MacGyver

It's interesting, and maybe it's a direction we can go in this thread, but if you're in you're early forties like me, you and I inhabit a different world and economy than our parents and grandparents did. There's a bootstrapped version of my story that I could tell. It's relevant, but it's definitely not the whole story. There are a couple of points in there where if I'm being intellectually honest, it comes into focus, though. My mom went back to work when I graduated from elementary school. Her dream was to send my sister and I to a private high school, and she did. She took a job as a teaching assistant in a special education classroom. She had good benefits, but her salary was never that high. She was able to send both my sister and I to high school on that salary though. That wouldn't happen today - at least not in Nashville or Atlanta where I grew up. My parents wanted and were able to cover the difference between what scholarships covered and what the tuition actually was for both my sister and I to go to college. Looking back now, I see how much they did without to make that happen. Graduating without debt put me in a position to have a lot more flexibility early in my career. That's a lot more difficult today, too. For my middle-middle class family growing up, I see what a stretch that was, and my tuition then was literally 25% of what it would be today. They would not have been able to provide me with the same opportunity in 2017. There are things that definitely work to our favor in 2017. Memory, processing power and storage have all basically become commoditized. An Amazon Web Services account coupled with a Pluralsight account and a year's worth of nights and weekends can have just about anyone with an idea in a position to start a side business. This is the small business owner in me talking, but there are some inconsistencies in a market that's dominated by giant corporations. Figure it like this - anywhere there's an 800-pound gorilla, there are necessarily some really unhappy customers. Figure out how to serve that small segment better and you can feed yourself.

The data is pretty clear on this stuff. There are two consistent factors that are most present in cases where a family achieves financial stability in America today. They are: Someone in the family unit has gotten as much education as they could They've waited until they're married to have kids If you want a surefire formula - the data shows that these two metrics are about as close as you can get in America today. Even then, you're still playing some odds. The risks of health calamity are always present. Health problems can bankrupt a family. As to risk taking, you're still in a pretty decent position. You're young (still under 30?), no kids(I think), and you're married so you have two incomes and as a family unit you get 336 hours in a week instead of just 168. You're in a position where you can tolerate some risk and the consequences of missing some of those assumptions simply aren't as dire. I just got accepted to one of the major startup accelerators with my new company. I didn't think they'd accept a 42 year old single founder when my competition is a bunch of 22 year old Stanford graduates. I have a lot more experience than they do, but they're in a position to tolerate a lot more risk. The data shows that the odds are in their favor. Most startups will fail. That's a known fact, and it's accounted for in the market right now. Why do people keep investing - because the consequences of being wrong are simply lower when you're in your 20's, and some of those folks are likely to take that experience and turn it around into a new venture that succeeds. Happy to talk about it sometime if you like.

You've definitely got my sincerest admiration - though like me, I sincerely doubt you do much to seek that affirmation. Your service means - if I'm doing my math right since the first Gulf War - that you've seen more hardship - both overseas and at home while you've been deployed than most CEO's in a corner office will ever experience. Your story is just as relevant as theirs. One is valued more in society and by our political class, though. And, that's a shame.

Spoken by someone who knows something about the subject. Appreciated.

