You seen the new McDonald’s commercial? It’s in HEAVY rotation so you must have. It’s for some new smaller version of the Chicken McNugget. The crappy food isn’t important though. The song playing in the background is just crazy good/catchy. It’s quite mellow but somehow I still LOVE it. Anyway it’s very reminiscent of the Indie duo Tegan & Sara. You all aint too old or too square to know who they are – are you? If you don’t know you should seek them out. Anyway at first I thought it might be them so I googled the crap out of it and found out it’s by an unsigned band out of Orange County California (that’s right the OC!) called Nicole Vaughn and Her Lovely Band.

I just love her. The music is categorized on her CDBaby account as ‘Folk Rock-Americana’ and I suppose that’s accurate. It’s hard to slot it in though as there are elements of Country-Rock-Blues-Rock-a-Billy, etc. Go to her website and listen for your self. I did and I ended up buying two albums worth of MP3s. Linkage below:

Info about the commercial

CDBaby page

NicoleVaughn.com

BandCamp page

And look at this live performance! Awesome blistering slide guitar:

.38 Special +P

I’ve been a wheel man for MANY many years. This was primarily for one reason and one reason only – my very small hands. As a short man ( 5ft 4) with short fingers I have always found most popular defensive auto-pistols uncomfortable and pretty much impossible for me to shoot and point properly due to the brick-like grip dimensions. The Glock was out as was all the other double column “wonder-nines” and their ilk. The 1911 fit fine and I could shoot the low-pressure 45ACP fairly well but I was never very comfortable carrying cocked and locked and I don’t feel like chamber empty is a smart way to carry either. So after a lot of experimenting I ended up in the revolver camp. And that’s where I stayed for a LONG time. The revolver allows for a virtually unlimited size range of grips. With the revolvers slim grip frame I could choose an open back-strap design like the Bantam:

This would allow for a VERY close trigger reach which works well for a person with small hands.

I started out with a .38 Special J-Frame Centennial. I read a lot of Masaad Ayoob so naturally I wanted to load up with the legendary FBI load (158 grain +P soft lead hollow-point). And I often did. The problem was the load is all but impossible to find. So my replacement was the 129 grain +P Federal Hydra-Shock. But the more I read (a lot of Marshall/Sanow – I even have the hardcovers) I found myself wanting MORE POWER. So I moved up to the .357 Magnum.

.357 Magnum

According to the experts and actual street shooting statistics there is no better hand-gun launched man-stopper than the 125 grain .357 Magnum semi-jacketed hollow-point moving at somewhere between 1300 and 1500 feet per second (depending on specific ammo brand and barrel length). BUT that kind of performance comes at a fairly high price and I don’t mean dollars. I’m talking PAIN – pain in the ears due to the insanely booming loudness and pain in the hands from the mighty recoil.

Even with a lot of practice I found this just too much of a beast for a carry load in a small frame 5-shot revolver. So I switched to the “second best” loading – the 110 grain .357 Magnum semi-jacketed hollow- point. I would alternate that loading with the Remington 125 grain MEDIUM velocity Golden Saber also in .357 Magnum. I was fairly content with this carry load…although not exactly “pleasant” to shoot it was OK and I could hit OK with it at close combat (25 feet) range. A frequent reader of the “gun rags” it was drilled into my head to “practice with what you carry” or at least something close to that. So I would train with Winchester white box 110 grain Magnums or equivalent handloads. Well the all steel Smith and Wesson Centennial didn’t care much for the Magnum practice and after 7 years and only about 700 rounds of Magnums (and 300 or so mild .38s) the little gun was “shooting loose”. I sent it into the Smith & Wesson service department and they informed that:

“J-Frames are for personal protection & are not intended to take to the range and shoot magnums a lot”

See here for all the details from when it happened in the summer of 2003:

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=26219

I let them fix the gun and I sold it off having lost all faith in Smith and Wesson. I switched to the tank-like Ruger SP-101 and never looked back.

