Happiness

Is having a wife to buy guns for. This is her Mother's Day present.
Guaranteed to pay for itself in ten trips to the range. The Mrs., you
see, likes to shoot. Keeping her SP101 fed with .38 Special at $66 for
250 rounds, and one box of 250 per trip is rather pricey. 22LR is
blessedly, much cheaper, so even though the Model 317 cost upwards of
$600, the payback period will be over by the end of the summer. God how
I love her.

Happiness

Is having your tummy rubbed.

Rites of Spring

The only good thing about the twice weekly ritual mowing of the lawn is that it concludes with beer. If I've been particularly faithful to the lawn gods, the household Goddess might reward me with a cheeseburger. This is a good thing.

Tomorrow we practice fertilization.

Czech Please

Friday was darn near a perfect day for the ol' Captain. Work didn't quite suck. It was a gorgeous day, and my paycheck included my quarterly stipend for being a qualified Building Emergency Director. Most importantly, and closely related, Sportsman's Warehouse called with the news my new pistol had arrived.

I've been wanting a CZ P-01 for months. They fit my hand like gloves, have a great reputation for reliability, and are reasonably priced. For those who might not know, this is a compact DA/SA design with a decocker based on the legendary CZ-75. At 14+1 rounds of 9mm Luger, it's a potent platform.

Today was my first trip to the range with my new baby. I put 150 rounds through it with zero problems other than running out of ammunition. :-) The DA trigger is smooth and very controllable. SA is light and crisper than my XD. Being a nine, recoil is a non-issue, even with +P loads.

I don't admit to being a great shot, and my first group was pretty ragged. Once I tightened up my grip and started really concentrating on my front sight, things improved dramatically. My last several magazines of rapid fire went into fist sized groups offhand at ten yards. All in all, I'm a very happy camper.

Cool Phone

A Samsung Blackjack II came home with me yesterday. This thing is awesome, although it does have a few shortcomings compared to my old Cingular 2125.

On the awesome side of things is a full QWERTY keyboard. It beats the heck out of predictive text on a numeric keypad. I also really like the scrollwheel/joystick. It makes navigation painless. My favorite feature though, is the built in GPS. AT&T would have happily sold me a ten buck a month turn by turn navigation package to use it. I'm a cheapskate though, and would much rather fire up the free Google Maps application and let it compute directions for me. I ran a little test this morning while I was out in the field at work. I opened Maps and set it to the satellite view. Zooming in once it was tracking more than the four birds it needs for a position, I could see that the plotted position was within a couple feet of where I was standing. Sweet!

The annoyances are few. I can't tag individual contacts with ringtones, and it won't recognize my custom mp3 ringtones. At least I haven't figured out how yet. I'm also having some synchronization issues. I saw this with the old phone too whenever I tried to synch Favorites. It gets terribly slow, and as soon as I get another good synch, I'll uncheck that option. That's always sped things up again for me. Keep your fingers crossed.

Change's afoot

I know, I've been neglecting the blog lately. Part of that is from the lack of a decent computer at home, and part of it is just the annual winter blahs. More of the latter than the former, I'm afraid. It was a terrible winter at work. Don't ask, just take my word for it. Anyway it's catch up time. All three of the kids have had big news lately.

Our youngest will be getting married this coming October to a great guy from Kirkland. He actually had the cojones to ask for my permission to marry her. I almost told him no just to see his reaction, but couldn't bear doing it to him. They obviously care for each other, and that's enough for this dad.

Number two is also getting hitched, but not until next May. He's found himself a real sweetheart of a girl who's been part of the family for several years now. Both of them have good jobs now, and are ready to settle down. We're very happy for them.

Finally, numero uno will be getting out of the Army this fall in time for the wedding. This is good news. We were thinking that he would find himself in Iraq this summer and not being able to return. His contract will be up however, and the Army gave him the option of not deploying. He chose to come home. Now we just need to make sure he finds a job or gets into school.

There's more to talk about later, but no time now.