Tag: Me Myself I

Personal stuff

Excuses, Excuses

Health

Whenever I get these upper-respiratory infections (about every nine months or so, it seems), the physical ailments (hacking cough, wheezing, nasal clogging etc.) are bad, but what really screws me up is the physical and mental lassitude that occurs not only during the illness, but persists for days and days thereafter.

Hence the paucity and dare I say crappy quality of the posts over the past couple of weeks, for which I am truly sorry.

It’s not only that:  to give you another example, my half-dozen per-month range visits have dwindled, in the past couple of weeks, to zero.  I think I’m going to get a call from Texas Legends any day now, asking if I’m okay.

I don’t even have the energy to drive over to pick up Rx refills from the drugstore, even though the on-hand supplies are dwindling fast.

We had dinner at Doc Russia’s place last Sunday night — our first dinner together in ages.  Normally, our dinners last well into the night, involving much food, drink, conversation and general merrymaking.  This time, after barely a couple of hours, I had to call it quits, an indecently-short time after dinner.  Never had a drop to drink, either.

All of which is my way of saying that this website has sucked over the past couple of weeks, and I know it.

I’m slowly — far too slowly — starting to get better, proof of which is that I actually took out the range bag yesterday and loaded it up with ammo for some testing I’ve been meaning to do.  (In case you’re curious:  the difference in felt recoil between .357 Mag, .38 +P and regular .38 Special loads across a couple-three revolvers of different brand and barrel lengths.)

I don’t know if I’ll make it to the range today — I really have to get those meds refilled, and I’m not sure I have the energy for two trips.  Following my semi-annual visit to the eyedoc two days ago, I also need to get new lenses for my failing eyesight;  fuck knows when I’m going to get round to that, but I really need to be able to read things like street signs and such.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to unload all this shit on you;  but you, my Loyal Readers, deserve some explanations for the website suckage of the past couple of weeks:  and there they are.

I’ll be posting at intervals over the next few days as the energy provides, just not in a five-minute post-midnight tranche as usual.  Bear with me.

Ugh (2)

Health

Me:  O foul pestilence, desist I beseech thee with thine afflictions;  the sore throat, the hacking cough, the fuzzy head wracked with pain, the nose running its foul essence down the back of the throat.  Desist, I say!

Pestilence:  Nah.  Here, have some joint pain and muscle stiffness as well.

Maybe tomorrow.

BP News

Health

No, not the giant oil company.  This:

Blood pressure medication is very often taken in the morning because it is a way to remember, but this may miss the maximum risk-window of having a stroke or heart attack, says Professor Foster.

“Very significantly, there is a circadian driven rise in blood pressure as we approach morning, caused by the release of cortisol and adrenaline –- this increases heart rate, combined with an increase in clotting factors.

“These normally clump together to form blood clots following injury, but they also work against us by producing clots that block blood vessels,” he adds. “The combined effects of a sharp rise in blood pressure between 6am and noon, and peak blood ‘stickiness’ in the morning, corresponds to the greatest chance of having a stroke or heart attack.”

In fact, there’s a 50 per cent greater chance of a stroke between 6am and noon than the rest of the day.

“Some studies have shown that when blood pressure medication is taken before bedtime, rather than in the morning, it’s more effective at regulating blood pressure and reducing stroke and heart attack risk.  This is because such drugs have a long ‘half-life’, remaining at high concentrations for many hours in the body before they are broken down. So, counterintuitively, taking an antihypertensive before bed can reduce your risk of a stroke in the morning.”

An analysis of eight clinical trials, published in the journal Scientific Reports this year, found that the morning blood pressure surge was significantly reduced in patients taking medication before bedtime.

I should point out that some other Smart People disagree with these findings, but that’s the nature of the beast, innit?

I started taking all my meds at bedtime about three years ago, on the advice of my own doctor.  I don’t know if this helps — how could I? — but his explanation at the time seemed very plausible.  (I don’t remember it, but it had something to do with night-time metabolism and the absorption of medications.)  He also suggested that I take my multivitamin tablet — I take an Old Fart kind, like Centrum — in the morning, for reasons I also forget (sorry).

