Warm and moist at the BOL today, maybe even stormy. Or it could be we end up missing it all. Sometimes the stuff swirls right past us here. Weather prediction seems to be one of two jobs where you can be wrong every day and people will still keep asking for your opinion. Stock picker/financial pundit being the other…
Yesterday started grey and warm, but cleared later. I even ran the A/C in the evening to cool the house and dry it out. Humidity was more uncomfortable than the heat. We’ve managed with screens and fans so far this week, but I like it a bit dryer.
I did get a couple of things done. I put the trim around the entry door, added a deadbolt, and that project would be done if I could have installed the threshold. Couldn’t find the right fasteners, which I KNOW I have somewhere. I’ll look one last place today, then install it anyway with some less appropriate screws. Gotta make due if you want to make progress, when a hardware store run is a 2 hours round trip. Being well stacked helps minimize that of course. Being able to FIND what you stacked, priceless.
I started laying out this year’s temporary sprinkler system. There was a bit more freeze damage than I thought. One of the hose connections split. I didn’t think to drain them, I just disconnected them from the feed. There must have been a loop trapping some water. I found another spot where the splice in the 1 1/2″ “trunk” line popped apart too. There might be more when I reconnect the pump and fire it up. I’ll continue working on that today if it’s not raining.
I did some sorting and organizing and putting away too. There will be a lot more of that today if it’s stormy.
I can find something to do, I’m sure.
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Post title refers to my best friend from high school and college. I got caught in the middle of his marriage drama and lost him, and his wife, as good friends. It’s been a couple decades, and I’ve reached out several times (they resolved their differences and have a son together and are still married). They have not resolved their issues with me, much to my regret.
Stacking doesn’t replace friendship, and new relationships don’t heal the broken ones, but life goes on.
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Get out in your neighborhood and meet some people. Inventory your existing relationships and spend some time on maintaining them. Stuff will be very helpful, but the right people will be critical for what’s coming.
Stack the right kind of friends.
nick
The US military has been paid off to look the other way. Watching my wife’s nephew work the system from arm’s length has been and education at our house.
Someone is advising him, and he can’t be an isolated case.
Banning the sale of the app until ownership of the service changes hands to a US company is a slippery slope.
Tik Tok data collection is amateur hour compared to the capabilities of Facebook and Google.
And, by extension, Vanguard, State Street, and Blackrock.
The eventual US owner of Tik Tok will answer to those three.
You Have Spoken.
We used to have the ability to fight a war on two fronts. Now, with the pussification of our military, and, plugs giving away the arsenal to Ukraine, we are in a position to get a severe bloody nose. The PLTs and plugs answer is “We got planes and nukes…” Try fighting a war without troops on the ground.
It is almost like a conspiracy to erase history:
Adobe Firefly is latest to suffer woke backfire after AI-generated images show black NAZIS, black Vikings and black male and female Founding Fathers – after Google Gemini furor
I don’t understand how everything is coming up Amish. Do the AI makers get together on the weekend to plot how 13% of the country should replace everybody else.
Shades of The Expanse:
Now scientists want you to eat lab-grown mold to ‘save the environment’
“Yes, I’ll have the mold and a side order of soy. June bugs for dessert.”
Blackrock is big into financing the AI monkey trick, and their social agenda is no secret.
Thanks to the recent Sweet Baby exposure, the Blackrock CEO’s comments about ESI are resurfacing on the Interwebz.
Messing with games is even more likely to generate a totally brutal backlash than movies. God help everyone involved if the rumors are true and Sweet Baby toned down GTA 6. Everything in the background of those women will go online, including sex partners and bra size.
Nothing will be off limits when “the spectrum” goes scorched earth.
People eat Blue Cheese, which is riddled with mold. People also eat fungus in the form of mushrooms. I still wonder who looked inside an oyster and thought that disgusting mass of slime would make a good meal.
And speaking of mold, when I was in the USAF the personnel analysts were called Turnips because dipshirts(-r) was already taken. They in turn called us programmers mushrooms because we were kept in the dark and fed crap.
“Black NAZIS”?
Sounds like a reparations bonanza.
