I’ve updated some of my firearms content with better or more pictures. I also added a couple more pieces. That new digital camera really produces large images to work with. I can’t wait to get these new pieces to the range to try out.

Firing Line got a new website. I really like it. It’s not perfect, but I’m sure they’ll work the kinks out eventually. If they keep it updated, it’ll be great. It’s one of the nicest looking websites for a manufacturer, gunsmith, gunshop, or range I’ve seen yet. Good job guys!

I just did some CSS changes to fix some page displays in Internet Explorer. I haven’t really been testing much in IE, because I rarely use it. In fact, I’ve done more testing in Konquerer than IE. Since both Konquerer and Firefox displayed the same I thought I had things right. Well, that was wrong and I had some weird shifting and column wrapping crop up on me in some odd places. After much playing around I think I’ve squashed those bugs. I’ve only tested IE version 6, so I have no idea if it’s broken in other IE versions as of yet. Konquerer and Firefox both seem fine still. I’m starting to dislike CSS, but maybe I should just be complaining about Microsoft’s support for it. If they would just fix their JPEG renderer so my gradients would appear smoother in IE too.

We went to watch Yours, Mine & Ours today. Despite the mediocre reviews, I really enjoyed it. Is it realistic? No. Is it fun? Yes. I think the casting was quite good, the actors played their parts well, and the story was nice. The only bit of annoyance I have is with David Koechner’s character Darrell. It was an added comic relief that wasn’t required. This was reminiscent of the family movies of my childhood. It has a little bit for everyone, and expresses the many personality types children come in and how they could actually get along (eventually). Think Brady Bunch meets the von Trapp’s, and brought up to the year 2005. It’s a great family film.

I managed to get over to Muvico to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on Thanksgiving Day. I really enjoyed it. I think it was the best one yet. A simple measure is the fact that I didn’t fall asleep watching it. I don’t think I stayed awake for any of the others. As I had read in many reviews, this movie is definitely darker. I don’t agree that it should be considered a horror film. It’s quite appropriate for the audience of readers that the book was intended. Having not read the book, I can’t comment on what was or wasn’t cut from the story, but I believe that the movie could have been made another 15 or 20 minutes longer without feeling overly long. My suggestion is that if you like the series, be sure to go watch it. It’s one of the best movies in the theaters for the last several months. In my mind, I haven’t seen quite as good a movie in the theaters since Batman Begins.

Black Friday has been a good one. We got to Best Buy just after 5am and waited in the line that wrapped 3/4 the way around the outside of the store. It was a bit nippy standing out there. There were signs that some people had apparently been out there in line a long time. There were chairs, and lots of beverage containers scattered everywhere (even some really nice ones). I hope they got what they were looking for. We managed to pick up a new digital camera. In fact, we just really lucked out on getting it.

We got home a bit before 8am and decided to nap. Well, we thought it would be a nap. It wound up lasting until the evening.

Then we decided to go to Tunica for Hollywood Casino’s Epic Buffet. On Fridays they have all you can eat seafood (including lobster). I managed to eat 4 lobsters. I will loosely call it “all you can eat”. It was really more of an “all you can wait”. They couldn’t cook the lobsters fast enough so you had to stand in line to go through the buffet and I’m talking a long line. I went through one that took me 20 minutes. At least I’m sure I got my money’s worth in crab and lobster alone. Since it’s winter, we didn’t have to deal with the mosquitos, which was nice. They had a bunch of mosquitos in there the last time we were there. I’m stuffed and need to take another nap.

Well, it was bound to happen to me. My several few tests of the new DivX Showsqueeze options were great, so I decided that I would try doing a show with automatic Showsqueeze (and automatic deletion of the source MPEG). In watching it the next day, it was aweful. The audio was out of sync as others had reported on the Snapstream forums. I’m glad the recording wasn’t one of my regular shows, but it was a pretty big disappointment to see it happen. I guess I won’t be relying on it to save me some disk space.

I hit the range again. My Makarov ran 1450 rounds through it today without a single hitch. I wish all my firearms ran so well. I think I finally figured out what works for me to increase my accuracy. I’m a pretty bad shot with anything, but I really improved my pistol accuracy quite a bit today. I cut my group size by at least two thirds. The RAV-22 ran pretty well, but was still not perfect. I got a new jam today. Apparently, the spent casing is pulled from the chamber, but instead of ejecting, it just goes straight ahead and then plants itself over the feed ramp. That wasn’t so nice. Fun little rifle though. I am absolutely positive I can “draw” a smiley face with it on a target. Did I mention it’s fun? I’m starting to feel the after effects now. My wrists are starting to hurt and my grip is gone. Oh well.

I had my suspicions pretty well confirmed when I left for my last exam today. My bicycle seat has been pretty well trashed this semester. It’s been quite mysterious, but I suspected it was this bird I’d seen hanging around the bike rack. Turns out this bird nests in the bushes there and spends it’s time picking on the bike. It took a liking to mine. Today I saw it happily perched on it’s handle bars half asleep. It only flew off as I got close and made some noise. Arrrg! At least it has lasted this long.

Done with all three exams now. All I have left to do is finish a quiz and do some exam corrections for Monday and I’m home free! I really need this upcoming break.