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New AR-15s

David G. Stinner — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 23:23:48 +0000

Last weekend, I picked up a Smith & Wesson M&P 15-22. It’ll mostly be used for target practice since 22lr ammo is cheaper to shoot than .223/5.56 ammo ($20 for 525 rounds versus $6 for 20 rounds). The nice thing about the M&P 15-22 is it operates like a regular AR-15. Other 22lr versions of AR-15 only look like one. The bolt release on the S&W works just like a bolt release on a regular AR. There are two separate receivers – an upper and a lower.

This weekend, I completed my AR-15 build. It cost me more than I had wanted to spend but in the end, it was worth it. My first thought was to get a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 Sport which only costs about $600. I decided to build my own so that I could get all the features I was after, instead of buying a complete rifle and then adding/swapping parts. Since I bought the upper receiver already completed, I didn’t need to purchase any special tools to complete the rifle.

I started with the Spike’s Tactical color-filled stripped lower mentioned in my previous post. I used a Spike’s Tactical lower parts kit and a Spike’s Tactical battle trigger group to complete the lower receiver. The stock is an ACE ARFX skeleton stock. The completed upper was ordered from Palmetto State Armory and shipped to Arms-n-Ammo in South Jersey to have the muzzle brake pinned and welded. After all was said and done, the entire build cost me about $1,200 (including taxes, shipping, and NICS fees). If I had purchased a $1,000 rifle, it would cost about the same after tax and NICS fees.

Building An AR-15

David G. Stinner — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:18:45 +0000

For about a year now, I’ve wanted an AR-15 rifle yet couldn’t decide between buying one already built or building my own. I thought I had settled on buying one already built, specifically a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 Sport, until I learned that a gun shop fairly close to my house carried stripped lowers in stock. I went by there on Saturday with the wife and purchased a Spike’s Tactical color-filled stripped lower.

I had to wait a couple of hours due to the fact that NICS was down and they didn’t get the issue resolved until later on in the afternoon.
The next thing is to purchase a lower build kit so I can complete the lower and then I plan on buying a completed upper instead of building one. It looks like it’s a lot harder to build an upper than it is to build the lower.

ReQall v. Remember The Milk, Round 2

David G. Stinner — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:36:10 +0000

About a year and a half ago, I chose ReQall over Remember The Milk as my GTD/productivity reminder app of choice. I eventually upgraded to the Pro version of ReQall because I liked the idea of adding items by voice and the integration with Evernote. After upgrading to my iPhone 4S though, ReQall stopped recognizing my location and therefore couldn’t remind me to do something when i was near a particular location (i.e. pickup milk when I’m near the grocery store). I’ve been in contact with ReQall’s tech support since October 24, 2011 and they’re in no rush to correct the issue. They say the developers are too busy working on a new product called ReQall Rover. Personally, I think three months is too long to have to wait for a bug fix, especially since I’m a Pro user.
Because ReQall has been pissing me off lately, I’ve decided to give RTM another try. They’ve found a way to use Siri to add new reminders to RTM. I never really used the Evernote integration but it was nice to know that feature was there, should I ever want to take advantage of it. RTM also has the ability to remind me by location.
I tried using the built-in Reminders app in iOS 5, but it didn’t live up to my expectations. If I wanted to assign a location to an item, I had to have the address attached to a contact in my address book. I didn’t really like that I had to create a contact for my grocery store or my pharmacy just to add a location to an item. I did, however, like that I could have the Reminders app notify me about an item when I leave a location, instead of only when I’m arriving or near one. I’ve used it several times to remind me to do something when leaving work or home. I would use the Reminders app exclusively if there were a web interface through iCloud to add items more quickly and if there were a way to dictate a list of items to Siri and have her/it recognize it as a list and create one entry per item (instead of one entry for the entire list).

