Category Archives: Fun

Enjoying the sun!

Brandon, a friend of mine and I went to Silverdale and what an absolutely beautiful day it was, I love sunny light jacket weather!  My friend Andrew got his license last year and I helped him zero the optic on his Ruger 10/22 at 10 then 25 yards.  Even with bulk ammo, it was shooting very well and he was happy with everything.  Brandon enjoyed shooting the handguns and our Ruger 10/22, sigh I wish I could shoot my AR15s but that doesn’t look like it’ll happen anytime soon. 🙁

Love capturing the brass eject out of the handgun!  Brandon prefers the Glock 19 over the HK SFP9, bah what do kids know lol…  If handguns are ever unbanned (not looking good with the Liberals leading in the polls but we find out tonight) I’ll get a full size Glock 17 again in the future as well as bunch of other guns.

Quality time with the boy is always  good. 🙂

Get out of here

These types of articles drive me nuts, it’s been well known for decades that criminals get their guns from the US and don’t bother with the licensing system we have in Canada yet the only solution the Liberals ever have is banning guns from legal owners.

The data from GTA police is in line with what research has shown for many years, says Jooyoung Lee, a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto who studies the underlying causes and long-term consequences of gun violence.

“One thing we’ve known for many, many generations is that the U.S. is a global exporter of firearms and the vast majority of crime guns in Canada are originating in a very small kind of handful of U.S. states that have much more lax and porous gun laws,” he said.

Source: CBC

If our news organizations were truly objective, they’d question the powers that be why they’re enacting policy that doesn’t do anything and is all for show.

There’s no way I’m voting Liberal (probably ever again) but I take a lot of pleasure to see all the candidates in the leadership race to replace Trudeau are running as fast as they can away from his stupid policies.

TOUGHSOUL TF9044IR Review (kind of)

I was browsing Amazon for some random stuff and the TOUGHSOUL TF9044IR showed up on my recommended list so I took a look and man, $105 for an IR laser/light combo seemed cheap, I wanted to get some IR devices for my GSG-16, perhaps this would work out.  Thank you Amazon Prime, it got to me in 2 days from Florida and I didn’t have to pay customs. 🙂

The TOUGHSOUL (shortened to TS moving forward TF9044IR came in an non descript box with the brand’s name on it and inside was the unit itself, two CR123a batteries, M-LOK accessories and a small manual.  The TS TF9044IR is made of aluminum, has two buttons (one for the laser & the other for the IR illuminator), on one end is a battery cap and slot for two batteries and on the other were the IR is emitted from.  Overall it’s ~200 grams so it’s pretty light and has a pretty small formfactor.

As you can see next to my Steiner DBAL-A3 civilian LAM (boo, I know) it’s very small and if it’s mounted on the top rail, would not be visible to any optic you may be running.  The aiming laser is IR only so you’ll need night vision to zero the device, but that’s not too difficult as the laser is inline with the mount so the offset should be minimal and easy for people to take into account.  The illuminator is fixed so it can’t be focused and designed to be used at close ranges.

I don’t know how legitimate the IR laser numbers are on the sticker as we’ll see a bit later the laser is significantly more powerful than my DBAL-A3.  The mounting mechanism is M-LOK only and initally I wanted to install it on the left side of the GSG-16 but then it’d interfere with the charging handle and I already have a Surefire M300 on the right side.  At the moment I’ve mounted the TS TF9044IR on the bottom, may move it later but for now this will work.

I’m sorry not the best photos and even though there’s no moon at the moment, it’s still an urban area with a lot of snow cover.  When the weather is better I’ll update or post new photos of the unit in a darker area, I just wanted to get something up.  In the first two photos you can see the power of the IR illuminator, in the second photo specifically the illuminator doesn’t work well beyond the fence though again the environment is not very friendly.

