Posting will be light....

I am working on getting a sexy hard body, and that takes time away from the monitor and back on the road work and heavy bag (sure, like I have a heavy bag some where). Tam mentions a book I should find and read to figure out why I might not make it through the next gun fight -- -Jim Cirillo; Guns, Bullets, and Gunfights, and Frank James spoke highly of him so two recommendations from those fine folks is enough, I am so far behind. Well, got to go - breakfast gruel and silly exercises call, what one does for love, sigh.

I miss basic training... or boot camp...

One was hiding in a herd of others and just had to keep moving at the Drill Sergeant's pace to graduation. When I was looking to buy a semi automatic rifle I thought about the M14 (currently known as the M1A) the one I had carried in Basic, Leadership Preparation Course, Advanced Individual Training, Officer Candidate School (Fort Benning's School for Boys) and then to my first overseas tour, Korea. Hmm, when did the M16 creep into my military life? Vietnam for sure, but weren't we still armed with M14s for the funeral details in Oklahoma and Texas in 1969? Not sure, maybe it will come to me - tomorrow, when it won't be fleeing furiously.

I could have purchased the M1A Springfield, but I have the DVDs Band of Brothers, Finding Private Ryan and Flags of Our Fathers, and the real kicker was Billy Jack had one in one of his movies (no I don't remember which). If you had asked the real reason, it wasn't particularly romantic - I was never a fan of shoot and spray - having never met hordes of the Kahn's Mongol Pony Soldiers and Chinese Red Army folk in mass attacks. And I was convinced that the twenty round box magazine was always in my way when I wanted to get close to the ground and still shoot my rifle, it was always in the way and I do like to hug the ground when fired upon... until I had to fix bayonet and charge, screaming a rebel yell (like that ever happened in this lifetime). So I did everything to get a fine M1 from the CMP folks, with bullets and instructions.

They didn't ship a Drill Sergeant to teach me properly, and so until recently I have had the most terrible time loading two cartridges into the clip for placing in the rifle. In military training, the assumption is you don't know anything and fear will set your mind free for filling with the finer points of military madness. Yep, it does work, I have been on both sides of the training. You have over a week of weapon training without bullets, carrying it everywhere, learning how to keep from hitting the soldier next to you with the rifle while marching forward and rear, right flank and left (and obliques for the Marines - so old school). You do exercises to sweat with it, you do tear down and assembly and name all the parts, and find the ones you think you can't put in upside-down (most you can't but some are made so you can but shouldn't). Any way I had fired on several ranges and over a couple hundred rounds and still didn't KNOW how to load two rounds, so I went back to the books. In the fine little pamphlet that came with my rifle, U.S. Rifle, Caliber .30, M1 : READ THIS FIRST! was, on page 14, was TO LOAD A PARTIAL CLIP, and I read it and went and got the rifle and two dummy rounds and a clip, and practiced - something a Drill Sergeant would have had me do long before those first round down range on the twenty-five yard range... ah, I can do it well now, especially since I didn't have to invent a way to make it happen it really does work. Thank you, Mister Garand, another easy step on the way to becoming a much better American Rifleman.

Any day at the range is almost perfect...

Maximum Effective Range of the M1 Rifle is 460 yards, maybe. What that means is that half of the bullets fired at a target four hundred and sixty yards away will hit it, with a trained rifleman. So I have been told. I made a quick composite of my day firing my first rounds down range with my rifle. Lower left the beautiful rifle itself and my almost spotting scope (no, I don't have one yet). The picture on the right is the range, farthest targets are three hundred yards - always remember that cameras can magnify a little but one's eyes are really better.

The target on the fifty yard line centered is on the upper left - three rounds, check (lower right), sight adjustment, three rounds, check (upper left out of black and getting wild), sight adjustment cut half of last move, two rounds, clip jumps out, leave bolt open and put weapon on safe. Go out and paste target, taking a picture, and move the target out to two hundred yards and plant it.

