Thor’s Hall

While some of her positions are definitely “out of the box”, there maybe some merit to this platform.

Go on give it a read, here.

For those of you who know Michael Yon, and his writings this is probably old news.

The NY Times, has a piece in today’s paper on Michael. Give it a read here. Then get on over to Michael’s site and read his stuff for yourself.

For those of you who missed the commercial version, here is the extended version.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.466754&w=425&h=350&fv=] from our.marines.com posted with vodpod

This makes me want to sign on all over again. If I could just get an age waiver.

Go over to the website, check out some of the stories behind the making of this commercial and I think just maybe you will get an inkling of what I mean.

Today seems to be a day of pointing out the thoughts of others, that I happen to agree with.

For your reading enjoyment, slip on over to Mrs. du Toit ande read her essay.  For my shallow comment of the day, she had me hooked as soon as she referenced “Dirty Jobs”.  As the essay progresses it takes some surprising, but well thought out turns.  Read it here and trigger your own thought processes.  Another one of those, how can we fix what was broken 40 – 50 years ago.

Over at Raven’s place she has published a post comparing social approaches to different scenarios that might occur 1967 vs 2007.  I’ve got to tell you it is one of those that  makes  me wonder where the road branched and how can we get back on a more “in between” path.  It also makes me wonder how I am going to manage to instill the values that my parents and grandparents passed to me, in my children if “the system” is teaching a differing set of values.

Go read Raven’s post here and share your thoughts.

I know I am a bit late to the party on this one.

It always amazes me the way that we encourage / allow anyone in the world to influence polls and results. Without having done any research, just observationally, the past several years have seen an increase in the use of various channels to gather opinions from a broader “cross section” of interested parties. The problem that I see is that the “cross section” is really a very poor sampling of a narrow population. For instance, American Idol has brought the idea of audience voting and participation to a significant portion of the viewing audience, with no controls on the voting (except how much you want to pay the cell phone company). Rockstar had a similiar approach.

Now, we have an opportunity to influence the Miss America pagent, and it’s selection of finalists. As a result you may have seen a number of bloggers out there campaigning for their candidates. Personally, without the communication from the blogging community I would never have realized that this opportunity was out there. I am actually curious to see what, if any, influence the blogging community can have on this effort. Unfortunately, there is not a good way to measure this scientifically. All we can do is get the word out, do some campaigning if you will, and see where the vote totals come in.

In that context I encourage all of you to get out there and vote here. Who you vote for, if you do, is up to you. However, I would encourage you to vote for….

Miss Utah, Jill Stevens. A member of the National Guard 1st Battalion, 211th Aviation Regiment. The Miss America Pageant takes place on January 26 in Las Vegas, Nevada. She has an opportunity to win a finalist position by popular vote. Her personal request for your vote is below:

Being a closet aviation geek (always wanted to be a naval aviator but it wasn’t in the cards) I found this survey to be fun. I also found out that depending on my mindset that day the results vary. Today’s result:

Yesterday’s result:

Definitely reflective of different mindsets for the day.

A while back, I decided that it was time to resurrect some old skills. Accordingly, I started frequenting the local gun stores and ranges. I’ve been able to rent quite a few weapons, and have enjoyed being able to not only hit the targets but being able to put together some pretty decent groups. Now it is time to jump into the ownership arena. I decided to go the route of a .45 ACP as my primary stopper. Keeping a .22LR on hand to keep the ammo costs down while being able to really improve and hone in on my skill set.

Today I spent quite a bit of time with the guys down at GAT, trying to figure out what I have missed in my research and trials so far. It was a little disappointing in that they were very supportive of my interest in a Springfield XD. They really like the way that it shoots, it’s maintenance requirements, and reliability. We talked about the Glock’s and the fact that I don’t shoot them well (pulls low and left). They also introduced me to the H&K USP, and the Sig P226. So, I think that I get to go back and work through some trials with both of those weapons, as well as giving the 1911 another shot. The reality though is that I like 1911′s I just think that the XD is a little simpler, and if the spouse wants, she will be less intimidated in handling the XD than a 1911. Bottom line is that there is room for both.

In the .22 LR category, I got a lesson in how the weapon really needs to fit in your hands. I had all kinds of trouble with making those feel comfortable. I worked through Browining Buckmarks and ultimately after working with five different ones finally found that there is a real impact in the fit of a weapon just from the grips that are installed. Saw that in the 1911 too. There were some subtle differences in the grip styles that had a tremendous difference on the feel of the weapon.

Ultimately, in the .22 space I found that I was most comfortable with the CS Cadet 75. Any thoughts from the sparse readers that might be out there?

One of the great things about this blog is that I get to share stuff that I run across out there on the web. It also means I am not necessarily as creative as I should be but, some folks are able to put a lot more effort into topics than I can.

So with no further delays go check out these couple of surveys / Best of lists for 2007.

Survey 1

Best of…

I will add more as I find them.