Well, it's a holiday weekend

Sitemeter tells me that none of you are reading this - probably off enjoying time with your families or some lame excuse like that ...

But welcome to the person from Rochester NY who came here looking for Smith & Wesson 625 info and stayed for 25 page views (!).  Glad to see you making up for the slackers!  Stop back, if you've a mind.

Now if all y'all will excuse me, I have to fry a chicken.

Shopping list

Calipers.

Scale.

Large rifle primers.

IMR powder.

.303 bullets if they have them (which I think they don't, in which case I'll go on-line).

I could get all of this online, but I want to chat with the guy at the store.  I like doing business with local guys when I can.

UPDATE 26 May 2012 17:57: Powder and primers, check.  No scale, calipers, or bullets. Still, progress!

I would seriously like to do this

Jo Dee Messina - Heaven Was Needing A Hero

(Click to read Christian's story)

Memorial Day isn't about barbecues for Christian Golczynski.  He was eight years old when LTC Ric Thompson handed him the flag that had draped his father's coffin.  That was five years ago.

This weekend will be the fifth Memorial Day where he won't be thinking about barbecues.  Next month will be the fifth Father's Day with an empty chair at the dinner table.

That is what Memorial Day is about.

I've posted this song a number of times over the last year or two, as it captures the in music the sound of a heart breaking.  The song alternates between memories of the loved and lost, and the stumbling emptiness as the singer tries - and fails - to make sense of the loss.  It's not your typical sentimental Country music song, it's pure, 100 proof grief.

For some, that is what Memorial Day is about.

There is no official music video for this song; Messina is no longer the chart topping singer that she was in the 1990s.  But people have taken this music and found photographs that amplify the music and make it personal.  The second picture is one that I found particularly moving - nearly as much as the one of young Master Golczynski shown here.

This is what Memorial Day is about.



Heaven Was Needing A Hero (songwriter: Jo Dee Messina)

I came by today to see you
Though I had to let you know
If I knew the last time that I held you was the last time,
I'd have held you and never let go
Oh it's kept me awake night wonderin'
Lie in the dark, just asking "why?"
I've always been told you won't be called home until it's your time

I guess Heaven was needing a hero
Somebody just like you
Brave enough to stand up for what you believe and follow it though
When I try to make it make sense in my mind
The only conclusion I come to
Is that Heaven was needing a hero like you

I remember the last time I saw you
Oh you held your head up proud
I laughed inside when I saw how you were, standing out in the crowd
You're such a part of who I am
Now that part will just be void
No matter how much I need you now
Heaven needed you more

'Cause Heaven was needing a hero
Somebody just like you
Brave enough to stand up for what you believe and follow it though
When I try to make it make sense in my mind
The only conclusion I come to
Is that Heaven was needing a hero like you

Yes, Heaven was needing a hero...that's you.

Abraham Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby is justly famous:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

Christian Golczynski also laid a sacrifice on that same altar of our freedom, a sacrifice costly beyond our reckoning.  I hope that the fullness of time will ease his anguish as well.  I fear that it will not.

That is what Memorial Day is about.  Not a barbecue in sight, just pure, 100 proof grief.  This weekend as you go about your normal business of life, remember SSgt Marcus Golczynski.  And Christian.  And what that sacrifice means.  May this Republic be worthy of them.

A not so guilty pleasure

You will be hard pressed to find some better guitar playing than this - Lynyrd Skynyrd and Montgomery Gentry on CMT Crossroads (maybe the best music TV program ever).

Make sure you stick around until the end for the guitar duel.  Awesome.



Country, rockabilly, rock 'n' roll - whatevs.  It's just great music.

In which Borepatch is an idiot

I got not one, but two reloading manuals (Lyman and Lee, thanks for asking).  Attentive readers will recall me complaining that neither discussed .303 Brit.

Well, of course they both did - attentiveness is its own reward - plus there was one that came in the box of .303 dies.  So I'm set for recipes.  Now I just need to pick one and do some actual reloading.

I confess

Confession is good for the soul.  OK, then.

Wayne's World 2 is a guilty pleasure.  I enjoyed it much, much more than the original - it was filled with tip o' the hat to great old film genres, and clever enough to keep me laughing after a lot of watching.



And a tip o' the hat to great old actors.  This scene simply cracked me up.