I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I'll stick to a few for right now - because truthfully at 2200CDT on a Wednesday evening I own and run a small business - and I'm still here, today. I haven't had a guaranteed payday on Friday in a long, long time. So, here I am. Both of our political parties have their hands in our pockets. This isn't a "conservative"/"liberal" thing. It's an American political thing. Find more than a handful of our 536 elected representatives in Washington that actually understand what it takes to actually create and sustain a job. You'll be hard pressed. And, I say that as a small business owner who knows the extraordinary effort it takes to go from zero to one employee. I am successful. Truthfully, I am rich. Maybe not by every metric, but certainly by most. I've been all over the world and I know what poverty looks like. I don't have to worry about much. Every time I open the refrigerator, it's like I've won the freaking lottery. There's good food in there, and I don't have to worry about whether or not it's going to make me sick, or whether there's still going to be some in there tomorrow. Success is a funny thing, though. I work hard. I work really hard. But, as it turns out, that's not the single biggest indicator of success. In America today, the single biggest indicator of success is the level at which you can tolerate risk. And, as it turns out, I can tolerate a fair bit. Some of that is the product of decisions I made earlier in my life, but a lot of that is also luck and privilege. You can discount it, but sitting where I sit today as the managing director of one company and the CEO of a new company, those last two factors are significant. What plays into those? A non-exhaustive list off top of my head: I come from a two-parent home I never once worried about my safety at home or whether or not I would have food to eat in the morning I went to good schools where teachers knew my name, cared if I did well, and by and large actually knew something about the subject they were teaching I graduated from high school I graduated from college with no debt - scholarships and the fact that my parents were able to fund the rest of my education I went to graduate school I started a little business with a couple of friends in the 90's that was in the right place at the right time We met some people who took a liking to us who happened to worth a whole lot of money - and they mentored us I waited until I was married to have kids My wife worked while I got my first company off the ground - and she had good benefits I'm white - discount that if you want - but I walked into a bank that I've never been into in my life today and the bank president walked me out when I left On the rare occasion that the police come into my neighborhood, they always address me as sir. I've always had reliable transportation - or lived in a place that had public transportation so good you didn't need it My family has not gotten any serious illness or disease My wife is able to parent with me so that I don't have to worry about childcare so I can go to work - it doesn't even cross my mind - if my schedule changes, it's not a huge deal. Can you take away one or more of those things and still be successful? Sure. But, you're going to have to work a lot harder at it than I do - and probably for a lot longer. The fact of the matter is that now, at 42, I can start a brand new company, and it's likely that it'll be successful. I'm good at what I do, but the only reason I'm starting it is because I have both an opportunity AND the ability at this point in my life to take advantage of it. As to a CEO having a huge compensation plan while stepping on the backs of employees, there are some giant problems in America today. Frankly, the economy is being looted by financiers. So many CEO's today aren't adding much value - they're just in a position to be able to extract as many assets of value from the companies they're heading as they can. See Sears, JC Penney, Radio Shack, Kmart, et al right now if you need examples. I cannot speak for everyone, but I can tell you how I see it. I'm pretty generous with my employees. I look at it in two ways. First, you can have a large piece of a small pie, or a smaller piece of a much larger pie. I try pretty hard to bring more people to the table and give equity away generously. In doing so, yes, I own a smaller percentage of the company. But, there are a lot of people who suddenly have an equity stake in it doing well. What do you think they're going to do with that? My experience shows that they work a lot harder to create value. And, having been through it a couple of times, instead of having 80% of something that's not worth that much, I have maybe 25% of something that's worth 10 times as much. In my experience, it works out better for everyone. I also look at it from a Biblical perspective - actually an ancient Jewish perspective. In the 23rd Psalm, there's the idea of the Lord filling a cup until it overflows. In the ancient Jewish tradition, there was no idea of individual blessing/salvation - it was all community based. So, when your cup overflows it's not wasted - instead it flows out into the community around you. And, everyone is better off because of it. Sure, I don't much care for having the government tell me what to do with my money. I would just assume they left me the heck alone. But, that is coming from a position of privilege. The truth of the matter is that while I'd love it if our churches, communities and civic organizations took care of our local communities - we suck at it. And as we embrace the politics of 'the other' over the gospel, it's getting worse. I can think back to the flood in 2010. We have a major church in Nashville that was built with the intention of being a disaster relief shelter. But, when the time came to put it to use, they didn't - because it would be disruptive to services, and liability, and insurance, and safety, and our kids, and whatever... Every last one of us depends on the government for way too much. And, that's unlikely to change anytime soon. I grumble and moan every time I write a big check to the government for taxes. But, as individuals we've become way too dependent. And it's not like our churches are going to step up. Western individualism has run completely amok in American christianity. So, it's a question that doesn't have a discrete answer that fits into a neat little partisan box. Do I "deserve" more because I work hard for it? Maybe? I probably deserve more than the Instagram starlets. But there are plenty of single moms that work every bit as hard as I do every day as vet techs or as medical assistants or teachers or at Target for that matter. There are women at the Target up the street that I know for a fact are there from open until close most days. I am in a position by luck, privilege and effort that allows me to tolerate a lot of risk - and that will more often than not lead to success. That's the easy part. It gets a lot harder from there.

