2.ooohhh

Excellent, fair price, quality parts, and shipped fast. (It showed up before my LPK, Barrel, Gas block/tube, and sights all ordered on the same day from other venders) Only companies I have had similar service from during this particular build (During the holiday season no less) have been D&T, Bravo Company, and Amazon.   PSA gets slightly less than honorable mention b/c of the glacial speed shipping, though prices go a long way to make up for it if you can wait in most cases.

Yep, I swiped it from his build thread after hearing that they(MAS defense) had better than average customer service. My pistol has progressed a little bit since that last shot as It now has a barrel, LPK, and free float rail- (sights finally came in as well but they went on after this pic)

My nearly worn out boots say in the truck since one day when I was "just going to the lake so sandals should be fine". . . and well you can probably guess the rest. As for the HAM thing my wife thought I was nuts until straight line winds hit bad up by her folks' place and she tried for four hours to call and see if they were ok to no avail, but inside 30 mins on the radio I had a local HAM down the road kind enough to go check on them for us on his four wheeler. turns out they weren't home when the winds hit but the HAM assessed the property pretty quick and gave me a head's up. I could have walked on water and the FIL would have been less amazed then when I showed up that same night in the truck with two extra guys, 5 chainsaws, two 5 gallon cans of gas, a half dozen coleman lanterns, and cooler full of ice and provisions to cook for them and the volunteers. By the time he woke up in the morning the driveway that the night before had 7 trees down across it was clear. :cool:

Couple things I keep that don't see on your list are a pair of hiking boots, decent hiking socks, and a cheap HAM radio (if your so inclined). I also have a hefty first aid/trauma kit, but I keep one of those in EVERY vehicle not just the truck.

    I know of a few patients(myself often included) that wouldn't need some of the meds if we were suddenly forced to forage, hunt, and gather. Between the exercise, and the sudden lack of fast food I have an odd feeling that my slightly elevated blood pressure might very quickly correct just from the forced lifestyle changes.  :surrender:

  I use Posted works well, though the more who help with the local databases the better it gets.     Posted for iOS   Posted! for android

Woke up to 8 degrees outside this morning, and a fire that needed more wood to help keep the cold out.

Amazon isn't charging tax on orders from market sellers outside TN so all my amazon purchases in the last 3 days have still been tax free, most just ship slower. It just takes an extra click to peruse the "more buying choices" section to determine whether saving the tax or having the faster amazon fulfillment is worth the difference.

The "Median" is the number in the middle of a range of values. i.e. in {1,3,5,7,9} the Median is 5 because it is in the middle of the set. In a range of values with an even number of values there is no technical median so one must be calculated. This is done my attaining the mean(average) of the two middle most numbers in the series and is often refereed to as an "Average Median" i.e. in the set {1,3,5,7,9,11} the "Average Median" is 6 and is refereed to as such since it is the mathematical center of the set of numbers but not a member of the set itself.     Since there were 110 active shooter events studied, there may have in fact not been an actual event in the study with a 3 min. response time so they are letting you know it was calculated from the two center most response times in the set.

Depends, if there is an unposted business near by offering similar services I give them first shot at my business. I.E. You will always find me shopping at the Green Hills mall(if for some odd reason I need a mall) rather than in Cool Springs Galleria since they are equal distances from my home and for the most part offer similar stores. Same with Sams Club vs Costco.   If it's a restaurant such as Loveless(My wife loves the preserves and biscuits) I'll disarm to keep the family happy or occasionally suggest(in advance if possible) a similar alternative. I.E. Puckett's.   If I need the services and nowhere offers comparable services I'll leave the gun at home/in my car. I.E. the Post Office.   I do not carry past postings on purpose, if I'm beyond the sign and armed you can assume I unknowingly used an alternate unposted entrance or the signage was not clearly visible.(I look pretty hard in most cases)

I made great money in the market this year, but the star has been some bitcoins that I bought on a whim to play a game of poker at defcon a few years back. They were around a penny a piece when I got them and I quit counting percentage gain when it got to 5 figures b/c it seemed silly. I'd love to be able to claim that I'm a genius investor who saw the potential and bought in heavily when the currency was in it's infancy but the reality is that I was just a drunk geek at a con who wanted to play some poker with friends, which turned out(through some strange fate) to be a good decision financially.

I didn't get any pictures during the stargazing b/c I didn't want to bother the others with the flash. Here's the group of us that hiked the ridge this year at the summit right before midnight. Hope everyone else had a safe and fun evening.