I first saw it when the lovely and loves-Florida-in-December Mrs. Borepatch and I were driving from the Washington D.C. area to, well, Florida once December.  We were taking 15 month old #1 Son do a Florida vacation because I was giving a talk at a Security conference.  Somehow, the conference was in Orlando in December - go figure.

We drove, and bailed out in Florence, S.C.  Hitting the hotel room after dinner, this had me laughing so loudly that she had to shush me so that #1 Son could fall asleep.  I think about that trip every time I watch the film. Not a bad thing at all, really.

So what's your guilty pleasure?

Work ethic

Or more precisely, the lack thereof.

I find that I've not been putting as much consideration into my posts this last week, and frankly, the quality - or lack thereof - has shown.  As an apology to my long-suffering readers, and as a token of grateful appreciation to their repeat business, all blog posts today will be entirely free of charge.

I flunked out of mime class

Literal music videos FTW.

New blacktop

The machines are gone from the vicinity of Camp Borepatch, leaving nothing but smooth, smooth, new blacktop.  Nothing like a new smooth stretch of highway.



Got to take my baby for a ride ...

This isn't taught in American public schools

But it should be.



This moment of Holy Cow brought to you by R. K. Brumbelow, via email

Quote of the day

Yeah, yeah - Ayn Rand was a hypocrite because she got Medicare.  Or something.  Orphan Wilde brings the rebuttal:

...you make it illegal for a private company to sell me water, you make it illegal for a private company to sell me electricity without your silly damn regulations, you seize people's property in order to build roads, you force me to pay into an involuntary retirement scheme, you make it illegal for anybody to provide medical care without your approval, you refuse to let me buy food and drugs on my own terms free from your meddling...

...and then you accuse me of being a hypocrite who is dependent on the government because nothing I do in the world can be done free of your goddamned meddling.

You have to hit the link to get his final thoughts.  All I can say is, "Amen, brother."

Jealousy

Some guys get to have all the fun:

The plan was to have the [B-17] Liberty Belle fly to a Publicity Meet at the former USAFE airbase at RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk.  There would be a static display of several WWII aircraft and then Liberty Belle would depart in formation with some of the fighters and a chase plane (modified Beech Baron or perhaps a Beagle Basset - I don't recall now, though it was a piston twin) for an air-to-air photo-shoot of the bomber and escort over the East Anglian landscape.

My job was to drive the minivan down there to allow some of those who'd be flying down to give up their places for some "paying passengers" on the return leg.

And guess who rode home in a B-17, not a VW?  If you like old planes, this is a great story, well told.

Me, I didn't have A-10s buzz my house when we lived in Blighty.  I did live within earshot of the Royal Firing Range in Bisley, which was pretty cool.  In a distinctly non-flying sense.

Atlanta Memorial Day Meet 'n Skeet?

OK, pistol and rifle match, not skeet - but they don't rhyme.

Fill Yer Hands has an outstanding idea:

This Monday is Memorial Day, and I plan to spend the morning as I did last year, shooting the Memorial Day Fundraiser pistol match at Creekside Firing Range in Cartersville, Georgia. Each year for the past seven years, Joe Harris at Creekside has donated all the proceeds of the Memorial Day Fundraiser to the family of a fallen serviceman in the Atlanta area. The Fundraiser includes a steel challenge pistol match in the morning, an auction of shooting gear, and a tactical rifle match in the afternoon.

Those of you who've met me know that I'm not very tactical, but I'm totally willing to let my modest marksmanship skillz get humiliated in a good cause.  And this isn't a good cause, it's a great one.

Who's up to join us?

Well of course

I downloaded the Kindle eBook app to the new company iPhone 4 (that I can videoconference from).  It just sort of stared at me.  Srsly, where do you get eBooks from?

And so I downloaded Apple's eBook reader app, and was instantly cruising the freebies (courtesy of Project Gutenberg): the Constitution, Declaration of Independence/Bill Of Rights, Federalist Papers, Common Sense, Sun Tsu, Price/Cost Indices from 1879 to 1929 (yes, I am a nerd).  I started scrolling by author, rejecting a Mark Twain screed as too cute by half, and then I saw it.

Erotic eBooks.

It's the Internet.  Without porn, it would be nothing.  You want proof?



Wonder if Rule 34 applies to the Bill Of Rights ...

