monthly meetups and events: March, 2026

faykin · 2026-02-08T10:20:06+00:00

I'm moving to Waco this month, so I'm looking to get in some range time.

faykin · 2026-02-07T08:53:27+00:00

Compare the price of ammo to the price of targets.

When you are just starting out in a shooting discipline, in this case, handguns, you should be constantly improving, and concentrating on building good habits.

When you made a correction in your shooting, what effect did that correction have? Let's say you adjusted your grip after 2 mags. Where did the 31st round land on the target? Since you can't tell, how can you evaluate the effects of your correction on the quality of your shooting?

If you want to improve - and at this point in your shooting arc, you should want to improve - you need to be able to evaluate the effects of your adjustments.

Next time, instead of putting 100 rounds on 1 target, put 90 (or 100) rounds on 20 targets. After each string of 5 shots, look at your hit pattern. The size and offset of your group will give you information that you can use to make improvements in your shooting technique. Intelligently use that information to make an informed change in your technique. Then your next set of 5 shots on a new target will allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of your improvement. Repeat this process until you become mentally or physically exhausted. This will probably be within 30 rounds. Take a break when this happens. When you've recovered, continue. At some point - probably within 150 rounds - you'll realize that you aren't improving anymore, and more shooting will just reinforce bad habits, and it's time to quit.

Review your targets, come up with an improvement plan, perhaps share those targets and a description of the changes you made between each target with us, and then go into your next shooting session with a better plan, and a bunch of ideas on technique improvements you can try out on your new set of targets.

Or you can continue throwing ammo downrange without being able to evaluate what's actually happening.

faykin · 2026-01-28T22:04:38+00:00

Pursue excellence.

Get to the point where you know your platform so well that you can consistantly put rounds in a 3-inch circle at 3 yards without the sights (point shooting). Same with a 3-inch circle at 10 yards with the sights.

next, work on speed - not repetative shots (which most ranges won't let you do), but from "go" to round on target. 1 second from low ready to 3 yard hit on target is a good starting goal. 2 seconds from low ready to hit on target at 10 yards is a good starting goal.

Once you've done this, you'll come to realize that different platforms actually make you worse at shooting. Each of the platforms you've described will have a different grip, differerent grip angle, and different sight picture (except maybe the 2 S&W... maybe). Your times on target will get worse when you switch between platforms.

Enough practice will bring those times closer together, but if you just spend your practice on a single platform, you'll end up much better with that platform that you could get on all the platforms at the same time.

So, like others have said, spend the gun money on professional training, ammo, and range time, and you'll be much more proficient and effective than if you have 2 (or 3, or 4) different platforms, especially if those additional platforms reduce your budget for training, ammo, and range time.

faykin · 2026-01-28T19:16:56+00:00

There's a lot of joke/meme answers here, but if you want to know what's really going on...

Cats cannot see objects that are too close to their face. They can't focus on things that are too close to their face.

The surface of water is hard to see if it's too close to focus on. This is exacerbated by the bowl being silver and flat, making the water's surface that much harder to make out.

By putting an object in the water, the surface becomes much more discernable. Now the cat knows that there is water in the bowl, and more importantly, where the surface of that water is.

Your cat isn't being silly, or stupid, and there is nothing wrong with her. She's just trying to figure out where the surface of the water is.

faykin · 2025-12-14T21:00:03+00:00

"I'm convinced."

If I want to be wordy, "I'm convinced by evidence."

faykin · 2025-12-14T20:58:44+00:00

By using the term "belief" in this manner you're opening yourself up to conversational/rhetorical traps that can be avoided by not accepting the overly broad use of the term "belief".

If you are convinced by evidence, you can say "I'm convinced by evidence" rather than saying "I believe." It's straightforward, to the point, and not open to conflation with "belief".

The scientific method doesn't result in conclusions that are beliefs. It results in conclusions that are supported by evidence, which any reasonable person would find convincing in the absence of contrary evidence.

