New Old Kid on the Block - Article from Patriot Ex Machina

I've been curious about what would happen with the takeover of the old Bushmaster factory by the former private owner. Below is a great write-up from Patriot Ex Machina of the transition and a brief product review about one of the 5.56 options available from Windham Weaponry

Windham Weaponry is the "New Old Kid on the Block"

Publicly Scolded... At least I was Anonymous

It is a strange feeling to hear yourself being talked about in a public forum. You know what I mean... you're in a meeting and the boss talks about an error and you know it's you but he doesn't mention you. You can feel your face turning red with embarrassment wondering if everyone else knows it's you that is the target of a well-deserved scolding. Well, I got a scolding yesterday in front of an audience of a few thousand people though I didn't here it until my commute this morning. Jack Spirko has a business podcast, "5 Minutes with Jack", in which he offers tons of awesome advice with a catch. You have to do something with it. In an email to Jack recently, I filled it full of excuses on why I haven't taken some steps forward with my ideas:

I know if I had spent some $$ to get dillonallen.com, was hosting on Hostgator, and had installed Wordpress that SEO Smart Links would handle this for me. That is my plan, just can't justify the $$ since I don't even have a detailed plan for a business yet.

I'm still sitting on Blogger and planning a move to actual hosting/domain following the outage I'm working right now and better formulation of my plan

In yesterday's Episode 91, He basically ranted on the subject of excuses and not having an "I can do it, so I AM doing it NOW" attitude and it seemed he was reading directly from my email. If not, some other dude wrote in with the exact same words, since Jack read off the excuses listed above - in that order - with a few generalizations. ACK! The point is, there will always be a reason or potential issue to stop you from moving forward if you don't step up and attack the future. I deserved my scolding and I acted... http://www.dillonallen.com is now in existence (though it won't show up until tomorrow some time) and I will be posting there in the future. I will run my main blog at dillonallen.com/blog as well as my photography page, Ka-Click, within the dillonallen.com domain. I also have a few ideas for both product and ebooks that I want to market. They will be available there by summer and I can remove myself - if only for a while - as a source of self-inflicted ridicule. Jack, thanks for the push.

Contagion? NZ Flu was a good fire drill

This weekend while perusing my twitter feed, I ran across stories of a strange flu-outbreak on a flight to New Zealand. I immediately found it strange that a bunch of people on the same plane broke out with symptoms and was, to be honest, a bit concerned that some new strain of flu could potentially be breaking free from SE Asia. Probably didn't help that I recently watched Contagion. But the NZ authorities took measures immediately to quarantine the flight. I still thought about the upstream issues (the departure airport, local area there, flights elsewhere from there, etc). But if all of these sypmtomatic folks broke out over the course of a flight, people would know quickly if they had the disease and be more easily quarantined. So news was slim and time was ticking...

Whew! Concerns Overblown! Now the kiwis say they went overboard but to err on the side of caution. This bothers me a bit and here's why. They did what they SHOULD HAVE DONE! You don't decide that you're overreacting to an event that has explosive potential during the event. You knock the everliving bejesus out of it (Mississippi for attack it really hard) and then address that in the after action report. Some worry that the public will be desensitized to the reaction by this overreaction. I say keep it coming, we need all the practice (with little impact) that we can get when something that ends up being relatively harmless happens.

You play like you practice and I'm proud of NZ for playing pretty well (even though they didn't know it was a scrimmage). I'm glad everyone is OK but this really drives home that we should all be ready to take action in the event that something like a pandemic breaks on our shores.

Here's another article from The Sydney Morning Herald

I Won a Soil Cube!

The Soil Cube is a small tool used to start seeds. More specifically, it is a mold that you stuff full of your soil and press into a small cube. You then press a small hole into the top with a threaded press. I've been wanting one, but it was way down the list of things I planned to buy as I have a few hundred dollars of other items to get to put the new L-shaped, Eliz-approved raised bed in the backyard. After all, my Pop never used a soil cube. Nonetheless I really wanted to add one to my toolbox for use starting seeds... meaning I wanted it now because IT'S TIME!