How’s this for a winning strategy: pick a fight with a bunch of young men with poor social skills, many of whom have some degree of autism, who have poured much of their identity into being online gamers, who have been conditioned to fight all-out to win regardless of the type of competition, who have learned to look for gaps and loopholes and little mistakes.
How well did this strategy work out in the past?
Ask Bob Iger.
Google especially. I don’t think people even realize how insidious Google’s data collection and storage are.
Meta’s (aka Facebook) power comes from all of the other apps they own. Facebook itself isn’t very popular with anyone under about 35. I’ve seen a lot of jokes about Facebook being for grandparents. However, Meta also owns Instagram and WhatsApp. So, while younger people may laugh at Facebook’s demographics those same young people are obsessively using Instagram (and, outside the US, obsessively using WhatsApp).
I am still shocked that in Europe, where privacy rights are a big deal, that everyone kept up their WhatsApp addiction after Meta acquired it. They should have all switched to Telegram or Signal (the fact that Signal is banned in China is one heck of an advertisement for Signal). Europeans even prefer WhatsApp over SMS/MMS/RCS and iMessage. When a European says “text me” they mean WhatsApp not SMS.
What is scary about TikTok is that they probably have fairly accurate psychologic profiles of every user, They know what vids you rapidly scroll past, which ones you watch multiple times, which ones you like or bookmark or share, where you pause them, where you choose to zoom in, which ones you’ve saved. If you’ve given them access to the microphone and camera (so you can make your own TikTok vids) then they probably even know which ones you’ve laughed or cried at. Also, because of the rapid viewing they can gain a more accurate profile from a much large content sample in a fairly short period of time. Have a detailed psychologic profile of hundreds of millions of people is no small thing. One could, theoretically, take that data and cross reference it against known business leaders, politicians, and their ilk and know precisely which ones to manipulate how to manipulate them.
Another nail in the coffin:
‘Duty, Honor, Country’: West Point to Remove MacArthur’s Words From Mission Statement
It is time to get rid of all those WHITEY! General portraits and busts that line the halls. Who’ll be left? A couple of Amish?
The same thing happened while I attended Command & General Staff College in ‘90 at Fort Leavenworth. One Amish student complained all the halls were lined with WHITEY! General portraits. It didn’t matter there weren’t any/no famous Amish Generals at the time. We got to watch “Glory” in the auditorium and talk about Amish feelings one hour a week for the rest of the course. I imagine at this point, the Army has just painted Colin Powell over all the WHITEY! portraits Army wide.
Falfurrias Check Point:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Falfurrias+Check+Point/@27.0244695,-98.1388032,395m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x866674ac16eaaaab:0xe6e02d72c78267cc!8m2!3d27.0250994!4d-98.1383791!16s%2Fg%2F11c2j7vt88?entry=ttu
US 281 turns into I-37 in San Antonio. If you stay on it you go to Corpus. 281 forks off of I-37 before Three Rivers. Big sign saying “RGV / Edinburg exit right”.
That’s how I go to Edinburg.
Looking at the map, ok, US 181 was the road to Corpus from San Antonio. With Beeville on the way. I think I-37 was planned for hurricane evacuation.
78F and part clouds. Getting a late start. Stayed up late reading after I fell asleep in a food coma…
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Gemini, ha ha! why do the AI images have the shiny roundness to them?
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WRT “texting” my D1 and her friends all use instagram to communicate with each other. Not IM on the phone.
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TikTok isn’t just building psych profiles, they are collecting blackmail material. They intend to own this generation overtly or covertly.
wrt picking candidates, there was a SF novel or short that had the candidate’s team using “psycho linguistics” or some such to craft speeches where using the exact same words would produce different results in peoples’ minds based on their psych profile.
There was also The Cobweb- written by neal stephenson and his uncle under a pseudonym, where the candidate has a brain implant and adjusts his speech to reflect instant polling results while he’s talking. Or more correctly, his team does.
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no tree trimmer this trip. He’s booked solid. Hmm, there is stuff that needs to come down regardless. Hmm.
