From this point forward, I propose that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving be known as “Hawaiian Shirt Day”, and that everyone should wear their shirts to the office (or out and about, if you’re lucky enough not to be working).
Archive for the ‘Shirts’ Category
A modest proposal.
Wednesday, November 21st, 2012Public Service Announcement.
Wednesday, October 10th, 2012Linoge over at Walls of the City has some nifty t-shirts for sale.
Stickers, too.
(I have received no compensation for this announcement. I paid for my own damn shirt, thankyouverymuch.)
Hello, Kalashnikitty!
Friday, February 3rd, 2012By way of the great and good Kevin Baker, we have learned that, once again, orders are being taken for Kalashnikitty t-shirts.
Mine has gotten a little frayed around the edges, so I will be ordering a replacement – perhaps two. Maybe even three. Thinking about it, I bet a certain niece of mine would probably like one…
A grand day out.
Friday, December 30th, 2011If you’ve got a week off, and you live in a relatively free state, why not schedule a range day?
And if you’re doing that, why not bring the middle nephew:
especially since he got a pair of Say Uncle endorsed active muffs for Christmas?
(I wanted to bring the two older boys, too, but for logistical and other reasons I wasn’t able to make that work.)
So we went out to Best of the West in Liberty Hill. I had not shot there before (though I’d been there once for LaRue’s Range Day). I was actually pretty happy with the range; everyone we dealt with was polite and friendly, and we managed to get an entire 50 yard bay to ourselves. (I only felt like we needed 50 yards, since all I brought with me was .22LR stuff for the novice shooter.)
Just in time for Christmas.
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011Sean Sorrentino is doing a third run of Project Gunwalker t-shirts.
This is great news. As a proud owner of one of Sean’s shirts, I’m considering ordering two or three more. Remember, these shirts make great presents for any major holiday: Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah, Ashura, even Armistice Day (though from what Sean says, the shirts may ship a little late for that one).
Edited to add: Now in pink!
Leadership Secrets of Non-Fictional Characters (part 7 of a series).
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011Ranger Up is one of my preferred clothing vendors. (As I may have noted previously, I am partial to my “Mr. Grenade” shirt, since that phrase gets a lot of use around the office.)
Anyway, I was poking around the site this morning (looking at the new MAC-V SOG shirt) and ran across Nick’s Rules on Leadership. I think these are linkworthy. There is a lot of overlap with other entries in the leadership series, but this is the kind of thing that’s good to have in one place, maybe so you can print it out and drop it on someone’s desk.
(I would like to note, for the record, that I do not currently feel any need to print this out and drop it on someone’s desk. I note this because certain someones have mentioned that they read this blog. This is also one of the reasons I do not talk very much about my work life.)
(I would also like to note, for the record, that I haven’t abandoned the leadership series, even if there haven’t been any recent updates. I post stuff when I find it, and when I think it is worth posting.)
You know something?
Sunday, August 21st, 2011I didn’t have to use my AK. All in all, I’d have to say, it was a good day weekend.
I got up bright and early (by Saturday standards) and staggered down to the Saxet Gun Show, where I met up with the legendary Borepatch and some other folks. (I am leaving their names out because I want to protect their privacy. Yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket. It has nothing to do with me being a bad and evil person and forgetting their names. It is all about privacy protection. Just ask my wife, Morgan Fairchild.)
I don’t have much to add to Borepatch’s report. I only found one gun I really liked at the show (a Savage model 24, .22 LR over 20 gauge) and the owner was asking just $250, but I didn’t have that much cash on me, didn’t want to leave and find a bank, and…well, if it is there next month, maybe. This would be a good survival gun for the car.
Also, Borepatch is right about the number of approving comments that Sean Sorrentino’s Gunwalker t-shirt received. Borepatch and I discussed the idea of trying to sell them at gun shows, which is a very tempting idea indeed.
(While I was there, I met another gentleman who recognized me from my statement in Borepatch’s comments that I’d be wearing that shirt. It turns out he’s a regular reader of Borepatch’s blog, my blog, and the Saturday Dining Conspiracy pages. Personally, I thought reading both my blog and the SDC pages was an approved method of “enhanced interrogation” for prisoners at Gitmo, but hey, whatever gets you through the night. I was going to introduce him around, but I was on my way to see a man about a racehorse at the time, and when I came back, he was gone. Feel free to leave a comment, Mr. I’m Not Identifying You Here For “Privacy” Reasons.)