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I have become an avid listener of The Survival Podcast by Jack Spirko. Jack occasionally has listener appreciate contests in which you send the appropriate key words in the subject and a sponsor will send the winner their product. AWESOME! But there are more than 25,000 listeners and I listen to the podcast at least 5 hours after the podcast posts, so snagging a win out of one or two potential prizes before the other listeners get to them is like catching a t-shirt out of a t-shirt gun while sitting in the middle deck at an ACC football game. NOTE: I was gonna say football game generically, but I'm from the SEC. We have 25,000 at our spring scrimmage games.

But lo and behold, this morning after the dust cleared from a couple of busy meetings, 6 missed calls from my boss, a contractor, and my wife, I got an email saying I'd WON the soil cube. I never win anything in random drawings... I mean like NEVER. So this really brightened my day. I will do a review of the soil cube once I get it and have some free time to start my seeds. It's the least I can do for Clayton and Jack. THANKS Y'ALL!

PS - I'm jumping the gun a hair since Jack hasn't announced the winners as of this writing (he had to unexpectedly can his episode today), but he says getting content out there is the most important thing and write about what makes you tick... this is it today. So I hope I didn't ruin the suspense for any of the 50-100 people per day that read this if you are also a TSP listener.

Project: Build rifles for the boys with granddaddy

Now that I've been back home in Mississippi for a few years, I am getting back to my roots a bit with respect to gardening, hunting, and other skills that I let founder over the course of my college and Navy career. When I was 8 I started with a single shot .410 shotgun from Harrington & Richardson. From there, I moved up to a rimfire rifle with my Marlin 75C .22 caliber rifle (the old carbine version of the Model 60, which now IS the model 60). Both of these were squirrel terminators. Neither kicked to speak of and were easy weapons on which to learn marksmanship and firearm safety. I later moved up to a 12 gauge identical to my 410. There is a great set of videos from Dave Canterbury (of Dual Survival) about the H&R 12 gauge and its versatility. My sons are old enough that they & their friends are starting to get BB guns and at an age close to where I got my 410. But now I look back and think of how I would have made different purchases if I was doing it now to end up with weapons that are more versatile long term but just as simple to learn and use as a kid. My dad always wants gifts to be meaningful. Between his desire to be meaningful and our shared goal to teach the boys lots of skills that everyone used to know, I think the next couple of birthdays/Christmases are going to focus on building up the boys sets of long-term tools like firearms and knives.

That leads me to starting them out on a 22 and letting them use my 410 until they can handle a 12 gauge and centerfire rifles. I've looked around at 22s and I certainly considered buying a couple of Marlins. After all, 2 is 1 and 1 is none. So 3 Marlins is like having 1.5 or something like that. However, that means I would spend somewhere north of $100 per rifle and be limited to 14-shot 22s. A little more digging and review reading led me to drop in conversions of AR-15s chambered in .223/5.56NATO to allow shooting 22s (25-round magazine). It provides an affordable alternative to shooting .223 or just a reliable platform from which to shoot 22s that can grow up to a 223 as the boys grow. To end up with a working AR-15, you need either 1 -OR- 2 AND 3 (more customizeable and cheaper) below. I threw in 4 below just for fun. It's a good little gun, best pump 12-gauge for the money, though admittedly is basically a copy of the Remington 870. To get the working AR-15 to become a 22, you also need 5 (or something similar from their comptetitors).

1. Whole Rifle: $650 & up You can literally spend as much as you want on these things. But if you spend $1000 or more, you're paying for the label. Mil-spec is mil-spec. Almost all of these rifles will be better than the marksman pulling the trigger.
Olympic Arms "Plinker Plus" flat top ("A4") with collapsible stock and railed gas block. This is kinda the bottom end of what I'd want to get for them. It has no customization and would require optics/backup iron sights to function.

