Blogroll Additions

I met some new people at this year's Rendezvous. First, GG from Girls {Heart} Guns, who is a newbie shooter, and very enthusiastic! She's also very safe, as she relates in this post.

Next up was Olav and his wife Patricia from Firearms and Training. Olav is a fine shot, and QUICK. On Saturday, the last run we did was five shots on a single steel plate at 7 yards as fast as possible. I watched Olav put five rounds on target from his 9mm S&W M&P in just over a second. You could have covered the group with a playing card. I told him I didn't see the happy-switch on his pistol!

Two guys from CS Tactical made their first trip to the Rendezvous, Mike Cecil and Andrew "Mase" Mason. CS Tactical has a forum, too! Not only that, but Mike's a helluva competitor. He won the Cowboy Fast Draw match on Sunday, beating out "Millisecond Molly" by literally milliseconds.

True Blue Sam made it this year. Zeke of Engineering Johnson couldn't make it due to work (he was in Viet Nam showing 'em how to make pop-top cans), but his grandmother Bea was insistent that she was going to her second Rendezvous, so it was up to Sam, her son, to provide escort duty! Bea is 79 years old and has been shooting for just a couple of years, but she handloads her own ammo - .357, .44, and .45 Colt.

Making his second trip to a Rendezvous was D.W. Drang of The Cluemeter. I haven't had him on the blogroll before, but I will shortly!

This was also Molly's second Rendezvous. She's going on the roll as well.

Also new this year was Dan Hall of GUNUP.com, a new site (not quite ready, but soon!) that aims to be THE place for people to go for gun-related information on the web. Sounds like they have a plan and the people, let's wish 'em luck!

Mr. Completely Really Delivers!

When Mr. C sets up a Rendezvous, he goes all out! This year somehow he got a lot of balloonists to come to Reno just for us! Here's the view out my hotel room window two mornings in a row. (Click the pictures for the full-size versions.)

And if you were in attendance, you were certain to go home with some T-shirts and other great swag. Here's some (blurry) shots of some of the piles of stuff that were given away:

Seriously, if you can make it next year, DO IT.

MidwayUSA Discount Codes

As promised, Mr. Colin Anthony, MidwayUSA's marketing specialist has provided some discount codes that you, my readers, can use! I've been doing business with Midway for over a decade, and I spend on average about $750 a year there. I think they like me. Anyway, here's his email:

To receive your Savings:

1. Place in-stock products in your shopping cart totaling:

$10 off $100 - Use Promotion Code 19310
$20 off $200 - Use Promotion Code 29310
$30 off $300 - Use Promotion Code 39310

Enter the promotion code in the box entitled "Promotion Code" on the shopping cart page.

2. You will see the discount on the Confirmation page before placing your order.

3. Remember, this promotion code is valid for orders placed on MidwayUSA.com.

4. Limited to in-stock products, one per Customer and one promotion code per retail order.

5. Excludes Gift Certificates and Nightforce products, Sale priced products and Clearance products.

6. Offer valid for retail Customers only.

7. Offer cannot be combined with Birthday or Special Pricing.

8. Hurry, offer starts at 12:00 AM CT Sept 17, 2010 (that's tomorrow) and ends at 11:59 PM CT October 17, 2010.

Colin B. Anthony
Marketing Specialist

Thank you again, Colin!

And for a great review of the pistol case that Midway gave to all the bloggers who attended GBR-V, go read Anthroblogogy's post on it.

Quote of the Day - Professional Advice Edition

Your professional career will not reward failure, so get as much of it in as early in life as possible.

Mike Fahrion, Common Sense Crumble? - B&B Electronics Serial Communications Blog

(Just as an aside, you have to wonder just how much failure The Won experienced during his early years.)

Now for Something Completely Different!

By email from my dad:

THIS is How You Shoot "Smoke-n-Hope"

That's "Millisecond" Molly Smith, 14 year-old 2010 World Steel Challenge Champion in both Lady's Iron Sight Revolver and Junior Revolver. She won six of eight stages to take the overall championship with her S&W 627, and you can see why. On the round where she missed the stop plate once, her time barely broke four seconds!

As someone observed, normally it would be considered kinda creepy for so many old guys to be filming a 14 year-old girl, but we all want to grow up some day to shoot like she does!

Next Up, THANKS!

There are a lot of people to thank for their contributions to the fifth (!) annual Gun Blogger Rendezvous, none more than Mr. Completely and Keewee for their efforts to pull it all together. As Mr. C put it, for him it's not a lot of fun, but it sure is rewarding when it's all done.