(I also saw one of the H&K .22 rimfire MP5 clones. It was going for around $600, as I predicted.)
After the gun show, I went down and paid off my layway at Tex-Guns, official purveyors of fine weapons to WCD. I now have a very nice Marlin 336 lever gun in .30-30: once I get some logistics worked out, and September 1st rolls around, this is going to sit in my car as my equivalent of a “patrol rifle”.
And then I went and had dinner with my mother and some friends at the Vivo on 620 at Lake Creek Parkway. The current chef, Paul Petersen, ran a place called the Little Texas Bistro in Buda; we ate there once, and it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Then he moved out to Marathon and worked at the Gage Hotel there for a while. Now he’s working at that Vivo, and hasn’t lost his touch. I had the”surf and turf”: one crabmeat enchilada and one brisket enchilada. It was one of the best meals I’ve had this year, and very reasonably priced.
(I did have some problems with Vivo, but none of them were with the cooking. They all stem from the current management’s decision to encourage an active singles/pick-up scene at Vivo. We were in a semi-private room, and towards the end of the meal, the music was loud enough that some of our party had to leave. Also, I’m not a prude, but when you’re taking your mother someplace, and there’s paintings of topless women everywhere, and a photo collage on the wall of the semi-private room featuring butts and other body parts, that’s a bit disconcerting.)
Today, of course, was the long threatened trip to the Snake Farm. I’m happy to say that everyone who went also came back, they all enjoyed themselves (from what I hear), and everyone who wanted one got a t-shirt. Or, as we like to say around here…
And much progress has been made on getting the Saturday Dining Conspiracy logs up to date. Which is comforting.
And Lawrence has put up some good photos from Worldcon, including a few of friends of mine I haven’t seen in a long time.
So, yeah, it has been a good weekend. How was yours?
(For those of you who don’t understand the “didn’t have to use my AK” reference, which is probably 99+% of my audience because you’re not fans, I suggest you go to your refrigerator and look at some Ice Cubes. (Warning! Adult subject matter!) Actually, I’m not a huge fan, either, but “It Was a Good Day” tickles my funny bone for some odd reason.)
DEFCON 19 notes: day 2.
Sunday, August 7th, 2011What the well-dressed gun blogger is wearing at DEFCON 19:
“Safe to Armed in Seconds: A Study of Epic Fails of Popular Gun Safes“: Confession time. I didn’t just watch this panel, I actually volunteered for part of it. I don’t think that compromised my objectivity, but better to be up front about it.
Deviant Ollam’s presentation concentrated on the smaller handgun safes, specifically the GunVault Microvault MV500, the BioBox, and the LokSAF PBS-001. Summarizing:
- All of these safes have some sort of keypad or biometric locking system, with a keyed tubular lock as an override.
- The Microvault and BioBox tubular locks were easy to pick with a tubular picking tool; the Microvault was a little more difficult to pick, while the BioBox basically flew open instantly. The LokSAF tubular lock was much more difficult to pick; Ollam himself hadn’t been able to pick it, but an audience volunteer managed to pick the LokSAF lock during the presentation. (Nobody had tried the Bic pen exploit on these locks.)
- Using a long thin object, like a straightened paper clip or a lock pick, it is possible to compromise the BioBox from outside without unlocking it; basically, you can fool the BioBox sensors into thinking the device is open, which puts it into a mode that allows you to reprogram the BioBox sensor and open the safe.
- Ollam and company were able to fool the fingerprint reader on the LokSAF, but it took some work. The basic method is to take an impression of the finger using dental alginate, then use a rubber molding compound (readily available at hobby shops) to take a cast of the impression. That cast can be substituted for a finger and used to open the LokSAF. Part of the panel was going to be a live demonstration of this using fingerprints from audience volunteers (of which your obedient servant was one); however, it took much longer than expected for the molding compound to set up, and that demo was pushed out until much later. Ollam did have video of this exploit working, though. There are some obvious questions, such as: how practical is this if you have to get a finger impression in dental alginate first? Answer: it may be possible to extend this exploit to use just a standard fingerprint, and watch for that presentation next year.
