All posts by MadOgre

Gear

I’m not happy with Wegner.

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Some time ago, I purchased a Swiss Army Wegner wrist watch.   Silver bracelet, blue face, “Military” model.  Looks good.  You’ve seen it in many Ogre Videos.  And then The Nightcrawler Effect hit me.  And the watch ejected off my wrist like a Jet Fighter Pilot struck by a Sidewinder.

So I sent the watch back to Wegner to get the bracelet fixed and the crystal (which had been scratched) replaced.   After 3 months the watch came back.  With a bracelet that was so small I could only get 4 fingers of my hand through.  WTF?  And the scratched crystal was still there. So I send it back.  This time it came back with bracelet that fit perfectly.  And its still scratched.  I’ll leave it like that.

However, I no longer want it.  I’ve replaced it with a Nixon.  “The Scout”.    So… I’ll put that Swiss Army Wegner Watch up for Trade.   Make an interesting offer.

Training

How to Not Shoot Yourself. By Daniel Shaw

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Guest post:  How to Not Shoot Yourself.  By Daniel Shaw

 Shooters who subscribe to the Ogre’s blog or social networking sites were likely to have seen, in late June, the YouTube video of a gentleman who was doing some training that resulted in him shooting himself in the leg. From his language and the way he handled the pistol after shooting himself, I gathered that he was not a novice. His main purpose of posting the embarrassing video was to let viewers know that negligent discharges could happen to anyone. Even the most skilled and experienced shooters can make bad decisions through complacency and those decisions could lead to an accidental discharge.

Continue reading How to Not Shoot Yourself. By Daniel Shaw →

Gear

CRKT, I don’t like them.

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CRKT makes a lot of good looking blades… and they are popular with a lot of my friends and other Gun Owners who are into knives.  However there is something about CRKT that is a bit off.

For one thing, it’s their locks… or LAWKS as they say.  Gimmicky locking mechanisms don’t make a for a good blade.  A good blade is all about the blade.  And CRKT has some great looking ones, but the company takes shortcuts.  Steel quality, heat treatments… I don’t know what it is with these guys but every blade I’ve had from CRKT has gone dull faster than knife made from silly putty.  You take any CRKT knife and it can be made twice as good if they had got rid of the silly gimmicks and concentrated on making really good blades.  Like Buck.  It used to be that I’d not own a Buck.  Now I’ve purchased a couple and they are great knives.  Why?  They have great blades.  A knife is a sharp edge of metal… the cutting edge is the most important.  Everything else is just to make that edge usable.   Now I know others will say that they had great luck with their CRKT knives.  And that’s fine.  But I use my knives hard.  I’m not saying you don’t, just that my other knives hold their edges a lot better.

Government

It’s going to hurt?

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It’s going to hurt he says.  What is going to really smart is the thrashing the Democrats are going to get come the 2012 elections.

The American Economy is a huge engine.  Extremely powerful.  Powerful enough to spin us, and to spin the economy of many other countries.  But ever since the Democrats took over Congress, it all started going downhill.  Then the Democrats took the White House as well and everything has gone to hell in a handbasket.  We hear the Whitehouse talk about all the jobs they have created… Horseshiat.   They don’t create jobs.  All the Government can do is to choke jobs.  Strangle growth.  I believe in this Nation… and I believe that it can be healed and can regain its momentum.   And a lot faster than the Democrats think.  The Administration needs to take the weight off this great engine.  But they are not going to do it.  What is going to have to happen is to get a regime change.  When that happens, we’ll get some momentum back.

 

Uncategorized

Uprising: UK

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It looks like Uprising: UK is going to come out to be about 300 pages.   A much more manageable sized book.  While I am going through and basically rewriting it, I am being careful to give it more atmosphere.  Uprising: US was basically all about the action.  UK is going to be more about the atmosphere and I want to give it more tension building up to the action and then make that action sudden and brutal.

Some scenes in U:UK were very tight, fast, and then we jumped ahead.  Well, I want to make some of these scenes bigger.  Such as when there was a downed aircraft and a missing character.  That scene needs to be expanded.   Then there is the death of a different character, and that should probably get more time as well.   More visual, more detail, and make this story something more important than just an action/horror genre.   Because while U:UK has zombies in it, it’s not really a zombie story.  It takes a turn for the super natural… and I think it takes Uprising to a new, higher level.

The stories as written by the other Uprising authors, are being worked on… and when they are finished, these are going to be some works that you will not want to miss.  In all honesty, they are some of the best writing I’ve ever read.   And this makes me feel strange.   I kinda think they have done a better job than I have done… I started this, created this Uprising Universe, and these are the guys that have taken it and run with it…  Which makes me the George Lucas of Zombies.  Neat.  Now I need to grow a ridiculous mop of hair, a huge beard, and wear flannel.    Okay, no… I wont go there.  But this does make me think… who is my Jar-Jar?  I think that would be Musket.  Musket is my Jar-Jar.

The next books in the Uprising Series is going to be in Russia… and then to China where the Uprising was all started.  But I don’t know how it all ends.   We shall have to wait and see.

Uncategorized

The Eagle

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I watched an interesting movie about a Roman Centurion who takes it upon himself to recover the Eagle totem of the lost 9th Legion.  I thought it was very well done and was quite interesting.   To a point.

The film makers did a great job on the Romans.  They took all sorts of time creating everything to look historically accurate.  And then they take the Romans north of Hadrian’s Wall and it all turned to crap.   Evidently the film makers want the Romans to look clean and shiny and the Scots to look like they are soggy and smeared in scat.  Until they get very far north and run into the Huron Tribe of Native Americans.  They called the tribe the Seal Tribe, supposedly some primitive Celts of some sort, but I forgot I was watching The Eagle and thought I was watching Last of the Mohicans.    I take umbrage at this.  The Scots of this time were indeed rather primitive and rustic… but they didn’t look like Indians and they didn’t shave their heads and they didn’t build silly little tents on the edges of north facing cliffs.  The film makers had a hard time filming on that location because of wind and rain blowing down their tents and such.   That should be a clue.  If you are wearing layers of Columbia Arctic Gear, Rain Gear and you have to keep putting the set back together… you can probably imagine that the Early Scots in that area were not shaving their heads, running around naked with ash smeared all over them and living in wig-wams.   They probably had long hair, wore a lot of furs, and built houses of some sort that could stand up to the weather they are living in.  Even the early Scots had a distinct culture and society.  They had standards of dress and hygiene.  Just because they were not Roman didn’t mean they were cave-men.

So The Eagle had great Romans… and the Scots were rubbish.

Uncategorized

I’m going to kill my Facebook account

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I’ve decided that I am going to kill my Facebook account.  I’m going to switch to Google+.  I don’t really know why I did Facebook in the first place… but I kind of liked it.  And then all the sudden I started getting Friend Requests from not just people who I don’t know… but also from Companies I never heard of.  If you are company that wants to be my friend – give me something.  A gesture.  Not access to my Friends List.   It’s just all too unwieldy now.  With Google+ I’m only going to accept people who I actually know.  If I don’t know you… that’s too bad.  My friends on WTA and such are welcome, Family of course, but if you are from Romania and I don’t know you and can’t pronounce your name… I’m sorry.

Probably by the end of the month I’ll kill my Facebook account.