Shamelessly reposted from the RNS team.

KTKC is gearing up for the Sept. fundraiser – join the cause Kilted To Kick Cancer, Part The Second http://t.co/hzJMBK0y #kiltedtokickcancer

Are you in a philosophical mood today?

Brad Torgersen is one of those Utah Authors, what I affectionately refer to as the Literary Mafia of Utah.  You know the guys, they write Science Fiction, and Pulp Fiction, and stories about hunting monsters, and zombie uprisings.  They all seem to feed off of each others ideas and before you know it you’ve read one of their books and you had to buy them all to read, and that wasn’t enough so they introduced you to one of their friends and it’s not an addiction I can stop at any time…. sorry.   Yeah those guys.

Mr. Torgersen took an hour or more to layout his thoughts on being rich.  With the exception of some comparisons that he makes, and some differences in our personal experiences I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything that he has written in his essay.  There are a lot of great excerpts here are two, to whet your appetite.

Being rich isn’t about the cash in your purse or wallet — it’s about knowing there is someone who loves you waiting for you when you get home. Not everybody has this.

________

Being rich isn’t about having a high-paying or prestigious job — there is integrity in all honest work, whether it pays minimum wage or not, and if you wear a 3-piece suit and work in a shiny office building but have to lie, cheat, steal, or defraud people for a living, you are poor regardless of how many vacations you take in Cabo.

Set aside 20 minutes or so, read his thoughts on the subject.  Give it some thought.  Where do you fit on the scale of things?

finished Devil Sent the Rain (Rock Band Fights Evil) by D.J. Butler nice pulp fiction series http://t.co/vu8jK61u #Kindle

Over at “From My Position, On the way!” — Chuck hits all the cogent points about this presidential election cycle.  I just wish that the mainstream media would agree and focus on the priorities.  Unfortunately, the bulk of the citizens (and aliens and dead voters) in this nation get their information from TV.  If it is not covered or prioritized there, they don’t know about it.

“I don’t care if a presidential candidate pushed a 6-year-old girl with downs into a chipper shredder.

I don’t care if a presidential candidate has smoked weed, snorted coke, or shot heroin.

I don’t care if a presidential candidate has eaten dog, cat, blue whale, or bald eagle.

I don’t care if a presidential candidate love gays, hates gays, doesn’t care about gays, or is gay.

I don’t care if a presidential candidate is mormon, buddhist, catholic, amish, or atheist, muslim, or practices santeria.

I care if my presidential candidate has a workable plan to make our economy work, reduce our deficit, wean us off the teat of foreign oil, has a workable plan for a strong defense, doesn’t bow to anybody, doesn’t apologize for America, doesn’t take shit from other countries, scares the Russians, French, China, and entire Middle East, supports Israel, and makes North Korea tremble; and laughs in the face of the UN. (In short, a President who believes in “America First, everybody else, take a number.”)

–Chuck

The only thing that I would add to the “care” portion of this point is that I care if my President understands, respects, and will defend The Constitution.

Dear Son,

I’m writing this slow because I know you can’t read fast.

We don’t live where we did when you left home. Your dad read in the newspaper that most accidents happen within 20 miles of your home, so we moved.  I won’t be able to send you the address because the last West Virginia family that lived here took the house numbers when they moved so they wouldn’t have to change their address.

This place is really nice. It even has a washing machine. I’m not sure about it. I put a load of clothes in and pulled the chain. We haven’t seen them since.

The weather isn’t bad here.It only rained twice last week; the first time for three days and the second time for four days.

About that coat you wanted me to send; your Uncle Billy Bob said it would be too heavy to send in the mail with the buttons on, so we cut them off and put them in the pockets.

Bubba locked his keys in the car yesterday.We were really worried because it took him two hours to get me and your father out.

Your sister had a baby this morning, but I haven’t found out what it is yet so I don’t know if you are an aunt or uncle.

Uncle Bobby Ray fell into a whiskey vat last week.Some men tried to pull him out but he fought them off and drowned.We had him cremated, he burned for three days.

Three of your friends went off a bridge in a pickup truck. Butch was driving. He rolled down the window and swam to safety.Your other two friends were in the back.They drowned because they couldn’t get the tailgate down!

There isn’t much more news at this time.Nothing much out of the normal has happened.

Your Favorite Aunt,

Mom

Been super busy lately both catching up from work and shooting more, trying to improve.  I probably need to slow down a bit and create a focused training plan.  How busy you might ask?

• Boomershoot – 3 days shooting 2 days travel
• MISS match – The Thursday following Boomershoot
• Spring Tuneup – Sunday following Boomershoot
• On Target – I had to work the new range last night during the members only opening window.

