bryan wann :: binary fury

The Garmin update is being a bitch, two different PCs and it times out on update. It’s already erased the old maps, so it’s sort of useless at this point.

Tonight was the first night I’ve ran in a while, four miles. I should’ve known not to lay off, it’s harder now.

I bought 28 pounds of dry ice on Sunday. 24 hours later, six pounds has subliminated. I may need to rethink my cunning insulation plans.

I put some more thought into my shade structure, I think I have something workable and simpler. Even designed it with a pipe cleaner scale model.

I ran into my Krav Maga instructor the other night at Trudy’s. He asked where I had been last week. I told him I was recovering from the pain of the week before. His response: “Good! It’s supposed to hurt!” A little part of me cried and I promised I’d be in Tuesday night for more pain.

The 12 volt fans I bought draw 1.02 amps.

It’s hard as hell to find 2″ x 3/16″ adhesive-backed foam tape.

Wal-Mart Supercenter at IH-35 and Ben White is not the place to be on a Sunday afternoon. It really is worse than a mall at Christmas.

I hooked up a iPod line-in module to my truck stereo. It’s almost awesome, I get great sound and can control my iPod via the head unit. It’d be perfect if it would show artist and song title on the head display via RDS or something instead of “D1 T44”. Death to FM modulators, endless caches of AAA batteries, and lack of free 88.1-88.7 MHz audio spectrum in Austin. Long roadtrips, here we come!

I got shafted on winning a scanner auction on eBay. The guy got my money, told me eBay had locked their account. Now their email bounces, their web site is gone, their eBay and PayPal accounts are nonexistant. I’ve opened a dispute with PayPal to get my money back, but I really want my scanner, dammithell!

Who know that amateur radio operators could be so, gasp, young and attractive? Who knew that reading the full Part 97 rules and regulations

for test prep could be so boring? Who knew that you could tune into the KG6DVO 147.435 repeater and listen into trivia on Saturday nights.The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. It resminds us of all that was once was good, and that could be again. Baseball.

More Krav Maga tonight. This time warmups were back and forth sprints, then about 160-180 total squats with sets of dive bomber pushups. Those things were murder, my quads were crying for mercy. Today was mostly low and leg work. Low defensive punches, low punch defense, shuffle front-leg straight kicks, elbow punches, and combinations of all of them. The low punches and shuffle kick was awkward to get the hang of, I don’t think coach was ever satisified. If you’ve ever seen a boxer (or Rocky) squatting under to punch under a rope about chest high, that’s the gist of the low punches we were doing tonight.

Looking in the mirror now, it looks like I popped some capillaries under my eyes. I’ve got these patches of red freckle-ish spots. That’s a new one.

I fired a Glock 23 last night and a HK USP .40 today. I really liked the feel of the Glock, the levers and whatnot were accessible and didn’t require a lot of force. Glocks are also relatively cheap, a used 22 or 23 could be had for $450 or so. Unfortunately the lack of an external safety makes me a bit nervous on the Glock. I like how I can just pull it out and go to work, but I feel like I’m going to snag it on something and shoot myself in the leg. Maybe I’m just Glock ignorant.

Anyways, I wound up buying a HK USP .40 It was a bit more than I wanted to spend, but I’m very comfortable with its operation. Get a Cabella’s Visa this weekend, save $100 on it, bonus! I must not have been paying attention when it happened, but there’s no waiting period on handguns anymore. I cleared the federal background check and had my gun within a few minutes.

I love Wal-mart. I purchased 100 rounds of .40 S&W for $16. Most places sell 50 rounds for $13-$15. Then my luck ran out. After I got home, I was going to leave for the range and discovered my battery was nearly dead. I couldn’t get a jump from anyone so I took matters in my own hand. The multimeter said my battery was putting out 10.8 volts, but not quite enough to get the truck started. I turned off everything and pulled fuses of accessories to keep them from turning on with ignition and managed to get the truck started. Headed straight to the store to buy a battery charger. Had my battery tested, it has a dead cell. This incidentally explains some sagging voltage problems I was having. Put my tools to good use, replaced the battery and now I’m good to go.

Finally made it to the range. It was packed, interestingly there were a few cute tattooed up girls in ragged clohes. I guess the redneck thing to do on a Saturday night is to go shoot guns? Fired 100 rounds, it’s clear I’ve got some de-flinching to work on to tighten up my pattern at 15 yards. Of all the high three-digit dollar range things I’ve bought in my life, I have zero buyer’s remorse.

Yay, I survived Krav Maga tonight. After my last class I was dreading this like a dental appointment, but made it through participating the whole hour. I almost have jump rope mastered. I had a partner that was my height and I learned how to better pace my effort. I got winded and dizzy several times either through sheer exhaustion or getting it knocked out of me while holding pads but managed to hang in there. Right now my arms and legs are quivering jelly from throwing punches and kicks. My knuckles are cracked, raw, and bloody from breaking in new gloves.

I figured out I can deliver a much more powerful kick and jab than I thought I was capable of. Must develop chest muscles to better protect against punches, methinks. During jab and punch drills, the coaches would come around and whack us in the head with a foam stick if we weren’t protecting our head. Toward the end of class I started leaning in to the pad during defense on my left side after a while to prevent getting the wind knocked out. Of course the class ended with “Ok guys, sixty seconds to go, on your faces! pushups!” Still pretty beat, but a much more tolerable experience than the first time.