New Year’s Resolutions – 2012

David G. Stinner — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 04:59:45 +0000

It’s been another couple years since I’ve made any New Year’s resolutions. Here are my current resolutions:

Save up enough money to move into an apartment
Lose at least 10 pounds
Save up money to purchase some items on my personal wish list

Aloha

David G. Stinner — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:34:52 +0000

This past week, my wife (still not used to saying that word) and I spent our honeymoon in beautiful Honolulu, HI. We stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village on Waikiki Beach. Our room overlooked the ocean and we were a quick walk to the beach from our hotel tower. It rained on occasion while we were there but nothing like the rain storms we get in the northeast. Usually they were sun showers. Only once was the sky kinda dark, but after an hour or so it cleared up. We went to Pearl Harbor but didn’t get a good view of the USS Arizona due to the rain coming down at the time. As soon as we got back on the tour bus, it stopped raining. We also took a day trip to the big island, Hawai’i, to check out the volcanoes. It rained there too but only while we were on the bus. While on the big island, we visited the black sand beach, which was beautiful and we would’ve liked to have taken some home if it wasn’t for the superstition that it’s bad luck. We didn’t wanna chance it. We also visited the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut factory and purchased some Hershey’s Kisses with Macadamias inside (supposedly they’re only sold on the Hawaiian islands). We didn’t get to see any lava flows like you see in the movies, mostly because they’re rare. The shots you see in movies take weeks to get and they use high power lenses to get a close-up view from a safe distance. We would’ve easily spent another week there, if we could have. We didn’t want to come home and deal with work after spending a week in paradise.

Talk About A White Wedding

David G. Stinner — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 03:59:11 +0000

Tonight I got married to my girlfriend of the last two years in the middle of a freak snowstorm. It hadn’t snowed in October since the 1950′s, and it’s only the third time since the Civil War that it’s snowed in October. Luckily, the snow didn’t scare away too many of our guests. Out of the the ~115 who responded, ~105 braved the storm; and we were extremely grateful for that. The night flew by too fast. Now I know what everyone means when they say you’ll wish you were a guest at your own wedding. There’s not enough time to take it all in. The crappy weather we had on our wedding day will make us enjoy our honeymoon in Honolulu even more.

Google Flights

David G. Stinner — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:14:33 +0000

Yesterday, Google released a tool for searching airfare. It’s similar to Kayak, Hipmunk and Expedia yet only focuses on flights, whereas the others also handle hotels (Kayak and Expedia also handle rental cars and entire vacation packages).
One of the things I like about Google Flights over the other services is that you can choose a departing city and date and see airfares to popular destination on a map. You can further filter this by price and duration of flight.
One of the things I don’t like about Google Flights is that you’re currently unable to book a round trip which start and end on the same day. My fiancée and I are going to Hawaii for our honeymoon and are planning on visiting the main island for a day to see the volcanoes. I know we can fly out at 6am and return around 8pm on the same day for ~$100 (booked directly through either Hawaiian Airlines or Go!, yet Google Flights insists we stay overnight and pay $172 instead. Kayak, Expedia and Hipmunk can book the same day round trip but also say it’ll cost $172.
Another thing I don’t like about Google Flights is that you can’t choose the number of travelers or what class you want to book. They automatically assume only one person is traveling and that person would like to sit in coach.
I’m sure it’s still in beta mode even though it doesn’t have the beta label; so I hope that they’ll improve it to better compete with Expedia, Kayak and Hipmunk.

Google Plus

David G. Stinner — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 23:12:32 +0000

I’ve been trying out Google+ for about three weeks now and so far I like it better than Facebook. There are a few things I like about Google+ over Facebook and there are a few things I’d like to see Google+ implement that Facebook already does.
What I do like:

Group friends/acquaintances into “circles” instead of groups so status updates can be targeted appropriately
Group video chat (I personally haven’t tried this but it’s nice to know it’s there). Google+ calls this “hangouts”
Better control over profile privacy
Integrated with Picasa (rumored to change the name to Google Photos), which I already use as a backup to my Flickr account. I might even get rid of my Flickr account all together since storage on Google is cheap
No annoying posts about what games people are playing cluttering up your feed (or stream as Google+ calls it)

What I wish Google+ did that Facebook does

Allow for vanity URLs. It’s easier to tell someone to visit plus.google.com/your.name instead of plus.google.com/103067558420705101928
Have fan pages. The closest thing (and it’s not that close) would be “Sparks” which seem more like Google News filters
Condensed comments. I was very surprised to see that Google+ didn’t already have this implemented fully. Some comments on my stream are condensed (it’ll say there are 30 comments and let me choose to expand them to view all the comments) yet others are fully expanded out without giving me the option to condense them down. This makes my stream a lot longer than it needs to be. Hopefully Google will correct this soon.

