Over at 10-8 Forums, a member is selling a Glock 19 that was presented by Gaston Glock to Jeff Cooper. The gun has a special serial number and has “Jeff Cooper” engraved on the slide. He’s asking $5,000.00. A plastic 9mm owned by Col. Cooper is an interesting piece indeed; it’s sort of like buying Michael Schumacher’s lawn tractor. Being a fan of the Colonel and of the G19, I’d like to have it.
is worn down from reading this last night. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, together on stage, liveblogged by Engadget. Way cool nerd stuff, a good read.
Watched Star Wars Episode The First Movie Whatever Number It Is on Friday night. It’s funny how I can trace a lot of my personality to that of Han Solo. But I don’t have a Han costume or anything that you know about.
Also, we watched the Monaco Grand Prix this weekend, the anachronistic marvel of the auto racing world. F1 is pretty much the only racing that I watch (don’t like NASCAR, don’t like whatever they call open-wheel oval racing anymore, and you can’t get World Rally on the tele in the US) and the trend is ever toward wider, safer, slower. But… they can’t kill Monaco, with its tiny little streets and hard barriers and oh-so-close harbor, because it’s thrilling to watch. Lots of racing, you think - “Yeah, if I had the time to practice enough, I could do that.” Not at Monaco; I think: “You people are crazy. MOAR!”
This year, an Internet friend was there at the Swimming Pool chicane; he had an extra ticket up for grabs and I had sudden frequent-flier-mile-emptying thoughts. I’ve been to Monaco, but never for the race. One of these years…
I’ve suspected something for a long time that I verified by measurement this weekend.
The distance by road from the Boathouse to the nearest decent bookstore is 16.0 miles. (I live at my bug-out location, LOL.) The Boatmobile gets 16.0 miles per gallon on a good day. It takes 30 minutes, give or take 3, to cover the distance.
With gas at $2.98 per gallon (lowest I could find), it costs me $5.96 to make the round trip to the bookstore, and that’s only if I don’t count the value of my time. Actually, that’s sort-of fair, because going to the bookstore is something I like to do. I am very often shopping for a particular book when I go to the store, and I always look around to see what is new / on sale. Sometimes I am just looking for one thing, and I can call first to see if they have it, but I find that this is not always productive (computer says they have it but they / I can’t find it is the most common problem).
OK, so it costs me $5.96 to drive there and back. Amazon Prime shipping is $79 per year. [If you get it on one of their many promotions, you can get it for $29 for the first year + $50 off something you were going to buy anyway (laundry detergent), but let's not consider the promo price.] Prime gets you “free” 2nd day air shipping and low cost ($2.99 or $3.99 for most books) next day air shipping.
By selecting next-day air shipping for $3.99 (I usually do the free 2nd day, but let’s take the worst case) for a book that I want, I save $1.97 for each book I buy by ordering it from Amazon instead of spending $5.96 for gas to get it locally. After roughly 40 books (assuming one trip each, which is not that realistic; I’d probably buy more than one book per trip to the store, but Prime shipping also gets you multiple items for the same price, so that’s a wash), I’ve paid for Prime with the gas savings. If I always used the no-extra-cost 2nd day air shipping, it only takes about 14 books to pay for Prime with the gas savings. I don’t know how many books you buy, but 14 doesn’t take me very long (we don’t have a good used book store here either). Also, this assumes that the price of the book is the same at Amazon as it is at big local book chain store, which is not true; Amazon is almost always cheaper, sometimes by a wide margin.
Of course, the trick is that I buy books from Amazon that I might not otherwise buy because they are too hard to find. Oh well, reading is fundamental.
AND… books are not all that Amazon sells. I signed up for Prime late last year. I immediately ordered an exercise bike (~100 pounds) and a lead-acid backup battery (~40 pounds) and paid for next day air shipping for both. It so happened that Amazon had the best prices for both items that I could find anywhere, and I paid about $6 total to get them to the Boathouse door the next day. Not too shabby, especially because I didn’t have to heft that bike into the Boatmobile, shuffle it across town and then unload the thing. Sadly, not everything is eligible for Prime shipping; Amazon has a lot of partner merchants and they don’t participate in the program.
