Goldfish Part II, What separates my tank from others

This picture features(from left to right) Tom, Schmitty and spastic. This was taken when I tried marble tile for the bottom of the tank and before the plant was eaten.

Goldfish, epically the feeder fish that I have, on there own are not that great. But with any fish it is truly the tank that makes them worth having. My fish tank is a standard fifty gallon tank set up in such a way to make it truly unique. What goes into that is the choice of fish, water management and décor. Now know that décor is were I spent the least amount of time. I focused more on the fish and how water management affects them. My décor only consist of a collection of gravel and a couple of odd shaped aquarium rocks. It is well lit with a natural toned light fixture.

First comes the fish, I went with four because this results in more natural behavioral pattern in the fish. Understand it is better to have 4 or more of a particle kind of fish as this will cause them to act as a school. Ultimately a school of fish is far more interesting then four random fish; as four random fish will not know what to make of each other simply sit there and stare at each other. A school of fish will swim around the tank in formation and have a noticeable pecking order. They also form up for protection from, as well as to investigate and try to eat the glowing red dot, my laser pointer, which occasionally shows up in the tank.

Water management is vitally important. And it’s the corner stone of my fish tank. When I started this tank I wanted to grow GAINT goldfish. So I went with a moving water tank. That means that my fish tank has a current. This is created as the bubble bars sit along the one side of the tank. A moving water tank causes the fish to swim constantly, like they do in nature. This causes the fish to grow to huge sizes. It also causes fish to grow past normal tank limitations. The constant bubbling also provides the fish with well aerated water. The gravel is a part of water management as well. My tank has a filter as well. To play it safe my filter is meant for tank larger then my own. Although it is easy to over look the gravel provides natural organisms a place to grow. These natural organisms help to keep the tank healthy as a mini ecosystem is formed. I once lined my aquarium, as seen above, with marble tile. In the absences of gravel my water quality went way down and filter cleaning went way up. Adding some live plants will add to mini ecosystem effect and improve water quality. Also know that these plants will provide a nice snack for your fish. My fish enjoyed them completely, which is why my tank has none.

A note to those Beta owners, DO NOT PUT MORE THEN ONE IN A TANK TOGETHER. No matter how many you put in, you will end up with, at most, one fish.

Good Times, an Old Friend and Top Gear

The two terms seem to be sinuous and often are. These two terms have come to my mind as I have recently had some good times with an old friend of mine. My friend, Jon, and I went to Applebee’s and had few drinks then went and caught an episode of top gear. It was definitely a good time. The two of us always do seem to have good time together as we have since middle school. I met him through the youth group at my church. It is funny as I have not seen him in a while yet we both watch Top Gear. For those of you who do not know Top Gear is a show from BBC, the British Broadcasting Company. It is a gear head, car enthusiast, show done in a British style, as anyone might expect from its producing network. The three host of the show do your standard car reviews with plenty of shot of the cars racing around the tack. But there is more. They are smart enough not to take themselves too seriously and they do interview celebrities. They also perform challenges like turning cars into amorphous vehicles or seeing if a car or plane will get from point A to point B quicker. Jon notes that it is the only car show that girl friend, Heather, will watch with him. I will note that it the only car show in which the host will evaluate the cars performance while participating in a beach front attack with the Royal Marians. Of that note if you want a car that has proven its effectiveness as a transport during a beach front attack go with the Ford Feitot, but do pick a color other then bright orange.

To continue on about top gear the show is awesome. Honestly on one episode they worked to determine the “roughness” of a pickup truck from Toyota. They left it out in the tide lit it on fire and placed it atop a sky scrapper during its implosion only find out the truck still ran after some work with no replacement parts. Truly useful information for those of us who will need to know what pickup trucks can take a hell of beating and keep on… well trucking. On one episode they raced a car against a jet and lost. And in the midst of all this absurdity with car more expensive then most could hope to own, they take a celebrity and have them do a lap around the race track in a standard car. Pure genius.

Something that I have come to find through this show that a gallon of gas in the UK is about 5 pounds. Now understand that the exchange rate from dollars to pounds fluctuates between 1.5 to 2 dollars for every pound. Ultimately this means that gas in the UK is priced at about 7.5 to 10 dollars a gallon. The thought of this alone has me wondering where my bike is. So as a bonus the show also enlightens one to world culture.