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as a data point, the single serving UHT milk boxes are drinkable 3 years past “best by” if they have been refrigerated the whole time. Normally they turn to tapioca at about 6 months past best by. They have a stronger “caramel” taste, but worked fine in my coffee this morning. MIL drank all my heavy cream… she’d have turned all my eggs into egg salad that no one would eat if I hadn’t called her on it.
As another data point, the single use “Mini Moos” creamer cups, also UHT, are a little chunky 2 years past ‘best by” . no ill effect, just no lightening of my coffee either.
————
Guess I better get back to it.
n
Did anyone else watch the Starship launch? It was glorious! They got quite a lot farther than last time. Lost the booster only at the very end, when the engines failed to ignite for landing (it was landing on water anyway, not intended for recovery). Lost the ship during re-entry, after all of the suborbital tests succeeded. One step at a time…
Ya don’t say…
Choice of college major makes a considerable difference. For example, an engineering major would generate almost three times the returns of a degree in the humanities and arts. The graphic below shows the differences.
n
Meanwhile on the interwebs, black girl discovers what others have known all along…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13197567/black-panther-video-game-designer-doesnt-hire-white-people.html
n
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13196437/Navy-captain-kurt-balanga-uss-ohio-fired.html
something going on.
n
Gina Carano
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/gina-carano-interview-madalorian-firing-elon-musk-disney-1235851597/
The Navy is “going down”, too.
I can’t imagine a sub Captain just sitting in his cabin for an entire cruise. That is a complete failure of training in command to get to that position.
Pearls Before Swine: Qatar Lost Football Match to Saudi Arabia
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2024/03/14
George Harrison is spinning in his grave.
“Inflation: A better measure, but still too low”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2024/03/inflation-better-measure-but-still-too.html
“I’ve been saying for years (as have many informed commenters) that the “official” rate of inflation has about as much relation to the facts as I do to Mata Hari. It’s massaged, manipulated and mangled until it bears little or no resemblance to the actual costs all of us are paying “on the street”. A year and a half ago, I said that the effective rate of inflation for our family (based on actual sales receipts, what we were paying for goods and services) was now over 30%. Late last year, Karl Denninger said much the same thing about what he was experiencing.”
“Tipp Insights has just prepared its own measure of inflation, based on the official figures, but removing much of the manipulation from them. It’s still not high enough, IMHO, but it’s more reliable than the government numbers.”
Yup, that is about what I am seeing. I am expecting inflation to be a minimum of 15% per year for the next ten years. Hold on, it is going to get rough.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13197567/black-panther-video-game-designer-doesnt-hire-white-people.html
It is beginning to look like the USA is becoming a country of enclaves. Heinlein predicted in his wonderful book “Friday” that the USA would split up into 6 or 7 countries in the future.
Bachelor in Fine Arts from Illinois State University. Receptionist at a daycare center prior to landing her first gig as a “Narrative Writer”.
The problem with going scorched earth on these women is that we are setting the stage for Big Mike 2024 in what will be the last election as we know the meaning of the term.
Big Mike will be about gettin’ even .. for everything.
The problem with going scorched earth on these women is that we are setting the stage for Big Mike 2024 in what will be the last election as we know the meaning of the term.
Big Mike will be about gettin’ even .. for everything.
Michelle Obama ain’t gonna run. She knows that the crazies will be after her the entire time. She will not be talked into running at the DNC convention in Chicago in August. That place will be a madhouse. It will be Nuisance who takes the baton from Biden.
“Figure Status Update – OpenAI Speech-to-Speech Reasoning”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq1QZB5baNw
Can terminators be very far away now ?
And I hope that the speech recognition is way, way better than the speech recognition in my 2019 F-150 4×4 which has terrible speech recognition, especially for navigation.
“Loss of confidence in his ability to command” generally means a sexual harassment or fraternization problem. And this is a problem with mixed-crew Naval vessels.
>> I started laying out this year’s temporary sprinkler system. There was a bit more freeze damage than I thought. One of the hose connections split. I didn’t think to drain them, I just disconnected them from the feed. There must have been a loop trapping some water. I found another spot where the splice in the 1 1/2″ “trunk” line popped apart too. There might be more when I reconnect the pump and fire it up. I’ll continue working on that today if it’s not raining.
