This guy actually *built* a Turing Machine. Ridiculously awesome. http://aturingmachine.com

Our fearless leader Ian has taken it upon himself to create custom birthday cards to celebrate each birthday on the team at work.  In each unique creation, Ian tries to commemorate the distinguished heritage of the recipient.  For my birthday, Ian highlighted the following facts about myself and my Wisconsin heritage:

• I have red hair and a “Mc” name, therefore I am Irish, and therefore a leprechaun.
• Wisconsinites subsist on a diet of cheese
• The favorite pasttime of all Wisconsinites is cow tipping
• Wisconsin is, in fact, not in the United States at all, but rather a part of Canada
• Wisconsin’s greatest cultural landmark is the Concrete Park in Phillips, WI, represented here by an iconic shot of Paul Bunyan.

For any of my pro gun-control or anti-gun friends reading this, please understand that I grew up around firearms and the notion that they can be used safely when treated with appropriate caution and respect.  If this is politically or emotionally disturbing to you, kindly don’t read it.  I’m not trying to offend anyone.

I’ve gone pistol shooting with Jon Ward a couple times recently, which has been pretty awesome since I’ve not shot very much since Boy Scouts in high school.  We’re shooting at Wade’s Eastside Gun Shop in Bellevue, which is a pretty nice indoor range.  It took me a trip or two to get the knack of things again, but I’m happy to report that my shooting has been improving steadily.  I’ve been renting various different guns, .22′s and 9mm, and Jon also let me shoot Evette’s Beretta, which I believe was a Beretta 92FS. Nice gun, though when it got dirty it started sticking a bit.

I liked the Ruger MK III .22LR that I shot this past weekend; got a couple decent groupings out of that:

Also really liked Jon’s Glock with .22 conversion kit, which felt a lot more solid to me than the Ruger, and after getting a feel for the harder trigger pull, I think it gave me more consistent shots.  I already had 20 rounds in the target below when I started shooting the Glock, but I put three shots in pretty short succession (maybe even in a row, not sure on that) through nearly the same hole.  To see how the grouping came out, I was aiming for the top of the circle (at the red X), and put three rounds connected inside the blue circle:

Good times.  I’ve got a membership at the gun range now, so the next step is deciding if I’ll shoot enough to warrant buying a gun, and if so, which?

A co-worker was arranging dinner for people staying late at work tonight.  I tried to respond that I was not staying late, and was confused by this “spelling” error in Outlook… until I realized they were probably just trying to shorten things up to keep the message box small.

Or wait… how exactly was that any shorter?

/facepalm.