For the rest of is, it is a lot of fun, and we really appreciate it.

Others who contributed involved many in the industry:

Bill Brassard Jr., Director of Communications for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NSSF provided the pizza dinner Saturday night, and Bill is the gateway through which bloggers can get media credentials to attend the annual SHOT show in Las Vegas.

Rachel Parsons of the NRA, who provided a very nice breakfast for us Friday morning before we headed off to the range, but was unable to make it herself due to illness.

Randi Rogers AKA "Holy Terror" of Glock, who provided a certificate for any standard Glock handgun.

Charles Brown of Hi-Point Firearms and MKS Supply, who provided a certificate for a 9mm Carbine.

Kerby Smith of Para USA who provided a 35% discount coupon for any new Para pistol

Lori Petoske of Ruger Firearms who provided very nice briefcase-style range bags for all of the bloggers, plus cups, hats and other swag.

Larry Weeks of Brownell's, who unfortunately couldn't be with us as this year he was a range officer at the USPSA Multi-Gun Nationals being held in Las Vegas. Brownell's provided AR-15 mags (I scored two), one of their top-of-the-line range bags, and other great stuff.

Colin Anthony of MidwayUSA, who provided shirts, a stack of excellent pistol range bags and other stuff, plus a discount code for blog readers (and another one to come!)

Patrick Harlan of Crimson Trace, who provided a certificate for any in-stock Lasergrip, and some very nice pistol rugs and other swag.

Leupold, who through Allen Forkner of Swanson*Russell, provided a damned nice VX3 scope.

Jamie Klund and Gary Shank of Cabela's who hosted a tour of their 125,000 square-foot Reno store, and let us fondle the rare firearms in their Gun Room, (including a $30k Single-Action Army!) Cabela's also gave us some discount coupons that most of us made immediate use of.

The Cowboy Fastdraw Association, who put on a match for Rendezvous attendees Sunday at absolutely no cost to us. It was, to coin a phrase, a blast. Special thanks to "Quick Cal" Eilrich and the Sage Hills Reno Rustlers Cowboy Fast Draw club who ran the match.

The Palomino Valley Gun Club who run a fine range, and the Western Nevada Pistol League who let us shoot their steel on Saturday.

Richard Brengman of Special Interest Arms, who brought some of his stuff to Friday's Show-'n-Tell for us to look at and handle. Richard lives an hour or so away in Gardnerville, NV, and said he thought some other local manufacturers might be interested in attending next year.

Derek of The Packing Rat, who donated an Air Venturi Bronco break-barrel air rifle. Derek is also the unofficial photographer for the Rendezvous.

And the Silver Legacy Resort and Casino who treated us well all weekend.

And thanks also to all the attendees who helped us raise money for Project Valour-IT. I met a bunch of new people this weekend, and my blogroll will be growing.

Home

I left Reno about 1:20 yesterday afternoon after dropping Mr. C, KeeWee, and U.S. Citizen off at the Silver Legacy following the cowboy fast-draw match, which was a hoot. I got my butt handed to me in two consecutive matches, but the finals were pretty exciting. I'm glad I stayed for it this year.

I got to Las Vegas about 8:30PM, but didn't end up getting a hotel room until after 10:00 (don't ask). I didn't wake up until 8:00 this morning, and was on the road gain at 9:00. I pulled into my driveway this afternoon at 3:30. I am wiped out.

A Rendezvous Recap (with pictures!) will fill the next few days' posts. And links. Lotsa links.

I can't wait for next year!

9/11

Tam (once again) has said it better than I could, so go read (as if you don't go there first).

On a related note, part of what we do here at the GBR is raise money for Project Valour-IT. Last year we raised over $8,000. The economy sucks this year. Several regulars were unable to make it, and things for most of the rest of us are tight, But we still have soldiers coming home with severe physical injuries - even after the "end of major combat operations" in Iraq. One (anonymous) previous attendee who could not make it this year still donated to Project Valour-IT via the link I gave above in honor of the Rendezvous. If you can spare it, please consider doing the same. Even if you can't, please spread the word.

GBR-V Update

About a dozen of the expected 30 or so people have already shown up, about half are new faces. There's no WiFi in the hospitality room this year (the hotel discovered they could charge convention goers extra for that service) so no live-blogging this year, at least from me. I'm going to HAVE to look into a Verizon net card next year.

Oh, and no Überpost this weekend. I didn't have time to finish it (well, I didn't take the time) and I'll be busy the next four days, but I promise it's coming.

