I worked over six hours yesterday. Yeah, I took a few breaks, but still. Something of a milestone.
* * * * * * *
Humans are remarkably adaptive creatures. We can adjust to a wide range of environmental conditions, accommodate significant changes in diet, accept shifts in social structure. Just look around the world and you’ll see what I mean, from variations in culture in response to climate to how people cope with extreme conditions such as war and famine.
There can be a toll to such adaptations, of course, depending on what they are, how long they last, and the particular individual or society.
In caring for Martha Sr I slowly changed my routine and focus to better meet her needs, so most of the changes I went through in that time were barely discernible from day to day. Over the four plus years of intense care giving, however, both my wife and I underwent a very substantial shift in what could be considered our normal life.
I’ve mentioned some of those changes previously – the weight gain, the loss of concentration, the lack of sleep. But I haven’t discussed the operative mechanism behind all those changes: stress. Specifically, the physiological changes in hormonal balance which come with prolonged stress – the so called stress hormones of cortisol and norepinephrine. Most people know these as the ‘fight or flight’ reflex effects: boost in blood pressure and heart rate, heightened sensory awareness, a slight time dilation. It is our body’s way of preparing us to survive a threatening situation. It is a very powerful experience, and can even be a bit addictive – anyone who characterizes themselves as an ‘adrenaline junkie’, who gets a kick out of doing dangerous things or watching scary movies, is talking about just that.
The problem is, those stress hormones come with a price – they exact a toll on the body. For most people, occasional jolts of this stuff isn’t really dangerous, but for someone with a heart condition or an aneurysm waiting blow, such an event can kill. That’s why you see those warning signs on roller coasters.
And consider what happens to someone who slowly ramps up their stress hormone levels over a prolonged period. That’s me. My formerly excellent blood pressure and heart rate is now scary bad, and has been for a while. I’m lucky that I started this in good condition – but think back to this episode last year, and you’ll see what kind of effect the excessive stress hormone levels had. In the final year of care giving, my system became saturated with stress hormones – my ‘fight or flight’ reflex changed from being related to a sudden threat to being an ongoing condition. I adapted.
So now I am in detox. That’s what the last few months have been all about. Slowly adapting back to something resembling normal, at a very basic physiological level. More sleep. More exercise. Better diet. As I’ve discussed recently, I have started to see some real changes. But as a good friend who is also a doctor reminded me recently, it will likely take a year or longer to make this transition, for my endocrine system to settle down. Recently I have taken some additional steps to help this process, in terms of changes to diet and food supplements. But it is a long and winding road I need to walk now.
* * * * * * *
I got up about 3:30 this morning for a potty run. Stepping from our bedroom into the bathroom, I froze: there was a light coming up from the downstairs that shouldn’t have been there. I quietly backed into the bedroom, put on pants and glasses, grabbed my cell phone, a pistol and a powerful flashlight.
I’m no ‘macho guy’ or wanna-be hero. The smart thing to do if you have an intruder in your house is to batten down the hatches where you are, call 911, and let the police deal with it.
But what if you just left a light on by accident?
I was about 90% sure that was what happened. So, carefully, I went to investigate. Checked the house completely. Everything was safe and secure. The cats were confused by what I was doing up so early.
I went back upstairs, hit the head, put away the various items I’d picked up, and crawled back into bed.
And have been awake since.
After an hour or so, I just got up. Because I knew I wasn’t getting back to sleep anytime soon. That’s the problem – the stress hormone receptors in my brain are so adapted to a regular high dose of adrenal squeezin’s that they hungrily lap the stuff up when it comes their way.
* * * * * * *
I worked over six hours yesterday. Yeah, I took a few breaks, but still. Something of a milestone.
Six hours may not sound like a lot. After all, most people are expected to work eight or more hours at a time, with a couple of paltry breaks.
But for me, regaining the ability to focus in, to concentrate and work for that length of time is a real improvement. It shows that I am making progress in detoxifying my system, of readjusting the endocrine balance.
Today is going to be a bit of a bitch, though, thanks to the early-morning jolt of adrenaline. But I know how to handle it, and hopefully it won’t cause too much back sliding. We’ll see.