What I wish Google+ did that even Facebook doesn’t do yet:

-1 something (the Facebook equivalent would be Dislike). People have been complaining that Facebook lacked this feature and Google should’ve listened to that and incorporated it into Google+ to one-up Facebook even more.

What I wish Google+ would copy from GMail and other social networking services:

Color coded commenting (similar to GMail)
Color coded stream entries (by circle, user configurable preferably – similar to labels in GMail but applying them to the person’s name)
A better @/+ mentioning system. It should default to showing me people I’m already following and not everyone in the Google Directory.

I think in about a year or two from now, Google+ will do to Facebook what Facebook did to myspace; even Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg is on Google+.

Florida Non-Resident CCW Permit

David G. Stinner — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 23:06:23 +0000

Almost three months ago, I applied for a Florida non-resident concealed carry weapons license. I received it on the 9th and realized they had goofed my birthdate. I called up the next day and was told I should have the corrected license in 7-10 days. I received the corrected license last Friday in the mail.
With the license, I can carry concealed in the following states:

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
New Mexico
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wyoming

I don’t plan on carrying every time I go to one of these states but it is nice to know that if I have to travel there for work and it’s a hostile environment, I can bring my gun along as protection.

VirtualBox

David G. Stinner — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:30:47 +0000

Ubuntu 10.10 inside Windows 7

Yesterday, I posted an entry about creating a Hackintosh inside VirtualBox. I failed to realize that I never posted an entry about VirtualBox even though I’ve been using it for a while.
VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware, targeted at server, desktop and embedded use. A lot of companies are moving towards virtualization because they can have multiple virtual servers running on one physical server. Fewer physical servers means less room needed to house the servers and less power to run the servers. Virtualization also makes it easier when migrating from one physical server to another. Typically, only a few files need to be migrated, instead of having to copy hundreds or thousands of files over; or having to create an image (Ghost, Acronis, etc.) of the old server and restoring the image onto the new server.
Oracle (the company who makes VirtualBox now that they purchased Sun MicroSystems) lists the following as reasons why virtualization is useful:

Running multiple operating systems simultaneously. VirtualBox allows you to run more than one operating system at a time. This way, you can run software written for one operating system on another (for example, Windows software on Linux or a Mac) without having to reboot to use it. Since you can configure what kinds of “virtual” hardware should be presented to each such operating system, you can install an old operating system such as DOS or OS/2 even if your real computer’s hardware is no longer supported by that operating system.

Easier software installations. Software vendors can use virtual machines to ship entire software configurations. For example, installing a complete mail server solution on a real machine can be a tedious task. With VirtualBox, such a complex setup (then often called an “appliance”) can be packed into a virtual machine. Installing and running a mail server becomes as easy as importing such an appliance into VirtualBox.

Testing and disaster recovery. Once installed, a virtual machine and its virtual hard disks can be considered a “container” that can be arbitrarily frozen, woken up, copied, backed up, and transported between hosts.
On top of that, with the use of another VirtualBox feature called “snapshots”, one can save a particular state of a virtual machine and revert back to that state, if necessary. This way, one can freely experiment with a computing environment. If something goes wrong (e.g. after installing misbehaving software or infecting the guest with a virus), one can easily switch back to a previous snapshot and avoid the need of frequent backups and restores.

Any number of snapshots can be created, allowing you to travel back and forward in virtual machine time. You can delete snapshots while a VM is running to reclaim disk space.

Infrastructure consolidation. Virtualization can significantly reduce hardware and electricity costs. Most of the time, computers today only use a fraction of their potential power and run with low average system loads. A lot of hardware resources as well as electricity is thereby wasted. So, instead of running many such physical computers that are only partially used, one can pack many virtual machines onto a few powerful hosts and balance the loads between them.

I typically use it for running older operating systems (Windows XP, Fedora 10, etc.) or for testing out new ones (especially Linux based). I haven’t yet, but if I wanted to, I could use VirtualBox create a virtual copy of one of my existing computers (with the help of third-party software).