York Times reported Tuesday that a growing chorus of Iranian officials, lawmakers, and clerics is openly calling for the Islamic Republic … Continue reading →
I bought a used (barely) Svbony SC311 astrocamera. These are cameras made only for astrophotography. They are very light and can talk directly to your phone so you can adjust settings on the fly and record (I think) directly to your phone via WiFi. In any case, it will record to the microSD card that goes in the slot. But seems not to have stayed in the slot when I picked the SC311 off the desk where it was charging and walked to the easy chair where Rosie insists on sitting on my lap. I am not blaming this very loving dog. I believe I lost the microSD card before I reached the chair.
These cards are tiny. I still do not see it on the floor anywhere. Amazon is promising delivery of a larger one tomorrow, 128GB, not physically larger.
UPDATE: Rhonda was cleaning, and there it was, pretending to be a piece of broken plastic.
The initial Model 500 series of EOTech sights was introduced in approximately 1999, replacing the 400 series. This new model changed the form factor of the sight to what we still see today, with a [...]
The post EOTech / Bushnell Model 500 Holosight first appeared on Forgotten Weapons.
I was chatting with another passionate cigar smoker recently about our hobby and the adjacent obsessions that come along with it. This doesn’t even include the cigars themselves. Many smokers have more cigars in their collections — I prefer the word selection — than they could possibly smoke in a lifetime. Yet we continually seek out new releases and old favorites.
It’s the supplementary compulsions that lead to an ever-growing selection of lighters, cutters, travel cases, and even ashtrays. It’s all really just part of the fun.
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There’s another obsession that gets less attention, but one I’ve found myself falling victim to: the constant monitoring of humidity levels in the humidor.
Questions about proper humidity levels for cigar storage abound on online forums and in cigar lounges. It’s usually one of the first questions beginners ask, and experienced smokers debate the subject regularly. To some extent, it’s a matter of personal preference. Sixty-nine percent relative humidity seems to be a common recommendation, though many prefer something a little lower. I strive for an average reading of around 65–66% myself.
Even after settling on that target, I continue to monitor and double-check. At one point, I had three Govee WiFi hygrometers in the humidor for remote monitoring, all accessible from my phone, along with two or three additional digital devices. All the units were calibrated and recalibrated every few months. These instruments were in addition to the humidor’s built-in display.
After a while, I had to admit that this was getting a little ridiculous.
Humidity levels in my cigar cabinet can vary by a few percentage points from shelf to shelf, and the readings fluctuate slightly as the system works to maintain temperature and humidity. Watching the averages on the remote monitors provides some reassurance that my target is being maintained. But there’s a downside for the humidity-obsessed: digital trackers that measure to a tenth of a percent and react to even the slightest fluctuation. Every little change becomes an event worthy of investigation.
As part of my ongoing recovery from this monitoring obsession, I now have just one remotely monitored hygrometer in the humidor. It also serves as an alarm in case of a major problem, alerting me if the temperature or humidity moves outside my preset ranges.
And there’s still one additional hygrometer in the cabinet, just because.
Two recent developments suggest that this humidity theme isn’t confined to the humidor.
My wife has a tray of small orchids sitting in a window. I happened to notice that her hygrometer was reading 65%. Without any fuss, without any adjustments, and without a single glance at her phone, her orchids seemed perfectly content with the reading.
I found that mildly unfair.
Apparently, humidity monitoring isn’t an entirely misplaced obsession after all. Of course, I realize that the two situations have very little to do with each other. But I’m willing to take whatever vindication I can get.
Yes, I’m humidity-obsessed. Excuse me while I check the calibration on my hygrometers one more time.
Cheers!
Officers were dispatched to the scene at 3:30 a.m. at the Circle K station at 750 Steels Corners Road.
Multiple suspects arrived at the station in two stolen minivans, and they rammed into the front of the station in one van, destroying the glass entryway and dislodging the ATM, according to police.
The suspects began to approach the store on foot until the clerk fired seven shots at them, causing them to flee, according to police.
While we are fighting the ravages of floodwaters… Note: Lovers of liberty know that it isn’t just socialism – it is government overall. Whatever it calls itself. Socialism? Just a greedier, more deceptive form. Democratic socialism: two wolves and… no … Continue reading →
Welcome back to Front Line Friday. This week is a gear week, and the topic is K9 patrol equipment: the gear that keeps both the handler and the dog alive and working across a career, not a demo. Front Line Friday is brought to you by Dead Air Silencers , whose support keeps this column going every week.
Every truck guy knows someone who dropped a Cummins diesel into a Chevy just to see the look on people's faces at the gas station. Grand Power of Slovenská Ľupča, Slovakia, has pulled off the rifle equivalent of that swap. But what is it?