2. Complete AR-15 Kit EXCEPT Stripped Lower Receiver $400 & up. This is all of the parts necessary to build a rifle except the lower reciever, which is the part of the rifle that is actually classified as the firearm by the feds. Similar to the entire rifle, you can go anywhere on the price spectrum from Yugo to MacLaren with these parts. The kit linked below gets you into a functional rifle with an adjustable length of pull (so the kids can use it) as well as a flash hider to which a suppressor that my family is considering can be mounted. J&T Distributing
- LW (lightweight) Barrel
- 6-Position DS-4 adjustable stock
- Picatinnny Rail Gas Block
- CAR Handguards
- Standard carrier, charging handle, trigger, trigger guard
- Hogue grip +20
- Phantom A-2 flash hider +$25

3. Stripped Lower Receiver: This is the only part of the rifle that has to be bought/picked up from a firearms dealer locally. Can't ship to your house, etc. But there are multiple options here and if it's mil spec it truly doesn't matter that much which you go with. Just find one you like, click, buy, pick up at local federal firearms licensee.
Mega Arms "Gator" with atom logo $109 (What nuke shouldn't have an atom logo reciever?)
Spikes Tactical SP-15 with spider logo $99 (The spider is just bad news)
Aero Precision $79
CMMG $79 (If sold out, there are others like DPMS for +$10-20)


4. 12-gauge Pump Shotgun for Home Defense/Hunting
New England Firearms "Pardner Pump" NP1-P18 (18.5" barrel, black synthetic stock, 5+1)

5. Drop in 22LR Conversion Kit from CMMG. You literally open up the rifle, remove the bolt carrier group, insert the kit and insert the 22 magazine... poof! You have a 22 on the AR platform.

Once you have 2 and 3 in your possession, it's a relatively simple matter to put all of the parts together assuming you have a couple of tools around like a strap wrench, vice, and some punches. Assembling your own rifle allows you to be familiar with its inner workings and I think letting my sons help assemble their rifles would be both a great learning experience and a fantastic memory with their dad and grandfather.

Hard-to-kill Greens: Chickweed & Malabar Spinach

Yesterday I heard about 2 separate plants that are both edible and grow easily in my regional climate - Chickweed & Malabar Spinach. You don't need a green thumb to get these plants going or keep them producing. Having no doubt I could grow these weeds - I have extensive experience with successful weeds growing in my yard :) - I was curious about how to use these plants before trying out some as ground cover in an empty bed on the side of my house. So in a quick search, here's what I found that makes me want this stuff tonight:

Malabar Spinach - Here's a video (makes me H-U-N-G-R-Y) about malabar followed by a couple of recipes.

• Indonesian Style Malabar Spinach - Food.com
  
• Mok Toi & Mushroom Stir Fry - MeltingWok.com
  
• Salads from Rose Creek Farms
  
• Bachali Kura Pappu ~ Malabar Spinach Dal - Sailu's Kitchen
  
• Pui Charchari or Malabar Spinach from Rice-n-curry.com
  
• Tomato-Malabar Quiche - Charlotte Fresh

Chickweed - I was going to post a cool video of this stuff being used, but the really interesting videos were all hosted by folks who appeared to have accidentally used a different, less legal weed and I couldn't put them up here without laughing (nor could they stop laughing). Just do a google or youtube video search for chickweed recipes. But here is the PBS-style public service announcement version, which actually shows you what it looks like on the ground and explains how to use it.

