Lost Another One

Tom Clancy has died.  I remember reading The Hunt for Red October when it came out in paperback.  It was a great story, well paced, and with believable and interesting characters.  I DEVOURED it.  I read Red Storm Rising – in hardcover – as soon as it came out. 

Just, wow.  I missed a lot of sleep with that one.

I then read everything Clancy wrote up through Debt of Honor.  After that I felt that he was largely mailing it in, though I did find his non-fiction book with Gen. Chuck Horner, Every Man a Tiger an extremely fascinating look at the 1991 Gulf war in the air.  Stephen Green reports in his piece on Clancy:

Against All Enemies (with Peter Telep) remains the only Clancy book I couldn’t get through — and quickly. There was just something was missing from that one, but the others since 2010 have all read like “classic” Clancy of the ’80s and ’90s. Just a few days ago I pre-ordered Command Authority, due out in December. I suppose it will be his last.

I may have to pick up a new (to me) Clancy and give him another shot.

Fair winds and following seas, Mr. Clancy.  Thank you for the hours of entertainment and the technical education you provided.

Edited to add this bit of Clancy wisdom:

Home Again

Got home about 4PM.  Another great Rendezvous, thanks to the efforts of Mr. Completely.  There will be a couple more updates once I get all my pictures and the (very) few videos I took uploaded, but let me start you with this one – the four fastest times from the steel shoot on Saturday, at least from the people who actually turned in their score sheets:


Jaci and Robert were drawing from the holster, Derek was drawing from CONCEALMENT. I was shooting from low-ready, but I was shooting a REVOLVER.  Yes, I am VERY happy with how I shot the Smith that day.

The guys from Gunauction.com brought professional-quality video and still equipment and there promises to be some really good coverage from them on the GunNews.com site that I will be stealing borrowing or linking to when it goes up.  I’ll also be writing about my conversation with David Smith, the guy from Gunauction who wrote that “We want your blog” email that caused such a fuss.

However, tomorrow comes early and I have to drive 101 miles back up to Phoenix in the morning, so this is it for me today.

GBR Day 2

I’m in the Hospitality room with a crowd of bloggers and vendors (pictures hopefully to follow), blogging from my iPhone (which sucks as a blogging tool, but hey, it’s what I’ve got.)  Had a great breakfast provided by the NRA, a GREAT day at the range, and now it’s Show-n-Tell. Tactical Solutions has brought one of pretty much everything in their catalog. I want one of their 10/22 barrels!

Blogging like this is painful, so I’m going to stop now and listen to the presenters.

So Much To Do, So Little Time…

Still working 10-12 hour days.  Lots going on out in the real world, and no time to analyze and write about any of it. 

Nobody shows for a “Climate Change Rally” in  Washington.  The snark and schadenfreude just ache to be written.

Obamacare’s implementation of a 30-hour “full time” workweek has spawned an “unintended consequence” – hour cuts to avoid having to provide health care.  “Unintended” my ass.  Everyone who saw that provision KNEW what the result would be.  But the White House says there’s no there, there.  In other Obamacare news, first there was the delay of planned Medicare cuts, then delay of the “employer mandate” for companies with 50 or more employees, and now the cap on out-of-pocket expenses has been delayed by proclamation.  And they’re still telling us that our premiums will go down.

A rodeo clown gets “lifetime ban” for un-PC political speech, and calls for “federal involvement” are raised. 

Jesse Jackson, Jr. and his wife get jail sentences, and CBS doesn’t find his party affiliation newsworthy.  (Hey, the New York Times put it in the first SENTENCE of their story.)

The Federal Government is still running at a loss, but the National Debt has remained at $16,699,396,000,000 since last month.  Truly, if a private business was run like the .gov, it would be shut down in thirty seconds and every officer would be sitting in prison alongside Rep. Jackson, Jr.  And the regular media has nothing to say about this accounting sleight-of-hand, I guess because “the right people” are in charge.

In other money news, apparently while the Fed can create money electronically with ease, the Mint can’t actually PRINT money worth a damn.

Egypt is coming apart at the seams.  Syria isn’t doing any better.  Or Iraq.  That “smart diplomacy” sure is working wonders, no?

Still no motion from the media on IRS-Gate, Bengazi-Gate, or any of the other myriad Obama scandals.  Of course not!  He’s not George W. Bush!

Yeesh.  Maybe I should be happy that I’ve got three more weeks of  busting my ass at work, and at least another month when I get back from Reno.

Please enjoy yourself in the comments and the archives, and a BIG thank you to reader John Hardin who has been making MASSIVE efforts to make available the old JS-Kit/Echo comment threads for a lot of the older posts, like this one.  Thank you, John.  It’s much appreciated, and if I’m ever in your neck of the woods, I owe you a beer or twelve.

One Small Step…


On this day at 02:56 UTC 44 years ago, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to leave one of these on the surface of another astronomical body. Three years and five months later, Eugene Cernan became the last man to do so, so far.

The last Space Shuttle touched down for the last time on this day two years ago.

Elon Musk of PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX fame has said that the impetus behind the development of SpaceX came when his son asked him, “is it really true that they used to fly to the moon when you were a boy?”

Now there are two-dozen or more private space ventures around the world. There is a plan to capture and retrieve an asteroid for commercial purposes. Other companies want to mine the moon.  Still another plans to put an observatory there.

If we can just hold it together for a couple more decades, humanity might get off this rock, and we might do it in my lifetime.

But it’s not looking too good.

(Updated and reposted from last year.)

I’m Geeking Out Here

Ok, one of these years I’m going to Comic-Con:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVpM3TNTVFY?rel=0]

My wife and I were in San Diego over Comic-Con weekend a few years ago, but not to attend the event.  I kind of regret not taking advantage of the timing, but …