Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Half off at Walmart

So...

The local Walmart has been clearing it's inventory of display electronics.  The electronics that are out there for the public to look at and touch?  Half off!

We wandered in on Sunday to look at shoes for Adorable Preciousness.  We picked up a Blu-ray player.  All they had left were some huge TV's and computer monitors.  Nice, but we don't need or want them.

I went by Walmart on Monday and they had their display out again, this time with another selection of TV's.  The guy stated that they found a whole pallet in the back with TV's on it.

Well, we picked up a 32" Vizio VO320E.  However, it did not come with a stand.  I know that I can buy a wall mount for it, but I've been looking for a replacement stand due to how we want to use the TV.

And they are all out of stock.  Oh well.


Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Getting sucked back into gaming.

OK, maybe the title of this post is not all that accurate.  I should not say that I'm getting "sucked" back in.  I must admit that I'm walking back in to online gaming with both eyes open.

A friend sent me a "Scroll of Resurrection" for World of Warcraft.  It allows you 7 free days of play plus you can transfer to a different realm plus you can level one alt to level 80.  I took advantage of it just to see what the game was still like.

The game still sucks.  My alt was one of three in Stormwind when I logged on.  I will admit that logging on May 15, the same day as the release of Diablo III, may have had something to do with the low realm population.  Or not.  I found that my old raiding guild had been deleted.  Oddly enough, my leveling guild that had "died" back in BC was still limping along with a handful of members.

While I was shopping with Adorable Preciousness, I swung by Best Buy and picked up a copy of Diablo III.  I still have not installed it.  I've been rather busy all day and I'm way behind on chores.  I never got around to upgrading my PC from XP to Windows 7.  I've had a copy of Windows 7 since December with the intention of buying some new hard drives to do a RAID set up but the money has not been there.  I've finally decided to just pop in a blank hard drive  yet I've had no time to actually do it.

Which reminds me, I need to pick up something in order to save my iTunes music.  Transferring iTunes is a pain in the tuckas.


Friday, May 4, 2012

Carrying Concealed with an empty chamber.

If you have been reading any gun boards or gun blogs for any amount of time, you will find an argument about the merits of an empty chamber or keeping a round in the chamber of a firearm that you carry.  I was recently on Sharp as a Marble and saw this.
Sharp as a Marble

For those of you not familiar, here is a quick rundown.  The argument for keeping the chamber empty is the safety issue.  If there is no round in the chamber, then you can not fire the handgun by accident.  The argument for keeping the chamber loaded is for self defense.  If the firearm is hot, then you can protect yourself quicker.

I can see the pro's and con's for each argument.  But, there are better arguments elsewhere online so I shall merely tell you what I did.

My first firearm was a Glock 17.  I had some basic training with firearms, but I was no where near an expert.  I bought my pistol and I quickly got a concealed weapons permit.

See, the Glock 17 has no external safety.  It has a very nice internal safety meaning you can bang around the pistol all day and night and it will not go off.  The safety release is on the trigger meaning you have to put your finger on the trigger in order to release the safety.  Does that make sense?

So...  as a new concealed carrier, I was a little nervous about carrying a loaded firearm with no external safety.  I did not fully trust my pistol at the time.  I just trusted that if I needed my pistol that I would be able to draw and rack the slide fast enough.

All of this changed when I purchased my second firearm.  It was a Smith & Wesson 642 revolver.  I carried it a few times and then it hit me.  Revolver = No External Safeties.  Glock is also = No External Safeties.

Wait a minute!

So, I only carried with an empty chamber for a few months before I became comfortable enough to carry hot.  But, as a new shooter I was more comfortable carrying with an empty chamber.  And despite all the arguments for and against, the biggest argument for carrying with an empty chamber was that it became a stepping stone to carrying concealed properly.  Had I been forced to carry hot out from the start, I probably would have declined and never gotten into firearms properly.