Yep, and Radnor is "closed" after dark. It's a special New Year's Eve event, reservations and such required.   http://radnorlake.org/new-years-eve-hike-at-dyer-observatory-3/

Not into the whole downtown scene so the wife and I are Stargazing at Dyer Observatory followed by a midnight hike at Radnor Lake. Simple but fun.

When I called to check on a Black Friday upper order last week the guy I spoke too said to keep an eye out for more crazy deals all throughout January. Apparently they are soon to be moving a large portion of their operation to a new location and are trying to sell as much as possible of the current inventory to keep from having to move it.

Ooma is just like the Obi I mentioned except it is locked to one VOIP provider. (Ooma) I switched several years back to Obi b/c it is open so there are far more options for compatible VOIP providers.   Anyone considering Ooma should also check out the Obi.

We use an Obi 110 to provide VOIP to our home telephones for free via a google voice acct.(though the free ride will end in March 2014 it's been a good ride for the last 3 years)   If you provide your routers/switches/VOIP hardware with backup power the internet generally doesn't go down during most power outages as the substations seem to have reasonably reliable backup power as well.   Our UPSs(battery backup, not the shipping co.) will run our IT infrastructure including phone/internet/alarm monitoring/cellular bridge for around 4 hours, it's not enough for massive week long power outages but it gives me plenty of time to decide if I really need to drag out the generator or not. The alarm has 4g wireless as backup should the cable internet go down.   So for us the plus is that pretty much everything hinges on the comcast internet service and we only have that one thing to worry about and can concentrate on keeping it as reliable as possible.(hence the battery backup) the con is also that EVERYTHING hinges on internet.

Just finished the last episode of The West Wing, Looking for a new series to start ATM.

I wear a shoulder holster often in the winter, though mine preferred shoulder holster is over 30 years old, well broken in, and was passed down to me from my grandfather. He often wore it off duty to carry his BUG(S&W j-frame) and I carry it essentially the exact same with the same j-frame. I recently acquired a galco jackass to use with my p229/p226s but it takes a heavier coat to cover than I have been able to wear around this mild winter.

I'm running 2 media servers serving HD media and VPN service to friends stuck overseas, and average around 2.5tb of throughput a month. That test is with all that traffic in the background. ;) Comcast consumer would likely shut down your service if you hit the levels of throughput I've begun using since moving my previously co-located servers back to the house. The other thing you have to remember is that "speedboost" skews throughput stats on speed test.net since they slow after the first few hundred MB of the download. That's all aside from the top notch service.

Well business service starts at $70 a month and you have to sign a contract, often for 3 years. (much like a cellular carrier's) I signed up for 16/3 x 3yrs but can change speed if I need to any time with a phone call. Speedwise it's not faster than my previous comcast technically but the speed I have is far more reliable. Also there is no bandwith cap. http://business.comcast.com/internet/business-internet/plans-pricing

Absolutely top notch, got a package from them missing a small component(spare set of clips I had requested) and one phone call and it was in route showed up within 48 hours. I've had amazon take longer to fix an issue with a shipment and they are typically my gold standard I hold all others selling over the internet to.

Very happy with the switch to Comcast Business here. Couldn't get Comcast consumer to roll a truck after a tree took out our service connection for two weeks. I also had had an utterly terrible experience with Comcast consumer when I moved across town. Finally fed up, I signed a Comcast business contract and got a new end to end service line inside 48 hours and tip top service ever since. No more bandwidth caps and service is almost always 2x faster than the advertised rate for my service level.   Business service may not be for everyone but if you depend on internet at home for work/business it's certainly worth looking into.

Don't be so quick to consider an older SUV a "cheaper vehicle" Before I got married my wife had a ford explorer and when it was wrecked I talked her into a mazda 3 as a replacement. I track mileage on all our vehicles and once showing her on paper that she was actually saving $3k a year in fuel she won't be going back.   http://www.fuelly.com/car/ford/fusion/2012/gas%20l4   http://www.fuelly.com/car/ford/explorer/gas%20v6   That said, I fully support your goal to be debt free just be sure to do ALL the math before considering a vehicle "cheaper". In the case of the mazda 3, the insurance, fuel, and tires are all cheaper than the explorer's were.

I don't have a hood for my 50 due to space constraints in my kit, but if you have room a hood is almost always a good investment. As to the fragility of the AF these camera lenses are precision optics so treat them with care and you should be fine.   I transport and store all my smaller lenses,flashes, remote triggers, and bodies in a pretty stout bag(Think Tank's Airport International 2.0) that I can lock up while I'm shooting. I've yet to have a breakage of equipment in transit and it has seen some pretty terrible TSA screeners.