Jonnin

You can use VS with a makefile -- it will import them sometimes if they are not unixed to death.  By default it uses an enhanced version (solution file) with more crap in it.  But I do not care what it does under the covers: I just like the project options checkbox type interface, blow&go project setup.  Its the hand editing of cryptic gibberish that I will no longer tolerate.    I also like assembly.  VS allows you to poke it right in the code, and is a little flexible on how you use it too, you can for example tap the variable names from your high level code directly without having to do the address lookup and tedious bits.  I don't do much of that either, though one of the places I do it often is for network vs PC byte order (integer byte order issue).  The intel family has a command that will flip it in a register, faster and easier than the byte manipulation code.     I can see QT for cross platform but its clunky and feels like what I had to use over 2 decades ago.   Cross platform is over-rated.  The mac and unix people *swear* that their emulation is better than running it directly on a PC.  Let em emulate it then, no need to go out of my way to use a junky tool when their virtual machine is sooooo much better than my PC.

It depends on the gun.  If the gun has no real value as-is due to poor condition, commonplace model, etc, then you can actually increase its value with work.  If its a rare example of an antique, or worse, one of a kind, having work done ruins the value in a hurry.   And there is the in-between of that too... you have the destructive a-hats like mitchel mauser who ruin collectable guns and then try to sell them at 5 times the value to suckers ... so even if you ruin it, you can always find a sucker to sell it to who is like "oooo... shiny".

Old growth oak -- you *may* be able to find a guy with a portable saw mill or who will clean the mess in exchange for the wood.     It should be a standing law that one cannot cut a live, healthy tree older than oneself.   People that cut down a 200+ year old oak because it was in the way ....   sigh.   Value as in property value / happy woods feeling/ etc is about $100k per year of growth of the tree.    Value in terms of lumber is fairly low due to the logistics of recovery.... its almost worthless to a pro due to only getting 2 trees for a ton of work.  Its of some value to a hobby guy -- free lumber for a weeks work.  

Use what you like.  Single point is good for small rifles or big pistols, and 3-point is the "can do anything" approach.  The big question is this: is your sling to carry the rifle or a shooting accessory?  If you plan to use the sling as part of your shooting method, to stabilize or control the gun, the 3 point is a good choice for an AR.  If you just want to haul the rifle, an old school strap (2 point?) is all you need.   The 2 point can be used for stability as well -- wrap the front around your hand and use it like a fore-end grip, but the 3 point offers more options if you don't mind fiddling with the straps to get it there.    Personally, since my AR has a foregrip and a bipod, the sling is to carry it, but my wife picked out a 3 point anyway so I have the full block and tackle setup in my way. 

I can't paste on IE 11, and pasting has been flaky on other browsers as well.   I had to go to IE-11 because FF kept firing up a rogue task that has a memory leak, hopefully they will fix that soon but it was making me reboot my system.  I rebooted more in the last month than in the past 2 years due to that.   (I actually think it was the lastest flash for FF that was awol, but I got tired of fighting it for now).   

  My stuff is mostly "big embedded" whatever that means haha.  Full systems -- you can run windows etc on em these days, but still embedded, think PC-104 or these days, our current project has a tablet PC running windows 8 (razor? Or spelled different? ).   I do the work on a 6 year old PC running windows XP pro and an older version of visual studio.  Most of what I do is real time,  the bulk of it command and control (think remote operator) so message transmission, parse, and then convert that to the command to the hardware, etc.  Also some controls (mostly linear algebra but controls people like to make it overly complicated).    I consider GCC to be 1980s tech.  If it needs a makefile, its broken, I am *done* with those aggravating things.  The IDE had better manage the project for me flawlessly, or I will not use it (given a choice of course).  If it does not have auto complete for object fields, I will not use it.   Just tried something called QT and you had to actually hand-write the handlers for GUI components, and the layout looks nothing like the actual result, it was awful, about like visual was --- version 2.0 for windows 3.1 ...     Visual has problems, but it can't be beat for handling the time waster stuff automatically and increasing productivity.  Older I get, the less patience I have with the hands-on unix way of doing things.   I don't want to micromanage every detail, I want the darn thing finished so I can move on.

hmm.  Looks like someone took an advanced training drill and made it horribly unsafe.   The drill has merits --- changing direction quickly.  The problem is the shooters doing it do not have the skill set to be doing this yet.  Also, its a drill you would practice with a fake firearm.  Also, its a drill you would do one on one with a qualified instructor.  Also, its downright dangerous to be doing it in a group with live guns and untrained shooters.   Basically, the instructor did not know what he was doing and the shooters lack the common sense and training to complain about the obviously unsafe environment.   Its the old "beware the guy that knows a little" problem.     And, then there is the move itself.  Again, it would be of some use in some circumstances, but at what cost?   Grabbing a mini-gun and doing a 360 has merits in some situations too, but its not something you want to DO as a LEO that might be in a firefight in the middle of a city!!    The move is dangerous and, if done at all, should be reserved for a few top shooters in the special forces, not a bunch of people that look like they can barely do a 180 without falling down.

