Guns Guns Guns

This last weekend a dream of mine was finally realized.

I got a handgun.

It's a Taurus PT1911, blued. The finish actually looks like some kind of parkerizing, not traditional blueing. It wasn't super expensive, and from my extensive research the PT1911 is a good middle-of-the-run gun. It has a bunch of features that are usually found in custom 1911s, nut the ones that were of interest to me were the Commander hammer, the beavertail safety, and the Novak sights.

I've had the opportunity to put 50 rounds through it (just plinking) and it seems to shoot fine. I've heard it takes a few rounds to "break in" the gun, so I'm not shooting for accuracy yet, and I'm just shooting the cheap Blazer ammo I got at Sportsman's.

Why did I get it? A few reasons:

1. I like to shoot. I have a Remington 870 and a Marlin model 60 that I like to shoot. I hope to get a deer gun and do some big game hunting next year. And a 1911 is fun to shoot, even if the ammo is a little pricey.

2. Defense. I plan on getting my CCW and carrying fairly often.

3. Excercising a right. It's in the Constitution, look it up. A right not excercised is one that is easily taken away.

Next stop: a Hunter's Ed class!

Excel as a moral compass...

This afternoon a friend of mine (who is a Computer Engineer) and I were talking about walking away from an underwater mortgage. The discussion included the implications of bankruptcy, credit ratings, how companies look at assets and make similar decisions, and finally the morality of making such a decision. He was specifically going to try to convince a relative that it would be in their best interest to walk away from their mortgage.


Some paraphrasing:
Him: "Banks just look at it like a spreadsheet."
Me: "But I made a commitment to fulfill an obligation, regardless of how they look at it."
Him: "I'm going to make a spreadsheet to show them that it's better to walk away."
... Some moments of silence ...
Him: "I just saved my Excel document... it said I had a minor loss of fidelity."


I thought that was pretty dang funny. Of course, Excel was referring to compatability differences between the Office 2003 and Office 2007 versions of files, but I like to think it was trying to tell us all something more profound.