Goldfish, more specifically, mine.

My goldfish are Schmitty(That’s how his name is spelled), Spastic, Tom and Jerry. They are by far the coolest goldfish there ever where, in fact Schmitty is too cool to be the color gold. He is in fact white. This is the result, as fair as my research efforts can tell, of a lack of direct sun light. Now the other goldfish have received the same, if not less, amount of sunlight as Schmitty, but Schmitty is the only one to go all albino on me. Schmitty is so cool he actually has his own Facebook. It was half made because of how cool he is and half because his owner used it to get ahead in a Facebook game. As a side bar said owner, me, has given up Facebook games. Schmitty does have his draw backs, he will go hemorrhagic septic simply for attention. For those not familiar hemorrhagic septic is blood poisoning that causes a fish’s blood to begin to surface in its fin and face area. It is as neat looking to the untrained eye as it is life treating to the fish. Now I say that Schmitty goes hemorrhagic septic for attention because he does it when the fish tank has undergone no major changes and is in peek condition. Further proving my theory that he simply does this for attention is that he does with no cause but also seems to clear up with no change in his environment as well. Schmitty is approximately six inches in length from tip to tip.

Spastic is the smallest at about four and a one quarter inches. His name comes from his spastic temperament which results from being the smallest in the tank. His temperament also makes him the most interesting of all the fish to watch. As he is the smallest in the tank and significantly smaller then the largest fish in the tank I do have to keep an extra eye on him for abuse from the other fish. This can first be spotted as fin shredding, which I have yet to see. It is normal behavior for fish to pick on significantly smaller fish given the opportunity. But I guess my fish are just special.

Tom and Jerry, named after the cartoon duo of my youth are the two fish in the middle of the size range at five and one half inches as well as five inches respectively. Tom also has two marks on his from the time he managed to squeeze in and get stuck behind the bubble tube. Fortunately I noticed and saved him in time. Since then I have put gravel around the bubble bar to prevent further incident. Aside from Tom’s little endeavor, Tom and Jerry are not very exciting. But they do complete school.

They are actually feeder fish that my sisters turtle passed over. It is a bit of a funny story my mom, sister and myself got a few normal tank fish and bunch of feeder fish to put in my sister’s turtle’s tank. The turtle went straight for the normal fish despite the fact that the feeder fish were much larger then its head. It was ironic cruel and sad as we had just finished naming those fish.

Pit Bulls

I got a pit bull a couple of months ago, a Staffordshire Bull Terrier to be specific, and it is not the terrifying beast that they are made out to be. Rufus, is the polar opposite of every stereotype I had ever herd about pit bulls. First off let me say that I was under the impression that pit bulls were these massive blood thirsty beasts. Massive is not even close, my vet says that Rufus will grow to be approximately 50 lbs. That is all. Human children, especially in this country, run bigger then that. Sometimes I carry him around just to be funny; he is a little light weight. We actually used to have a female runt of a chocolate lab and that dog was bigger then this male pit bull.

It isn’t all about size as there is the stereotype that these dogs are ferocious and will rip your throat out just for looking at them the wrong way. NO. Rufus will run and hide under the table if you look at him the wrong way. And if you raise your voice, even at jest with someone else in the room, the little guy makes a B-line to hide under my parent’s bed. While on walks the little guy will defend me as he stops to bark off those killer… killer street signs and trash cans. Even moving around a throw rug will send him scurrying off.

Now many times people say that they are just plain mean dogs. Those people are mistaken. Rufus is a pack animal just the same as any dog. My mom and my sister recently had minor surgeries done which took them out of commission for a few days of hanging out on the couch and recuperating. Despite Rufus being a scarred little ninny his pack mentality had him at their sides the whole time they were recuperating. He could sense that they weren’t at the top of their games and stood by, just in case. It was kind of sweet of him.

Uncontrolled and inhibited have been said of pit bulls as well. Not the case either. The entire time my family has had Rufus he has had 2 accidents. That’s right the 6 month old puppy went two whole months with only two accidents. He can from the SPCA were he did receive daily walks but the dog kennels are set up so that dogs can, and often do, go to the bathroom in them. So Rufus becoming house broken so quickly is no small feet for any dog. Pit bulls rather are a trainable dog. Perhaps this is why dog fighters use them, because they will do what they are trained to do, no matter the cost.

