I was at the range today to test some new defen­sive ammo in my CZ-75, and found that they had finally got in a fresh sup­ply of 9mm. I decided to buy a box and try out a Spring­field XD(M)–the range had the 9mm com­pe­ti­tion model avail­able for rent. I’ve fired numer­ous Glocks (of var­i­ous mod­els) over the years, and never really liked the feel, but I hadn’t tried any of the var­i­ous poly­mer frame striker-fired pis­tols that have come along in recent years to com­pete with them. The XD(M) is a deriv­a­tive of the Croa­t­ian HS2000.

As expected of a polymer-framed pis­tol, the XD(M) was quite light­weight. It prob­a­bly weighs about as much empty as my CZ-83, which seems strange in a much larger pis­tol. Of course, I’m used to all-steel pis­tols, so my weight expec­ta­tions are based on pis­tols which are actu­ally rather heavy by mod­ern standards.

The trig­ger was a pleas­ant surprise–it was much bet­ter than a Glock’s, and roughly on par with my CZ-75 (which has a stock trig­ger). It’s not nearly as good as my M1911 trig­gers, but that’s to be expected. The Glock trig­ger is one of the things I don’t like about that design (I can shoot it accu­rately, but I don’t like the feel), so I was pleased to find that not all striker-fired pis­tols have mushy triggers.

Accu­racy was good. I didn’t shoot quite as well with it as I did with my CZ-75, but then I’d never laid hands on an XD(M) before while I’ve fired thou­sands of rounds through that CZ-75. With greater famil­iar­ity, I’d expect to shoot it just as well. In any case, it was more than suf­fi­ciently accu­rate for self defense use.

A mag­a­zine load­ing device (not sup­plied with the rental gun) is a neces­sity for load­ing the XD(M)‘s 19-round mag­a­zines. Even though a range rental’s mag­a­zine has no doubt seen con­sid­er­able use, I still found load­ing the last few rounds unaided to be very dif­fi­cult (not to men­tion hard on my thumbs).

Over­all, I was impressed enough that I’d def­i­nitely con­sider buy­ing one at some point, albeit after some rifles I’m cur­rently more inter­ested in.

Provo doesn’t know where its fiber is, Google makes city spend $500,000 to find it.

[Ars Tech­nica]

One part of this story in par­tic­u­lar grabbed my atten­tion because of Google’s recently announced plans to bring fiber to Austin:

As we reported pre­vi­ously, Provo tax­pay­ers are still on the hook to pay off the city’s $39 mil­lion bond that was used to fund the network’s construction—the city still col­lec­tively owes $3.3 mil­lion in pay­ments in the next 12 years.

If Google wants to be an hon­est busi­ness and make an invest­ment in fiber infra­struc­ture here in Austin, fol­lowed by charg­ing peo­ple money to use it, great! But if they’re expect­ing the city gov­ern­ment to steal money to pay them to do busi­ness here, then thanks but no thanks.

Quote.

“The ter­ror­ists don’t hate Amer­ica because of its free­doms. The Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats hate Amer­ica because of its Free­dom. The ter­ror­ists hate Amer­ica because of the Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats.” — John Shuey

[End the War on Free­dom]

Let’s get some­thing straight. Any­one who uses a CZ-75…in a shoot­ing com­pe­ti­tion is basi­cally a cheater. This thing is sim­ply too easy to shoot.

MrCo­l­ion­Noir

I’ve only entered one shoot­ing com­pe­ti­tion, ever (I’m not at all com­pet­i­tive and was basi­cally nagged into it), and I used my CZ-75B. Yes, I won.

Any time bombs are used to tar­get inno­cent civil­ians, it is an act of terror.

An evil man who has used bombs to tar­get thou­sands of inno­cent civilians

It’s offi­cial: Google Fiber is com­ing to Austin “by mid-2014”.

[Ars Tech­nica]

There’s no men­tion of where, exactly, they’re going to be installing it. If it comes to my neigh­bor­hood I’ll cer­tainly pay for the $70 package.

Some­times hav­ing a broad gen­eral knowl­edge of fan­tasy lit­er­a­ture can lead to a story you don’t know being given away far in advance. For exam­ple, there’s a scene in episode three of Game of Thrones where one of the char­ac­ters talks about the cul­tural sig­nif­i­cance of drag­ons and how his ances­tors came to power rid­ing on their backs. Right there I can tell where a major part of the story is going, because one of the best known char­ac­ters in fan­tasy is Daen­erys Tar­garyen, Mother of Drag­ons.

I finally got around to watch­ing the begin­ning of Game of Thrones. I’ve never read the books it’s based on, but I get the dis­tinct impres­sion that some of the char­ac­ters were sup­posed to be much younger than they are in the series.

Your Dreams of Own­ing a Dire Wolf Can Finally Come True (Sort Of). You?ve been read­ing or watch­ing Game of Thrones. You?ve lov­ingly lin­gered over the descrip­tions of Gray Wind run­ning into bat­tle with Rob, Sum­mer sleep­ing on Bran?s bed. You cried for Lady and light a can­dle every night for Nymeria. And lately, you?ve caught your­self look­ing back over your lease agree­ment and won­der­ing if “dire wolf” qual­i­fies as an exotic pet. [Wired News]

I’m more of a cat per­son. I’m hold­ing out for a saber­tooth tiger.

In recent years the amount of money the Cal­i­for­nia state gov­ern­ment steals directly from my pay­check had gone up dra­mat­i­cally, far in excess of what they claim for taxes. They do send out tax refund checks, but this was effec­tively a forced no-interest “loan” to peo­ple I loath. I just deposited my last tax refund check from Cal­i­for­nia, and decided to use the money to do some­thing to show what I think of the scum who rule that state. So, I bought 1,000 rounds of 5.56 NATO ammo–a type used by many rifles that they think only they and their enforcers should be allowed to own.