Everytime I looked at the date today it kept bugging me. I knew there was something that happend on this date that I should remember.
Figured it out tonight. It’s the birthday of my late great grandfather, Andrew Buist.
It’s also the birthday of my still living uncle Daniel too.
About a year and a half ago Abject Disappointment was browsing through a picture filled book I had just bought on small arms of the 20th century at the local pub. Flipping through it he stumbled upon something that made him exclaim out loud, “What the fuck?!”
Me: “It’s from Japan.”
AD: “Figures.”
Odds are if you see a picture of a horribly awkward looking firearm from the 20th century it’s going to be Japanese. There’s just something about the Japanese firearms designers. I can’t explain it.
Tonight I stumbled upon a great example of the asshattery of Japanese gun designs: The Type 94 Pistol
The slide covers the entire top of the frame and barrel. The pistol is cocked by pulling back on the milled ears at the rear (which until I actually got one of these I always thought that was the hammer). Doing this forced the designer to put the sear bar (which releases the trigger) in an exposed position. That long bar on the side that terminates just above the trigger is the sear. Light pressure on that bar - fires the pistol. You could fire it putting it in your holster. You could fire it by flopping down on your holster. So - you didn’t carry it with anything up the spout… meaning you gave the other guy the second or so it took to cycle the slide. A second or so in combat can literally be a lifetime.
Follow the link if you’re interested. A quick and dirty history lesson and pictures can be found there.
Crap. It’s been almost a week since any updates.
Couple things going in my life right now. One is a new job. Sort of. I’m actually just changing positions within the company and moving to a different department. So, I’ll soon be working on a different portion of the same project. There’s multiple reasons behind this and I’m pretty stoked about it.
Trying to catch up on my sleep this week, too. Friday after work I hopped into the Jeep and drove to Minneapolis to visit the lady friend. She’d been out there for two weeks already on business and isn’t coming home until the end of this week. As a bonus Abject Disappointment was out that way too so we all met up and had a beer. Left Grand Rapids, MI at 6:00pm Friday and arrived there at 6:00am. I took a loopy route and got stuck in some Chicago traffic. Left there at 2:30pm on Sunday evening and at 5:00pm I realized I had been heading west on I-94 instead of east. I finally figured it out 90 miles from the border with North Dakota. So, I didn’t get home until 5am Monday morning.
That sucked. The trip was still worth it, but the return home was not pleasant. Fourteen and a half hours on the road with about 9 hours sleep combined over the previous two nights.
I’m trying to get back on a regular schedule now.
So, that said, back to your irregularly scheduled blog.