We went out with a friend last night before he leaves for the cold northern lands. He had moved away, but was able to keep coming back for football games. This time, he will be far enough away that visiting is probably going to be 1-2 times a year, if that.
I've known him for about 23% of my life. Ha! a percentage that can only keep going up.
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I finished this year's superbowl pool sheet since we now know who will be in it.
I haven't setup my web server just yet, so I am not going to have a link to the open office file if you want to edit it (or a pdf if you want to print it). Just leave a comment and I can get that to you.
update:
I am going to setup my web server, I just wanted to get this post out before I forgot to set it up....
General Petraeus came to campus and gave a talk last week.
It was pretty interesting, he didn't give a presentation, but took questions from the audience. He had some staff that would queue up the right set of slides to match what he was saying. It was pretty neat with a free form talk.
Nothing unknown was said so nothing to report there.
Going in, we were bugged by some american communist party people("Come join the reds") and some other damn hippies. They were giving us sheets of paper that had "hard" questions for him to answer about the wars. The people at my college are fairly well educated, so they basically ignored the 60 year olds. Everyone except this girl that was obviously from a former soviet state, who was like "Are these the list of questions that we can pick a question to ask from?".
I ended up crumpling the paper and giving it back to the protesters and asking if they recycled. They begrudgingly said yes.
Some protesters stood up during the talk, took off jackets to expose something on the backs of their shirts which they faced toward Petraeus. He either didn't see or ignored them. It was about 6 50-60 year olds and the crowd was not very happy, as all they wanted to do was see him talking. They were quietly escorted out for (I assume) blocking the view of people and blocking the aisle.
General Petraeus is a stand up guy, he seems to try and understand all issues from both sides.
Sorry to post all of these range reports at the same time...
This is a three shot string at 100 yards of .243 Winchester out of a Remington 700 with a short stock (for me, it belonged to someone shorter than me). The drop is 1.7 inches between the centers of the top and bottom shot. We used a bench rest, but heart/muscle twitches (all before you even pull the trigger) were probably moving it about .25-.5 MOA (more for the breathing ~2 MOA?). The horizontal spread is .22 inches, which I find reasonable at 100 yards ;-). So, about the vertical spread, are we going to call it velocity differences in the rounds? (I did some simple calcs, probably not) Barrel harmonics? My own tendency to have a 7x spread between horizontal and vertical? Maybe the barrel heating up? (it was about 34 degrees?)
I wanted to see my performance on the Marlin 795 standing at 25 yards, so I did an 11 shot string. Spread was 1.2 inches horizontally and 3.25 vertically. This was with the Thunderbolt ammo, which I previously did a .85 inch spread horizontally while sitting at 25 yards. My vertical performance was ~3x my horizontal performance. I am going to try and think about that when I shoot to see if I can correct it as it happened with two different guns and two different ammos that day that I was much worse in the vertical direction, whether standing or using a bench rest.
We also shot at balloons, at the end I shot a 5 shot string of .22 lr at 4 balloons at 100yards (maybe 6-8 inches wide?), I hit the first two with the first two shots then messed up the rest. I hadn't run any .22 lr ballistics, so I didn't know what the drop was going to be, I estimated I was holding over 3-4 inches, upon calculating it using a 50 yard zero it should have hit -6.5 inches, which would have hit the balloon.
This is a late range report of a long outing during December.
Many photos will follow, with some discussion/description on most. I think that I need to correct my trigger pull as I seem to have a tendency to pull to the slightly low left on many firearms.
1911 (.45 acp) at about 9 yards. I was aiming at the bullseye. Center of the group is to the left. Spacing of the rings is 1 inch with the center circle having a diameter of .75 inches. Not really the best group, can we call the extreme left and right flyers? I need to fix the front sight on my 1911, I bought some JB weld today to get it to stay.
This one shows a test where we wanted to see if the .38 special rounds and the .357 rounds shot to different places from the same gun. About 9 yards again, shooting the .38 special at the center of the target and the .357 at the lower x. I think that I shot 6 of each type of round, so one of the .357 shots is missing. I dunno what happened on that .357 flyer that was with the .38 special group. Andy also shot at about the 4:30 position on the outer ring with the .25 acp FIE Titan. I think he shot 5 rounds, he complained about the trigger. I don't think it was the gun's fault as you will see below.
