I decided to celebrate the morning of this 4th of July by going out to Knob Creek and shooting my new-to-me M1 Garand. It had a clean bill of health from the gunsmith, and I was itching to put a couple of rounds down the barrel.

As usual, I got there before they opened, and picked out a good spot on the firing line. I put a target out at 100 yards, and put 2 clips of ammunition through it to zero the weapon.

The three shots in the center are my final rounds. I guess the zero is pretty good.

My groups weren’t as good as I would like, but these were the first rounds I’d put through the rifle. With practice, it’ll tighten up.

Here’s a pic of the new addition:

My impressions of the Garand is that it’s a heck of a lot of fun to shoot. It kicks more than an AR or SKS would, but not even close to the impact of a Mosin against my shoulder. It’s a heavy piece, and I can’t imagine walking with one from Normandy to the Elbe.

I would have burned up even more of my M2 Ball on it, but it’s in short supply, so I stopped after two clips. I’ll practice dry fire and stoppage drills with it at home and see if that helps with my groupings.

A lot of the systems I support have been in production, in one form or another, for over a decade. A couple for much longer than that. Occasionally, we run into some things that have been around since the Reagan administration that try to creep into new iterations of those applications.

The other day, one of the lead developers for one of our oldest applications called one of my coworkers and asked if he could have KERMIT put on his development Linux box.

We were all shocked when we heard about this request. I haven’t used KERMIT since Junior Bear was in diapers, and I haven’t had a system with KERMIT in almost 10 years.

We searched around, and there isn’t a supported KERMIT for our Linux distro. We did, however, find this:

I haven’t heard if this will be acceptable.

Well, our yearly family reunion with the Hoosier side of the family has come and gone. There was the usual crop of new babies. Imagine that, a Midwestern German Catholic family that has a steady stream of kids.

Girlie Bear had a good time running around with her cousins. Little Bear stayed home with his mom and Junior Bear is visiting his mom in California. Baby Bear had a blast being passed from aunt to aunt all weekend. We set up an inflatable pool for him and the other little ones and it as a big hit.

The weather was clear, sunny, hot, and muggy. We joked that it was convenient that the family reunion was held during the state Humidity Festival. I’m not complaining. It could have been storming all weekend long. The weather here has been very wet lately, and we were worried that it would be wet all weekend.

One note. To the group of four older couples that had the camping spots in the middle of our little mob all weekend. I’m very sorry that we messed up your quiet get together at the lake. The herd of children roaming through the area is actually a nice group of kids, and we tried as much as we could to keep the noise down after dark.

We’re leaving for the annual Hoosier Hoedown family reunion tomorrow. I probably won’t post over the weekend. I’ll let y’all know how it goes when we get back.

NBC is reporting that Michael Jackson has died.

One can only hope it was painful and slow. Hopefully when he gets to hell, Satan can find enough demons to reenact Jacksons actions with little boys for a few thousand years.

Roast slowly you pedarast freak.

Ok, I know she wasn’t the greatest actress in history. And she did go a bit off the deep end with drugs for a couple of decades. But her swimsuit poster is one of my most vivid memories from adolescence.

For all the mornings I woke up to see that smile and other attributes, I thank her.

On June 22, 1941, 68 years ago today, Adolf Hitler and his mob of sociopaths demonstrated why you should never believe your own PR and began the Nazi invasion of the USSR. Hitler believed after taking 2 countries without firing a shot and several more using innovative blitzkrieg tactics, his armies were invincible and he had “only to kick in the door” and the Soviet Union would crumble. He forgot that the thing that has protected Russia for millenia is how vast the country is and how harsh it is to invaders once the first snows fall.

By the time his little gambit was done, tens of millions of people would be dead, Germany would be partitioned for an entire generation, and Eastern Europe would take a body blow of oppression that still lingers.

I’ve been in Russia, and every little village has some sort of memorial to the civilian and military cost of the war. Germany is littered with mournful reminders of not only the German dead, but the innocent victims of German nationalism run amuck. France, Poland, Hungary, Austria, and all of the other countries in Europe have similar scars on their history and collective psyches.

For those of you who listen to podcasts, Dan Carlin over at Hardcore History is doing a multi-episode discussion of fighting at the Russian Front. Go, listen. He puts things into a very human perspective.

Went out to Knob Creek and got a couple of hours of range time before it got ungodly hot. One of my friends from work and his son joined me. He was trying out his new AR-15 and his son was tearing it up with a mini-14.

I pretty much just plinked with the mosin and practiced with the pistols. I’m getting better with the .45. My friend shoots a fun fun competition at Open Range and if I can get away I might check it out.

I like going to Knob Creek early in the morning. It doesn’t get crowded for the first couple of hours and you can shoot a while then relax and shoot the bull for a while. Since you pay for the whole day, you don’t worry about the cost of every minute.

I’m going to try to get out shooting a couple of times a month. I also need to do more dry fire and draw practice.

I was sort of invited to go to a rendezvous with some of the black powder crowd and I think I’ll check that out if the opportunity arises.

For some reason, blogger won’t add the text I added to the bottom of the previous post.

I found the graphic at Atomic Nerds.

Hat Tip to Atomic Nerds.

Gave me a much needed chuckle.