Anyway, there it is.  Make your own decisions according to your instincts and experience, as always.

Sufficiency

Guy Stuff, Lifestyle, Toys

I was watching this podcast, and one of the statements (made at about the 41-minute mark) resonated with me.  It was this:

“For me, cars and watches are a similar thing, because at a very early accessible price point, they both fulfill their brief.  So telling the time and getting from A to B, happens with an Apple watch and a Dacia Sandero.  If you’re concerned about the functionality of a car, anything after that is led by the heart.”  [And the ego.]

It’s been a constant struggle for me and I think, for many.

I know I’m always going on about luxury stuff, and I think almost every argument on this website has revolved around where your own limits are on the price : quality scale — because in almost every case, we’ve established the functionality of the thing early on.

Hence cars:  functionality is achieved with, say, a Honda Civic.  Then, if you want a little more speed to go with your functionality, you move on to the excellent Civic Si or even to the Civic R.  But you also have a desire for a little more luxury than a standard Honda’s offering, so you look at… an Acura Integra Model S?  (Same car as the Civic, more or less the same performance, but with a tad more luxury and a higher price point.)  But come on, you say, an Acura?  Why not (say) a Mercedes CLA 35 AMG at pretty much the same price point, but with Merc luxury (better than any Acura’s)?  (Here’s a comparison.)  And then on and on you go, until you start getting serious about all those things that make your parts tingle until you end up looking at stupid money for a product that is completely over the top by any standards (hello Ferrari or similar).  (And in SUVs, you start off with a Toyota RAV4 and end up with a Maybach 600.)

Then watches.  Functionality is simple:  Casio F91-W ($30).  Okay, you don’t want a digital watch, so a more manly Invicta Pro Diver ($60).  You all know where this is going:  up the scale with Timex, Tissot, Seiko, Grand Seiko, Longines, Omega… until you get to Rolex, Ulysse Nardin, Audemars Piguet and thence to the stratosphere where you can spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars… on a watch that is functionally little better than that Casio, Invicta or Timex.

With watches, I have my Tissot Heritage and I really don’t feel the need for any other.  Maybe if I had some budget I’d consider a Longines Master or even an Omega Railmaster (which makes me tingle, bigly) but beyond that it’s more ego than I care to indulge myself.  Unless I went all eclectic on y’all.  As with cars with manual transmissions, my timepiece choices are somewhat narrowed by my insistence on manually-wound actions, but there ya go.

Of course, there are guns.  Confining ourselves to double-barrel over/under shotguns, we start off with Gforce (never heard of them) for under $400, and while this may be a piece of junk — not judging, just acknowledging that to produce this kind of gun at that particular price point, compromises must be made — there’s no doubt that it’s at least a Timex shotgun, so to speak.  Then I guess you’d go on to the Turkish-made CZ Drake, then up the food chain to Browning Cynergy,  Beretta Silver Pigeon, Rizzini BR110… and we all know where this ends, don’t we?

I have to confess that my mood swings wildly when it comes to this stuff.  On the one hand, I’m perfectly comfortable driving my 150,000-mile Tiguan.  But if I had to get a new car and had any kind of budget, given my circumstances, I’d probably consider that Honda Si (decent reliability, performance and above all, manual transmission).  After that, I’d need more budget, maybe a great deal more budget to get a car I’d really like to drive for pretty much the rest of my life.  While I’m not really brand-conscious (in terms of impressing others), I’d rather drive something that has some kind of heritage — but forget the boutique stuff like Ferrari, no matter how much budget I have.  And whatever, it has to have a stick shift.

