A Recent Debate

Well, I was stuck at the jail the other day awaiting a parole hearing where I was the prosecuting officer. Another officer, female was there. She was prosecuting another parolee and had a city police officer there as a witness. We still don't carry duty weapons other than mace and baton if qualified, but many of us have carry permits and hit up every training session we can make for handguns. This officer had recently recently completed a citizen's acadamy class and was doing night ride alongs with city police officers. At some point she apparently decided that she wanted a .45 and has been saving up for it. She and the officer were talking. The city police here carry Glock .40's. He was telling her that she needed to get the single stack Glock .45 because of her hand size. I butted in and asked his opinion of the .45 GAP. My theory being that this would give her the .45 power in a 9mm size package, possible letting her have a higher capacity weapon without sacrificing much in the way of power or size. I have no personal experience with the GAP cartridge yet, but it looks good on paper. He didn't like it, saying in his experience it was too much power like the .357 Sig.

At this point I began to think. The only Glock I ever owned was a Model 17 9mm. I have shot Glocks in .40, 9mm, .45 ACP, and .357 Sig. I don't like the way a Glock feels and points for me, and I have short pudgy fingers, so the hi-cap weapons aren't always the most comfortable for me in any brand. I personally think the .45 ACP Glock has more felt recoil than a 1911 or Ruger P-90. On the other hand, I didn't find it that unpleasant, I mean we aren't talking .44 magnum range or anything. I think the .45 ACP to be a little more pleasant than the .40. I also felt the .357 Sig might have been a little louder and had a little more muzzle flash, but I didn't think it actually kicked any harder than the .40.

Personally, if the dimensions of the weapons are the same, comfort level is the same, ammo capacity is the same, and recoil is the same, I would take the .45 GAP over the .40 just because the bullet is a little larger. The .45 GAP is using the lighter weight .45 bullets, so it falls into the same range of bullet weights as the .40. I think the .45 GAP might be a little better suited to self-defense carry. On the other hand, I would want to know about penetration also. Police work might require the shooting of someone inside a car or behind a baracade, while self-defense shooting for a civilian shouldn't. The .40 might be a little faster and offer a little more penetration, which might suit it more for police work. Personally, I liked the Sig round. I want Browning to offer the Hi-Power in it soon. I like it better than the .40. I know it penetrates more, although the bullet weights are in the 9mm range. It is really a zippy round and offers more power than the 9mm or .38 super. I think it is a fun round to shoot, and should make a very nice police or self-defense round.

Drive Through Traffic Jams

On a recent trip from Cookeville, Tennessee to Clinton, Tennessee I encounter 2 of the absolute slowest "fast" food places I have seen. In Crossville Tennessee I found a McDonald's off of interstate 40 that seems trapped in slow motion. We gave up on the egg mcmuffin my wife wanted and continued on 40. Somewhere between Oak Ridge and Clinton we became trapped in the Taco Bell Drive Through that Time Forgot. Thanks to those 2 stops we lost the 45 minutes of spare time we gave ourselves and were actually about 10 minutes late. While stuck in the hell that is a drive though in August in a car without a working air conditioner, I exponded once again on my theory about the double window drive through.

You see, I don't think the fast food joints that use two windows do it to speed things up, I think they do it to take the last possible option away from the customer. You see, traditionally, if there was only an order point and a window where you paid and got your food, if the line was slow, you could almost always pull out and leave. If you pull in with 25 minutes of a 30 minute lunch break left and order a burger, fries, and drink and 15 minutes later you are still 3 cars away from the window, you need to leave and be able to grab a beef jerkey stick and drink from a convienence store to make it through the day. The double window drive through doesn't speed this up any. To make a 2 window drive through work efficiently to speed up traffic, you need a minimum of 4 people staffing it. You need one person taking orders, one person taking money and giving back change. one person carrying food to the window, and one person filling drinks and handing out the food. I don't know of a single place locally that uses more than 3 people, and most make do with two. Most places make the person taking money and making change take the orders to. That way, one register is all that is needed, but if it is busy, he has trouble taking money and making change because of the orders coming in. This can really slow down both order taking and money collecting. Now some of our local chain food shacks use two people on the second window, but some make the drink filler and food hander fetch and sack the orders, this really slows stuff down.

Now the local McDonalds uses the double window system on all it's local stores. The local Burger Kings have the double windows, but only one actually uses them and only during busy periods. I can't tell a difference in service speed. Dairy Queen and Jack in the Box both use only 1 window and aren't any slower in service on the average. I believe the real purpose of the first window is to get your money quick, so you won't leave the line if it is slow. Even if you do, they got paid for the food. I mean, we eat fast food because it is quick, convienent, and consistant, not because it tastes good. That's why we are fat, lazy and in a bad mood. Now we are being manuevered into having to put up with bad service from underpaid wage slaves. It sucks.

I want a Vacation

Damn, first we've been moving my in-laws as the farm they were renting sold. Naturally the inlaws themselves are at a race track in Kentucky, and can't be bothered by moving all their earthly possessions, so it has fallen on my wife to magically not only get it done, but get it done in a manner that suits her father. To make matters worse, I am having to work a lot as many of the warrants I've taken are hitting court and several times in the last month I've had to magically be in court in two counties 60 miles apart at the same time. My wife has handled wonderfully, but there have been a few explosions. None of the family has helped, but some of her former co-workers have come through like champs. Last weekend we had a yard sale on some of the stuff they wanted to get rid of. Her father won't tell her what to price anything, but asks what she sold and what she got for it, then bitches if she didn't get enough. He says for her to call him if she doesn't know what to sell something for. Now, it usually involves leaving a voice mail message and waiting 2 hours to contact him, so that is not a working plan.

Now I might need to explain that they didn't move to another farm. Instead, they set up a storage shed in our front yard and most of their crap is there. What won't fit in the shed is on a flatbed trailer also in our front yard covered with a tarp. Her father loaned the flatbed trailer to a friend and my wife spent most of Monday unloading the trailer and putting the shit in our barn. We recently spent a weekend cleaning the barn out and hauling off junk just so we could build 2 new stalls. Now it is full of shit that isn't ours. We can't mow the front yard, because it is full of tarped furniture, appliances, and the stupid trailer the friend still hasn't picked up, but which we had to rush like hell to empty. My wife is regretting not taking my suggestion involving the 2 gallons of gasoline and the mysterious lit match that must have been tossed from the window of a passing car causing a horrible accident.

Our last three weeks have revolved around this issue. My wife can't do anything else, no time, and all our weekends are consumed by it. We now have a niece living with us, because no one else in the family will take her and the boarding school / slave camp / juvenile detainment center she has been enrolled in isn't ready for her until the middle of next week and we can't find a gypsy caravan to take her off our hands. My wife is tickled though, she has help. The girl will probably be glad to leave, the slave camp will be like a resort compared to what she is going through.

I have three days of training this week which means I am behind in everything else. I probable should stop this and get to work.