@nick, does your system have an input to connect an air compressor and evac any water from the system. Common on RVs.
You’re confusing Moochelle, the former first lady, with Big Mike, an angry black male, regardless of current appearance, with many scores to settle, including one over the loss of his manhood to an agenda.
One way or another, we’re all going to get what Joan Rivers got when she got too close.
Nuisance will be VP as long as he surrenders his Texas research from his money people’s funding of Doors and Robert Francis’ statewide campaigns.
The Deep State will want their guy, Mayor Pete, however.
In other words, she’s unable to communicate with other people or to resolve disagreements or conflicts.
Which is what we often see with “amish” people; they’re unable to reason, so they immediately become violent.
Well, $&(&)_*^%_+_)()(*. And &^(*&%$_)*)(^*&.
The dryer quit, error code F01, which indicates a failed control board. The dryer is Kenmore HFE which we purchased in 2008. Videos on the intertubes indicate that the problem may be a soldered joint for the power relay. That I can fix with a jumper wire from the failed solder pad to another pad on the board.
We are leaving tomorrow morning so there is not enough time to get to the control board due to all the other stuff that needs to be done. The spousal unit will take the wet clothes to a friend’s house to dry the load. When I get back I will open the dryer to get to the control board and see if I can fix it. The unit will still be on borrowed time. A couple more months would be nice due to cash flow issues.
My gut instinct on a 16-year-old dryer is to just replace the thing. I can get one from Costco with the price including delivery, setup and haul away.
>> Stack the right kind of friends.
Good advice for Prince Willy. Plenty of details on the DM site not suitable for our genteel sensibilities here 😉
He could be taking one up the tailpipe in today’s military. Still fraternization.
And in these enlightened days, off by one errors are still killing my software. I just fixed a nasty one that I put in the code four months ago. Killed the entire run.
The dryer quit, error code F01, which indicates a failed control board. The dryer is Kenmore HFE which we purchased in 2008. Videos on the intertubes indicate that the problem may be a soldered joint for the power relay. That I can fix with a jumper wire from the failed solder pad to another pad on the board.
Or could it be a blown capacitor ? I am still seeing those, especially in kitchen appliances and laundry appliances.
2007-2008 is about the right time frame.
Every single one of the appliances in the kitchen in our rental in Vantucky had to be repaired/replaced during our four years in the house.
With the final repair, the LG (!) fridge, the appliance guy replaced the circuit board in the appliance and couldn’t initialize the system by unplugging/plugging. He gave up and told me to have the landlord buy a new refrigerator.
Not wanting to wait for that, I pulled up YouTube and watched the video on the repair, including the caution at the end that the refrigerator had to be plugged into the main and power cycled from the breaker to properly initialize the system.
Problem solved!
When we were paroled … er, escaped … er, moved, I still got hosed for half of my $1400 deposit for water spots on the faux marble backsplash and stains on the ceiling from the ductless (!) range vent.
Never rent a divorced woman’s settlement house. Our landlord certainly never did much of anything in the kitchen.
The Exploder has been at the Ford dealer waiting on a diagnosis of steering rack noise for four days.
The techs still haven’t taken a look. We are now 11th in line.
Ford has a problem.
This is the last year that the 4Runner will have the V6 so if the problem is the rack and not bad strut mounts – another possibility – the Exploder is history.
70,000 miles.
That’s SOP up north. Winterization of lawn sprinkler systems usually involves having somebody come by and hook up pressurized air to the system and blow all of the water out. October is usually the month for that.
Or Obama’s Purge of the Generals is being followed up by a Biden Purge of the Colonels & Captains.
The party of Slavery & Jim Crow doesn’t need a military full of officers still believing in things like Duty, Honor, Country. They might refuse commands to use their F-15s and nukes on fellow citizens.
Today’s Tyler Durden cowardice reporting.
God forbid US Steel actually focus on making … steel.
Vanguard/Blackrock/State Street want to merge their US Steel steel making subsidiary with their Cleveland-Cliffs steel making subsidiary.
