Not the best pics, but here’s my full size M&P9. It’s made by Smith & Wesson. I got it in a couple of weeks ago and have nearly 600 rounds of the Todd Green 2000 round challenge through it so far. All mods (except night sight install) were done by me and include:
Beavertail reduction (stupid thing poked me in the love handles)
Stippling of backstrap, frontstrap, mag release, and index marks
Apex Sear installation
MA compliant trigger return spring
Warren 2 dot night sights
Well, we had 4 amazing Christmas Eve services this past week. Here’s a look at some of the various pieces that went into it:
1. Christmas Faith Story. Scott Milder shares with us the journey he took to faith.
2. The Christmas Story. Each year we try to do a humorous bit, this year we used it to get us into the Christmas Story:
3. The Solos. Here are the 4 solos sang during our services
A. Glory in the Highest, Jason Castro
B. O Holy Night, Suzanne Davis
C. Winter Snow, Emmy Davis
D. Heavenly Child, Danny Davis (Danny wrote this song and sings it pretty much every Christmas)
I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I did helping make it happen!
I probably shouldn’t do this… but we’ve been working hard and I can’t wait – here’s a little sneak peek at what we’re working on for Christmas Eve…
I’ll post a more full review once I’ve got some time, but here’s last night’s setlist…
1. Breathe
2. Get On Your Boots
3. Magnificent
4. Mysterious Ways / My Sweet Lord (snippet)
5. Beautiful Day / Blackbird (snippet)
6. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For / Stand By Me (snippet)
7. Stuck In A Moment
8. No Line On The Horizon
9. Elevation
10. Until The End Of The World
11. The Unforgettable Fire
12. City Of Blinding Lights
13. Vertigo
14. Crazy Tonight / Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) (snippet) / Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough (snippet)
15. Sunday Bloody Sunday / Get Up Stand Up (snippet)
16. MLK
17. Walk On / You’ll Never Walk Alone (snippet)
Encore:
18. One / Amazing Grace (snippet)
19. Where The Streets Have No Name / All You Need Is Love (snippet)
20. Ultra Violet (Light My Way)
21. With Or Without You
22. Moment of Surrender
It was a solid 2 hours of U2 and it was amazing…
So last night I got to do something new – Zombieland (in theaters everywhere today) had a screening/premiere and Zombie Walk last night.
So, at 5p I quit After Effects and unpacked a bag of make-up and costume pieces and started zombify-ing myself in my office. Jeff and Amanda took some pictures and video of the process, so maybe I’ll have that to add later. There weren’t pictures of the rest of the evening for two reasons – 1. My zombie character wouldn’t have had a camera and 2. My zombie companion did not follow Tallahassee’s (Woody Harrelson’s character in Zombieland) advice. When it came time to Nut Up or Shut Up… I think he shut up… Oh well, I had a great time and plenty of people asked to have their picture taken with me, so that was cool.
I had what was probably one of the least gory costumes – I mean there was no blood on my hospital gown until my IV full of blood leaked all over my hands and I wiped them on my robe. The best costume of the night had to be the Hunter S. Thompson zombie.
The movie was great. It was funny and just gory enough. They had amazing titles – the main character, Columbus (played by Jesse Eisenberg) narrates the film by giving his rules to surviving Zombieland. These rules were always shown on screen as they were either followed or broken in 3D text that lived within the frame and reacted to the action on screen. There was an incredible title sequence of super slo-mo zombie attacks set to “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Metallica. The credits were done in the same way as the rules, only now people were crashing into and scattering the letters all over the frame. It was very cool.
The crowd was pretty fun – but most crowds of geeks who dress up for events are – I mean, who are they to make fun of someone else?
Lessons I learned:
1. White makeup just doesn’t look dead enough on it’s own. If you want your skin to shake off the rosy hue of life, mix in a little green and just a touch of black into your white… it gives you a gray rotting look that white alone can’t create…
2. For most people – zombie makeup consists of copious amounts of fake blood randomly scattered across your skin and clothing. There doesn’t really even need to be any kind of reason for it.
3. People who run haunted houses are annoying. I literally had nearly a ream’s worth of paper from all the flyers and handouts they kept throwing at us…
4. People dressed as zombies re-creating the dance from Thriller is still funny…
5. A free movie and all you can eat pizza for under $10 is well worth the time and effort to dress up as a zombie.
6. Paper costumes (like a disposable hospital gown) can be a bad idea – especially when the hardest rainstorm of the season breaks out while you are driving to a Zombie Walk… So, have a back up plan (I did, but didn’t need it – see #7).
7. God must love Zombie Walks. The clouds parted and the rain stopped at the exact moment I parked my truck.
Here’s some photos from the event posted to Flickr
So… Metallica was awesome. Ann and I had a great time together (Frank was there too and he also seemed to enjoy himself)… I always thank God that he gave me a woman that likes to cuddle up at a metal show…
Anyway, here’s the set list and some notes on what they played. As always the music was awesome and the lights/stage show were… basic. Their pyro was cool (like it always is), but their lighting and stage setup is never real revolutionary or anything.