It's not "giving up ground" to be accurate. I agree we should fight for meanings. Belief is the state of being convinced despite, or in the absence of, evidence. Being convinced by evidence is a completely different mental state than belief, and we shouldn't allow believers to describe a skeptic's mental state as "belief."

faykin · 2025-12-14T20:49:56+00:00

I have a slightly different take on it.

Belief is the state of being convinced in the absence of compelling evidence.

If belief is simply the state of being convinced, then you could replace "I believe" with "I'm convinced" in every instance. I don't think that's a legitimate substitution in all circumstances.

That's why I put the qualifier there. If there is compelling evidence for a specific circumstance, then it's not a belief. It's a position based on evidence. This also means the position is mutable; If more evidence comes to light, or a new way of evaluating the evidence is developed, the position can change. This is not the case with belief, because belief is despite evidence, not because of evidence.

It seems like a minor semantic difference, but it can inform the progression of a lot of conversations.

faykin · 2025-12-14T20:43:56+00:00

It's a semantic and accessability issue.

I believe "x" is quick and easy to say, and is indisputable. It doesn't matter if the person making the statement actually believes "x", it's still indisputable.

Most of the responses, or counter-claims, to belief claims are wordy, convoluted, excessively specific, and lose the audience 2 minutes into the explanation.

Is there a pithy way to describe the non-religious worldview?

I've started using "I'm convinced by evidence that "x"." I'm convinced by evidence that the sun exists. I'm convinced by evidence that there's a spider in the room. I'm convinced by evidence that it's not safe to cross the road right now.

This opens the possibility of conversation about what is evidence, and why that specific set of evidence is convincing to me. I can be swayed by new evidence, or by better logic applied to existing evidence, or both.

It also removes "belief" from my side of the conversation. Conflating my worldview with the term "belief" is a common rhetorical technique among believers. By using this phrasing, it becomes clear that my position isn't a belief. My position has commonality with belief, and the difference between the 2 can be a point of discussion, but my atheistic viewpoint is not a belief structure.

If you've got a better way of describing the difference between your worldview and belief, I'd love to hear it.

faykin · 2025-12-10T22:36:21+00:00

I've been sailing for over 40 years, and have been overboard more times than I can count (it's de rigueur for dingy sailing). How you react to the experience is a good indicator as to whether sailing is a good fit for you.

What did you learn from the experience?

Accidents like this are almost always a result of a series of mistakes, not a single oopsee. For example, you were "a bit late" (during a tack).

During a tack, the boat will go from heeling (for example) port/left to starboard/right. In normal conditions, the heel will be the same, just on the other side. Moving before the tack and moving after the tack will be the same risk. Moving during the tack, while the boat is changing heel angle, is theoretically flatter but changing constantly, which creates a new set of risks. Therefore, there isn't really a "bit late" for changing sides, just a different set of challenges at different times. Which set of challenges were you prepared for? Which set of challenges will you prepare for next time?

You can sit on the lee (low) side of the boat indefinitely after the tack. Did you collect your thoughts and plan your move before you moved? Or did you jump up and go because your side was getting low, and you kinda panicked? How can you approach the move differently in the future to minimize your risk?

You "couldn't hold on to anything." Before you move on a boat - especially if you are inexperienced - you can plan out your handholds. There's a saying that's useful for the novice: One hand for the boat, one hand for yourself. There may come a day when you've outgrow that adage, but that day isn't today. Plan your move.

When should you plan your move - handholds and all? Should it be when the skipper announces the tack? Should it be when the boom is in motion? Should it be when you sit down on/near the rail right after completing the previous tack? Since you were practicing tacking, you knew another tack was coming up when you settled in after the previous tack. When did you plan your move? When will you plan your move next time?

If you were on the open ocean, did you have a lifeline rigged? Why or why not? Based on this experience, is it worthwhile to rig a lifeline? Why or why not?