Ignorance is horrible thing, and I always strive to set myself from the ignorant masses. It also helps that I have a friend who rescues pit bulls and enlightened me long before we got ours. Still I was surprised that pit bulls are not big. But my little rascal is just right.

Sucks

I got my paper done, and that is what matters. And what makes it better is that I have two sources to boot. Spent all night with it till 5 am at which point I discovered I wasn’t getting any sleep, awesome. I have had some trouble writing it. I couldn’t find a topic that worked for me. I wrote about efforts to prevent and curb juvenile crime. As a Public Safety Officer (PSO) juvenile behavior is my cup of tea. Don’t worry though, proper parenting will not replaced anytime soon, advocates on both sides of the discussion have it completely wrong.

I went shooting last night, it was awesome. Well, it was awesome to get to go to the range again, as it had been a while since my last trip. The actual event was weak. It seemed as though the guy running it was there because he needed to get out more on Wednesday nights. But enough about the negatives, despite a distractingly frustrating environment I shot quite well. Now I only shot at four targets right and proper like I would in a competition, but I scored rather consistently. One was 80 the last 3 were 83. Just got a lovely dose of bad news, NRA pistol shooting is done one handed. The practicing I have been doing is wrong and my gun is not well suited for one handed shooting. That really sucks. Really, really sucks. All this time I thought I was shooting really well was for not as I was shooting to a different standard. That really sucks. I wish the NRA’s website had all the rules and regulations on it a few months ago when I started down this road, like before I invested so much time and money into doing it wrong.

I got a C on a test from Non-Western Societies. It was a good thing if you consider that when I left the room after the test I was wondering if I would be getting any points. Did I mention that just about all of my efforts to become a competitive shooter where for not and that, that really sucks? Yea so short blog it is.

Seven

Last week has been reposted!!! Saying that I got a little carried away is far too much of understatement so I will say that I vented far too vigorously. So if you would, please do take a look as it rewritten to be a civil, based and informative while still retaining that sneer that all blogs should have. And there is some perfectly hilarious word play that you simply must go and see for yourself. I like the entire post so much I intend to take the New Jersey Gun control aspect and rework as well as expand it into a paper. It is a paper I wanted to do for a couple of years but have been shut down on by my professors. Most professors argue that there is not enough material within New Jersey State Gun law to provide enough substance for a decent argumentative research paper. At the same time most professors do not realize how much there is to argue in regards to New Jersey State Gun Law. So I am continuing to aim for success in that I have finally made some headway in paper writing. I came to a block after my first paper. I get writers block when I feel like there is no point nor challenge to writing a paper and most of that depends on the topic.

Babysitting is over and, although not relevant to this blog, it was successful for me as well. Seems like I am having a lot of success lately. I did the whole babysitting thing weekly for a while and, from my nephew’s perspective, I went from one of these guys to Uncle Josh. Its so nice. My brother completed his class so, now I will be catching up with Buddy and Ben every couple of weeks on Fridays instead of Wednesdays. Wednesdays are free for going to practice shoots again so I’d be back to practicing tonight if I could fine my range ID.

Gun insight: bullets to magazines.
For clarity on gun terms I am going to cover a few terms most people are confused about. Starting with what most people know a bullet is the metal thing that flies out of the front of the gun when it is fired. Modern guns still fire bullets but they are loaded with rounds. Rounds are the result of the powder and primer put into a little cylinder canister of metal, typically brass, and sealed off by the bullet. Rounds are also referred to as shell. The little cylinder canister of metal from the round, which has a lip around the side opposite the bullet, is referred properly referred to as a shell casing when it is still part of the round and a spent shell casing after the round has been fired. The casing is also referred to as brass, shell casings, spent shell casings and shells. The casing is most frequently called brass as this is the marital most commonly used to manufacture it. More recently aluminum has been used to make casings in addition to brass. Some weapons with a system of parts would hold extra rounds under the pressure of a spring ready to be fed up into the chamber after the spent shell casing from the previous round was removed. This system of parts is called a magazine. Standard magazines can be removed from a weapon and are often interchangeable. As these are standard they are referred to simply as magazines. The majority of WWII weapons had the magazine built into the weapon; this is called an internal magazine. A clip is a set of rounds held together by a backing of a metal strip that is crimped around the lip of the casings. WWII weapons would be loaded by shoving the clip of into the internal magazine. As the rounds slid into the internal magazine they would slid off of the metal backing, which would be discarded.