Planning

Work is "interesting" now, as we plan what the next major software release will be.  A dozen products that work together in a dozen different solutions, with 150 or 200 software engineers - making all this mesh is a lot like playing Tetris.



Tetris where you have a dozen different Product Managers each trying to hit the button that will slip a few more resources their way ...

Nothing else really hammers home the reality that is the "Iron Triangle": there are three and only three variables that you can use in your planning.  feature set, timetable, and budget/staff.  That's it.  You can play with them any way you like, but the Iron Triangle defines how much will happen and how long it will take.

And that's before we turn it over to management ...

I guess that if I didn't enjoy this, I wouldn't do it.  ;-)

Useful Idiots

Peter has a must-read post about how the Catholic Church seems surprised that the Obama administration is more or less forcing them to violate their doctrine in the name of "health care".  Peter quite correctly points out that the Catholic Church was one of the biggest advocates of Obamacare, and so they don't really have call to be surprised that Progressives are doing what Progressives do.

I mean, the Cardinals were so sure that Obamacare would go so far and no further.  How can they be on the short end of the stick now.  And where the heck did the stick go?

Some are calling this "feed the crocodile so he eats you last".  I see it that the Cardinals were Useful Idiots - tools who saw some things that they'd like about the New Progressive World and who simply couldn't wrap their brains around the historical fact that Progressives have been sworn enemies of organized religion in general (and the Catholic Church in particular) for well over a century.

Give Progressives tons of new coercive power to do things that you like, and you're surprised that they do coercive things you don't like?  Inconceivable!

There's a message here about the GOP and their big visions, too (*cough* Patriot Act *cough*).  TSA pat downs?  I just thought you were keeping us safe from terrorists!

Inconceivable!

Um, yes?

And I don't hide my gun purchases from my significant other.  She hides them from me.  Srlsy.  Made of win, right there.

(via)

Congratulations, Kevin!

Seems like it's happening to everyone - Kevin Baker just got his 3 Millionth hit.

The first blues song

This is said to the the first copyrighted blues song.  It may be the first record by an African American band, back in 1918.



It sounds more like jazz/ragtime to my ears, at least.  But this recording was before Hart Wand added lyrics to his song:

There's a place I know, folks won't pass me by,

Dallas, Texas, that's the town, I cry, oh hear me cry.

And I'm going back, going back to stay there 'til I die, until I die.

And suddenly, unmistakeably, it's the blues.

How to give your neighbors at the Marina a case of the envies

Old NFO has how not to do it, which involves this:

This is perhaps a better way:

Diesel-electric luxury submarine.  And it probably does a lot better in rough weather than that other one, at least if you take it down 150 ft ...

Congratulations to blog brother PISSED

His odometer just turned over 1 Million hits.  Well done.

Quick update

Tired, so details later, but we had a blast at the Blogmeet.  It was a good turnout, and I have shooty venues lined up in the next little while.  The take away is that we need to do this regularly.

Also, I now have .303 Brit dies on order.  Have to get bullets, primer and propellent now.

Military sights for the Ruger 10/22

The new Tech Sights for #2 Son's 10/22 are not just functional, but they dial the bad-assitude up more than a couple notches.

The front sights are the real deal.

So is the rear peep sight - dials for range and windage.

The camera angle is somewhat off center here - I can get quite a good sight picture through the peep sight, but the dumb auto-focus can't get the image crisp.  I need to play around with the manual settings of the camera.

Plus, they're dead simple to install.  With the sling and extra magazines - not to mention the SKS and 500 rounds for center fire shooty goodness - we're pretty much ready for Appleseed.

A battlefield

Heh.  And this is the obligatory musical accompaniment.

Man Cave

I spent most of yesterday excavating the basement storage bunker here at Camp Borepatch.  I actually cleared out so much junk that there was room to set up my new (to me) Lyman reloading press.  Thanks, Carteach0!

Click to enbiggify

A lot of what used to live there is now baking up in the attic (only the stuff that isn't hurt by the heat, of course).  And there's still some more stuff I can get rid of.  de-clutter FTW!  But now there's room for ammo, range bag, and that sort of stuff.  I'll put up some peg board against the wall and hang my tools there.  Not sure how I've gone this long here without having a proper workbench (oh yeah, I was in Austin most of the time) ...

