Geek with guns

EMC World 2008 has ended; great event, lots of interesting stuff in the domain of storage and backup. Data deduplication certainly is a hot item in backup apparently, funny that we were actually looking into this area before even knowing of data dedup in VTLs. Interesting to see how inband dedup (like Avamar), outband (in VTLs) and the dedup technology in the upcoming TSM 6.1 will work together (or not at all ;)

I survived the last couple of nights mainly on Johnny Walker Black Label. Johnny Walker has always been one of my favorite blends, but the black one (12 yo) I had yet to taste. I tasted spicy heat and sweetly malty, creamy vanilla, and a very very small amount of peat.

Time to leave Vegas, but first why not stay a day longer and have some more fun in Sin City ? The US is the land of milk, honey and lots of guns, so we decided to go for some target shooting at the Gun Shop. I chose a shooting session with two of the most renowned automatic rifles, the AK-47 and the Uzi 9mm.

The AK-47 is better know as Kalashnikov, is a true legendary weapon, known for its extreme ruggedness, simplicity of operation and maintenance, and unsurpassed reliability even in worst conditions possible. It is used not only as a military weapon, but also as a platform for numerous sporting civilian rifles and shotguns. The gun, which is way more lighter and slimmer than I expected, is fed from 30 rounds, stamped steel magazines of heavy, but robust design. Shooting the AK felt very light, and the gun almost has little or no backdraft. Very sensitive trigger too, it's no wonder lots of accidents happen with this baby.

The Uzi 9mm is a much smaller gun, with smaller bullets too. The UZI submachine gun was developed in Israel by designer Uziel Gal in around 1949. UZI had been adopted by police and military of more than 90 countries, including Israel, Germany, Belgium. It was also produced under license in Belgium by FN Herstal; more compact versions, Mini and Micro UZI, which were developed in the early eighties, and are adopted by many police forces around the world. The Uzi has the same shooting experience as the AK, though the trigger is less sensitive. Bullets from an Uzi leave larger bullet holes too : whereas the AK left nice round holes, this one almost shreds the target paper.

Shooting these arms subdues the gunman literally with a rain of bullet shells. These empty shells fly all around, are burning hot, and leave an impressive burn mark whenever they hit a naked arm. Lets just say I have a nice souvenir from this experience ;)