six

“If you always caught fish then they would call it catching.” Very true Lindsey, very true. In the spirit of calling a spade a spade then salon fishing should be called “Remote hypothermic wading for a chance at a snagging a fish.” It’s not even fishing. There is no skill, no technique. It is so highly regulated that your only choices that matter are other rod, reel and line.
Moving forward, I had a great find the other day, Winchester 22 Long Rifle Dynapoint ammo. This ammo I have been looking for since before I owned my gun. At fifty yards they shoot twice as accurate as most ammo and they are renowned as having the least amount of jams. And I found them at K-mart. K-mart is known for many things, gun ammo is not one of them.
Hope was dead and now it is reborn. Last week I had given up on ever finding a target competition and had thrown in the towel at trying to find one. I had exhausted all of my efforts from fellow members at the Gun Club to the NRA website. I had even stopped shooting. But, while reading my NRA magazine I stumbled across the back section that announced local shoots. This led me to include that the NRA website doesn’t have an adequate search engine or list them on its website. It is awesome that I finally found a source for competitions. The next competition is Nov. 6… in NJ. It is quite unfortunate that the competition is in NJ as NJ legislators have outlawed my style of gun.

Gun insight: Gun Law
The right to bear arms. Federally granted right restricted on the state level. Before you get a gun or think about getting one must learn about the laws of your state and those around it. Gun owners, gun enthusiasts, constitutional enthusiast and even some people that become aware of the laws in effect are frustrated by state gun laws. To illustrate this point the laws that keep my gun out of NJ will be used. N J state legislation has a gun law that makes it unlawful for individuals within the state of New Jersey to have possession of a gun, as a firearm that does not have a butt stock, which is magazine fed by a magazine that loads outside of the pistol grip. So one is not forced to continually reread the entire phrasing used to address the law which keeps me as a Competitor Restricted Against Participation it will now be referred to as crap law. Understand that the magazine, also known as a clip, is the item that holds the extra rounds, also known as bullets, which feed into the gun as it fires. As for clarity, guns that crap law allows are what is most commonly thought of as hand guns, such as the Smith & Wesson 5946 of the NYPD, pictured in the top image above. Guns that crap law effect include, but are not limited to, both Olympic style hand guns and my Ruger Charger, as pictured in the bottom image above. Now one may ask what is the difference? and/or what does it really matter? The answer to both those questions is little.
The best way to examine the little difference crap law makes as well as how little it matters is through the justification that supporters of crap law and laws like it use. The main justification is that guns restricted by crap law have a higher potential for collateral damage that could occur if such a gun was used in a shooting incident. This supposed higher potential is thought to come from that these guns have larger high capacity magazines, a shorter change time for the magazine and larger caliper round. Magazine capacity is how many rounds, also thought of as bullets, a magazine can carry. But this justification doesn’t hold up as NJ law prohibits large capacity magazines under N.J. Rev. Stat § 2C:39­9h. A faster reload time is a reasonably sounding argument for justification, but non-crap law gun can be loaded in a heart beat as illustrated in this video. So being able to reload in half a heart beat would add a little more potential to a shooting spree. The last argument is that crap law guns could have a larger caliber then non-crap law guns. But there is no restriction to the size of the pistol grip on a magazine feed handgun in NJ so you could make a pistol grip large enough to any size round. So ultimately crap law does not effectively restrict the size of hand gun ammunition. So crap law is crap. It is an unjustified law. It shouldn’t be there. Hence the frustration gun owners, gun enthusiasts, constitutional enthusiast and even some people that become aware of the laws in effect experience.