OK, so I need to tidy up the workbench ...

Now if I had some .303 dies, I'd actually start, you know, reloading.  But I'm quite pleased about the place.  It's not as manly as ASM826's Man Cave, but hey - not many are.  This should do nicely for now.

Atlanta gunblogg happy hour this tomorrow evening

If you find yourself on the north side of the Perimeter, join us at 5 Seasons Brewing Company on Roswell Road at 6:30 PM tomorrow:

5 Seasons Brewing
5600 Roswell Road , Sandy Springs, GA 30342

The Prado Shopping Center

(404) 255-5911 ‎ 5seasonsbrewing.com

I'm expecting that Monday won't be a problem, but if you think you might make the scene, shoot me an email so I can get us a table that's "right sized" for the group. borepatch at gmail.

UPDATE: scheduling fail. Monday evening, not Sunday.

The desert does bloom, you know

It's quite pretty when it does.

© Borepatch

These grow wild outside the company's office building in Austin.  Different sorts of flowers here in Atlanta, because it's not a desert ...

Atlanta mini blogmeet: Tomorrow at 6:30 PM

Anyone in the Atlanta area who wants to meet up, come to 5 Seasons Brewing Company tomorrow evening at 6:30 for dinner, beer, and conversation. 

5 Seasons Brewing
5600 Roswell Road , Sandy Springs, GA 30342

The Prado Shopping Center

(404) 255-5911 ‎ 5seasonsbrewing.com

Sean Sorrentino from NC Gun Blog will be visiting, so if you're in the area stop by.  Reservation under "Borepatch", naturally!

How should we assess Barack Obama's Presidency?

I dunno.  Maybe we should ask him?



Hey, thanks!  Clears a lot up, right there.  Of course, it's racist to quote the man (or something), and so I'm quite ashamed of myself.  *rolls eyes*

Hat tip: A Large Regular.

Frédéric Chopin - Nocturne No. 1 in E minor

Chopin, painted by Delacroix.  Image
via Wikipedia.

Modern music - music as we know it - was really born in the Romantic period perhaps 180 years ago.  While music from earlier periods is heard in symphony halls (and church hymnals), this is the music that you still hear in popular culture: films, TV dramas, that sort of thing.  We're surrounded by it, and really don't think of it as being "old fashioned" at all.  It may be what's called "classical", but it's unmistakeably modern.

Frédéric Chopin perhaps did more than anyone else to create that music.  While he didn't invent the nocturne style, he was without doubt the master of the genre.  He was fortunate that his short lifetime coincided with the Industrial Revolution, where rapidly rising family incomes and dramatically falling manufacturing costs made it possible for many families to have a household piano, and to buy sheet music for their daughters to learn to play.*

And quite frankly, nobody composed for the piano like Chopin. Born in Poland to a French father and a Polish mother, he lived most of his short life in France.  He was quickly recognized as a brilliant pianist and a notable composer, and while he struggled with finances most of his life, he collected a galaxy of rich admirers who ensured that he did not end dieing in poverty (as did Mozart).  The most famous of these was the scandalous noveliste, Amandine Aurore Lucille Dupin - better known to the literary world by her nom de plume Georges Sand.  An early feminist known for wearing trousers (in the 1830s!), she became the love of his life and nursed him for most of his final years.

For he died very young, before the age of 40.  Sick with (probably) tuberculosis, his funeral procession stretched from central Paris to Père Lachaise cemetery.  Delacroix himself - who painted the portrait shown here - carried his coffin.  His grave is something to see - we went to this perhaps most famous burying ground in 1991, and it's worth the journey.

Because his music is sublime, especially the nocturnes.  Soft, lyrical, and with a lushness that belies a solo performance, Chopin took an existing form and put an indelible stamp on it.  So much so, in fact, that when he was young he was told that his compositions were reminiscent of John Field (the originator of that musical form).  By the end of Field's life he was annoyed to be repeatedly described as "Chopinesque".

But this is a form that we would recognize today as modern popular music, still written for television and the mass media.  Modern.  We can thank Chopin for that.  His life was short, but blazed bright.



* Sons, too, but sons were still sent off into the world to earn their fortunes.  Daughters became the traditional focus of family evening entertainment in the Victorian period.

Musical interlude

You add some banjo (and a pickup truck) and this could be country music.



Just sayin'.