If you want to do it on the cheap, why not get a long barrel for one of your existing setups?   It takes all of 5 min to swap the barrel on a typical "A5" type design.

Its hard to say.  Refinish did nothing for its value but decrease it.    A lot of those guns are parts guns -- the army took them all apart, dumped the parts into buckets, and then put them back together (discarding worn out parts as they went) on multiple occasions.    So it just depends on what it is ... if its an all original in excellent condition and all that is "wrong" with it is a refinish job, it could  be worth over $1k, and up from there.   If its just a parts gun that has been refinished and possibly who knows what else (part replacements, tampering) or if heavily worn, it could be worth just a few hundred.  Its just not a question that I think can be answered from a picture.    But look at it this way: if it is not worn out to the point of being worthless, well its going to be better made and more classy than the cheapest 1911s new which are $500+.  So, if it shoots and you like the idea of an older pistol, its worth at least as much as say a new RIA or taurus etc type pistol in terms of "practical" value.   So you can safely say its 500-700 or so in "value" just as a shootable 1911 pistol, ignoring any value added for being old (again, assuming its not worn out).

While I am a big fan of the lee turret press, if you ONLY wanted to load rifle, I would say to save money with a single stage press.  Why?  Because you have to take the brass off the press after you size it to trim it, making the turret into a single stage, effectively.    However, if you plan to load ANY ammo that does not require trimming (straight walled pistol cases, mostly) the turret is very much worth getting.  If you are unsure of what you might do, get the turret.   Even now, if you use cheap components, you can still make 9mm for ~50% of the store price and most other calibers save you much more than this esp magnum revolver or small auto (380, 32 etc).    If you shoot a lot, you want a case trimmer.  I tried the drill route and it works, but it gets old fast.  I finally let my wife buy me a motorized dedicated machine for it and it is 1000 times better.   If you shoot a lot and are not trying to win the long range match competition with your loads,  the lee disk powder device works pretty well to get the powder in the case rapidly.  As with any volumetric device, small particle powder (ball) reduces air space and helps consistency.  Same would be true if you used a spoon to dip it.    Most everything else was covered.   I am a cheapskate, so my table cost about $10.  I bought a small piece of plywood, cut that into 2  pieces 2 foot square and nailed them onto a 4x4 cut into 4 legs (so its 2 plywood thick).   It did not break when I was reforming 30-06 brass by brute force, so that is sturdy enough for most reloading tasks.   Walmart type plastic bins to store things, or whatever, but you will need some storage esp if you branch out to more calibers, components take up some space esp if you buy the big jugs of powder.  

Some 1911s have a pretty slick trigger.   Not usually the ones carried, but its the CYA factor --- not knowing YOUR 1911, people recommend the safety being on in case its one of "those" with the 1 pound trigger and near zero travel.   A typical off the shelf mid grade 1911 usually has enough trigger slop and weight to be as safe as a glock, agreed.  But every glock is identical.  Not all 1911s are.  You know what you are getting into when you talk glock.   Not so 1911:   YOURS is 6 pounds.  Someone elses may be less than 1/3 of that...   Modern 1911s are drop safe IFF they have not been tampered with.  But there are tons of shade-tree 1911 home trigger jobs and some of those WILL slip if dropped if the safety is off.   YOURS is safe.    So, what it comes down to is that you can say with confidence that YOUR 1911 is safe to carry without the safety on.   But you can't say that as a blanket statement about all 1911 due to the questionable condition of some older ones,  potentially unsafe modifications,  ultra tweaked target pistols, and other such things.

Well well, looky who didn't veto it...    

windows still owns the games too.   Macs have been half decent since they moved to not quite unix back with os 10, but they still cost more across the board and still many games simply do not work on them, or have to be run through slow emulators.    Windows has a lot of problems, but 90% of them are caused by one of 2 things: illiterate users and bad drivers for offbrand hardware.   Mac still has a heavy hand on hardware vendors and drivers, so its not so easy for vendors to crank out garbage and sell it at worst buy to people that just don't know any better.   Instead, they pay up more and are forced to buy higher quality goods.  That is not a bad thing, but you can't blame the OS for sorry PC hardware, is the point.   And no one bothers to write much malware for mac, because the bulk of mac users make up what, 5% of the target systems?   If I had to do *actual work* on a computer, I would be happy with a mac if it had a quality (think, visual studio) set of tools.  I dunno if it does or not, last time I used one, it was like a bad 1984 rehash -- the tools were terribad.   I don't do legit work on my home pc, at least not much -- its a toy, and windows+pc is a better toy, always has been, more bang for the buck.