fiver

“It will give me a chance to clear my head or a bit.” Was the last line of my last blog. Somehow I had this misconception that cramming myself with my grumpy dear old Dad and Hyperactive brother. Yea it was far from relaxing and at quite far from head clearing.
But, the fish were awesomely massive. Prehistoric looking, at least that is what I saw from the fish that other people caught, ‘cause I didn’t catch a single fish. They were everywhere, they ran into me and I literally tripped over one. I was tripping on the darn things but I could not one. BAH!!! Ok Ok OK it was good times. I mean I got to chase after a couple other people had on a hook and wow that was an adrenaline rush. My Dad and I came home early…
And took our new gear into the Nashamy creek that runs threw our back yard and tried to catch carp. That was a good and relaxing time. I know what your thinking, Why did you try to upstate New York to go Salmon fishing when you have big old carp in the creek that runs through your back yard? That is a good question, and the mistake will Not happen again. I can not catch fish in my backyard all on my own and then go to my room which is bigger then the entire cabin. Yea like it was smaller then a quad.
Now this blog is supposed to be about shooting and schooling, not fishing. So, back to topic; I got a B+ on my Non-West Society mid term, BOOSH!!! (That is an explanation meaning of great magnitude, at least in my book.) That test was studied very hard for. It is increasing hard to not use first person in writing now. Now that this blog is being up kept. It is a lazy way of writing that, of recent, this writer has been falling into and is working to get out of. That is the update from my strides for success in so far as scholastic endeavors. As far as efforts in regards to competitive target shooting, not much to report there. I have not been to the range in a few weeks, still. I will sending out a few emails to track down a competition to go to.
I intend to change things up. Future Blogings will be two parted. The first portion will be much like the entire normal blogings you have already been reading here. The second portion will be a breakdown of some aspect of shooting. How the gun works, some of the science behind the bullet and its trajectory, or how different sights work. Hope you enjoy the change. And here is a little taste.
Sighting in: the process of aligning the trajectory of the bullet as it is fired from the gun and the point at which the gun sight is pointing at for a relative distance. Understand that the bullet leaves and flies forward from the end of the barrel. The gun sight sits above the barrel and points to a given position down range. The sight has to angled downward so that the sight line and the path of the bullet cross. The sight is adjusted so that these lines cross at the target as the distance from the target changes. Now this is an oversimplification of the process but mind you more detail will offered later.

Scatter brained

My head is a hundred different places right now; my job, my hobbies, my friends, my family, up coming fishing trip and my school groups. It has been an eventful week, so eventful I didn’t make it to the range. I did make it to all my classes fully prepared with all my homework and readings done. I also got to see my nephews this Wednesday. That was very upsetting as my nephews hardy knew who I was. Also I had to work on Thursday evening which means I had to miss my IVCF meeting. That stinks. Not a single round all this week so as practice makes perfect, so now my skill has backslid I am sure. Also I helped baby sit my nephews while although the older, Buddy, welcomed me the younger, Ben, couldn’t seem to figure what to make of me. Sad really I need fix quite a few things about the way I spend my time. I am restructuring my schedule to makes things right.
It was really upsetting for my nephews to offer me such a cold reception. It is not their fault it is mine. I don’t spend enough time with them. But thanks to the restructuring that has seem to gone on this week, in part the hours at work and in part I will be helping babysitting on Wednesday nights, that will change. I am excited to help out for my brother and get to know my nephews. I really look forward to this. Buddy and Ben. Buddy is constantly moving two years old and Ben is a discovering one year old.
That was good. I cannot keep up with my school and work load while still having a life; had to bring that to an end. I spoke with my boss and my hours will be reduced from thirty-two hours to twenty-four hours. That is a huge relief for me. What is better is that it will be an ongoing arrangement. That Matt, my boss will keep staff so that the excess of hours will be covered year round. At this point it is important to be aware that I work part time and go school part time. There is about two years left in my college endeavor and twenty-four hours is how it will stay. Slow and study wins the race. That was a mistake at first but it gets the point across. Two classes a semester and winter/summer sessions when they work. But also I will not be working Wednesday nights or Thursday nights. Freeing me up for Babysitting and IVCF.
It was really upsetting for my nephews to offer me such a cold reception. It is not their fault it is mine. I don’t spend enough time with them. But thanks to the restructuring that has seem to gone on this week, in part the hours at work and in part I will be helping babysitting on Wednesday nights, that will change. I am excited to help out for my brother and get to know my nephews. I really look forward to this. Buddy and Ben. Buddy is constantly moving two year old and Ben is a discovering one year old.
Fishing trip coming up! This Monday My Father, My Brother, Myself and a friend of My Bother, will be heading upstate New York to chance SALMON. It will be awesome. A great chance to freeze out while bonding with the guys and catch some of the largest fish of my life, sounds like a great time. It will give me a chance to clear my head or a bit.