That Was Just Your Life
The End of the Line
The Four Horsemen
Holier Than Thou
One
Broken, Beat & Scarred
Cyanide
Sad But True
The Unforgiven
All Nightmare Long
Kirk Solo #1
The Day That Never Comes
Master Of Puppets
Dyers Eve
Kirk Solo #2
Nothing Else Matters
Enter Sandman
Encore Jam
Breadfan
Whiplash
Seek and Destroy
Total Running Time: 2:07:38
*Metallica first played Dallas on February 27, 1985 at Arcadia.
*They last played here on August 9, 2008 as part of a one-off Ozzfest. It was at this show that Cyanide was debuted.
*This was the first time that Dyers Eve was played in Dallas and also the first time that Dyers Eve was played in the US since November 6, 2004 in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
*This was the tenth time that Breadfan was played on the World Magnetic tour and the first time in 11 years that it was played in Dallas.
*This was the first time that Holier Than Thou was played in Dallas.
So I hooked our 5D MkII up to a spare laptop and captured the following time lapse of our recent speaker install. Unfortunately the HDD I was using started to fail, so there’s some missing data at the beginning and the end, but you get the idea…
Speaker Install Timelapse from Kevin Dooley on Vimeo.
According to reports released by the European Union and the United Nations, the UK has been named the most violent country in Europe and is listed as being more dangerous than the United States and South Africa, which has long been thought to be the one of the most violent countries world wide. Check out this article for more information.
All of this despite the fact that Britain has sweeping and severe gun control which is generally considered to be the strictest gun control in the world.
In addition to this, the UK has more CCTV cameras per person than the communist regime in China – the UK averages 1 camera per 14 residents and each citizen is captured on camera approximately 300 times per day. Check out this article for more info.
So what does all this mean? It means that nanny-state, oppressive control by the government cannot keep their people safe – but it can keep them docile and under the thumb of their government. What it says is that there is no replacement for taking PERSONAL responsibility for your own safety and the safety of those you love.
The man that makes football sound stupid finally gives up and goes home!
Well since ESPN moved the video that was linked here… I was excited because John Madden finally retired. Man I couldn’t stand that guy.
Here’s a couple of videos we’ve used in service lately that I’ve shot and edited (with help from my awesome coworkers of course).
One Verse Cafe from Kevin Dooley on Vimeo.
How Not to Prayer Walk from Kevin Dooley on Vimeo.
Alternately – “How to ruin your senior year of high school.”
So this past week someone rang my mom’s doorbell rather agressively at around 12:30 am or so… My mom looks out her peephole, and seeing no one calls the police to report the incident. The police ask if she saw anyone and if they were driving a particular pick up truck. She says nope, cuz she didn’t see anything.
The next day we find out that her neighbor saw quite a bit. He’s a cop and the minute a pickup truck holding approximately a dozen young men parked outside his house, he woke up. Unsure what was going on, he armed himself and kept an eye on burgeoning mob.
Suddenly two of the young men charge across the street and up the sidewalk towards the neighbor’s door. He throws open his front door and levels his issued Glock at what is now clearly two very, very frightened teenagers who were merely trying to get in a little post-graduation “Ding, Dong, Ditch” or “Ring and Run” or whatever they call it near you (we called it something involving a racial slur where I grew up, but this post is not about that). The cop chases after the two guys and watches them hop into the back of the pickup which is quickly filling up with young men who just found out what a stupid idea it is to go onto someone’s property uninvited in the middle of the night in Texas.
By the way, deadly force is authorized against criminal mischief in the dark in the state of Texas. Meaning? Just for annoying the crap out of people like this gives them the right to shoot you in Texas… as long as it’s dark out.
One last note, since I forgot to mention it. My mom was at her door with her custom-made, stainless steel .45, just for the record…
Okay, I’m lazy, so I published these photos from iPhoto into Facebook, so they’re found here:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1853307&l=d1a83054c2&id=513208420
So today I am at one of our campuses and I just overheard a couple of members who are here early because they are serving. They were talking about our upcoming service projects that we’re doing to celebrate our church’s 30th anniversary. One of them said, “I can’t take off work for all the stuff we’re doing – I’ll lose money.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t laying aside your wants, comforts and schedule to feed the hungry and clean up your community supposed to be sacrifice?
So I built a rifle recently. That’s right, I BUILT a rifle. It’s an M4 styled AR-15. Here it is:
For those that are spec driven, here’s the details. I used a stripped Essential Arms lower from a little company in Louisiana. It’s not the prettiest receiver (there’s no prancing horse or coiled snake or anything on it), but its functional and it was affordable, and since one forged lower is as good as another, that’s what I went with. Inside of it is a lower parts kit from Rock River Arms – that’s all the little pins, detents, latches and the fire control group that make the lower receiver functional. I used a mil-spec receiver extension tube with an H-weighted buffer. The upper receiver group is from Bravo Company USA which builds some of the finest components you can get. Their M4 upper comes with the following specs:
All of which basically means that it’s pretty much as close to mil-spec as you can get without enlisting. Inside of that is a Lewis Machine and Tool Bolt Carrier Group and a Continental Machine and Tool charging handle. I then added some Magpul goodness to round it out – there’s the MOE (Magpul Original Equipment) buttstock and handguards and Magpul’s new back-up rear sight – the MBUS. I will shortly be adding a receiver endplate that adds a sling attachment (the ASAP from Magpul) and a weapon light down towards the front sight and this little rifle will be done…