9mm

Fast-forward to the summer of 2011 and my buddy Elmo turns me onto his new auto-pistol – a Springfield Armory XDm in 9mm. I was skeptical at first “another 9 mm brick-grip?”. But he assured me I should try it. He explained that the guns come with a user replaceable back strap piece in 3 sizes and the smallest size should fit my trigger finger perfectly! So I took his gun to the range and I shot that gun better than ANYTHING I’ve ever shot and by this point I’ve shot an awful of different handguns! As far as I am concerned this is a revolution in handgun design. In one gun I can now have a modern easy shooting piece that can fit a variety of people’s hands. I’ve never been a GREAT shot but with an XDm I am a very GOOD shot.

I now own 3 XDms (2 compacts and one full size) all in 9mm and I love ‘em.

With the 9mm I am in a much better place in so far as ammunition selection. I like the Speer Gold-dot jacketed hollow point in 124 grain weight at +P velocity I also use the Federal HST in the same weight and also +P. These are rated at around 1,200-1,250 feet per second. Ballistically this puts them nipping at the heels of some of the best .357 Magnum self-defense loads and far above anything in .38 Special. Yet even with this “warm” load I find the guns no louder as far as blast/noise than the .38 Special and even EASIER to shoot. Other than their beautiful classic lines and pop-culture nostalgia the Revolver holds nothing for me anymore. I am no longer a wheel man.

So it dawned on me a couple of weeks ago that I haven’t been able to find barbecued flavor Fritos anywhere in what must be 6 months or more. So I did a little Googling and one of the first hits was this Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-WANT-MY-BBQ-Fritos/164702786899903

It turns out that for some bizarre reason Frito Lay has this weird “distribution black-out” with that one specific flavor. Whole or partial states are completely left off the deliver list but ONLY for that flavor. It’s very strange. Like for example around here (47714 zip, Evansville, IN) ALL you will find in stores are: Original, Chili-Cheese and those silly Honey BBQ Twist things. Frankly I don’t even count the twists as “real Fritos”. And the Chili-Cheese are good for about 5 crunches and then they start to make kinda nauseous. For me it’s gotta be the BBQ! So clearly I HAD to find the BBQ. I wanted some before but now that I learn some “blackout” is keeping them from me….well it was time for a Quest! So naturally I first hit the web. I did find a few online vendors that would sell me a case at an “OK” price. But a case isn’t really what I wanted as I do eat healthy now on all but two days out of the week. Eventually I ended up here:

http://www.fritolay.com/our-snacks/where-to-buy.html

My first trip I tried the closest hits on the map and they had ZERO of the elusive BBQ variant despite Frito Lay corp saying they did. I was not happy! Yesterday I expanded the search to include Owensboro, KY. And I am happy to report success! I scored 6 full size bags at the following location:

“Hometown IGA store #21″ 201 Carter Rd, Owensboro, KY 42301

It did take a 40 minute drive but they were on sale 2 for $4.00.

I just wanted to share my find for any more BBQ Frito starved souls out there! They DO still make ‘em -you just may have to take a drive depending on where you live.

This is a mini review of two mini sized comics. The first one was a HUGE disappointment. I didn’t pick up The 8 issue mini “Thor -The Mighty Avenger” when it came out originally in standard comicbook form. But I’ve read review after review where people go on and on about how GREAT it was. So I looked at some art samples online and liked what I seen of Chris Samnee’s art. Marvel originally put this out as part of their kid-friendly line of books under the “Marvel Adventures” imprint. This is a totally separate line with it’s own continuity. It’s not part of the classic Marvel Universe or the Ultimate Marvel Universe. And since I just can’t buy and READ everything it’s something I’d normally take a pass on. But I ordered the trade paperback from Amazon based on the great reviews and good art. This was truly a mistake. What I didn’t realize until I got it in my hands is that this thing measures only 6×9 inches in size. It’s similar to an Archie Digest or Marvel’s “backpack sized” trades from a few years ago. It’s an interesting size. It would be easy for the collector in me to trash it outright simply because it doesn’t fit well on the shelf with standard sized trades and hardcovers. But I gave it a chance. I TRIED to read this thing. But the reduced size truly does NOT give the great art by Chris Samnee any justice what so ever. It really suffers being shrunk down like this. The text/fonts look kind of OFF this small as well. There are ELEVEN editors (counting assistants) listed in the credits for this. I find it astonishing that one or more of them didn’t speak up and question the wisdom of putting this out in this format? Am I the only one that thinks this looks terrible? I really hope they release a full size version that collects all 8 issues so I can give this another shot one day. Oh yeah and did I mention the price? $14.99! The standard price does not match the substandard size!