Everyone knows a rifleman wants to make every shot count, but in the world of shotgunning, it’s kind of a given that you’re going to miss some shots, especially when you’re inexperienced. At least, you’re likely to have some misses when you’re wingshooting, especially on smaller birds with a lot of speed, like a teal. And obviously, it’s very difficult to get a follow-up shot on a flying bird with a single-shot shotgun. In my neighborhood, there used to be a neighbor who went to “the gunning bar” with a single-shot, and a few shells held between the fingers of his forward hand on the shotgun. Local legend has it that he could reload that gun so quickly that he’d get follow-up shots on eiders, despite the limitations of his equipment, but those sorts of stories are rare (and even more so as time marches on).
My plan to machine this adapter from a 6"x6"x1/2" sheet of aluminum ran into some size issues. The 6" chuck cannot hold that big a workpiece. Nor does my mill have enough Y capacity to center and drill the middle of the plate.
Okay, cut it down to 5" x 5" and it should work. My chop saw cannot hold down that size of sheet horizontally to do that cut. Vertically, it has insufficient capacity. I regret giving up bandsaw. At least I have roomto put one in the shop.
Canned chili and rice and emergency rations followed me in.
I doubt that I have the stomach to dress a deer, especially because Rhonda would adopt it.
As she walked across the lawn, our wolfette pack lost their minds.
This is a slightly refreshed discussion from 2018. I started thinking about MINITS and sleep became impossible.
The dials on the left and the push buttons at bottom allowed you to enter data into various memory locations, such as when you needed to put the boot code in to load the OS from the drum. This was a slow process. One friend, Curt, demonstrated his ability to enter the boot sequence accurately with his toes.
I do not know if the Model 15 was an Interdata supported product, or something Cerf's team created. The Model 3 was for control of the teletype terminals and modems. The model 4 did the timesharing processing.
This is a model 33 teletype. It printed and accepted keyboard input at 10 characters per second (we finally managed to find a 30 character per seconds modem and CRT to attach).
Because alignment of the type to the line was happening at very high speeds, the letters would often being not exactly centered in the line. You would see characters printed perhaps a few hundredths of an inch off a perfect impression vertically. I suspect this could be adjusted for better output accuracy but the listings we had in binders were all suffering this drunken vertical print alignment.
*Computers execute instructions stored in RAM as binary numbers usually expressed in hexadecimal. X'5A' was the Interdata AHM (Add Halfword to Memory) instruction. (I remember because they used many of IBM 360 mnemonics and architecture; 16 general registers all of which except 0 could be index registers; and where X'5A', was a 32 bit add of memory to register on the 360, X'5A' was AHM 16-bit add of memory to register on the Interdata), It not being very easy for most people to remember all the numbers, we generally wrote in assembler language. AHM 5,VALUE would add the 16 bits at symbol VALUE to register 5. The program that converted these easy to remember mnemonics into binary was called an assembler.
I have mentioned learning to program on an IBM 1401. This computer processed class scheduling, attendance records, and grades for the entire Santa Monica Unified School District. I used my knowledge and access to get myself moved from one section of German to the other because the girl that I was obsessed with was going to be in that section. Another one of the computer lab rats, Curt, claimed no knowledge of how he had dozens of unexcused absences from P.E. and still received an A.
Anyway, the data processing coordinator for the district somehow rescued a computer pound puppy. It was an odd dual minicomputer system named MINITS (for Miniature Time Sharing System). It used two Interdata minicomputers, a Model 3 and Model 4, sharing a common 32K RAM space. A model 4:
Anyway, the data processing coordinator for the district somehow rescued a computer pound puppy. It was an odd dual minicomputer system named MINITS (for Miniature Time Sharing System). It used two Interdata minicomputers, a Model 3 and Model 4, sharing a common 32K RAM space. A model 4:
The dials on the left and the push buttons at bottom allowed you to enter data into various memory locations, such as when you needed to put the boot code in to load the OS from the drum. This was a slow process. One friend, Curt, demonstrated his ability to enter the boot sequence accurately with his toes.
I do not know if the Model 15 was an Interdata supported product, or something Cerf's team created. The Model 3 was for control of the teletype terminals and modems. The model 4 did the timesharing processing.
This is a model 33 teletype. It printed and accepted keyboard input at 10 characters per second (we finally managed to find a 30 character per seconds modem and CRT to attach).
Modems were the way you communicated with a remote computer well into the 1980s. (I still remember the thrill of installing a Telebit Trailblazer modem at work and getting 14,400 bits/seconds.) It had an acoustic coupler: two rubber orifices into which the handset fit. The modem (modulator/demodulator) took ASCII electrical bytes, converted them to a variety of interesting sounds and sent them over the phone line. At the far end, another modem converted those sounds back to ASCII bytes. It was, as you might expect, less than perfect. Line noise could garble the characters. This is why teletypes operated in either full duplex or half duplex mode. Full duplex mode: you typed a character. The far end echoed it back so you knew what character it heard. Half duplex: the character you typed appeared immediately.
An early minicomputer editor was called TECO. It was said that TECO commands were hard to distinguish from line noise.
