While a lot of the people I knew got drunk when they turned 21, I bought my first hand gun and applied for a concealed carry permit. I still have that Glock 27, but as the years have passed I have acquired a few more pistols. Some I loved, some I hated, and some I wanted to love but wound up hating anyway.

I liked the simple operation of the Glock, and its basic design. Disassembly and reassembly were easy, and my 27 has been super reliable. I have probably put 8000 rounds through it without a single issue.

However, it was hard for me to shoot. I have a few ergonomic issues with the grip. The most important one is that the frame rubs on the top joint of my thumb, and after about 200 rounds it wears through my skin. I also found the recoil of the .40 S&W cartridge to be a bit too much for me to shoot at a faster speed.

Fast forward to last year. I acquired a Rock Island Arms 1911 Government pistol and fell in love. I became very accurate with the pistol, partly because the ergonomics of the 1911 were better for my particular hand, and partly because the metal frame and slide absorbed a lot of the recoil from the .45ACP the RIA belched towards my targets.

There were two problems, though: the Government was quite large and heavy in comparison to my other CCW pistols, and the magazine capacity was much lower than I’d desired. Sure, you can carry extra magazines but that adds weight and reloading under pressure could be an issue for some.

I purchased a 1911 Rock Island Arms Officer’s model a few months later, but after about a 1000 rounds the handgun suffered a catastrophic magazine latch failure that scared me off from using it as an every day carry (EDC) piece.

I wanted something that had the dependability and ease of maintenance like a Glock, but the ergonomics of a 1911. I started doing some research. If a Glock 27 and a 1911 met up at a block party and made passionate love, their baby would be the Springfield Armory XD45 Compact. Would the polymer-framed handgun be the answer I was looking for?

Sort of.
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Normally when I review something I love it or hate it. I can recommend it, or not recommend it. There might be things that I like about a product I dislike, or things that I wish were different about products I otherwise care for.

So when something like Bump Patrol’s aftershave anti-razor shaving product comes along, I don’t know what to do. I am so neutral on the product that I think I may have trained myself out of needing Bump Patrol’s offerings.
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My house has three bay windows in it. When I bought my home I thought they were great: they let in a lot of light and looked nice from the outside. Figuring out how to drape them properly was a pain. The windows were too close together to allow for a standard curtain rod installation. Standard curtain rods were too long to fit. Shorter curtain rods fit, but then I couldn’t cover the windows properly and light spilled in around the edges. I tried getting curtains that were too wide and forcing them to billow out, but that looked odd. I eventually gave up and let light creep in through the windows.

That is, until Sedagive? suggested the Bayview flexible curtain rod by Umbra Solutions.
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My Waring Pro waffle maker finally gave up the ghost about two months ago. I used the Waring extensively in the nearly five years that I owned it. In fact, it died because I used it so much The metal hinge screws completely stripped the plastic mounting holes.

I wanted a replacement, but I wasn’t willing to spend $70 to get another one online, or about $100 if I found one locally.

Amazon.com was there with the rescue, and in two days I had a Presto Flip Side for less than $40 delivered.
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I love my Rosewill 8500 wireless mouse from NewEgg.com. I like it so much I bought an extra for work, and one for my desktop machine.

I’ve used the mouse quite a bit over the last three months. Two things have happened since then:

1) I killed the battery that came with the mouse.
2) The scroll wheel started to “jump” down about half a click when I used it.

The latter was a big deal. Sometimes I would scroll down a particularly long Web page and then the screen would move about two paragraphs. This was distracting and I often lost my place.

Even more annoying was that the problem with the scroll wheel didn’t happen all the time. At first it was every one out of ten spins. Then it was one in four. Then it was a 50/50 crap shoot for random scrolling insanity.

The Rosewill 8500 comes with a 30 day replacement guarantee from NewEgg, and then a year warranty from Rosewill. I didn’t want to mail in my $30 mouse and then be charged for a repair, so I decided to crack open the mouse myself to see what I could do.

If I succeeded, I’d have my favorite mouse back. If I failed, I had several others to replace it — and it’d make for an interesting Gibberish entry.
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Ten days ago, I wrote about the problem I had with my Bersa Thunder Ultra Compact Pro in 45ACP. I am not sure exactly what was wrong. It could have been a problem at the factory with the slide bluing; perhaps the plastic bag and protective oil combined to stain the slide. I posted my issue to the forum on Bersa Chat. Some other Bersa users experienced a slight staining on their slides directly from the factory, but nothing they couldn’t remove. Mine seemed to be the worst of the bunch.

That was the bad news. The good news is that I received some outstanding customer service.
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So you’ve done all you can. You identified a potentially bad driver and adjusted your speed appropriately. You changed your lane position. You made sure there was a clear exit path (or a semi-clear one that you could blast through in an emergency). You are doing the Admiral Akbar and have one eye on the threat and one eye on traffic in front of you.

Then you start getting more nervous. The person is talking on their mobile phone with their left hand. They aren’t looking at their left mirror and aren’t moving their head. Their car is coming up to a semi truck, and you are worried that they are going to change lanes due to the Spring Hypothesis.

Without looking, without any signals — that the driver made consciously, anyway — the car is coming into your lane.

What do you do now?
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I purchased a Bersa Thunder Ultra Carry Pro in matte finish on Friday. These pistols have been very hard to find, and I was looking forward to spending some time with it and perhaps making it my everyday carry piece.

Unfortunately what appears to be at least a packaging error if not a manufacturing defect has made me send the gun back without firing a single round.
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Little Pearl joined my house three years ago today. I got her from the Washington Animal Rescue League, and they do fantastic work placing friendly critters into happy homes. If you are looking for an animal companion, please consider WARL (or any other adoption agency) before thinking about buying a pet.

I can’t believe it’s been three years. :)

By the time you read this, the following new laws will be in effect in the Commonwealth of Virginia:

1. HB 505: Valid concealed carry permit holders are now able to carry concealed in establishments that sell alcohol for on premise consumption as long as they are not drinking alcohol. This is a very good law and it has been a very, very long time coming. At least fourteen years by my count ;)
2. HB 885: Any person may carry a concealed weapon in a motor vehicle or boat as long as the container is locked. You don’t even need a CCW permit for it, as long as you’re legally able to possess the firearm. An example given was a glove box in a car, but this would apply to my locked top case on my motorcycle as well. Interestingly, the spirit of the original bill was to allow CCW holders to leave their firearms in their cars when they go to work. The legislation as passed means that you can travel with a handgun in a private vehicle as long as the container is locked.
3. SB 3: Concealed carry permits are now renewable by mail. I don’t really like this one very much, but I admit it’s convenient. I would prefer more intense certification programs for concealed carry permit holders in exchange for wider reciprocity. Ideally, the program would mimic the drivers license system in the USA, except instead of a driving practical you’d have to undergo a shooting practical. Unfortunately most states are trending away from a shooting practical portion of their CCW certification and just do law/safety only.

Congratulations to the Commonwealth of Virginia for entering a more logical age in regards to firearms legislation, and thank you to the legislators that made these changes possible.