The Japanese only care about making money for their shareholders, building the community, and paying the workers well.
Filthy lucre.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-steel-plunges-after-biden-opposes-acquisition-vital-iconic-company-nippon-steel
“Announcing worldwide availability of Arm Advisory Service for developers”
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2024/03/13/announcing-worldwide-availability-of-arm-advisory-service-for-developers/
“In October 2023, Microsoft introduced the Arm Advisory Service. Since then, interest has risen steeply. This is no surprise, as many across the industry consider Windows on Arm devices as the future of computing, with unparalleled speed, battery life, and connectivity. Our no-cost engineering advisory program has a proven track record helping developers build Arm-optimized apps for Windows.”
Wow, that screams Microsoft is moving to ARM, at least for laptops and other portable devices.
Windows on ARM still relies on junk designs from Qualcomm with lousy GPUs.
Microsoft could go the Apple route and design a chip, but that would be a long process. Plus Apple poached the quality talent which was available over a decade ago.
An AI-powered robot responds to speech …
Story with video here. Impressive – and maybe a bit creepy …
The local Flix Brewhouse has a 15th anniversary screening of “Inglorious Basterds” Saturday night.
I have the DVD, but it isn’t the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOcimzsviFA
Yes, you will see scalpings. It’s Tarantino.
15 years. Geesh. The next Tarantino flick will be his last if he keeps his word.
Brad Pitt has already signed up.
An AI-powered robot responds to speech …
Story with video here. Impressive – and maybe a bit creepy …
Very creepy. I got a terminator wannabe vibe from the bot.
Well, we got some drops but no real rain, and it’s pretty clear to the southeast. Most of our weather here comes from there.
I wasn’t super motivated so I cleaned and arranged while looking for the screws I can’t find. Then I got out the pole saw and went to work on some low hanging branches. brush pile is growing.
Might get my fire tonight after all, as it’s 73F and the wind has died down to nothing. It was howling earlier, and I wasn’t looking forward to being on the dock in it.
Opened the MrHeater 30K BTU unit I was going to use in the garage, or keep as back up for the house, and someone stole the ceramic catalyst blocks, then returned it. That’s a new one for me. I’ll see if I can order replacements, it’ll likely still be cheaper than buying new, but it does suck.
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Based on the texts and pics, W and kids went to the Rodeo and Livestock Show today. Looks like they had fun, and I didn’t have to stand there watching the rides that make me sick if I ride them. I do miss the deep fried food though.
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wrt the frozen sprinkler hose, I put out temporary “chucka-chucka-chucka” sprinklers fed by garden hose and connected that to my zone controller. The valves are at the bottom of the hill, so I thought that simply disconnecting the hoses from the valves and letting them drain out would be enough. Mostly, not entirely…
I’m re-doing the system with a similar plan, but I’m being a lot less random this time, running the hose around the perimeter, putting the sprinklers at even spacings, and splitting up the zones better. The only part of the original buried in ground system I’m re-using is a 1 ½ ” run up one side of the property to feed the front yard (street side) of the house. Naturally, there is a pushed apart splice in that run too. A real system will have to wait another season or two, if I can get the cobbled together stuff to run.
I’d like to find that some part of the front yard system can be salvaged, if only to get to the flower bed in the middle of the huge driveway, and to get under the drive to my veg garden area. That’s where I left off in the fall, backfeeding the pipes and repairing some breaks to see where they went, and if I could use them.
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Time for dinner, leftover pork chops, yum.
n
Opened the MrHeater 30K BTU unit I was going to use in the garage, or keep as back up for the house, and someone stole the ceramic catalyst blocks, then returned it. That’s a new one for me. I’ll see if I can order replacements, it’ll likely still be cheaper than buying new, but it does suck.
I hate it when that happens, I have been burned like that too. If I buy a box that has been obviously opened, I try to check it over first now. The manufacturers are getting smart, they put stickers on boxes now that indicate that the box has been opened.
Time for dinner, leftover pork chops, yum.
Leftover meat (hamburger 90% lean) spaghetti made by the wife a week ago.