I would not begin to know how to use the venom to make an antidote.  Now, I would not mind having a supply of it for nefarious purposes in a  SHTF scenario ....    some of that good stuff that clots all your blood in like 10 seconds would be a nice tool against zombies.     This stuff http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/20/heres-what-snake-venom-does-to-blood/     which might be useful to stop bleeding, but its too dangerous for anyone but a medical pro.

usually once fired is a loose description of brass that is mostly and *should be* once fired.   For example -- a range that does not allow reloads sells brass as once-fired, on the assumption that most of it is.   But a few reloads may be sneaked onto the place, etc.    Or a military source of 223 hulls, for example.    Or a shooter who does not reload but collected his once fired brass (here again, could pick up a stray if its a public range or something).     So, mostly, its a good faith description that most of the brass is indeed once fired, though when talking every single piece, a few used pieces may slip in.   A lot (most? many?) of places will put in extra cases to counter any problems, such as an occasional non-brass case or a damaged case etc. 

In my experience blue screens are usually bad drivers.  Try booting in safe mode, if that works, proceed to back up and then  roll back any recent driver updates.   Also loose hardware like a video card that is partly out of socket can do it.   check disk has some value though ntfs supposedly automatically avoids disk errors as it verifies files after writing them.    a spare disk backup is fine.  Mirror the drive if you can, if not, get your data at least.    A lesser known and rarely seen red screen means epic hardware failure.

it looks fine to keep a kid's fingers out of there.   It would probably take a creative adult about 30 min to remove so its probably not much use for anything other than kids or grab and use scenarios.

test the ammo and gun apart from yourself.  That is, lock the gun down in a rest and test it, see how it groups.  Once you find the ammo it likes (making your own is probably best) to get the tight groups, then you can see what it will do with a human holding it etc.  I would say try it at 100 and 200 yards.      You could always contact colt and ask them what ammo they use for their test targets.   They may have a recipe or something.  

  The tests also get borked up by having 8 inch barrel revolvers compared to 3 inch CCW autos.   Ballistics by the inch has a 125 gr corbon round in both coming out of a 3 inch barrel as pretty close, with the sig actually having more velocity in that case.   For those same rounds, the sig slowly loses ground to the mag as the barrel length increases, but *at standard semi auto barrel lengths of 3-4 inches* they are very close.  At revolver lengths of 6-8 inches, the mag is superior. 

The reformat disks on cheaper computers are not worth it unless you are in a very bad way.  They re-install all the spyware and junkware and adware that come on those machines (oo, gee thanks for the 20 gig 10 day trial of microsoft office...)    and set you up with antique drivers that have to be replaced right away and then you need about 4 days worth of downloading window's updates.    Mirror your drive every few months, and you can *greatly* reduce your losses and the pain of going back a few weeks is minor compared to a total do-over from nothing.    And even a regular, normal windows installer is much better than the rescue disk --- it does not put on the junk at least.     That said, yes HP does the rescue partition, at least on its low end line of best-buy type computers. 

 the 40 and 357 sig are interchangeable with just a barrel swap, so that is neat.  The 357 class is very good for handloaders, you can make anything from a 90 grain 380 to a 170 or so grain 357.   So its a flexible round.  BUT its a necked case which is annoying to reload.    Ballistics say the 357 sig is pretty darn close to a 357 mag, which is an excellent round, whatever "stopping power" even means to YOU, these rounds have "enough" of it as the 357 is time tested and respected in that realm.   However, this is not far off from the top end 9mm defense ammo....   My take on it though is the round is a problem looking for a solution.  The 10mm was a good round: lots of power in a semi auto, for the "magnum" revolver guys to have a nice round to play with in a semi auto.   The .40 was developed because the 10 was too much for non magnum shooters who bought the wrong gun, perhaps thinking it was a step up from a 9mm.   The 357 sig was developed to match the 357 mag --- which would have been easily done by making some 120-ish grain .40 cal bullets!   Personally, I am done with all that.  I spent a lot of time trying to chase down a 10mm, and for a while was looking for that oddball 44 (not 44 mag) auto loader, and I have tried the 40 (hated and sold) and shot a few of the 357 sigs.   Now if I want to shoot a big auto, I have a desert eagle in 44 -- easy to find ammo, easy to load ammo, and I got a sweet deal on the thing used so the gun was not bad either.  If I did not have that, I would probably have returned to my quest for a 10mm.     Can't say what the best gun would be...  pick your favorite .40 and see if you can get a sig barrel for it.  I would say, perhaps a SIG would be a good place to look :)

where it gets tricky is when there is no data at all for what you want to do and you can't even use a close match for a starting point.  But the answer is still the same, make them weak and build up slow.    9mm is a tricky round due to a little bit of OAL trouble (seating too deep) gives a lot of pressure, and when you combine that with a rich variety of usable bullets it can get hairy.  The good news is that if your gun can handle a +P round and you are in the normal data section, you have a built in margin of safety.      For a totally unknown 9mm that you just can't find a close match to --- load it to the max OAL that will chamber in your gun reliably and use the weakest starting load for the same bullet weight you can find, and build up from there.  

nice setup for outdoors. 

a cleaning party sounds fun but standing up with no room to work and wearing a hat indoors??   Trying to do that standing up and without and space, I would come out of there wearing a back undershirt (originally white) ....

malwarebytes is great but it gives false alarms, be careful what you delete.