The road is long and winding, and I must take it where it leads.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Gardening, General Musings, Guns, Health, Patagonia, Predictions, Publishing, Richard Matheson, Science Fiction, Sleep, Travel, Writing stuff
You may have noticed that some of my posts have gotten a little longer over time, at least in the last couple of months. I haven’t been doing word counts or anything, but that is my sense of it, looking back over the archives. This is because I am emerging from the exhaustion of caring for Martha Sr, slowly but surely.
And as this progresses, it is interesting to see how certain aspects of my life are starting to come back to me. My wife and I have started to resume something that can be called a social life, getting together with friends for lunch or dinner, having people over. I finally got that book review of the Matheson Companion done – that had been hanging over my head for a while. I’m putting together the stuff for the ballistics testing, and figure that we’ll have the website for that up next month some time. I got my garden in, and am harvesting strawberries. This is good.
And I’m starting to get a creative itch again. No, not the low-level sort of creativity that goes with this blog and my conservation work. I’m thinking about the next novel. I’ll probably toss out what I have written of St. Cybi’s Well, and just start fresh – those first couple of chapters were so long ago that I barely remember what I intended to do with them. It takes (me, anyway) a lot of mental energy to juggle all the various threads in a decent novel, and I’m not ready just yet to tackle that. But I am thinking about it, and that is a very good sign.
And I have another idea for something completely and totally unrelated, which would also be a lot of fun. But I have to wait to get a new computer system for that – this old thing just doesn’t have the capabilities which would be required. I would also need to learn some new software programs. From these facts you can guess that this idea would have something to do with the ‘net, and you would be right, but that’s all I’ll say for now.
Oh, yeah, and I need to learn survival Spanish sometime before going to Patagonia in October.
It’s nice to feel this way again.
Jim Downey
Well, as I mentioned in this post, after we did the schedule of ballistic tests using the custom Thompson/Center Encore pistol and had all the “ideal” data relating to barrel length versus bullet speed for a wide variety of ammo and calibers, we still wanted to use the same ammo in a number of “real world” guns – actual handguns from our various collections. That would give us some head-to-head comparisons to see how they would compare to the “ideal” performance.
Well, yesterday Steve and I had a chance to get out and do this additional testing. Here’s a message I sent to our third partner in the previous tests:
Thought I would drop you a note, let you know that Steve and I (with another friend tagging along) went out and shot all the “real world” pistols today, using the full run of ammo available. Lots of good data points on those. About 6 hours, plus a bit for cleaning up. I will get copies of the data sheets sent off to you in a day or two.
Mostly, it went smoothly. The little Berettas in .25 and .32 were a right pain to shoot, and problematic in getting data (we did, but we really had to work for it). The .380 Walther was OK, the .327 Ruger rough, the big .45 Colt and .44 Mag more pleasant than either of us expected. We also supplemented with Steyrs in .357 Sig and in .40 S&W, along with the .357 Python, big .357 S&W, .38 Diamondback, .38 S&W 642, and Para Ord .45. We shot the .357 revolvers with both .38 special and .357 magnums, to have those data points.
Vanes were hit, bullets bounced off the armour plate in front. Sunburns were earned. But we got all the data, done done done. I’ll probably write something up for my blog in the morning, as documentation. I also took pix today, to go along with the pix from the previous tests.
I heard back from Jim, who said that he knew a number of people were eagerly waiting for the data, and that one fellow in particular who has done a lot of ballistics testing of his own using ballistic gelatin was really looking forward to the comparisons between the “ideal” data and the “real-world” data. John, he said, expected some real differences but was curious just how much there would be. My response:
Well, tell him that his expectations will need to be changed. Here’s some quick head-to-head comparisons:
- .45 ACP (5″) – almost no difference, advantage to the Para Ord!
- .40 S&W (4″) – marginal difference (less than 50 fps), advantage to the Thompson over Steyr M40
- .357 mag (6″) – Significant difference, advantage to the Thompson over .357 S&W (by about 200 fps), more over Python (another 100 fps)
- .38 sp (6″) – A little difference, advantage to the Thompson over .357 S&W, more over Python (about 100 fps across the board!)
- .38 sp (4″) – Almost no difference, advantage Thompson over Diamondback.
- .38 sp (2″) – Significant difference, advantage to S&W 642 – between 100 and 200 fps!