• Chickweed Pate - Eatweeds UK
  
• Pakora & Hot Dressed Salad (+ a few more) - Carl Legge
  
• Chickweed Pesto - LearningHerbs.com
  
• Chickweed Salad - Food & Wine
  
• Chickweed Chimichurri & Tuna Poke - Fat of the Land

The last one makes my eat crazy stuff bell ring. I LOVE poke. When my little brother was stationed in Hawaii and I stayed with him during my two week Naval Reserve duty at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, we ate almost nothing else. Adding something local, prevalent, and free to something that is a lot more pricey in Mississippi (due to the large amount of saltwater fish) is a great idea to stretch it. Anyway, I'm stoked to try out the malabar this year.

Downward Class Migration: Not Falling Alone, Sliding Together

Jack Spirko has been talking about "Downward Class Migration" for quite a while on The Survival Podcast. I am hearing more and more media reports about people falling in the class structure, but that isn't what Jack has been talking about. His point is that what it means to BE middle class (or any given class) is sliding downward while the actual class structure remains relatively stable. I think of it like an avalanche or landslide in which a shelf of ice (the class structure) slides down a mountain so that everyone remains about the same relative to each other but everyone is actually lower on the mountain. The kicker is that this shift combined with all of the individual cases of falling down to a lower class (due to unemployment, etc) compound each other for those to whom it happens. Below is a video that Jack put together to better explain this concept:

WARNING: This isn't a graduate thesis. It's a discussion from a normal guy to his community. There is some PG-13 language, but nothing rated R.

Here is Jack's blog post at The Survival Podcast, with a growing comment thread.

The bottom line of Jack's entire focus at TSP is that if you become more self sufficient in providing your needs (and wants), you can combat the downward migration of the entire class structure while nothing else is going wrong on a personal, local, regional, or global scale (storms, medical emergencies, financial difficulties, civil unrest). Thus his slogan "Helping you live the life you want if times get tough, or even if they don't." - Jack Spirko

UPDATE - Here is a link to a story from the Wall Street Journal on cultural inequality. Many similar themes, but from a mainstream polished source.

OH NO! BVO?

I love Mountain Dew, well Diet Mountain Dew (DMD) to be more precise. I drink enough of it that I keep about 2 gallons (8 liters) in my pantry rotation to make sure that critical resource never runs dry and as an accumulator tank so I can catch sales on it. On top of that, I drink a knock off of DMD from Kroger - "Big K Diet Citrus Drop Soda" out of cans. I drink 1/day as part of my lunch at work. Here is an article comparing the Citrus Drop to Mountain Dew. The prices aren't up to date, but the relative comparison between the 2 options is still accurate, thus my choice. But I stick with the original for the 2 liters.

I heard a short discussion as part of The Survival Podcast feedback show yesterday regarding the use of a chemical called brominated vegetable oil in MD, DMD, and other citrus sodas. This chemical is pretty much like it sounds, vegetable oil bound with bromine/bromide salts. What is this chemical used as outside my DMD... a fire retardant. That is not enough in and of itself to make me shy away. After all, I regularly intake chemicals that are standard fire retardants/extinguishers (water, carbon dioxide). But a quick google search for "BVO" or "brominated vegetable oil" leads you to sites like:

• Scientific American
  
• Food Democracy
  
• Bon Appetit
  
• Environmental Health News
  
• RD411
  

Not a single one of these sources, or any other source I could find, has anything positive to say about BVO and everything I read says this stuff could be pretty nasty. In fact, it is banned for use in sodas in many countries (~100). Now I recognize that many of these sites are a bit on the alternative side of the media spectrum. But Scientific American is certainly mainstream scientific media. I have to do some digging into the actual impact and the data behind it and I think I may have to go to offshore data for impacts specifically in food/soda. But I sense that for my DMD habit there may be a quiet death knell looming in the distance.

Extreme Races: Warrior Dash & GORUCK Challenge

UPDATE: Run For Your Lives is another extreme race... basically a 5k with obstacles and, more importantly, zombies!!! This looks like a fun, less serious alternative to the GORUCK challenge and perhaps a little less physically challenging than the Warrior Dash. If anyone has participated in any of these and would like to leave a comment with some more info, please do.