“DIY Non-Destructive Entry“: I missed this and “Battery Firmware Hacking” because I was still caught up in stuff from the gun safes panel. Sorry.
“Smile for the Grenade! ‘Camera Go Bang!’“: Nice guys, good presenters, total failure. The basic idea was to build a clone of military throwable/launchable video camera systems, using off-the-shelf parts (including the perfectly legal and not a destructive device at all 37mm grenade launcher) at a fraction of the cost. This looks like it could be a promising project, but the presenters only started working on it three months before the con, and only did their first test run the weekend before DEFCON. It didn’t go well; the powder they used to load their grenades was apparently defective, and they got no video. While it is interesting to see how small (and cheap!) wireless video cameras have gotten ($20 for the cameras they used, and $80 for the receiver), this is a presentation that should have been shelved for a future DEFCON.
“This is REALLY not the droid you’re looking for…”: From those wonderful folks who brought you Android rootkits, yet another Android exploit. Summary: because of Android’s design, and Google’s lack of strict enforcement of their user interface guidelines, it is possible to build an app that:
- runs in the background as an Android service.
- uses APIs from other applications to display login screens from those apps.
- captures credentials the user enters into those login screens.
- forwards the captured information to…say, a server in China.
- override the normal behavior of the “back” button, so the user doesn’t suspect there is a problem.
- and, because Android doesn’t have a standard “switching apps” visual animation, the user further doesn’t suspect there’s a problem.
This is a very high level summary; the authors went into much more detail about how to build this kind of application in their talk. And it’s not really easy to fix the problems that enable an application of this sort without changing both the Android OS and the way Google/the Android Market does things.
All apologies.
Wednesday, July 27th, 2011I feel bad about this, especially since some folks like South Texas Pistolero apparently think I’m worth reading. (Thank you, sir.) But there’s just not a lot going on right now that’s worth blogging about. I blame the heat. And the vertical integration of the broiler industry.
I guess I could point to yet another reason to carry your damn guns, people!
Or yet another example of the police being indistinguishable from armed thugs.
Or I could put up a nifty photo of myself in one of Sean Sorrentino’s “Project Gunwalker” shirts, which he’s reopened orders for (and which you can now get with a pocket, even) but I haven’t picked up mine from the PO Box yet.
I could also ask what kind of fascist country we’re living in, when a judge expresses doubts about the credibility of an accused murderer.
I suppose I could also ask if it’s actually legal for mariachi bands to collude over the fees they charge; doesn’t that strike folks as being a violation of anti-trust law?
I’ve got a post I’m working on about the egg roll problem, but I’m still doing research on that.
The good news is, we’re only a week away from DEFCON 19, which I do plan on blogging. In that vein, if anyone has recommendations for places to eat in Las Vegas, please drop me an email or leave them in the comments. A trip to Lotus of Siam is required, of course, but I’m looking for something to eat on the other four nights I’ll be there.
Edited to add: Hey, while I’m thinking of it, I do want to point folks to this discussion at Battleswarm. I haven’t had a lot to say about Breivik, mostly because other smarter bloggers are saying it all. But for some reason I’m awfully darn curious about his weaponry; I think maybe because the gun in that photo is so blinged up I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that it’s identical to the ones carried by Food Court Team Six.
“The guys get shirts!”
Sunday, July 10th, 2011I’d like to bring your attention to a couple of t-shirts that I think are pretty nifty.
The first one is from 604Republic. I am not a huge Star Wars fan (I actually haven’t seen any of the movies other than the first one), but I felt like I had to get one of these to go with my Reagan t-shirt from ThoseShirts.com.
Shirt number two is from Sean Sorrentino at “An NC Gun Blog” (also added to the blogroll): the official t-shirt of Project Gunwalker. Sean’s apparently going to the printer on Monday so I’d place an order now if you want one.
(Disclaimer: I’m not getting anything from any party for this post. I paid full retail for these shirts. I haven’t even received them yet, so I can’t swear to their quality.)