The 3rd photo shows the laser (in the center), the 4th shows the dot difference between the TS TF9044IR and my civilian DBAL-A3, I don’t know if the TF9044IR is eye safe…  5th and 6th pictures show the difference between the TF9044IR and the DBAL with illuminator and with laser/illuminator on.  Note the DBAL A3 is at its widest setting and again the environment sucks for taking photos right now.  Finding a good LAM up here in Canada is difficult but there are a lot of compelling options coming to the market and some are making it up here too. 🙂

I can’t talk about how the TS TF9044IR handles recoil as my AR15s and GSG-16 are currently banned by the federal Liberal government but they should fall soon and hopefully we’ll have sensible gun laws again soon.  That’s a story for another time so the review really is incomplete but when I can shoot again, I’ll definitely talk about my experiences and if the TS TF9044IR could maintain zero.

For $105, even if it sucks I really can’t complain too much but I do have some high hopes so crossing my fingers and will keep this thing mounded on my gun till I can bring it to the range. 🙂

End of year trip

I should have posted this update last week but was lazy, anyway Maggie and I went to Cancun Mexico for xmas, it was the first time we’ve been away from Brandon for such a long time, in forever and it was really nice.  Our hotel, despite having beach club in its name was not near the beach but the location still wasn’t bad next to a lot of small businesses and restaurants.  We mainly relaxed but we did also do two full day excursions which was fun.

We saw some of the Mayan ruins, did some snorkeling, spent time at beautiful Mexico beaches and got to enjoy 28C+ humidity everyday lol.  I really do hate that sticky feeling, good thing our hotel room’s AC had a dehumidify option, not just cooling.

Only eventful thing that occurred was when we were snorkelling, there were a few other boats doing the same thing and well I happened to swim to the wrong boat lol.  Didn’t help all the guides wore the same coloured clothing and that our group had the same colour life jackets, it can be very disorienting in the water especially with people telling you to follow them.  I was lucky I had flippers on, if I didn’t I don’t know if I would have made it back to my boat as I was exhausted already lol.

Man I really love Mexican food, lol nothing was too spicey for me and while tasteful a lot of stuff is super cheap too!  A really great trip with Maggie, hehe we went away this year somewhere nicer to celebrate our wedding anniversary a bit early, on the 3rd we’ll be married for 20 years!  Wow how time flies, I really am lucky and have the best partner in her.

Here’s to 2024 and I can’t wait to see what 2025 has in store for us. 🙂

Next one is a bit of a wait…

On Friday Brandon and I drove up to Beaverton Ontario to stand on their beach to try and spot Comet A3, we were successful!

It was super faint to the naked eye, barely perceptible but the cameras and our nods allowed us to see it very clearly.  Comet A3 won’t be back for another 80k years so it’ll be a bit of a wait for it’s return. 😉  Saturday night we went out for a night walk as a family and while we could see the comet with the aid of our night vision devices, it was pretty hard to see with all the light pollution coming from Toronto.

That makes 3 astronomical events that I shared with Brandon this year and man, it was a good one.  Our weekend was really good and I hope you had a great one too.

Auroras!

A geomagnetic storm hit the planet last night (and tonight too, though less severe) so after Brandon’s BJJ I took Maggie out to find the auroras and we were successful!

I was running two cameras but for some reason set them up looking in the same general direction ugh what a newbie mistake.  Anyway a quick timelapse that I thought turned out pretty well. 🙂

I’m still around

As I mentioned earlier I don’t have much motivation to post on my blog these days, not sure why but I will try to keep it more up to date (I’ve said that before).  My back still hurts and I’m going to physio, there’s one central point just off to the right of my mid back that’s very painful but the physiotherapist, after doing her thing seems to show me where other aches and pains are.  It’s not the end of the world but annoying, she was saying it may take 4-6 months to recover!  Pretty crazy but then again I’ve never been in an accident so this is uncharted territory for me.

This weekend, Brandon went to the Cub Scout camp to assist and he had a lot of fun!  My little niece Georgia went as well and from what I’m told she said it was one of the best experiences in her life which makes me so happy to hear.