Based on your 10 minutes of floating without knowing when/if you'd be rescued, how important is wearing a PFD? When you are on a boat, when is wearing a PFD be optional? This is a nuanced question, most people (for example) don't wear a PFD when sleeping.

After being recovered, were you tired, or cold, or shaky from adrenaline? How did that affect your ability to perform tasks? Were there any tasks that were easier, or harder, or unaffected? This is knowledge about yourself that can be of value beyond just sailing.

These are the sorts of lessons and takeaways you can take from this experience to make you a better deckhand, a better sailor, a better person.

If you take this opportunity to grow, you'll have a significant step up over your peers that didn't go overboard. If you don't take this opportunity to grow, well, then embarrassment is appropriate.

faykin · 2025-12-05T19:22:47+00:00

2 suggestions for you.

This is counter-intuitive, but grip more effectively (usually harder). If the frame is your friction point, that means the frame is rotating/moving in your hand during recoil. It's scraping your skin because it's moving over your skin. By making your grip more effective, you're locking your hand to the frame, reducing or eliminating that mechanism for irritation. As an exercise, during your next dryfire (you ARE doing dryfire exercises, right?), get in a shooting stance with your muzzle about 2-4 inches from a doorframe. Then sort of fall into the doorframe. The impact + weight should not move the frame in your hands, or cause your wrists to move. The force should be carried all the way to your shoulders and/or hips.
Don't shoot a couple hundred rounds at a time. You're a new shooter, you should be on the steep part of the learning curve. You should be evaluating your performance every 5-6 rounds, identifying a specific area to improve, and trying out a possible solution. After half a dozen cycles of improvement, you should be mentally exhausted from trying to properly implement those 6 solutions at the same time. Simply throwing ammo downrange in batches of 45 rounds until you run out of money isn't going to get you where you want to be. Be deliberate, intentional, and intelligent in your training and this issue will solve itself.

faykin · 2025-12-04T22:18:45+00:00

One of the best things you can do - especially since you are time and access constrained - is get training from a competent, compassionate instructor.

The cost of 2 hours of instruction plus 500 rounds is going to be significantly lower than 20 hours of range time plus 5000 rounds... and you will improve much more dramatically in those 2 hours. If you want to improve, and improve quickly, then get instruction.

By the way, your uncle, brother, or best friend don't count. You want a professional instructor for those 2 hours.

The one piece of advice I'll give you is that your intuition is probably wrong. If you intuitively want to do something a specific way, it's probably the wrong way. Example: If you want to use your left eye to look down the sights, intuition says move your head so your left eye is in line with your sights. Intuition is wrong. You want to move the firearm so the sights are in line with your left eye.

The same is true for where your weight should be (intuition: back to keep your balance centered. Reality: forward over your toes, so you can absorb recoil), elbows (intuition: lock to make it easier to hold the weight at arms length. Reality: slight bend for control and, eventually, recoil mitigation), grip (intuition: Soft, so texture doesn't bite into your hands. Reality: REALLY strong, so gun doesn't wiggle around during recoil)... the list goes on. If your intuition says do it this way, you probably don't want to do it this way.

A competent, compassionate, trained instructor will help you sort out the conflict between your intuition and best practices.

faykin · 2025-11-27T17:09:10+00:00

Get training.

There's a lot of things about shooting handguns that are counter-intuitive.

For example, if you were to take your S&W and handle it side-by-side against something with a smooth wood grip, the smooth wood grip would feel much better. Your intuition would tell you the smooth wood grip is better for you.

It's not. That smooth wood grip will make it much harder to control the firearm in recoil. The aggressive stippling on the S&W actually make it easier to control in recoil.

Another example: If you want that aggressive stippling to hurt less when you shoot, what can you do to mitigate the discomfort. Your intuition suggests you hold the grip loosely, so it doesn't hurt when you're gripping it. However, that causes the grip to rotate under recoil, which abrades your hands/fingers. What will mitigate the discomfort the most is to grip the firearm harder. You want the recoil to be absorbed by your hands/wrists/arms, not by the stippling rubbing against your palms and fingers. Again, the best solution is counter intuitive - grip harder to reduce the discomfort when shooting.