Week three

Well I am in the writing mood so I might as well stick with it. See that paper that was due on Tuesday I just finished it. I know nice and late right. That wasn’t my intention. My intention was to aim for success. And I was on Monday when I wrote the first seven eights of my essay. Given the nature of my job all employees eat lunch alone and I was working a double so I had written most of my essay there at work and then saved it to my folder on the hard drive at work. Which wasn’t realized till 11:00 am when I went to type up the conclusion and print it out before my 10 min. drive to school. Work is over an hour trip there and back. Leaving me no time to finish the conclusion and print it out. MAJOR SUCK. So I had no essay for essay workshop day; therefore didn’t go. But I used the extra time to further revise the essay and add some sources to it. So yea, my late essay is nice and solid though so maybe that’s something, IDK.

Speaking of writing essays and aiming for success I would like to offer a great resource for everyone in the class. http://www.easybib.com/ It is a fantastic website for all courses that you have to site sources for. It helps you put together Bibliography in MLA style, MLA style is the style of bibliographies that all courses at DVC are supposed to use, but it offers other styles if you need them as well. If you were able to set up your blog and you are capable of looking up things in a book then you are plenty qualified to use this website. You put in your source type and it asks you different things about it, like author, publication date, ect. Filling these out is as easy as filling out fields on a website like name, DOB, email, ect. Then you put in other sources. It takes the fields and creates a properly formatted Bibliography entry with the right order and punctuation. It takes all your sources and puts them in order. Then you can download it as a Microsoft word file or view it as a web page and copy and paste it. Again it is a great resource.

I am getting better at shooting as well. I went to the Wednesday night 50 ft indoor shoot again and it went well. Improvement from last time was definitely notable. Last time out of a 100 points possible a relay, like a round, I shot an average of 69.8. This week I shot a average of 81.9. 12.1 points of improvement. By NRA standards this weeks shooting was done at a Bar 1 level. That is one level below the sharpshooter level. If the score is raised by 9.6 points it will be at the sharpshooter level and I will qualify for NRA competition, if I can find one. I stumbled across a free file filled with targets of all shapes and sizes, this includes the targets needed to practice shooting for the 50ft indoor range. Now I can practice when ever I find the time. No longer will I be confined to Wednesday night shoots. Bonus! I should be up to match level in no time.

Progress was made on finding an NRA competition as well. The guy who runs the shoot was out this week because he was at a shooting competition. He is a nice guy so I am sure that if I shoot him an email he will be happy to point me the right direction. No pun intended.

more progress

Not only was last week went well in aiming for success in shooting but it went really well in aiming for success with academics as well. The class presentation in English class went well. My group had a little trouble all getting on the same page earlier on but ultimately we where successful in our presentation, full credit successful. Prof. Ryan said we set the bar rather high, which is a little ironic as our group, at least in part, chose to go first as to gain the little leeway that the first group to go gets. My motivation in going first was simply to get it done and out of the way so that I could focus more on my essays during the rest of the semester. It will be nice to not have that looming over my head for the rest of the semester.

It was a rather interesting topic, Spider-man India. It is interesting how this foreign country has adopted the Spider-man character. And it’s probably just a personal quark but I love when something a seemingly insignificant can be used so well to illustrate such a significant point as the global social and economic theater.

As for my other class, Non-western Societies has begun to move forward again. Understand, last week both classes were canceled. Class was up and running as usual this week, as it turns out he had some unforeseen medical issues arise.

I am excited about my shooting as I put in an order to Cabella’s last week. I purchased based on my experience from last week. I got a match spring, hammer and sear kit that will take my trigger pull down to two and a half pounds. I also got the two ten round clips I wanted. Now the mail will be checked every day for the next three to six business days, that it when the shipment should arrive. One might find it odd that the spring, hammer and sear kit is what is replace changes the trigger pull but I can explain that. The way a gun fires, in a simple manor, is that the gunpowder charge is ignited by a primmer flash. The primmer flash is set off by off as the firing pin smashes into it, which is propelled by the hammer. The hammer gets its force from the hammer spring. Before this process is set in motion the hammer spring sits compressed against the back of the hammer. The hammer rests against the sear which is the only thing that stops it from flying forward. This is much like a mouse trap set to go. The trigger knocks the sear out from holding the hammer back. By altering the way the sear and hammer meet less effort would be needed to knock it out. The springs that are replaced return the sear and trigger into proper position after a shot is fired so they are ready to go for the next shot. Most of these are weighted for the safety of inexperienced shooters; however as an experienced shooter I am confident with a lighter weighted trigger. Last Wednesday was bust at the range as I couldn’t focus. There were two kids shooting next to me and I shot horribly. I did however manage to grab a NRA pistol shooting pamphlet. After the method of scoring is deciphered I can see how my shooting stacks up. Somehow the lower your score the better; perhaps the score is the points you missed out on, I don’t know still working on that.