This is in SHARP contrast to the little hardcover by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming called “Takio”. This is a true gem of a book. It’s roughly the same 6×9 size of the Thor TPB but this is an original graphic novel not a collected series or story arc. This is published under the creator owned Icon imprint also by Marvel. At $9.95 for 96 pages it’s a bargain. It’s also an absolutely charming story that any fan of the comic medium or the super-hero genre will love. It’s appropriate for any age. This is the PERFECT book to hand to a young kid to spark their interest in reading and/or get them into comics specifically. This is a story about two sisters (ages 13 and 9 I think) that accidentally get super-powers. If you think you’ve heard that before too many times think again. This is a fresh spin on an old idea. It’s told mostly from the point of view of the girls themselves and it’s a winner. Anyone familiar with Brian Bendis’s other work on Marvel’s Avengers or Ultimate Spider-Man knows that he is a master of dialogue. This is no exception. The banter between the two sisters (especially the over the top excitement from the little one) is terrific. The cartoony artwork by Michael Oeming does NOT suffer at this smaller size. The backgrounds are pretty sparse. I think more detailed backgrounds would suffer badly at this digest like size, but it just works great here. The colors really pop. Buy this book. Buy it for yourself and buy a copy for any young people in your life. They will thank you & probably come back wanting more. Hopefully Bendis & Oeming won’t make us all wait too long for volume 2.

So I went to see if Chuck Lorre was on Twitter. He IS:

http://twitter.com/#!/realChuckLorre.

But even better he has ALL his show Vanity Cards online here:

http://chucklorre.com

What’s a Chuck Lorre Vanity Card? You know those boxes of text at the end of Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory, Dharma & Greg, Mike & Molly & probably a few others I’m not aware of or have forgotten. The only way to really read them WAS to pause the TiVo and then force the pause bar thing away. Now thanks to the site you can read them all quite easily!

My big awesome HP LP2475w 1920×1200 24 inch LCD monitor started having a strange black streak faintly visible on the right side of the screen image but only against certain pastel colors. Well this is no cheap TN LCD panel so I figured it would have some warranty left. So I called HP.

Well after a LOT of back & forth over the phone with about 6 different HP (and HP subcontractor) reps they finally managed to get the replacement monitor too me. Although this was a Business Level Warranty deal three out of the six folks I talked to over the phone were quite obviously in some third world nation & I could barely understand ANYTHING they said. And don’t get me wrong I’m NOT one of those people that always say crap like that and revel in making fun of “foreigner speak”. I can normally understand VERY thick accents. After all I did grow up on Monty Python and Morecambe & Wise. Also my first boss at the TJX Distribution Center back in 1986 was Peruvian and virtually none of the local workers here in Evansville, Indiana could understand him. I was (not exaggerating here) his “translator” at the start of each shift. He would tell everyone what to do and then the group would look at me and Jacinto would say: “Larry – you tell them”. Seriously.

Anyway these guys I could NOT understand. Clearly HP is behind Dell in the area of “choosing good Bangalore phone clerks” department!

During the initial conversations with HP they actually insisted that I have an in-home Service Tech “install” my replacement monitor!

How does one “install” a monitor???

I thought that was pretty insane but he wouldn’t have it any other way. But over the course of the next few days I got calls from other HP reps and HP delivery reps and eventually I did get one to change the order to a delivery only & this person was also a little confused that the first HP rep wanted to have someone “install” a monitor! It took me a week to get the replacement even though HP sent it down Next Day air to the local HP reps. They could only give me a delivery window during hours that I work my day-shift job when no one is at home so they had to hold the thing until Friday (my day off). Why they couldn’t allow me to come pick the thing up I will never know since the place they shipped it to seemed to be right here in my town. CRAZY.

Equally crazy is the way I kept getting calls from other continents that kept getting my address wrong. They botched the zip code 3 times and wanted to send my replacement to “Sulfur, Indiana” instead of Evansville, Indiana. I corrected them 3 times and three time they continued to give the local delivery people the WRONG address! Why couldn’t the delivery people that are in the SAME CITY as I AM simply deal with me directly? Eventually they did and I did get my replacement screen.