It amazes me that Amazon can be so efficient. Just for grins, I have lately been wondering what is the heaviest item at Amazon that qualifies for Prime shipping. Their big safes are all sold by partners. I don’t guess they sell .45-70 bullets by the pallet?
It kinda bugs me that the mom of Spc. Casey Sheehan stole a lot of the news on Memorial Day, but at least the news was positive.
I don’t know how people in other parts of the US celebrate Memorial Day, but around where the Boater lives, the little American flags are just EVERYWHERE. I’d like to think that even a lot of the moonbats could hush for a minute and just say “thanks.”
Anyone else remember Phil Engeldrum’s Handgun Tests magazines from the early 1980’s? I certainly do, and, ahem, someone else apparently does as well.
Mrs. Boater and the Junior Boaters are currently in the theater seeing “Are We Done Yet?,” the new Ice Cube movie. Some movie reviewers go on and on and on. Mrs. Boater sent me the following text message:
“Movie sux”
TXT SPK FTW!
Ebert / Roeper actually said “It’s Beyond Awful.”
Oh, yes I am going to wonder publicly whether it is a good idea to select a gun for hiking in (black) bear country with a specific eye toward being able to “stop” bears. Other than “.45 v. 9mm” or “AR or AK,” the “bear gun” topic has to be one of the most beaten to death ever.
I used to have a 3″ “Backpacker” model 629 S&W. It was unported but wasn’t THAT bad to shoot; the muzzle blast was actually more disconcerting than the recoil. I bought it for, you guessed it, backpacking / hiking in bear country. I carried it a couple of times, but an all-steel 629 is a heavy piece. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Well, what kind of holster did you use?” My answer is: “Not a very good one.” Except for a recently purchased Blackhawk SERPA, all my other holsters are Milt Sparks. I didn’t get a Sparks for the 629; I used some sort of “they had it at the not-so-good chain gun store so I got that one” brand. Looking back on it, I don’t suppose I gave the 629 a fair shake before I sold it because I never bought it a decent home. A 29 / 629 is a very nice piece, especially pre-keyhole, and a Mountain Gun makes the most sense to me.
Now, Smith (yeah, some other people make revolvers too, so I’ve heard, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually SEEN one) makes a scandium .44, the 329, but I’ve got a scandium 340PD and it just doesn’t feel right to me like the steel or aluminum guns do. Even as a carry-a-lot / shoot-a-little package, I don’t feel that comfortable with it, so I’m not eager to drink any more scandium Kool-Aid. I’m guessing the resale value on scandium .44’s with two shots fired is not that great, given the glut on the market.
Smith also makes the mighty X-frame in various lengths. Having seen what it can do to meat-based targets, I have a lot of respect for the .500 cartridge. I have somehow not gotten to shoot a .460 yet, and I think I’d be more interested in that one for the (fun) long-range potential, so it might get more use than a gun that would mostly just get used when camping. However, I don’t see any X-frame being happy to come hiking with me in anything but a shoulder holster; it’s a lot more bulky and heavy than a steel 29 / 629, much less the wrist-punishing scandium version. Shoulder holsters are hard to conceal (nearly impossible in the summer) and that plus the size of the X would invite way too much “Hey, whutkindagunizzat?” scrutiny for my taste. (Of course, the concealment problem also rules out the obvious “870 with slugs” solution as well.)
There are services for photographers that rent special lenses for special occasions; there needs to be something similar for guns. I’d like to rent a scandium .44 for a week and see if I can tolerate it. Or… I could just go hiking with slower, tastier people.
A&E TV has a huge box set of the entire Monty Python series on sale this week for $34.98.
I bought them years ago when they were released individually; they were probably $34.98 for 2 DVD’s then.
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