This one shows Andy testing the .357 impact point vs a .45 acp (different pistols). The aimpoint for that test was the 3:00 position on the outer ring. The .357 did indeed shoot high and to the left. This target also has me shooting the Titan, 5 shots. From 9 yards.
The filename says it all, "mosin_sad.jpg". 5 shots sitting in a field position at 100 yards. I called 2 really bad flyers and 2 flyers with one good shot. Thats exactly what happened. Again, it was later in the day, but I have to stop making excuses.
This is 20 shots from the AR at 25 yards using the red dot. I shot 5 shots trying to get them into the center of the black squares. At that range, I have to hold high about 2 inches, so the red dot was held two inches high from the center of the black squares. Each black square is 2 inches square. I did them clockwise from the top left square. Fairly brisk pace, maybe 4-7 seconds for each string.
I bought a Marlin 795 (.22 lr rifle) on black friday (sales + rebate = happy). I bought two types of ammo, Winchester target hollow point and Remmington Thunderbolt (known for its cheapness, dirtiness, and actually in the manual as an ammo not to use). I wanted to see how they shot, so I shot ten shot groups (iron sights) at 1 inch black squares (with .8 inch white circles). I don't think you can comment on one being a tighter group than the other. Both shot to the left a slight bit (I think its me) but the Winchester shot about 0.5 inches low I would estimate. For a 50 yard zero for .22 lr like I had, at 25 yards it should have been .44 inches high. I really don't know where it is zeroed, I think I am going to zero it at the 50 yard zero, that way, from 0-50 yards it stays between -.4 to .5 inches. At 100 yards it would be -6.5 inches low. (heh, center of group, and in an ideal world)
Another 10 shot string of the Winchester Target hollow point. 2 inch group, so not really the best at 25 yards.
They need to figure out a way to tell people what procedures cost. The important costs are: 1) Cost out of my pocket 2) Cost to the insurance company.
My insurance company didn't even know what they covered me for, without a 1 hour phone call which involved me correcting them (asking them to check again) for a coverage on a certain procedure.
You seemed to be encouraged to get the procedure/medicine/whatever, and then figure out if you are covered for it later. That seems to be backwards to me, for many types of healthcare that are voluntary.
Everyone seems to be in a battle and try and push things off to other people. I am stuck wondering who I am paying and what exactly for. There are 3 conflicts, you vs the doctor, the doctor vs the insurance, you vs the insurance. You vs the doctor is them not wanting to have responsibility if they screw up. Doctor vs insurance is the insurance not wanting to pay the doctor and the doctor wanting as much as possible. You vs insurance is basically the insurance not wanting to pay for anything and you wanting to get services for your money.
Considering how much I am paying/will be paying (costs are on the up and up), this stuff needs to be figured out. It should be easy for the consumer and anything hard/complicated should be pushed to the doctors or the insurance. Everyone seems to have forgotten that the consumer is the customer, they are the one that supplies the money that greases all of the wheels. I suppose they have us in a lock though, as sometimes its life or death on healthcare, so you jump through the hoops because you value your survival.
Maybe I should invent a new profession, the health care planner. Sort of like the financial planner is to banking. Or a tax preparer is to taxes. You pay this person and all of your problems about that part of your life are simplified. They know how to work the system. They have the time to play with it. The thing is, I assumed that the insurance company would serve that function, working together with the doctors.
[stray idea]
What if we had a smart card in our insurance card. We would stick it into the machine at the doctor's and select what procedures we want to have/will have. It hashes some stuff, and green lights come on if it is covered(it also shows what you have to pay, and what the total was), or red lights (if it is not covered, and shows the total out of pocket cost). Completely verified with some strong crypto, no issues with a person mishearing/being told wrong about coverage so liability is a non-issue. You could also use it at home with a usb reader or something. Maybe you just put in your unique id at the doctor's website and select the procedures.
I am whining alot about this, I am just surprised at how complicated something is that I assumed would be simple.
So, if you want to remove an imposter fakebook profile, you need to have a facebook profile to report it.
You can not use a friends profile to do so, as you have to send a link to the "real" facebook profile. I supplied a dummy one with a note explaining that their web form sucks.
I couldn't find a phone number for facebook either.
I think that this whole thing is absurd, especially the part that you have to be in the club to have a fake version of you removed from it.