Two clips to shoot, sixteen bullets and all over everything. Still, the target if a man-sized zombie standing still or coming straight at me might die - needed a head shot don't I? Bring more bullets, concentrate and tighter shot groups, windage is flaky and hurried, but mostly the focus on the same point on the target isn't there so the vertical is very bad. I do know that an eight inch bull at two hundred yards is tiny, especially when focused on the front sight post. The military center of mass might be better. I do know that I am in love with that rifle.

Yes, there were high speed black rifles with scopes and red dots and bolt actions that will reach out and take those mountain goats on the other side of the moon - men love their rifles - but I am glad I only took twenty four rounds to break the ice - otherwise I would have stayed all afternoon until the ammunition was all gone, and that makes me think I should fire both days next weekend with the M1. But I won't, the .22 Stevens Low Wall on the first day. The M1 Garand on the second day. I need to find some discipline and get off the computer and television, this electronic death is the pits.

great day !

Sure I get to ride my trusty Triumph to work and home, which makes every day a better one, but that wasn't putting a smile on my face. I was happy because I have two new library crew to train and play with. Oh, I don't really play with them, but since they cause me so much amusement as they learn that real work happens in the library, and routines are designed to prevent mistakes and errors - one could say I am playing. First worker showed up, and I get him to understand the rules that will get him fired for breaking them. An Expectations List from our leadership above, and it does a fine job of making it clear what the clerk can't do, and how important customer service is. Then I showed him a sample time sheet, and that he would be making forty-two cents an hour, six to seven hour days if all goes well. Then I get him started on shelving, and finding out that he doesn't know enough, but I am there for training and he listens and works it out. Then I go looking, on the telephone, for his partner - the other new guy. He is found asleep in his rack, and comes to work without his glasses, which means he can't read and that will slow him down all morning. Although my own work is slowed by my training the new guys, I am still happy that they are here, the current crew is accepting of them and their decided shortcoming in performance are exceeded by their willingness to learn and ask questions. I even have accelerated putting them on the circulation station, to give them nightmares tonight. I will repeat tomorrow because the tough circulation days are Monday and Tuesday with little recovery time between patrons. And although I love to think I am a fine trainer - we are missing one book and one music cassette already - they either got checked out improperly, or put where they don't belong. Which is a kind of normal in new clerks that seem to think I will take their heads off if they make me upset - do I look like the Queen of Hearts?

Just a fifth of Patience, Black Label, please...

I have three inmate library clerks to train, and it is amazing how little they know about work and life and the library. I have had much success training real workers in the past, they understand work and what kind isn't a problem, for all real work is similar. If I get someone with good life skills I can train them also, great attitude and harmony with the lesser universe and work is just a different instrument to play on and they dance through our work day. I could blame lack of library knowledge on the school system, television or credit cards and book stores -- but it could be they just shouldn't be library clerks if they were never real library patrons - how much customer service can you explain to someone that has never been a customer?

Less than a week on the job and they already want the library to be run differently, they want more creative time, they want to expound on their previous job and how wonderful they did there, they are becoming afraid to ask questions of me (have I been biting their heads off, or just am snappy having little tolerance for stupidity). I emphasized that they must look at the computer screen as they scan barcodes, and make sure they are doing what they think they should. But they know everything about computers and it doesn't look cool to keep looking at work instead of holding a wonderful conversation. Another shot of patience, please.

They don't understand they have so much more to learn, one shouldn't spend time sitting when the boss spends his time on his feet, that fellow needs more time shelf reading and shelving. When they get a chair and abuse it, it becomes a throne and overthrowing Kings is part of my past I don't like dwelling on and hardly want to repeat. My work is cut back and I have only two more days to try and finish February well - which is only a personal goal, but it is one of the only man I respect almost completely -- me. I do know a bit too much about his dark(inner)side, still he doesn't have much faith in excuses performing to expectations.

There is one advantage in their slow work habits, they can't get ahead of me, even when they try they are falling behind the power curve - it is all mine. The experienced clerk and I laugh a lot about the new guys, but then we keep hoping tomorrow they will be a bit better and learn another lesson or two. We are making them earn that forty-two cents an hour, shouldn't I get some extra compensation, too? Another shot of that patience, please. All my rewards are waiting in Heaven, going to get stuck in the library there, too?