So in less than two weeks, I have spent about 4+ days on the range.  For me that is a huge uptick in trigger time.

Quick highlights:

Boomershoot:  See my previous posts on this one.  Needless to say, it is worth the time and hassle to travel out there for it.

MISS:  I have been trying to shoot with this club all winter.  My schedule does not always work with the match dates but it has been a good season.  I’ve met a lot of great folks, had fun, improved my skills, and did I mention had fun??  The last match followed on the heels of returning from Boomershoot, traveling to Detroit for a client, returning and zooming off to the match, where I promptly showed how I can be mentally psyched out by steel.  It baffles me how I can consistently ring steel at 700 yds in swirling winds and it takes me 6 rounds to drop a popper at 10 yds with a handgun.

Spring Tune Up:  Brought to you by Action Shooting Sports.  Kind of an impulse decision to run out to their event last Sunday.  They were kind enough to squeeze me into the roster at the last minute.  It was worth the time.  The event was held at The Hollows (old Blackwater North site) and it was a couple of hours drive to get out there.  Nice wide, and deep outdoor bays, a shoot house, jungle walk, and all manner of fun stuff.  Basic handgun skills, and some shotgun skills.  And yet again I should how what appears to be a static steel plate somehow magically dances around on its rack when I choose to shoot at it (I love to shoot steel but for some reason I suddenly SUCK at shooting it).

On Target Tactical Training:  What can I say, it’s less than 5 minutes away and it’s shiny.  The are having some opening week hiccups but, the ranges are SWEET.  Great lighting, great ventilation.  I need to figure out the advanced settings on the target system.  If you roll on by there make sure you have eye protection and that you where it.  Also be sure to wear a billed hat.  Maybe it was where I was standing in the stall, maybe it was because I haven’t been in a stall for a while but I had ejected brass bouncing off the sidewalls and into my face a lot.  The staff is still figuring things out but, I think it is going to be one of those places where they have a personal touch and that makes it that much better.

Lots of fun, now I suppose I ought to put a plan together to start really tuning my skills.

First trip to the new range… Nice http://t.co/5MEQUEhg

@WIILSHOOTCOM Rob dropped his weapon during a reload http://t.co/cTrP1EFL

Ok, I am way late in writing this post.  It’s funny how work backs up when you take a few days off.  Many others have written about their Boomershoot adventures, accordingly I think I will borrow some of their excellent content.

Boomershoot always opens up with a fireball, to kick off the event.  This year was AWESOME.  Just as background information, one of the most devestating conventional weapons in the US arsenal is a the Fuel Air Explosive.  The fireball at Boomershoot is essentially an FAE without the detailed fuel dispersal science that a weapon would have.  The results though…  well see for yourself.

I thought that I had some video of my own but I guess I did not get the right button pressed on the machine in order to capture the event.  Barron, who was one position over on the shooting line, along with his lovely wife captured much of the above video.

I thought that I would get some video to help you all put things in perspective.  Boomershoot is about long range precision rifle work in “wild” conditions.  The wind does some unusual things across those fields, and through the surrounding canyons, it makes for interesting times.  The targets themselves are small quantities of Boomerite that are packaged in 3″, 4″, and 7″ boxes.  It is a tough event but then challenges are fun.

Now take a piece of paper and a ruler and draw a square 7″ on each side.  Tape it to the wall and walk back as far as you can.  Think of that same square 7 football fields away.  That is what you saw detonating behind the tree in that video.

Before the day started the 380 yd line looked like this.

So that’s the nutshell version of Boomershoot day 3.  Decent weather, swirling winds.  Lots of boomers, challenges moving up the hill with the winds.  But put it all in perspective for a second, I was outside in fantastic weather.  I had a tool in my hands that fired a bullet that was less than 1/3″ in diameter.  I was able to apply a set of skills to place that bullet into the lower 1/3 of a 3″, 4″ or 7″ square at distances ranging from 400 to 700 yards on a repeatable and consistent basis.

Yeah, it was a good weekend.

My thanks to:

• Joe Huffman and his team (Ry, Barron, etc.) for all the work that they do to put this event on.
• Gene Econ, and his training staff (Bill, Monte, Paul) for welcoming me and including me as one of their own.
• To everyone that attends, and makes sure that we all have a safe and fun time.
• And finally to Joe “Gundoc” Chetwood at Crusader Weaponry for building the Broadsword that served me well at this year’s event.  A lot of folks were asking about the origins of my Broadsword, if you are one of them give Joe a call.