Rendezvous!

OK, I'm here! I just got checked in and I'm in my room. Next up, the Silver Baron 'B' ballroom to find out who else is here.

OK, Another Post

On the way up to Reno, I'm stopping by this place: Special Interest Arms. They do...interesting things with Lee-Enfield rifles, and I have a couple that I'm interested in selling. I've got a No. 4 MkI^* Savage barreled action that has a bad bore, and a No. 5 MkI that has way excessive headspace on a #2 bolt head (instant case head separation). Besides, Gardnerville isn't that far out of the way. I have another No. 4 and an original No. 5. The No. 5 shoots pretty well. The No. 4 not so much. I might try to partially trade the two I'm bringing for a 7.62x39 conversion kit for my other No. 4.

On the other hand, those suppressed .45ACP carbines look wicked cool . . .

And the proprietor has said that he might drop in on the Rendezvous this weekend, which would be cool.

The HP DeskJet D2680 SUCKS!!!!

My daughter got one as a freebie in a bundle with a new PC. She liked the printer she already had, and knew that I didn't have a printer for the Franken-puter I built last year, so she gave it to me. (Prior to this, I've been using my Epson Stylus RX620 3-in-1 printer/scanner as a network printer, but I have to have the old machine it's running on in the other room on at the same time.)

Let me reiterate: The HP DeskJet D2680 SUCKS!!!!

Yes, the HP DeskJet D2680 SUCKS!!!!

And, not to put too fine a point on it, the HP DeskJet D2680 SUCKS!!!!

Not only does it go through (expensive, non-refillable) ink like a 426 Hemi goes through hi-test, it can't seem to print more than three pages before locking up the print spooler in the middle of a page. Sometimes it can't even print one entire page.

Apparently this is a known issue. It's been known for a while. And HP still hasn't fixed it.

No wonder they're giving these things away for free. If they actually sold them as printers, they'd be sued for fraud.

No Blog for You!

I'm in final preparations to head out for Reno tomorrow, and of course I'll be on the road for most of tomorrow. I'll check either tomorrow evening (assuming I find a hotel with WiFi) or Thursday once I get checked in at the Silver Legacy.

Hopefully the long-promised next Überpost will be finished and up by Saturday. We'll see.

In Honor of James Lee

Hint: It doesn't work that way, and no matter how hard you try, wishing won't make it so.

It especially doesn't work if you try replacing the technology in the grinder with people.

Brilliant!

Here's some political activism I can get behind:

Send a CFL to your congressman

They've mandated these bulbs. I think we should make them choke on 'em.

Quote of the Day - Education Edition

Zombie agrees with me:

The media and public schools were correctly identified by Gramsci as the most influential cultural institutions, and it was therefore those that the left realized must be targeted.

It is this sophisticated Gramscian plan, and not the more brutish Marxist idea of simply seizing power by force, which has guided leftist thought in America since WWII. And it is why the media and education have, over time, been slowly turned into engines of leftist propaganda. Gramscianism matured into “critical pedagogy” which is the real-world application of his educational theories, and countless left-leaning young adults have for decades been nudged toward careers in education and the media. Some time ago, we crossed a threshold in which the Gramscian infiltrators no longer had to ply their trade surreptitiously, but became the majority in the media and in education, and after that point the process accelerated rapidly as they took over both fields and turned them into ideological weapons.

"Zombie" - In Pursuit of Cultural Hegemony, Part IV of his five-part series on ideological warfare in America's public school systems.

Read it all.

Speechless

Just a few minutes ago, someone was directed to my Failure to Communicate essay by plugging the following (verbatim!) into ask.com:

Thomas Sowell Theories is his theories idea or detrimental to society

Mouth hangs agape.

Quote of the Day - Try "Both" Edition

Now I am scared. The NRA may be right. We have heard from several hunter friends they have had the same experience. Either the Department of Justice is a total joke or the government is building a database so they know where to go and pick up private citizens' guns. -- Maybe the NRA's right to be paranoid

This is not an either/or question. There's every reason to believe that the answer is "Both."

(h/t to SayUncle)

Well, So Much for Good News

So, I get on the internet when I get home, and discover that there's been a blast at Widener's. Thankfully, apparently no one was killed.

And today I received a call at work from my doctor. My lab tests say I'm a diabetic.

Oh boy.

(At least I don't need to worry about my porphyria any more.)

UPDATE: Widener's says "Wasn't Us!!"