And it’s a beauty! I ran a free app called “Dead Pixel Buddy” to help me look for flaws and I found NONE. My old unit had 7,999 hours on the backlight. The info screen reports 2 hours on this one as of right now -which is pretty odd since It’s been on since I got it unpacked at around 10:00 am this morning (it’s now 5:09 PM). Anyone know why that is? Part of the time it was asleep but still. Does the backlight counter only update after a power off/on cycle? I don’t know. I will have to Google that I suppose.

So here I am switching again. That is dumping the traditional 32 page stapled comic book in favor of hard cover and softcover collected editions. Of course I’m only doing this for NEW comics. I still prefer the original format for the old stuff. But honestly about 95% of everything written in comics today is really intended for the collected format. They read BEAUTIFULLY in nice collected arcs (typically 4-12 issues or 88 to 260 pages). I will continue to complete the great old stuff like Werewolf By Night, Tomb of Dracula, etc. in “real” “comic book” comic form. But as of now I’m out of the 32 pager for $2.99 -3.99 cover price business. It just had to be done. It should save me a bit of space in the ComicBook Room and maybe even a bit of money -but NOT MUCH. Lets take a look at a cost breakdown for the typical newish comicbook run:

Marvel’s Avengers Volume One (2009) this collects the 2009 series issues 1-6. Amazon has it right now for $16.49 (34% off of cover price) Cover price is $24.99. This is for the hardcover. The math on this comes out to about 12.5 cents a page (Amazon) or 18.9 cents a page at standard retail list.

IF you had bought the same story as they came out in 32 page (22 without ads) chunks it would have cost you about 13.5 cents a page (at $2.99 cover price) or 8.13 cents a page (@40% off by PRE-Ordering online).

Another option is the Trade Paperback (softcover) collected format. The math on this is 10.29 cents a page (Amazon) or 15.14 cents a page (retail list).

Just looking at the raw math the 32 pager pre-ordered online from an etailer like DCBS seems to be the clear winner. BUT there are hidden costs (at least for ME) in the form of Bags and Boards. Hardcover books if moderately cared for have a nice long life sitting on a normal shelf. Tradepaperbacks aint so bad either. But “real” comicbooks need a fair amount of “care and feeding”. They need a proper box/lid and they also need a board and a bag. If you use ANYTHING other than Mylar you are just making a bad situation worse and in time (5-20 years depending on various factors) that cheap plastic bag will degrade, yellow and eventually start to destroy your books. I put all my comics in Mylite2s from E.Gerber. I buy in lots of 500. Even at this quantity they ADD about 30 cents an issue or 1.36 cents a page (only counting story pages here).

So the single 32 pager pre-ordered online is STILL cheapest at 9.49 cents a page (this now includes a nice Mylar bag & board). But this does NOT put a dollar figure on the Pain in the Ass factor. I’m talking about the time and labor of messing around with bags and board, boxes and lids and all that jazz. Sure its “fun” for a while but in time it does get old. And let me tell you mylar bags are NOISY. When one is trying to read a comic or two at night when the wife’s asleep you DO NOT want to be rattling a crispy/crinkly mylite bag! Trades and hardcover are virtually silent in comparison!

Now all the calculations above were assuming we are dealing with the $2.99 cover price of the typical modern comicbook. Sadly many comics are now $3.99 and many more soon will be. The math on this is:

10.86 (naked without bag or board) pre-ordered online or 18.13 (naked -standard cover price)

WOW

Shipping -lets not forget the shipping cost. Amazon has free shipping for all orders over $24.99. This is easily met so effectively my hardcovers and trades will have NO SHIPPING charge. At DCBS I currently pay $6.25 per month for UPS ground – a good deal to be sure but this adds (averaging book numbers here) about 16 cents an issue or .75 a story page. Not a lot but a little.

And don’t even get me started on how much Pain in the Ass factor is added by having to order all your comics months in advance. Trust me it sucks.

Amazon.com here I come.

The last few days for some reason I’ve been on a mini quest to learn about the Mac. Call me “bi-curious” computer wise I guess!