With Brandon away on Saturday Maggie went to play badminton while I played Pokemon with my local group here in Oshawa, came home at 1pm then we went up north to chase the auroras.  There was a large solar flare and accompanying CME earlier in the week but it ended up being nothing unfortunately.  Still I got to show Maggie the stars and they were absolutely beautiful.  We went to a new spot which I think I’ll make my default astro photography location moving forward as it’s much quieter than being on highway 60.

The first photo is looking North, top 3rd of the photo just off to the right you can see the Andromeda galaxy and it’s amazing that the light that we’re seeing started its journey 4 billion years ago!  When you see stars like this, it really makes you feel insignificant…  On the second photo I screwed up and missed focus, not sure how that happened but if you don’t zoom in to pixel peep, the photo still looks pretty good.  I believe the galactic core has set and won’t be around again till the spring but it’s still fun and it’s nice to check out how the new location is.

The Lexus RX 350 is great it’s a super comfortable car to drive in, not very exciting but that’s not what I’m looking for right now.  As something to soak up the KMs, it’s absolutely perfect.  Pretty dirty from the dirt roads I had to drive on (especially Friday when it was wet dropping Brandon off at camp) but I think I pissed someone off because there’s a large scratch on the right side running from the front fender over the two doors and onto the rear fender.  Sigh that’s why we can’t have nice things…  It’s not too deep and I’ll try some wax to see if I can buff it out.

Overall a good weekend, had a lot of fun but pretty tired so I’m going to bed early tonight. 🙂

Ouch!

I’m off Tuesday-Friday this week so I could spend some more time with Brandon and this morning we went to Silverdale.

Shooting is great bonding time and he enjoyed himself as well as starting to get better, just needs more practice.

On the way home though we definitely had a bit of a shock.

This was on the QEW just before Mississauga Rd, it was stop and go traffic and well the big truck couldn’t stop in time, hit the black van which then hit the back of my car.  The van slid into a white van in the passing lane (we were all in the middle) so it was a 4 car accident, ugh!  I feel lucky the black van was in between because if it wasn’t that truck would have hit me and the damage would have been a lot worse.

I called the police, two officers showed up an hour later traffic was terrible so not surprised it took so long.  They talked to us individually then told me I can drive home if I wanted to so I did.  The Lexus drives straight and felt fine (except for the error message about the parking sensors not working) so I hope it can be repaired though when I got home and opened the trunk I could see the rear was pushed in a bit, not sure if that’s bad or not.

Called insurance, gave them all the info and told them I have a dashcam with video if they wanted to see the accident but I think it’s pretty clear what happened so let’s see how long this one takes.

Amazing experiences

The sun ejected a few CMEs the Earth’s way last week and the first hit our planet on Friday and continued throughout the weekend.  Since it was clear, I took Brandon hunting for auroras and it was an amazing experience to s hare with him, to say we were successful is an understatement!

The first photo is of the sun, the suns pots on the right side of the picture, that’s where the storm erupted from.  Friday night the Kp index which gives you a rough idea at how significant the storm was at max, Kp9 and rated as a G5 geomagnetic storm (analogues to hurricane category ratings) and the auroras were so bright, you could see the greens, reds and purple colours with the naked eye!  Each photo is either a 2 or 4 second picture, absolutely wonderful!

Unfortunately Maggie had a badminton game early Saturday morning so she didn’t come with but yeah I was able to share this wonderful experience with the boy. 🙂

Obviously the last two photos have nothing to do with the auroras, that’s actually from a few weeks ago when we went to take pictures of the solar eclipse that came through, also shared that event with Brandon.  Definitely feel very fortunate that I can share these types of things with my boy and I hope that he remembers them forever! 🙂

Quality time!

Took Brandon to Silverdale this morning to do some shooting and it was great!

Brandon got to shoot his GSG-16 rifle, he enjoys it quite a bit and even though he didn’t initially like the recoil from 9mm pistols, he enjoyed shooting the Glock 19 on the steel plates. 😉  The ting from striking steel is very satisfying and I’m glad I can share this wonderful hobby with him.