Two different extreme races have come to my attention via completely separate ways in the last 4 days:

• The GORUCK Challenge - This weekend while researching a discount on a highly recommended pack (GORUCK) I ran across the GORUCK Challenge put on by a high-speed cadre of former operators from the special operations world. I was immediately intrigued by the challenge and started thinking of who I could recruit as the core of a team to do a custom event later this year or, more likely, next year since their schedule is pretty chockablock until then. The list of people who would think it is cool is relatively long. The list of people on my short list who would actually commit to do something that won't be fun but will be extremely rewarding... let's just say I didn't need my toes. I am scared of this thing and exhilarated at the same time. Can't wait to get down to brass tacks on this one.
  
  
• The Warrior Dash - A colleague is participating in Warrior Dash Mississippi which will raise funds for St Jude Children's Hospital. I can't think of a better reason to run myself into the ground regardless of how crazy or painful it might appear. The kids for whom the funds are being raised run headlong into the unknown every day and don't have a choice. But they keep fighting until they can't. If that isn't a warrior spirit, what is? I'll be working shift work, so can't participate this year. But the event organizers tell me they often do repeats as their events are very successful. I'm IN for 2012.

I can run a few miles without "having to" and I can push myself through some pretty hard work. I'm no hard core terminator cyborg like my little brother, but I think either of these two events would be awesome to participate in.

New toy for my 22? Elftmann Tactical

I have been looking for a solution to make my "old faithful" Marlin Model 75C (which is really the old version of the current Model 60) into a rifle with a shorter length of pull and generally much smaller. Mount a holographic red dot on top (very inexpensive alternatives are available that can handle the non-existent recoil of a 22) and you have a very capable little rifle to plink or hunt small game. I love the idea of a 22 that can be carried with negligible impact to your weight and could even be strapped onto the side of a 3-day pack.

The guys at Elftmann Tactical have put together the product pictured above, which appears to be of significantly higher quality than the bolt-together plastic alternatives previously available. They offer it for both the Marlin and the Ruger 10/22, which covers an a amazing amount of the 22 market share. If I can get my hands on one, I will follow up with a review. Here is a link to the Elftmann site.

Chef Georgia Pellegrini

I'm completely intrigued by Georgia Pellegrini. She's gone way beyond where I would expect most girls to go in terms of "back to nature", hunting, gathering, etc. But she seems to have proven that you can do that stuff and still stay what would be conventionally described as "girly". Not to mention having some ideas that the guys can learn from. Here's a link to Chef Pellegrini's recipes. You can navigate to the rest of her site from there. Some of the recipes are pretty adventurous - but I will try just about anything once and have found many interesting foods that way over the course of my life and travels. I certainly want to do a couple of the weirder ones on my own before I try to convince my kids that it's even in the realm of possibility to try.

The Girl Hunter - Facebook Fan Page

Finally, here's a link to her book. It looks pretty interesting, but I haven't read it yet and therefore can't endorse it. But I have added it to my wishlist.

Why I carry knives

My wife always asks me why I carry my Barrage from Benchmade on me all the time and keep my Benchmade Houdini Pro in my car. She thinks I'm a bit of a knife/gun/___ nut. Here's a timely reason from Blade Mag. So far, I've only convinced her to carry an old Swiss Army Knife in her glove box. I haven't gotten a response from her yet, but this might be what it takes to get the Houdini moved over to her truck - and stationed within arms reach in case SHE is the one who is stuck in an accident.

Eliz, if you're reading this... this is why I do all of the "nutso" things I do in the name of a little preparedness. Being ready before an emergency is the only way to actually be ready. I love you and I want to keep you around. If one other person reads this and takes action to prepare to deal with the many small tasks and potential emergencies for which a knife is well-suited or in the extreme saves a life, then this post did more than I could hope for.

In the near future, I will try to post a little about the small things I do to be prepared in my daily life.