Todd's Blog

Today was the class that I'm facilitating for's first range day. They got to shoot a .50 caliber machine gun, a MK 19 grenade launcher, and set off 6 Claymore mines. My coworker and I had to haul all that ammo out there this morning and get things set up ... note: boxes of .50 cal ammo are HEAVY!

After that, I had time to take a few pictures. Unfortunately, it was a bit cold and rainy today, so I only took a few (think they came out relatively cool though). I'll have a couple more chances while I'm down here to get out to this range. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these ...

The Airman work in small 3-4 person teams to set up the claymore mine:


Boom! Two mines explode as the teams hide safely behind a sandbag barricade:


Scoping out the aftermath of the detonation. Lots of little holes in these targets.


Finally, I didn't spend a lot of time taking pictures of the machine gun firing, but I did think this one of the .50 cal muzzle flash was pretty cool:


That'…

I recently bought an HP 10.5" Netbook and a Virgin Mobile MIFI device to connect to the Internet while I'm traveling. On the one hand, this could be a bit of overkill, since I already have a Macbook Pro laptop, and I can get Internet on my Android phone. However, there are certain disadvantages to having to bring my entire home office with me every time I need to take a trip.

When I'm at home, I have my Macbook hooked up to a couple of portable drives, and a second monitor. So while it is a laptop, I don't really use it as a portable device per se. And I've tried to take just my phone on short trips, however then I'm limited to how good the 3G coverage is wherever I'm traveling too ... and more importantly, the little tiny screen. While this netbook is definitely not what I'm used to at home, I do still have the ability to play a game of poker, or more importantly get on Skype with my daughters.

My new Virgin Mobile MIFI gives me even more freedo…