- .357 Sig (4″) – almost no difference, advantage to the Thompson over Steyr M357.
I don’t know the barrel length for the rest of your guns, so can’t really say. Interesting, but not too surprising, that the semi-autos seem to be closer to the Thompson “ideal” than do the revolvers, except with the 642. Really odd, that. Oh, wait . . . that could be the difference between the measurement including the chamber and not. We’ll have to be very careful to note that in the data display, with information about the comparisons. Hmm. That would make the revolvers look even worse, since you would effectively be comparing them to a ‘longer’ barrel in the Thompson . . . say between a 3″ and 4″. OK, checking that, the data makes more sense, The 642 falls right there between those, so is fairly comparable, or a little on the underside. Clear advantage to the semi-autos for power, head-to-head barrel length, then, though with a revolver you get “extra” barrel.
Interesting!
And of course, there are variations between ammos, with some up and some down more than noted. Once the data is plotted, be interesting to see what the curve comparisons look like.
So, yeah, very interesting! I do look forward to getting everything entered into the spreadsheet programs and plotted, so that the relationships between one and another are easier to visualize. But now the testing itself really is done!
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Guns, Health, Hospice, Sleep
Sorry I haven’t posted much the last couple of days. Honestly, I am in a funk – the sort of deep-seated inertia which comes after completing a protracted project. On one level, it is just the downturn from the ballistics testing. But more, it is the still lingering exhaustion from care-giving.
Which is not surprising. You can’t expect to recover from years of poor sleep and intensely caring for someone else 24 hours a day in just a few weeks. Particularly not when we’re still very much dealing with resolution of the estate (strangers are here right now going through things, giving us estimates on the value of some items) and trying to play catch up on professional and personal obligations. We collapsed immediately following the memorial service for Martha Sr, but then tried to pretend that we were recovered, to get on with the life which had been put on hold for so long.
But now it feels like it is catching up with me again. Like how a battery can get a ‘surface charge’ quickly, but also wears out again quickly. I need a prolonged period of recovery and recuperation. That, however, is not likely to happen. There are books to repair, bills to pay, years worth of things to catch up on.
So, forgive the slight break. I’m not burned out – I still have a lot to say, to do, to write about here. I’m just tired.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Government, Guns, Health, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Press, Privacy, RKBA, Society, Survival, Terrorism, Violence
If you know me at all, from personal experience or just from my writings, you might be a bit surprised to know that when I was a kid I was considered bookish, uninterested in athletics, a bit nerdy. I distinctly remember being pushed to close whatever book I was quietly reading, and to go outside and play ‘like a real boy’.
Why do I mention this? Well, because I have been following with some interest the whole ‘controversy’ around Lenore Skenazy‘s recent column and subsequent news coverage/website devoted to the concept of “Free Range Kids“. In itself, it is fascinating that Skenazy’s ideas have generated this kind of reaction – challenging the prevailing cultural norms about child-rearing and parental control (under the guise of keeping kids safe). Lots of people are saying that it is about time for us to get away from “helicopter parents” who so over-protect their kids that the kids never get any real life experience. Just look at the comments at BoingBoing, on her website, or just about anywhere else – she gets some criticism, but for the most part people are saying either that “it’s about time” or “what’s the big deal – this is how most of the working class folks get along”.
But beyond that, there is something else that comes through: a basic desire for people to have some freedom back, that the whole “security” mindset may have gone too far, that we have gotten well away from our self-professed ideal of being the “Home of the Brave”. I don’t think that this is the least bit surprising, nor that it would show up in these kinds of discussions, because I think that the issues are very closely interrelated.
Let’s talk about Skenazy’s notions again for a moment. Her basic premise is that while we need as parents (and as a society) to take some reasonable precautions, it is also extremely important that kids be allowed to actually experience life outside the purview of parents and other authorities – to have a little room to learn about things like self reliance, independence, and problem solving. Her example is letting her 9 year old son ride the subway in NYC on his own. What happened? I’ll quote from her site:
When I wrote a column for The New York Sun on “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Take The Subway Alone,” I figured I’d get a few e-mails pro and con.
Two days later I was on the Today Show, MSNBC, FoxNews and all manner of talk radio with a new title under my smiling face: “America’s Worst Mom?”