Wednesday night shoot

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Went shooting on Wednesday, much to my dismay it was not a competition, but all is not lost as practice makes perfect and I learned few things. The above photos are my targets from the shoot. The top photo is my best shoot free hand and the bottom is my best target shoot from a bi-pod. The bottom target is 4 points out of a hundred short of a perfect score.

It was ten volleys of ten rounds. I was not planning on going but decided to go just before it started. The fist five volleys I shot from a bi-pod to make get used to shooting at closer range as my gun was not sighted in for it. I made due, aiming a little low and to the left. I would have preferred to adjust my sight but it was a very fast pace.

An awareness of the pace of the event is something I will definitely take away from the experience. Keeping pace with the other shooters was a challenge as I often found myself struggling to load my gun in time. One of the volleys I even failed to get all ten of shots off. This was due mostly to my gun jamming. But constantly striving to load up in time was no help. Over all I was fairly tensed about trying to keep up.

Accuracy in shooting comes from a number of different factors. One of these factors is a steady hand. The less relaxed I am the worse my hand shakes. So to better myself as a shooter I need to work on relieving tension during shoots. There isn’t much I can I do about my gun my gun jamming as it was fully cleaned before the shoot; however I will able to better deal with the overall pace of the matches by purchasing a couple of additional 10 round clips. That would set my total count up to five allowing me to load up all before hand and then load up again during the halftime break.

Recently I have been debating on purchasing an upgrade to gun, something to improve my accuracy. Already having a sight that cost twice my gun it would have to help me steady my shot. In my experience, steadying the gun is the main issue that holds cost most shooters steadying the gun. For a while I was debating a front pistol grip. When a camera is mounted on a helicopter it is mounted with a soft mount as apposed to a solid mount as there will inevitability be shaking in the helicopter and the soft mount won’t transfer the shaking to the camera shot. This got me thinking if I did spend the money on the front grip it would only transfer more of my shake to the gun and ultimately through my shots. Furthermore when shooting I realized that I shot better with a light grip then a solid grip. My trigger is stiff in that it takes eight pounds of pressure to pull the trigger. While applying this to pull the trigger my aim is thrown off the most. So rather then spend my money on a front grip I will be spending my money on a lighter pull trigger. Normally a match trigger is only a two and a half pound lighter.

So from the trial run of the shooting match I learned that getting used to a match pace is something I will need to practice on and that I will be buying a couple of clips and a match trigger set. I am happy with how well I am shooting as I out shot the guy that ran the competition. That’s a feather in my hat.

Setting the stage

This blog was going to be about all areas I am aiming for success, school, work and competitive shooting, however anything interesting that happens at work is held in confidence. So, this blog will be about my efforts for success in school and competitive shooting. Don't let the idea of a gun scare you, my gun amounts to little more then a remote whole puncher. Yes it does have the potential to do more it lives its life putting wholes in peaces of paper. Its a Ruger 10-22 Charger. I am incredibly good shot and am moving forward, as much as I can, with heading into the competitive ream of shooting. I have been shooting since I was about twelve on and off but since I purchased my gun about a year ago I have been shooting rather consistently. I average 300 rounds a month which will go up as I recently joined the gun club across the street from my house. As for my academic background I graduated from Central Bucks School District South High School and then started at Delaware Valley College full time as a Criminal Justice Major. I switched over to being a Secondary Education Major for a little bit. Then after a couple semesters switched back to Criminal Justice. Needless to say that set me back academically along with some trouble passing En II. Since then I have switched to a part time student in order to work on my resume and so I could have a little more time to focus on the few classes I take at a time. Currently that entail En II and Non-western Society. More background information on this blogger can be found on Facebook [note: I have been told my picture resembles a grapefruit with a smily face drawn on it]. In short this blog this will be insight to my life with the school and the range as presented with an an interesting presentation.