My father has the S&W Shield and I actually saw one for sale in a very empty case when I bought some rounds for my wife’s Glock. But I bought her G26 used at a very fair price with extras thrown in considering the shortage of guns and ammo in my area.
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A new (non-contract) job. I start next week.
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I’d offer to teach but damn, that commute!
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EVERYwhere. Nearly 5 million new gun owners this year in the US.
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Corona+BLM/Antifa may take over from Obama as the best gun salesman ever.
More astrophotography gear. I’ve been after a wide & fast lense for some time, and this one happened to come up at a reasonable price. Samyang F2.8/14mm (and half an alphabet of acronyms). It’s manual focus, which matters not to me.
And then this - the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Pro Pack. (Try saying that when you’ve had a few drinks!). Way overkill for what I need, but no stupid WiFi-only connectivity to a proprietary app, and enough load capacity for any camera rig I am ever likely to purchase.
I just need the CV19 travel restrictions to ease up, and a clear sky… (It’s a gamble which one will arrive first. 
)
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That star adventure pack looks pretty awesome. I think it’s a long way down my list of purchases though 
Nice! Manual focus is the way to go in low-light, especially if you can zoom in on an area in the live-view screen (or EVF if mirrorless) and dial the focus in that way.
A couple of new things:
- A StreamDeck to have a bunch of fun little LED buttons to control things on my main PC
- An HDMI switcher and a USB switcher so I can use my keyboard/mouse/1 of my monitors to control 3 of the computers at my desk
- It’s not here yet, but I ordered another of the 27" gaming monitor I ordered a few months ago so I can finally be back up to 3 screens on my main rig. Those two will remain dedicated to the gaming PC, while the third monitor (which is slightly smaller and lacks some vibrancy in the color it displays) is the one hooked up to the switcher.
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I look at those StreamDecks every now and then. I totally don’t need one, but it looks entertaining.
No pictures, but I bought two Skyrocket Juniper trees. I left them up in Oregon in the care of friends until they can be planted. I’m going to need at least 50 more, for my privacy fence/sound wall but it’s a start.
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It’s neat. It can not only control the obvious stuff in OBS or the other streaming software, but you can have it do things like play back audio files, launch applications, enter hotkey combos…
Plus you can find plugins for it to do other things. The first one I went and found is one that lets me have buttons to mute/deafen myself in Discord. There are also ones to control Hue lights or do other neat stuff like that.
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Oooh. That looks like a Canon EF mount - what body are you putting it on?
Well, fk you Amazon. Fk you with a great big fking stick wrapped with razor wire, dipped in pig sht and decorated with poison ivy. Fk you, you pack of fking fks.
I hadn’t received any further confirmation that things were proceeding and found that my account no longer exists. I got a friendly “There is no account associated with that email” message, and no way to get it sorted out. So I shall be keeping a very close eye on my card from here on…
On the brighter side, I found the tracker on an Oz camera shop website for a better price.
I have a Nikon D7100.
It’s just a generic photo from Samyang’s site, and they make a zillion versions of it to fit just about every camera body out there.
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10yo Siglet Secundus decided he wanted to learn to play guitar.
None of the three guitars I own are really appropriate for a 10yo to learn on.
So now there are four. This is a half-scale Cordoba Mini II in flamed mahogany:
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I should be able to pick up my new BBQ today at Walmart. It’s been in the store since Tuesday, just not ready to pick up. I hate that I can see that information. It’s maddening.
Blackstone Tailgater. This thing looks 100% awesome. It should be more than adequate for cooking for 2 and incredibly flexible. I love that I can take the grill box off (or the griddle, or both, really) and cook over the burner with a big pot if I’m doing some chili or a side dish or just boiling up my laundry or something.
It was pretty cheap at just over CDN$400, including tax. It was $100 cheaper at Walmart than through Amazon, which I found interesting.
I’ve ordered an infrared thermometer and a whole bunch of other stuff to deal with the griddle portion. I’m gonna have some kind of fun with this, for sure.
It’s solidly built (by all accounts), and just light enough to be portable. Take the griddle and grill box off, fold up the legs, disconnect the gas bottle and you have 4 manageable parts.
It’s propane, but I’m going to cannibalize the parts from my old grill to make it natural gas. They sell a conversion kit, so I know it’s compatible.
I need to figure out a good way to cover the griddle, though. I can probably make one out of sheet steel, like a lid. Once it has been properly seasoned and in use, I shouldn’t have to worry about rust. It’s all the other crap like leaves, bugs, bird crap, etc.
I also want to make a shelf out of sheet steel to straddle the leg supports. There is no shelf anywhere on this thing, and I might want to set down a spatula or have a place to store a roll of paper towels. Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that if you get a griddle like this (or one of their larger ones) that you might as well have a Sam’s Club membership for paper towels.
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Our internet has been worse than spotty lately. The last 4 months (at least) it has dropped out for a minute or two, a couple of times/hour, intermittently. Not all the time, but enough to make me a bit mental trying to diagnose the issue and deal with the reconnections on my work networks.
AAAAUUGGGGGHHHH!
Last night I found out that it is the DSL from one particular company that is the culprit. The company that I’m with.
I just ordered fibre into the house. It’ll arrive on Tuesday morning.
We’ll be going from a tentative 75 to a strong 500. No more worrying about whether I’ll be able to stream something without it buffering. Work should be uninterrupted. I should be more calm.
Price is a bit higher, but that’s expected. Still way more than anywhere else in the world, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
I got a 12 month discount on price, free installation, free equipment rental. That’s about $400 in ‘savings’. I also found a way to bypass their equipment so that I can still use my own, thereby limiting their ability to keep an eye on what’s happening on my network. All good stuff.
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A Blackstone grill/griddle is on my list for next Spring
Have you not heard the wailing and gnashing of teeth over here in Australia? The fastest we can get here on a consumer grade plan is 100Mbit. I think the Powers That Be are looking to 5G for higher speeds, but I like cables.
Mind you, it does run rings around ADSL.
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