Yes, that’s what it took for me to learn just what a hot-button this is — this issue of whether good parents ever let their kids out of their sight. But even as the anchors were having a field day with the story, many of the cameramen and make up people were pulling me aside to say that THEY had been allowed to get around by themselves as kids– and boy were they glad. They relished the memories!
And the next paragraph nicely summarizes what the real problem is, as I see it:
Had the world really become so much more dangerous in just one generation?Yes — in most people’s estimation. But no — not according to the evidence. Over at the think tank STATS.org, where they examine the way the media use statistics, researchers have found that the number of kids getting abducted by strangers actually holds very steady over the years. In 2006, that number was 115, and 40% of them were killed.
Now, why do people have the perception that the world is much more dangerous now, when the statistics don’t support that? Hmm. Think about it for half a moment and the answer is obvious: because that is what we are constantly told by the mainstream media, both in news and in fiction. And I’m not just talking about kids being kidnapped, assaulted, or murdered. If it isn’t the government trying to scare us senseless about some new terrorist threat, it is some TV show preying on your fears with murder or deadly ingredients in your food/water. Think of what sells papers and ad-time, and you’ll understand the motivation. It has always been so. But what has changed in the last generation is the absolute saturation that we get from these sources.
I am the first to acknowledge that the world is, indeed, a dangerous place. When I was barely starting adolescence my dad was murdered, and my mom was killed in a car accident, for crying out loud. Sure, neither of those is as bad as the loss of a child, but still. I do take reasonable precautions in going about my life, from trying to watch my diet to getting exercise to carrying a gun (and other safety tools). I use my seat belt and pay attention while driving. But I also live my life – because I know that no matter what, I’m going to die of something someday, and I would much rather enjoy the life I have than live in fear of losing it.
It is simply impossible to live a fully protected life. Just as it is simply impossible to fully protect kids from harm. Furthermore, it is completely counter-productive. In the case of kids, all you are doing is denying them the opportunity to really learn about themselves – the one and only person that they will have to rely on in the future. Kids have to learn to walk on their own. And they have to learn to get up when they fall. Sure, they’ll get hurt. They’ll scrape a knee, maybe get cut, maybe even break a bone. Know what? That’s life. They’ll heal, or learn to deal with it.
That’s harsh, but I am not advocating harshness. I am advocating bravery. Because that is what will come from learning that yes, you will get hurt – but you will recover from it. Yes, life will present problems, but you can learn to overcome them or cope with it. Learning that is liberating, and the sooner someone learns it, the more fully they will enjoy what life they have.
Likewise, in seeking to protect ourselves from threats, we have done nothing but lose our bravery as a nation. And lose our freedoms.
Let the kids range free. And let your own faith in yourself range a little freer, as well.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
One of the major things we still need to do for our ballistics project is to come up with a name for the website/url where all the information and data will be hosted. It is something we (me, Jim K and Steve) really should have discussed over the course of the long weekend just past, but honestly we were always just too worn out at the end of a long day of testing to be very creative. And trying to think about it myself right now is problematic, because I am trying to fight a migraine at the same time and only have enough focus for one thing or the other (and sorry, but getting rid of the migraine takes precedence).
So I thought I would throw out the idea here, see if any of my occasional readers would have any thoughts to contribute. Ideally, the site name/url will be short, easy to remember/type, convey exactly what the project is all about, and available to reserve as a domain.
Here is a list of some of the names we have kicked around previously, to give you some idea where we’re going with this:
- ammobytheinch.com (et cetera = .etc)
- ballisticsbytheinch.etc
- handgunballistics.etc
- pistolballistics.etc
- handgunammovsbarreldata.etc
- pistolammovsbarreldata.etc
- pistoldata-barrelandammoeffects.etc
- pistol-barrelvsammodata.etc
- muzzlemeasure.etc
- muzzlevelocity.etc
- muzzledata.etc
- barrelvelocity.etc
We’d probably prefer to do a .org for the primary domain, if one is available in the name we want, but also buy up the .com and other common variants and have them redirect. So, that is a consideration. Of the ones listed above, I like the simpler and shorter ones.
Thoughts?
