I'm still learning things about Eponym's system.  I just discovered that if you go to the notifications page for this blog, there are separate RSS feeds for each category.

Or at least, I intend to be.  I'm going to call it a range day.  I feel lousy today, with a pretty bad sinus-related headache.  I didn't feel like driving all the way to the real range (also, that uses up more than 4 gallons of gas).  So I set up my home indoor/outdoor/backyard range and did some shooting with low-powered .22 ammo.


First up was the lower target.  The cluster of holes in the center is using the old Steven's Favorite and Remington 22 Subsonic ammo.  Ballistics from the box:  MV 1049 fps, ME 93 ft-lbs, "ballistics developed in rifle-length test barrels."  Just because I like including these kinds of details.  Fires a 38 grain hollowpoint.  I adjusted the sights twice until I started getting them in the 10 ring.  I guess my dad likes to use a different sight picture.  The top target is 5 or 6 shots after I finished adjusting the sights.  Looks pretty good except for that one flier.  This is from a distance of roughly 20 yards, because I was shooting out of my back door and that's the first dense clump of oak trees in the line of sight from the door.

The lower cluster of shots in the lower target are those Super Colibri "no powder" .22's in the Single Six.  I wasn't too worried about pin-point accuracy because I'm not convinced this ammo hits to the same point of aim as "real" ammo.

All shots were fired from a bench.  I didn't feel up to free hand today, and I plan on doing my squirrel hunting from carefully pre-planned sniper positions, anyway.


I'll have to take the Single Six to the range next time and test fire several different kinds of ammo from the bench to see if they all hit the same.  But today I think I'll just try to get some rest and see if the pounding in my head will stop.

I need to see about getting a pressure cooker, too.  Squirrels are best when pressure-cooked.

Maybe "miracle" is too strong of a word, but still...

Warehouse:  Songs and Stories was, I think, Hüsker Dü's last full-length album.  It was released in 1987.  I bought this CD on my birthday, so it must have been in either 1987 or 1988.

Many years ago, something went wrong with this CD.  Although it has no visible scratches, I could no longer play it on any CD player that I tried it in.  It would skip all the time.  I tried ripping it on my old computer using Goldwave a long time ago, and that didn't work, either.

Not long ago I downloaded a free ripper program called Audiograbber and installed it on my new, much faster machine.  I decided to try the old CD and see what would happen.  So now I have just finished listening to a perfect digital copy of Warehouse.  Not a single glitch or skip was heard.

This makes me very happy.  Now I need to get all my gear together and start making copies of my old vinyl albums.  This is the only CD of their's that I have; all other albums are records.  I also learned that my old machine didn't work too well in recording records, but I've experimented with the new one already and it works perfectly.  The old one just wasn't fast enough, I guess.

Next up for ripping, because the old machine didn't do a good job:  Uriah Heep's Demons and Wizards and The Magician's Birthday.  I used to listen to those a lot when I was designing D&D adventures back in the olden days.

Regular readers here might be surprised at some of the music I mention, because I usually only talk about jazz, classical, and so forth.  But there are lots of old groups that I still enjoy.  Such as Motörhead.  I still like hearing them on occasion.

Tom Morris, Sr., (pictured here in 1896) better known as Old Tom Morris, was born in St. Andrews, Scotland.  He started his career in golf apprenticed to "featherie" ball maker Allan Robertson (Robertson is known as the world's first golf professional).  When new ball technology made the featherie obsolete, Robertson opposed the new ball.  Morris simply went his own way and began making his own balls.  He was also a club maker, course designer, and champion golfer.


Morris won four Open Championships during the 1860's, and is the oldest person ever to win the Open Championship, at age 46.  He was Keeper of the Greens at Prestwick from 1851 to 1864, and Custodian of the Links at St. Andrews for nearly 40 years, until he retired in 1902.

Some of the courses he designed are Prestwick, Royal Dornoch, Muirfield, Carnoustie, Royal County Down, Nairn and Cruden Bay.  His fee was £1 per day plus expenses.  He standardized the golf course at 18 holes, introduced the idea of placing hazards so the ball could be routed around them (previously they were just there and you had to deal with it), and introduced the course design concept of each nine holes returning to the clubhouse.

Old Tom passed away in 1908, a few months after sustaining a fractured skull from falling down the stairs at the clubhouse.

Technorati Tags: pipe smoking, nanny state, Old Tom Morris

This article about women as gun owners also profiles former anti-gunner Marcia Grann O'Brien:

Fellow gun-toting female Marcia Grann O'Brien, editor for the Narragansett Times, who has raised three children and is now a proud grandmother, was a self-proclaimed "huge anti-gun mom" when her own kids were growing up.

"I wouldn't even let my boys have posters with guns in them," said O'Brien, a Rhode Island native who lived in New York and then moved back to the Ocean State in 1993.

Oddly enough, it was her passion for the anti-gun movement that spurred her eventually love affair with firearms.

In 1995, O'Brien was in an editor's meeting and got wind of a potential story idea surrounding a group of women who frequently gathered at the Warwick Range to practice shoot. O'Brien decided to cover the story out of a sort of morbid curiosity.

"I wanted to see who those crazy women were," she joked. "I said to myself, 'if you are going to do a story on this, you at least need to shoot a gun.'"

She chose the .22-caliber revolver for her first shot.

"I was hooked the first bullet out," said O'Brien. "I loved it. I can't tell you how wonderful and exhilarating it was trying to hit that bulls eye."

Within a week, O'Brien was a gun owner, with her first purchase being her first love, the .22-caliber. She then moved onto a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver and finished her collection with a .45-caliber Eastern European semi-automatic. Shortly afterward she also obtained her Handgun Carry Permit.

"My kids get a huge kick out of it," she said when thinking back to her days as an anti-gun mom, calling her transition "beyond bizarre."

Although O'Brien sticks to target shooting and does not partake in hunting, she said she is not against the idea. In terms of self-defense, O'Brien made clear that she would absolutely use her weapon to protect herself if she saw no other alternative.

"Running away is always the first choice, but if you can't get away, then you shoot," she clarified. "I feel much safer carrying."