- Play some Modern Warfare 2.
- Hit the gym.
- Clean my guns from last nights range session.
- Friends 40th Birthday Party.
Speaking for cleaning guns. Maybe its just because I am used to my black XD-9 or maybe its just the tons more powder in a .45, but it seems like my 1911 gets a lot dirtier. Break out the CLP!
Friday is my normal range day, so no news there. However today I am taking a bunch of n00bs!
Its my brother’s birthday and he wanted to hit the range. Normally hitting the range does not require a special occasion but his fiance is on the anti-gun side of things. So his birthday, his choice. I am looking forward to getting her in the range and replacing anti-gun resistance with the joy of shooting.
Guest List:
Mom: Having grown up with guns, this will only be her second trip to the range in 25 years (three months ago was her first (and she did great)).
Wife: I expect her to be shooting better than me any day now.
Brother: He has maybe been to a range twice, once a long time ago and once last summer to shoot my 10/22. So he’s still a n00b.
Brother’s Fiance: I have yet to see her even handle (or say anything positive about) a gun. Should be interesting.
I have done this a few times so I have developed the n00b education plan. I figure in three visits to a safe, clean and friendly range you can have a shooter ready to uptake some training.
Extreme Tolerance’s N00b Education Plan:
Visit 1: This is a gun, be safe, they make loud noises.
Visit 2: While being safe, keep your eyes open when you pull the trigger.
Visit 3: Safety ingrained, loud noises no big deal, time to work on trigger pull and sight alignment/picture.
My Brother’s Fiance kicks ass like all the other women in our family so I predict a proficient shooter in no time.
Update: Ya, I could not get her in the range. Everyone else has a great time. My brother like all men packing a pair, loved the Kimber 1911.
This tip via Lifehacker who stole it from this guy.
A “weapons” is defined as a rifle, shotgun, pistol, airgun, and STARTER PISTOL. Yes, starter pistols – those little guns that fire blanks at track and swim meets – are considered weapons…and do NOT have to be registered in any state in the United States.
I have a starter pistol for all my cases. All I have to do upon check-in is tell the airline ticket agent that I have a weapon to declare…I’m given a little card to sign, the card is put in the case, the case is given to a TSA official who takes my key and locks the case, and gives my key back to me.
That’s the procedure. The case is extra-tracked…TSA does not want to lose a weapons case. This reduces the chance of the case being lost to virtually zero.
It’s a great way to travel with camera gear…I’ve been doing this since Dec 2001 and have had no problems whatsoever.
Well I usually don’t travel with any expensive equipment so I don’t think I will be trying this. But having my luggage lost one or twice is is appealing although I hate the thought of any added paperwork.
One of these days I am going to post a short tutorial on how to test your wifi network’s security. In the mean time here is a quick tip: if you are using WEP (64 or 128) or plain old WPA to secure your network, you are totally vulnerable.
This brings me to the reason I am posting. Fiberevolution posted a link to a product that claims to break into wifi networks automatically. I found this unlikely, and when I checked out the product it says you need to use BackTrack (a Linux distro focused on Penetration testing). Using BackTrack is NOT easy, especially if you have no Linux experience. Furthermore the product itself looks like a Alpha wifi adapter.
Moral of the story: I encourage all of you to learn more about network security. However there is no quick, do it for me, answer. Be prepared for hours of frustration Fun!
Last Friday I was reading The Firearm Blog, as I do everyday, and I noticed a holster I had not seen before in a posted trailer. I have included it below. Its the holster the bearded trainer is wearing in several shots.
Anyway, I commented wanting to know if anyone knew what it was. Then I did a whole bunch of searching trying to figure it out myself. Joseph, another reader, commented that is was a Raven Concealment Holster.
I know it seems like a mundane interaction that happen everyday on the net, but its still really cool. Had it not been 1) for the blog and 2) for the commenter that know what I was talking about, I would have never known about these holsters.
The Phantom looks like a great holster for my XD. Perfect for some of the training I will be undertaking and perfect for OWB CCW as well as various backpacking/outdoorsy applications. Hopefully I will be able to get my hands on one soon and write a review. Should be interesting to see how they compare to my Comp-Tac M-TACs.
While I was reading Google probing possible inside help on attack by Reuters on Yahoo news, this struck me.
Google, the world’s most popular search engine, said last week it may pull out of the world’s biggest Internet market by users after reporting it had been hit by a “sophisticated” cyber-attack on its network that resulted in theft of its intellectual property.
Thats all they said about what Google said. Not ‘ Google stops censoring Chinese search results after a cyber attack, which may result in Google pulling out…’ Seems like Reuters might be worried how this story would play in China if they had included what Google really said.
Google is giving China the finger. ‘Attack us and we will show your population the truth. [Bitches]‘
Official Google Blog: A new approach to China.
Implications:
This is a nation on company event. China attacked a company and now that company is taking retaliatory action. A nation attacking a company is nothing really new, but in this case the company (Google) has the capacity to do something about it. Depending on how this plays out Google could be doing something that a) no other company has had the balls to do and b) something the US Gov could only dream about doing.
Fallout:
Obviously, China could block Google. Then we would be in the same situation with Iran and Twitter (start your proxies!). China could also do what they did during the Weger problems and shutdown all of the internet. In one case they are playing whack a mole and in another they will be stunting their economy. Will China stop its cyber attacks? My guess, probably not. Will they block Google? Publicly maybe not, but I bet we will get reports that its Google.cn has been blocked.
The third option is for China to do nothing. Why this could work takes a little knowledge about how search engines work. But simply if you search for something in Chinese, Google.cn will reply with what it has in Chinese. So if China already has all the Chinese writers afraid to write about something then there will be no content to feed the search engine. Similarly the searcher needs to know what to search for. Hence the reason something like twitter has the potential to cause much more immediate and gaping PR disasters. The Google’s lack of censorship China could quietly deal with for years barring word spreading rapidly though China that this information was available (something that is not likely to happen as China controls its media).
Get Your Website Banned in [Country Here] and Piss Off Your Host:
If China plays whack a mole, you might be able to help. If you have a hosting account with PHP you can create a proxy. Just download PHProxy and drop the files in a directory of your choosing. Instant Proxy. Of course if you have a shell you could open up SSH tunneling which would be a lot more secure for the people you are trying to help.
Danger for the Searcher
If you are in China you need to think twice about bouncing over to Google.cn and typing in whatever. That traffic is not encrypted and you would not be safe from a big brother watching for such a traffic pattern. SSH tunneling could provide a degree of privacy. China could use this as a Honey Pot opportunity to identify dissidents.
Searching Google.cn
I wanted to know if anything about tiananmen square was coming up in auto complete. Right now it looks like you need to speak English. The simplified Chinese that I tested was not coming up with anything. This may just be that no one speaking Chinese is looking for that stuff yet or writing about it.
Got my order from Brownells. Let the lubricant testing begin.