I don't know that you can get into Sylvan Park for $250K anymore.

Look at it another way. Most kids won't pay any more attention to this than they would the potato battery. They'll be back to instagram and Snapchat by the end of class period, escaping school with a marginal education that they've put minimal work into. They'll be ill prepared to be anything but good cookie cutter consumers. But for a few it will spark their imagination in a way that cannot be unkindled. The problems that these kids go on to solve will change the world.

A reversal of a reversal. Seems y'all can give your cheeks a needed break. http://www.recoilweb.com/reason-prevails-atf-reverses-stance-on-sb-tactical-braces-127810.html Here's the letter: http://2ht1mik98ka4dogie28vqc4y.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Barnes_ATF_letter.pdf

The Phyton Minecraft mods are pretty cool. My oldest two have gotten a lot of mileage out of them.

Yeah, the benefit of the Kano was case, keyboard, wireless NIC, etc all being included with instructions they could follow. You can totally piece it together less expensively. I don't know if Kano makes their OS image available on Github or something, but their "introduction to the command line" was really instructive. She shouldn't need to solder anything. Everything pretty much just fits on the PI's My kids built a joystick plus two buttons early on and had a blast with a lot of the Atari classics. We're having a blast with Makeblock mBot Ranger right now. It's Arduino powered. They use the Scratch programming language to conduct their own Mars missions.

Any of the starter kits should work well. The one my kids have was a little more than piecing it together yourself, but they did the whole thing themselves: https://kano.me/ Make sure to check out adafruit, too. You'll be inspired for all kinds of fun projects: https://www.adafruit.com/

It taxis pretty. Wonder if it could fly... https://theaviationist.com/2017/04/15/new-photos-and-video-of-irans-homemade-f-313-qaher-stealth-jet-have-just-emerged-and-heres-a-first-analysis/

Grips still look great on that one. Nice!

That's super cool. I can remember a time in my life when that would have really helped out. Hope someone can use them.

it the last "for fluent communication" that's the giveaway. Who says that?

The Mulch Stop in Nolensville. They deliver pretty quickly, and have always been reasonable.

The TiRant is one of my favorite suppressors. It's a great can.

I've got one of Marty's barrels. Let me know if you need to borrow it.

How about keeping all of this junk to one thread?

I just like to reduce the risk of things blowing up on me when I shoot. I *might* always intend to shoot subs - but then a supersonic round sneaks in there - or there's a mixup in a range bag - or whatever. As a rule, if I can remove the chances of operator error from having disastrous consequences - in any system in my life, I will. I'm sure there are overbuilt cans that are over-bored and rated for anything you can fit through it. Like you said, a suppressor rated for 300 win mag is going to be awfully heavy hanging off the end of a pistol. It's also not going to be as quiet when it's bored for a 9mm round and you're running a smaller diameter .30 cal bullet through it. YMMV.

I'd be wary of this. This may hold true in some cases - but accidentally run a super through it and you'll blow it up.

I'm running a BakFlip Revolver X2 on my Tacoma. Love it.

This thread is full of great information!

It's not the newest tech on the block, but my AAC 762-SDN-6 has been an absolute workhorse. For hunting applications, you might consider a direct thread model - it'll cut down on your weight a bit.

You're going to be a lot happier with that PID than you would have been trying to monkey with a replacement thermostat.