I’m pretty sure you all know where I stand on guns.  I carry either Springfield or Colt 1911s, wouldn’t dream of carrying a Nighthawk or Ed Brown 1911, hate plastic guns of any caliber, and prefer shooting revolvers anyway.  And that’s just handguns.  Rifles?  I’m a Mauser man — actual Mausers as opposed to John Rigby’s exotic Mausers — and while I might be tempted on occasion to look at a custom rifle (purely based on its appearance), I’m just as happy shooting a .30-30 lever action.  And finally, when it comes to shotguns I prefer the old-fashioned — that is to say, side-by-side barrels and double triggers — and regard pump-actions as I would hammers or drills:  pure tools, nothing more.

Lifestyle choices:  budgets, compromises, ego, practicality, dreams… we all have them.

This New Thing

Marketing / Advertising, Morons & Idiots

Probably the modern word I hate the most is this “influencer” tag.  Fuck me, every totty with some kind of EeewwwChoob / TikTwat channel is now suddenly an “influencer” because her views of makeup / clothing / (whatever fad the younger audience of today are obsessed with) seem to cause advertisers to swoon with delight, according to the number of “followers” they are supposed to have according to some impenetrable measurement method.

There’s nothing wrong with the latter, of course:  the Nielsen ratings were once the yardstick whereby advertisers could approportion their spending among the various TV stations and shows according to the shows’ audience size.

Or maybe it’s just sour grapes on my part, because these (mostly-brainless) girls are raking in the cash with their “content” — the latter being nothing but opinion (largely shaped, I assume, by the brands’ sponsorship of such).  And apparently, being beautiful with large breasts increases their allure (no idea why).

I find it interesting that male “influencers” tend to have more actual content on their shows;  the wonderfully-low-class Mat Armstrong, for example, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars (okay, pounds sterling) out of repairing crashed supercars — he’s just bought a house in England and another in Miami, so we can safely assume that his business is profitable —  while stalwarts like Garand Thumb (two guys with actual expertise, being former SpecFor and Ranger operators) skimp along, apparently, with sponsorships from various gunny-type companies (but have a lot of fun along the way).

I suppose that even I could call myself an influencer, judging by the number of (tongue-in-cheek) complaints from people over the years, wailing about how they were perfectly happy with their firearms until they came to this website and were compelled — forced, even — to buy yet another gun they didn’t know they needed until I spoke glowingly about its allure and excellent qualities.

Did I get any kind of remuneration from this “influencing”?  Don’t be ridiculous.

So yes, maybe I am jealous that today’s influencers make money hand over fist each week while I have made, at a rough guess, a few thousand dollars — over twenty years — from my type of influencing.

Of course, my own cussedness hasn’t helped, in that I refuse to take on advertising (I did, once, very briefly for a few months during the NoR days, until an advertiser complained that I’d said Bad Things about his industry and I told him to fuck off and pulled the plug on the whole thing).  Ditto sponsorships, mostly because gun companies don’t need me when they have “gun writers” to pimp their products via the various gun magazines, but also because I absolutely refuse to be tied to any kind of influence over my opinions on, well, anything.

It also doesn’t help that my “likes” are confined to a really small list of products and such, either.

So I guess I am and have been my own worst enemy in this regard.

Oh well.

Here’s an unsolicited (and unpaid-for) recommendation (link in pic):

It’s a pre-WWII Sempert & Krieghoff tube-fed semi-auto chambered in 8x60mm, and it’s so beautiful it makes me swoon like a schoolgirl groupie.   Okay, at $17,500 it’s not the cheapest gun you could buy, and good luck finding the obscure 8x60mm S ammo anywhere, which means it’s strictly for reloaders.

And its performance is pretty much on a par with its smaller 8x57mm Mauser cousin, which is plentiful and can be fired far more cheaply from rifles like this mil-surp K98k:

…which are sold everywhere and can be had for under $1,000.

But you have to admit, that one-of-a-kind Sempert sure is pretty.  If you do decide to buy it, mention my name to the folks at Collectors, which will result in nothing more than a “who?” from them and not a single penny of kickback to me.

Par for the course, really.