Jim Downey
The ballistics testing is finished. Well, sort of. As I mentioned yesterday, the primary goal was to get through the barrel-chopping tests, get all the data from that, and to worry about the ‘real world’ guns sometime later. And we accomplished that. Early on, as we were cruising along, it looked like we might wrap up really early, perhaps mid-day.
Of course, it couldn’t possibly work out that way.
Just as we were down into the 3″ barrel lengths, disaster struck: the mounting rail for the laser busted loose. And not just a little bit – the mounting screws stripped out, and there was no way to fix it short of machining in new threads on the receiver. That’s not the sort of thing you can do out in the field.
Remember I said this, yesterday:
We have four more ‘flights’ of ammo to test today (we did six yesterday), going from barrel lengths of 5″ down to 2″. When we get to the point where the length of the barrel is less the the housing of the receiver (the pistol), things get tricky, but the aiming laser will help a lot.
Um, oops.
And of course, the thing didn’t fail all at once. We got to go through that wonderful process of noticing the impending disaster and trying to cope with it, using this or that strategy, each attempt sorta working for a little while before failing. That took about two hours. And just when we thought we had it secured, a shot with one of the powerful calibers (I think it was a .45 Colt) sent the thing flying in recoil.
Steve, who probably has the most experience as a shooter of any of us, figured that he might as well see if he could shoot the pistol, sans laser. And sans any other sort of sight. Even without the benefit of a barrel, since once we got to that point, the short little bits of barrel were *down inside* the housing of the Thompson/Center Encore pistol (look down to ‘Number 1842’ to get an idea of what just the housing looks like – it’s the part without a barrel or anything attached, off on the left side).
This, needless to say, was going to be a difficult accomplishment, for just a few shots. Doing it for a couple hundred data points (shots were only considered “good” if we got comparable readings from both chronographs), using always-changing types of ammo and different calibers, almost impossible.
But Steve did it. We decided that his secret ‘super power’ is the ability to shoot amazingly well in really dumb situations.
So, we got it done. Got all the data we considered critical for the project. Packed up the stuff we didn’t want stolen, and what needed to go back to Iowa with Jim K, came home. I’ll get the rest of the set up (tent, tables, et cetera) today. And Steve and I will go out sometime in the next week or so and do the ‘real world’ testing, using guns on the market with the same ammo as for the test, which will give us some benchmark comparisons to relate to the ‘ideal’ data.
Big project. The better part of $7,000 worth of ammo, and $5,000 for the custom barrels. Add in another three or four thousand for incidental stuff (lasers, chronographs, generator, chop saw, and so forth). Maybe 250 man-hours of labor for the actual testing component. And we’re still a long ways from being done. We still need to do all the data entry, design a website, write everything up so that all the information – warts, glitches, and errors – is available freely to anyone who is interested in seeing hard data about what the correlation is between barrel length and ammo performance. I’m guessing we still have several weeks before we can say that it is done.
But one hell of a big part of it is accomplished. And that feels really good.
Jim Downey
This is going to be fairly brief – I still have a lot to do this morning and only about an hour to do it.
You know how you feel when you first start a new job, with the uncertainty and intense learning curve? OK, keep that in mind. Now, you know how you feel after a good workout, doing exercise or a bunch of yardwork? Add that in. How about that great feeling of accomplishment, yet exhaustion that comes with finishing a big and difficult project? Add that, too. And lastly, if you are an intensely introverted person, used to being alone about 85% of the time, but switch around to being with people constantly for a week? (Extroverts, I think you’d get a similar feeling by being stranded on a desert island for a week, with no human contact to recharge you.) That’s how I feel. All of it together.
In other words: “Damn, I’m beat.”
The ballistics testing project continues to go very, very well. With a little luck we should wrap it up today. We’ve had a variety of minor glitches, each of which has required some good ol’ Yankee Ingenuity to resolve, but nothing major. The new ‘armour’ protecting the replacement chronographs works – yes, one of us managed to bounce a round right off the top of it (likely would have missed the chronos, but still . . .). The new chronos themselves are a great improvement over what we had been using. The laser has had some problems – good thing we ordered in overnight three additional ones on Thursday, as back-ups. And now that we’ve gotten down to the ‘good parts’ (barrel lengths typical for most defensive handguns), we’re both really excited and really getting pummeled by the effects of the blast of repeated discharges in close quarters.
