Some random thoughts...

I was going to post a picture of another of my rifles tonight, but after getting it out of the safe and finding a suitable place to photograph it, I realized my camera battery was dead... and I don't know where the charger is right now. Bummer.

I finally jumped on the Apple fanboy bandwagon and bought an iPhone (once the price had dropped to $100). It's frikken great! I had no idea what I had been missing, just using a $15 gophone (with my sim card in it) for the last year. Wow - way much more than a phone! All my music is on it, there's a sick amount of "apps" available - I have a bunch of games on it as well as a GPS, "I heart radio" and even a bible in various translations! One HUGE drawback - since I got the phone, I have not read one single book... which is saying something coming from a guy who used to read 2 or 3 a week... I am going to have to address that at some point, but not right now. I have a high score to beat on Battlefield 2.

Today was an especially interesting day for me in the blogosphere. I found a pretty inspiring story about open carry in California over at Say Uncle, which was written in a neutral/positive manner. Pretty refreshing to see a reporter actually report on gunnies objectively. Over at Joe Huffman's casa, I found a link to the state of affairs back in Blighty, which is pretty depressing (and would be even more so if I still lived there). I swear, whenever I get down about the latest stunts our lords and masters in Washington are planning to inflict upon us, I see stories like this which correct my perspective and make me truly thankful that I live where I do. These stories also, however, show us a taste of what's to come too, should we slip in our vigilance.

This year's Gun Blogger Rendezvous has me all tingly. There's going to be a lot of folks going that I'd love to finally meet in the flesh, and it sounds like there are a lot of neat events planned too. It's great that they pushed it up from October to September, so in a perfect world, I could attend and still go hunting. However, it is not a perfect world, and like everyone else, my funds are stretched pretty tight right now. My wife and I have shares in a points-based timeshare thingy and they happen to have a resort in Reno less than half a mile from the Silver Legacy, where the Rendezvous is being hosted. Since I could use that for "free" (notwithstanding the thousands of dollars we paid up front to actually purchase the shares) I wouldn't have to sweat the $300+ a hotel room would set me back and I'd only have to deal with gas there and back... I could possibly swing that... unfortunately, the Reno resort is fully booked, so I'm on the "first tier" waiting list to snag anything that comes up should someone cancel... it looks like that is the only possible way I'll be able to attend, worst luck... well, fingers crossed...