Anyway I watched a few videos on the Apple site that explained how to do common stuff on a PC and then showed the equivalent on a Mac. So now I am quite knowledgeable on the basic GUI and stuff. I feel like I could now sit in front of a current Mac and go straight into anything I would need. My impressions:

1) GUI -beautiful! That Dock is a work of friggin art!

2) Animations – all the eye candy effects as you open/close/minimize stuff is crazy impressive!

3) The hardware itself is friggin’ BEAUTIFUL. Aluminum. Thin. Nice. Again elegant works of ART.

Then I went to the store side and pretended to buy one. This is where my brief love affair ENDED. That stuff is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over-priced. Of course we have all known this for some time but the price difference doesn’t really hit home until you see it loaded up in the cart staring you in the face. It is in a word – INSURMOUNTABLE.

The cheapest Mac is the Mac Mini at $699.99 for 700 bucks you get:

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
2GB RAM (LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
320GB HD (Gee I didn’t known they still made many that small)
GeForce 320 graphics

The cheapest Mac portable and also something very similar in size to my Netbook is the Mac Air 11 inch at $999.99

* 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
* 2GB memory
* NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics
* 64GB Flash Storage (No HD I guess)

And one odd thing to note – NO ETHERNET PORT. What the hell??????????? The cheapest Netbook has an Ethernet port but not this pricey Mac?? WHY??

Clearly the specs on the Macbook Air 11 inch are far superior to my Acer 10 inch Netbook. But my Acer only cost $248.00 (+32.00 for an additional 1GB of RAM). At 3x the price is the Mac 3x the machine????????

Much better CPU -YES
Same RAM -NO
Better graphics -YES
Faster but WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY less storage (I have 160GB) -NO

So I dunno maybe the 11 incher IS worth $1,000.00 but if you are a middle-lower classed joe can you afford to spend a grand on a tiny portable?

On the desktop side the Apple Tax is much more apparent as the PC walks all over any thing Apple has to offer when you factor in the cost versus performance. So switching to the Mac isn’t something many people can probably afford to do. But I do have to admit the next time I look at portables I will take a hard look at the Air series. That’s probably all I will do but I WILL look.

http://lrpctech.com/filez/list.html

Now keep in mind the above version is one I did some slight editing to in order to fit more in smaller spaces. I changed the font size and cleaned up a few extraneous formatting bits and that helped a lot. But the resulting file is still a real bitch to navigate on an iPod sized screen.

I’ve tried with various phones and iPods and they all SUCKED. I had the best luck with an Amazon Kindle (and that after running it through a Mobi Pocket creator converter app). But while the Kindle displayed it nicely the eReader’s d-pad control is pretty slow and “clunky”. Next I bought the new Nook Color 7 inch eReader/Android Tablet. This has a gorgeous IPS LCD screen running 1024×600:

I had really high hopes for this but even at 1024×600 the letter navigation bar at the top of my report was pretty unusable (couldn’t accurately click letters). And I made a somewhat disgusting discovery – Touchscreens are NASTY! I will NEVER get used to touchscreens! It’s so gross. My OCD kicks into overdrive with these! I spent more time trying to wipe skin oil and particles of dirt off the screen then I did reading it! I can’t stand someone touching my monitors and I enjoy smearing oils from my own skin on one of these just about as much! It’s just gross. Touchscreens are NOT for me.

So I took back the Nook Color and for the SAME $250.00 I got a 10 inch Acer Aspire Netbook running the same 1024×600 resolution:

Even with the abbreviated screen size this tiny laptop has no problems displaying/navigating my list. I imagine that’s because unlike iPods, phones and tiny tablets it’s running a REAL Operating System (Windows) and therefore can use the proper programs to get the job done. Of course I wouldn’t wanna use something like this for “serious” work or even to replace my 15 inch laptop but for my specific purpose (and I suspect many many other things) it works great. I have Windows 7 Home Premium running on mine (it came with Win7 Starter but I formatted the thing as soon as I got it out of the box and did my own setup) & it even runs Windows Aero desktop beautifully with it’s rather modest specs:

1024×600 on a 10 inch screen
Intel Atom N450 1.66ghz
1 gig of DDR2 RAM
Intel 3150 graphics
160 gig hard drive

And best of all – no wiping grease all over the screen just to use it!