But we’re coping. Using the box for the portable generator, combined with additional layers of cardboard, we’ve created a ‘blast shield’ to mitigate the worst of the shock wave. All the recording process has gotten smoothed out by experience. The chopping of the barrels continues to be simple. It’s going really, really well. We have four more ‘flights’ of ammo to test today (we did six yesterday), going from barrel lengths of 5″ down to 2″. When we get to the point where the length of the barrel is less the the housing of the receiver (the pistol), things get tricky, but the aiming laser will help a lot. Whether we get to doing tests of ‘real world’ guns with the same ammo today is not too critical, since we can do those on another day with a whole lot less equipment (no need for the chop saw, generator, et cetera). So we should finish the main part of the test today, follow up with the rest later.
Well, gotta run.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Guns, Humor, movies, RKBA, Science, tech, Weather
Ever see what happens to modern electronics when you shoot them with large caliber handguns?
Wait . . . I’m getting ahead of myself.
* * * * * * *
As noted previously, I’ve been busy the last few days getting things ready to start the next round of ballistics testing. Round one was about three weeks ago, and in addition to getting a lot of good data about three of the 13 calibers we’re doing the research on, we also learned a great deal about the testing platform and procedures. Because of that amount of learning, when the three of us got together this week before setting everything up on Wednesday, we decided that we would go ahead and push this weekend to do all the remaining testing.
As a friend said in an email Wednesday night: “Whoa.”
Yeah, because that is 10 more calibers (eight barrels, since the .38 special and .357 magnum bullets use one barrel, and so does the .44 special and .44 magnum). And over 5,000 rounds of ammo.
We’re fortunate in that all three of us (me, Jim K and Steve) are all in situations where we can set aside our work demands for a time and devote our attention to doing this. And in looking at the remaining barrel/ammo combinations, it was clear that there would be some efficiency in doing things all at once – a number of the somewhat more unusual calibers have only two or three types of ammo, meaning that we’d be spending more time swapping out the barrels and chopping them than actually shooting and recording data. So there would be a benefit in getting all those calibers done, then move on to the several calibers where we had a lot of different ammo to test while the other barrels were chopped and prepped (de-burring and modest recrowning to get good consistent results).
And that’s what we did yesterday – dove in head first, in spite of very uncooperative weather (lots of rain and temps in the 40s). Our set-up keeps us out of the wet (we’re using a fair-sized cabin tent for our work area, with the chronographs outside under a protective tarp) but the damp chill still takes a lot of energy out of you. The changes we made to the shooting platform – the addition of an inexpensive target laser – meant that you essentially didn’t need to take the time to aim the thing (once we had it zeroed in), all you had to do was control it with the more powerful calibers.
And before we stopped early in the day, we had gotten to the same point with these remaining 10 calibers as we got on the first day of the previous round of testing with just three calibers.
Now, why did we stop early, if things were going so well?
Wasn’t due to the weather. Not unless you consider a .45 caliber bullet as rain.
What happened was this: one of us (who shall for now remain nameless, until I can spend more time to write up the saga appropriately) was in the middle of shooting the second most powerful of the calibers we’re testing, and didn’t manage to control the gun completely when he fired the round. And it went right through both chronographs. Perfectly.
We use two chronographs, lined up one in front of the other, to be sure we’re getting good data. He hit the first one right dead center, a little high from the middle. Like a perfect shot in a movie, hitting the bad guy right between the eyes. The large bullet punched through the display, destroyed the electronics, and shattered the back of the chrono – then entered the front sensor of the second chrono, exiting out the bottom rear sensor as well.
It was spectacular. A perfect shot. I have pix I’ll be posting later.
But it meant we were done for the day. No chronographs, no way to measure the velocity of the bullets.
But such things are available here, and we’ll pick up a couple more units this morning. And we’ll be getting the kind which have a remote readout – meaning that it’s just the sensors in the line of fire, the electronics on our shooting bench. Meaning that we can place some protective armor plates in front of the sensors to prevent this from happening again.
Meaning that we’ll just have to find a new and improved way of screwing up. 🙂
More when I get the chance.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 