Yes that is a paper tape punch and reader on the left side, which used this stuff:
There are indeed more than 8 rows. One is a parity bit, and the other is some other out of band signaling information that I have forgotten. Slow! I once did a three pass assemble* of the Interdata Model 4 OS from paper tape as my first summer job after graduating. (That was 12 hours of profound boredom, fixing paper tape jams and tears. Why three passes? No hard disk to store intermediate results, like symbol tables)
Anyway back to MINITS. This was one of Vint Cerf's brainchildren. The idea was a relatively cheap timesharing system. We had scads of listings for the operating system, BASIC interpreter, and some of the utilities and games, printed out on a drum printer that was attached to the Univac 1108, that was supposed to be the mainframe to which this would be attached.
A drum printer was one of two mainframe printers of the era. Chain printers, like the IBM 1403:
An early line printer that used type slugs linked together in a chain as its printing mechanism. The chain spun horizontally around a set of hammers. When the desired character was in front of the selected print column, the corresponding hammer hit the paper into the ribbon and onto the character in the chain. Chain and train printers gave way to band printers in the early 1980s.
If this sounds incredibly slow: it was not. An IBM 1403 chain printer:
The original model can print 600 lines of text per minute and can skip blank lines at up to 75 inches per second (190 cm/s), while the model 3 can print at up to 1400 lines per minute. The standard model has 120 print positions. An additional 12 positions are available as an option. A print chain with up to 15 copies of the character set spins horizontally in front of the ribbon and paper. Hammers strike the paper from behind at exactly the right moment to print a character as it goes by. In later models, the print chain is replaced by a print train; print slugs instead of being mounted on a chain are placed in a track.
Drum printers used a series of type slugs mounted on a drum. A print stroke would line up the appropriate slug for each letter (perhaps all the slugs for the entire line to be printed?) and stamp them through a ribbon onto that same distinctive wide fanfold paper used by chain printers:
Because alignment of the type to the line was happening at very high speeds, the letters would often being not exactly centered in the line. You would see characters printed perhaps a few hundredths of an inch off a perfect impression vertically. I suspect this could be adjusted for better output accuracy but the listings we had in binders were all suffering this drunken vertical print alignment.
The MINITS hardware was unique. It had a large magnetic drum that did two things: every few milliseconds as the drive reached its zero track position, it generates an interrupt that told the operating system, "It is time to give another user some time." (Clock generated interrupts? Not sure when these appeared on other minicomputers.) Also when it came time to swap users, the entire user context (the current contents of his BASIC program or whatever else a user was running, which I believe went from X'5800' to X'8000') would be written to the drum. The OS would then load the next user's context and give him execution time.
How much time? The OS had a concept of Terminal Control Block, which specified how many milliseconds he was allowed and the priority of his terminal's task. By adjusting these numbers on the fly, you could annoy the heck out of a remote user. (Imagine typing a key on the teletype and waiting a second or two for the echo to print on the paper.) There was one in the math lab several thousand feet away, and another attached by 110 baud modem at Lincoln Junior High, some miles away. We also borrowed a teletype to take home on weekends, for breaking into ARPAnet; more about that some other day.) When there were problems, either because someone was manipulating the remote user's TCB or because of hardware problems, the long-suffering, but always polite Lincoln math teacher responsible for this learning project, Mr. Winkenhower, would call us to find out why he was not having any luck.
Anyway, I learned a lot about how operating systems worked in 11th and 12th grades. The Control-V key would drop you into a debugger where you could by accident do enormous damage requiring a hard reset, including re-entering the boot sequence through the front panel. The right set of common keystrokes would change RAM in areas that were lethal to the OS. It was needed, however, to fix some problems on occasion so we could not just disable it. A fellow student, Curt, and I wrote a utility in Interdata assembly language and then hand compiled it (we had no assembler program) that would do all the necessary functions but otherwise block access to the debugger.*
I also learned how to redirect the illegal instruction interrupt, which would drop you into the debugger. At some point I decided to be clever and build an illegal instruction driver that would recognize instructions that were part of the Interdata Model 70 instruction set. These were short relative jumps (branch within 256 bytes so the instruction only took two bytes instead of four) and add, subtract, multiply, and divide instructions (limited to I think 8 bit values; AHM (add halfword memory AHM register, value) and it would simulate these perfectly. Then I foolishly started adding these instructions into the OS. It came to a near complete standstill as basic OS functions would keep running through the illegal instruction ISR.
I am trying to get my WiFi adapter out of the Faraday cage that is my shop. This gives me 45 Mbps. Unfortunately it is not stable. It uses two USB 3.0 cables end to end. I need some height to get line of sight to my range extender. Unfortunately, antenna masts like we used to use for televisions in the ancient times are hard to find now. Pipe would work but I cannot get an 8' section in my car. Suggestions?
If you have never shot .22 LR suppressed, you have missed one of the best experiences in shooting. A subsonic rimfire behind a can is genuinely quiet, the whole thing costs very little per round, and new shooters who flinch at a centerfire rifle will happily shoot a suppressed .22 all afternoon. Derya Arms has clearly noticed, and here is their new OBone suppressor in detail.