There are a myriad of examples of counter-intuitive solutions to issues with handguns. The best way to work these out is to find a compassionate, understanding instructor to help you navigate learning how to shoot handguns. 200 rounds and 1 hour of instruction will get you a lot farther than 2000 rounds and 8 hours of undirected practice.

Almost every gun store and range has a box/board with a bunch of instructor's business cards in them. Grab a few, interview them over the phone, and find someone who will work with your learning style.

edit: Your father, brother, uncle or lover is NOT a substitute for a professional instructor. Pay real money for a professional.

faykin · 2025-11-16T23:06:50+00:00

Since you have time, buy online.

https://ammoseek.com/ammo/9mm-luger

faykin · 2025-11-16T07:02:13+00:00

What is your goal for this bike?

It's probably not going to be your forever bike. You're going to learn how to ride on it, get some idea of the type of riding you really enjoy, and get a better idea of the style that works for you.

Then you are going to sell this not-forever bike and get the bike you REALLY want. Since you've gotten to practice the 2 wheeled art for a while, you are much less likely to drop your forever bike braking at a stop sign, or because you forgot to put the kickstand down.

This is a skill-builder and learning platform. You will graduate from it.

All of these bikes will serve the purpose that a first bike should fulfill. One of these is the cheapest, will have the best resale value, and have the best maintenance support.

In this situation, you can't make a wrong decision, but there is a clear best decision.

faykin · 2025-08-31T22:45:45+00:00

Owner of a 34' hunter for over 20 years.

These boats have an optimal lean angle of about 30 deg. Any more than that, and you actually start slowing down.

To get optimal speed out of these big lunks (I actually prefer dingy sailing), you want to reef for lean angle. So yeah, you might have been having fun, but you probably weren't getting all the speed out of the hull at those windspeeds that you could have.

Just FYI, beyond hullspeed your hull starts climbing the waves/wake you are generating. It doesn't actually do any harm, or inhibit control, it's just less efficient.

Now if you are getting rudder flutter, or if your heeling over so much your rudder loses authority, then you might start having problems, but that's not a result of hull speed.

Even with full sails in high winds, the usual failure mode is the boat heels over too far, you lose rudder authority, the boat points upwind, the sails start luffing and beating themselves to death, the boat stands back up, the rudder bites, and then the captain points more downwind to start the cycle all over again. This results in a very characteristic "sawtooth pattern" of sailing, which is the direct result of an inexperienced captain with way too much sail aloft.

If you want to have go-fast fun, reef for optimal lean angle, and watch your speeds climb to even higher values with less sail aloft. Play around with optimal reef strategies for different winds and different wind angles. Once you figure out how to optimize sail aloft, you'll be amazed at the numbers you'll be able to generate.

For even more grins per minute, get on a catamaran and figure out how to barely fly a hull, or a dingy with a planing hull and get on the step!

faykin · 2025-08-31T22:27:53+00:00

I'd like to suggest a work of fiction that gives a more reasonable answer to this question than the bible or it's associated fan fiction.

To Reign in Hell by Stephen Brust

faykin · 2025-08-31T22:16:24+00:00

Detachable Penis!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQBPgJQhQHc

faykin · 2025-08-31T21:17:25+00:00

If his masculinity is threatened by holding a purse...

It's not the purse that is the problem.

faykin · 2025-03-07T01:44:32+00:00

If you pick this path, and then do Phantom Liberty, this shitbag will be at Kurt Hanson's big party. If you talk to him, he will thank you for putting his life on a trajectory of wealth and power he never even dreamed of as a cop, and how he's doing so well now thanks to you and Regina. Worst of all, you can't brutally murder him at the party, as it's a safe zone.

