OldIronFan

Oh it certainly looks a bit blocky/chunky, I agree. I guess you don't want delicate but it could probably be slimmed down some and remain durable.

Just over 11 lbs (5.1kg) with suppressor and 1 loaded mag. 8.4lbs for the base rifle. Not crazy by any stretch. Maybe a pound over what I would have envisioned considering the 13" barrel.

Ahh, gotcha. Yeah the sleep study is a pain. Not just from the new hoses and leads but in my case they woke me up at least twice to change or add something. I started out with only the monitors, once they got readings in that state they put the CPAP on me and went again. Then they switched the CPAP setup in the wee hours of the morning again.

My wife sleeps like a log with a CPAP now. She adapted quickly. It actually annoys me more than her these days since I tend to extend an arm out from my pillow and get my hand/arm tangled up in her air tube. She lost weight and generally improved her overall health. She has more energy, wakes up early and rested these days. It also improved her sinus and asthma issues. Breathing filtered humidified air ~7 hours a night has greatly cut back on her breathing issues. She nearly died 30 years ago from pneumonia and suffered permanent lung damage as a result. The CPAP while not reversing any of that has lessened symptoms and side effects to a low annoyance, low maintenance level.

We are thinking of leaving the country for retirement, definitely leaving TN. I do love TN, I have been here 40 years and my wife was born here but once work and family ties/obligations are done we will be looking for a significant change.

I have the MRAD/MK 22 deployment tool kit with the Fix-it-Sticks. Love it and use it on pretty much every firearm I own from scope mounting to chassis/action screws. No issues and I have checked their products against the calibrated torque meter at work we use for all calibration of torque wrenches and limiters in the shop. They have all been very close to nominal. Just be aware that heat from heavy use or just extreme ambient heat can affect the torque limit. Don't try and torque 100 bolts in a row in short order and don't store them in your car in the heat of summer right before use. They are viscous fluid / friction based devices.

"The eForms system is back online as of 4:00 pm on Friday, March 1, 2024." Per the email I received on Friday about 5 pm CST.

The land around me that is being developed, at an alarmingly fast rate, has not been farmed for at least a decade, if ever. Most of that land was either owned by a farmer who has been gone for at least a decade or two and the land was left in Family Land Trust but not actively farmed or was owned by a large land trust for the purpose of speculation/wealth. The only farms that still exist in a ~40 mile radius of me are 30~100 acre hobby farms with less than 100 head of livestock, a few hay fields, or a few 10~20 acre fields of row crop. At least here in my area of Mid TN the ground is too rocky or the hills to extreme to row crop for food production, efficiently or economically at least. The ~30 acre field behind me had soybeans 7 or 8 years ago. That was the last time it was planted. The last planting was left unharvested and the field was returned to weed/brush growth. The cost of the diesel to harvest the beans was greater than the yield from the field would have paid. I think he has partially bush hogged it twice in the last 7 years. Not a huge loss in my opinion, soybeans are horrible and the more fields of those we loose the better off we are. Along those lines our, now sold, family farm was up in Robertson County and in the middle of lots of small to medium sized tobacoo farms. With already low and further decreasing demand for tobacco products much of that land is being repurposed. Some of it went to corn or hay, some of it went to developers, some of it went to livestock but there is a lot of it that is just not actively farmed for any purpose anymore. I don't think the blame is solely on home development even though it hurts to see pretty woods and fields turned into subdivisions.

Back when I had a decent salsa garden (tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, garlic, multiple peppers) I made upwards of 100 pints of salsa every year. Some went to family but we tended to go through at least a jar a week in our house alone. Since I had the water bath canning setup I threw cucumbers into the mix and made ~20 or so jars of pickles annually. I ended up getting pretty good with jams and jellies as well. Friends and family always wanted my jars of pepper jelly and Blackberry jam for Christmas every year instead of gift cards or a bottle of wine. I never got setup to pressure can so I never did try low acid veggies or meats. Now I do not have a garden and the new house is not conducive to starting one. No fences and hordes of deer, rabbit, armadillo, opossum, and skunks make it nearly impossible to keep plants alive that are not right up against the house. If they ever develop the land behind me and I have to put up a fence I might try again. I adopted the square foot gardening raised bed method for my last garden and had some great success with it. Efficient and easy maintenance as well.

A world record Walleye came out of Old Hickory Lake in 1960. In the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's it was a regular practice of northern anglers to come down to Tennessee to walleye fish in the winter to get some "warm weather" fishing in while their home lakes were frozen over. It was nothing for them to pull dozens of walleye out a day. Now there are few if any walleye left in Tennessee. There is a small population in the Caney but it is not significant by any stretch. Licenses and limits are in place for just those sorts of conservation issues. Snag fishing for paddlefish is another prime example, without a limited season and limits there would be no native populations left. Most anglers now target crappie, bass, or catfish not because they are a preferred species but but because they have breeding rates that allowed them to proliferate through extreme overfishing. There is simply not that much else left to target. Even if you are a trout fisherman in Tennessee you are not fishing natural/native populations but rather controlled hatchery spawned populations. Hatcheries paid for by the a portion of your fishing license as others have mentioned.

Or the thought of going to a retail location to stand in line to buy those paper tickets including going hours early if it was a high demand show. To explain it to the young folk. "Apple just launched the latest iPhone and each apple store only gets 100 each of them."

Oh god, trying to stay awake through another showing of the slides when any relatives came to visit. My pops had thousands taken from the window of a C130 over Vietnam, Japan, Guam, and most of the south pacific islands.

Still had three pedals no matter where the gear lever was located. Learned to drive in a 65 Chevy C10. Straight 6, 3 on the tree.

Ammo manufacturing can come with some big issues. Requirements on how much powder you can store, where you store it, how much you can have in a single location, Distance requirements from your storage location to nearby structures and roadways. If you are getting into more commercial level volumes there are a bunch of other things to consider like static discharge prevention. Things that are not a huge concern for a home reloader become a much bigger concern when you start dealing with pallets of powder kegs and primers.

3 Pedals is so rare now. Last time I took my wife's car to a place we needed to valet park I had to do it myself. The no one on the valet staff knew how to drive a manual. Or a well in general even with an electric pump. My grandparents place still had 2 active wells, one with the above hand pump and one with an electric pump out in a small pump house.