We are really enjoying the old 26 ft3 sidebyside refrigerator in the garage. The wife just carries stuff out there and throws it in.
I do need to remove the rest of the ice maker from the system but that still works if hooked up. It was the door spigot for cold water that was not turning off that needed to be fixed.
This is the first refrigerator that we have replaced in 30 years that was in good enough shape to keep in the garage. The two previous refrigerators were destroyed by roof rats in the house that ate the compressor wiring insulation and opened small holes in the water pipes for drinks. Huge fire hazards.
Huh, logged in to youtube and they think I’m in Dallas. Starlink must be coming down somewhere near there or assigned me an ipaddy in Texas…
n
confusion to the databasers…
I am running W11 arm in Parallels on my MacBook. Some stuff does not run. But what I need it for does run. Fairly quick although that may be the Mac system.
Grr. This old Toughbook is cpu bound when watching youtube. I guess I’ll have to upgrade after all. If’ I’m gonna have starlink, I should be able to watch my tubes…
One oddity, I get better flow with fewer stutters on 720 than 360 which is where the “auto” resolution wants to be. Maybe the cpu is doing less work?
n
If anyone has any first hand experience with the Keltec 2000 or the S&W M&P FPC, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts and impressions.
n
>> I don’t understand how everything is coming up Amish. Do the AI makers get together on the weekend to plot how 13% of the country should replace everybody else.
Similar to the Wizard of Oz, eventually the curtain will open and the monkey trick will be revealed.
>> Google especially. I don’t think people even realize how insidious Google’s data collection and storage are.
I realize, but I’ve mostly given up on hiding from the Google-verse, although I include a few obtuse searches now and then to keep things interesting for them.
>> Meta’s (aka Facebook) power comes from all of the other apps they own. Facebook itself isn’t very popular with anyone under about 35. I’ve seen a lot of jokes about Facebook being for grandparents.
Yup, all my kids post on FaceCrack are pictures of the grandkids.
>> TikTok isn’t just building psych profiles, they are collecting blackmail material. They intend to own this generation overtly or covertly.
I figure I’m at the age where I’m not blackmail worthy. Anything worthwhile is long gone down the Brazos River.
>> As another data point, the single use “Mini Moos” creamer cups, also UHT, are a little chunky 2 years past ‘best by” . no ill effect, just no lightening of my coffee either.
The wonders of modern chemistry: Milk, Cream, Sodium Citrate, DATEM, Tetrasodium Pyrophosphate, Carrageenan.
>> Dani Lalonders, an associate narrative designer at Cliffhanger Games, made the comments in 2021, when she was working for a different video game named ValiDate, which follows 13 characters in Jersey City as they navigate dating. The comments have since gone viral, after being shared by the right-wing account Libs of TikTok, sparking outrage on social media among critics who say the comments are racist and proof of discrimination. ‘ValiDate has a team of all people of color. We have no white people on our team,’ she shared during a talk at the Game Devs of Color Expo. ‘I did that because I wanted to create a safe environment, and I know the best way for an environment to be safe is to be around people who are just like me. She added: ‘I’m not saying white people are creating unsafe environments, I’m saying sometimes it’s hard to work with white people because sometimes they think something is okay, but it’s actually a microaggression. ‘And no one wants to deal with that while you’re trying to make a game that they love.’
Hmm, did she happen to mention the “diversity” of the neighborhood she live in?
>> I hate it when that happens, I have been burned like that too. If I buy a box that has been obviously opened, I try to check it over first now. The manufacturers are getting smart, they put stickers on boxes now that indicate that the box has been opened.
I’m sure there are smarter crooks… https://www.amazon.com/SmartSign-Evident-Packing-Messaging-Material/dp/B09XJ6RZF1?tag=ttgnet-20/
>> If anyone has any first hand experience with the Keltec 2000 or the S&W M&P FPC, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts and impressions.
General comments…had a KelTec P22 and wasn’t happy with it. Too many FTFs and FTEs (with quality ammo). Sold it online (for a good price surprisingly). Have a M&P Shield EZ, very nice gub, would consider the FPC if you’re looking for a PCC.