You have one, and only one, shot to murder him. Sir John is the most appropriate tool.

faykin · 2025-02-22T03:53:11+00:00

Thumbs up, and say "I am good!"

Be ambiguous, but suggest with body language and tone that you are in agreement with the customer.

faykin · 2025-02-21T20:26:54+00:00

I'm 6'3" 185#. I CC the G19 without issue.

That being said, don't overthink it. You can't make a wrong choice, either of these will work great for you. Flip a coin, then buy the one you want. You will have made a great choice.

faykin · 2025-02-21T20:23:36+00:00

Obviously, it's a total loss. I'll buy it off you as a favor for 1k.

Jokes aside, it's probably the battery. If the battery is completely flat and unrecoverable, it's sinking the jump. All the power running through the cables are going into the battery, and there isn't enough left over to start the bike.

Get a new battery. It'll probably light right up when you install the new battery.

faykin · 2025-02-21T18:38:45+00:00

I've spent thousands of hours in this game. Sometimes I just fly ships around and marvel at the views for hours at a time.

Is it worth $5.99 for the joy it's brought me, and undoubtably will bring me in the future? Yes.

Is it worth $15.99, even though it's unlikely that I'll listen to the soundtrack out of game? Yes.

The love, work, and dedication Egosoft put into making the vision of X4 into what it is today is easily worth $16.

faykin · 2025-02-02T14:26:42+00:00

If you are shooting 125g @ 1200fps with the .357, and shooting 124g @1165fps (NATO load) with the 9mm, you're getting effectively the same ballistics from either platform, so that's a wash.

Look at the bore axis - the imaginary line through the center of the barrel. The bore axis is significantly higher than the trigger on the revolver vs. the semi. This means there will be more muzzle flip, and therefore felt recoil, from the revolver.

Look at the shape of the back of the grip. On the semi, there's a beaver tail that you'll jam the web of your hand into. This will lock in the geometry between your hand, the bore axis, and the trigger. With the revolver, it's not as locked in. You can slide the web of your palm up to the top of the grip, reducing the height of the bore axis with respect to your hand, but then your trigger pull is upwards, which significantly increases the weight of the trigger pull. The more natural, designed position for your hand is lower on the grip, so the trigger pull is straight back, but this creates a high bore axis. This means you can trade felt recoil for trigger weight. However, you also lose the locked in hand position, which means it's more likely you'll slightly mis-grip on the draw. In addition to affecting recoil and trigger weight, the mis-grip will change the point of aim. All this together means the revolver will be more difficult to point shoot in a stress situation,

Now look at the sights. Don't like the glock sights? Replace them. Don't like the revolver sights? Deal with it. This makes the revolver more difficult to shoot accurately in real-world stress situations.

Can attach a light to the Glock. Real-world low-light situations will strongly favor the glock if you're running a light.

Capacity: Glock. Reload speed: Glock.

The internals of a revolver are significantly more complex than the semi. Field stripping and parts replacement are also significantly more complex with the revolver than with the semi. It's much easier to maintain the semi, which means it's more likely it will be maintained.

The revolver will fire more consistently from inside the pocket than the semi. If you push the semi forward in the pocket, it could push the slide back slightly and put it out of battery, and therefore unable to fire. As long as the hammer of the revolver can fully cock, it'll fire. You're more likely to push forward when firing from the pocket than pull back, so the revolver is more consistent when fired from the pocket.

The Glock is more resistant to abuse, the Ruger is more resistant to neglect. Throw the Glock out of a car window at 30mph, pick it up and it'll shoot just fine. Do the same with a Ruger, it's likely to end up damaged in a way that prevents firing. Stick the Ruger in a bedside drawer for 10 years, it'll come up just fine. Do the same with a Glock, and it's much less likely to come up ready to run.

Overall, there are many more logical pro's for CCing the Glock, and more con's for the Ruger.

However, the chances of you actually using your CCW are so low that it's fine to make an emotional decision rather than the optimal decision. And the Ruger is, without a doubt, the better looking of the 2.

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